The Arts Desk’s weekly picks for music, movies and more
By CHARLIE MCBRIAN — arts@theaggie.org
In a country where queer existence is not always met with acceptance, the media plays an important role in imagining a reality better than our own. Here are five queer picks to keep you company over winter break.
Movie: “Nowhere” (1997) dir. Gregg Araki
“Nowhere” represents the crater of meaning at the center of pop culture. The film follows a day in the life of a group of young eccentrics grasping at meaning through sex, love, media, drugs and religion in an increasingly apocalyptic Los Angeles. Gregg Araki takes this framework and heightens each element, overwhelming each frame through surreal colorful visuals, camp dialogue and a fuzzed-out alternative soundtrack. Beyond turning it on its head, “Nowhere” bends pop cultural symbols to the point of snapping, fracturing into 1,000 shards of acid-dipped rock candy. Initially received as a style-over-substance parody piece, its caustic indifference speaks to a world suffocated by conflicting narratives.
TV Show: “Are You the One?” (2019) by MTV
Despite the name, reality TV represents a manufactured and limited reality. This is especially clear in dating shows which invariably reinforce heteronormative expectations. Season eight, “Come One, Come All” of MTV’s “Are You the One?” sidesteps this, not because it’s more honest — it’s catty, dramatized and at times ridiculous. Rather, it crafts a reality that uplifts the queer experience as something complex, tangible and worth celebrating without pandering to a straight audience. Boasting a fully sexually fluid cast, the eighth season of “Are You the One?” has 16 contestants that share the goal of finding eight perfect matches and winning $1 million. It’s a smaller cast than earlier seasons but a much more challenging task as each contestant may be a match with the other 15. This leads to a lot of strategy and some satisfying negatives as well as devastating false positives. Its cast also meshed together well, feeling as though they need to win this for the queer community. As pretty much the only queer dating show on major streaming platforms, this is a must watch.
Song: “The Drowners” by Suede (1992)
Emerging out of Britpop, Suede remains a criminally overlooked group within the scene. Suede was able to condense the flirty, sleazy and dangerous side of glam rock into an alternative rock context and turned the queer subtext of David Bowie and T. Rex into text. Backed by its scuzz-wall of guitars, “The Drowners” contains the excitement of enjoying something you’re supposed to reject, of being something you’re not supposed to be, distilling the group’s best elements. It feels like a warm velvet hug, it feels like gender. It’s really good, please check it out.
Album: Larry Levan “Live at the Paradise Garage 1979” (2000 archival)
An early house music pioneer, Larry Levan’s DJing mixed soul, disco, funk, electronica, post-punk and psychedelia at the alcohol-free — but certainly not drug-free — queer discotheque: Paradise Garage. “Live at Paradise Garage” is an uptempo soul set in which Levan blends Cher and the Supremes with obscurities at a relentless and seamless tempo, allowing the set to feel like an endless party. Paradise Garage distilled the initial queer freedom promised by Disco into an enduring and repeatable reality — immune to the supposed “death of Disco.” Eventually, AIDS killed the club in 1987 and Levan in 1992. But his legacy lives on through the diva pop of Madonna, Beyonce, Grace Jones, Sophie and subsequent generations of DJs and gay clubs as well as Garage house, a whole genre based on the sound of Paradise Garage and Levan.
*Video: “Sufjan Stevens ‘Futile Devices’ Live on Soundcheck” uploaded by WNYC (2011)
I’ll finish it off with a 2011 radio performance of “Futile Devices” by Sufjan Stevens. Minimal yet gorgeous instrumentation sets the stage for an emotionally overwhelming performance from a misty-eyed Stevens. “Futile Devices” sits at the edge of action, a small interaction burdened by centuries of violent negation. But to choose to live as you want despite that is what makes queer love so beautiful and necessary. Youtube user @Connor Williams put it best: “He made his own damn gay ass self cry with his own damn gay ass song.”
Written by: Charlie McBrian — arts@theaggie.org
