*whimper*

[kindkit]

I just watched the first part of Man in an Orange Shirt, one of the shows the BBC produced for its Gay Britannia celebration, and it was wrenching. It's about two men who fall in love just after the Second World War, but one of them is engaged to be married, and everything plays out just as you'd expect. *sigh* I guess it's important for people to know queer history, and to understand that homophobia and criminalization wrecked lives, but . . . I would also like to see representation of the unwrecked lives, of the ways queer men found to resist and even to be happy.

I think the second part is going to be happier, but that's set in the present, and as such it doesn't speak to me as much.

Should've been more cautious, because I'm not really in a good emotional state for stories of heartbreak.

tl;dr still waiting for the Second World War era love story between two men that has a happy ending.

Comments

[kindkit]

*nods* I think a lot of those queer tragedy stories are ultimately meant for straight viewers/readers, not queer ones. And that's not a bad thing necessarily, because unfortunately we still live in a world where some people think closeting is just "discretion" or "not flaunting it," instead of a soul-destroying system of oppression. But there ought to be a lot more stories for queer people, where queer characters live their lives (whether space pirate or retail drone) and maybe they're happy and maybe they're not, but they're not unhappy or made to be unhappy because they're queer.

It occurs to me now that a bunch of BBC programs whose specific remit was to mark the 50th anniversary of decriminalization may not have been the best place to look for those stories.

[magnetic_pole]

But there ought to be a lot more stories for queer people, where queer characters live their lives (whether space pirate or retail drone) and maybe they're happy and maybe they're not, but they're not unhappy or made to be unhappy because they're queer.

Yes yes yes yes yes! M.