EPISODE 817: PON FARR AND THE CITY
In Heaven Every Email that Paul Revere Sends is in All Caps.
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
Hi and welcome back to Pop Culture Spirit Wow, the newsletter where we dare to ask the question, What would the crew of Star Trek’s Strange New Worlds say about the writers strike?
That’s my friend and mega-Star Trek fan lord Ann Marie Segal in the center. Star Trek writers, actors and fans did big strike events in New York and LA last week. It was pretty epic.
Lots going on in the world this week. Let’s get into it!
THE WOWND UP
This week the Los Angeles Dodgers let a bunch of homophobic Catholics who hate drag queens scare them into disinviting the San Francisco Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to its yearly Pride event on June 16th, leading many in Los Angeles to tell the Dodgers what they can do with their Pride event. (Note to Dodgers: It’s sort of contrary to the whole point of Pride to enter into it by shunning a queer group.)
Meanwhile over the weekend Boston University graduates joined Writers Guild members in protesting commencement speaker David Zaslav, who was taking a break from destroying television’s most enduring brand to look like the villain in a bad 80s teen movie. For all those who are wondering what the deal is with this writers’ strike, this photo pretty much captures the situation we’re dealing with.
That image comes via April Wolfe, @awolfeful.
And speaking of Warner Brothers, the Arrowverse is coming to an end on Wednesday with the series finale of The Flash. I fell off the Arrow shows during the pandemic, but in coming back to The Flash this final season the thing that strikes me most is just how much fun those shows could be. Based on the comments of the new management, it’s not at all clear that Warner Brothers will even note the moment, but we should all pour one out Wednesday night 8pm for everyone involved with the Arrowverse, because over the last 12 years they’ve accomplished a tremendous amount in terms of both representation and super hero storytelling, much of it stuff that Marvel is only just beginning to figure out how to do.
EVERY SIGHT THAT I SEE IS MARIA
The Writers Guild also announced this week that it would not picket outside the Tony Awards, which will allow them to be aired on CBS and Paramount Plus as planned. This is an important concession. The theater industry in New York has yet to recover its audiences from the pandemic, and the Tonys are Broadway’s one big chance each year to advertise its shows. Producers I know have said, given the fragility of the market, if the Tonys did not go forward some shows would absolutely close immediately.
Personally, I feel like the writing community and the theater community should always be supporting each other. We’re very much in the same position in our various industries, and we’re all union people. The Tonys would absolutely not have happened if the WGA had decided to picket, precisely because the theater community support the writers, and I’m grateful to see us show similar support for them.
That said, the broadcast will have its challenges. Given that the writers are on strike, there can’t be any sketches or other original writing for the broadcast. The hosts and various performers giving out awards can’t even improvise bits, as that, too, would constitute original writing. All that they can do is give out awards and perform numbers or bits from various shows.
I’ve heard some people groaning about this, but honestly I think there’s opportunity here, too. First of all, the show could be shorter (never a bad thing for an awards show). It could create time for more performances, as well, which is what people really come to see anyway, and what sells the shows.
Also, maybe it makes room for some other creative choices…
THREE WAYS TO MAKE TONYS ’23 TONY
1) Include Scenes from Plays
Most plays are not sketches; each scenes builds on the next. You try to pull a scene out and perform it on its own and it could very well flop.
But there are some where you actually could do this, like Ain’t No Mo, which is a set of about 8 independent scenes built loosely around the concept that every Black person in America is leaving to go to a new nation in Africa. The show never got the chance to find an audience, but it was tremendous: hilarious and also deeply insightful. Here’s a teaser.
I think a number of the other Tony nominated-plays have moments that could stand on their own, especially Fat Ham. (Also, if there is any way to reproduce what’s happening in A Doll’s House, I am all for it, because it is astonishing.)
2) Include Off-Broadway Shows
Everything nominated for a Tony is from a Broadway show. But the show is meant to be a celebration of theater, with a point of getting more feet in the seats. So why not include some other stuff. For instance, for the last year the show everyone talks about is actually the off-Broadway musical Titanique, in which singer Céline Dion acts as a sort of Greek chorus in a retelling of the 1997 film Titanic, and the music is all her songs.
3) Include Regional Theater
Last year I got the chance to see a production of a new musical version of Diary of a Wimpy Kid. And while the cast was almost entirely pre-teens, the show was not at all your typical kids show; the singing, the writing, the demands were all very much next level. It was really good. (Truth be told, my nephew Patrick played the lead, so I am definitely biased, but seriously, it was great.)
There are lots of shows like this, that are smart and clever and will have huge futures in schools and regional theaters, but just don’t get to the Great White Way. Why not feature a couple of them? (Wimpy Kid also includes a book by Tony nominee Kevin Del Aguila, so it has a Broadway connection.)
Here’s a recording of Wimpy Kid, cued up to one of its great songs.
(Sorry about the video quality and Big Uncle Energy.)
ALL THAT DRAG
So we need to talk about this Catholics/Dodgers story, because it’s not about what everyone is saying it’s about.
First of all, this story is not about defending nuns. I feel like that’s the biggest hurdle to get over, and the one in which you may end up disagreeing with me, so let’s face it head on. The Sisters of Divine Indulgence are a group of queer men and trans women who have been dressing up as nuns for almost 50 years. They started in 1979 with a goal of “promulgating universal joy and expiating stigmatic guilt,” by way of raising money for charities, standing up for queer people and trying to free Christians from the guilt and shame of Christian sexual morality by being ridiculously sexual in their names and some of their activities.
So what does that look like in practice? They did a pom pom Rosary in a Time of Nuclear Peril as part of San Francisco’s Three Mile Island protest; they chased Christians attacking queer people out of the Castro; they created the first safe sex pamphlet anywhere in the world as the AIDS crisis exploded, organized the first AIDS candle light vigil, raised money for HIV/AIDS patients, and many, many other things. The Dodgers were going to award the L.A. chapter with the “Community Hero Award” because they’ve done so much good in the L.A. community.
Catholic opponents would probably point to some of their antics, like doing an exorcism of the Pope when he came to San Francisco in 1987, smashing the doors of the State building during a riot after Governor Pete Wilson vetoed a California gay rights bill or their often sexual names as justification for condemning them and calling them anti-Catholic. Although to be clear, they’ve actually raised money for Catholic and other Christian churches at times. So I mean, how anti-Catholic can they be?
The sisters say they dress as nuns because they see what they’re doing as a ministry akin to what nuns do in the Catholic Church; that is, they attempt to serve the spiritual needs of the communities in which they find themselves. Here’s a great quote I found from one nun: “The lightness of everything, in addition to the whiteface and the nun’s habits, are a mechanism to reach out to people. When we’re dressed up like that, kind of like sacred clowns, it allows people to interact with us.” To me, that’s kind of beautiful.
Check out their history and decide for yourself whether you think they either hate nuns or Catholics. I may have blind spots here, but I don’t see it.
This is also definitely not a story about the Catholic Church. The organizations which attacked the Dodgers, the Catholic League and CatholicVote, are both private right wing pro-Trump organizations who often use Catholicism to hide their actual nutjob political agendas. It’s unfortunate that the Dodgers didn’t have someone in their offices simply ask some Catholics whether these are groups to take seriously, but it’s not entirely unexpected either. Secular institutions today are so anxious about having a decision of theirs get ratio’d, it becomes easy to manipulate by claiming a religious controversy.
At the end of the day what this is about is drag queens. Many right-wing groups are currently committed to demonizing drag queens, saying they’re pedophiles grooming children. And if that sounds familiar somehow, it’s because it’s the same argument these same groups have made over the years about LGBTQ teachers, psychologists and gay men in general. It’s harder to demonize those groups today, so they’ve found a new target.
But why drag queens? They’ve been around forever. They’re hilarious. How is it that they’re suddenly “dangerous?”
My thought: maybe this actually isn’t about drag queens at all, but about transgender people. Even though doing drag is completely different from being trans, I wonder if these groups see them as the same thing, or see drag queens as a group that by virtue of their talent and charisma encourages kids to reconsider their own gender identity.
And you know, they’re right, in a way. Not about getting kids to question their identity; ask a drag queen and they’ll tell you, drag is performance. But when you’re in the presence of something truly joyous and free, it absolutely helps you see yourself and your own possibilities. It invites you, too, to be free.
But, um, so do a hundred other things, like watching The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and going to the circus and running a 5K and talking to people who you look up to you or God help us maybe that new Little Mermaid movie. Are we going to ban all of that, as well?
But actually come to think of it I guess in some states the answer is yeah, yeah we are.
THREE SCREENSHOTS OF THREE TWEETS (UGH TWITTER UGH)
This is absolutely true. For this and other reasons, stop using ChatGPT.
I’ll be away next week, but back the week after with more things to Wow about. In the meantime, enjoy Memorial Day, the last episodes of The Flash, Mrs. Maisel and Succession. And stay strong on those picket lines!
MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE
I did a story last week about this Tik-Tok “Denise, Heaven’s Assistant.” It’s really wonderful. If you’re looking for a little pick me up this week, here’s one of my favorites.
I so agree! They do so much good, and they're a lot of fun.
Thanks for another great newsletter! And for standing up for the Sisters of Divine Indulgence. I used to see them around here in Chicago all the time, they’re such a wonderful organization!