Black Brown and Queer

  I hate seeing trauma on screen. Like Queer pain, rape, hell even black pain annoys the hell out of me sometimes and I'm white. I subscribe to the notion that we as people already have to deal with so much shit in the real world and I really don't want to watch another "the world sucks and you can't fix it" movie.  And no Mysterious Skin  doesn't have such a nihilistic approach to the world, it was more about the incident that shaped two boys' lives. But does seeing queer trauma add to existing trauma? I know that recently we have been getting better queer films about happiness like Happiest Season  (which was really good and surprisingly nuanced) or Love, Simon. Both are still very white but they are stupid cheesy movies about being queer and finding love, and after growing up hearing about how queer people can't find love it feels really validating to me to see it happen in such a stereotypical way. The cheesy romance films all about a will-they-won...

      Lookup a list ranking lesbian films and you'll likely notice a weird trend. Some lists seem intent on specifying whether or not the two leads die, whether they actually get a happy ending. I would even argue that on those list of "100 best lesbian films" a solid 1/3 is all about sex and sexualizing lesbian women. None of these lists ever really mention whether they end up together or break up. The trend these days tends to be a bit more optimistic but it took a lot of time to actually get to that point. The only movie I can think of off the top of my head that doesn't follow is "But, I'm a Cheerleader"  and even then that story isn't a romance but a coming of age film. Where's the cheesy lesbian Love, Simon ? or the deep and thought-provoking lesbian  Moonlight ? Where's the wild and out-of-control lesbian I love you, Philip Morris? Why do lesbians' love stories have to end in a break-up, in death, in close-ups of sweaty breasts tha...

 One of the things I felt the hardest when watching Pariah was the feeling of isolation Alike had throughout the film. I think that's one of the biggest hallmarks of being young and queer, this feeling that no one can possibly know what it is you're going through. The desperation to have your family understand you.  I adored how Dee Rees uses the frame-within-a-frame technique throughout the film to show this feeling. Nothing feels more isolating than being in public, surrounded by people, and knowing none of them can really see you. Rees uses this most often when Alike is around her family because those are the people who are supposed to understand her and she knows they don't. Her father is the closest to really know her and there are several scenes where she realizes he doesn't. Even Laura and Bina can't seem to fully understand what she is dealing with at home and within herself. I think that's there's always a sense of helplessness at being queer'd....