The Category Is: Representation Realness

Pose is a show (see also: a work of art) about the underground ball culture in New York City. It tracks the experiences of house mothers and elders of the community, who try to help the young navigate the AIDS epidemic and inevitable loss. It’s the story of transgender and gay POC, played by transgender and gay POC. And for this act alone, it is revolutionary.

Pose serves the audience representation. The show gives music, it gives face, it gives costumes. And most importantly, it gives substance. When will these major production companies like Netflix realise that this authentic representation of groups in society so often pushed to the side, is what the audience wants? When will they stop creating the same stale reboots, with their token gay mothers, or so called ‘blind casting’? Where are the shows telling the stories of those who haven’t been able to make their voices heard? Why are we funding the same cast, the same plot, the same soundtrack, in everything we watch?

We don’t want your High School Musical or Gossip Girl reboots. We don’t want your all female rewrites of Ghostbusters, What Men Want, or The Hustle. Or rather: we don’t want them if they’re at the cost of otherwise silenced perspectives. 

We want representation. We want new stories about POC and LGBTQIA+ communities. We want shows which navigate disabled friendships and portray the suffocating grip of the patriarchy. We want to watch plot lines unfold that are about more than cis, white, able bodied relationships. 

We want representation.