Welcome to Critically Queer! I regret to inform you that today’s inaugural double feature is not about a purely escapist gay fantasia, but if arson makes you horny, you’ve come to the right place. Tomorrow, I will go back to a binge of Top Chef and smooth my brain with #1 Chef Top Padma Lakshmi, but right now I invite you to enter the world of literally flaming homosexuals with two installments of queer love burning down the house – one from 1983, and one from our dear departed friend 2020. What can I say? An angry dyke is forever.
“The world is burning” is a phrase common, and devoid enough of pinpointing a specific catastrophe, that it seems to be a catch-all introduction to almost anything published in a virtual space. I find it most often on social media, where the personal is business, and business is superficially, often laughably aiming for political relatability.
“Well, the world is burning, but…” I took a nice walk, and admired the trees around me! Remember to breathe deep and embrace your loved ones, and buy them something if you can’t embrace them in person! “Everything is burning, so...” here’s a piece of art/a meal/a commendable aesthetic decision I made, followed by a graphic I designed after reading a few other graphics made by those who have read slightly more than I have. “Remember the dog in the ‘this is fine’ comic? That’s me right now, and…” here’s a podcast/30 day yoga challenge/newsletter (gotcha) to which you can subscribe.
I get it! The moral imperatives to do something, to not be seen as a so-called “armchair activist,” but also to show that you (or your brand) are not forgetting what’s truly important in this world can all combine to mean two things: no one can authentically live online, and in one way or another, invoking or evading bad news means we’re still engaging in apps literally designed to ruin our health even as we’re attempting to soothe it.
In the first edition of this yet-to-find-its-legs newsletter, however, I offer an alternative to both pure fantasizing, and convenient sidestepping: fully indulging in the fictional depictions of political chaos devised by queer women who are mad as hell, and truly refuse to take it any more.
The first picks for this gay (but not always having a good time) newsletter are those in which this allusion of burning the world are literal - and maybe that’s why they feel so good. Nothing is vague or allegorical. Nothing is even remotely motivated by passive relatability - these dykes are setting shit on fire, and they’re not pretending that your purchase into their ideologies means you’ll be anything close to fine. The featured queer women in Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames (1983), and Patricia Vidal Delgado’s La Leyenda Negra (2020) are literally lobbing matches, bombs, and cans of spray paint, aiming to strategically destroy, rather than evade, that which seeks to consume them.
Born In Flames - Available to stream on the Criterion Channel, Kanopy, First Run Features, iTunes, and Scamazon Prime
If you prefer to watch a movie before reading any critical analysis/potential spoiler, I’ll make my argument here: this shit rules. If you read no further, please be warned that the film contains themes of sexual violence, and (fake) images of Black death.
Born in Flames is a mockumentary-styled, slightly sci-fi, dystopian collage which chronicles an uprising of the fictional Women’s Army against the hypocrisies of the ruling party ten years after the “Social Democratic War of Revolution.” After a decade of glorious “socialism,” the new government is showing the same hands of chauvinism, racism, and working class suppression as the old one - and some women are fed up. The government has decided that their pilot programs of affirmative action for women in the workplace don’t cater enough to men’s feelings, and instead of bolstering social programs to combat the relentless street harassment of women or rates of joblessness, they’ve instead decided to reverse course. Surprise surprise, women are now being offered wages for housework.
Partly told through the voices of the inept FBI agents assigned to monitor what is first classified as a mostly harmless situation, Born in Flames focuses on the power of community, underground media, afro-futurist dreaming, and direct action to explosively change the world. You’d be hard-pressed to call it a traditionally inspirational tale, because it doesn’t focus on the sort of triumphant feelings or endings espoused by more straightforward (and straight) genres, but, in my humble opinion, the feelings invoked by its mayhem and lesbian vigilantism are hugely appealing.
Hell yeah to the dycicles on bicycles hungrily circling would-be harassers, chasing them off with whistles and pure force of numbers. Fucking yep to the members of the Army who swagger up to a creep on a train, and stop his space-invasive leer short. And in this moment of only being connected to my community through FaceTime or the briefest outdoor meetups, a sobbing yee-haw for the tight knit, intergenerational bonds among queer women with the strongest of opinions, duking it out over whether they should arm themselves, how they can best support their communities, and what they want their collective futures to be. The bond between weathered organizer Zella Wylie (civil rights activist Florynce Kennedy) and upstart Adelaide Norris (Jean Satterfield) is an especially gratifying connection to see onscreen.
All of this anarchic camaraderie lives so far from the narrative films or television we see today in which one lesbian (or one lesbian couple) is somehow placed among a community of straight friends and family, or one token queer person of color takes up residence in a group of white lesbians. Instead, the pre-cursor to the New Queer Cinema of the ‘90s is a rip-roaring showcase of a “futuristic” New York City queer scene that is home to dueling lesbian feminist radio stations, and Black queer women leading the charge in social and political revolution. As a bonus, it makes a point to ridicule the ego of white academics espousing out of touch, regime-defending beliefs in the Socialist Youth Review - among them Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow in her first credited acting role. As is occasionally the case, the supposed otherworldliness of an alternate universe captures realities with more pointed commentary than contemporary, realistic fiction.
As it is as far from a Hollywood film as one might get, while still being a basically comprehensible narrative, Born in Flames can feel a little hard to watch. The film features a bevy of first time and non-professional actors being shot with a very limited script, and a budget of about $200 at a time over a period of five years - a true “guerilla style” that contributes to some of its scenes needing a rewind if one wants to fully grasp a chronological sequence of events. But what Hollywood might consider a failure of legibility, or of low “production value,” (a misnomer when the value of the work is so high on the dykes-blowing-things-up scale) adds to the glee of Borden’s punk, narrative. The shots are still smart, the humor is truthful and cutting, and the story remains meaty and original. If Red Krayola’s rhythmically rattling theme song were to play over a glossy, Ocean’s 8-style lineup of glamorous crime lordesses scheming and sniping stylishly in their massive warehouse lair, well, it wouldn’t be Born in Flames.
La Leyenda Negra - Available to stream on HBO Max, HBO Latino, and Premium Hulu
Baby dykes fighting fascism with the power of their love! If that can’t persuade you to watch it on HBO Max immediately, then I guess you should read on.
La Leyenda Negra is not nearly so experimental in form as Born in Flames, which is part of what makes its commitment to balancing politics and romance so impressive. The leanly powerful coming of age drama depicts the evolving relationship between the brilliant, rebellious and soon-to-be-undocumented Salvadoran-born Aleteia (Monica Betancourt), and the soft-spoken but determined Mexican American Rosarito (Kailei Lopez) as they navigate schoolyard bullies, quinceñeras, and the looming presence of ICE in East Los Angeles. The story’s pairing of polar opposites, with Rosarito’s popular girl-next-door taking an interest in the obviously out-of-place and out-of-patience Aleteia, sparks a delightful, genuine chemistry that stays the beating heart of the film.
From its first scene – Rosarito trying not to ogle the butts of her friends in a slow-mo But I’m A Cheerleader-reminiscent Dance Dance Revolution sequence – La Leyenda captures the interiority of queer teenagerdom with remarkable kindness, nonchalance, and sincerity. This empathy continues throughout, with first time feature filmmaker Patricia Vidal Delgado doing the impressive job of matching wider political activism to interpersonal activism, making the stance that the way characters treat each other is inextricable from their larger socio-political awareness. Aleteia, fueled by a sometimes stilted but mostly explosive first time performance from Betancourt, can’t separate her fly by night anarchy from her personal life, and neither, Delgado alleges, should anyone else.
Everything about the film is hyper relevant to its Los Angeles setting and zeitgeist, including its themes of surveillance (LA has one of the most intense police drone and helicopter surveillance programs in the country), the whitewashing built into public education, and the dehumanization that comes with racist nullifications of visa programs and immigration status. The brilliance of the film is in never watering these themes down, and still allowing an organic, sweet story of shy but promisingly triumphant young queer love to blossom.
Science Fiction, Double Feature
It may be fairly obvious why I chose these films as a double feature. Lol we get it, Shayna, you like it when queer women set things on fire. Yes! Of course I do! But I’d like to take a moment to discuss two scenes from each film that, in my mind, make them girlfriends who are both inexplicably able to kill the cockroach (I’ve never seen it happen, but it could).
In one of Born In Flames’ surveillance montages, we get a brief glimpse of a Women’s Army organizer, (played by current palmist and grief counselor Hillary Hurst) naked in bed with a lover. They’re not making out (sad). The organizer is instead talking her lover’s ear off (hilarious), no doubt about some hot topic or philosophy of the week making the rounds in the Army’s discussion circles. The shot is scarcely longer than a few seconds, but an entire story is told through body language, animated facial expression and gesture, and set design. It’s a moment of comfort and intimacy amidst the chaos, in which strategy and stress was put down for an instant to experience connection – but then the wheels start turning once again.
A scene in La Leyenda Negra (my favorite aside from its ending shot) uses similar romance-during-wartime conventions. Rosarito has somehow convinced Aleteia to join her for a neighborhood quinceñera, and Aleteia is an uncharacteristically shy, nervous wreck upon realizing she has nothing to wear. This prompts - what else - a makeover scene, in which Rosarito helps Aleteia with the heretofore foreign substance of makeup, and one can practically hear the little “ping” of hearts popping into both their eyes.
As they sit on the bed, framed against Aleteia’s “respeta mi existencia o espera resistencia” stencils, so grows a love intertwined with keeping each other safe. While burning things down is what invokes a sort of delirious glee (soon these monuments to capital, slavery, and order will be nothing but cinders!), this love, care, and moment of respite is what powers the ability to create change.
Based on my own wistfulness, I imagine that Aleteia and Rosarito, solitary as they appear during their film’s short runtime, eventually find a community that includes the dykes of the Women’s Army. Maybe Aleteia, with her early experience, eventually runs a chapter.
I’ve found it near impossible to have the stomach for destructive event after event, and connected, casual cruelty after cruelty - especially when I am unable to ground myself within community, however small that might be. I’m tired, and sad, and I often feel so numb that I want to turn my brain to sleep mode, but these films and their incensed, determined queers help me to safely, cathartically access anger. I can still spiritually be in community with those that I miss, across timelines and alternate universes. When queer women light a match, it feels so good to help them throw it.
For more reading on the direct feminist action drawn on by Born in Flames, try this foundational 1977 statement from the Black feminist Combahee River Collective.
For further La Leyenda Negra reading, here’s a beautiful interview with Patricia Vidal Delgado on how she found and bonded with first-time actor Monica Betancourt.
Thank you for reading Critically Queer! Tune in next time for more on the girls and gays that make movies worth watching.