Tangerine (2015)

As a huge fan of Sean Baker’s Tangerine, The Florida Project, and Red Rocket, I’ve wanted to watch Anora since before it even was released. But life got in the way, my watchlist grew, and honestly, the fact that it was marketed as a romantic comedy put me off. Even with all the critical praise and the five Academy Awards it won last year, I just kept postponing it indefinitely.

When Netflix added it last week, I finally took the plunge and watched it. Now I realize that I’ve been letting my genre bias keep me away from what is easily one of the best films of the last ten years. And while I’m aware I might look down on romantic comedies because they're usually riddled with clichés, I’ve never held any prejudice against sex workers, who are always at the heart of Sean Baker’s stories. It's actually the main reason I love his work so much; he treats the subject with real compassion and genuine respect.

Although Christmas is a time of year for love and cheer for all, holiday cinema has not always represented diverse communities. Being a holiday with Christian origins, much of its media consists of straight white families or straight white romances. Luckily, modern years have been bringing with them plenty of POC and LGBTQ+ representation that the holidays so desperately need. Here are just a few to get you started!

Notice: If watching with children, it would be good to do some more research on these films, depending on the age of your child. Number 2, Jingle Jangle, is technically the only one marketed towards children, and several others may not be child-friendly at all.

After being diagnosed with a terminal illness, an introverted woman breaks out of her shell and flies off to Europe in order to complete her bucket list with her remaining time.

This quote comes on screen at the end of When Men Were Men and it very much encapsulates everything that the film and its creators stand for.

The queer media space is still so narrow and so underpopulated with nuanced and specific narratives about what the exploration of one's identity can be like. It was therefore such a privilege to be able to chat with a pair of non-binary artists who are carving a path for the rest of us.

MG: So, Incluvie is all about diversity and inclusion and looking at things like identity and that journey. And I feel like that is so on point with what When Men Were Men is about. So I just thought this was the perfect marrying of the two.

While film and TV still have a long way to go when it comes to LGBT representation, there are so many more opportunities for LGBT people to see themselves onscreen than there were even a few years ago. Best of all, some of the best LGBT films and shows are available online for free or on popular streaming services that you might already be subscribed to. Here are some of my top picks for films and TV shows with positive LGBT representation, sorted by where you can find them. (Note: This list is accurate as of June 2021, but streaming libraries change frequently.)

Tubi offers a library of over 20,000 movies and shows for the unbeatable price of zero dollars, as long as you're willing to put up with a few ads.

Must-Watch LGBT Movies Online Recommendations

This Pride month, I was thinking about what kinds of LGBTQIA+ characters films portray. I found a list on Wikipedia that identified LGBT characters in film, so I narrowed that list to only films in the United States, and limited the years to 1990 to 2020. After that, I was left with 331 characters (some within the same film). This list also identified characters as Black, Latinx, Asian/Pacific Islander or White — there were no other races/ethnicities acknowledged.

I never fully trust Wikipedia, so let’s consider the 331 a sample, as I am sure there are film characters missing. Of the 331 total characters in our sample, 85% are White, 8% are Black, 5% are Latinx, and a whopping 2% are Asian/Pacific Islander. See the chart above for a visual representation of this information, with the glaring majority of White characters.

Not dissimilar to the rest of Hollywood films, White people dominate the market. For a breakdown of this disparity, see my previous article on the overall representation of race and gender in film. LGBT characters are not spared from underrepresentation in film. Actually, it’s even worse.

Let me put these 331 characters into context. Again, since there are probably many which were overlooked on the list, so let’s round it up to 400. According to Box Office Mojo, 17,892 films were made from 1990 to 2020. For the sake of argument (statisticians, please look away), let’s pretend it is 400 individual films and not characters. Our 400 films out of the 17,892 total mean only 2% of films made over 30 years have LGBT characters. One more time — two percent of films had characters who identified as LGBT. And, as we just learned, most of those characters were White.

So of these characters, I wanted to see what kind of characters made up the 15% BIPOC. I narrowed my analysis to the last 10 years (2010–2020) and marked each as a leading or supporting character. The chart below shows the results for the Black, Latinx and Asian/Pacific Islander LGBT characters.

Minor Spoilers Ahead

They say home is where the heart is, and Nomadland is all heart…if you project onto it, at least. Following a woman living in her van going from one temporary, minimum-wage job to the next, the film gives some insight into a world often hidden from the on-screen due to its often realistic and unromantic nature. When we watch movies, especially mainstream Hollywood ones, there is always a large amount of excess in both story and lifestyles. It's more “fun” to focus on the lives of rich and middle-class people where wealth possibilities are endless and the story doesn’t have to acknowledge class inequalities (which is one of the most glaring issues of American society). However, Nomadland doesn't shy away from this and gives light to a harder lifestyle that’s outside what is considered ideal: unstructured, singular, with few possessions, no white-collar career, and nomadic. Departing from what Americans have been conditioned to believe is the “right” way of life (marriage, 2.5 kids, a life-long 9 to 5, and faith in “the system”), Nomadland comes out at a great time to cover its themes of political inequality, the need for travel and freedom, and the grand uncertainty of life. Audiences get to experience pain and nostalgia without the dramatics of bourgeois life. Instead, they are given a look (not immersed though) into the simultaneous oppression and freedom in living outside the bounds of society. There is, though, an issue of representation that lingers throughout if this really is authenticity or playing poor for a faux self-awakening from the audience. The portrayal of job insecurity and poverty is framed more as an alternative lifestyle than an act of circumstance despite the recession being the main factor in the character’s life-altering change.

The incomparable Frances McDormand tells Fern’s story through a collection of images where we get to closely study her countenance and the emotions that bubble at its surface. Her hard face and reflective smiles can bring tears to your eyes since it allows for personal introspection to put on the film instead of hard-lined narrative meaning to be outwardly thrust upon viewers. She asks for patience and eventually does get it out of you when one finally gives themselves over to just experiencing rather than searching for a narrative (which admittedly is how our minds are conditioned to view films). Her chemistry with her love interest Dave is just as endearing, where they don’t get caught up in over romantic plans of star-crossed lovers. It addresses an often ignored reality among older peoples of wanting company with one another rather than needing some whirlwind romance. On the other hand, seldom do we even see older people (particularly older women) being madly in love and passionately excited for a romantic relationship. I suppose she learns to love herself and the freedom of not being tied down to anything — though she is still stuck to doing minimum wage jobs that often abuse their workers and do not provide a suitable amount to live off of.