Written by Danielle Castillo
Last January, MJ Rodriguez made history by being the first transgender actor to win a Golden Globe. She took home the best actress award for her role as the lead in Pose. Ryan Murphy’s musical-dance series features New York City’s Latino and African American LGBTQ ballroom culture in the ’80s. However, Pose isn’t just all glam and glory, like how people seem to view Ballroom culture merely as a form of entertainment. The show is more than the fashion extravaganza, the trendy “Vogue” moves, or the buoyant opening line “The category is”.
Pose is history --- the longing for acceptance, the emphasis of struggle, and the call for right representation. Pose, most importantly, yields the truth about HIV AIDS struggle during the ’80s.
The show already proclaims, and most importantly, embodies its truths, holding the largest cast of transgender actors and creative staff. Not only queer, but these actors are also people of color.
MJ Rodriguez, who plays as Blanca Evangelista, portrays an HIV positive character who decided to leave Elektra Abundance’s (Dominique Jackson) House of Abundance to form a house of her own. Blanca soon recruits Damon (Ryan Jamaal Swain), a 17-year-old who gets kicked out of his home after his parents discover his sexuality. The House of Evangelista soon started to grow as Angel (Indya Moore) a sex worker and dancer, Lil Papi (Angel Bismarck Curiel), and Ricky (Dyllón Burnside) were recruited by Blanca. With help from Pray Tell (Billy Ray Porter), the ball’s emcee and the Evangelistas’ usual fashion designer, the balls are facilitated with chosen categories for each House to compete.
Pose defines Houses not only as a team but also as a family. Like how Pray Tell puts it: “Houses are homes to all the little boys and girls who never had one, and they keep coming everyday just as sure as the sun rises.”
Perhaps what stands out the most is the way the lives of queer, trans people of color in America are handled and depicted in this show. Pose has mastered the balance of sharing the violence these individuals go through on a regular basis, and doing this while understanding how vital it is to also underline the compassion and love that is central within these communities.
Blanca provides food, shelter, and support for what they call “children” of the House. Her recruits call her “Mother”, and Blanca guides her children through situations such as Angel’s relationship with her white cis male lover Stan Bowes (Evan Peters), Ricky and Damon discovering the importance of Safe Sex during the HIV/AIDS crisis, and Lil Papi’s struggle for family and drug dealing. The series also displays Elektra’s wrestling with having gender-confirmation surgery, Pray Tell’s need for love and affection despite being HIV positive, and what it means to be “real” in a world that fears them. These circumstances introduced in the first season are carried so gracefully all the way to the end.
The series highlights the subculture that has developed over the years. It demands the attention of those who have been continually undermining the oppressed LGBTQ community. Pose features Ballroom culture as a platform for subversion which claims social spaces from which the diverse catwalking combatants, gay and transgender, and black and Hispanic have been excluded. ”Live, Work, Pose”, isn’t just a catchy ritual phrase that starts each episode in the series. To live is to go through discrimination and hate almost every day of their lives. To work is to build a future in a world that denies their access to opportunities. To pose it is to display the counterculture that defies gender roles and asserts their own self-expression, and how Elektra says: “How lucky are we? We create ourselves.”
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