And we all relate to Lana, because we all feel that there are consequences for our romantic actions. But no one understands the trope of the “fallen woman” more than those outside the system. Sex workers I think have a special relationship to Lana because of the Fallen Woman trope. Even without talking criminality directly, because of the nature of the job, our personal and professional love lives remain spaces of risk and of melodrama. Sex workers are still living in the fallen woman paradigm. Sex workers, all criminals, trans people, queers. More Lana than Lana. This disconnect between queer cinema and crime film might be surprising, given that, until fifty years ago, to be gay was more or less synonymous with doing crime. The famed origin story for the US gay rights movements is a police raid on a West Village dive bar in the summer of 1969. Two years prior, sexual activity between men was finally decriminalized in the UK. Sex between women wasn’t regulated with the same degree of verve, but it was the frequent subject of obscenity trials—in 1918, for instance, Maud Allan was charged with inciting a “Cult of the Clitoris” by dancing as Salome before largely female audiences in London’s music halls. Perhaps prohibitions against homosexuality meant that queer crime couldn’t be the subject of mainstream film, but a deeper dive into film history shows that this wasn’t a hard and fast rule. Case in point: Basil Deardon’s 1961 noir Victim. The oversaturated, bubblegum tones of Doug Emmet’s cinematography reflect the plastic superficiality of this sleek, anonymous, urbane world.” Of course, I am a huge fan of Lana Del Rey and I imagine a life of fame must be pretty intense—I’ve never met her but Lana could also be more Lana than Lana. Lana, if you’re reading this, let me know. Are you also more Lana than Lana? We love you. You mean so much to sex workers, to queers, to those of us on the margins. You know your music gets us through it. However, I can say that, after having read it, Be Gay, Do Comics definitely deserved their award! This was a fun anthology that brought together a bunch of amazing artists and writers to create an impactful statement about what it means to exist as a queer person within the world. There was a little something for everyone here—the comics covered a myriad of topics and featured creators that had stories to tell about their own cultures and experiences, as well as some queer history, and discussions about "current" events (some of the events are less than current now, but were very current when the comics were made).

Be Gay Do Crime: Queer Crime Films - BFI Player

It took me a while to read since some of the comics were very in-depth, and I felt like I needed time to digest them while I was reading, so I'd read a few and then put it down for a day or two. It was definitely cool to see so many different perspectives on what it's like to be a queer person, and also to have them united in the general message that, no matter the struggles and hardships that might be faced along the way, it's actually still pretty great! Some of the comics were short and funny, and I think the mix of more serious pieces with the shorter, lighter ones also helped make the whole thing more readable. Honestly, this was 50% a salt read, and 50% it looked pretty cool, and so I actually wanted to read it. They beat out Dates! (and a few others) for the Ignatz Award, and so I was mildly salty about it since I was a Dates! contributor 😒If the characters of I Care A Lot are absolutely morally bankrupt, they are nevertheless immensely watchable. Take Pike’s Marla Grayson, who is not a good person but is extremely good at what she does. Her “business” involves working with similarly morally dubious doctors and care facility managers to have elderly people declared mentally or physically unfit to live indepently, and placed into residential care facilities. After being appointed as their “legal guardian” by a court judge, Marla acquires the authority to assume their property, which she promptly sells off for her own profit. Marla’s business — a venture shared with her (both professional and romantic) partner, Fran — is going swimmingly, until their latest target is revealed to be the mother of a vengeful Russian mafia mobster. So far, so intriguing.

Be Gay Do Crime: A Season of Queer Crime Films | BFI Southbank

A survey of more than 12,000 LGBTQ teens around the country released in 2018 by the Human Rights Campaign found that 67% report they’ve heard family members make negative comments about LGBTQ people. If anything, I do think the Gurlesque questions romance, or has a sense of anger toward the problem of romance, toward the male object of desire. I think of Ariana Reines’s coeur de lion.Adding this movie (because of the cigarette scene between Lupin and Jigen) but it pretty much applies to the entire franchise. I read the entire main cast as not heteronormative but by far Jigen Daisuke is the most queer-coded of the bunch. His frequently expressed disinterest in women and the fact that he canonically enjoys reading magazines filled with naked buff men would be the highlights I guess. Rachel: So I recently was able to interview Arielle Greenberg for the Poetry Foundation, who edited the Gurlesque anthology and coined the term. I asked her how the Gurlesque informed her own work, how she’s seen it seep into her own poems and she said it hasn’t.