Queer Ultimatums
It’s Pride month in a nation teeming with anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric, legislation, and violence. With 16 states now banning gender-affirming care and 20 banning trans-students from sports, perhaps it makes sense one would want a reprieve from the world and just get their house cleaning, laundry and food prep done with trash tv playing in the background. Or maybe that’s just me!
Last night I chose The Ultimatum: Queer Love, a show with a premise I would never do laundry to the cis-hetero version of. And yet, the shit-or-get-off-the-heteronormative-marriage-pot premise exists. Representation!!! Here we go!
When Love is Blind season 4 came out (shout out Seattle!!!) people fell the fuck in love with Brett and Tiffany. What wasn’t to love about this gorgeous coupling? I swooned for Tiffany from the moment she fell asleep to Brett talking in the pods! I could relate! I want to sleep when most men talk! But Brett is lovely - positive masculinity! People online were raving, “See?!! This is why you should have OLDER people on these shows. Unlike 24-year-olds, 36/37-year-olds are grown-ass and know what they want!” Brett and Tiffany were seemingly intentional, loving and kind. It certainly would make one think these shows would be better off not filling the coffers with 20-somethings.
Then lo and behold enters the QU’s Aussie. Holy fuck, Aussie is 42. Aussie is the same age as I am, only Aussie is brimming (or edited to be brimming) with trauma, triggering, condescending “mates!”, and conversation escape tactics. (Taking a moment to reflect on the absurd and intense living conditions of these shows as perhaps, an amplifier of issues) Maybe toxic habits and untreated trauma gets worse with age??? It was depressing to see someone my age acting this way! But, I have no idea what life must be like to not be able to come out to your family or community. To be the child of first-gen immigrant parents. To be moving through so much confusion and self questioning, while in your 40s, while you’re on a reality show, while you are being edited by a production team supporting (largely?) heteronormative narratives, concepts and imagery. But still!
One of the angriest people I ever met in my life was this guy who ran video for a theater in Los Angeles. In my early 20s’, I ran the soundboard on a weekly kids comedy show; it was both educational and hilarious. (One of the actors eventually went on to become a Cirque performer.) The show ran in the mornings after students would unload from school buses and pile into the theater. I would arrive at 7am to prep the show. This person would already be outside, smoking, and on the phone with his girlfriend, yelling at her. He was always pissed off. And smoking. By 7am. Fun to sit next to in a small booth in the morning hours! Here is the wild thing about him - This motherfucker spent every weekend at Buddhist meditation centers and would go on weeklong silence retreats whenever he had time off. All the fucking meditation and silence, and yet, he was a constant. A constant fucking asshole.
Now Aussie is not an angry white cis-hetero man, but boy did I think about that dude every time Aussie had to pop off the screen “to go meditate.” Humans are weird and traumatized. I wish Aussie went to counseling instead of going on this show. I think Aussie was going through a lot, and maybe none of it needed to be experienced on Netflix? I could say this about multiple people on this show! But - representation!! More queers for reality tv!!! Why should the messiest people only get to be the straights?
The question is begged - What for any of these couples, actually needed to be experienced via Netflix however? I have been in stagnant relationships before but never once was I like - maybe we need a crew to follow us around and record every waking moment of our lives! Perhaps participants should retire the “she’s here for the wrong reasons” bit, because, I don’t know, maybe they all are? Does this show just prove that there are many types of people who will give themselves all the b.s. validation reasons they are on a show, other than just, “I wanted to be on tv”. Lesbians! They are just like us*!
I cannot think of any premise less queer to me than, “marry me now or I’m the fuck out.” It feels rife with dominant status quo and hetero-narratives. For all of the “I have to know you will never leave me and I am your only one Hell Yes!” statements that were regularly thrown about, the closet I could cross over to understanding these people was only upon consideration of how legal marriage/insurance benefits would help cover pregnancy/IVF/childbirth costs. So, maybe Yoly considering Xander over Mal after just 3 weeks makes sense in that light?
Moving on - Netflix could give two flying fucks about queer people. Netflix cares about profit. Monies hunnies, and that alone. I can go back and forth on this all day - representation matters everywhere, so - capitalism be damned(?) - I guess we just need even more trash reality shows for all types of queers? For the culture! But - Will every queer themed show counter balance every trans-bashing show that Netflix produces? Thoughts!!! It was a choice to not have a queer host, but maybe no queer performer wanted that role. I had to look up who Swisher was, as I have never watched “Are you Afraid of the Dark”. According to wiki she’s been on the Hallmark channel, and that seems about right for a person I can forget I ever saw.
How many queer applicants to the show were thrown from the candidate pool because they weren’t the formulaic hetero image of fem/masc binaries? Every couple, minus one, consisted of a high femme in lipstick and cocktail dress with a masc/non-binary other. Lexi and Rea, the sole exception, but clearly Netflix let that slide because Lexi, like me, is repping big-ass Jewish titties and two women in a tight dress is better than one. Hetero framing in practice.
While this show spends time on processing and conversations, it still offers viewers plenty of toxicity and shitty communication. It upholds antiquated ideology that one has to be married in order to “move forward.” It continues the pathway of so much reality tv of the time, where the idea of marriage is seemingly more important than the work and the process of actual partnership.
Does Mildred really think, that as a single parent, getting married means a person is always going to stay? Her lived experience shows that’s just not true. As a single parent myself, it was wild to watch all these queer folx remain so steadfastly focused on this action of getting married, as though it would be the answer to all of their shit.
To have given themselves these intense circumstances and timelines, as though the greater scrutiny would stop them from not listening to each other, or from fighting, or from avoiding intimacy with sex, or whatever each unique couple would defer to. At the end of the day, saying marry me or fuck off now, seems like some straight ass shit. But then, we live in a SCOTUS YOLO world, where Thomas is counting down the days till overturning Obergefell. So what the fuck do I know, maybe all queers gotta get on the marriage and IVF train STAT.
In closing, representation matters, go queers(!) and also, dear god I don’t want a future of shows like this. Or at least - I don’t want to watch them! Writers need to get fucking paid. Support your striking writers. Happy pride all - If you want a feel good story on queer youth joy, check out my article for Parents Magazine - Queer Youth Joy is a Radical Act.
And the random ultimatum things I can’t let go of:
The cameras posted on the ceilings capturing couples having sex under black and white nightime creeper video lights. What tf Netflix. This feels disgusting. Stop it.
Vanessa told Xander they would have their “own separate kids”. Sit with that.
The Netflix editing team for when Mal and Yory back together. Yoly with red lips, then cuts to Mal, cuts to Yory makeup off, and repeats 10 times. Excellent work prod. Team!