by Nathaniel R
This just in. The GLAAD nominations for portrayals of the LGBT community are out. This is a different group than the critics group that I vote with (the one from lgbt entertainment journalists) and their focus is less on quality -- or it has been in the past -- than on battling homophobia and fighting for inclusion. Their full name gives you their raison d'etre history: the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. They've made significant blunders in their years (supporting I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry would still rankle if anyone still remembered the film) but let's not hold that against them since we love that their purview is so wide (music, comic books, everything) and their purpose admirable.
The film nominees go like so...
OUTSTANDING FILM – WIDE RELEASE
Battle of the Sexes (Fox Searchlight)
Call Me by Your Name (SPC)
Lady Bird (A24)
Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (Annapurna)
The Shape of Water (Fox Searchlight)
OUTSTANDING FILM – LIMITED RELEASE
BPM (The Orchard)
A Fantastic Woman (Sony Pictures Classics)
God’s Own Country (Samuel Goldwyn Films/Orion Pictures)
Thelma (The Orchard)
The Wound (Kino Lorber)
Those are pretty great groups, don'cha think? Thrilled to see Professor Marston which is about a triad marriage between the creator of Wonder Woman and two free thinking queer women, get some recognition. It was roundly ignored in theaters but it's really quite involving and unique. And it's from an out female director of color Angela Robinson. (Dee Rees isn't the only one, people!) Robinson previously directed D.E.B.S. (2004) and Herbie Fully Loaded (2005) so this is a big step up. It would have been a huge step up had people really noticed the film. Perhaps on streaming, it's day will come?
Elsewhere GLAAD kind of goes overboard. They have, essentially, 25 nominees for best TV series (since there are 10 wide categories for both drama and comedy PLUS a regular sized limited series/movie category) and that is too many even in the days of "peak" TV. But I was happy to see that there were enough LGBT centric comic books for a whole top ten including Iceman (pictured above). He was always one of my favorite X-Men and when that video game where you could play X-Men fighting each other was popular I always played him so it's a fun coincidence that they've retconned him as a gay. Comic book companies are always retconning everything so there's no point in being an angry purist when one of the retcons does something progressive. Unfortunately Iceman only lasted a year on comic shelves, cancelled last month.