This June, a comic cast of “allies” has emerged to pay tribute to Pride, many at the site of Stonewall itself. Each is more menacing than the last: famous white woman Taylor Swift, serial hair-sniffer Joe Biden, the NSA, and even ICE. Swift and Biden’s public relations cameos at the Stonewall Inn confused the movement with the place that happened to spark an uprising. These lip service homages smear the significance of Stonewall and other acts of insurgency that continue to serve as pillars of trans and queer liberation.
While the denunciation of bigots in this video may be welcome to most, the form of it is profoundly unsettling. The ugliness of these hillbilly fascists is absolute, with no glint of even the Diane Arbus kind of amusement, let alone the John Waters kind, to alleviate the sense of revulsion; it’s not fun or silly, like everything in the rest of the video. There’s no immediate threat of violence or even the slightest interaction with the gross hate-yokels—the fun, beautiful gay people just ignore them effortlessly, as they sunbathe in their sunglasses and adorable togs. Those lowlife can scream all they want! They will forever be entirely beneath the notice of the Beautiful People.