Marvel has revealed its first ever drag queen superhero in an X-Men series.
Shade is a mutant who is also a drag queen, and she’s already a big hit with the fandom.
The superhero sashayed her way into the world with a single panel appearance in last month’s Iceman #4.
Fans are already creating fan art of Shade | Photo: Twitter
But many Marvel fans wondered whether it was just a drag queen posing as a mutant or not?
Writer Sina Grace, who’s out, has now revealed that Shade is a mutant and will be appearing in future issues of the comic.
‘I really wanted this series to push readers to new and better stories about the whole queer experience and how it applies to being both a mutant and a superhero,’ Grace told The Advocate.
‘There’s a million different queer perspectives and we’re only scratching the surface.’
Who wants a Shade action figure? | Photo: Twitter
Iceman is Marvel’s only solo series featuring a queer lead. Bobby Drake, the character, came out in 2015 and had his own solo series in 2017. However, this was canceled due to poor sales.
But due to fan demand, a new monthly comic was created in 2018.
‘My goal with this new Iceman series is for for everyone, myself, the readers, the characters involved in the comic book, to have fun,’ declares Grac
Shade’s mutant power is teleport. She can open pocked voids that allows her to step into and out of her handheld folding fan.
A debut collection of linked short stories about love, loss, and intimacy, Oranges is a gentle look at what it means to come of age and grow older as a gay man in the Midwest. The slim collection of nine tales sketches the life of Michael Dolin, a civil lawyer who grew up closeted in Mason City, Iowa, before finding self-respect in Minneapolis as an adult. In spare prose, author Gary Eldon Peter portrays Michael’s lifelong journey toward inner peace with care and compassion.
The first story, “Blankets,” opens the collection with the protagonist at his most vulnerable. A recent college graduate, Michael struggles to balance his attempts to study for the LSAT with the demands of his job at a local hospital, where he cares for acutely depressed patients and dreams of finding stability. The aspiring lawyer also has just moved into the home of his partner, Kevin, who is living with HIV in the eighties. How the couple’s relationship will grow is by no means certain, but the intimate moments the two men share at their kitchen table are among the most memorable in the story, which, as with the other tales, unfolds in a series of succinct vignettes.
The rest of the collection focuses on either Michael’s adolescence or his mid life. In “The Bachelor” and “Donny,” Peter fully renders the confusion and turmoil that accompany Michael’s teenage realization that he’s gay. By contrast, in “Skating,” “Oranges,” and “Sun Country,” the author sympathizes with an adult Michael’s efforts to help care for Kevin, his mother, and his father, all of whom are ailing and nearing their deaths. Across stories Peter switches from first to third person and moves around in time, but his primary concern always is to flesh out Michael’s interiority.
“Wedding,” the final story, ends the collection on an uplifting note. The story explores Michael’s relationship with his new partner Stephen as the couple prepares for and attends the wedding of his nephew Jason. For much of the story, Michael frets over the idea that his sister Susan, Jason’s mother, will react negatively to his male partner’s appearance at her son’s wedding, but his worrying amounts to very little. Knowing how lonely Michael has been since Kevin’s death, Susan deals with the unfamiliar experience as best as she can, even if she doesn’t quite welcome Stephen into the family with open arms. The two men end the night dancing in their hotel room, optimistic about the future.
Warmhearted and thoughtful, Peter is at his best when he’s attending to the nuances of Michael’s close relationships. Whether charting Michael’s clumsy interactions with his father at a retirement home or detailing the sundry ways he tries to brighten Kevin’s last days, the author manages to make each relationship feel fresh and distinct from the rest. The best stories in the collection are those that show Michael successfully closing the distance between him and a loved one, after a period of emotional or physical separation.
As sweet as the stories are, they sometimes enter the realm of the saccharine. Conflict rarely erupts across these tales, often appearing only as a distant threat. The stories also tend to be a bit too well plotted, and the endings are uniformly forward looking and hopeful, even in the face of great loss. Time and time again, Michael finds himself in the difficult position of having to comfort his loved ones as they approach death, but the author rarely dwells in his protagonist’s pain or frustration. A little more anger would have heightened the realism of these slice-of-life stories
In spite of some blemishes, Oranges is still promising as a debut collection. Peter is talented at honing in on small moments that reveal character, and he sensitively captures the quietude of life in the Midwest. It’s not difficult to see why the collection won the Many Voices Project competition in Prose, hosted by Minnesota-based New Rivers Press. From his straightforward language to his penchant for precious endings, the author brushes aside cleverness and cynicism at every turn, and his stories earnestly depict an endless longing for human connection against the backdrop of a placid landscape.
Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury in ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (Screenshot via YouTube)
The 76th annual Golden Globes, hosted by Andy Samberg and Sandra Oh, recognized the best in film and television at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday with some prominent awards handed to LGBT projects.
“Bohemian Rhapsody,” the Queen biopic starring Rami Malek as queer frontman Freddie Mercury, won Best Motion Picture Drama. Malek’s portrayal of Mercury was also honored with the award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama. Before raking in the accolades, the film was already a box office hit becoming the biggest-selling music biopic in history.
Malek notably didn’t thank director Bryan Singer during his acceptance speech. Singer was fired from the film after being “unexpectedly unavailable” during filming. Rumors have also swirled that Singer and Malek clashed while filming. After his speech, Malek explained why he chose to omit recogizning Singer.
“There’s only one thing we needed to do and that was to celebrate Freddie Mercury in this film. He is a marvel. There is only one Freddie Mercury and nothing would compromise us giving him the love, celebration and adulation he deserves,” Malek said per People.
“The Assassination of Gianni Versace” won for Best Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television. Executive producer Brad Simpson noted in his speech that although the story is historical, set in ’90s Miami, it is not dated.
“This was the era of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ It was the Defense of Marriage Act era. Those forces of hate are still here with us. They tell us we should be scared of people who are different than us. They tell us we should put walls around ourselves. As artists we must fight back by representing those who are not represented by providing a space for people with new voices to tell stories that haven’t been told. As human beings, we can resist in the streets, resist at the ballot box. and practice love and empathy in our everyday lives. Our show is a period piece, but those forces are not historical. They are here, they are with us, and we must resist,” Simpson said.
Darren Criss, who played spree killer Andrew Cunanan, also won for Best Performance by an Actor in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television.
“This has been a marvelous year for representation in Hollywood, and I am so enormously proud to be a teeny tiny part of that as the son of a firecracker Filipino woman from Cebu that dreamed of coming into this country and getting to be invited to cool parties like this. Mom, I know you’re watching this,” Criss told the crowd.“I love you dearly. I dedicate this to you. This is totally awesome.”
Lady Gaga won Best Original Song in a Motion Picture for “Shallow” although both she and her “A Star is Born” co-star Bradley Cooper didn’t bring home awards for Best Actress, Best Actor or Best Director.
Out actor Ben Whishaw also won for his role as Norman Scott in “A Very English Scandal.”
“He took on the establishment with courage and a defiance that I find completely inspiring. He’s a true queer hero and icon. And Norman, this is for you,” Whishaw told the crowd as he accepted his award.
Check out the complete list of winners below.
Best Motion Picture – Drama
“Black Panther”
“BlackKklansman” “Bohemian Rhapsody”
“If Beale Street Could Talk”
“A Star Is Born”
Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
“Crazy Rich Asians”
“The Favourite”
“Green Book”
“Mary Poppins Returns”
“Vice”
Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama Glenn Close-“The Wife”
Lady Gaga-“A Star Is Born”
Nicole Kidman-“Destroyer”
Melissa McCarthy- “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”
Rosamund Pike-“A Private War”
Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama
Bradley Cooper-“A Star Is Born”
Willem Dafoe-“At Eternity’s Gate”
Lucas Hedges-“Boy Erased” Rami Malek-“Bohemian Rhapsody”
John David Washington-“BlackKklansman”
Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
Emily Blunt-“Mary Poppins Returns” Olivia Colman-“The Favourite”
Elsie Fisher- “Eighth Grade”
Charlize Theron-“Tully”
Constance Wu-“Crazy Rich Asians”
Best Director
Bradley Cooper-“A Star Is Born” Alfonso Cuaron-“Roma”
Peter Farrelly-“Green Book”
Spike Lee (“BlackKklansman”)
Adam McKay (“Vice”)
Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy Christian Bale-“Vice”
Lin-Manuel Miranda-“Mary Poppins Returns”
Viggo Mortensen-“Green Book”
Robert Redford-“The Old Man and the Gun”
John C. Reilly-“Stan and Ollie”
Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture
Amy Adams-“Vice”
Claire Foy-“First Man” Regina King-“If Beale Street Could Talk”
Emma Stone-“The Favourite”
Rachel Weisz-“The Favourite”
Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture
Mahershala Ali-“Green Book”
Timothée Chalamet-“Beautiful Boy”
Adam Driver-“BlackKklansman”
Richard E. Grant-“Can You Ever Forgive Me?”
Sam Rockwell-“Vice“
Best Original Score in a Motion Picture
Marco Beltrami-“A Quiet Place”
Alexandre Desplat-“Isle of Dogs”
Ludwig Göransson-“Black Panther” Justin Hurwitz-“First Man”
Marc Shaiman (“Mary Poppins Returns”)
Best Original Song in a Motion Picture
“All the Stars”-“Black Panther”
“Girl in the Movies”-“Dumplin’”
“Requiem for a Private War”-“A Private War”
“Revelation”-“Boy Erased” “Shallow”-“A Star Is Born”
Best Screenplay in a Motion Picture
Barry Jenkins-“If Beale Street Could Talk”
Adam McKay-“Vice”
Alfonso Cuaron-“Roma”
Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara-“The Favourite” Peter Farrelly, Nick Vallelonga, Brian Currie-“Green Book”
Best Motion Picture – Foreign Language
“Capernaum”
“Girl”
“Never Look Away” “Roma”
“Shoplifters”
Best Animated Film
“Incredibles 2”
“Isle of Dogs”
“Mirai”
“Ralph Breaks the Internet” “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”
Best TV series – Drama “The Americans”
“Bodyguard”
“Homecoming”
“Killing Eve”
“Pose”
Best performance by Actress in a TV series – Drama
Caitriona Balfe-“Outlander”
Elisabeth Moss-“The Handmaid’s Tale” Sandra Oh-“Killing Eve”
Julia Roberts-“Homecoming”
Keri Russell-“The Americans”
Best performance by an Actor in a TV Series – Drama
Jason Bateman-“Ozark”
Stephan James-“Homecoming” Richard Madden-“Bodyguard”
Billy Porter-“Pose”
Matthew Rhys-“The Americans”
Best TV series – Musical or Comedy
“Barry”
“The Good Place”
“Kidding” “The Kominsky Method”
“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”
Best Performance by an Actor in a TV series – Musical or Comedy
Sasha Baron Cohen-“Who Is America?”
Jim Carrey-“Kidding” Michael Douglas-“The Kominsky Method”
Donald Glover-“Atlanta”
Bill Hader-“Barry”
Best Performance by an Actress in a TV series – Musical or Comedy
Kristen Bell-“The Good Place”
Candice Bergen-“Murphy Brown”
Alison Brie-“GLOW” Rachel Brosnahan-“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”
Debra Messing-“Will & Grace”
Best Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
“The Alienist” “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story”
“Dirty John”
“Escape at Dannemora”
“Sharp Objects”
“A Very English Scandal”
Best Performance by an Actor in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Antonio Banderas-“Genius: Picasso”
Daniel Bruhl-“The Alienist” Darren Criss-“The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story”
Benedict Cumberbatch-“Patrick Melrose”
Hugh Grant-“A Very English Scandal”
Best Performance by an Actress in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Amy Adams-“Sharp Objects” Patricia Arquette-“Escape at Dannemora”
Connie Britton-“Dirty John”
Laura Dern-“The Tale”
Regina King-“Seven Seconds”
Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Alan Arkin-“The Kominsky Method”
Kieran Culkin-“Succession
Edgar Ramirez- “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” Ben Whishaw-“A Very English Scandal”
Henry Winkler-“Barry”
Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Alex Borstein-“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” Patricia Clarkson-“Sharp Objects”
Penélope Cruz-“The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story”
Thandie Newton (“Westworld”)
Yvonne Strahovski (“The Handmaid’s Tale”)
Kevin Hart and Ellen DeGeneres. (Screenshot via YouTube)
Ellen DeGeneres is facing backlash for supporting Kevin Hart and actively campaigning to have Hart host the Oscars.
Hart was tapped to host this year’s Oscars but stepped down after old homophobic jokes and tweets resurfaced. DeGeneres invited Hart on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” to talk about the fall out with the episode scheduled to air on Monday. However, DeGeneres and her producers was apparently so impressed by the interview that the episode aired on Friday instead.
In the interview, Hart explains that he has repeatedly apologized for the jokes, which were made 10 years ago, and viewed the situation as an attack on his character and an attempt to ruin his career. DeGeneres let Hart know that she fully supports him and even called the Academy on his behalf.
“I called them, I said, ‘Kevin’s on, I have no idea if he wants to come back and host, but what are your thoughts?’ And they were like, ‘Oh my God, we want him to host! We feel like that maybe he misunderstood or it was handled wrong. Maybe we said the wrong thing but we want him to host. Whatever we can do we would be thrilled. And he should host the Oscars,’” DeGeneres says.
She continued to explain that she thinks Hart has learned from his mistakes and deserves to come back as host.
“As a gay person, I am sensitive to all of that. You’ve already expressed that it’s not being educated on the subject, not realizing how dangerous those words are, not realizing how many kids are killed for being gay or beaten up every day,” DeGeneres says. “You have grown, you have apologized, you are apologizing again right now. You’ve done it. Don’t let those people win — host the Oscars.”
Some people criticized DeGeneres for labeling people who took issue with the jokes “haters” and “trolls.” There were also people who didn’t believe Hart was being genuine with his apology.
DeGeneres appeared to notice the backlash as she tweeted, “However you feel about this, the only positive way through it is to talk about it. Thank you for being here, @KevinHart4real. “
Calendar/Singer/Songwriter Music: Friday January 18 @ 7 pm. Occidental Center for the Arts is pleased to present: ‘Words and Music’ with Laurie Lewis, Don Henry, Claudia Russell and Nina Gerber. Join us for a night of outstanding music when three celebrated, award-winning singer/songwriters trade favorite tunes in a Nashville-style song circle, accompanied by virtuoso guitarist Nina Gerber! Don’t miss this special collaboration of talent at Sonoma County’s acoustic ’sweet spot’ OCA! $25 Advance/$30 at the door. Reservations advised. Fine refreshments available. Wheelchair accessible . Art gallery open for viewing. www.occidentalcenterforthearts.org. 707-874-9392. 3850 Doris Murphy Ct. Occidental, CA. 95465
We are living in a golden age of lyric, hybrid forms. Following in the queer lineage of Maggie Nelson’sBluets, Dionne Brand’s The Blue Clerk is a fascinating collections of prose poems and hybrid poetry.
The Blue Clerk is a timely book. Self-identified as an “Ars Poetica in 59 Versos,” The Blue Clerk follows the narrative arc of a speaker/poet and an omniscient clerk—who may be the poet/speaker’s archivist, confidant, guide, or Maker, depending on where one finds themselves in the story. Captivating us with a similarly rich landscape of hues (including the fascination with indigos/blues found in Nelson’s book), this collection interweaves the personal with global in a world that feels simultaneously familiar, dissimilar, futuristic, and as old as time.
Starting at something that could perhaps be a shipyard, or Ellis Island, or a stormy dock anywhere in the world, we as readers traverse through a lush landscape similar to the worlds of Gabriel Garcia Marquez (who is referenced), Jorge Luis Borges (who is also referenced), and Andrea Barrett (who is not referenced, but seems to exist in the same canon). And then, when we’ve gotten comfortable with a land of bygone days, we are startlingly drawn to an aching present—
In this city, you fall in love at Chester subway, it’s not a beautiful subway so your love makes it so. But its ugliness may doom your love, and you know it by you love anyway.
This is a tender, present moment, but also timeless. In fact, one of the most remarkable components of this manuscript may be that Brand has managed to make an entire gamut of time itself “timeless,” portraying moments as precious and beautiful, while also as hard as flint. Which is not only challenging to do well, but also intuitive to the way we emotionally function as people. While there are queer themes in the book, I would argue that the queerest thing about The Blue Clerk is exactly that: the skewed, nonlinear spectrum of time.
It takes a truly gifted writer to not only write about the queer experience as identity, but to also skillfully and astutely motion to the entire concept of temporal universality. The Blue Clerk may be one of the best collections of prose poems I’ve read in a long while.
An archivist is a professional obsessive with an impossible task: to collect, preserve and organize everything within one’s chosen bounds. Julietta Singh is not an archivist in the typical sense: on the contrary, she says, she has “a long history of becoming discomfortingly overwhelmed in spaces that contain masses of information.” Instead, the obsession that propels No Archive Will Restore You is the idea of the archive itself, and what it might mean to behold one’s own body—in this case, a queer, multiracial one marked by experiences ranging from bulimia to childbirth—as an archive worthy of passionate study.
Her starting point is a quote lifted blithely out of context from the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, who maintained that the first step in developing a coherent philosophy was to assess oneself as “a product of the historical process to date which has deposited in you an infinity of traces,” which must be inventoried to achieve self-knowledge. Singh is somewhat more interested in the deposits left by her personal history than by Gramsci’s great river of world history, but she dips into broader forces as well: the body can be shaped by many things, not all of them strictly physical. She speaks with rare candor about the material conditions of her labor as an academic within a system that churns out legions of “underpaid adjunct laborers without access to healthcare, facing our mid-30s without a clear sense of what it had all been for.” There is a riff on the politics of vegetarianism, and a thread tracing how the wellness industry and medical establishment converge to steer women toward natural remedies and psychological explanations for life-threatening conditions.
This is not even a quarter of the ground Singh wanders across—impressive in a book that barely crests the hundred-page mark. (At times I did wish she’d dwell longer in one spot, sometimes with the desire to forestall the occasional lapses into theory-as-poetry but generally because even her briefest asides are compelling.) One obvious predecessor for the book’s digressive form is Maggie Nelson’sThe Argonauts, which No Archive both references and closely follows in its blend of the academic and the couldn’t-be-more-personal. Which is not to say confessional. No Archive moves so briskly between subjects that the larger narrative of Singh’s life emerges only in flashes, and even major events can blur at this speed. Undescribed family trauma and an unexplained injury, for instance, haunt these pages like a kind of muscle memory.
If Singh glances away from such details, it may be to avoid framing No Archive as solely a catalog of damage. Early on she rejects the idea of focusing on the bodily “imperfections” that women in particular “see magnified so acutely that when we look at ourselves we see not body but flaw… I do not want to gather a body archive strictly in order to convert culturally produced deficiency into historical value; to begin to love in other words, what I have been trained to perceive as a flaw.” She’s after something messier: a portrait of the body as not so much vulnerable as permeable, continuously exchanging signals and material with the world around it.
That exchange produces joy as well as pain. Singh describes finding both inspiration and animal satisfaction in the birth and parenting of her daughter, produced and raised in partnership with a queer best friend. The book is dedicated to Singh’s romantic partner, the trans filmmaker Silas Howard, who shows up here as the object of a rapturous new love forced by distance to progress largely via text message. (Singh amusingly dissects the “biochemical desire” for an iPhone’s chime to supply a fix of attention, and “the private drama that unfolds in me each time I send a text message and receive an emoji response.”)
It’s perhaps a measure of Singh’s commitment to the instability of our embodied selves that she ends a long section on her blissful relationship by fast-forwarding to its end so she can address her partner’s next partner: “I want to articulate to her my devastation in advance. But also, and crucially, to welcome her lovingly into this genealogy of womanliness to which she will belong.” What might happen to our various relationships should we adopt Singh’s view of the body as unbounded and bountiful archive? Maybe something like this remarkable renunciation of ownership, this invitation to discover novel forms of community among our shifting selves.
Jeanne Winer’s second novel, Her Kind of Case, is an authoritative, grounded, and deeply human legal thriller. Crime fiction in part stems from the 19th century social novel, so it’s always a treat to read a contemporary novel that sheds light on a contemporary social issue: in this case, the complicated origins of homophobic violence and how our legal system handles teenagers involvement in such violence.
Winer’s Lee Isaacs is a 59-year-old criminal defense lawyer in Boulder, Colorado. She’s seasoned, savvy, and winding down a stellar career. She’s also a loner, still grieving the death of her husband. A difficult case falls in her lap: a sixteen-year-old skinhead, Jeremy, has confessed to participating in the horrible beating death, a “boot party,” of a young gay man. His earnest aunt believes that he’s innocent, that he was incapable of such violence, but nearly all the evidence, most of all the confession, point to a different conclusion. Furthermore, Jeremy seems uninterested in defending himself. An enthusiastic practitioner of Tae Kwon Do, Isaacs thrives on competition, always pushing herself physically and mentally. She’s intrigued by the case, because it seems impossible to win. Once she meets Jeremy, though, she senses there’s more to him than the evidence suggests; ultimately she defends him because she wants to understand him.
An attorney with thirty-five years of experience in criminal defense,Winer portrays lawyers and the machinery of the court system in precise detail, but never bogs down the momentum of the story with unnecessary exposition. She has a good instinct for when to dramatize courtroom scenes and when to offer summary, a key skill for legal thriller writers. She creates tension by fleshing out all the complex personalities of all the primary players, from to Jeremy to Carla Romano, the lead investigator, to Mark and Bobby, a gay couple and her best friends, who object to her defending a violent homophobe, to Dan Andrews, the DA, her legal opponent. Her relationship with Dan, in particular, is a blend of mutual respect and sparring, an echo of her Tao Kwon Do matches. As result, it’s one of the most compelling relationships in the book.
In a less compelling version of this story, Winer would’ve made Lee a young, hot twenty-something lawyer with something to prove, the DA would’ve been cocky and despicable, the defendant a pawn, and the plot run-of-the-mill. Writing Lee as a seasoned professional woman was a refreshing and dynamic choice. She’s equal parts wise, passionate, intense, and compassionate. (Please, writers and publishers, more characters like this, please!) Her relationship with Jeremy in particular is touching, not purely because she connects with him, but because he plays a role in her healing from the lost of her husband. In the most unlikeliest of ways, they need each other. As I was reading, I was reminded that the legal profession and justice system, however imperfect, is about people.
When Jared (LUCAS HEDGES) is outed as gay to his parents by a desperate new college friend, he is just as shocked as they are. Whilst he is aware of having feelings for other boys Jared is genuinely unsure of his sexuality and this is the reason he calmly acquiesces to his parents demand that he leave college to attend Love In Action that specialises in gay conversion therapy.
His father (RUSSELL CROWE) is the part time Pastor of a large church and also the owner of a successful car dealership in Arkansas and has reached his decision that this is the right course of action after consulting with two rather conservative Church elders. His mother (NICOLE KIDMAN) quietly goes along with this, and she is the one who accompanies Jared to the Center, and moves into a nearby hotel, where she and Jared will live whilst he goes to his daily ‘lessons’.
The story is based on GARRARD CONEY’S 2016 memoir so we assume that the methods that the school undertook to indoctrinate the ‘pupils’ was reasonably accurate. Adapted by JOEL EDGERTON who also directed and starred as the School’s Principal, he trod a careful path not to make the movie become one big anti-conversion rant.
Jared tries hard to come to terms with what his own sexuality may be and reconciling that with his faith, in an environment that comes over literally like a prison . It is as he and the other ‘pupils’ are verbally bullied by the school establishment, that the quiet introspective Jared finally finds his voice to speak out. It is however when he awakens his mother as to what is actually going on every day when he is dropped off at ‘school’, that she finally takes his side and calls the principal out for being the charlatan that he is.
Boy Erased comes on the heels of The Miseducation of Cameron Post the award winning movie that ridiculed gay conversion therapy. which really appealed to teenagers. With 39 US States still legally allowing such centers to operate this compelling new movie seems to be aimed more at parents who are not aware of the inequities of the system and long-term harm they can cause young people.
Hedges puts in a finally nuanced performance as Jared which is already attracting the attention in this awards season. However it is Kidman’s turn as the protective mother that really grabs your attention whilst you are reaching for the tissues.
Boy Erased somehow lacks the power of Cameron Post and doesnt have you reeling quite so much, but in this current political climate any attempt to spread the news and truth about these places is sorely welcomed.
In my review of Queer Games Studies, I approached the idea of queer games studies as a chance overlap of queer theory and games studies. With a breadth of scope, the lens of queer theory could obviously be applied to many mediums, (board, card, and video) games included. In the introduction to Queerness In Play, the editors present the idea that queer theory and games studies are both studies in the negotiation of spaces and situations, elaborating:
In both queerness and games, the idea of boundless freedom is a mirage, but also for both, there is meaning in exploring the possibilities that occur within the boundaries, especially when that exploration allows to us to see the ways in which those boundaries can be tested, expanded or reconfigured.
It makes sense to examine the rules of one world, to see the expansion of possibility in another.
Where Queer Games Studies, a prior collection of studies and essays taking a snapshot of the field, was something of a hub or a showcase of the many different areas to explore within the young but growing field, this collection has a slightly tighter focus. As the title Queerness In Play implies, the studies and essays presented are interested in both sides of the screen and the interaction between the two. Even when taking a close look at characters in virtual spaces, authors are also shedding light on players’ actions with and towards them inside games and reactions to and conversations around them outside of the games.
Sorted into four parts, “Queer Foundations,” “Representing Queerness,” “Un-gendering Assemblages,” and “No Fear of a Queer Planet: Gaming and Social Futures,” the book examines present, past and potential states of play, players and player avatars.
The first section includes two examinations of games studies itself. Sarah Evans, in “Queer(ing) Game Studies: Reviewing Research on Digital Play and Non-normativity,” presents research into the amount of work regarding queerness in games studies has been published, and in “Envisioning Queer Game Studies: Ludology and the Study of Queer Game Content,” Evan W. Lauteria makes a case for the importance of applications of queer theory in game studies.
“Representing Queerness” examines both characters that players can control and those they encounter and interact with, ranging from those that explicitly identify/are identified to be within the LGBTQ assemblage to those that provide space to examine queer themes. In the former category, there is a look at the portrayal of two characters, Ellie and Bill, from The Last Of Us, a discussion of the lack of same-sex romantic relationship options in the life-simulation game Tomodachi Life, and an examination of how androgyny is ‘allowed’ in protagonists while, in contrast, gender-variance is portrayed in a villainous light. As for queer subtext, there is a survey of gender performance of the various heroes of the Final Fantasy series, an analysis of the reveal of Samus’ appearance underneath the armor in Metroid in relation to similar ‘revelation’ narratives in other media, and a discussion of the discussion surrounding Zelda’s gender identity as Shiek in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time(and other appearances).
The latter half of the book focuses on the players and the act of play as well as the changing environments for play. Where “Un-gendering Assemblages” takes a look at individual roles and play, “No Fear of a Queer Planet: Gaming and Social Futures” considers gaming communities, small and large.
“Cues for Queer Play: Carving a Possibility Space for LGBTQ Role-Play” looks at the various paths and hurdles for queer roles and queer players in table-top, video game (offline and online), and real-life roleplaying games. Nathan Thompson looks at the gay MMORPG ‘mod’ scene in “‘Sexified’ Male Characters: Video Game Erotic Modding for Pleasure and Power” and how it provides a digital mirror to real-life politics of desire. “Let’s Come Out! On Gender and Sexuality, Encouraging Dialogue, and Acceptance,” presents a case study using a board game, Let’s Come Out!, which requires players to roleplay certain identities, to encourage discussion and self-reflection about assumptions and actions.
“The Abject Scapegoat: Boundary Erosion and Maintenance in League of Legends” examines the gender policing of an e-sports player amongst the game’s players and media. “Outside the Lanes: Supporting a Non-normative League of LegendsCommunity” looks a how members of an LBGTQ friendly e-sports club at a college attempt to create an inclusive space and time. “Out on Proudmoore: Climate Issues on an MMO” discusses the creation and social maintenance of the titular LGBT-friendly server in the massively popular game, World of Warcraft.
This collection does a lot to make it recommendable for those interested both queer and game studies. It provides various angles to understanding queerness using the stories and characters presented in games. It showcases an impressive effort of in-depth research as well an appropriate familiarity with the medium. And, it situates its discussion within appropriate contexts, often in the form of player discussion.
However, I must note the reliance on using or examining popular series, something which arguably leads to a slightly inaccurate picture of queer representation in games. It makes sense to use popular series and games to write about: authors are limited by both publishers’ and readers’ varying levels of knowledge regarding video games. Additionally, more popular games reach wider audiences which in turn provide more things to analyze. However, in a time when indie games can sometimes take up equal mindshare as mainstream “triple A” games, it seems odd that those made by smaller studios, like Undertale or Dream Daddy, aren’t discussed alongside other games.
Media is often a mirror for audiences, presenting a version of the world on screen, on canvas or on the page. Unlike most other media, however, games allow for (increased) interaction with the creation. In addition to the work itself and the reaction to it, another facet to be studied are the actions one can take in relation to it. And, in the case of online gaming, the media is less a separated reflection, but an extension of the tangible world.
As the games industry continues to grow and the field of queer games studies continues to widen, solid foundational texts are needed. Queerness In Play is a deeply researched guidebook whose authors deftly navigate multiple contexts and whose editors understand that game studies is not just an examination of other worlds but our own as well. And while it can only cover so much ground, it also does an effective job of inspiring future work.
Queerness In Play
Edited by Todd Harper, Meghan Blythe Adams, and Nicholas Taylor
Palgrave Macmillan
Paperback, 9783319905419, 300 pp.
October 2018
