Warning: AJ and the Queen spoilers
GLAAD publish a report every year
which forecasts the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and/or queer (LGBTQ)
characters that are expected to be scripted on primetime programming in the
television season. In 2019/20, 90 out of 879 (10.2%) series are expected to
involve regular characters who identify as LGBTQ. GLAAD state that this is the
highest percentage of LGBTQ regular characters they have counted since they
started forecasting 24 years ago. Similarly, this is an increase from last
years 8.8%. In fact, GLAAD called upon networks to ensure that 10% of
characters in primetime series were LGBTQ by 2020 which shows that networks
have achieved and slightly exceeded this.
AJ and the Queen, a Netflix
original, is one of these series in which the two protagonists AJ and Robert
both demonstrate that they identify as LGBTQ. Robert, stage name Ruby Red, is a
drag queen who states on the programme that he is a gay man but adopts she/her
pronouns when in drag. Robert/Ruby’s genders are straightforward and binary. However,
AJ seems to not fit into the binary view of gender. We begin the programme
believing that AJ is a “little boy” who wears a hat, a white vest and hustles
people for money to live. Later, AJ’s hat is knocked off and Robert is
surprised by AJ’s long curly hair which leads him to exclaim that she is, in
fact, a girl. AJ adamantly tells Robert that she is not a girl and does not
want to be a girl. As a result, Robert assumes that AJ wants to identify as a
boy. However, AJ later refutes this and claims that she never said she wanted
to be a boy, but rather she just didn’t want to be a girl. Although Robert is a
member of the LGBTQ+ community, this could have been used by the show’s writers
to juxtapose the conflicting generational views of gender between Robert’s and
AJ’s age group. his binary ideas of
gender display a juxtaposition between Robert’s generation and AJ’s age group.
Moving away from the main characters,
the relationship between gender and body is explored within other side
characters. For example, in one episode AJ and Robert meet a lady owns a garage
with her husband: she keeps the books and the husband fixes the vehicles. We
find out that when she was younger, she entered wet t-shirt contests and won
every single one due to her “beautiful boobs”. However, she then reveals that
she had a double mastectomy and no longer has these “beautiful boobs”. Later, AJ
gives the lady Robert’s fake 'boobs' which he uses to win a wet t-shirt contest
whilst in drag as Ruby and appears to be ‘passing’ [a term used to describe an
individual looking fully like the gender they are dressed up as] as a woman.
The lady rejects these boobs and says that she feels just as beautiful, as
womanly and like herself without them. They are given to the lady’s husband as
he appears to miss them more than she does.
Since finishing AJ and the Queen,
and sadly having recently heard the news that they are not renewing the
programme for a second series, I have started watching more programmes with
LGBTQ main characters. I’m currently on episode 1 of Pose, set in the late
1980s, which already seems to centre around the repression of the LGBTQ
community in New York, the ball culture, and the impact of HIV. Perhaps this
will make for another blog post exploring gender, health and even cities.
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