Movies for Queers Who Like Revolution

Image by Noom Peerapong.

If it’s June, then it must be Pride and straight people everywhere are celebrating how far you’ve come. You know, out of the closets and onto MTV. But what if you don’t particularly feel like celebrating? What if you’re actually pretty goddamn pissed off right now, what with the bipartisan police state feasting on shattered trans bodies like undead fiends just behind the rainbow curtain and known sexual predators demonizing our kids as perverts for pissing in the wrong bathrooms…

What if all this primary season, tightrope chicanery actually has you in the mood to hurt people, straight people, including the ones who pose as allies and then vote blue no matter who? Not that you would ever act on such unspeakable compulsions, but sometimes it feels more than a little cringe marching around in rainbow merch surrounded by pigs and newly progressive church ladies dolling out mom hugs. Sometimes inclusion feels like a party favor at a Jonestown jamboree.

So, what then do we do with these angry faggot feelings that won’t get us chucked in a prison cell with a bunch of equally pissed-off breeders of the wrong gender? Maybe we escape the heat and go see a movie, a Queer movie, a really Queer movie, like the kind of Queer movie where Queers actually get to hurt people, straight people. Naturally, you might have a hard time finding anything that bad for you in the Marvel clogged megaplexes of suburban Ozymandias. But if you’ve got yourself a couch in the basement and an autistic girlfriend who pirates movies on the dark web, maybe you can join me in checking out some of these decidedly politically incorrect movies for Queers who like revolution.

Monster (2003) by Patty Jenkins

Unfortunately, best known as the movie Charlize Theron was brave enough to make herself look like an actual fucking woman for; Monster is not simply a serial killer flick, it is a daringly sympathetic look at how a Queer sex worker like Aileen Wuornos could be driven to murder seven of her own johns in just under two years. The woman wasn’t a monster. She was a victim who never learned how to become a survivor and she isn’t alone. It took a lifetime defined by sexual violence and the brief flickering opportunity to save another abused Queer woman from the same fate to drive Aileen to kill and as horrifying as it might sound, she did it for love and paid a price that most of her tormentors never........

© CounterPunch