Bonus Video! Paris is Burning & My So-Called Life
Added 2024-09-01 16:00:09 +0000 UTCHello there!
For this week's bonus video, we're taking a look at the origins of Rickie Vasquez on My So-Called Life -- and how the show took inspiration from the documentary Paris is Burning, as well as from Prince and Jimi Hendrix, to create him. Plus: Some really fine acting by Claire Danes, and a strange Grungus-related mystery.
You can get a copy of Freak, Geeks, and Dawson's Creek, which I reference in this video, here: https://amzn.to/3yZCXjk
Comments
Truly, I am going to carry the concept of Grungus with me till I pass
Brit
2024-09-02 17:34:47 +0000 UTCI never saw Wilson Cruz in "My So-Called Life". It was my sister's favorite show, so naturally, I had to hate it on principle. Wilson Cruz however, did play a formative character for me a few years later. As a young teen, my favorite show was secretly Ally McBeal. This was a secret because at the time, I was the only one who knew I was Queer, and I was pretty sure that the fact that this was my favorite show would outed me on the spot. Anyway, in the first season, Ally is defending a young trans sex-worker named Stephanie who was played by Wilson. It was the first time I had ever heard the term "gender dysphoria" uttered on T.V., but more importantly, the first time that I had seen a Queer character being accepted and treated respectfully by the whole of a show's main cast. I'm sure if I watched it now, there was things said in that episode that would be terribly anachronistic, in fact, I think the whole defense strategy being pushed on Ally and Stephanie was to plead insanity based on transgenderism being a "fetish". Also, the fact that Stephanie dies horribly at the end of the episode is it's own commentary on the disposibleness of Queer characters in the 90s (which arguably continues to this day). Still, what i take most from that episode was the hope, strength and light that Wilson brought to that small role, and that fact that this Queer character was loved by Ally and respected by her friends for who she was. It stuck with me so much that whenever I think back to the years I watched this show (and of 90s T.V. in general), this episode is still the first thing that comes to mind.
Trevor MacIsaac
2024-09-01 17:37:17 +0000 UTC
