Queer media can be bad, too

I’ve been watching a lot more movies, as well as trying to make reviews for them, as it’s helping me with my writing and storytelling. And as I’m telling a queer story as a queer person, I’ve been watching a lot of queer movies. And while a lot of them are good, SOOOOO MANY ARE SO BAD AND WEIRD. And while I would say that it is because of the time that the movies were made, some of them don’t have that excuse as they are more recent.

I’ll start with some of the newer queer media that I like. This includes TV shows, movies, web series, etc. I really liked the movie Bottoms(2023), as it was a fun and lighthearted movie with a good premise, good actors and good, realistic lesbian rep. It was a fucking banger of a movie. I feel as if everyone could enjoy it of any background and have a fun time watching those loser lesbians do stupid lesbian things. Another good one is The Whale(2022). While the queer relationship of the main character is never shown to the audience, we are told about it through the characters’ dialogue and actions. It plays a big part in the movie, without it being shown in an ‘in-your-face’ kind of way. Though I wish it were more in your face, a little bit more like some of the stage productions of the story, but it is a major part nonetheless. I’m counting ‘new things’ as things from this century, so i’ll include Rent(2005) in this as well. This is one of the best things I have seen in terms of queer rep, and representation of minorities in general. It is real, raw and emotional. It shows the good, the bad, the hopeful and the ugly of being ‘queer’ in more way that one. It shows the effects and the toll that the AIDS crisis, the marginalization of those with AIDS, both gay and straight, both from sex or other means of contraction. It is such a good fucking movie.

And there are pretty good show and other series as well. She-ra and the princesses of power was hella good, with a fantastic plot , good animation and good queer rep. Arcane, tho it has its problems at points, has a pretty good plot and good queer rep. And tat goes for characters that aren’t explicitly stated as queer, but are written and perceived as such. That is mainly addressed at the JayVik writing throughout the show. 

Now onto something a little more negative. I think that even tough something is queer and about queer people and storylines, it can still be bad. I know, controversial take /j. But for real, this is something that I have seen more and more often, people not genuinely engaging with a project or movie in terms of it possibly being ad, or horrible even, because it is queer and therefore, its good. I hate this idea.

A movie that fall under this is Call Me By Your Name(2017). This movie, though beautiful, was honestly not that good. It showed a less than likable relationship between an older man and a boy in his late teens, something already a little odd and off putting. But it also wasn’t a good story, with very little substance or plot. I see so many people talking about this movie as if it’s one of the best queer stories put to film, when it isn’t, even ignoring the problematic elements to it. Carol (2015) is the same, but lesbian instead of gay.

Now for the biggest example of this that I have in the animation side of things, The Hellaverse from Vivienne Medrano. Oh goodness, this sucks to say, but all of her works are not good, but people still engage with them and hold them up as good because it has queer rep, which isn’t even that good. If the rep came along side some good writing, with better writing for the queer characters, then maybe it would deserve the amount of praise that it gets daily, but it doesn’t. The queer relationships are so one dimensional, and without any interest being built in the characters and their relationships with one another, then it falls onto the plot to make the show worth while. But since the direction of her shows have all pivoted to following the relationships, there is no plot to lift up the bad character writing . It makes me so sad that one of the best examples of indie animation going big is some shows that aren’t even that good, in any sense of the word.

I just hope that there are more people out there that are interested in either making queer media with substance, aside from being queer as that is not enough to make something inherently good or worthwhile, or that people can at least admit when the queer media they like isn’t god and that they enjoy it because it’s user. Doing the latter will at least make it known t the creator of the media and other creators that they need to ad something else to their stories to make it good, as I think that queer people deserve good media to consume and be represented in.

Just something that has been on my mind as of late. I might go onto write again about the Hellaverse as it is something that has really been bothering me recently.