Hey there,
Welcome back to the newsletter from STUDIO WORROM, serving you monthly hits of my POV on culture so you can form yours.
You might notice my logo and name looks a little different. Among other things during my spring glow up, I got involved in a very sexy trademark dispute that has resulted in the iconic rebranding you see before you. Allow me to introduce you to my new and improved strategy consultancy: STUDIO WORROM. A mirror for the world, a mirror for my last name. She’s stunning, she’s legal, and she’s ready to deliver all the creative strategy work you know and love with a slightly different name at the top of the invoice. Now that we’re in the gorgeous gorgeous world of registered IP, allow me to spoon feed you this next take on culture Piping Fucking Hot®.
Let’s do a full 180 to an equally sexy topic: queer yearning.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Kissing Jessica Stein. Lost & Delirious. Blue is the Warmest Color.
Lesbian movies just can’t get enough of queer yearning.
Jill Gutowitz has written a hilarious and fantastic book with razor sharp dissection of queer female media called Girls Can Kiss Now that you should definitely read if you haven’t already. In it, she’s got a chapter called, “Supercut of Lesbian Yearning” in which she writes three iconic passages:
“Unlike straight movies, lesbian movies are often about yearning that ends in disaster, rather than triumph.”
“The only thing that makes a lesbian movie a lesbian movie is this: the two women cannot be together but goddamnit they will glance.”
“For so long, rom-coms, pop culture, and pre-penicillin lesbian movies have told gay people to yearn, but not act. That our actions might have real, potentially grave consequences. So we don’t. We yearn.”
And that was written BEFORE the Killing Eve finale. Queer yearning has been a trope in queer media since the dawn of time (RuPaul was there and she told me). A trope like many others, including Bury Your Gays, which has been written about to death by people smarter than me.
Recently, I read an article tipped to me by my very smart friend SJ whose substack I would highly recommend, called “GAY YEARNING DRIVES FANDOMS — HERE’S WHY IT DESERVES MORE ATTENTION”.
This well intentioned article very intelligently unpacks all the ways queer media misses the mark for gay people. The ways we for years have had to read into queer subtext of stories that don’t even have gay plot lines to find even a hint of representation because there’s so little media for us. The way we write our own endings in fan fiction about the few stories that do include us because the straight people who create the media about us keep killing us off or making us GLANCE at each other from across the room for all eternity instead of just letting us be together for once.
The article’s revolutionary conclusion to the dearth of good queer representation in the media is this:
The existence of this space [of unfulfilled queer yearning] allows fans — and especially queer fans — to redefine what is worthy of attention and care, and what is good enough to bring to existence and share with others.
And there is no need to wait, beg, or seek permission to bring these stories to life. “Your peers, not multinational media conglomerates, are making the art your hearts are so hungry for. You just have to know where to find it — or create it yourself.”
So basically what this article says is, the queer yearning we see in existing queer media is actually a good thing because it’s either so vague or so dissatisfactory that it leaves space for FAN FICTION that you should go find or write yourself.
I’m sorry, but no. I was once dating a girl in secret (another gay trope). We were truly awful at communication and one day she texted me, “I wished we lived in a time where people only wrote letters.”
I felt the way reading that text as I did reading this article, which is girl, no! That is the last thing we need.
We don’t need more queer coded media and fan fiction. We need better stories. More nuanced storytelling. More funding for queer media. Better representation. All over the world.
Here’s the thing - queer yearning is born from deep-seated societal homophobia that has made it historically dangerous or isolating for gay people to act on their feelings. Queer yearning is a fundamental part of the gay experience because we still live in a homophobic society. But it’s not a part of the queer experience we romanticize or think about fondly. To be honest, I hope for a world where baby queers read about our media in 2050 in their textbooks on mars and find queer yearning deeply unrelatable.
Fan fiction is fine, but I’d much rather have the real deal. It shouldn’t be on us to write or find the stories we want to see in fan fiction. It’s on Hollywood and the media to create better representation so we don’t have to. So c’mon Disney, Netflix, and HBO. Let’s turn the Queer Yearning trope into a Queer Joy trope or at the very least let us live until the end of the movie. Your audience is here for it.
As always, feel free to hit me up if you agree or mildly disagree :)
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Here are three things I liked on the internet this month:
-This thoughtful editorial piece on which women we choose to believe, unpacking the internet’s disturbing response to the Amber Heard and Johnny Depp trial and why it matters.
-You can find me dancing by myself on Charli XCX’s Roblox server. The Samsung branding is way too heavy handed, but I’m a simp for Charli so wherever she goes, my avatar will follow in a badly rendered Marine Serre bodysuit.
-This AI can generate Bored Apes that are unique - and free. LOL.
That’s all for now.
See you next month!
Steph