Welcome to Wrath Month, our post-Pride series dedicated to embracing our queer anger. Read more here.
Pride Month is officially over; long live LGBTQ+ Wrath Month. A few years ago, fed up with all the pinkwashing, corporate-sponsored parties, and rainbow brand logos that flood our feeds every June, the queer internet collectively decided to devote July to queer anger. And wow, is there a lot to be angry about. From the onslaught of discriminatory legislation sweeping the country to the Supreme Court’s undoing of Roe v. Wade, it’s a rage-inducing time to be alive. Whenever I’m not absolutely despondent about the state of things, I am foaming at the mouth.
Maybe that’s why I’ve never liked mainstream biopics about LGBTQ+ advocacy, which often imply that impassioned but respectful pleas for change are the right way to advocate for our community. Swelling strings and inspirational speeches really don’t do it for me these days. Stonewall was a riot, the people who fought for justice at the height of the AIDS crisis were hopping mad about government inaction, and trans people today are fed up with being demonized. I’d much rather spend my free time watching media about queer people being angry, destructive, and loud because anything else feels insufficent for the moment.
If, like me, you’re in the mood for LGBTQ+ stories that are cathartic and full of fury, look no further. I’ve assembled enough entertainment to keep your ire up all Wrath Month long.
Rooting for the villains is second nature for a lot of queer people. We grew up identifying with them in Disney movies, coveting their style in comic books, and dressing like them for Halloween. That’s why the HBO Max animated series Harley Quinn is my perfect TV show: Batman is a dweeb but his rogues’ gallery is cool as hell. Not only does this show feature a Sapphic romance between Joker’s former sidekick (Kaley Cuoco) and a sultry-voiced Poison Ivy (Lake Bell), it’s got lots of chaos, explosions, and a bone-crunching baseball bat to boot. Together, Quinn and Ivy rage against the machine and find queer love with each other. What else could anyone want besides, perhaps, a side order of anarchy and sushi?
If you haven’t seen Tangerine yet, LGBTQ+ Wrath Month is the ideal time for a first viewing. Sean Baker’s 2015 Sundance favorite was filmed entirely on iPhones on the streets of Los Angeles and it’s absolutely thrumming with frenzied energy. The film follows two trans sex workers, Sin-Dee Rella (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) and Alexandra (Mya Taylor), as the former seeks revenge on a pimp who has been cheating on her with a “fish,” a.k.a. a cisgender woman. This is not a movie that feels the need to respond to transphobia with unimpeachable characters who can do no wrong; to the contrary, Sin-Dee and Alexandra get to be loud and mad and beautiful all at once.
I saw this powerful 2012 documentary for the first time the year it came out, which was also the year I came out. I can think of no better way to get oriented in modern LGBTQ+ history than to watch this moving account of ACT UP’s work at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Directed by investigative reporter David France, who painstakingly weaves never-before-seen archival footage between his interviews, How to Survive a Plague is a testament to the bravery of a legendary activist group who pushed the FDA and other government agencies to take action on AIDS. It is also a film that will make you really fucking angry, as it should. If you think government officials ignoring and mocking queer people in the face of our suffering is a new phenomenon, watch what the White House did in the face of an epidemic that threatened the very fabric of the LGBTQ+ community.
In 1985, then-closeted actor Mark Patton starred in the second movie in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, making him the first male “scream queen” in cinema history. The Freddy Krueger sequel was intensely homoerotic, well beyond the level of mere subtext, and Patton essentially felt outed by the film’s reception. Decades of personal struggles followed as he tried to continue his acting career and as he dealt with a near-fatal HIV-related hospitalization. In addition to detailing these challenges, the 2019 documentary Scream, Queen! follows Patton as he embraces the cult classic status of Nightmare 2 and as he seeks clarity from the film’s screenwriter, David Chaskin. All these years later, Patton is still angry about his sexuality seemingly having been written into the script, and a cisnormative world would probably rather he leave that outrage in the past. What I love about Scream, Queen! is that it gives Patton the space to turn his anger into answers.
If “fuck everything” doesn’t feel like an apt motto for our times, I don’t know what does. Gregg Araki’s 1992 road trip movie is about two gay, HIV-positive friends named Luke and Jon who go on a crime spree together. It is brash, it is bold, it has a killer soundtrack, and you should watch it. “Fuck work, fuck the system, fuck everything,” Luke tells Jon at one point, opining that AIDS has made them “totally free” to do “whatever the fuck we want to do.” Nihilistic? Sure. Antisocial? Absolutely. But is it a relatable sentiment given that we live in a late-capitalist hellscape that’s rapidly tipping toward downright theocracy? Hell yes.
Park Chan-wook’s immaculately directed erotic thriller certainly puts its lesbian protagonists through hell before they get their happy ending. But when Nam Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri) and Izumi Hideko (Kim Min-hee) finally defeat the people who have tried to keep them apart — namely a creepy uncle and a con man — what a cathartic finish it is! There is death, there is poison, there is opium, and most importantly, it is hot as hell, though your mileage may vary when it comes to the elaborately choreographed sex scenes.
Look, sometimes queer people are angry. And sometimes we are cranky, cantankerous, and cynical. If your burning hot rage is just barely covering over a constant low-level grumpiness, Difficult People, which ran for three short seasons on Hulu, is for you. Billy Eichner is the undisputed king of playing gay characters who seem like their blood pressure is through the roof — and his eponymous self-insert in this show, struggling comedian Billy Epstein, is no exception to that rule. Alongside his comedy partner Julie (Julie Klausner), Billy-qua-Billy gets mad about everything from celebrity tweets to the success of Hamilton. Bonus points for casting Shakina Nayfack as Lola, a foul-mouthed trans waitress who is also a 9/11 truther. We’ll never get another sitcom character quite like her.
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