What about this show (or how it came to be) could be useful in thinking about how to make queer art / art about queers going forward?
Belatedly popping back in with a thought about this. I love how matter-of-factly the shows handles its queer characters. We don't get much agonizing over sexuality, we don't get big coming-out scenes, we don't get the tropes of the Queer Storyline. I think Stede probably does do some agonizing over his sexuality, and we see hints of it, but it's allowed to be offscreen and not the focus. Similarly when Stede comes out to Mary--we can see that it's hard for him, that he's almost surprising himself by saying out loud that he loves a man, but it's all in implication, and Mary's reaction is just to be happy for him. So the story isn't taken over by all the things we've all seen a million times before.
Among other things it allows space for additional queer stories: Lucius and Pete moving from fuckbuddies to lovers in a non-monogamous relationship, and Jim working out their own identity and also starting a relationship. And it's all handled with a light touch; being queer is treated as basically unremarkable, which I love. Queerness is never the problem of the story.
And yet it's not a world implausibly free of homophobia, either. *coughIzzycough* Izzy's story is probably the closest that OFMD comes to an overused trope (the closeted and/or self-rejecting queer villain) but it's handled so well, we pity Izzy so much for how he's ruining his own life, that I don't mind it. And anyway, Izzy's mess is about 1/4 homophobia, 1/2 unrequited and unacknowledged (by himself) love/desire, and 1/4 Izzy being a big bundle of All the Toxic Masculinity Things, All the Time.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2022-04-10 08:39 pm (UTC)Belatedly popping back in with a thought about this. I love how matter-of-factly the shows handles its queer characters. We don't get much agonizing over sexuality, we don't get big coming-out scenes, we don't get the tropes of the Queer Storyline. I think Stede probably does do some agonizing over his sexuality, and we see hints of it, but it's allowed to be offscreen and not the focus. Similarly when Stede comes out to Mary--we can see that it's hard for him, that he's almost surprising himself by saying out loud that he loves a man, but it's all in implication, and Mary's reaction is just to be happy for him. So the story isn't taken over by all the things we've all seen a million times before.
Among other things it allows space for additional queer stories: Lucius and Pete moving from fuckbuddies to lovers in a non-monogamous relationship, and Jim working out their own identity and also starting a relationship. And it's all handled with a light touch; being queer is treated as basically unremarkable, which I love. Queerness is never the problem of the story.
And yet it's not a world implausibly free of homophobia, either. *coughIzzycough* Izzy's story is probably the closest that OFMD comes to an overused trope (the closeted and/or self-rejecting queer villain) but it's handled so well, we pity Izzy so much for how he's ruining his own life, that I don't mind it. And anyway, Izzy's mess is about 1/4 homophobia, 1/2 unrequited and unacknowledged (by himself) love/desire, and 1/4 Izzy being a big bundle of All the Toxic Masculinity Things, All the Time.