Glass 

Netflix recently added Pose by Ryan Murphy to their streaming and I watched the whole first season for the first time last week. While we can all recognize that Ryan Murphy has made a lot of not-so-great work, he certainly got it right with Pose. Netflix recently made a $300 million deal with Murphy to house his work and after Glee, The Prom, and some questionable themes in Scream Queens and The Politician, Pose has solidified Ryan Murphy’s place as King of Queer Representation in Television in my head. Since 2009 with the premiere of Glee, Murphy has been committed diligently to representing queer people in his work. Many of these shows/ movies have shaped the way a mainstream culture views queer people and for the first time, Pose represents the BIPOC Transgender community and Ball culture through the late 80s and the AIDS epidemic in NYC. Documentaries such as Paris is Burning had previously shared insight into this community and Pose builds on this to give us complex and beautiful queer characters in the form of a heartfelt TV show.

While the AIDS epidemic is central to this show, the characters live their lives in an effort to leave their mark before they are taken by the deadly virus that targeted the queer community. This show will bring you through the full range of emotions of this period from severe grief and loss to absolute queer joy and the love of found families. There is no lack of celebration through this show regardless of the tragedies that occurred in the devastation of AIDS. Pose shines a light on one of the darkest times for queer people and outlines how community and love can be stronger than hate.

The absence of live theatre this year has left a gaping, red-curtain-sized hole in my heart. Now that I’m desperately missing one of my favorite things, I rely on film adaptations of musicals to supplement those long-missing endorphins and make that magic more accessible.

New to Netflix, The Prom seemed like it could be the answer to my prayers. The glitz, glam, and star-power definitely acted as a draw, but my hopefulness almost immediately soured upon starting the film. With the perfect formula to succeed, how did this film not only fall flat but become hard to sit through? Too many ill-fitted choices add up to an off-putting and distracting experience.

In this film, four has-beens of the Broadway community (played by Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, James Corden, and Andrew Rannells) attempt to boost their image by becoming the faces of a small-scale social justice movement. They come across the story of Emma (Jo Ellen Pellman), a teen in Indiana whose wish to take her girlfriend to Prom develops into a major source of contention in her community, canceling the event altogether.

Acknowledging that this film draws deeply from the source material, I can’t help but notice that, in true Ryan Murphy fashion, this narrative is packed with dramatic tricks that don’t know when to quit, and barely enough laugh-out-loud one-liners for me to count on one hand. As the group of thespians tries to persuade the town to be more inclusive, what could have been a heartwarming tale descents into cliches and problematic undoings. Most concerning of all, Emma is cast aside and wholly invalidated when she truly deserves to be the heroine of this story.