‘Pose’ Highlights the Beauty of Being Queer, Gifted, and Black
The Emmy-winning drama reminded us that gay White men aren’t the center of the LGBTQ universe
“Live. Werk. Pose.”
From the day it debuted on our television screens in 2018, announcing itself with those three words, Pose simultaneously told LGBTQ+ history and made it. The FX drama celebrated the same 1980s New York City underground ball and drag culture that the 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning explored nearly three decades earlier to ecstatic reviews.
Paris Is Burning is a groundbreaking piece of cinema that gave LGBTQ+ people of color the unprecedented screen time that made the mainstreaming of RuPaul and his Drag Race possible. Similarly, Pose — which recently completed its three-season run — was a series of firsts. (As if directly acknowledging the link, Paris director Jennie Livingston helmed a second-season episode.) It was the first queer-themed TV project created by Ryan Murphy (Glee, The Politician, Hollywood, The Boys in the Band) not to revolve mostly around gay White men.
It was the first drama series to feature an openly gay Black actor in an Emmy-winning leading role. Take a bow, Billy Porter.
