Time for some Pride & Joy
I seriously considered "Swallow your Pride" as the headline here but thought that might be a bit punchy...so here it is a sub-head instead!
The month of June marks so many wonderful things: summer sunshine (who am I kidding?? Thus far it’s been far wetter than April and May), the return of Pimms and barbecues, the French Open, and most wonderfully: Pride.
Any celebration that involved rainbows, sequins, glitter & feather boas has got my vote. Obviously Pride for the LGBTQ+ community is about far more serious issues than sequins and glitter…such as human rights for groups who have often (& in some cases, still) have had those rights curtailed and lives ruined by others simply because of who they are. But in a great middle finger to their would-be oppressors, queer people opt to lift themselves up and celebrate rather than tear others down. More power to them, I say.
It’s been tough to whittle down this week’s recommendations but I’ve done my best: a mix of older stories mixed with new and, as best as I can manage, a range from across the LGBTQ+ community as a whole - but all of them are great. (I would say that though, wouldn’t I?)
TL;DR
Read Fingersmith and The Line of Beauty; watch Big Boys and Pose; listen to Who Shat on the Floor at my Wedding? and Great White Heist; and watch Milk.
READ
There are literally so. very. many books and authors I could have chosen for this section but I also want to be realistic about how much time people have to read this newsletter each week so I’ve gone with two books who left a serious impression on me. (Also one of my favourite Pride-appropriate books is Less…but I recommended that a few newsletters ago!)
A few years back, I start picking a ‘spooky read’ to occupy me through the month of October running up my favourite holiday of the year. As a result, I came across Fingersmith, quite some time after it was first published in 2002 and lauded by all who read it. It’s not spooky per se - but it is set in Victorian England and is very much an example of gothic fiction.
Sue is an orphan raised by Mrs Sucksby who sends out her band of adoptive children to pick pockets and generally nick whatever they can. Mrs S sends Sue off with a mysterious man called the Gentleman to Briar, the country home of Christopher Lilly and his niece Maud. The Gentleman plans to marry the niece, then have her committed to an asylum and claim all the dosh due to her once she gets hitched. Nice chap, really.
Sue poses as Maud’s new lady’s maid and convinces her to marry the Gentleman. But inconveniently, Sue falls in love with her - and so begins a page-turning twist-filled thriller. Waters’ writing is lyrical and compelling whose descriptions, character names and world-building are reminiscent of Dickens. If you enjoy getting completely lost in a belter of a novel, then this is for you.
Given that The Line of Beauty won the Booker Prize in 2004, it’s hardly a hidden gem.
But if, like me, you spent more of your uni years both propping up and dancing on bars, you may have, also like me, not really paid attention to winners of prestigious international book prizes during your time in third level education. I finally heard about The Line of Beauty about ten years ago and it sits neatly within one of my favourite niches: that of a period piece set in a recent period.
The novel is set in three different years throughout the Eighties: 1983, 1986 and 1987 and is set against the backdrop of - or perhaps more accurately, within - Conservatism under Thatcher. Recent Oxford graduate Nick is our protagonist from a fictional Northamptonshire town called Barwick. After graduation he moves to London where a uni friend offers him a bed in his parents’ Notting Hill pile whilst they are away. Nick winds up becoming part of the furniture and lives there for several years as a lodger, growing up, becoming more confident in his homosexuality and having the scales fall from his eyes in terms of what it’s really like to be grown up, rich and a Conservative - in other words immature, at times morally baseless and outrageously hypocritical.
This is another one that draws you in and reading it now you will likely draw comparisons with Emerald Fennell super-success that was the movie Saltburn and, more recently, the book The Ellerby Code by Jonny Sweet. But do remember, The Line of Beauty walked so they could run.
WATCH
Big Boys kicks off in 2013 with Danny & Jack meeting in first year at university.
Danny is a mature student (at all of twenty five years old) who is all about partying and chatting up girls and covering up the true state of his mental health. Jack is a nineteen year old on a journalism scholarship who is still recovering from the death of his father and processing the fact that he’s gay, though not out.
Jack is played by Dylan Llewellyn of Derry Girls fame - he plays the English cousin: James. Just another reason to love this absolutely heartwarming story. The show tells the story of their time together at university and the friendship that’s formed throughout. It’s in turns funny and sad and a great portrayal of the struggles faced by young men and how they deal with it. It was universally loved by critics when it came out and I highly recommend it for a bit of company of an evening; you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you won’t be disappointed.
If you want your TV a bit more theatrical, colourful and overall wonderful, you can do worse than to consider anything from the mind of Ryan Murphy. He who brought us the American Horror Story series, Nip/Tuck, Glee and my favourite at the time: the short-lived Popular. Murphy has become a genre of his own.
Pose is his love song to the African-American & Latino ball culture of New York City in the Eighties and Nineties. It brought us - among other things - ‘voguing’, a dance style known for inspiring Madonna’s 1990 hit single Vogue, from her not-such-a-hit movie Dick Tracy. The three seasons run from 1987 to 1998 with the most incredible cast clad in fantastically colourful costumes who split into ‘Houses’ with names like Abundance, Evangelista, Ferocity & more. I think I’d be the latter personally.
The houses compete against each another in dance battles where the costume designers, make up artists & choreographers got to go to town. It’s like watching a modern version of those Golden Hollywood films of the ‘40s and ‘50s where perfectly coiffed ladies paired with men in white tie with huge teams of nose-clipped synchronised swimmers in the background came together in a huge dance number. It’s glitz, it’s glam, it’s colour and an amazing soundtrack with heart-wrenching relationships forming and fracturing as it struts along through the AIDs epidemic and threats to the LGBTQ+ community that were commonplace thirty five years ago. Just watch this trailer and tell me you don’t want to watch it immediately:
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If you prefer your period dramas a little older, I must give an honourable mention to Tipping the Velvet (which originally started life as a novel by Sarah Waters mentioned above) & more recently from the brain of genius that is Sally Wainwright: Gentleman Jack. Both excellent stories featuring some of the best of British acting talent.
LISTEN
A few years ago, I was scrolling through my podcast app on the hunt for something to keep me entertained during a long car journey. When I came across Who Shat on the Floor at my Wedding? & Other Crimes, you won’t be surprised to learn that I did a double take. Did I really read that right?! Yes, yes I did.
This is the story of Helen Mclaughlin and Karen Whitehouse’s wedding on a boat in Amsterdam in 2018 which turned into a ‘poodunnit’. (Props to whoever on the internet that came up with that, because I will admit, it wasn’t me)
A piece of excrement is discovered on the floor at their wedding. Pretty horrifying in & of itself, right? All the more horrifying when you consider they were on a boat: it was a confined space with no public access - this removes the possibility that it was some randomer who nipped in off the street, potentially pissed or high as a kite thinking it the absolute LOLs to defecate at a stranger’s wedding. This was done by someone they know. But again, when you think about that a bit more: this was their wedding and it was on a boat so the numbers invited to the event were Helen & Karen’s closest friends and family as they were restricted by how may people were legally permitted on the boat at one time.
So the two women do what any of us would do when reeling from the shock of the realisation that someone they know well and likely care for deeply, thought it was acceptable to take a dump in the middle of the nuptials…they decide to investigate. And given the way things work these days: they make that investigation into a podcast. Listen, this will either be your thing or it won’t. But it is hilarious and unpredictable and really a lot of fun.
I have never really got into fictional podcasts in any great way - I’m too much of a news bore. But this next title bucked that trend. Great White Heist is made by Audible Originals and has a truly jawdropping cast: Bowen Yang stars (SIGN ME UP), Alan Cumming, Cynthia Nixon, Jane Lynch, Jonathan Bailey and Margaret Cho…I mean, come on. What’s not to love?!
Yang plays Jude ‘Judy’ Fink who leads a ragtag bunch of queers of all kinds in the planning and execution of a bank heist. But this isn’t just any heist of just any bank, oh no… They plan to hit the United States Seed Registry, hidden deep beneath the Space Needle in the city of Seattle. There they will find semen samples from all of the world’s greatest minds (the use of the word ‘greatest’ there could be deemed debatable) such as President Barack Obama, President Ronald Reagan (see? debatable) and Mark Zuckerberg (!) They plan to sell all this…ahem…’seed’ to wealthy Russians using the money to then build an all-queer island paradise “Los Lesbos”. What more could you want?
It’s so fun and it’s been renewed for a second season. Go on, have a cocktail and dive right in!
WATCH
And finally, the true story of a real person: Harvey Milk.
Milk was forced to leave the US Navy when he was outed as gay. He later went into public service and wound up being elected as a city supervisor in San Francisco in 1977 - at the time, the highest office to which an out gay man had been elected.
Milk was also the first non-incumbent openly gay man elected to public office; in an election of firsts. Also elected was the first ever single mother (Carol Silver), the first Chinese American (Gordon Lau) and the first African American woman (Ella Hill Hutch). Another first time appointee Dan White was elected but wound up dissatisfied and quit his position in 1978. Two weeks later, White returned to City Hall and shot dead both Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.
As you’ll see from the picture above, they made a biopic about Harvey Milk in 2008 starring Sean Penn as the eponymous hero and Josh Brolin as Dan White (Brolin got an Oscar nom for his portrayal). The movie shows Milk’s playful side (apparently he was known for pulling pranks), his dedication to politics and working to deliver for the people - particularly the gay community - of San Francisco and not only him navigating public reaction to his sexuality but also the toll his political career took on his private life. It’s directed by Gus van Sant who was also at the helm for Good Will Hunting and both movies earned him Best Picture nominations at the Oscars. So you’re in good hands.
Another reason to learn about Harvey Milk in particular is this: in 2021, a US Navy ship moored in San Francisco was renamed to celebrate Milk and his contribution to his country both in the military and in politics. That decision was reversed by the current Secretary of Defense (whose name I’d rather not use) because, he claims, it is not policy to ‘name ships for activists’. Let’s all make sure we remember Harvey Milk this Pride Month - as well as other members of the LGBTQ+ community whose legacy others are attempting to erase.