Time For Another Gay Ol' Story

I'm not sure what is happening lately. Either I'm spending more time actively chasing down gay content or gay-accessible pop culture is just becoming more prevalent.

This weekend, I finally got the chance to watch Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. If you haven't seen it yet, it's a pretty solid movie. Cute, full of high-school angst and growing pains, but hopeful. So what's really queer-friendly about a love story between a teenage boy and girl? The male lead is in a gay rock band. He's just not gay. But the rest of the band (and the supporting cast for the movie) is gay, and it's just that simple. There's no long, drawn-out explanation as why he's there or over-testosteroned attempts for the male lead to prove his heteroness. The sexuality of the kids is handled as casually as the sex lives of the hetero characters, which is certainly a nice change of pace from what we've come to expect of movies and gay stereotypes.

I also finished Hero by Perry Moore the other week. Hero is a novel about a young queer boy growing up in a world where super heroes simply exist. The League is thriving and thwarting enemies on a daily basis, while characters like Justice, who crashed landed on Earth after his home world was destroyed only to be raised by farmers (ahem… not familiar at all), fly through the sky protecting the planet from peril. The boy goes through a small bit of pain about his secret homosexuality, but soon learns that his secret powers are what will make the biggest difference in his life. Why is this important from a pop culture perspective? It was a successful book, and considering that Peter Moore is the executive producer on the Chronicles of Narnia series of movies, I'd say his chances of green lighting his novel into a movie should be pretty good, or even a TV series if the current round of rumors are to be believed.

In a few weeks, The Watchmen will be released in theaters. The Watchmen has been heralded as one of the greatest works of fiction, and is easily the best example of what a graphic novel can be. The novel doesn't expressly focus on anything gay, but you do come to learn that two of the characters, minor as they are, are gay and that news is handled as matter-of-factly as the fact that the are masked adventurers. Whether this tacit acceptance and normalization of the gay characters will persist into the big screen isn't quite clear yet, but the portrayal in the book is pretty great.

So what's going on? Am I hunting down LGBT-related content, or is it finding me? I think a little bit of both, to be honest. I want to know my community better and I want to consume material that I can relate to, so I know that I'm on the look-out for more gay content. However, I believe that the tide of queer equality is approaching faster and faster, even if only in the pop culture frame.