We’ve spoken before about the important, confounding, disappointing yet groundbreaking show that was Queer as Folk, and frankly the topic never gets old.
The 2000 US reboot of Russell T Davies’ landmark British show concerned a group of (white, thin, middle-class) gay men making their way through a pre-Prop 8 America, and it shows. While dated, the series represented—along with 2004’s The L Word—one of the first mainstream shows that was for and about gay people. As such, it could be a little heavy-handed and a lot clichéd. In its effort to cover every possible issue concerning the gay community in the early 2000s (except racism, disability, femmephobia, sexism, and transphobia) its episodes often took an afterschool special, almost preachy approach to the then-new idea of non-tragic, prestige queer storytelling. That said, the show managed to cover a lot of ground, and it wasn’t shy about doing it.
Witness, for example, one clip that’s recirculating online. When Justin, the show’s youngest character, first comes out to his family, his conservative parents are not supportive. Even as Justin’s mother starts to move in a more accepting direction in the show’s later seasons, she still manages to make it clear that—much like the rest of straight America at this time—she’ll only tolerate queerness if she doesn’t have to hear any details of her son’s gay life. Which leads to this confrontational moment during a therapy session.
queer as folk one of the few shows that portrays gay men accurately (narcissistic shallow and evil) https://t.co/APyQnIsCFm
— ren. (@ikindaren) November 25, 2024
“I like dick,” Justin tells his mother in the clip. “I wanna get f*cked by dick, I wanna suck dick, I like sucking dick. And I’m good at it, too.”
Cringe as it may seem, Justin’s confrontational stance is exactly what queer audiences were starving for at the time. After decades of being relegated to playing quirky sidekicks, doomed lovers, and sacrificial lambs, a gay character played by a gay actor was finally saying the quiet part out loud.
Looking at it today, however, viewers are seeing something different.
“queer as folk one of the few shows that portrays gay men accurately (narcissistic shallow and evil),” the original poster wrote above the clip. They went on to clarify that “narcissistic, shallow, and evil” are good traits (I mean, we knew.)
In the comments, queer people shaped by this deeply imperfect show are expressing how meaningful it was to them.
“the comic book guy,” wrote one user, referring to the show’s ostensible narrator, Michael (Hal Sparks) “was probably the first gay character that i felt any relation to on tv (despite not being into comic books.)”
Some viewers tuned in for…other reasons.
“Is this a safe space to admit I jacked off to this show as a teen or,” another user wrote.
“I was nine years old,” someone else chimed in, “and completely obsessed.”
Same, bestie. Same.
But one user summed things up perfectly. “This show gave me such a mistaken expectation about how I wanted to be my life: going to clubs every weekend and fucking with every man alive,” they wrote, “and now here I am: alone, with my cat and watching telenovelas every Friday night.”
I guess some things truly never change.
Via Intomore.com
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