Pose
Pose is a Netflix drama series directed by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Steven Canals. The series is set in 1987-1988 as a dance musical exploring the LGBTQ youths’ lives and the New York ball culture. The film documents the hardships that the LGBTQ members, especially the African Americans and the Latino Americans, had to go through because of who they are. It is a rollercoaster drama of young people trying to fit in in a world that regards them as freaks. It emphasizes their freedom and empowerment that the cast receives after being in an environment where they can be who they really are and creating a culture that gathers all who are not welcome in the ordinary world.
The film starts with several queens showing off their most dazzling outfits at the ball. The film significantly revolves most of its part around the lives of Elektra, Blanca, Angel, Stan, and Damon. The group is a bunch of disenfranchised LBTQ people of color trying to create the most realness and meaning in their lives and the ball is where their voguing gives them that triumph. Elektra of the house of abundance is never scared to steal from the museum and walk into the ball to win and leave in handcuffs like a queen. She would do anything to win. Blanca is another character who, after diagnosing HIV positive, wants to leave a legacy for herself and help other girls who have been kicked to the streets like her. She leaves the house of abundance and forms the house of Evangelista to fulfill her dreams. In the process, she educates Damon in the dance world of ball. On the other hand, Angel is a transwoman who fights to have her place as an accepted woman. She meets Stan with whom she hopes that he will keep her like any other normal woman. After it all, she realizes that she is her own woman and her own strength and sets to help her own family and does things on her own terms for the first time (“pose”). It is also a win for Blanca as she wins the year award’s mother, and Evangelista’s house wins all the awards. The film overly does an excellent job of bringing awareness of the difficulties the LGBTQ communities go through. For the film, it brings us from tragedy to a happy ending.
The movie connects with the course content through sexuality. The film shows an adequate representation of homosexuals and the transgender community and how they relate to the larger society. Angel is a perfect example who tries to bridge her life at the ball and have a normal, accepted life with Stan. The film also connects with ethnicity, which in this case, is majorly African Americans and Latino Americans. The film documents their struggles of being the minority group discriminated against for their color and being gay or transgender. Blanca is an excellent example of having to be a woman of color, and transgender is thrown out to the streets by her mother for sneaking in girls and eventually contacts HIV.
From the movie, it is clear that sometimes the outside world can be so alienating to other people that they need to find a way of fitting in and feeling the realness of their own existence while lawfully everyone has a right to expression and freedoms that lets each one live their lives. The movie reinforced my understanding of the ball culture, which is a mixture of modeling, dance, lip-syncing and other events. I mostly understood the ball culture because it gives the disadvantaged LBTQ community a chance to be themselves and space to congregate together freely without judgment from the outside world.
REFERENCE
Pose season 1. Netflix. (, 2018).
Pose. Season 1. Vulture New York. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.vulture.com/tv/pose/