{"id":279009,"date":"2020-12-18T02:46:09","date_gmt":"2020-12-18T07:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=279009"},"modified":"2020-12-18T02:46:09","modified_gmt":"2020-12-18T07:46:09","slug":"happiest-season-is-the-first-lgbtq-christmas-movie-from-a-major-hollywood-studio-and-its-receiving-criticism-is-it-fair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2020\/12\/18\/happiest-season-is-the-first-lgbtq-christmas-movie-from-a-major-hollywood-studio-and-its-receiving-criticism-is-it-fair\/","title":{"rendered":"Happiest Season is the first LGBTQ+ Christmas movie from a major Hollywood studio and it’s receiving criticism \u2013 is it fair?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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FILE: Don’t miss an Instagram Live Q&A with #HappiestSeason director Clea DuVall (@officialclead) and co-writer\/star Mary Holland (@maryhollandaise) TOMORROW at noon PT. 🎄🌈 (Photo<\/a>: happiestseason\/Instagram<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When the collective back catalogue of a film\u2019s cast and crew includes stars like Kristen Stewart, Schitt\u2019s Creek\u2019s Dan Levy and GLOW\u2019s Alison Brie, you know there\u2019ll be a ready-made audience waiting in anticipation, whatever the theme.<\/p>\n

Make it a \u201cheart-warming Christmas story<\/a>\u201d and you get Hulu\u2019s \u201cbest viewership for any original film<\/a>\u201d attracting \u201cmore new subscribers than any other previous feature title\u201d. But Clea DuVall\u2019s Happiest Season, is a little different in that it\u2019s the very first LGBTQ+ holiday movie from a major Hollywood studio.<\/p>\n

In spite of 2020\u2019s COVID-shaped dent in cinema releases \u2013 Happiest Season was diverted online because of the pandemic \u2013 the year caps an unprecedented decade for LGBTQ+ representation on screen. From the Oscar-winning Moonlight to the critically acclaimed coming of age comedy Booksmart, film is certainly turning a corner.<\/p>\n

Online and off, \u2018tis the season for new perspectives on Christmas, too. Netflix is following up 2019\u2019s Let It Snow with A New York Christmas Wedding. The website Etsy<\/a> centres a gay couple in its 2020 Christmas advert. And Hallmark and Lifetime both release their first gay Christmas films this year.<\/p>\n

Coming out at Christmas<\/h2>\n

Unsurprisingly, Happiest Season\u2019s central seasonal premise isn\u2019t entirely new. A woman invites her partner home to her tight-knit family. There are some awkward conversations about separate bedrooms, and later the revelation of a secret.<\/p>\n

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\nFilm has a lot to learn from TV when it comes to LGBT representation<\/a>
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In spite of its potential for gorgeous camp, the holiday movie has been foremost among genres for confining LGBTQ+ representation to the gay best friend or sibling. Love Actually cut its would-be lesbian storyline and emerged a largely white and straight-washed Christmas tale that feminists have loved to hate ever since.<\/p>\n

Happiest Season acknowledges the genre\u2019s undeniable heteronormativity by making a spectacle of it. But there\u2019s a paradox at the heart of DuVall\u2019s bid to make a romcom premised on the painful process of coming out. A literal \u201ctrapped in the closet\u201d gag will certainly get knowing laughs, but isn\u2019t it a little close to the bone?<\/p>\n

Jamie Babbit\u2019s But I\u2019m a Cheerleader \u2013 starring DuVall herself \u2013 managed to make a traumatic gay conversion therapy storyline both funny and heartwarming. But a very particular set of expectations seems to be levelled at the holiday movie, which is not just about its seasonal setting (famously, Die Hard is counted out) but its \u201cspirit\u201d.<\/p>\n

New Queer Cinema<\/h2>\n

Queer film and media makers who have ventured into this territory have often chosen to reveal its contradictions and exclusions. In Desiree Akhavan\u2019s Appropriate Behaviour, Persian New Year is the setting for Akhavan\u2019s protagonist Shirin to come out to her mother \u2013 or rather to try and fail.<\/p>\n

Lena Waithe\u2019s Emmy-nominated \u201cThanksgiving\u201d episode on Master of None uses the cyclical nature of holiday celebrations to acknowledge that coming out is something that happens over and over again. And Pose\u2019s Christmas episode embraces the long-held queer notion \u2013 for many, by necessity \u2013 that the most important family is your chosen one. Evidently, none of these examples fit the bill for those on the hunt for an LGBTQ+ holiday movie.<\/p>\n

How do you make a heart-warmer that takes its queer characters seriously and acknowledges that Christmas isn\u2019t necessarily joyful for everyone? DuVall calls<\/a> Happiest Season a \u201cuniversal story from a new perspective\u201d. But such claims have always created conflict for queer directors wanting to appeal both to a subculture and to the mainstream.<\/p>\n

The New Queer Cinema movement<\/a>in the 1990s addressed this conflict head on, exploring the need to represent the complexity of sexuality rather than tying it up in happy endings.<\/p>\n

When I teach this particular episode of queer cinema history, epitomised by trouble makers who refused to sign up to acceptable narratives of LGBTQ+ love and romance, students often ask what\u2019s wrong with so-called positive representations that celebrate LGBTQ+ identity. After all, we can\u2019t take happy endings for LGBTQ+ characters for granted. Not so long ago, they were actually banned.<\/p>\n

And yet, \u201cLGBTQ+ representation\u201d still often stands in for \u201cwhite and middle-class lesbian and gay representation\u201d, even under a new banner of inclusivity. Happiest Season is a landmark film for LGBTQ+ representation, yes, but it leaves other norms untouched. Sexuality intersects with gender, race and class \u2013 on and off screen. The whiteness and wealth of the protagonists might not be commented on within the film itself, but that doesn\u2019t mean they don\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n

So is the problem that the film recalls an all-too-familiar trauma, or that it makes it all OK in the end? That it is willing to acknowledge the difficulties of queer life, or that it smooths them over? That it tells one version of an LGBTQ+ Christmas story, or that it presents that story as \u201cuniversal\u201d? Perhaps the real problem is that a burden of representation means a single film must claim to be \u201cdoing it all\u201d.<\/p>\n

But on social media, where a film\u2019s life is extended well beyond its own running time, queer commentary is lifting the burden. Re-imagining characters\u2019 romantic destinies, finding unlikely pairings and promoting peripheral characters to stardom has long been part of the pleasure of fan culture.<\/p>\n

Twitter is alive with hot takes. Videos tagged \u201c#HappiestSeason\u201d on TikTok have been viewed 40 million times and counting. You can always count on marginalised audiences to find strategies to confront the standards and shortfalls of dominant culture.\"The<\/p>\n

Clara Bradbury-Rance<\/a>, Lecturer in Liberal Arts, King’s College London<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the collective back catalogue of a film\u2019s cast and crew includes stars like Kristen Stewart, Schitt\u2019s Creek\u2019s Dan Levy …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":279010,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-279009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","category-hollywood","mauthors-clara-bradbury-rance-kings-college-london","mauthors-the-conversation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279009"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":279011,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279009\/revisions\/279011"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}