What was I expecting of a 44 minutes long YT video showing "Bad Bi Representation"? Not sure but I definitely got muuuch more than I could have wished for!❤️ I love the analysis of what queer representation is, what's considered "good" and "bad" representation, and why the "good" ones are so f* boring while "bad" ones are the best stories, and why bisexual representation is one of the most difficult one to make... And also it set my interest on Desiree Akhavan:
(...) Lucky for me, Akhavan's work is in direct opposition to squeaky clean "gaystreaming". She is what scholar Maria San Filippo calls a "bad queer" filmmaker. She's not interested in creating characters that will convince you that "bisexuals are good, actually". Rather she portrays bisexuals that embody all the dreaded stereotypes and ask the questions you're not allowed to ask. This is the opposite of the Hollywood sanitised bisexuals.
Some quotes:
(...) They're not love stories, they're break up stories. "Appreciate Behavior" is non chronological and the first scene mirrors the last, telling us that all of these ideas about life milestones, whether gay or straight, are fake. It's not about your carrier, or coming out or getting married. Life is an ongoing journey in which you cannot be defined by the standarts others set for you
But I love the "bad queers"! They reclaim artistic freedom and create space for self-reflexive humour. They're not laughing at the LGBT community, they're laughing with the LGBT community, from within the community, from a deep understanding of how ridiculous our politics and interactions can be. They reject the impreative to write relentlessly positive role models in favour of flawed and human figures. And in a way, a bisexual perspective is inherently a "bad queer" perspective which will often clash with what GPAAD and Twitter think queer media should be. That's the challenge in bisexual strytelling: if it's honest, it will make some people cranky.
(...) So really, publicly owned broadcasting is the only way these alternative bi stories get made. And who wants to see a story about explicitly bi Iranian woman? Maybe no one who isn't bi will ever really want to see bisexual stories that aren't "gaystreamed". But that's the point: there are some minorities whose experiences can't be mainstreamed (and I'm not just talking about bisexuals here), and there are undoubtedly some stories which can never be told if we depend on consumerism of art. We need broadcasters like Channel 4 in order to tell those stories.