POSE’ Tells the Stories of the LGBTQ+ Subculture We Need to Hear

Those who watched POSE know it was a breakthrough series that shook many established social schemes and structures, especially those related to the LGBTQ+ world, HIV, and the Latino and Afro communities in the United States. The series, which lasted three seasons, told different stories of NYC’s underground culture in the 80s.

The contribution of this series created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Steven Canals has been so important that Argentine professor Camila Roccatagliata wrote an extensive 30-page article in which she focuses on the reflection about the ways that “POSE questions the hegemonic mechanisms that set up the gender and identity order within the U.S. society by the end of the 80s during Ronald Reagan government.”

She continues: “These deconstructive ways and gestures shake the foundation over which the cis-heteronormative matrix sustains itself, and it also proposes a counter-sexual society, in which desire is released (at least it tries to) out of the strictest socio-cultural ties limiting it. Also, it analyzed the HIV-Aids representation in the series, and how it may be read as a denouncement of neoconservative and neoliberal policies, which put a blind eye on the pandemic and submitted thousands of lives to the most disastrous abandonment and oblivion.”

Photo Credit: Netflix

In this sense, POSE was just as educational as it was entertaining. Starring extravagant characters and activists from the LGBTQ collective, it addresses, among its themes, how HIV has affected them in different aspects, not just health. During the time the series took place, the church declared that the only way not to contract HIV was to avoid sexual intercourse. By doing so, they made the disease invisible and propagated misinformation about a group whose members, at that time, were dying.

To date, it has been the television series with the largest number of transgender actresses in history. Even Janet Mock, a black trans woman, activist, and TV host, participated in an episode. That was how far this series went to vindicate a culture that has been marginalized for decades.

POSE is a testimony that aims to sensitize society by sharing a humanized story told by the community itself. It was characterized by glitter, dance, and glamour, but also by narrating how members of the LGBTQ+ community survived. This is a valuable contribution to the fight against intolerance and discrimination that unfortunately still exists in various parts of the world.

POSE, the series

Photo Credit: Netflix

As we mentioned, POSE is an American drama television series about the New York City African-American and Latino LGBTQ+ and gender-nonconforming cultural scene in the 1980s and up to the late 1990s. It featured dancers and models competing for trophies and recognition inside the depths of this underground culture, and who support each other in a network of chosen families known as “Houses.”

The series premiered on June 3rd, 2018, on FX and stars MJ Rodriguez, Dominique Jackson, Billy Porter, Indya Moore, Evan Peters, Kate Mara, James Van Der Beek, Ryan Jamaal Swain, Charlayne Woodard, Hailie Sahar, Angelica Ross, Angel Bismark Curiel, Dyllón Burnside, and Sandra Bernhard.

Photo Credit: Netflix

The first season was met with critical acclaim and subsequently received numerous award nominations, including the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series–Drama and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series for Billy Porter. In 2019, Porter received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, the first openly gay black man to be nominated for and win in an Emmy lead acting category. The series was nominated for Outstanding Drama Series at the same ceremony.