Another week, another relentless news cycle. There’s a lot going on out there, so it’s understandable if you haven’t been able to keep up with it all.
If you’re looking to catch up on what you might’ve missed, “The Buzz” is here with your weekly update on what’s happening in the world of LGBTQ2S+ culture. This week, we’re taking a look at some Disney drama, some big tour announcements and another trans Drag Race coming out.
Here’s what you missed this week in queer and trans pop culture.
→Disney executives say that even though the company continues to give piles of money to the politicians behind Flordia’s divisive “Don’t Say Gay” bill, the house of mouse still wants everyone to know that it supports queer and trans people.
As reported by Variety, CEO Bob Chapek sent a company-wide memo on Monday expressing Disney’s “unwavering commitment to the LGBTQ+ community.” The memo came in the wake of the Orlando Sentinel reporting that Disney had donated money to every single Florida politician behind the bill, which essentially bans any discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in schools.
Disney employees have openly expressed outrage at the company’s political donations.
In the March 7 memo, Chapek did not explicitly denounce the bill, instead focusing on praising Disney’s pro-LGBTQ2S+ efforts and clarifying that the donations did not come because of the bill itself.
“While we have not given money to any politician based on this issue, we have contributed to both Republican and Democrat legislators who have subsequently taken positions on both sides of the legislation,” he wrote.
“I believe the biggest impact we can have in creating a more inclusive world is through the inspiring content we produce, the welcoming culture we create here and the diverse community organizations we support, including those representing the LGBTQ+ community,” the statement read.
Admittedly, the high-profile, inspiring content in Disney’s big-budget movies in recent years has mostly consisted of fleeting glimpses of background characters who might be gay, Lena Waithe as an ogre getting one line about her wife and Josh Gad doing whatever he was doing in the live-action Beauty and the Beast (which even he admitted “didn’t go far enough”).
In his memo, Chapek said company executives would be “reassessing” advocacy strategies, including corporate giving, going forward.
→Also on the topic, Kate McKinnon took on the bill on Saturday Night Live by saying “gay” a bunch of times.
→Michaela Jaé Rodriguez is one of Time magazine’s Women of the Year!
→Rodriguez was also in conversation with Beanie Feldstein for the cover of this month’s The Cut about Feldstein’s upcoming turn in Funny Girl.
“I just came out of the womb with jazz hands. I just wanted to be onstage since I was born,” Feldstein said.
→Weepy gays, prepare yourselves: Phoebe Bridgers is touring across North America and Europe later this year. I for one plan to scream out all of my feelings from the past few years in one cathartic night.
→And if you’re a different brand of gay, Lady Gaga is finally taking us to Chromatica with the Chromatica Ball tour, kicking off around the world later this year.
→Sweet birthday babies rejoice! Russian Doll is coming back to Netflix for its second season in April.
→Zoë Kravitz says her version of Catwoman in the new The Batman is bisexual, or at least “that’s definitely the way [she] interpreted it.”
But after watching the film, a lot of fans pointed out that interpretation and actually being explicit about it are very different things.
“The clues that Selina is bi are buried so deep in the subtext you need a spotlight as bright as the bat signal to find them,” Gabriella Geisinger wrote for Digital Spy.
It’s time to remember that Catwoman’s been bi plenty of times in the comics—and it seems the screen adaptations still have some catching up to do.
→Saturday Night Live’s Bowen Yang and comedian Joel Kim Booster (alongside of coterie of other queer icons, including Margaret Cho) are set to star in Fire Island this summer, a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice written by Booster and set in the gay social circles of the eponymous Fire Island.
This week, Vanity Fair dropped a series of first-look images of the film, which premieres June 3 on Hulu.
→WNBA star and outspoken queer advocate Brittney Griner has been detained in Russia after officials allegedly found drug paraphenelia in her luggage.
“Griner has the WNBA’s full support and our main priority is her swift and safe return to the United States,” the WNBA said in a statement this week.
→Here I was thinking we got the last of the “Drag Race contestants coming out as trans” with Jasmine Kennedie’s coming out a few weeks ago. Not so! While Season 14’s Willow Pill was previously openly non-binary, this week she opened up on social media about being trans-feminine and pursuing medical transition.
She also spoke candidly about medical PTSD and navigating transition as a person with chronic illness.
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