Rocketman vs Renault
A few weeks ago, Jeremy and I sat down to watch Rocketman.
And right before we popped the DVD (yes, DVD) in, I said, “Please be gay.” We’d watched Bohemian Rhapsody a couple of months earlier and were very disappointed in how pan to the window the queerness in that movie was. I love Rami Malek, but he seemed uncomfortable with the idea. And the screenwriters didn’t help, what with the heavy focus on Freddie Mercury’s female partner and the most passing of passing illusions (until the end credit “where are they now” moment) to his relationship with Jim Hutton. It was painful. My parents loved it. Both can exist on the same plane.**
Rocketman was very gay. Thank god. But it also wasn’t a great movie. Unlike Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman chose to share almost an entire life, cramming way too much information into a two hour bite. Don’t get me wrong, Taron Edgerton has an astonishingly incredible voice. And I will be listening to the cast recording way too much, fucking up my Spotify algorithm in the most delightful way. But the entire movie felt like a Broadway jukebox musical (not a compliment), and then a series of music videos (what?), and then a flashback to Across the Universe. (Ouch.) And while I believe Elton John, the producer and most likely final say in Rocketman the jukebox-video-of-a-Taymor. While I know that his memories of the first 30-ish years of his life are probably pretty shitty to put it lightly, I do wish we were able to spend more time with his joyful queer years and a little less time with the abusive manager who dominated his sexual experience in this version of events.
Like, I literally cheered when Edgerton kissed a member of the band he was playing backup for. I cheered for one minute in a 120 minute movie. Because every other moment of queer love wasn’t love at all. It was manipulation and pain and power and drowning in a literal swimming pool. And maybe that’s how it actually happened! I don’t know Sir Elton John personally. I haven’t even read his memoir yet. But it made me sad to see this reversion to old ideas, to sit in a movie that on the surface is so colorfully queer — but upon closer inspection is a slow burn of abuse.
Who would have thought my new favorite queer epic would come to me just days later.
Have you seen the new Renault ad that’s truly just a short film with product placement? Sure, it has some of the awful stereotypes that I still hate to see in mainstream media. (When her father finds the letters? That completely wrecked me and I believed it, but I hate to see homophobia as an obstacle. I can’t wait until we’re past that.) And I know there are a million people joking on Twitter that this should have been a Subaru ad, but hey I don’t see any queer couples in the five million Subaru ads I’ve seen in my lifetime.*** But I watch one Renault ad and it’s the gayest most beautiful thing ever?
The day the ad came out, Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg tweeted that she would watch a TV show based on the car commercial.
I would too. I think that a lot of people would. But here’s the thing: there aren’t any networks giving heartwarming, tear jerking, queer television dramas the green light. There’s no gay This is Us. And do not come after me saying that Modern Family counts. I’m convinced the gay couple in that show is the butt of the joke, joining the ranks with the young stepmom and bumbling dad for one-dimensional cheap laughs.
The story that this Renault ad follows isn’t a new one. But it feels new, and that’s what’s important.
So what do we do? Keep sneaking queer stories into advertisements until we roll our eyes because there are just too many? Or do we keep creating new stories — wonderful stories that don’t have homophobia as a conflict, stories that don’t require abuse to move the plot forward, stories with some hope because for so long everyone who fell in love died?
Or maybe the answer is all of the above. I’m okay with that.
**When I was in high school, I exclusively listened to three bands: Queen, Elton John, and The Beatles. This was a choice that I made on my own, listening to CDs on a discman as I wore my boys’ cargo pants and Dickies jacket. No one thought to say, “Hey, Danielle. Let’s have a conversation about LGBT issues.” We only knew those four letters. And no one wanted to talk about them.
***After reading this blog post, my friend Sara, always the dramaturg, always the marketing genius, immediately sent me this article in The Atlantic that points out that lesbians driving Subarus isn’t just a stereotype, it’s a 20-year-old marketing campaign. Woah.