Welcome to the Pop Culture Fix, your weekly round-up of all the pop culture you need in your face.
The People’s Choice Awards
The People’s Choice Award nominees are in, and it turns out that people are idiots and make bad choices. JUST KIDDING (mostly). Anyhow, some queer-related items of interest:
- Pitch Perfect 2, a movie which had a black lesbian character and was 25% music and 75% racist jokes, is up for Best Movie and Favorite Comedic Movie.
- Bisexual actress Michelle Rodriguez and queerish actress Shailene Woodley are both up for Favorite Action Movie Actress.
- Grey’s Anatomy, which features lesbian and bisexual lead characters, is up for favorite TV Show.
- The Favorite Network TV Drama category is probably the best because it’s mostly Shondaland, and all of the nominees include LGBTQ characters or storylines: Empire, Gotham, Grey’s Anatomy, How To Get Away With Murder and Scandal.
- Favorite Dramatic TV Actress is also dominated by actresses from those shows, and is 80% women of color: Kerry Washington, Sara Ramirez, Taraji P. Henson, Viola Davis and Ellen Pompeo. People are still into Ellen Pompeo?
- Pretty Little Liars sweeps the Favorite Cable TV Actress Category: Shay Mitchell, Lucy Hale, Ashley Benson and Sasha Alexander all earned nods. So did Hilary Duff.
- Bisexual actress and musician Lady Gaga got a nod for Favorite Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV Actress
- Ellen DeGeneres duly noted as Favorite Daytime TV Host.
Other shows with LGBTQ female characters up for nominations:
- Person of Interest – Favorite TV Crime Drama
- Masters of Sex – Favorite Premium Cable TV Show
- Arrow, Once Upon a Time & The Vampire Diaries – Favorite Network Sci-Fi/Fantasy
- American Horror Story – Favorite Cable Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV Show
- House of Cards, The Mindy Project, Orange Is the New Black and Transparent – Favorite Streaming Series
- Grandfathered and Scream Queens – Favorite New TV Comedy
- Rosewood and Code Black – Favorite New TV Drama
So Many Video Debuts!
+ BET debuts a new app-exclusive series called “Holler If You Hear Me: Black and Gay in the Church” and you can watch the first episode on their website right now.
+ Vice has debuted a trailer for all of the new shows you’ll have the pleasure of witnessing with the debut of their 24-hour Cable Chanel, Viceland, including “Gaycation with Ellen Page.” Other offerings include shows about the future, weed, carjacking (hosted by Michael K. Williams, aka Omar from The Wire), Compton, food, immigration, Fashion Week and sports. Unfortunately a lot of this programming seems to be, in typical Vice fashion, heavy on white savior narratives.
+ The Front debuted the first episode of their webseries “New Deep South,” featuring a young interracial couple in Mississippi ready to settle down and start a family and also be really cute.
+ The second episode of Geena Rocero’s transgender-focused digital docuseries “Beautiful As I Want To Be,” produced by Logo, debuts today. This episode features trans activists Jen Richards and Angelica Ross.
+ NBC has a new promo for “The Wiz,” which I am cautiously SO F-CKING EXCITED ABOUT. You guys! Common! Queen Latifah! Uzo Aduba! Amber Riely! David Alan Grier! I died already just thinking about it.
The Teevee
+ As I told you in the Fall TV preview, the new Netflix series “Master of None” features a black lesbian character, Denise, played by out actress and comedian Lena Waithe. AfterEllen has seen the show, and they say that it is good: “Although Denise is only in a handful of episodes, she’s incredibly likable and a different kind of lesbian. She’s the kind of woman who hangs comfortably with the guys, dishing out helpful advice when it comes to women.”
+ ABC Family unveils its schedule for 25 Days of Christmas.
+ Lesbians watching The L Word for the first time:
(For more ‘watching The L Word for the first time” humor, please check out Listling Without Commentary: Conversations I Had While Watching the L Word for the First Time)
+ If your ovaries have been aching for another pregnant lesbian to show up on your television set, have I got good news for you: Pregnant Lesbian Expert Shiri Appleby will be on Code Black this Friday as Malaya’s Ex-Girlfriend. Also she’s gonna be pregnant. A pregnant lesbian.
Also.
+ Last night, Carrie Brownstein and Amy Poehler did a Q&A event for Brownstein’s new book, “Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl.” One particular question led to making the evening extra-memorable — a young lesbian couple asked if Brownstein would marry them. She accepted. Poehler played “Greensleves.”
+ Key and Peele are developing a stop-motion feature with the director of “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
+ The Decider wants to talk about whether or not “Chasing Amy” was good for the gays. Honestly I haven’t read the article because I already know the answer: IT WAS NOT.
+ I hope you’re sitting down for this one: Ian Fleming, the straight cis white man who created James Bond, told a fan of the books that Pussy Galore was a lesbian who “only needed the right man to come along and perform the laying on of hands in order to cure her psycho-pathological malady.”
+ You can finally watch “Tangerine” and “Drunktown’s Finest without finding a local Film Festival!
+ The cast of The Baby-Sitters Club reunite, Mallory is still gay.
+ Watch Kelly Clarkson and Josh Groban do a duet from The Phantom of the Opera.
+ Want a virtual tour of Hollywood’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter attraction? Here you go.
+ Marvel’s Iceman is gay. He’s just gay, y’all. Very gay, that one.
Gaycation is the thing Ellen Page has been filming when she’s done all that rad stuff like confront Ted Cruz and go to Haiti’s Pride! (Hopefully at least her show won’t have the white-savior vibe, since she’s involved and generally a perfect human).
PP2 was such a let down. I have struck it from my memory. There is only one Pitch Perfect. The first one, the one with too many fat jokes but at least not a bunch of weird racist jokes literally nobody laughed at in the theater I was in…
Sadly, I found the first Pitch Perfect to be pretty racist as well.
http://www.racialicious.com/2012/10/18/pitch-perfect-and-its-far-from-perfect-portrayal-of-asian-american-women/
Yesssss!!!! Hurrah!!!!
Thank you for bringing the fantastic news that “Drunktown’s finest” is now available.
This is definitely one of my top ten movies of the last decade. It’s beautiful, it made me cry (in a good way, and Sydney Freeland was really kind about it at the film fest), and it is so glorious to have a Native trans* story (amongst others) told by a Native trans* film-maker.
Now I just need the Indonesian queer movie “Madame X” and the Korean lesbian movie “A girl at my door” to also become available.
Did I mention you should buy “Drunktown’s finest”? You should – and then maybe more movies like that will get made, as well as getting to enjoy an amazing film!
Also, I’m trying not to admit that I have a mini-crush on Sydney Freeland.
O.K….I have a mini-crush.
She’s smart, artistic, and look…
Maybe it’s me, but I am kind of interested in seeing the Vice network. Mostly for Ellen’s show, Compton, carjacking, and the food shows did catch my eye.
Didn’t Ian Fleming also say Idris Elba was “too street” to play James Bond? What a gross human.
I’m excited about Master of One! It looks good.
Ian Fleming died in 1964. I believe the Elba comment was from a author of the newer Bond continuation novels. But I’m not certain. I don’t really care for the Bond movies or books.
A few thoughts.
1. Poor Troian. :(
2. Shiri Appleby must be the first actress to be typecast as a pregnant lesbian.
3. I can’t believe it’s 2015 and we’re still talking about Chasing Amy. I also can’t believe that the fucking Criterion Collection released a DVD of it back in the day. But I think they also released two Michael Bay films during that era so they were either high or just trolling art film enthusiasts (which is fine by me, but I think Chasing Amy is taking it too far).
Yeah I’m really shocked Troian wasn’t nominated. All the girls are incredibly talented, but she’s definitely my favorite actor on the show.
Are the nominees for the People’s Choice Awards decided by the general public as well, or do they only get to pick the winners after the nominees are announced? Because if they pick the nominees as well, it doesn’t surprise me that much. I think maybe Troian’s personality and aesthetics appeal more to the queer adult audience than they do the larger young, straight girl audience. I could be completely off base on that, but it’s the impression I get.
I agree with parts of this. But I think it’s that Troian doesn’t intentionally market herself to the young straight audience that much. She could appeal to them, if she wanted to, and she has done that a bit, with that Teen Beat (I think?) cover story about her eating disorder, and her photo shoots with Keegan Allen, but for the most part (at least from what I’ve seen on her Instagram/Twitter/Tumblr) she’s not trying to do that in the same way that Shay, Ashley, and Lucy are. And that’s not a dig at any of them, either. To be an actress in this day and age is to be a brand, and they’re just branding themselves differently, and that’s cool.
Yes, I think that’s closer to what I was trying to say. I just don’t think she has as much of an interest in that sort of thing. Like, you don’t really see her posting videos of herself lip syncing to Drake songs, or whatever.
I wish people wouldn’t give Once Upon a Time credit for having a queer female character when her sexuality stayed subtext and said character left the show right after.
I was really excited to see Ellen Page is hosting a TV show, but “Gaycation” disappoints me. Does it have to have the emphasis on gay? Does it have to be about vacations? She’s all-around awesome and hot! Let’s not put her in one rigid role for the rest of her life. (That said, I really just want to see her in all kinds of roles and all over my screen…)
I would wait to judge the show until it’s actually aired. Ellen did some rad stuff while filming — like stand up to Ted Cruz about LGBT rights. Sometimes it’s ok if stuff has an “emphasis on gay.” Oh hey, like this website! :-)
She’s living her life and embracing being out after years in the closet. Part of that includes the projects she is choosing to do. She’s not being typecast, she’s doing passion projects.
And I mean, it’s a minor project — it didn’t seem to take long to film, and she’s doing lots of other stuff too.
I’m excited about Master of One! It looks good.
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