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      ‘Pariah’ at 10: When Black Lesbian Characters Had the Spotlight

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      The Dee Rees drama made waves but studios largely returned to business as usual. A new crop of filmmakers sees signs of hope.At the shimmering pink Catnip Lounge, a Brooklyn teenager, Alike, stands face to face with a dancer sliding head first down a pole. The pleasure manifesto “My Neck, My Back” from the rapper Khia booms from the speakers. Transfixed by the power of her desire, Alike discovers a physical place outside herself that can hold it. Finally.This is the bold opening of “Pariah,” the coming-of-age drama from the writer-director Dee Rees. Ten years ago it premiered to critical acclaim, first at the Sundance Film Festival, then in theaters with a limited release that December, a herculean effort for an independent film starring a then unknown Adepero Oduye as Alike (pronounced ah-LEE-kay) and made on a shoestring budget of less than $500,000.“Pariah” (available to stream on HBO Max) was the first movie about a Black queer woman to be released in theaters nationwide by a Hollywood studio. As Nelson George wrote in The Times in 2011, “No film made by a Black lesbian about being a Black lesbian has ever received the kind of attention showered on Ms. Rees’s film.” At the same time, George pointed out, “Pariah” was also part of a crop of films that pushed the boundaries of “what ‘Black film’ can be.” How Hollywood responded, then and now, has been telling.Rees tells Alike’s story with an uncompromising specificity that has etched its place in great American cinema. (This year the movie was added to the Criterion Collection.) This unflinching sensibility harks back to the New Queer Cinema of the 1990s. By opening with the unfettered eroticism of the lesbian club and showing us scenes — like Alike’s awkwardly endearing dildo try-on — without explanation or apology, Rees followed in the footsteps of a group of filmmakers who refused to sanitize images of queer life to appease straight audiences. Think Cheryl Dunye’s “The Watermelon Woman” (1996), the first narrative feature film about an out Black lesbian protagonist made by an out Black lesbian. Cheryl Dunye directed herself and Guinevere Turner, left, in “The Watermelon Woman.”First Run Features“Pariah” began making waves in 2007 when Rees released the short that would become the basis for the 2011 feature. Kebo Drew of the San Francisco film training nonprofit Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project remembers the reaction in her community of friends and colleagues. “The Blackness was just saturated, coming from the roots,” Drew recalled.After hearing word-of-mouth about the short, a screening at Outfest in Los Angeles touched the filmmaker Angela Robinson. “I felt like it was kind of opening a door that I hoped would stay open,” said Robinson. “It was such a personal story and a singular vision.”The writer-director Numa Perrier credits Rees and “Pariah” as an inspiration for her 2019 film “Jezebel.” She remembered, “The softness of how vulnerable that coming-of-age story was, I hadn’t seen that before.”Yet this fresh perspective did not lead Hollywood to greenlight more films about Black lesbians. There have been supporting characters like the passionate teacher Ms. Rain (Paula Patton) in “Precious” (2009) and the serene boxing coach Buddhakan (Sheila Atim) in Halle Berry’s directorial debut this year, “Bruised.” But over the last 10 years, not a single feature focused on Black lesbians has made it through mainstream pipelines.At the same time L.G.B.T. characters overall have become far more visible on the big and small screens. Yet according to a University of Southern California report looking at the top 100 films of 2019 (the most recent year for which figures were available), nearly 80 percent of all such characters were male-identified and 77 percent were white. The report doesn’t provide statistics on queer women of color, as a group distinct from the category “female-identified.”“It’s almost like the stars have to align before we get another Black lesbian movie,” Drew said. “But that’s a structural issue. So there has to be a more systematic approach for encouraging stories.”So “Pariah” was singular not just in its self-assurance, but in whose story it told, too: Alike and her best friend, Laura (Pernell Walker), two Black, gay and masculine-of-center best friends from working-class neighborhoods in Brooklyn circa the early 2000s. Through the refuge of their friendship, they carve out space to be themselves.Sara Foster, left, Meagan Good, Devon Aoki and Jill Ritchie in “D.E.B.S.”Bruce Birmelin/Samuel Goldwyn FilmsAt a “Pariah” screening at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2018, Rees told the audience, “There shouldn’t be two or three or 10. To me there should be like 200.” She added, “There’s room for so many more stories.” (Rees declined a request to be interviewed for this article.)When Black lesbian stories, and the filmmakers with the lived experience to tell them, are shut out of the larger film world, the result is systemic erasure that is by definition hard to measure.About 100 feature films have been directed by Black women since 1922, almost a third of whom are lesbians, the researcher and filmmaker Yvonne Welbon wrote in the 2018 anthology “Sisters in the Life: A History of Out African American Lesbian Media-Making.”But the work of Black lesbian filmmakers has almost exclusively been made outside the Hollywood system and often not seen outside the film festival circuit, academia or grassroots distribution networks. Rees’s predecessors — filmmakers like Dunye, Michelle Parkerson (“A Litany for Survival”) and others — didn’t have assurances that a larger audience would even see their work; they simply made films that mattered to them, stories they wanted to see that didn’t yet exist in a film world that barely acknowledged their existence.That “Pariah” earned distribution, made back its budget and even received a glowing shout-out from Meryl Streep during her acceptance speech for “The Iron Lady” at the 2012 Golden Globes, was all monumental, even if the film didn’t garner much attention inside Hollywood.This is something the filmmaker Tina Mabry well understands, having tried, and failed, to get a theatrical release for her critically acclaimed debut feature, “Mississippi Damned,” a few years before “Pariah” came out. After seeing the short version of “Pariah,” Mabry asked Rees for an introduction to the film’s then up-and-coming cinematographer Bradford Young and hired him to shoot “Mississippi Damned.”Tessa Thompson in “Mississippi Damned.” The director, Tina Mabry, turned to the cinematographer Bradford Young after seeing his work on the “Pariah” short.Array ReleasingA coming-of-age tale starring Tessa Thompson and based on Mabry’s experience growing up in a Black working-class family in Tupelo, Miss., the movie won awards on the festival circuit, and aired on cable. Mabry said that she was told repeatedly that the movie was too similar to “Precious” and that “the market can’t handle two Black dramas.” For some distributors that focus on L.G.B.T. audiences, the movie was also perceived as not being gay enough despite a Black lesbian main character.“The distribution model failed us. The people did not,” Mabry said. She also gives a nod to Ava DuVernay, who eventually got the film released on Netflix in 2015 through the film distribution arm she founded, Array. That year Mabry also got her first television directing job (“Queen Sugar,” another DuVernay assist) and Mabry — much like Rees after “Pariah” was released — has worked steadily in Hollywood ever since.Indeed, there are signs of potential change. Mabry said she currently has feature film projects in development at four Hollywood studios, some of which center on Black queer women protagonists, although none of them are a done deal yet.Back when Robinson made her first feature, “D.E.B.S.,” a 2004 lesbian teen spy movie that has since become a cult classic, “there was still the attitude in town that if you played a lesbian, it could ruin your career,” she remembered.After Nina Jacobson, then a Disney studio executive, saw “D.E.B.S.” at the Sundance Film Festival, she hired Robinson to direct “Herbie Reloaded,” starring Lindsay Lohan. With ticket sales of $144 million, Robinson became the first Black woman director to draw at least $100 million at the box office. But despite her gratitude to Jacobson and the crew, the experience left her feeling isolated.“It was me and 200 white men,” Robinson said.That was when she pivoted to cable, accepting an offer from the showrunner Ilene Chaiken to direct episodes of the third season of “The L Word,” the groundbreaking show about the lives of high-powered lesbians in Los Angeles. Robinson hasn’t made another studio-backed film since. (Her 2017 feature “Professor Marston & the Wonder Women” was an indie.)But now, more than 15 years later, she has an all-female action movie in the works at Warner Bros., and her desire to cast women of color in the leads was met not with pushback, but enthusiasm, she said.“Warner Bros. called back and they were like, ‘Yes, we think you should make it more women of color and more queer,” Robinson said. “You have no idea how many years I have been waiting for somebody to say that.”And Robinson is more hopeful than ever. She has a lucrative television production deal with Warner Bros. and several other projects in the pipeline, including a DC Comics series, “Madame X,” and a film remake of “The Hunger.”“It’s always a tenuous time, but things have changed. I don’t feel like I have to Trojan-horse it anymore,” Robinson said, adding that it seems as if “I can just walk in the front door and say, ‘This is what I want to do.’ And I feel like there’s a lot of opportunity to do it.” More

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      Steve Bronski, of Pioneering Gay Band Bronski Beat, Dies at 61

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      He was part of a British trio whose songs often directly addressed gay themes and issues in a way few other pop music acts were doing.Steve Bronski, part of the 1980s British synth-pop trio Bronski Beat, whose members were openly gay at a time when that was uncommon and whose early songs unabashedly addressed homophobia and other gay issues, died after a fire on Dec. 7 at his apartment building in the Soho section of London, British news outlets reported. He was 61.The London Fire Brigade confirmed that it had responded to a fire on Berwick Street and taken an unidentified man to a hospital, where he later died. Josephine Samuel, a friend who had been helping to care for Mr. Bronski since he’d had a stroke several years ago, told The Guardian that Mr. Bronski was the fire victim.Mr. Bronski formed Bronski Beat in 1983 with Jimmy Somerville and Larry Steinbachek, and their first single, “Smalltown Boy,” was released the next year. It was a stark story of a young gay man’s escape from a provincial town where he had endured a homophobic attack; a haunting chorus repeats, “Run away, turn away.” The official video for the song, fleshing out the events the lyrics allude to, has been viewed more than 68 million times on YouTube.The song became a Top 5 hit in Britain and made the charts in other countries as well, including the United States. A follow-up, “Why?,” another chart success, was equally direct, the lyrics speaking to the ostracism and social disapproval experienced by gay people. “You in your false securities tear up my life, condemning me,” one lyric goes. “Name me an illness, call me a sin. Never feel guilty, never give in.”At the time, a number of mainstream performers — Elton John, the Village People, Boy George — telegraphed gayness, often with stereotypical flamboyance, but rarely addressed gay issues directly in song. Bronski Beat was different, eschewing coyness and gimmicks.“They buck stereotypes,” Jim Farber wrote in The Daily News in 1985, “presenting themselves as everyday Joes.”The group’s debut album, “The Age of Consent” (1984), was as forthright as the two singles. The album sleeve listed the “minimum age for lawful homosexual relationships between men” in European countries, an effort to underscore that the age in the United Kingdom at the time, 21, was higher than almost everywhere else. The sleeve also included a phone number for a gay legal advice line.Mr. Bronski said the trio didn’t start out as a political or social statement.“We were just writing songs that spoke about our lives at the time,” he told Gay Times in 2018. “We had no idea ‘Smalltown Boy’ would resonate with so many people.”But when they began doing live performances in 1983, he told The Associated Press in 1986, the audience reaction helped them realize that they had struck a chord.“We had all these people coming backstage saying, ‘I think it’s great you’ve been so honest about it,’” he said.That same audience reaction landed them a contract with London Records in early 1984. Mr. Bronski was on keyboards and synthesizers along with Mr. Steinbachek; Mr. Somerville’s distinctive falsetto vocals were the group’s signature.Warren Whaley, an electronic music composer based in Los Angeles and half of the synth-pop duo the Dollhouse, struck up a running correspondence with Mr. Bronski when he wrote to him after Mr. Steinbachek’s death in 2016.“I recall hearing their debut single, ‘Smalltown Boy,’ on the alternative music radio station in Los Angeles in 1984,” Mr. Whaley said by email. “The song starts with a heavy octave bass. Then a staccato hook. Then Jimmy Somerville’s lovely falsetto. I was hooked by 22 seconds in. This band was something special. Something new — but old. Their sound harkened to disco and R&B. But it sounded new, different.”Mr. Bronski in 1996. He continued to make music after the original Bronski Beat trio broke up. Jim Steinfeldt/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesThe original Bronski Beat lineup didn’t last long; Mr. Somerville left the group in 1985. But Mr. Bronski continued to make music, with Mr. Steinbachek for a time and with others over the years, most notably “Hit That Perfect Beat,” a hit in Britain and elsewhere in 1986 and a dancehall favorite ever since. Mr. Whaley said that though Bronski Beat’s best-known songs had gay-centric lyrics, “their appeal crossed the boundaries of sexual alignment.”“Everyone bopped their heads and danced to their music,” he said.Mr. Bronski was born Steven Forrest on Feb. 7, 1960, in Glasgow. He had made his way to London by the early 1980s, where he met Mr. Somerville and Mr. Steinbachek.“It was a lot easier living in London,” he told Classic Pop magazine in 2019, explaining why he and other gay men had gravitated to the city, “since there was a thriving gay scene compared to other parts of the country.”Information on his survivors was not available.In 2017, more than three decades after the release of “The Age of Consent,” the only album with the original Bronski Beat lineup, Mr. Bronski teamed with Stephen Granville and Ian Donaldson to release the album “The Age of Reason” under the Bronski Beat name, revisiting songs from the original record and adding new tracks.“I think a lot of the songs are as relevant today as they were all those years ago,” he told Gay Times. More

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      in Movies

      ‘The Novice’ Review: A Freshman Effort Worthy of Varsity

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      The obsessive ambitions of a college rower are masterfully orchestrated in a debut feature by the writer-director Lauren Hadaway.In “The Novice,” the impressive debut feature from the writer-director Lauren Hadaway, Alex (Isabelle Fuhrman) is a college freshman who finds purpose in the masochistic ecstasy of team rowing.Alex isn’t suited to the demands of her sport. She’s not as strong as her crew mates, and she’s not as team-oriented as they are either. But she becomes obsessed with rowing, driven to achieve her goal of making the school’s varsity squad, even if her incessant efforts alienate her peers and coaches. Not even Alex’s first queer romance with Dani (Dilone), a confident teaching assistant, can draw Alex out of her fixation. She begins her season as a novice, and threatens to end it as a zealot.Hadaway has crafted a film that thematically and visually resembles Damien Chazelle’s “Whiplash,” for which she served as a sound editor. But where Chazelle’s film followed a protagonist with world-class aspirations, the modest scale of Alex’s ambitions keeps “The Novice” more grounded as a character study, and helps the film steer clear of overblown statements about success. The protagonist merely wishes to be the worst rower on her team’s best boat.Without the pressure of narrative grandeur, Hadaway is free to go big in her filmmaking style. She uses maximalist techniques like slow motion, rapid editing and deep space staging to create dreamlike sequences of Alex’s isolation. Fuhrman’s performance matches the filmmaking for its intensity. The movie achieves a surreal allure — at times, it’s hard to pay attention to the dialogue because the images and the sound design are already communicating so much. If the story’s hero can only aspire to the middle of the pack, the beginner behind the camera shows no such limitations.The NoviceRated R for intense sequences of distress, language, brief nudity, and some sexual content. Running time: 1 hours 34 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      in Television

      Jussie Smollett Timeline: A Case With Twists and Turns

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      The case began in 2019 when the actor reported that he had been the victim of a racist and homophobic attack, and led to a trial in which he was accused of staging the attack himself.Nearly three years have passed since the actor Jussie Smollett reported that he had been the victim of a racist and homophobic attack in Chicago. The police initially investigated the incident as a possible hate crime, then accused Mr. Smollett of staging the attack himself. Charges were filed against Mr. Smollett, then dropped. A special prosecutor was appointed and charges were filed again, leading to his trial on charges of disorderly conduct for making a false report to the police.Here’s a timeline of how we got here.Jan. 29, 2019: Mr. Smollett, who is Black and gay, tells the police that at about 2 a.m., two masked men, one of whom he believed to be white, attacked him on the 300 block of East Lower North Water Street in downtown Chicago. The assailants, according to Mr. Smollett, hurled homophobic and racial slurs at him, put a rope around his neck and poured a chemical substance on him.Mr. Smollett says he went home and a close associate of his reported the incident to the police 40 minutes after it happened. Anthony Guglielmi, the chief spokesman for the Chicago Police Department, later told The Chicago Sun-Times that Mr. Smollett had been hesitant to call the police because of his status as a public figure.Law enforcement officials say they are treating the incident “as a possible hate crime.” At a follow-up visit by investigators, Mr. Smollett says the attackers mentioned “MAGA country,” a reference to the campaign slogan of former President Donald J. Trump.Celebrities, politicians and advocacy groups offer their support to Mr. Smollett. Fox, the network on which “Empire” airs, issues a statement saying the “entire studio, network and production stands united in the face of any despicable act of violence and hate.”Detectives comb through surveillance camera recordings but say they can’t find images of the attack.Jan. 30: Investigators announce the first possible break in the case: A surveillance image shows “potential persons of interest wanted for questioning” in connection to the case. The images are of two men with their backs to the camera.At this point, the F.B.I. is already investigating a threatening letter sent to Mr. Smollett at the “Empire” production offices in Chicago the week before.Jan. 31: Mr. Trump is asked about the incident in the Oval Office. He refers to it as “horrible” and added that it “doesn’t get worse.”The Smollett family releases a statement: “Jussie was the victim of a violent and unprovoked attack. We want to be clear, this was a racial and homophobic hate crime. Jussie has told the police everything from the very beginning. His story has never changed, and we are hopeful they will find these men and bring them to justice.”Feb. 1: Mr. Smollett releases his first public statement through his publicist. It says: “Let me start by saying that I’m OK. My body is strong but my soul is stronger. More importantly, I want to say thank you. The outpouring of love and support from my village has meant more than I will ever be able to truly put into words.”Acknowledging some skepticism about his story on social media, Mr. Smollett adds, “I am working with authorities and have been 100 percent factual and consistent on every level. Despite my frustrations and deep concern with certain inaccuracies and misrepresentations that have been spread, I still believe that justice will be served.”The Chicago police superintendent, Eddie T. Johnson, says in an interview with a local television station: “We have to remember, he’s a victim. You know, so we have to treat it like he’s a victim. We have no reason to think that he’s not being genuine with us.”Feb. 2: Mr. Smollett appears in public for the first time since he reported the attack, performing a concert in West Hollywood.“I have so many words on my heart that I want to say, but the most important thing I can say is, thank you so much, and that I’m OK,” Mr. Smollett tells the crowd.Feb. 4: The Chicago police say the people of interest have not been identified yet but they are continuing to follow up on leads.Feb. 11: The department reacts to phone records that Mr. Smollett turned over to investigators. The police had asked Mr. Smollett for access to his phone because he had been in conversation with his manager when the incident occurred. Mr. Smollett provides the police with redacted records that they say “do not meet the burden for a criminal investigation.”Feb. 13: Two brothers of Nigerian descent, Olabinjo and Abimbola Osundairo, are detained by the authorities after a flight back home to Chicago from Nigeria. Police officers raid their home and, according to CBS Chicago, remove items including an “Empire” script and two hats.Feb. 14: Mr. Smollett gives his first interview about the incident to “Good Morning America,” where he is adamant that he is telling the truth.“It feels like if I had said it was a Muslim, or a Mexican, or someone Black, I feel like the doubters would have supported me much more,” Mr. Smollett tells ABC’s Robin Roberts. “A lot more.”He also says he is convinced that the men in the surveillance images were his attackers.“Because I was there,” Mr. Smollett says. “For me, when that was released, I was like, ‘OK, we’re getting somewhere.’ I don’t have any doubt in my mind that that’s them. Never did.”The Chicago police reveal publicly that at least one of the men detained has appeared as an extra on “Empire.” The department also says they “are not yet suspects.” Their lawyer, Gloria Schmidt, tells CBS Chicago: “They’re really baffled why they are people of interest. They really don’t understand how they even got information that linked them to this horrific crime. But they’re not guilty of it. They know that the evidence is going to prove them innocent. They send their best to Jussie.”The local news media releases its first reports that investigators are beginning to look at the possibility that this is a hoax, something the Chicago police dispute publicly.Feb. 15: In a whirlwind day, the detained brothers are identified as potential suspects by police, but that night are released without being charged. Investigators announce they are no longer considered suspects but do not say why.Feb. 16: The police say they are seeking to speak with Mr. Smollett again. Media outlets, including CNN, report that the two men have told investigators they were paid to take part in a hoax. Mr. Guglielmi says in a statement, “We can confirm that the information received from the individuals questioned by police earlier in the ‘Empire’ case has in fact shifted the trajectory of the investigation.”Lawyers for Mr. Smollett release a statement saying, “As a victim of a hate crime who has cooperated with the police investigation, Jussie Smollett is angered and devastated by recent reports that the perpetrators are individuals he is familiar with.”It added: “One of these purported suspects was Jussie’s personal trainer who he hired to ready him physically for a music video. It is impossible to believe that this person could have played a role in the crime against Jussie or would falsely claim Jussie’s complicity.”The lawyers say that Mr. Smollett will “continue to cooperate” and that they “have no inclination to respond to ‘unnamed’ sources inside of the investigation.”Feb. 20: Fox releases a statement in support of Mr. Smollett amid reports that his role was being reduced on “Empire.” Later in the day, the Chicago police announce that they consider Mr. Smollett a suspect in the filing of a false report.Understand the Jussie Smollett TrialCard 1 of 5A staged hate crime? More

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      Pastor Who Appeared in Drag on HBO's 'We're Here' Leaves Church

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      A United Methodist Church pastor in Indiana stepped down after performing in drag and speaking about inclusion on the show “We’re Here.”When Pastor Craig Duke stepped onstage in a small town in southern Indiana, wearing a cotton-candy-pink wig and a sparkly dress under his white robe, he knew his performance would rile some members of his congregation.He did not, however, expect his drag debut to bring an end to his role leading Newburgh United Methodist Church in a suburb of Evansville.Mr. Duke’s performance was part of the unscripted HBO show “We’re Here,” which documents L.G.B.T.Q. people and their allies in small towns who put together a drag show, led by three drag all-stars.The episode that featured the pastor premiered in early November and in it, he explained that he appeared on the show so he could be “empathetic, not just sympathetic” to the community’s gay members. Three weeks later, the church announced that he had been “relieved from pastoral duties.”In an interview this week, Mr. Duke said he had received enough critical feedback since the show aired to convince him he could not continue leading the church, which he said had about 400 congregants. He said that he was hurt by the negative responses but that he had also received hundreds of messages of support.“I experienced as much love and acceptance, and dare I say more, within the drag culture and the L.G.B.T.Q. community than most people would experience within the settings of the church,” Mr. Duke said. “Not one person questioned what I was doing there; it was complete acceptance.”Mr. Duke last preached on Nov. 14, a week after his episode aired. A local church leader said in a letter to the congregation dated Nov. 26 that Mr. Duke would be relieved from his duties on Dec. 1.The superintendent of the south and southwest district of the Indiana United Methodist Church, the Rev. Mitch Gieselman, wrote in the letter that he had received numerous messages both supporting and criticizing Mr. Duke’s actions.Mr. Gieselman said that the pastor had not resigned or been fired, but that his salary had been significantly reduced and he and his family would have to move out of the parsonage by Feb. 28.“While there is a diversity of opinion regarding the moral implications of Rev. Duke’s actions, he has not been found to have committed any chargeable offense or other violation of the United Methodist Book of Discipline,” Mr. Gieselman wrote.The pastor’s supporters created an online fund-raiser, which had raised more than $56,000 as of Wednesday morning. He said any money raised over the $30,000 goal set to help his family would go toward creating a new faith community in town that he hopes is more inclusive.Pastor Craig Duke, middle left, and the drag queen Eureka O’Hara, middle right, performed at an event after Mr. Duke’s drag transformation on the HBO series.Johnnie Ingram/ HBOThe public split in this congregation came during a stalemate about rights for L.G.B.T.Q. members of the United Methodist Church, which has nearly 13 million members worldwide. Roughly half of them are in the United States.Ahead of a 2020 meeting of global delegates, a group of church leaders introduced a proposal to split the church, citing “fundamental differences” over same-sex marriage. The traditionalists signed a letter declaring that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” But the debate on the proposal has been delayed for nearly two years because of the coronavirus pandemic.The proposal, which would create a denomination that continues to ban same-sex marriage and the ordination of gay and lesbian clergy, is scheduled to be debated at the church’s general conference in August 2022.The interim pastor at Newburgh United Methodist Church, the Rev. Mark Dicken, said the Methodist church had “regrettably” been fighting over this issue for more than 40 years.“Very regrettably, the extremely conservative wing of the United Methodist Church has crammed through rather draconian provisions in their attempt to control clergy and their ministry to L.G.B.T.Q. people,” Mr. Dicken said.Mr. Dicken worked at the church in Newburgh from 2004 to 2011 and came out of retirement to lead the congregation again.“The tribalism and polarization that’s going on in our culture, particularly in our political culture, has filtered down into the church,” he said.In the HBO show, which was nominated for an Emmy in 2020, three drag stars, Shangela, Bob the Drag Queen and Eureka O’Hara, confront these divisions while mentoring people for the show-ending drag performance. All three posted messages of support for Mr. Duke after the news about him leaving his position became public.O’Hara, who was the pastor’s drag mother or mentor, said on Twitter: “Craig is an amazing person and deserves the same love that he shares with everyone around him.”The pastor, who is straight and described himself as “heteronormative,” was nominated to be featured in the show by the Evansville Pride group. He said he had never heard of the show but decided to participate to share a message of God’s unconditional love and to support his daughter, who identifies as pansexual. He used Joan of Arc O’Hara as his drag name.He said the negative response from some members of the congregation was especially painful because of the way it hurt his daughter. But his wife and the rest of his family are “sticking together,” he said, and they have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support.He said he was grateful for his experience in drag.“It was real, it wasn’t vaudeville, it was powerful, as the words they taught me, it was fierce, it was authentic,” Mr. Duke said. More

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      Jussie Smollett Tells Jury He Did Not Direct a Fake Attack on Himself

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      The actor, who is accused of asking two brothers to mildly attack him, and then reporting it as a hate crime, took the stand at his criminal trial on charges related to the 2019 assault.Jussie Smollett took the stand on Monday in an effort to convince a Chicago jury that he did not orchestrate a racist and homophobic hate crime against himself but, instead, was the victim of both a real attack and the police’s rush to judgment in charging him.Mr. Smollett, 39, submitted himself to questioning in his own trial to rebut the testimony of two key witnesses, Abimbola Osundairo and Olabinjo Osundairo, brothers who told the court last week that Mr. Smollett had instructed them in detail on how to attack him.The Osundairo brothers said Mr. Smollett took them through a “dry run” of the attack on the day before it was supposed to occur in January 2019 and asked one of them to bruise him without inflicting real injuries while the other put a rope around his neck and poured bleach on him.Prosecutors have argued that Mr. Smollett staged the attack because he was upset that the show on which he starred, the Fox hip-hop drama “Empire,” did not take seriously a threatening letter he had received at the studio.But Mr. Smollett sought to undercut the prosecution’s explanation, testifying that he had refused the studio’s offer of additional security, which would have driven him each day from his home to the set.“I’m a grown man,” Mr. Smollett said. “I don’t need to be driven around like Miss Daisy.”He also supported the defense contention that the brothers attacked him so that he might be scared enough to hire them as his private security. Mr. Smollett said that Abimbola Osundairo was persistent in trying to act as his bodyguard, at times behaving when they went out in ways that reminded him of the “Secret Service.”And Mr. Smollett’s version of what happened on Jan. 25, 2019, just days before the attack, when the prosecution says Mr. Smollett asked Abimbola Osundairo for help “on the low,” was completely different. He was seeking a meeting, not to plan his own assault, but to arrange to get an herbal steroid from Nigeria that helps people lose body fat and is illegal in the United States.“At any point in time did you talk to him about some hoax?” Mr. Smollett’s lawyer, Nenye Uche, asked.“No,” Mr. Smollett replied.During their car ride later, they did not plan the attack, as the prosecution argued, but smoked marijuana, Mr. Smollett said.“We drove around and smoked and that was that,” he testified.Olabinjo Osundairo, at the courthouse, where he testified Thursday that Mr. Smollett had orchestrated the attack.Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated PressAbimbola Osundairo, Olabinjo’s brother, told the court last week that Mr. Smollett was upset that a threatening letter he received had not been taken more seriously.Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated PressMr. Smollett also sought early in his testimony to indicate just how happy he had been with his role on “Empire,” and, when asked directly, said he had no problem with Fox. Instead Mr. Smollett, who is gay, testified that it had been a blessing to win the role of Jamal Lyon, a gay singer-songwriter, that so closely mirrored his identity and to eventually earn $100,000 per episode.“I had never seen a gay man — let alone a gay Black man — portrayed ever,” Mr. Smollett said. “I really, really wanted to do it.”Over the course of the trial, prosecutors have sought to paint a picture of the attack as a bid for publicity, pointing to how, days before the attack, Mr. Smollett had received the letter at the studio for “Empire.” It included a red stick figure hanging from a noose, a homophobic slur and the acronym “MAGA,” said Daniel K. Webb, the special prosecutor in the case, in the courtroom last week.“He devised this fake hate crime to take place so that the ‘Empire’ studio would take this more seriously,” Mr. Webb said, “because this fake hate crime would get media attention.”But the showrunner for “Empire” at the time, Brett Mahoney, testified earlier on Monday that the show had actually taken the letter “very seriously,” and sought to provide Mr. Smollett with additional security.As he began his testimony, Mr. Smollett depicted himself to the jury with a lengthy biographical summary of his career as someone who grew up in a middle-class family of performers, received some work as a child actor, became deeply involved in charity organizations and returned to acting, landing the major role on “Empire.”In January 2019, when the attack was reported, public sympathy for Mr. Smollett was immediate and widespread. But as the police investigation into the report stalled, suspicion grew about Mr. Smollett’s account, though the actor stood by it.Understand the Jussie Smollett TrialCard 1 of 5A staged hate crime? More

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      ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ Review: Nanny Doesn’t Know Best

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      The new family-friendly musical, adapted from the hit movie, ends up cowering in the original film’s shadow.In 1993, a film about an irresponsible father dressing up as a woman to manipulate his way back into his family’s life was a barrel of laughs. A man in a dress? Classic! He does impressions? Even better! He tries to sabotage his wife’s new relationship? Comedy gold!Truly, it was a different time.And that was the main challenge for the stage adaptation of “Mrs. Doubtfire,” a new musical that opened Sunday night at the Stephen Sondheim Theater. With music and lyrics by the brothers Wayne and Karey Kirkpatrick and a book by Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell, “Mrs. Doubtfire” simultaneously tries to replicate an outdated story and update it for the times. But the show only ends up cowering in the original film’s shadow.And speaking of shadows, there is the outsize one of the incomparable Robin Williams. In the film, Williams brought his endearing playfulness to the role of Daniel Hillard, a struggling actor who lacks discipline as a father. When Daniel’s wife divorces him and is granted custody of their three children, he poses as the kindly but firm Scottish nanny Euphegenia Doubtfire in order to spend time with his kids.Rob McClure steps into Mrs. Doubtfire’s sensible shoes in this production. He’s vivacious on the stage, and his impressions, including a hilarious tongue-wagging Gollum, are precious. But the director Jerry Zaks’s ambivalent production tries to have it both ways: The story of a playful man-child with whom we empathize but whose good intentions can’t excuse his machinations. The film pulled it off at the time, primarily thanks to Williams’s charms. McClure’s Daniel, though, is more irritating than entertaining, and his antics — which include hacking into his wife’s email account to sabotage her nanny search — are more creepy than kooky.McClure as the title character, with, from left: Analise Scarpaci, Jake Ryan Flynn, Jenn Gambatese and Avery Sell.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut would Williams have fared much better in 2021, when the toxicity of this male character’s actions would raise alarms?That strain is everywhere in this production, whose 18-month pandemic hiatus coincided with renewed conversations about race, gender and equity.When Daniel asks his gay brother Frank (an amiable Brad Oscar) and brother-in-law Andre (a stylish J. Harrison Ghee) to latex-silicone-and-powder him into womanhood (the impressive makeup and prosthetics design is by Tommy Kurzman), they casually support what seems to be Daniel’s new interest in drag — until they hear his true intentions.Frank and Andre — who get a paper-thin story line about adopting a child, by the way — are very loosely meant to serve as the gay conscience of a decidedly hetero production. So they go along with the scheme, occasionally popping in for some comic relief. In one number, they also get a personal ensemble of male stylists snapping and flicking their wrists, because even the show’s gay stereotypes are dull.Lines from the movie about Mrs. Doubtfire having a penis have been excised, and in a surface-level attempt to make Daniel’s long-suffering wife, Miranda (Jenn Gambatese), a more feminist and sympathetic figure, the show’s creators have made her the owner of a body-positive activewear line called “M Body.” The pseudo-feminist song that she sings during a fashion show, “Shape of Things to Come,” is a painfully punny inspirational poster masquerading as a piece of music.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      At Long Last, Onscreen Portrayals of Lesbian Relationships Are Getting Complex

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      The shift comes after decades of stories that minimized romantic love between women as fruitless, or as some kind of phase.In most parts of the world, to be gay or transgender is to at some point realize that you’ve been taught, to varying degrees, to deny who you are and to feel shame about your desire to love and be loved — to be entitled to a full life. This is true, as well, of queer lives onscreen, where, until very recently, most narratives centered around death, whether it was the trans person too tragic to continue living — either as a result of murder (“Boys Don’t Cry,” 1999) or suicide, a trope that has existed since “Glen or Glenda” (1953), one of the earliest films to highlight transgender issues — or gay men felled by their own murderous impulses (“Cruising,” 1980) and, later on, complications from AIDS, representations of which have regularly treated the disease as a form of punishment.Then there were lesbian characters. They, too, were subjected to countless onscreen deaths, from Tara on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” in 2002 to Poussey on “Orange Is the New Black” in 2016, but queer women have also been disappeared in a different way: For nearly a century, affection between two women has often been depicted as unrequited, predatory, transient or otherwise unserious. Just think of the menacing, lonely Mrs. Danvers in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rebecca” (1940), a famously queer-coded character; or, on a lighter note, Roseanne Barr and Mariel Hemingway on the former’s sitcom in 1994, or Calista Flockhart and Lucy Liu on “Ally McBeal” five years later. All these stories seemed to argue that the ultimate tragedy of lesbianism was that it was a choice, and that smart women, wanting marriage and children, chose otherwise. Such “lesbian kiss episodes,” as they’re derided today, were usually (and unsurprisingly) dreamed up by straight male Hollywood showrunners as a kind of titillation, according to Sarah Kate Ellis, 50, the chief executive officer of GLAAD, who says, “Lesbian storytelling has historically been told through the eyes of men and their experience of that, of their own desire.”Tara (Amber Benson), left, and Willow (Alyson Hannigan) on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”© 20th Century Fox Film Corp./courtesy of Everett CollectionNow, some two decades later, lesbian portrayals onscreen are finally starting to become deeper, more varied and more inclusive, moving beyond the aspirational (mostly rich, mostly white) women who dominated programs like Showtime’s “The L Word,” which debuted in 2004, or Todd Haynes’s 2015 film, “Carol,” based on “The Price of Salt,” Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel of mannered glances, and starring Cate Blanchett as a housewife who must choose between her female love and her daughter.In the past two years, there have been “The Wilds” (2020), Sarah Streicher’s Amazon Prime video series about a group of teenage girls that doesn’t overly conflate coming out with conflict, as well as indie films like Céline Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” (2019) and Miranda July’s “Kajillionaire” (2020), wherein love stories orbit around mutual desire rather than shared sexual frustration. In late 2019, when Showtime rebooted “The L Word,” the show was celebrated by fans for its more diverse cast — and more authentic writing, which didn’t shy away from the realities of menstruation, cunnilingus or seething jealousy. Gone was the tragic lesbian, forced to choose between love and a full life; instead, we got unpredictable, messy, complicated lesbian lives. “The ultimate privilege is being able to do anything we want,” says its 36-year-old showrunner, Marja-Lewis Ryan. “We’re getting closer to being able to have characters who are deeply [flawed] and not have them represent all of us.”The third season of “Master of None” focused on the marriage and relationship between Alicia (Naomi Ackie), left, and Denise (Lena Waithe).© Netflix/courtesy of Everett CollectionAnd what is the point of queer representation if not that? Not just that there’s less death and despair, or that there are happier endings, but that the misery and pathos of life is rendered with more complexity, because everyday life is sometimes miserable, too. “It’s so important to us to have characters [being] weird and crazy,” says the queer writer, producer and actor Lena Waithe, 37, when discussing the BBC thriller “Killing Eve,” soon to air its fourth season, which has thus far subverted the “will they, won’t they” clichés of the past — and, too, the murderous impulses — by layering each episode with chaotic, bizarre sexual tension.Waithe accomplished something similarly complex when, earlier this year, she co-wrote and starred in Season 3 of Netflix’s “Master of None,” a five-episode arc that centered on two women who are selfish, who step out on each other, who watch their dreams crumble but still manage to move forward. After their marriage eventually fractures, they bend, break and then start to heal themselves, offering a radical depiction of queerness that both references decades of downtrodden lesbian narratives and yet somehow still feels hopeful. Making the piece was, as Waithe says, a matter of “life and death,” as much for herself as for the other L.G.B.T.Q. creators it might someday inspire. “We spend our lives trying to fit into a world we don’t want to fit in,” she adds. “We don’t need to.” More