Tag Archives: sexuality

An Open Letter to the Entertainment Industry

01 Saturday Mar 2025

Posted by in A Few Thoughts

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,

This is an open letter in response to the proposed SCREEN Act and many other efforts to ban LGBTQIA+ content and explicit content as pornographic:

I am a reader, writer, and watcher of a vast variety of entertainment, from classic children’s movies to extreme horror. Please excuse the essay below, but I feel like really important things are happening and going to happen, and we all need to be prepared to protect ourselves now rather than simply waiting for the worst.

It’s so easy to look at market forces in the short term and allow book burners and book banners to decide what content everyone is going to be able to read, write, and watch. There’s small but loud pressure to consider queer content ‘pornographic’ (regardless of actual sexual content, because they are the ones who sexualize queer existence), to declare all sexual content pornographic, and to then declare the distributors of pornographic content sex offenders.

What these people tried to do to LBG people, they’re using the same playbook for trans people, and because they’re such a small subset of the population, they’re a lot easier to target. Compromises are made out of fear rather than principle. They’re winning against trans people, and they’re applying the playbook once more to LBG people. People have already proven willing to throw one subculture under the bus, so why not another?

Amazon made its bones on the backs of indie writers and both small and large publishing companies. It doesn’t necessarily make a profit from us, but it’s still the place for published written content. Whether some people like it or not, the Internet was built on the back of erotic and sometimes queer content. Romance, erotic romance, erotica, romantasy, etc. dominate the top spots. Fifty Shades was a cultural phenomenon, paving the way for Sarah Maas and Colleen Hoover. All of this, and Amazon is making every effort to produce its own prestige content, which often includes queer and/or sexual content.

HBO (WB-Discovery) made its bones on both prestige and trashy sexual content, often with queer content, none so popular as Game of Thrones.

Netflix made its bones on queer and sexual content, coming into its own with Orange is the New Black, eventually hosting everything from the Fear Street trilogy to Stranger Things, Ryan Murphy vehicles, Bridgerton, and other juggernaut feel-good shows like Queer Eye and Great British Baking Show.

Even The Blacklist, which is NBC product but one of the most popular shows on the platform, is a decidedly queer story, to say nothing of the Star Trek series through CBS.

Disney has long capitulated to these loud but small voices, in part to continue to send their movies to highly censored but lucrative markets like China and Russia. Any queerness has been suggested rather than overt, not to mention villainized. Only recently has it been more overtly depicted, but sparingly. However, Disney also has control over content intended for teens and adults through such channels as ABC (Freeform), FX, and Fox Film and Television, hosted on Hulu (and now on Disney+ directly).

When these small but loud forces come for all queer and sexual content, all of your content will be at risk. It is simple enough to proceed with ‘acceptable’ and ‘clean’ content per regulations going forward, maybe, and eliminate all cultural gains made in favor of placid obedience. It will be more difficult to censor back decades of valuable and pervasive queer representation and on-screen sex intended for teen and primetime (adult) audiences.

Just off the top of my head, powerhouse mainstream and legacy shows like Glee, NCIS, American Horror Story, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, SWAT, anything Shondaland (Grey’s Anatomy, How to Get Away with Murder, Scandal), anything FX, anything HBO, ER, 9-1-1, Wheel of Time, Star Trek, Matlock (new), Ghosts, The Irrational, Will Trent, Brooklyn Nine-Nine… On the chopping block. That’s not even getting into movies or the decades of novels through publishing arms of these entertainment industries.

As someone who has had very little queer community in real life, queerness in television has been so important to me and to others and has been instrumental in getting mainstream America to see how our existence isn’t a threat to them. But book burners/banners are. They don’t want people to be able to read/write/watch what they want or for people to be responsible for their own content and avoid what they don’t like. They want people to only read/write/watch the things that book burners/banners watch, and they want to criminalize what they don’t like.

We could lose whole swaths of prestige shows and even just plain enjoyable dreck by calling them pornographic. John Waters said pornographers are important to all of us, canaries in the entertainment coal mine, because what they are allowed to do allows the rest of us to do what we want. (See also Evelyn Beatrice Hall summarizing Voltaire: ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’)

American media has been censored and controlled in the past (and now) to certain degrees (see: the Hays Code, the present swath of book bans in schools). However, entertainment is not the same beast it was in the fifties. It has ballooned in size, power, influence, and ubiquity.

Streaming made so much more available to so many more people. I believe that attempts to censor or remove IPs with queer and/or sexual content will remove too much conscientiously created over the last 30 years with deliberate effort to depict queer people as they really are, rather than the terrifying predators that the far right believes us to be.

Religion is no longer the opiate of the masses. Entertainment is. I think if governments seek to control queer and sexual content by forcing censoring/removal of it beyond the merely annoying and oft ridiculed level of ‘edited for television,’ there will be more of a pushback than they are expecting from the general population. A disturbing number of people who enjoy modern romance and romantasy novels, sometimes with queer content, voted red.

I think that if these disappeared, there might be enough of a backlash, but in a theocracy, it’s difficult to say whether that can be depended upon to turn legislative/litigious tides. Netflix, Amazon, Disney, HBO, etc. all have a stake in what book burners/banners are trying to eliminate in books, movies, and television. And they have tremendous economic power. I beg you to refuse to budge. What they’re doing to books matters to you. You’re on the chopping block with us. These policies will affect you, but you have the economic power to resist and effect change. Please do not bow down the easy path now by self-censoring trans experiences. Censors learn what they can do by what you’ve already proven yourself willing to do.

Most big businesses lean conservative in hope of conserving a buck, but I believe supporting creators and your customers will lead to greater gains in the long run and that it’s most cost effective to take the risk of pushing back against book bans/burns as well as efforts to eliminate queerness and sexual elements from more visual media. I understand that these are businesses, but what most businesses forget is that they are also services. You can choose to accept civic duty or ignore it, but your choices have larger cultural consequences than profit, and it’s short-sighted to pretend otherwise.

Freedom of speech and expression is on the docket in this administration and beyond, because Project 2025 was never just about 2025 and has been in motion for decades with concerted and staggeringly successful efforts at banning vitally important books in schools. The book battle is your battle. They will eventually do it to you.

I am begging you, with your tremendous economic influence, to stop waiting to see where the wind will blow so you know which direction to go and instead step into this fight, hand in hand with book publishers and other entertainment companies, to protect speech, expression, cultural memory, the right of information, the right of parents to allow their kids to read, write, and watch according to their own principles rather than someone else’s, and the right for kids to see themselves in the media they consume and for teens to prepare for adulthood in the eminently safe spaces of entertainment. Too much information is less dangerous than too little, and diversity shouldn’t be a reluctant compromise. It literally makes everything better.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for your time.

(Edited to add: I didn’t just post this here. I sent a version of this letter to the four big entertainment corporations listed above in November.)

No one mourns the Wicked

11 Wednesday Dec 2024

Posted by in A Few Thoughts, Movie Reviews

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Just came back from seeing Wicked in theaters, and I’m pleased to say that I agree with everyone about how wonderful the adaptation from stage to screen is. I forgot to bring tissues, although I always cry for “No One Mourns the Wicked” and “Defying Gravity.” Like a lot of people, I’ve always identified with Elphaba, and like a lot of people, I also have to contend with the Glinda in me.

Chu’s movie and Erivo’s interpretation of her role brought a lot of profound, rich elements to Elphaba’s story. There’s no escaping how much Erivo brings her blackness into her depiction, although the world of Oz itself doesn’t seem to be as concerned with race or size, as shown by prominent depictions of all kinds of people, including those considered less-than, soulless, or cursed in our world (I noticed little people at the Emerald City, an albino student of African descent, and lots of gingers). Nod to Bowen Yang for “I don’t see color.” (Indeed, disability seems to be the notable exception, and that more out of general ignorance rather than a lack of effort on the part of Ozians.) Better people than I have commented on how Elphaba’s clothes and dancing were ridiculed until mimicked by a white girl, comparable to the co-opting of black culture for white consumption. And there was that beautiful moment when pink light showed Cynthia’s own skin tone when Elphaba was imagining no longer being green.

There’s also no escaping the romantic undertones in the friendship between Elphaba and Glinda, although the world of Oz seems to be welcome to various sexualities and, as shown by the universal reaction to Fiyero, runs quite bisexual and gender neutral, as shown through Shiz uniforms (reminiscent of the Next Generation Enterprise in its first episode, when a man wore a mini-skirt on board, although it eventually shifted to what we call unisex today, which considered masculine bodies and clothes a default neutral). This was by design first by Maguire, who made it more over- than undertone, then shifted more to a vibe by Schwartz; both men are gay.

Elphaba is representative of no one thing, because all of our vulnerable groups are just that: groups, communities, umbrellas. Elphaba is truly and utterly alone, though many of us in vulnerable groups still feel alone, isolated, especially if we’re not connected to a community. We can feel like there’s none like us, but we have the benefit of knowing we aren’t the only one of our kind. Elphaba does not. So she becomes the ultimate Other, for those of us alone and hated for what we are to look to and identify with.

Neither Maguire nor Schwartz were prescient; all things old are new again, and ever shall it be. Maguire grew up and through the AIDS crisis as a gay man. It’s no surprise that he referenced it in his novel through a character experiencing a debilitating sexually transmitted illness and being tended to by Elphaba alone—again alone. Schwartz’s musical came out when the gay and lesbian community was only just beginning to get traction in media representation showing that they weren’t predators and were just trying to live their lives in love. The sapphic vibe kept Elphaba and Glinda more palatable, gateway lesbian romance for the time, and left room for the equally important friendship.

What ached so deeply in my heart through “Defying Gravity” during this viewing, though, also seemed very intentional on Chu’s part. Or maybe it didn’t even need to be intentional, because it’s always there: the common enemy made of vulnerable people who are too easy to make hated, not because of what they do but because of who they are. First the Animals (capitalized to differentiate from those who do not speak), who were at one point completely integrated into the Oz world and then gradually discriminated against until they were squashed into silence and loss of their identity. The Animals didn’t do anything. The Wizard just brought his prejudices from our world into Oz, and they were convenient to blame after economic hardship (sound familiar?).

You can’t avoid the parallels Wicked makes with the world we’re in, even though they were post-production well before the election and could not have known who would win. And you can’t avoid who seems to be the Wicked Witch of the Western World now. While watching Erivo run, then take her flying stand as the citizens scream “Kill her!” and Madame Morrible says with such relish, “Her green skin is but an outward manifestorium of her twisted nature. This distortion! This repulsion! This wicked witch!,” it is impossible not to see my trans brothers and sisters in this demonization.

It is impossible not to recall the fear-mongering election ads and articles depicting trans people as repulsive and distortions, as predators, as sick, and how the other side really made no effort to combat the monstrous rhetoric, in an effort to protect themselves and because they truly don’t care. It is impossible not to recall the same viciousness and indifference, with the exact same phrases, used against gays and lesbians less than fifteen years ago (before Obama’s ‘evolving’ opinions). Yet enough gays and lesbians now were willing to throw trans people under the bus, presenting themselves as the ‘good queers,’ assuming incorrectly that they aren’t going to be the next (and present) targets. In addition, it is no coincidence that Elphaba is an analog to trans and intersex in the books, although that element wasn’t included in the musical.

All throughout “Defying Gravity,” my heart broke for my trans brothers and sisters who sit with me under our particular umbrella. As the Wizard says, “The best way to bring folks together is to give them a real good enemy.” This is what the culture war is: Distract from the real villainy that people are doing by pointing them in the direction of a small, vulnerable population and condemning what they are, often through bad-faith misunderstandings and outright lies. It’s also no coincidence, of course, that Dr. Dillamond is a literal scape-Goat.

Part of me wishes that this movie had come out before the election. Another part of me knows that enough people who have loved the musical and movie may not see Glinda in themselves or the Wizard in those they idolize. They may only see in Elphaba the rebel they want to be but not the terribly alone and exiled woman she is. Again, it seems to be no coincidence that people of all races, gender identities, and sexualities at Shiz were afraid of, hated, and bullied Elphaba, and how minorities so rarely seem to rally for each other in solidarity, out of either unconscious or fully conscious fear they’ll be targeted next. Much easier to have them scramble for scraps of approval. If anything, I felt like the fact that races, sizes, and queerness being depicted as acceptable while Animals and Elphaba were discriminated against highlighted the truly arbitrary nature of discrimination. (Which again brings to mind Star Trek, but this time the Original Series, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.”)

Wicked has been relevant for much longer than it has existed, and it remains all too relevant today. We’ve still been so easily manipulated into misplaced fears about incredibly vulnerable people, even though they’re far more at risk for the things we’re afraid of them for, and all too often by the people who are afraid of them in the first place.

If your heart aches like mine and brings you to tears during “Defying Gravity,” I hope you can take that pain and recognize who has become the Animals and the Wicked Witch in our world. If this would not have galvanized you into action before, let it galvanize you now. Because the culture war of distraction continues, the Animals are losing their voices with each book ban, court case, and piece of legislation, and there’s no prophesied Witch in sight.