(source: renthony @ tumblr.com)One of my biggest frustrations in trying to discuss queer media is how many people seem incapable of separating "this is an important milestone in representation" from "I did or did not enjoy this piece of media." Media analysis goes beyond just "fandom stuff," and queer media in particular deserves analysis and discussion because of how hard it's been stifled.
It doesn't matter if you hate Steven Universe, it's still important to talk about, because it showed the first queer wedding in American children's television. It has been cited by the creators of subsequent queer family animation as a major milestone in allowing their shows to enter production. The Ruby/Sapphire wedding is a historical milestone, and that doesn't stop being true just because you hate the show or think the ending was bad.
It doesn't matter if you think Will & Grace is entertaining or if you have any real interest in watching it, it's still a majorly important entry in televised queer representation. It kicked down the door to allow even more to come after, and deserves credit for what it did even if you don't personally care about the story.
It doesn't matter if you have any personal interest in Rocky Horror Picture Show, it's still got a ton of important history in queer spaces. Understanding why Rocky Horror showings were and still are hubs of queer expression is important even if you despise the movie and the creator.
Giving credit for representation milestones doesn't mean you can't have criticisms of a piece of media, it doesn't mean you have to like the media, and it doesn't mean you can't prefer other media. It doesn't mean it's free from problematic material, it doesn't mean it's god's gift to television, it doesn't mean it's better or worse storytelling than other stories.
It just means it's worth talking about and understanding the context in which it was made.
(source: renthony @ tumblr.com)Reblogging this to mention a couple specific examples people have brought up in the notes, that I thought were really good—
- Glee. How many of us fucking hate Glee? I do. You couldn't pay me to watch an episode of Glee today. Damn important at the time, though!
- Rent. Fucking goddamn Rent. I hate Rent. But how many people did it introduce to broader queer stories and issues and community?
- The Ellen Show. The show was a HUGE deal, and the impact of Ellen DeGeneres coming out was far, far reaching. Ellen as a person, however, is the kind of rich asshole who hangs out with fucking Dubya. And that's something that can (and should!) be talked about in the analysis of the show and its aftermath, without ever saying that "the show is bad and shouldn't exist and Ellen's coming out should never get talked about."
(source: renthony @ tumblr.com)I just blocked someone for going on a tag rant about how Rocky Horror doesn't deserve to be on this list because it's
irredeemably transmisogynistic,and I need all of you to sit down and listen.I never said you had to like the things on this list. I never said that you are required to engage with them.
What you are obligated to do, if you want to exist in queer community spaces, is respect the history and culture of the space you're in. You don't get to go into queer spaces and shit on the communities and traditions that kept the community alive. It doesn't matter if you "approve" of those traditions, what matters is that they kept. people. alive.
Every now and then someone gets over-the-moon pissed at me for defending Rocky Horror, and I just want so badly to introduce all these people to the 60-something year old trans woman who came up to the cast & crew when I was helping clean up after a RHPS shadowcast performance to tell us all about how she and her fiance have both been coming to Rocky longer than I've been alive, and how heartwarming it was to see people keeping the tradition alive.
If you have never been part of a queer space putting on a Rocky show for other queer people, don't talk to me about Rocky. Go count your fucking blessings that you live in a world where we can have new, better kinds of representation, but don't you dare act superior to the queers who have been Time Warping since before either of us were fucking born.
(source: renthony @ tumblr.com)again with this “i hate ‘Rent”’ stuff :/ i agree with the point of the post of course but i feel like a lot of ppl missed the point of Rent and it frustrates me
Okay, so a lot of people have left similar comments, and I want to address it:
I don’t like Rent because I simply did not enjoy it. I don’t have deep reasons why it’s irredeemable or offensive or objectively bad or something. I just…don’t enjoy it. It’s not a show I like. I’m really picky about my musicals because I’m HoH and they’re not always accessible to me, and Rent just didn’t do it for me.
The music isn’t bad, but I don’t personally connect with any of the characters, and it’s not a story that I particularly needed, because I had other elder queer people in my life growing up who told me their own stories about AIDS. Rent just wasn’t for me.
That is not a sin. It’s not because I didn’t understand it, it’s not because I think it’s worthless and unimportant, I just didn’t like it.
And that’s fine. Because my core point of this post is “you don’t have to like something to recognize its value and respect its history.”
I’m not here to shit on Rent and give people reasons to avoid it or whatever. I just, personally, did not enjoy it as a piece of entertainment. I don’t like modern slice-of-life live-action musicals. I like fantasy animation. It’s a genre preference, nothing more.
ren once again knocking it out of the park, articulating all of this in ways i could only dream of. there's a lot of reasons their tumblr is one of an extremely small (as in number i can count on a single hand) amount of tumblrs i kept track of after i deleted my entire tumblr account for good. (getting into the whys of deleting my tumblr account is a post for another time...)
they touch on a couple very important things i think a lot of people struggle to grasp: you don't have to personally like something for it to still be culturally important, personally not liking something does not inherently imply you think it's also objectively bad (it can also be objectively bad, just that these things aren't always linked), and also that a frightening number of younger LGBTQ+ people are very eager to tear down and destroy the foundation works which led to the more modern stuff they enjoy and also condemn and attack even other LGBTQ+ who still have a connection to those things.
at this point i mostly just block or otherwise avoid people who do the latter, though that doesn't mean we don't all feel the effects of those actions rippling through the larger community. the first person i knew who was really into Rocky Horror was an ex-friend (ex- for my own wrongdoing, not his, to be clear...) and whenever he brought it up he would say basically an entire essay of all the things wrong with it and apologise profusely for liking it, which even then before i really knew what a problem all of this bs was i was just kind of confused by. in the sense that yeah i mean those things about Rocky Horror aren't great things but it can still be important and meaningful to you, it's not a big deal. this was also something he did with his interest in drag and i had the same feelings on it. it's okay to still like it. something can be both Problematic and an irreplaceable piece of our history and culture as queers in this part of the world. those two things aren't in opposition or a contradiction of each other.
idk. i think this is more what i try to get at when talking about Problematic Media and is a facet at this point of why i'm highly allergic to people being hostile and vicious about "bad" media, aside from the immense amount of personal trauma all that dredges up for me. but at least this part of the world seems to be hurtling towards even more extreme conservatism and Christofascism so i can only imagine with dread that we'll be seeing and having to fix more of this behavior, not less. s i g h.