As highlighted in last week’s post, one of the concerns with shows that revolve around queer romance is the risk of defining what queer love is supposed to look like. To that concern I would add a danger in queer representation that attempts to answer “what queer life is supposed to look like.” However, within a seemingly bland sitcom formula that would enact these dangerous representations, Please Like Me adds a twist. Josh’s gay coming of age story is constantly interrupted by his mother’s (Debra Lawrence) mental illness. It is her constant need of care that disrupts what would be a classic coming-out narrative. Through these disruptions, a better reflection of the realities of living as a queer individual is displayed.

In the very same episode, Josh has his first queer encounter with Tom’s coworker Geoffrey (Wade Briggs) and hears of his mother’s attempted suicide. The morning after an awkward and ultimately sexless night with Geoffrey, he checks his phone to find multiple voicemails from his frantic father. But the shot itself lacks the urgency of a reaction to a suicide attempt: the camera gradually zooms in on a banal scene of Josh brushing his teeth with his phone at his ear, signifying for the audience that rather than a surprise, these calls are routine.

 This event suddenly shifts the trajectory of the narrative, denying what should have been the “coming-out” moment between Josh and his best friend Tom. As Tom drives Josh to the hospital they casually talk about the previous night and Tom says, “Just so I know, we aren’t talking about your mum because you’re all like, emotionally stunted yeah? And we are just ignoring the fact that Geoffrey is a man?”  To which Josh answers, “Yup.” Tom’s casual introduction of the two events exemplifies how Josh’s mother’s suicide acts to disrupt and expose the fiction of the singular coming out “moment”. In life, there is no true “coming out” where individuals exclaim their queerness to the world popularized in shows like Glee.

In Sedgwick’s The Epistemology of the Closet, she demystifies this idea, highlighting how life institutes a plethora of closets to “come out” from, “every encounter with a new classful of students, to say nothing of a new boss, social worker, loan officer, landlord, doctor, erects new closets whose fraught and characteristic laws of optics and physics exact from at least gay people new surveys, new calculations, new draughts and requisitions of secrecy or disclosure. Even an out gay person deals daily with interlocutors about whom she doesn’t know whether they know or not.” (68) By disrupting the show’s narrative from Josh’s gay storyline to Rose’s struggle with mental health, Please Like Me illustrates the reality behind life as an “out” queer person: the daily trials of “Do they know? Should I tell them? Do they even need to know?” In fact, Josh lives in sexual identity limbo for most of the first season. There is no actual moment in which he says, “I’m gay” (he makes a quip about how coming out is so 90’s) instead he is outed multiple times by the show’s other characters: Claire’s outing of him to the audience and Geoffrey’s outing of him to his father and mother on separate occasions; these multiple outings better represent life alongside Sedgewick’s theorizations and life as an out queer person.

Please Like Me also complicates the representation of queer life through scenarios between Josh and his lovers in heteronormative and hypermasculine spaces. These scenes show how interconnected these oppressive structures are in the mindset of queer individuals, how they influence behavior, even how they influence opinions. In the first season, Geoffrey buys tickets for him and Josh to watch a rugby match. Josh, reluctant to see any sports at first, is titillated by the aggressive catharsis in engaging with the highs and lows of a rugby match. The two bond over escalating insults towards the players’ poor performance that results in emasculation, eventually calling the players faggots. They are immediately asked to leave for “homophobic language” to which Geoffrey responds, “This is my boyfriend, we’re not being homophobic” and energetically kisses Josh.

The scene leaves us with no closure other than the irony of two gay people removed from a hypermasculine space for being homophobic. But it does bring up interesting questions: is it okay to scream faggot if you’re gay? Who gets to scream faggot? Or better yet, who gets to tell whom whether they can or can’t scream faggot?

This scene is much more complex when considering queer affection in hypermasculine spaces and unearths for viewers a unique complication: queer Public Displays of Affection (PDA). After getting booted from the game, Josh and Geoffrey start fighting over the kiss. The camera angles reveal the shame that each feels for the other: as they spar the shot switches between them, cutting the face off the other, signifying their inability to “meet the other’s eyes.” Josh is ashamed of being known as queer in public, whereas Geoffrey is ashamed and frustrated with Josh’s inability to express his feelings publicly.

This scene is surely familiar to many queer people and brings up deeper questions: Is Josh really ashamed to be seen kissing a man? Or does he generally not like PDA? Queer individuals constantly wrestle with this dilemma, one that is often confused and interconnected, asking a darker question: Can I truly dislike PDA without it being part of gay shame? The interconnection here marks heteronormative structures’ infiltration into the very conceptions of our own opinions on our queer intimacies. Please Like Me offers no resolution to these questions (because there aren’t any) and in its ambivalence better reflects the reality of queer experience.

Mark Muster is a master’s candidate at Syracuse University studying the relationship between time and alternative kinship formations in American film and literature.

The post No True Coming Out: Queer Life in “Please Like Me” appeared first on Broadly Textual Pub.

In a 1986 New York Times interview regarding My Beautiful Launderette (1985), director Stephen Frears notes, “It’s a completely ironic film, isn’t it? We wanted people to have a wonderful time, but to make the film provocative, turning everything on its head.” Indeed, the made-for-TV movie highlights a topsy-turvy–like ’80s Britain.

The film’s irony comes from the portrayal of a Pakistani immigrant family at the center of a Thatcher-era story of “rich get richer, poor get poorer.” In contrast to classic images of corporate greed or poor immigrants, My Beautiful Launderette stars immigrants as greedy and corrupt, while the poor are represented by the British working class. Omar (Gordon Warnecke) is an unemployed young man taking care of his alcoholic father, a leftist ex-journalist who acts as the foil to Omar’s uncle, Nasser Ali (Saeed Jaffrey), a successful businessman who is best exemplified by the advice he gives to Omar, “In this damn country which we hate and love you can get anything you want … you [only] have to know how to squeeze the tits of the system.” Nasser and his family are decadent with their wealth: hosting lavish parties, and, at one moment, literally throwing money around.

Taking a job with his uncle, Omar’s own ’80s-inspired greed and ambition earns him a shot in the family business turning over one of his Uncle’s many properties, a destitute launderette in a poor neighborhood of London. Meanwhile, Omar’s childhood friend Johnny (Daniel Day-Lewis), exemplifies the poor English working class as a homeless kid whose punk gang resorts to crime and squatting for survival. These two worlds merge at the site of the launderette, owned and exploited by Nasser, whose revenue comes from his English working-class patrons. Omar and Johnny’s queer relationship and Nasser and his British mistress Rachel’s (Shirley Anne Field) infidelity represent aberrations in the film’s familial structure: where business and wealth are insulated and grown within Nasser’s vast family, Johnny and Rachel stand on the outside. They are the “dirty laundry” kept secret from the successful family. Renamed “Powders” (how gay is that?), the launderette becomes the symbol of the film’s tensions: anti-immigrant sentiment, greed, gentrification, and economic inequality play out as lovers Omar and Johnny renovate and run the launderette together.

Highly acclaimed, the film moved to theaters in Britain and America, where it received an Oscar nomination for the best original screenplay (beaten by Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters). This ability to move from British television to American theatrical distribution reflects the film’s reach and makes it a prime subject for analysis on queer representation.

In terms of queer relationships, we arrive at Johnny and Omar’s intimacy quite late. The first time we see them together on screen is a serendipitous reunion (we learn later they were very close childhood friends). We enter their relationship not at its conception but in a revival; we encounter them without experiencing their romantic past. This positioning may seem trivial but it does important work: it muddles the spectacle of queer intimacy. With much LGBT media centered around dating and romance, a potentially damaging and myopic structure emerges around these representations: What does queer love look like? What is queer love supposed to look like?

By denying us identifications with the beginnings of Johnny and Omar’s intimacy, we must find other ways to love their relationship. This makes us focus on what their love does, rather than what it looks like. We watch the two literally build a business together. Yes, it is a business that does indeed make money for Omar’s corrupt uncle and feeds Omar’s greed. But it is also a business that allows Johnny to break out of his cycle of crime for survival, and one that allows Omar and Johnny’s love to blossom.

At the height of the film, the aberrant relationships challenge the divisive theme of anti-immigrant London, showing the intersectional and connective power behind “queer” love. On the opening day of the launderette, Omar is nervous. Johnny — seeming to want to help him relax — pulls Omar into the back to fool around. However, with Johnny sitting on his lap, Omar reveals that he knows Johnny participated in anti-immigrant marches, and how xenophobia took part in his father’s alcoholism and his mother’s suicide. While Omar confesses, Johnny is sympathetic, sitting close to Omar, undressing him and caressing his chest. Johnny apologizes as Omar starts to strip Johnny in turn. Their intimacy is mirrored by Rachel and Nasser entering the launderette together. Flirting and laughing, the two seem to be truly in love. As they marvel at the beauty of the renovated launderette, Rachel says to Nasser, “Dance with me … we are learning.” They begin to waltz across the launderette as Johnny and Omar share champagne and make out behind the two-way mirror.

These two couples, whose love is immoral in structures of monogamy and heteronormativity, are actually the only characters who suture a racially and economically divided London. They kiss and dance at the very site that will connect these two sides for the benefit of both.

Looking deeper, Johnny and Omar’s queer love is actually intertwined with challenging London’s racial and economic divisiveness. In another example, queer love acts as comic relief, aimed at the audience to subvert the tension between Johnny’s anti-immigrant punk gang and Omar’s greedy drug-dealing uncle Salim (Derrick Branche). Omar exits the launderette to pay Johnny for his work, sharing glares with Johnny’s gang who are loitering at the entrance. As Salim drives by to check on the business, we look through his side-mirror, his hand in the shot, as both he and the gang observe Johnny and Omar.

The tensions of the film build and center themselves as “all eyes” are on Omar and Johnny. But the tension calms, as the audience is privileged with a shot from the opposite viewpoint: Omar hugs Johnny for a job well done, and we see a close up of Johnny’s head next to Omar’s. Playfully, he sticks his tongue out and licks Omar’s neck, a recognition of their love that eases the tension from these encroaching forces.

Other cute, quirky, and hilarious moments mingle with the queer love of these two characters and recall a specific moment that encapsulates — for me — the beauty of this film: in Nasser’s house, Salim makes a snide comment to Omar when discussing the launderette, “You haven’t fucked your uncle’s launderette, you little fool?” Omar, smug, lifts his head from his chair to meet Salim’s eyes and responds, “In my small opinion, much good can come of fucking.”

Mark Muster is a master’s candidate at Syracuse University studying the relationship between time and alternative kinship formations in American film and literature.

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Recently, there has been an uptick in the amount of “gay-centric” media created by the mainstream film and television industry. Movies like Call Me by Your Name (2017), Moonlight (2016), Carol (2015), Bohemian Rhapsody (2018), etc. mark a notable shift in LGBT narratives to being not only more mainstream—more desired—but actively produced for recognition among the Hollywood award circuit. In the wake of Moonlight’s win (or perhaps earlier with Dallas Buyers Club (2013) and the snubbed Brokeback Mountain (2005)), LGBT narratives were solidified in the slew of dramas that catch Oscar-esque attention; though notably, these narratives remain a majority gay, white, and male-centered. With multiple queer and gay narratives watchable in theaters, stream-able online, and available on network TV, there is an ostensible perception of a surplus.

With waxing LGBT representation, queer-identified people — long erased and caricatured in television and film or marginalized to the edges of the screen — finally find themselves at the center of these narratives, finally up for best-actress and actor as opposed to being ossified as the side-kick, the friend, the best supporting actress/actor. But even after the recognition of films like Moonlight, a brilliant tale of queer intimacy and intersectionality in Miami, my desire for queer media only increases. I begin to reject these new pristine studio-made representations of queer lives; I feel a guilty disappointment. They are simply not enough.

Unpacking these feelings unveils the larger and multi-tiered problem of popular queer representations in film and television — tiers that build on each other and consequently narrow the multiplicity of queer narratives. Part of this homogenized representation comes from the infrastructure of the American entertainment industry. Run mainly on viewership, products appealing to the lowest common denominator will always thrive in contrast to media that attempts to be unique. Even in the age of Netflix, Amazon, and other streaming services where competition allows viewers to demand more creativity from television, “LGBT” shows and movies must constantly compete with straight media that statistically annihilates even the strongest queer fan base.

Beyond this economic obstacle, there is a problem with the very identifier of “Gay” as a genre in film and TV. Based solely on classification by the sexual binary, Gay TV as a genre becomes a sweeping conglomeration for any kind of media whose narrative crucially involves or revolves around a queer character. The trap of Gay TV then lies in being classified by a heteronormative industry, a label which itself invites a lens of tunnel vision, reducing shows to the characters’ sexual object choice rather than classifying the show as a drama, romance, comedy, game-show etc. This tunnel vision hails a specific audience that on the one hand is useful for those queer-identified people seeking representation but weakens the agency and reach with which some media have the potential to cause. Instead of exposure to these shows and movies, the algorithms of streaming services that recommend based on genre choices will never promote queer media to a wider audience, consequently stifling the ability of queer narratives to challenge heteronormative structures of intimacy, social formations, even story-telling.

The third tier, and the issue where I want to dwell, lies in my own conundrum when desiring queer representation. By scouring history for queer-leaning figures we create our own queer historiography, forge a lineage, and construct a model for future queer people. However, when binging queer photography, queer art exhibitions, queer film and TV I am also consuming in an attempt to connect: as if to say, “Ah! There I am, that’s me.” This desire may originate from the first moment one notices their asynchrony with heteronormative sexuality: the need to find oneself in a world full of images that represent a very specific type of person, relationship, body, family, etc. When I watch a gay TV show like Looking or a film like Call Me by Your Name, I am looking to recognize and connect with aspects of my queerness. In other words, when I consume these medias, I am trying to feel closer to the represented identity of “gay.”

But, the endeavor to identify with these narratives inevitably fails. No matter how close I want to connect to a character like Patrick (Johnathon Groff) in Looking, he is not me, and his queer experience is not my queer experience. Therefore, I wonder how we might envision alternative ways to consume LGBT representations that relocates this desire? Instead of focusing energy on how I might recognize parts of myself in these characters, it might be better to look for queerness in content, form, or style. How do certain aesthetic choices reflect queer experience and queer life in a heteronormative time and space?

This set of posts is deeply inspired by José Muñoz’s Disidentifications, in which he traces a cogent methodology of disidentifying with harmful or problematic representations and discourses in order to utilize aspects of these works for minoritarian subjects as a matter of survival and a method of resistance. These posts work alongside Muñoz within the process of identification attempting to reconfigure the moment of connection within these representations from the characters or works, to acts and techniques. For the next three weeks I will explore three different queer representations. Focusing on aesthetics, I hope to show how these films and TV connect with us by commenting on contemporary queer experience. Tune in next week for my thoughts on My Beautiful Launderette.

Mark Muster is a master’s candidate at Syracuse University studying the relationship between time and alternative kinship formations in American film and literature.

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