"Why Bad Gays Are Good" Transcript

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Cars is a Disney Pixar animated film released in 2006 and was the seventh film released by Pixar Animation Studios. This film followed a string of emotionally evocative and intellectually stimulating films just two movies after the industry changing, Finding Nemo. The success of the studio was predicated on taking the typical gimmicks of Hollywood animated movies and subverting their juvenility with examinations of emotional depth, creative Visual Direction and stellar voice acting. Pixar defied all expectations, that each subsequent film would fall short of its predecessor.

Even a sequel to their debut movie, Toy Story 2, was far more than just a shallow reprisal of all the same themes of the first; in a period of Hollywood history when sequels were hollow recreations of their prior installments. For the Studio's early history, it seemed that they were the real deal. That even if they were directing their films primarily to be accessible to all ages, they would treat animation with dignity and integrity – in spite of being a subsidiary of Disney. Disney, after all, at the time, was looking for ways to collect prestige without diluting the Disney brand, as per their offshoots of Touchstone Pictures and Miramax.

Pixar was granting them prestige and animation that typical cartoons could not. However as Disney's in-house animation projects began to flounder (does anyone remember Home on the Range?) they needed to perpetuate that good old ‘Disney-ness’ somehow. Lucky for Disney, Pixar was about to allow the Mouse's brand into their studio with Cars. Which from the initial ads audiences pegged as it being a little more corporate.

When it was released, it was decried as soulless and not really having any other purpose but to sell toys. And in spite of the success of Pixar's other films - Toy Story notwithstanding - Cars was the first to get a sequel. Which is interesting because it also has one of the least impressive box office performances of any pre-pandemic Pixar film. And indeed whatever soul the first movie had, the second one had less. Effectively accomplishing nothing but giving Larry the Cable Guy a feature-length stand-up gig.

And confirming that 9/11 occurred in the Cars Universe. Which means that the Cars Cold War existed. Which means that there was a Cars nuclear arms race. Which means that Cars World War II happened. Which demands the existence of Cars Hitler. And subsequently the Cars assassination of Cars Grand Duke Franz Ferdinand. Which, through the Cars Holy Roman Empire, we can only extrapolate that there was a Bubonic plague in the Cars universe.

As much as this may seem tongue-in-cheek, it's highlighting a very key problem that developed in Pixar. Whereas before, they would take a concept like monsters in the closet or ant hill politics and build a world around that. The studio used absurdity and scale to either integrate the plausibility of their plots into our world, or, like The Incredibles, would dismiss plausibility and cultural identification altogether. For this reason, Cars seemed half-baked. Was it in this world or not? Where was it drawing from our history and where was it just kind of doing its own thing?

But of course that mattered less than selling cars merchandise. Which, when you look at how much money Cars merchandise has made next to every other stream of revenue at Pixar, it's clear exactly why cars got two sequels and a slew of spin-offs. And this would have been dismissable as a project to appease the Disney overlords who needed to push merch off of those Disney store shelves.

Like any parent lacking responsibility skills, when Disney drops the ball, one of their kids has got to pick up the slack. It would have been dismissable if this wouldn't be how Pixar would continue to treat its projects. Between Cars 1 and 2, Pixar released a trio of prestigious juggernauts: Wall-E, Up, and Toy Story 3. Which earned Disney, by proxy, a long-coveted Best Picture nomination. One for dad, three for fans. It seems like an acceptable ratio.

Brave was the second time that Pixar was really seen as bending their creative vision to appease Disney. After Wall-E, the last of the original five Pixar concepts to be released, Brave was closer in concept to a Disney princess movie than Pixar's established brand. And indeed Merida is included in Princess merchandise. Disney got what it wanted: a stop gap after Tangled and The Princess and the Frog underperformed. So they could sort out what to do with Frozen, which was then an adaptation of The Snow Queen and in cold development hell.

Pixar began to incorporate more human focus stories into their feature. The long-awaited sequel to Finding Nemo was closer to Cars 2 than Toy Story, where the sequel was built entirely around a takeaway character from the original and the original protagonists were more or less abandoned.

And it's not that Pixar is making bad movies, or that their messaging is lacking, but it seems that they're leaning on... gimmick storytelling to do a whole lot more of the heavy lifting. Like Bing Bong from Inside Out, who, from the second he was on screen, was read as an emotional pawn, who was only there to make the audience cry.

But then there are movies like Coco, Onward, Luca, and Turning Red, which, again, were not bad movies. But it's not really clear why these were Pixar movies because they seem like Disney movies, especially with the mouse leaning into plot beats and styles like Big Hero 6, Zootopia, Raya and the Last Dragon, and Encanto. It's hard to really qualify why these latest Pixar films seem so distant. And to a large extent, it might be that Disney is just trying to be more like Pixar.

But it does feel like Pixar is taking notes from the top. Developing stories where it is less about a cast of personalities and more about generating settings that younger viewers could imagine themselves in. They focus more on showing this world to the audience. There's a spectacle made of the creative process. Rather than passively depicting characters interacting with the world and trusting the audience to pick up on the defamiliarization.

They also focus more clearly around coming-of-age, whereas that wasn't really the primary theme of a Pixar movie until Brave, which is absolutely Disney's wheelhouse. We're not likely ever going to get another story about a lonely robot where the first half of the movie is entirely without dialogue and leads an entirely new generation to discover why Hello Dolly put an end to the original Hollywood musicals.

But the most important distinction is the scope of what these films are discussing. Contemporary Pixar films discuss self-actualization, emotional growth, personal development, and interactions between the self and society; again, Disney's bread and butter. Nothing new, as far as animation goes.

However, the reason early Pixar films stood out so firmly is that they handled more macro themes. A Bug's Life spoke to the power of collectivism against a smaller class of oppressors. Monsters, Inc was about the moral bankruptcy of corporations. Wall-E was about the invested interest of keeping an entire population docile and dependent. The Incredibles and Ratatouille, in spite of being made by Brad Bird, have different things to say about classism. (Which is unfortunate because a lot of people grew up taking notes about individual exceptionalism from this raging Ayn Rand fan.) Personal plot beats are present in all of these films but characters are secondary to what the film has to say about society at large.

Even in earlier Pixar films that do focus on characters, topics and themes remain more abstract. Toy Story routinely discusses abandonment issues and related trauma, dictating who is or who is not useful to social structures. Up focuses on demystifying the idea of youth being the time to have adventures. And Finding Nemo was more directed at parental anxiety.

Even Cars was about learning how to slow down and appreciate the little things in life; that empathy and integrity can and should go a lot further than chasing the next big deal or the next big paycheck.

Pay attention, we're going to come back to that later.

These days, Pixar films seem to align a lot more with what Disney is comfortable with. Coming-of-age, family values, friendship, spectacle, set pieces to show off just how much those computers can render, et cetera. Honestly, Encanto feels more like a Pixar movie than anything that Pixar's produced lately.

And no it's not subtle, what's going on. Leaks from staff at Pixar are all indicating that the studio is under more and more creative pressure to fit into the Disney mold. Especially because, in spite of tanking staff morale, Pixar has now, in large part, been moved to the ‘exclusively for streaming’ part of Disney+. And believe me, this does have a lot to do with the process of creating independent media.

Pixar, as a studio, should be seen as maybe not a cautionary tale, because it still is where animator's dreams come true. And in spite of their creative shift, they are producing stellar content. We're not talking at all about the quality of what's being made. We're talking about the creative process behind how it's created.

Guys, it's okay to like Pixar movies. Please do not go to the comments and say that I'm trashing Pixar. I am not.

But this should be seen as just what happens the more a creative venture gets tangled into a large corporate structure. Pixar Animation Studio has its roots in indie filmmaking. The technology was developed, in large part, by George Lucas, even though each one of the Star Wars movies featured the 20th Century Fox logo, each one, with the exception of Episode 4 was financed and produced independently by Lucas himself... until Disney got them.

Following Star Wars: Episode Six, he sunk his hands ever deeper into the technology that makes sound and visuals. He is one of the co-founders of THX. Which, everyone who lived in the 90s and 2000s will recognize as the logo that told you to turn your volume down.

He didn't really like working for studios, but he did like working with other filmmakers. Famously, the raptors in the kitchen scene of Jurassic Park was animated as a digital technology flex by industrial Light & Magic, George Lucas's special effects team. Meanwhile, some cinema empires can't be bothered to properly composite Mark Ruffalo's head into a scene, for one of the most expensive cinematic projects of all time!

Through this process Lucas toyed around with using computer technology to make animated shorts. He abandoned the project to ramp up his work on the Star Wars prequels in the 90s, where, instead, he would be the guiding force on pioneering digital cinema. He was also a consultant for digital effects for the Lord of the Rings movies. So, no, he's not just the Star Wars guy. He sold the Pixar technology to Steve Jobs, who in turn sold it to Disney, while maintaining a strong creative control over the studio. The 2011 death of Steve Jobs also lines up with Pixar's creative pivot.

Pixar sets a unique stage for this reason. As it has been both an auteur-driven animation studio while also a cog in the machine of a much larger ‘art as product, product as art’ media corporation.

But specifically why are we talking about this, when the image in the thumbnail is from a web series about cussy horny depraved murderous demons in an environment where sexual deviances are the norm? None of those words have ever been in a Pixar movie. And with the exception of "murder", they're not in the Bible, either. Having described how Pixar's content manifested as per its relationship with corporate oversight, what does that have to do with a hard-R rated animated series on YouTube called Hell of a Boss?

Helluva Boss is a show created by Vivienne Medrano in 2020. The show is technically a spin-off of an earlier series she piloted called Hazbin Hotel. It's... closer to say it's a spiritual successor. While the shows exist in the same universe, they share few other overlapping elements and are thematically distinct. A key difference is the inclusion of internet celebrity Brandon Rogers as leading voice talent and a major contributor to the series. In conjunction with Medrano's signature care to setting and emotional development, Helluva Boss stands out even among network animated series.

The premise of Helluva Boss follows Blitzo (the O is silent) as he runs a business which offers services to damned souls. For a nominal fee, the Immediate Murder Professionals - or just I.M.P or just IMP - will zip on up to the world of the living to get revenge on behalf of the now-dead person. Usually this involves killing whoever the client blames for them being in Hell. IMP is made up of Blitzo, Moxxie and Millie, a happily married couple, and Blitzo’s adopted furry— I mean hellhound-daughter, Loona. As much as Moxxie, in particular, longs for appropriate work-life boundaries, Blitzo insists on having a "family environment" at work.

Ironically, the one person who actually wants to be around Blitzo is someone who he is constantly trying to give the slip. Prince Stolas, one of the principal rulers of Hell, is head over heels for Blitzy. Stolas, himself, is a little bit of a late-bloomer to love and gay sex. Having lived most of his life in a loveless marriage that he's only put up with for the sake of his daughter, Octavia.

As a goetia, either a variation of demon, or a dynastic family, Stolas possesses a grimoire which can open portals to the mortal realm. A book that Blitzy needs in order to get paid. So, in order to borrow it from Stolas, he needs to give the prince of Hell the jerk around to keep him hooked, just enough, while still being able to avoid emotional intimacy.

But, because the book ultimately belongs to Stolas, Blitzo does kinda have to toe the line. Stolas does, on a few occasions, demonstrate why nobody should really get on his bad side. Just your average "pissed-off bottom" stuff, really.

The nature of the plot forces Blitzo into a situation where he can either choose to abandon what seems to be a last resort career, or to confront his attachment problems.

We're getting into spoilers now. Go watch the show. It's on YouTube. You have no excuse.

As with all of Medrano's content on her channel, Vivziepop, the series is wrought with gratuitous cussing, gratuitous violence, and, most of all, gratuitous genderblind sexuality. Which, the first two are nothing particularly new for cartoons. And even explicit sexuality isn't anything too shocking for those of us old enough to remember that “Drawn Together” was once a thing.

But the degree to which errant gender is depicted is something that stands out from the norm. Even in comedic animation where queer people are included, we're usually just the butt of the joke.

This is Hell, after all. It makes perfect sense why all the purity rules we hold would be inverted there. There isn't even an "everybody is bisexual or pansexual" angle, either. It's relatively clear that where some characters have no preference, a character like Stolas simply doesn't have much interest in women whatsoever. The fact that he's leaving his wife for a man is not scandalous. The scandal is that he's leaving her for a lesser demon. In Hell, where degeneracy is not only the norm but the social expectation, the only real taboo seems to be affectionate monogamy.

Moxxie and Millie frequently have to face jeers and criticisms about their… relationship. (Though really they-- they could-- they could stand to tone it down just a-- just a little bit.)

The thing that is shocking about Helluva Boss, however, is the very strange, uncompromising quality of the writing. Under the gallows humor, there is a strong underline of very salient emotional beats, consistent characters, and recurring plot themes which challenge these characters. Yes, the plots are outrageous and the setting is outlandish. But when the series wants to be, it can be shockingly real.

For instance, in the show about horny violent demons, I was caught off guard when an entire episode ended up being dedicated to exploring the way that children may... internalize their parents divorce.

It's fairly common to see media where children spiral through their parents divorce, at least in media where divorce is depicted at all. (Which is still shockingly infrequent, as per actual divorce rates.) The depiction usually focuses on how children go a little sideways due to family cohesion breaking up, or some kind of abstract reasoning like that.

However, this is also media which depicts parents as being much better at keeping their emotional shit away from their kids. I've spoken with a few people who were either ambivalent or relieved when their parents announced that they were moving ahead with separation. Children are shockingly good at picking up that their parents just aren't vibing with each other. And parents are shockingly bad at assuming their kids aren't going to pick up on the needling each other over dinner.

Helluva Boss's Octavia has been living in this home environment for some time. And although she does not seem that upset about the divorce, itself, her concern is that the divorce is going to drain the life out of her parents so they won't have anything left for her. Which is quite the nuanced depiction, especially when it would have been easier to just depict the easy route.

Especially now that we're into the second season of the series, the creators seem more comfortable with depicting these kinds of interactions. Gotta get the audience hooked with the sex and violence first, though.

It's rare that an animated series is allowed to go both ways. There is saucy adult animation, meant to push boundaries, like Rick and Morty. Or well-developed animated dramas like slice of life anime.

Usually, when networks approve any kind of series, they want things to be able to fit neatly into categories. This way, it's easier to qualify what kind of media is successful. Because if you're operating off of a numbers-only situation, it's impossible to isolate what elements of a piece of media make it successful. The media in question cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts. Because quality in media is more about how these parts interact.

It's why Marvel sticks to the Marvel formula. They found something that agrees with audiences but which has quantifiable elements that can be controlled through several layers of executive oversight. As long as their media sticks to this pattern, they can bank on certain projects being a success. Especially if they aren't simply going to increase the amount of low risk media they produce and continue to put all of their eggs into only a couple of very expensive baskets.

For instance, Avatar: The Way of Water didn't break even until it hit 1.1 billion dollars at the box office. Even though Terrifier 2 only made 12.6 million, that was 42 times its budget of $250,000. In order for Avatar to have that same kind of profit margin, it would need to make 10.5 billion dollars. Which means, naturally, studio content is going to get more formulaic because it needs to fit proven models for success. And their media is going to begin to be directed at the broadest possible audience.

But as a crowd-financed web series, Helluva Boss is in a unique situation, Medrano does not strictly need to answer to anyone to approve the content that she wants to fill her media with. As a, more or less, independent creator, she can make media… independently.

Strictly speaking, Helluva Boss is independent. But the show from which it spun-off Hazbin Hotel, is not technically independent anymore. Hszbin was picked up by a studio for more episodes. None other than A24, the studio I'd sell my left lung, right kidney, and both nuts to work with.

A24 is a relatively small studio founded in 2012. Though they, themselves, are a bit off the beaten path. The studio gained recent renown for releasing Everything Everywhere All at Once, a critical inbox office success. However, the studio's other noteworthy venues include, Swiss Army Man, Ex Machina, Hereditary, The Lighthouse, and Euphoria. The studio's history is interesting... but essentially amounts to a rich person throwing small fortunes at creative types to just... mess around and find out. It just so happens that the creative people they throw money at are exceptionally talented.

Maybe an A24 executive just watched the pilot and decided they were going to throw money at something that they wanted to see more of. You know, like Patreon! Linked in the description! 🙂

God forbid a studio head that actually watches and enjoys stuff. Industry's secret is that the people running these media companies... don't actually watch the movies or television shows that they produce. Patreon and other crowdfunding services have made careers for small creators who would have never otherwise managed to find a platform.

Artists existed because of patrons. You know, back in the day, when an old money type with titles and tracks of land would see some poet or composer and would pay them to live in their manor and make art. The rich person then gets to say "Hey! I helped this cool artist friend (who I am definitely not having any gay sex with, by the way) make something really, really, cool!"

Not a perfect system, especially because you can't really criticize the wealthy classes directly. But clever artists - and this is one thing that Shakespeare was very good at - would sneak in some real social commentary. He was also apparently pretty good at the gay sex part too. Allegedly.

So yeah, I'm pretty comfortable qualifying Helluva Boss as Independent Media. Because on top of everything else... Vivziepop has a habit of collaborating with other independent creators in significant ways. And some of these creators are people that most corporations in their right mind wouldn't touch with a laser pointer and a hazmat suit.

Who is Brandon Rogers?

Brandon Rogers is a YouTuber who's been around since the site became a thing, joining the platform in 2006. He's best known for satirical skits where he plays a multitude of characters. Characters that are crass, offensive, arrogant, repulsive, aggressive, unsavory, kind, caring, touching, and-- wait, what the hell is this?

[Grabs a folder off his desk, opens it and reads it.]

You can't be "offensive" and "touching"! ...But apparently, he is.

His channel originally started out as simple comedy sketches with recurring characters. However, in recent years, he's developed a sort of cinematic universe for himself with multi-episode series. These include "Stuff It Sam", "Blame the Hero", and "Normal British Series", as well as crossover one-off episodes like "A Day at the Park" and "A Day at the Beach". With my wrestling crush, Sammy Guevara, even co-starring in "Helen Trains a Wrestler".

Because of Brandon's dedication to the joke, and ever increasing production value, he's lasted a lot longer on YouTube than most of the sketch comedians that popped up on the platform in the early days. A pretty damn impressive feat, considering a multitude of his videos are rated 18-plus by YouTube and he makes absolutely no effort to self-censor. Which you'd think might be the end of him, these days. But it seems to work in his favor.

Normally, the phrase “equal opportunity offender” can be a bit of a trigger. Look at creators like Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park and their pseudo-libertarian approach to whom they make the target of their ridicule. Yes, they target established authority, depicting the nonchalant cruelty of Republicans, the blase ineptitude of Democrats, showcasing the narrow balance of police brutality and the incompetence of law enforcement. The series does, on occasion rush to the defense of public figures, who are perhaps unjustly the target of media mockery, such as Britney Spears. And at times, they use their platform to stand up for marginalized groups, like the episode with Stan's gay dog.

And all of this sounds like an upstanding, responsible use of a given platform - if it wasn't for the "equal opportunity" part. Because there is no specific target of their mockery, they target everyone.

There is a component of their whiteness and straightness that doesn't seem to understand how institutions of oppression function. And while you can deflect criticism for targeting elements of a minority community's culture by saying "we're making fun of everyone", it doesn't take into account a culture which is already passively ridiculing those same people.

For instance, their falling out with Isaac Hayes, the voice actor of staple character Chef, is indicative of this. Although things do get a bit complicated. Chef was a knowingly racist caricature that was used to often address the white perspective of black people in small communities. They were already threading the needle. Isaac's sudden departure from the series left him on very bad terms with Parker and Stone. Only using existing dialogue lines, they wrote Chef out of the series with a gruesome death.

And in the same episode, which highlighted an unspoken historic precedent of... English adventurers and explorers molesting the indigenous children of colonized nations, they implicated their only reoccurring black adult character, a cafeteria chef in an elementary school, as being a pedophile. And this is in conjunction with a recurring... polarized take on trans people and identities. Ranging from... ‘pretty okay’ to downright transphobic.

And also targeting and ridiculing specific people like Al Gore and his climate change advocacy - which has had detrimental and measurable real-world effects. Remember kids, it's never just a cartoon.

So, when it comes to a description of Brandon Rogers and his comedic style, he can also fit as an equal opportunity offender. But why am I willing to criticize Parker and Stone... where I will praise Rogers?

Rogers also has a broad range of characters which he uses to style his comedy he also uses potty, and gallows humor for his carnivalesque videos. Suburban moms, single spinsters, gay men, lesbians, homophobes, white people, black people, Asian people, Hispanic people, children, the poor, the English, the blind, cats, social media influencers, ghosts, Jeff Goldblum, closet-cases, and even robots. They're all lampooned, skewered and torn to shreds. But then, in odd moments of tenderness, many of them are brought down from their ridiculous heights and become surprisingly identifiable.

Bryce Tankthrust, a CEO-turned-president of the United States-turned-disgraced ex-president of the United States, is probably one of the best characterizations of corporate evil I've ever seen. With her literally having no heart and raising an army of clones, just to rip their hearts out so that she can keep on being the biggest bitch in America. But even she has had a backstory developed that humanizes her. Because, in the world that Brandon Rogers creates, no one is above being made fun of, and almost no one is too low to sympathize with.

Rogers himself is gay and of Portuguese, Filipino, Scottish, and Spanish descent, so he gets a pass for... pretty much everyone that he makes fun of in his videos. But even though he's a gay man of color who successfully broken into the insult comic world, dominated by straight white men (and also broken the rules and made it better, in my humble opinion), not all gay people are all too fond of his videos. It's hard not to find gays on Twitter, Reddit, or Tumblr decrying him is bad for the community and giving gays a bad name. He's too crass, too juvenile, not setting a good example, not being a (good gay), as it were.

In fact... doesn't he seem to just represent all the things that we try to avoid? Putting forth the absolute wrongest version of our community to show to “the straights.”

But on the other hand, doesn't it just get exhausting to put on all of these airs for the sake of impressing the straights? Why do we have to be biting our tongue like it's Thanksgiving dinner with relatives who think it's important to get a Republican president every now and then just to "balance out" the Democrats? And who is the "we" that is deciding what we should and should not depict to the cis-hetero hegemony?

Many queer people are put off by Brandon Rogers. Usually the same group of people who don't like being locked into the "LGBTQ" umbrella term. There's a sensibility in the community itself that feels that Roger's crass explicit YouTube videos are in detriment to the community because “golly gee what are the straights gonna think of us if we aren't showing them that we can be just as straight as them? Or straighter if at all possible!”

Putting on an act that will earn us acceptance into the hetero hegemony should not be the sensibilities that we use as a foundation. We had to create this community, and queer enclaves to protect ourselves from this group of people in the first place. And now we are going to put ourselves under such massive duress just to avoid backlash from them? If that weren't the case we would ask a different question. One that does not require an answer.

Why shouldn't Brandon Rogers make his videos?

Make 2023 the first year where we stopped saying that one rogue queer with no straight social filter is somehow sabotaging everyone else's rights? All that does is point out how fickle the hegemony's morality is, and that we ought to hold them to a higher standard, not us.

Meanwhile, have we really sat down and asked ourselves if playing to "straight standards" is a fantastic idea. And when I say straight, I do mean cisgender and heterosexual. I do acknowledge that a lot of trans people are heterosexual. But--

[On screen]: “SARCASM”

--like a bisexual person telling everyone they're gay just to save time, I have places that I'm trying to go with this.

See, the problem with an appeal to “the straights” is that they don't really know how we want to be seen. Which results in a lot of cis people believing that Blaire White is a shining example of trans visibility. The problem here is that it is easy to receive praise and recognition among the hegemonistic cultures by telling them that there is no onus on them to change or adapt - playing to the crowd, as it were. Whereas to make any strides in visibility, you have to be willing to challenge convention. The message we need to send to truly gain strides in the fight for our rights, is that people do not need to live by this Rockwellian set of nuclear family values to be fine.

I certainly hope that as Rogers becomes more prolific and prominent, that he does not face more backlash for developing the kind of content he wants to produce. On one hand, he, yes, does make content that seems highly indicative of lowbrow YouTube skit comedy. Which can often amount to men in bad drag screaming for no reason.

However, Rogers is capable of demonstrating a great deal of technical and narrative skill in the development of these videos. As far as there is a lot of shrieking in these skits, his dialogue has a punch. Characters are well developed and he makes good use of visual cues. And regardless of how chaotic they seem, they all drive toward a straightforward theme. For instance, he's one of the only creators I can think of who's pulled off time travel well.

But most importantly, all of his characters, no matter how outrageous, are indicative of a kind of humanity. At their core, they are identifiable on a personal level in a way where you can say “I know that person.” Even if the person you're thinking of does not go quite so hard.

Ultimately, this is the clear separation between the likes of Parker and Stone, and Rogers. Both can be offensive satire. However, South Park can have a tendency to be personally insulting. Rather than Rogers, whose insults are not quite so personal. If I were to qualify, it I would say that the difference would be Roger's comedy targets trends or behaviors themselves, and even if they are indicative of a particular identity, the identity is not the target. Merely their behavior. He humanizes his characters while he's making fun of them.

While targeting expressions of an identity, care is taken not to invalidate the identity. It is the character that is comedic. Whereas, South Park functions... well when it's making fun of white straight people because in the show there are still redeemable white characters to be found. With a limited cast of diverse characters and a set of narrative framing devices that paint these communities with broad strokes, the identity itself becomes the target.

There's no rationale or cultural context for why these people act the way they do. Simply holding up the behavior and saying “isn't this weird? See how peculiar this is? Look at this gay guy wearing a harness. Ah those homosexuals.”

It's not a secret that people of privilege have difficulty separating a criticism of behavior from a criticism of identity. Keep in mind “Born This Way” was a message that was not projected to them until February of 2011. Those of privilege are so accustomed to joining in ridicule of other people that the second someone makes fun of a component of white people, there is a widespread right-wing backlash about how somehow whiteness and Santa Claus are under attack.

Is the inability to navigate these nuances a component of privilege? Or is it something conditioned by living in privilege?

Meanwhile, successful satire tends to hold a reverence for the target of ridicule. Tina Fey's method of doing this, for instance, is to make fun of the person doing the ridiculing, just as much as the target of comedy. Or to ridicule the act of ridicule itself. But at the core, all subjects of mockery need to be put in the context of their own humanity.

I feel this is indicative of why exactly Helluva Boss holds so much impact. As a writer on most episodes, Rogers seems to be aware of how these characters can reach such carnivalesque heights. While at the same time keeping them identifiable. This sets the stage for when he steps away from the writer's chair for episodes that are intended to be more personal and empathetic - Medrano's brand - without them being tonally jarring.

Suffice to say, Helluva Boss's ability to play both camps exceptionally well makes it stand out in a way that is refreshing to see. Especially in an era where there is more and more social pressure to go through corporate channels to generate media. Because on the other side of an unspoken shame directed at those who have the moxie, gumption, coordination, drive, determination, grit, skill, talent, and persistence to produce their own media, independent of a corporate structure and agenda, there's a very loudly spoken praise... for those of us - especially for minority communities - who managed to convince a CEO... to let us make our media.

When it comes to the success of Vivziepop animation, and especially the prominence of Medrano and Rogers as YouTube creators, there's a discussion to be had about why queer content doesn't seem to translate onto the big screen. As well as being touch and go with cable TV. Whereas our visibility seems to thrive on streaming and on media sharing platforms like YouTube. It seems like the smaller the screen, the more liable we are to thrive.

There's an under-discussed discourse for why this may be. The easiest suggestion- and this is Hollywood's favorite- is that gay stories just don't make money. Sure, we are a relatively small community. But so are so many other communities who receive a wide range of representation in film. And what it comes down to is that... no we don't really turn out to support movies that purport to represent us.

But I think the answer for why is more complicated than we've been led to believe. There were three prime examples in 2022. Two of which failed primarily due to neglect. Studios under-promoting these films to a point where reporting on Strange Worlds opening weekend box-office bomb was the first time a lot of people had even heard of the movie. Meanwhile it went to number one on Disney Plus. Fire Island was sent to Hulu to die. Both of these are Disney's fault, by the way. Shocker.

And yes, gay people are going to get blamed for this, for whatever reason. But I would instead like to confront... my own community with why we (quote unquote) "let" Billy Eichner's Bros flop for its theatrical release.

Spoiler alert: I actually literally could not bring myself to finish watching Bros. It was that bad. I had to read a synopsis of the last 20 minutes. Which did not help.

A breakdown of Bros really isn't necessary. If you know who Eichner is, imagine that, but in a plot that tries to frame him as endearing, somehow. Imagine a regular rom-com, but gay! And lacking narrative cohesion and without tonal consistency and an unnecessary amount of f-bombs and no less than four sex scenes involving him and incredibly attractive... white guys. This combined earned the film a hard R rating. Which it seems quite proud of, in spite of the fact that that limits the potential theatrical audience.

Eichner is desperately trying to be both Tina Fey and Larry Kramer. However, he's too arrogant to direct criticism at himself, yet too insecure to say anything actually provocative. But, regardless of the fact that R-rated films have been shown to perform quite well at the box office - especially if made for a moderate budget - Bros underperformed to a point of Eichner explicitly citing homophobia as the sole reason for why the film failed. Okay so why didn't your own people go see it then, Billy?

Make no mistake, the queer demographic is relatively small, for now. However, we, in conjunction with a broader audience who are interested in queer characters and stories, were invested enough to give Helluva Boss the kind of views on YouTube which would have any television executive wetting their pants. Given that both Helluva Boss and Bros have a similar comfort with curse words and sexuality, why is one so much more successful than the other?

Regardless of the platform a Helluva Boss is just ubiquitously more successful. And it was made without the stamp of approval from a major studio. And most importantly, why do queer audiences gravitate towards the YouTube show so strongly whereas queer audiences were likely to turn away from Bros?

A common argument is that queer people aren't comfortable going to see queer movies in theater. The outdoor journey to the cinema may attract the prying eyes of homophobes. That it's safer and emotionally easier to just watch things on TV.

Even as Bros received glowing reviews from critics why were queer audiences so turned off by it? My explanation is that this was a movie at its narrative core about... "gay love". (And Eichner giving his character the opportunity to sleep with several ridiculously attractive men.)

While the film claims to to decry these values - which is made abundantly apparent at the beginning of the film - Eichner builds a normative concept of gay love which is outstandingly similar to straight love. Gay people may not appreciate this message because gay love itself is not a monolith. At least not the monolith that straight love can be.

The thing is, without the rudder of social etiquette milestones, we develop our own ways, and our relationship structures can be quite varied. Throwing gender dependent coupling to the wind, there's a lack of clarity regarding what roles two people may occupy in a romance. Trying to develop the quintessential “gay love story” is impossible. Because every gay person approaches love in a way that is defined by their distance from heterosexual coupling. And in this, Bros tries to present itself as this quintessential story in developing this new hetero-tangential gay hegemony.

I could foresee these opinions about Bros or any other media that seeks to make a normative argument about this. “Ours isn't straight love! Let me tell you what our love is!”

I can see many people simply feeling that.. one white homosexual cis man living in New York Cit-eh does not have the right to define that. Bros' narrative through-line instead is that... growing up in one's approach to relationships means monogamy. As that is the success factor of the story it moralizes monogamous love normatively. Aggrandizing itself for criticizing media that promotes hetero-typical love, while making a mockery out of anything that is even slightly out of the cis-hetero norm.

Bros ends up being a broad strokes normative description about the moralistic direction in which gay men apparently ought to direct their lives. Again, people who were pushed from the hegemony, who in turn had to create their own identities, do not like being told what their identity should be!

Like Billy Eichner's character in Bros, Bobby, the movie spends far too much time insulting the people who it then demands support from. And Eichner does expect to be celebrated, in spite of the fact that he spends the entire movie being critical of everybody. People, let alone gay people, generally don't like that.

Eichner's attitude during the movie's promotion didn't seem to help. He went around making statements indicating that this was the "first gay movie that mattered". He didn't say it was the first gay movie, but he did claim that it was the first gay romantic comedy to be produced by a large studio. Which is also wrong.

But the statement did seem to imply that prior gay movies - the ones that kept us going through a century of persecution - seemed to matter less than this one. Eichner's very public self-congratulatory statements, while off-putting to queer people, did a lot to intrinsically tie this movie to queerness in a way that was not done with, say, Strange World.

Between the two, critics seemed to be much more comfortable celebrating Bros. And after watching the quality of Bros…

Okay I have some filmmaker stuff I need to get off my chest: Bros was shot with a kind of lens called an anamorphic lens. These lenses are very expensive and difficult to work with. They make the shot wider by shrinking the image. Like what happens when you squeeze a JPEG in Photoshop. And then the editor has to properly de-squeeze the image in post-production. Anamorphic lenses are used to generate incredibly dramatic, impactful visuals, that are often what people would consider "cinematic". I have no idea why Bros needed to be shot with these lenses.

And they messed it up! While I was watching it, I noticed that the image wasn't de-squeezed properly! It's nothing that literally, like, anyone would notice except people who know what to look for. But seriously, this is not a movie that requires fancy camera lenses used to shoot movies like Lawrence of Arabia and The Lord of the Rings!

[Exasperated exhale] Anyway.

Taking stock of the technical skills and talent that went into Bros, the only reason I think that it was received as positively as it was is because critics were afraid of being accused of being homophobic for giving it an honest review. And while I can't know for certain, Eichner certainly made a point of accusing everyone in the world - minus the 15 people who actually saw the damn thing - of being homophobic.

I can foresee a few critics maybe being afraid that if they gave it the good old "thumbs down", Eichner would have personally showed up at their doorstep with a baseball bat and four out of the five guys from Queer Eye.

What does confuse me about Bros (and this is going to seem generalized) is the movie itself. Bros as a project, confuses me.

From a creative side, the film is designed to lampoon a very real precedent of queer media kowtowing to a heteronormative standard, while at the same time being framed through a heteronormative love story format. All the while, the film itself pushes for queer independence, while the creative team was very proud of themselves for using one of the largest film studios in the world to validate it. If queer creators are in need of creative liberation from hetero establishment expectations and formats... why was it so damn important to get made by one of the largest hetero establishments... in Hollywood?

For all Bros seems to pride itself on being "The Gay Movie", it certainly doesn't reach very far to accommodate the people it claims to want to service. And definitely expects that audiences... do the heavy lifting in this relationship with the media. And yet aside from living in this fictitious self-insertion wish fulfillment world of fiction, where everybody likes Billy - I mean, Bobby - and takes him seriously, every stop is pulled to validate straight opinions of queer identities.

"Don't worry, straights! You know all those weird things about gay culture like polyamory and being comfortably single into your 40s? And you know how queer people are just constantly arguing about privilege? Yeah don't worry. It is dumb and dysfunctional. 'Cause I said so."

If Eichner really was intent on making Bros for us, queer people, then he wouldn't have blamed straight people for why it flopped. And in the end Bros fits the definition of exactly what it claimed it was different from: a gay movie made for the bemusement and celebration of straight people.

But if Eichner was sincere in wanting to create media that speaks to and for the queer community... then that dream was always going to be hobbled by a big Hollywood producer, for whom this community is a demographic on a chart. And a small one compared to the straight white men and women aged 18 to 56.

More confusing, still, is the fact that this group of executives and creative decision makers (who think they know something about what audiences want, in spite of landing their job after coming from the microwave division) that insists that flops like Bros are proof positive that there's just no demand for queer content.

Meanwhile, roll over to vivziepop's YouTube channel and find views that any television producer would ritualistically sacrifice their first and second born to translate into ratings. No demand? No demand? None?! Apparently.

And Helluva Boss sashayed right past the limits of bold language and sexuality that Bros stopped at. All the while this show does incorporate queer aesthetic sensibilities and does feel comfortable digging into the issues affected by queerness and do all the things that Bros cannot or will not do because its narrative structure is predicated on the limits of what a corporate body will let it do.

Though her platform is self-made and much smaller, Medrano has reached more audiences than an overwhelming majority of creators who make (as would be considered by many) the right kind of queer content.

So why is corporate-made media put on such a high pedestal? Why do we have to organize our community to watch Oscar-bait bullshit and generic rom-coms (but with gay characters) under the promise that if we show everyone that this can be a success then maybe they will actually give us something we want? Never mind that wild cats like Medrano and Rogers have been there the whole time building content that already speaks to us on their own.

Medrano is demonstrating that there is social currency for niche content to thrive. In spite of every media executive (except at A24, apparently) saying it could never sell.

Is it for everyone? No. Should it be for everyone? No! The problem with corporate media, is that it needs to be for everyone!

Meanwhile, this is the space for prestige? Where everyone wants to be? Where we're told this is where you need to go to know that you've made it. This is the coveted spot? This is where you want to move your career? This is the big leagues?

Could it really be just about getting a bigger paycheck? Or is there some kind of subliminal thought process, that by being contracted by a straight executive, it means we're overcoming persecution? Or maybe individual creators feel more validated by a single executive than by the praise of a large fan base.

But what about the single executive's opinion is more important than a whole audience feeling seen by your art? Why is there still such a rat race to impress executives when people like Medrano and other independent creators are proving that you can make a living by producing the kind of media that you want to make in the first place?! Making good art isn't at odds with making a living. Why is external approval so important?

There was one... one... cohesive message that came out of Disney Pixar's Cars: that there is integrity and value in the slow lane. That by chasing the more lucrative contract, the prestigious brand, you end up missing so much and leaving behind the people who may mean a lot to you.

An entire movie designed to sell Lightning McQueen merchandise, to have colorful settings, and flashing lights and it has this one salient thing to say! How did so many people miss it?! It came out 15 years ago. Why don't more people of my generation... celebrate people... who don't sell out?

[Soft hopeful music in the background]

Having lived as a gay man for thirty-some-odd years now... I've seen the community go through some big changes. When I was a kid in the 90s, I remember seeing arguments and debates over "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the Defense of Marriage Act in the United States.

I remember Ellen DeGeneres coming out and all the chaos that surrounded that. ...I can still see my mom crying while watching the news coverage about the murder of Matthew Shepard. My family talking about the legal battle here in Canada about whether or not a boy could bring another boy to his prom.

I watched Queer as Folk and Will and Grace open the eyes of millions of viewers each week. I seethed... as George W Bush tried using the gay community and our marriage rights as an election issue in 2004. And then he won. I was shocked the night Barack Obama was elected President of the United States only for California, of all states, to enshrine discrimination into their constitution with the passage of Prop 8.

I watched and enrapt as soldier after soldier came forward to talk about how they had been booted out of the U.S military because they were gay. Even though their commanding officers knew full well that they were gay when they sent them on multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. And then a dishonorable discharge meant that even after... multiple tours... they lost all their benefits.

And I eventually cheered when Prop 8 was overturned by the Supreme Court, same-sex marriage was legalized, and the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy was repealed.

All of this was between 1993 and 2015. That’s 22 years.

The fight for gay rights had been going on long before 1993, of course. It's been going on forever, really. But it feels like in the 22 years between '93 and 2015, that gay rights really went mainstream. Since '93 we've watched as politicians, like Joe Biden, voted against our rights by voting for the Defense of Marriage Act. And we watched as he, as the President of the United States, fully repealed the statute in 2022 when he signed the Respect for Marriage Act. It's not politics if it's character development. (That was sarcasm, by the way. Pay attention to voting records, not just what people say.)

We saw gay characters only being allowed on TV after a certain time of night and movies almost universally being rated R if they had a gay character. To Disney, releasing a 200 million dollar animated movie with a gay lead character... even if they did neglect to market it.

We saw LGBTQ literature go from existing on the fringes with people rushing out of tiny bookstores with non-descript paper bags containing copies of books by authors like Christopher Isherwood, Radclyffe Hall, and James Baldwin, to queer Y.A. books becoming global bestsellers and inspiring hit TV shows.

Though we've certainly run into some setbacks.... the progress has seemed rapid and unprecedented. (At least that's what the straights say. They don't seem to realize that people were fighting for gay rights before the Clinton Administration.)

But if you look at the queer community of today and the queer community of the pre-AIDS era. It feels like there's something missing. Not just the tens of thousands of brilliant minds, talented artists, and loving people who we've lost to that disease, but a sense of something else. The shamelessness. The “be whoever you want to be” attitude that perpetuated within the community before... fighting for our very lives and hospital beds became the only fight we could fight.

It's telling, I think, that once protease Inhibitors had reached the market and an HIV diagnosis was no longer a death sentence, the battles that rose out of the AIDS epidemic for gay people were access to marriage and military service.

When, once, the queer community was focused on creating the best art and living lives worth telling stories about, the 1990s brought on a new goal: how best to fit in.

As the brilliant Fran Leibowitz has said many times, "the first people who died of AIDS were the interesting ones: the artists." There's a reason that Art became Ghostbusters and CATS in the 1980s. Because all of the really talented artists were dying. The rule-breakers. Ones who weren't afraid to shake things up. And the audience died with them.

[Quote on screen, read out]:

"Now, we don't have any kind of discerning audience. When that audience died — and that audience died in five minutes. Literally, people didn't die faster in a war. And it allowed of course, like the second, third, fourth tier to rise up to the front.

Because of course, the first people who died of AIDS were the people who... I don't know how to put this... got laid a lot. OK. Now imagine who didn't get AIDS. That's who was then lauded as like — the great artists.”
[~ Fran Lebowitz]

So many of the gays left alive once the Clinton Administration came into being were, to be frank, the boring ones. The gays who knew nobody and who nobody knew.

And they rose to the top of the community and therefore their priorities rose to the top of the community, as well.

And what did they want? Apparently, they wanted to join the army and have big gay weddings. General employment non-discrimination wasn't all that important to them. Making sexuality and gender identity a protected class along with sex, race, and religion wasn't that important to them. They wanted marriage and military.

Because they were the good gays. Not the naughty gays who were sleeping around and dying of AIDS. Not the poor gays who couldn't make political contributions. They were the gays with families and commitment ceremonies and office jobs and houses. They were the good ones the ones who would look fan-TA-stic and incredibly marketable (when they were interviewed by CNN). They were the gays who straight people would look at and say to themselves “maybe they're not so bad after all. I still don't want my kid to be gay but maybe... it's okay if Bob and Henry got married.”

The gay rights movement shifted from "accept us for who we are" to "we’ll be whatever you want us to be if you accept us." And it's kind of remained that way over the last 30 year. We've been trained to be offended by queers who step too far out of the mainstream.

Plenty - and I mean plenty - of gays online were on edge when Billy Porter started showing up to Awards shows in dresses. Lots - and I mean lots - of gays were unnerved and worried when trans people started coming out of their own closets. Some going so far as to disavow the "T" from the LGBT because they were worried people who don't like trans people would lop in the gay men and women in with them. Who needs community when you've already got your house in the suburbs, right?

And so, so so, so, many gays will rise up in a social media tornado at the first sight of a problematic queer showing up somewhere in media. And I'm not even talking about like serial killers like Dahmer or Buffalo Bill. I mean I just mean the slutty gays. Being anywhere near a sex positive as Samantha was on Sex in the City 20 years ago could lead to a gay character in today's day and age being canceled for not being a good role model for the community.

The queer community is one that's made up of oddly shaped characters all being forced to fit into these perfectly square boxes. Built by the men who wanted marriage and military over protected rights for everyone.

So it's been absolutely revelatory for me, born right around the time the "good gays" started taking control, to see some "bad gays" being naughty in media and having a blast doing it.

Brandon Rogers has been the antithesis of the good gays in those old gay marriage commercials for about 15 years now. And his videos are just getting better and more complex as time goes on. Giving us queer characters that mainstream media would be far far too squeamish to portray.

Vivziepop's expanding world of Hell has given us queer assassins, queer princes of Hell, queer demonic drug addicts, and the queer daughter of Lucifer and Lilith themselves who just wants to help people.

Meanwhile Hollywood gives us annoying gays... dying gays... and gays they refuse to market.

"James, is this another video where you say we should support independent creators in studios instead of supporting the giant Hollywood conglomerates?" ...Yes!

Asking Hollywood to give us fun, earnest and meaningful representation only for them to puke out Bros and then still beg these producers-- it's like begging a dickhead ex-boyfriend to take you back because you feel lonely. Even if he does say "yes", you think it's not gonna suck? It is!

Meanwhile, there's a horde of people begging for your attention that we as a whole community have managed to ignore altogether. Some YouTubers are making funnier videos than anything Hollywood's been spitting out lately. Some production companies are making queer inclusive content so good... it's the front runner for every Best Picture award this season even though it came out last March.

So, in 2023, I think we need to make a promise: to search out and watch some more independent queer media. And stop jumping for joy every time Marvel happens to cast a queer actor.

I'd say we're a long way off from Disney producing anything nearly as queer as the 2013 Young Avengers run by Kieron Gillen. Holding your breath for this is only going to turn you blue.

Support queer creators on Patreon. Buy independently published books by queer authors. Stream web series by queer video producers. And watch all the queer movies and series that somehow make their way onto major streaming services like Netflix and Amazon.

Support it all! Yes, even if you find it offensive! Because if you think queer characters should be beacons of great decision making and career choices.. if you think queer characters need to be models to show off to the straights... the straights who hate us in 2023, are still gonna hate us if we come across as perfect or flawed.

So let's stop caring what they think of us and live our lives the way we want to! Without asking for their acceptance... or their permission.

It's time we start hearing the message that corporations and other media Gatekeepers refuse to say: that you are enough. That you have intrinsic value without authority's validation. That there are people who want your stories, your art and your feelings. Maybe they'll be a little rough around the edges but maybe that's better. Because of the real raw unadulterated place it comes from that most Hollywood producers or executives could never understand. But for which... there may be an audience who will feel seen by these stories. And will see you in return.

It's time for us to start considering whose opinions about us actually matter and to start seeing ourselves as we are; as worthy. Because you're worth so much more... than a column on a spreadsheet.