Great Moments in Gay - The Talented Mr. Ripley - Bathtime with Dickie

In honor of Pride Month, we're highlighting a few Great Moments in Gay. Here’s Christopher James

Chess has never been this sexy.Few movies are as sexy as The Talented Mr. Ripley.  John Seale’s cinematography holds its gaze on each of the beautiful stars throughout the movie. Sex drips off the screen at every moment. Though the film is predicated on the “murderous gay” trope in the end, Minghella and company do a great job on establishing and defining its characters attractions. The bathtub scene between Tom Ripley and Dickie Greenleaf is not a “Great Moment in Gay” just because you see Jude Law’s penis. It is doing dramatic work too, illuminating the power dynamics between Tom and Dickie and their characters, too. Plus, it bears repeating, it’s incredibly hot.

Spoilers and NSFW Images to Follow…

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Great Moments in Gayness: Journey to the Cocksucker in "But I'm a Cheerleader"

In honor of Pride Month, Here’s Christopher James highlighting a pivotal scene from Jamie Babbit’s But I’m a Cheerleader.

Doesn't everyone remember their first time in a gay bar?Satire is a powerful tool. It can take even big dark topics and shrink them down to laughable size. But I’m a Cheerleader represents the high point of what satire can do. Conversion therapy camps are still a blight on our society, despite being declared illegal in 20 states and more municipalities. They have traumatized an uncountable number of queer people. Yet, Babbit’s film subverts the location to be a cotton-candy-colored joke. The film does such a great job of making it a nightmare that loses its shock value because you simply can’t stop laughing AT it.

The joke machine comes to a halt for a joyous moment where we come up for sweet, queer air. The kids escape True Directions to go to a gay bar, "the Cocksucker"...

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Great Moments in Gay - Lady Bird

Here’s Ilich on Lady Bird (2017)...

Pride Month and its celebrations are so outrageously fun to participate in because they feel so earned. The titular pride almost never comes immediately after queer people identify, at least to themselves, as such. It’s often preceded by confusion and a paralyzing fear that interrupts as many opportunities of rational thought as it can. Queer people take their time navigating through awkward stages of a sort of grief that will hopefully lead to that realization that they are free to be themselves without fear, and definitely without shame. Hints of these stages are warmly depicted in Greta Gerwig’s endlessly satisfying directorial debut Lady Bird. Through Danny (Lucas Hedges) and his friendship with the film’s protagonist, Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson (Saoirse Ronan), Gerwig’s script fleshes out the performances that many rehearse in the process of accepting their nature...

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Trailer for ''God's Own Country''

by Murtada

Do we have a new gay classic coming our way this year? Judging by the reactions from a few film festivals, we just might. The film in question is Francis Lee’s debut God’s Own Country. The story is about a farmer from Northern England and his journey of sexual discovery after falling for a Romanian migrant worker...

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John Cho's Sulu Comes Out

In a fun bit of refreshing happy news, it has been revealed that John Cho's Sulu will be gay in the upcoming Star Trek Beyond. What a heartwarming nod to the series's original Sulu George Takei, who has been one of the loudest and proudest out performers advocating for LGBT rights for some time.

This is also a welcome alternative to the after-the-fact revisionism granted to franchise icons like Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series, though Takei himself disagrees. But Sulu hasn't previously had any romantic backstory in the canon, so any grousing of opportunistic pandering isn't quite fair either. Reintroducing the character as gay without a "might be" or "actually was" asterix is something else entirely while the series is running, especially without definitively being drawn as straight in his history.

The reported nonchalant introduction of Sulu's same-gender partner is a hopeful sign that gay visability in mass entertainment to moving toward characters that that don't shy from queerness but don't require it to solely define them. Cho commented on the reveal:

I liked the approach, which was not to make a big thing out it, which is where I hope we are going as a species, to not politicise one’s personal orientations...

While the unfortunate obvious truth is that we are not at that point with LGBT acceptance, having a beloved character who now happens to be gay is a necessary step towards wider visibility that has been missing in franchise entertainment.

This is a step in the right direction for franchise entertainment as a whole, but one that seems long delayed for the historically progressive series. Toss in that original Rihanna track and Beyond is starting to look like a gay old time at the movies - but Sulu, honey, you're supposed to come out during Pride month, not after!

Do you find Sulu's outing exciting or revisionist?