Poe-wning The MTV Movie Award Nominations

As announced on MTV.com today, The Force Awakens cleaned up with 11 nominations for MTV Movie Awards. Deadpool had the second most nominations with 8. These much more populist awards reflect achievements that are geared towards fan favorites from a younger demographic than the stuffier Academy Awards. Nevertheless, I'm glad that The Force Awakens is finally getting some bigger recognition this awards season.

TFA is up for Movie of the Year, but it is a crowded field with geek culture heavy-hitters (Deadpool, Age of Ultron, and the massively successful Jurassic World, but weirdly no Mad Max). And with Creed and Straight Outta Compton in the running too, it seems like the MTV awards might compensate for the Hollywood diversity crisis that dogged the Oscars. I would be (pleasantly) surprised if TFA took this category.

I see better odds for the many performances categories: Adam Driver (Best Villain), John Boyega (Breakthrough Performance and Best Action Performance), Daisy Ridley (Best Female, Best Hero, and Breakthrough Performance), and Andy Serkis and Lupita Nyong'o (Best Virtual Performance). With the sheer number of individual performance nominations, chances seem good. And come on, Daisy Ridley was basically the Best Hero ever, so...

No nominations for Oscar Isaac, but with so little screen time, not surprising. Although if Finn and Poe had greeted each other with more than just that leaping embrace, Best Kiss would've been theirs to lose!

At any rate, Isaac deserves a great deal of the credit for the infectious and extraordinary cast chemistry that earned TFA a best Ensemble Cast nomination. This will be the category where I really root for them.

Don't forget to vote and tune in on April 10!

You Need a Pilot: Gay Male Heroes IRL

To recap: gay characters in mainstream pop culture, especially in geek culture, are generally either psychopathic villains or buffoonish clowns who provide comic relief. These tropes have become so entrenched that many audience members react strongly and negatively when challenged with LGBT characters in other roles.

And especially when it comes to gay male heroes: all the stereotypes about gay male effeminacy and mental disorder tend to fuel misguided assumptions that homosexuality--and especially homosexuality in men--is incongruent with the kind of charismatic heroism that central protagonist roles usually demand. I believe that this is a big part of the resistance to Poe being gay: audiences just can't reconcile a gay male heroic character with societal stereotypes of gay men as sissies and wimps.

So I thought it was worth a little primer (or reminder) on a few real-life gay men who challenged the poisonous misconceptions that homosexuality somehow prevents a man from cutting a heroic figure. This is just a tiny sample of gay men whose high-profile selfless acts of heroism saved lives--often at the expense of their own.

Sipple (left) saves the life of Pres. Ford by
grabbing Sarah Jane Moore

Oliver Sipple was a gay man who served as a Marine in the Vietnam War. On September 22, 1975, Sipple thwarted an assassination attempt of President Gerald Ford in San Francisco by grabbing the arm of the would-be assassin, Sara Jane Moore, as she raised her gun to fire. The bullet missed the President and struck an innocent bystander, who suffered only minor wounds. Sipple was declared a hero for his bravery and quick action.

Unfortunately, this unwanted fame thrust him into a spotlight that outed him to his family and society, leaving him alienated and embittered until his death in 1989. But Harvey Milk, a San Francisco city supervisor and the first openly gay elected official in the U.S., knew Sipple and wanted people to know that Sipple was gay. Milk is quoted as saying, "For once we can show that gays do heroic things."

Staff Sergeant Eric Alva was the first American Marine to be wounded in Iraq in 2003, and the Iraq War's first recipient of the Purple Heart. On the first day of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Alva stepped on a landmine and sustained injuries that required amputation of his leg.

After his injury, Alva worked to improve the opportunities of other gay people who wanted to serve, and he became a spokesperson against the U.S. military's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy until it was finally repealed in 2011. Alva is quoted as saying: "I joined the military because I wanted to serve. I was patriotic, idealistic; I was also gay."

....Hm. Latino, patriotic, idealistic, gay. He reminds me of someone... I can't quite put my finger on it... Oh, and if you're having a hard time imagining what a dashing, decorated, gay military fighter pilot might look like in real life, behold: Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach.

Not so bad, right?

Allan Fonseca was a Macy's employee who was working the day of the Clackamas, Oregon mall shooting in 2012. When Fonseca heard the gunfire, he led a customer out of the store, then had the stones to go back in--TWICE--to help more customers and coworkers evacuate.

So gay heroes are not just soldiers. They're civilians too. And sometimes they have gorgeous skin and work at the Lancome counter. Deal with it.

Tori Johnson was another civilian hero that helped others survive a crazed gunman in Sydney in December 2014. The gunman took a dozen people hostage in a cafe and used them as human shields during an hours-long standoff with authorities.

Eventually, Johnson, a gay man and the manager of the cafe, charged the gunman and tried to wrestle away the weapon. Johnson was fatally shot, but his selfless actions distracted the gunman long enough for the others to escape, and the gunfire brought in the police, who killed the gunman. The entire country of Australia remembers him as a hero.

The horrible events of September 11, 2001, marked some of our country's darkest hours. But on that terrible day, the heroism of emergency responders and of everyday people inspired the country and captured our imaginations. Two of the most widely-known heroes of September 11 were gay men.

Father Mychal Judge, known as the Saint of 9/11, was a Franciscan Chaplain to the New York Fire Department and had the dubious honor of being the first victim of the September 11 terrorist attacks when he was killed by falling debris. His heroism and bravery at the World Trade Center were extraordinary, but his full story as an out, gay, recovering alcoholic Irish-Catholic priest is nothing short of legendary. Judge's spirit, kindness, and charisma touched hundreds, if not thousands, of lives. His was a terrible loss, but like all heroes, he made his sacrifice with courage and selflessness and he was a credit to all Americans.

Mark Bingham was an entrepreneur, a skilled rugby player, and a gay man from the Bay Area who found himself on board United Flight 93 en route to San Francisco on September 11. When the flight was hijacked, Bingham was one of the passengers who stormed the cockpit to prevent the terrorists from completing their attack, sacrificing themselves in the ensuing crash to save countless other lives. His and the other Flight 93 passengers' stirring tale of heroism is memorialized in numerous films and documentaries. Bingham is remembered by the Bay Area and the broader gay community as one of the largest-looming heroes of 9/11.

These men (and countless other LGBT people, men and women alike) are exactly the type of hero that has never--ever--been portrayed in a sci fi or action film as a main protagonist, even though their heroics capture the selflessness and bravery that we all admire in a character like Poe.

And the next time someone scoffs at the idea of Poe (or any central protagonist) being LGBT, with the implication that someone as heroic, charismatic, and virtuous as Poe couldn't possibly be gay, keep these men and their stories in mind.

Shake That Moneymaker: Deadpool's Poe-sterior

Vanity Fair published a terrific article describing how Deadpool's box office success puts it in a great position to eventually introduce--in the greenlit sequel--the first openly male LGBT hero in a comic book film.

The initiative and willingness from the creative side is definitely there. The comic books have numerous references to Deadpool's omnisexual flirtations, which make it harder for closed-minded audiences to burden a queer film adaptation with the whole "diversity for diversity's sake" garbage. And more specifically, Tim Miller, the film's director, described Deadpool as pansexual, and Ryan Reynolds has previously remarked that depicting Deadpool in the future with a boyfriend "would be great."

But more importantly, the dollar signs are there. As mentioned previously, one of the major studio concerns with LGBT central protagonists is China's restrictive cultural policies that censor or ban positive images of LGBT people in media. China is a huge consumer of U.S. films, so jeopardizing a film's success there with an LGBT main character makes major studios skittish.

Deadpool was banned in China for violence and sexuality, but Fox still made PILES OF MONEY in opening weekend. According to Box Office Mojo, Deadpool had a staggering $150 million opening four day domestic weekend, with a $264.8 million worldwide debut as of last Sunday. This makes Deadpool Fox's biggest opening weekend ever (beating second best Episode III: Revenge of the Sith's domestic opening by about $25 million).

So basically? China's anti-gay media policies can suck it.

I really hope this emboldens Fox to make Deadpool's bisexuality a more meaningful character trait in the sequel, as opposed to just making it a part of the humor. And if that happens, we would have the first cinematic LGBT hero in a comic book film. And in turn, I hope that Disney/Lucasfilm is emboldened to consider an LGBT heroic main character for the cinematic Star Wars franchise.

Remembering Battlestar Gay-lactica

When a former co-worker shows up at the office holiday party to stir shit.

Battlestar Galactica, that stalwart old ship, has been cruising into fandom's consciousness quite a bit in the past week or so, with an announcement of movement towards a cinematic adaptation at Universal and Alessandro Juliani (Lt. Felix Gaeta from SyFy's rebooted BSG) popping up on the new X-Files series. So although I've been thinking a lot about BSG in relation to LGBT characters in sci-fi the past couple of months, this seemed like a good time to write about it.

I was six years old when the original BSG aired on television, and I was smitten. It was like Star Wars, but it was on TV every week so I could regularly get my fix of cool ships, weird aliens, and soapy space drama. I admittedly had a little schoolboy crush on Dirk Benedict's Starbuck, but mostly I was just there for the Viper dogfights and the shiny kick-ass Cylons.

When SyFy reimagined BSG in 2004, it quickly became apparent that BSG had grown up in the intervening quarter century. The stories were profoundly political, philosophical, complicated, and ambivalent. The design was gorgeous and the cinematography revolutionized that photojournalistic zoom-in style we now see in all sorts of sci-fi today (see, e.g., The Expanse). The performances were uniformly terrific, and sometimes just brilliant--every moment in the romance between Mary McDonnell's President Roslin and Edward James Olmos's Admiral Adama was understated, soaring, heartbreaking, and simply glorious.

Unfortunately, the series finale was pretty infuriating, and, like Lost, did not do justice to the nuance and ambiguity of the series. I remember people referring to it as "Bible-star Galactica": seriously, the implication that Starbuck was a goddamn angel made all of us at our viewing party lunge for the same coffee table to flip. Outrageous.

And speaking of ambivalence, the other aspect of SyFy's BSG that continues to perplex and confound me is its inclusion of LGBT characters.

In general, the humanoid Cylon models (at least the female ones) were sort of pansexual, especially the Sixes, played by Tricia Helfer. There was a threeway reference in Season 3 involving one of those randy Sixes, a Three (played by lesbian super-icon Lucy Lawless), and Gaius Baltar. But while this indicates the fluid sexuality of the Cylons, it was basically gratuitous set decoration.

The Pegasus was capable of FTL (Faster Than Lesbianism) speed.

The TV movie Battlestar Galactica: Razor achieved a deeper exploration of gay main characters when it revealed that the captain of the Battlestar Pegasus, Admiral Helena Cain, was in a relationship with a Number Six model named Gina. The destruction of the colonies drives Admiral Cain mad with vengeance, and when Cain discovers that Gina is a Cylon, things do not end well. What follows is a classic BSG meditation on the ironic/tragic way that leaders obliterate life and humanity to protect life and humanity. Unfortunately, the story doesn't really break any new ground for LGBT characters. Cain becomes a psychopathic villain who is ultimately destroyed, a very well-trod cautionary tale story line for LGBT characters in sci-fi and otherwise.

That look: I'm getting multiple GAY-DIS contacts, sir.

Then, in the midseason break of the final season, Battlestar Galactica: The Face of the Enemy was released as a series of short webisodes with long-time central character, Felix Gaeta (Gay-ta? come on), as its main protagonist. In the first webisode of The Face of the Enemy, we see Gaeta share an on-screen kiss and a very sweet moment with Louis Hoshi--and it seemed like BSG was going to give us a gay male hero who could have his own side-adventure and get his guy, too!

Alas, four major issues ultimately left The Face of the Enemy as a less-than-ideal introduction of an LGBT hero:

1. Through a series of flashbacks, we learn that Gaeta was romantically involved with an Eight, a Cylon female model. So Gaeta is technically bi, which is great (and kind of even hotter). But a part of me can't help but wonder if that was some sort of assurance from the writers to the straight audience members who might not appreciate bisexuality as a legitimate thing that, yes, Gaeta was gay with Hoshi, but he wasn't that gay, only kind of gay sometimes, so he could still be taken seriously as a male protagonist. The romantic entanglement with the female Eight, while important to the plot and certainly not gratuitous, still feels to me a little like a concession.
2. The only mention that Gaeta is LGBT is in those 33 minutes of webisodes; it never came up at all before or after in any of the SyFy broadcast episodes. Casual viewers of the TV series could have gone the entire show without ever knowing that Gaeta was LGBT. There was suspiciously little audience reaction, which suggests that this canon content slipped by pretty much under everyone's DRADIS. So Gaeta is not exactly the out and proud LGBT hero we're looking for, and it leaves an impression of classic LGBT tokenism in sci-fi content: "Aren't we edgy for having a gay male protagonist in a mainstream sci fi property?! But to be safe we'll just do it over here in this little non-essential side project and shh don't tell anyone, 'kay?" Meh.
3. Gaeta's and Hoshi's romantic storyline goes out with a whimper. Hoshi spends his on-screen time doing awesome boyfriend stuff for Gaeta--smuggling him drugs, persuading Tigh to authorize a fool's errand of a search-and-rescue mission, actually volunteering for said fool's errand search-and-rescue mission, sweetly assuring Gaeta that "Baby, you're good!" when they finally find him, and later holding Gaeta's hand as Gaeta is wheeled away on a gurney to receive medical attention, never leaving his side. So how does Gaeta repay all this concern and devotion? As soon as he's back on his one good foot, he promptly dumps Hoshi. I mean... dude. I know the events on the Raptor were traumatizing but the relationship seems unnaturally easy for Gaeta to simply terminate--he assures Hoshi that he will try to protect him because Hoshi searched for and saved him, but not because they've been fraking each other for gods' sake. Gaeta treats it like some sort of debt, and not even a debt of any particular gratitude. It's a really unsatisfying moment and feels like a contrived way to avoid having to carry the relationship through to the televised episodes.
4. Although largely an enigmatic everyman throughout the series, Gaeta was consistently moral and steadfast, which was why I was so pleased to have him introduced as LGBT. But the events that unfold while Gaeta is stranded in the Raptor with the treacherous Eight leave Gaeta in a very dark place of self-revulsion and regret, and spark his motivation to mutiny against Adama and his alliance with the Cylons in the subsequent SyFy episodes. And in the morally murky BSG universe, consistent convictions get people into serious trouble, so Gaeta's unwavering beliefs lead him to an untimely demise several episodes from the series finale. So... yep. The story manages to turn Gaeta into yet another LGBT antagonist who gets killed before the end. *sigh*

Don't get me wrong here. SyFy's BSG is one of my favorite sci-fi TV series ever. And I really enjoyed The Face of the Enemy--it won Streamy awards in 2009 for Best Dramatic Series, Best Male Actor/Dramatic, and Best Writing/Dramatic, so it was kind of a big deal in terms of web-exclusive quality and impact. Kudos to the BSG producers, writers, and cast for finally showing a gay protagonist in a sci-fi series at all, especially a protagonist as (mostly) heroic and nuanced and sustained as Gaeta was.

But that's not to say that we can't do better. BSG got close, but there's more we can do in terms of decoupling the seemingly inevitable association of homosexual characters with disease, tragedy, and misery in sci-fi portrayals.

*cough* Poe *cough*

And now, here's some of my favorite BSG eye candy because I'm a sharer.

Jamie Bamber. He sure knows how to ride a Viper.

Michael Trucco. "Space athlete" pretty much checks all the boxes, amirite ladies?

Musical Com-Poe-sition

Just a quick disclaimer: The point of this blog is not really to ship Finn/Poe, although that's naturally going to come up if we're discussing the possibility of the first gay hero in the Star Wars cinematic universe. It's cool if Finn is not straight too, I just didn't get it from Finn's character in the movie the same way you see it in Poe. Finn is so desperate and panicked throughout TFA, romance does not really seem like it's on his radar at all. 

A full-on LGBT relationship would be amazing, but I would be happy if Poe were gay, with or without a romance. Okay, that said:

I found faerielion's tumblr, and there's a post from January 4 that does a side-by-side comparison of how the Han and Leia theme plays over the Finn/Poe reunion scene. And since Han and Leia are the central romantic pair from the OT, their theme is basically the Star Wars love theme.

Here's how it works:

*heart eyes*
fan art by rngrn

Step 1: Play the Han and Leia theme, and note the lovely woodwind melody at about 1:55 that is repeated with horns at 2:15.

Step 2: Now watch the scene where Finn and Poe are reunited. That same woodwind theme from the Han and Leia orchestration starts at about 0:24 seconds when Poe is greeting BB-8, and (OMG) the horn theme swells just as Poe and Finn are jumping into each other's arms. 

Step 3: Feel all the feels.

Now, by TFA, Han and Leia are no longer romantically in love, and I imagine that when Williams was composing this piece for the TFA soundtrack, he was thinking of a very mature relationship--powerful feelings, for sure, but not sexy-fun-times. So I'm not sure that using that melody from the Han and Leia theme was necessarily meant to suggest romance, as much as just a very warm and emotional moment for the characters of Poe and Finn.

At the same time, wow. Those are some very intense emotions for two guys to have for each other after probably no more than an hour together during their escape. And it all goes downhill moments later with the lip bite...

Prêt à Poe-ter Part Deux

That's my jacket... I wish.

Mon Dieu mes amis! As reported by Nerdist.com today, Matchless, a UK-based designer outerwear retailer, has thrown in on the Finn/Poe jacket game with this offering, and it is gorgeous.

I'm not wild about the branding on the breast pocket, but the buckle is so much better than the cheap black plastic one on the Film Jackets version (yuck). I wish they had an image with a model wearing it; it looks like it might be cut a little longer than the film version, but hard to tell.

Anyone have an extra $1,750.00 to spare?

Yep, it's that much. Nice though, right? They have a bunch of other high-end jackets inspired by other Star Wars icons too, if Poe is not your thing (and if that's the case, what kind of a monster are you?).

"Poe to Inflate"

I love this. Cinema Blend has reported that intrepid/detail-oriented Tumblr user @youneedapilot unlocked the secret message printed on Poe's flight vest.

I'm sorry but it's just so hard to focus on anything but that look....

Most text in Star Wars is in Aurebesh, the written form of Galactic Basic. But translating this little blurb on Poe's vest was weirdly difficult because none of the characters matched the Aurebesh alphabet. The chances seemed good that this was some sort of funny/cool hidden message, especially given the silly Beastie Boys call-out in Aurebesh on Ello Asty's helmet.

But alas, the message doesn't quite live up to the hype: @youneedapilot eventually realized that the text is printed upside down so the vest's wearer can read it when looking down at it. Once that was sorted out, it was easy to translate the Aurebesh.

It says: "Pull to inflate."

Safety first, Poe!

To nerd out a minute here, it seemed like the similar X-Wing pilot vests from the original trilogy were more like flak vests--at least, that's how various cosplay groups, like the Rebel Legion, conceived of them--and not flotation devices. But perhaps X-Wing pilots have different vests for different terrains? The image above is right after the dramatic over-water assault on Takodana, so maybe it was mission-specific gear?

In any event, the fact that some person was so troubled by the mystery of Poe's vest makes me incredibly happy. It's sort of a bummer that it wasn't more of a cool Easter egg (something like "Tell that to Kanjiklub" or "Stormpilot 4ever"), but the effort and thought that went into decoding it is what being a fan is all about. Nicely done.