by Deborah Lipp
2019 was a very LGBT Oscars. (Well, at least LGB.) And it was not merely the presence of LGB characters, although this was staggering in numbers. It was also that many were presented in a new way.
Consider Can You Ever Forgive Me? Melissa McCarthy was not nominated for playing a lesbian. She was nominated for playing a famous writer—a famous lesbian writer. I’m not particularly a fan of the “happens to be” formation—I think it erases the struggle and complexity of arriving at a queer identity. Let’s face it, no one “happens to be” queer. We get there through a process that is sometimes difficult, or even agonizing, sometimes complex and winding. There’s always a road to be taken, always an arrival that may or may not require yet more journeying. Despite that, our stories should be about more than how we got there...
We need more stories than merely, “I came out, that was hard” or, “I came out and then I got AIDS.” They should be about, “I fought for the attention of the Queen of England,” or “I forged literary letters,” and this year, they were.
Queer women, in particular, have it rough in the movies. Sure, Hollywood isn’t forcing each and every one of us to have AIDS. On the other hand, queer men are allowed to exist, often with identities and agency, rarely as the object of the heterosexual male gaze. I mean, purely based on numbers, since 2010 there have been nine Best Picture nominees, including three wins, featuring queer men in leading or major supporting roles. In that period, only three Best Picture nominees featured queer women, and none won. So Can You Every Forgive Me? and The Favourite are significant films in terms of female representation, the first such at the Oscars since 2011.
Not all the stories were great. Bohemian Rhapsody did a disservice to gay and bisexual men almost as much as it did a disservice to rock and roll. And don’t get me started on Green Book. But the sheer volume. The presence. The diversity, complexity, and range of queerness. QUEER AS FUCK YOU GUYS. Three of eight Best Picture nominees with queer main characters, and minimum of one queer character in every acting category. Sweet hopping pogo sticks, that is a lot of representation!
In that context, I bring you the opening number. Bohemian Rhapsody may have gotten Freddy Mercury’s joy in his sexuality very wrong, but it was right about how closeted he was to his fans. But, y’know, you can take his joy, and make it visible, and open, and fully, vibrantly queer by having a bejeweled Adam Lambert sing the lead.
It made me feel that, yes, we are the champions. Of the world.