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What We’re Watching and Reading this Pride Month
Another Pride month is coming to a close – but as you know, Pride goes on forever in our hearts (or as my new favorite song says, ”for you it’s just a month, for me it’s a lifetime”), which means you have plenty of time to catch up on some of the NWLC staff’s favorite queer media this year. Let’s get into it!
Erin Longbottom
WE’RE HERE – SEASON FOUR
If you’re unfamiliar, the premise of We’re Here is that famous drag queens (this season that means Jaida Essence Hall, Latrice Royale, Priyanka, and Sasha Velour) go to small towns across America to put on drag shows featuring local LGBTQ people and allies. Filmed in the summer of last year, this season takes place while states like Tennessee are passing drag bans (the first few episodes actually take place in a Tennessee town that canceled Pride). While tackling homophobia and transphobia has always been a core part of the show, this season has made these political battles more central to the narrative – a choice that feels right given the disturbing increase in anti-LGBTQ laws across the country.
It’s easy to feel like the hateful rhetoric plaguing many state governments right now is a commonly held belief. We’re Here goes to the heart of those places and shows us those beliefs are still in the minority, despite the noise. Throughout the process of putting on these drag shows, the queens show that there is often more support around us than we think. It might not be expressed perfectly, but it’s there – and we desperately need those people to speak up.
Beware that if you are anything like me, you will be ugly crying through the majority of the show (don’t worry, Jaida Essence Hall also cries every episode and it makes me feel supported as a fellow weepy baby). While this season feels markedly more somber than previous ones, I found I desperately needed the reminder that even in the tough times, LGBTQ people will always find ways to care for each other, to create joy, and to simply go on living as themselves.
Jordan Reynolds
HERE FOR THE WRONG REASONS
Are you obsessed with trashy dating shows? Were you gagged at the news of Queer Ultimatum being renewed for a second season, and wished that every dating show had a gay season? This is the book for you. Lauren and Krystin are two contestants on Hopelessly Devoted (a Bachelor-type dating show), and while one of them is looking for love, the other definitely isn’t—at least, not until she starts falling for one of her fellow contestants. While I might be biased because my two best friends wrote this book (and fell in love doing it!) I am confident that this is the perfect Pride month beach read. Cotton-candy sweet but with a deep emotional core, you’re sure to be charmed by this horse girl and beauty influencer’s behind the scenes love story.
INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE
Gay people love vampires. This we know—but never has a show so specifically catered to that love… until now. AMC’s Interview With The Vampire is the second adaptation of Anne Rice’s novel of the same name, the first being the 90s film starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt; but where the film tamped down the homoeroticism, this show leans alllllllll the way in. Not for the faint of heart, it’s gory and nasty and bloody as hell. But the performances are exquisite, the writing is illustrious and grand, and the queer relationships at the show’s center are heartbreaking and passionate. Season two is currently airing on AMC, and if you use the code IWTV30SH you can get a month-long free trial, which will get you through the finale!
Kat Menefee
Love Lies Bleeding
There was a sad period, early in my tenure as an out lesbian, when I couldn’t enjoy movies where the queer woman was the villain. I love queer women and I love villains and I love the genres—horror, thriller, crime—most likely to combine the two. But in the aughts/early 2010s, most queer villains were usually only queer as a third-act twist, and a lazy one at that. (E.g.: She murdered her because she’s in love with her!) Back then I thought: If you’re going to equate evilness and gayness in such direct, regressive way, at least let her be evil and gay the whole movie.
But now—such bounty! Entire movies are dedicated to the shenanigans of queer women who are, if not precisely evil, at least very much not upstanding citizens. They blackmail a Senator over a specially made dildo. They start a school fight club to get closer to their crushes. And they are written not by straight writers looking for a shocking ending, but by queer women who invest their queerness into every frame.
Best of the bunch is this year’s romantic crime thriller Love Lies Bleeding. Written and directed by Rose Glass and starring Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian (all openly queer), it has all the genre elements of those earlier queer-villain movies—violence, criminality, third-act twists—while being deeply queer in a way those movies couldn’t have imagined and wouldn’t have dared. For example: The leads fall in love when Stewart’s character injects O’Brian’s with testosterone for her upcoming bodybuilding competition. That both characters will also go on to do awful things is not a result of their queerness—but their worst acts, like everything else in the movie, are very queer. It’s perfect.
