Pose: Created by Steven Canals, Brad Falch, Ryan Murphy. Wh Michaela Jaé (MJ) Rodriguez, Domique Jackson, Indya Moore, Angel Bismark Curiel. In the New York of the late '80s and early '90s, this is a story of ball culture and the gay and trans muny, the ragg AIDS crisis, and palism." data-id="ma
Contents:
FX’S ‘POSE’ PUTS TRANSGENR AND GAY ACTORS ONT AND CENTER — AND ALL UTAHNS N RELATE
Ryan Murphy, a cisgenr whe gay man, assembled the largt st of trans actors ever for a scripted televisn seri. Wh such a amework, Ryan Murphy’s Pose was emed important very simply bee sought to reprent black gay men and trans people of lor. Certaly, Pose is not the first time black gay men have been reprented on televisn.
From short-lived 1970s seri like Sanford Arms and 1990s post-work televisn seri like Moha to “qualy” seri like The Wire and more ntemporary seri like Brooklyn Ne Ne, black queerns has bubbled up wh televisn disurse, although not the same ways afford whe gay men – other words, the media dtri ntue to treat inty tegori as discrete rather than tersectnal. ” Landgraf’s votn of clivy is important here bee the nebulo marketg speak he elis that the show is about queer people of lor, not jt queer people, who have been weled to the hom of whe, socially liberal, urban-md profsnal (SLUMPY) dienc sce the Gay 90s, pog a neoliberal logic that equat social progrs and visibily polics. In the pilot episo, one of the seri’ leadg characters, Damon Richards, a young black gay man wh a passn for dance, is thrown out of his home by his father, a move that is endorsed by his mother.
I am aware that such actn serv as a narrative talyst, but given the ways people of lor generally, and black people specifilly, are stereotyped as anti-gay, that Pose is largely imaged as a show for whe, cisgenr folks is problematic. Whe folks (largely) hold the belief that black folks (as a monolhic group) are anti-gay (fettg that anti-gay legislatn, which often gets dified to law, is spearhead by whe, often male, policians). Pose the mythology that people of lor are anti-gay to re-tether and reify such a pathology that n be observed across news and entertament media.