Pop Culture Fix: Everything Is Terrible Except For Ellen Receiving Her Presidential Medal of Freedom

Welcome to your weekly Pop Culture Fix, the place where we talk about queer entertainment news in to distract ourselves until the next episode of Supergirl! 

+ Would you like to watch Ellen accept her Presidential Medal of Freedom? Would you like to watch it a hundred times? It made me cry because it made Ellen cry, and also because any hope in this political darkness right now is a precious, powerful thing.

+ This year’s Spirit Awards include the most ever LGBT film nominations.

+ Alison Bechdel just drew her first Dykes to Watch Out For comic strip in eight years. It’s a good one. It’s exactly what I wanted to see today.

+ Parker Posey will play a gender-flipped Dr. Smith in Netflix’s Lost In Space remake.

+ I always get so bummed when Luisa goes away “to rehab” on Jane the Virgin just because the show doesn’t know what to do with her, despite consistently being best show on television, and I was actually worried she might not come back at all for the rest of season three, but I was wrong! Elisabeth Rohm has been cast as Luisa’s love interest in a recurring role.

+ The Powerpuff Girls are coming to Hulu next year!

+ Here’s a great piece from The Atlantic called “Queer Writers in the Age of Trump.”

There are still places where LGBT Americans fear to go. But at its best, and often in times of the deepest challenges and uncertainties, our literature has offered a vision to the world of the possibilities that may exist within each person, of our ability to resist and persist, of our ability to make and remake ourselves, even in the face of unspeakable pain. Many of us are accustomed to benign ignorance at best and violent hatred at worst—and the opposite of hatred is not love, but, rather, compassion or empathy, which is what the best literature tries to instill in us. In such an atmosphere of uncertainty, we must remember, that even if for many of us the sky seems dark, our art can still be one of the lights leading us through the night.

+ Hey, guess who’s joining TV Land’s super queer Heathers reboot? Oh, it’s Shannen Doherty all right.

+ Hamilton’s Brandon Victor Dixon has nothing to apologize for and he knows it.

+ This is a big damn deal: CBS’ new Star Trek: Discovery series has cast its lead and it is Michelle Yeoh!

+ Okay and here is one other hopeful thing: Holland Taylor and Sarah Paulson are still stupid levels of in love and tweeting each other when they’re away from the dinner table for more than about five seconds. #TooLongToBear

+ Hey, happy Thanksgiving.

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Heather Hogan

Heather Hogan is an Autostraddle senior editor who lives in New York City with her wife, Stacy, and their cackle of rescued pets. She's a member of the Television Critics Association, GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, and a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer critic. You can also find her on Twitter and Instagram.

Heather has written 1718 articles for us.

22 Comments

  1. Alison Bechdel is a fucking hero. A weekly DTWOF strip might make the next 4 years slightly more bearable.

  3. This morning I woke up, rolled over, checked twitter, saw that Ellen/Obama video, and began my day by sobbing hot wet tears of joy and love and pride and amazement and other implacable things. Recommended!

  6. The Star Trek item isn’t quite correct, only because no one knows who Yeoh is playing yet and saying she is the lead is just speculation, but it’s very exciting nonetheless!

  8. The Obama/Ellen moment came on Nightly News when I was in the room with my father and he totally teared up. My 68 year old just now finally kinda sorta accepting that his daughter is in a loving relationship with a woman dad teared up. Gah. This week/month/year has been hell, the election is still too terrifying/horrible for words, but this was my little Thanksgiving miracle. Thank you, Ellen. Thank you, Obama.

  9. The Ellen video is everything!! I’m so proud of her. I bet she never imagined in 1997 she would be receiving such an honor & validation from the President for coming out. It’s also validation for the LGBT community, and it fills me with so much pride & hope. Thank you Obama.

  11. I still remember the scene where Serena came out on Law and Order. I wonder what her character is going to be like, it always seems that Luisa is a little off the rails and doesn’t really find the best companions.

    And that Heathers reboot sounds like like a terrible hot damn mess.

  13. Next year’s Medal of Freedom recipients: David Duke plus all of Trump’s kids, except for Tiffany

  14. Alison Bechdel’s website has been down for a while, probably due to too much traffic. Do you know any other way to see the new comic strip?

    • You should be able to get there through FunnyTimes.com, their post on my FB was where I first saw it but traffic did indeed crash Bechdel’s site.

  15. That Ellen video gave me the second wind I needed to continue studying :/
    Also Michelle Yeoh is poetry in motion and any chance of seeing her on the big screen I’ll take in a heartbeat, thank you for putting these out here so close to the holiday season, everyone can do with more positivity this time of the year.

  17. One problem I see with Star Trek Discovery. It is only being streamed to cbs website. Since last year a lot of stations now have their own streaming service instead of Hulu like before. Kinda sucks cause some make you pay for it and some do not. Plus most smart tvs don’t have all of them and can not download them. I know I tried to download cwtv.com for supergirl. So I got a google chromecast and used that watch my supergirl when I miss the episode on tv.

  18. I respect what Ellen has achieved in her career and the gay community, I just wish she were a nicer person :/ Never heard a good word about her from colleagues

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