While we’ve come a good distance with on-screen illustration, a lot of mainstream tv and movie fails to supply relatable, genuine illustration for all. That’s the great thing about podcasts: up-to-date content material in an accessible format that usually permits completely different demographics to have a voice on the desk — or higher but, construct their very own platform. This week’s podcast picks amplify queer, Black, and Asian American creators who’re taking management of their very own narratives. They provide us a recent lens by which we will re-watch outdated favorites or find out about media we’ve but to interact with. These podcasts will make you are feeling such as you’re sitting in a lounge with buddies, speaking about what you recognize finest: your lived experiences.
Here are Women and Hollywood’s newest podcast choices.
“Queer Girl Film Club” – Hosted by Holly, Alice, and Georgia
“Queer Girl Film Club”
Launched in 2021, “Queer Girl Film Club” is is a podcast by which “three queer women watch the classic (and non-classics) of queer girl cinema and discuss,” per its description. Covering motion pictures akin to Jamie Babbit’s 1999 teen basic “But I’m a Cheerleader” to latest releases like Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s “Do Revenge” starring Camila Mendes and Maya Hawke, “Queer Girl Film Club” is an hour-long dialog between buddies that provides recent views on movies.
In Season 2, Episode 12, “Queer BAIT Film Club – Bend it Like Beckham (2002),” hosts Holly, Alice, and Georgi sort out the beloved — though not explicitly — queer movie from Gurinder Chadha. “There are a lot of valuable conversations about films that are not queer but are queer,” Alice observes. In 2002, when the movie was produced, there was a extreme lack of enough queer illustration on display screen, which the movie business suffers from even at the moment. While discussing whether or not or not “Bend it Like Beckham” ought to have been extra forthright with its characters’ sexualities, the hosts pause to emphasise that the movie was launched whereas England was nonetheless “in the age of Section 28.” This piece of laws, abolished in November 2003, prohibited the “promotion of homosexuality by local authorities” and meant that any constructive depiction of the 2SLGBTQIA+ neighborhood was unlawful. It would have been far much less possible to have the movie made, a lot much less promote as efficiently as it did, if the 2 leads overtly recognized as queer.
Movie theaters in Oklahoma lately posted warnings a couple of same-sex kiss in Pixar’s “Lightyear,” and even introduced they’d fast-forward previous the scene. Would “Bend It Like Beckham” have stood an opportunity of being launched in 2002 with overtly queer protagonists?
“Queer Girl Film Club” notes that plenty of queer viewers have walked away from the film with the message that “it is okay to be gay even if these two aren’t.” Holly even insists that “the notion that we’re looking at two heterosexual characters is pushing at the limits of credibility.” As the hosts observe, “the fact that we’re still talking about ‘Bend it Like Beckham’ 20 years later is a really good sign that it managed to push a conversation about queerness and how that’s represented in British culture.” Holly acknowledges how the movie awoke queer identities in so many viewers, and she or he doesn’t “think that would have happened if there wasn’t a really really thick layer of queerness running all the way through it.”
As talked about on “Queer Girl Film Club,” the film isn’t merely about queerness and even friendship. It helped popularize ladies’s soccer at a time when little consideration was given to ladies in sports activities, and it additionally shone a lightweight on the lived expertise of British Asians by the societal pressures, microaggressions, and familial expectations Jess, performed by Parminder Nagra, needed to endure. The hosts conclude that it was outstanding that “Bend It Like Beckham” was capable of symbolize, consciously and unconsciously, the queer and racialized expertise with such success.
Listen to “Queer Girl Film Club” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
“Black Girl Film Club ” – Hosted by Britney and Ashley
“Black Girl Film Club”
“Black Girl Film Club” affords an area for Black ladies to look at and focus on motion pictures. With multi-hour episodes launched twice a month, hosts Britney and Ashley “analyze movies and the film industry from their unique, and often underrepresented, point of view,” as described on its web site.
From Jordan Peele’s 2022 sci-fi horror “Nope” to Rob Reiner’s 1989 rom-com basic “When Harry Met Sally,” the podcasters have just about lined it all. Most of their month-to-month installments see the hosts chatting about two motion pictures sharing the identical theme. In Episode 80: “Passing (2021),” “Black Girl Film Club” mentioned the idea of passing in Rebecca Hall’s 2021 adaptation of Nella Larsen’s novel “Passing” and Douglas Sirk’s “The Imitation of Life,” taking a deep dive into passing and “what that does to the human psyche,” whether or not it is a Black particular person experiencing the privileges of a white particular person resulting from their mild complexion, or a white particular person masquerading as a Black particular person to domesticate a sure (appropriative) picture on-line.
Before digging into the movies themselves, Britney and Ashley discover the idea of colorism as a result of, as they observe within the episode, folks normally “never get to the root” of why privileges are afforded to individuals who look a sure method. They break down Eurocentric requirements of magnificence and the way sure options would make somebody appear extra fascinating in Western society. The hosts interrogate why “those features considered beautiful?” within the first place — and it’s normally as a result of they’re rooted in white supremacist ideology, and if a facial characteristic is akin to or has proximity to whiteness, it is preferential.
This results in their dialogue of Hall’s “Passing” and why a Black particular person, particularly a Black girl, may need chosen to racially move throughout the historic context of the Twenties. Britney and Ashley distill the wealthy, complicated adaptation right down to this: It’s “all about power and agency.” The act of passing, they argue, is about folks attempting to safe energy and company, and “how they’re finding it is through white supremacy notion of ideals.” The hosts acknowledge how these struggles from the Twenties ripple into the current day, typically on this planet of social media — whether or not it is manufacturers catering to a white-established notion of magnificence, or white ladies appropriating Black tradition and trend. Passing, colorism, and all their implications are nonetheless prevalent at the moment, and because the hosts emphasize, attending to the foundation points involving picture and energy stay critically essential.
Listen to “Black Girl Film Club” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
“Self-Evident: Asia America’s Stories” – Hosted by Cathy
“Self Evident: Asia America’s Stories”
Focused on constructing “serious infrastructure for Asian Americans to become the authors of their own stories,” “Self-Evident: Asia America’s Stories” passes the microphone to an inclusive vary of producers and visitor hosts whereas additionally placing “tangible resources into the hands of under-served producers, reporters, filmmakers, and listeners from every corner of Asian America.”
Podcast host Cathy, alongside producers James and Julia, dive into varied matters akin to reconciling with the historical past and tradition behind Spam within the 30-minute episode “Specially Processed,” and the way music and artwork can facilitate private restoration amidst Anti-Asian violence in “Say Goodbye to Yesterday.”
In a particular bonus characteristic early within the podcast’s run in 2020, senior producer Julia takes the reins in a dialog about Disney’s animated “Mulan,” describing the film as a “divisive and momentous time in Asian American history.”
The “Self Evident” hosts ruminate on Mulan’s romance with Li Shang and a number of views emerge: Julia, who identifies as Chinese American, notes that she was upset there was a romance plot in any respect, as a result of her beloved childhood folktale had none — the unique legend of Hua Mulan featured a intelligent heroine who is by no means uncovered for posing as a male soldier. Cathy additionally admitted her misgivings, observing that Disney’s second iteration of princesses throughout the Nineties appeared to “cherry pick a fable or a folklore from each culture” across the globe.
While James notes that, at instances, the film felt like “a white gaze on what Asian American culture must be like” and demonstrates how white audiences can fail to differentiate stereotypes from the fact of the racialized expertise. Cathy nonetheless appreciates Disney’s efforts to symbolize Chinese tradition and philosophies. Julia additionally observes that many Asian Americans like herself are drawn to “Mulan” as a result of mirrors the expertise of second- or third-generation Chinese Americans who’re aware of East Asian ideas, like ancestor tradition, however are nonetheless coming from their “own weird, filtered American version of things.”
Their dialog stretches past the subject of cultural illustration. The “Self Evident” hosts additionally focus on the movie’s resonance with the queer neighborhood. Aside from the extra overt gender-bending moments like Mulan chopping her hair and going to battle disguised as a person, there are numerous subtleties that audiences have picked up on. Julia addresses the 2020 live-action reboot and the followers’ response when it was introduced that Li Shang wasn’t going to be within the movie in any respect: “Some people were mourning the loss of what they see as a bisexual hero in the Disney universe. He has a connection with Mulan before he ever knows that she’s a woman and that could be interpreted that Li Shang is bisexual.” She acknowledges that even when that studying was not intentional on Disney’s half, numerous queer people maintain this character and that storyline near their hearts.
Listen to “Self Evident: Asia America’s Stories” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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