As a community,” said Darryl Stephens, who played Noah Nicholson on Noah’s Arc. “I think Noah’s Arc was important because it gave Black men permission to be vulnerable with one another. The show aired on Logo for two seasons until it was abruptly cancelled.
#Black gay movies 2021 series#
It was then picked up by Logo as the network’s first scripted series in 2005. Noah’s Arc, which was created by Patrik Ian Polk, initially started as a web series, with the one-hour pilot episode being independently produced by Polk and released in 2004 online. It remains the only scripted series from a major network to center a cast of Black gay characters. The groundbreaking show was the first scripted series to feature an all-Black gay ensemble cast and storylines that centered Black gay experiences.
#Black gay movies 2021 tv#
The Logo series Noah’s Arc is an essential piece of Black gay TV history and regularly referenced example of the long-lasting influence of these Black queer productions. “This process of demarginalization can help increase appreciation for cultural differences and help revise the terms of engagement for Black queer stories to be able to proliferate and flourish in the broader society.”īut in the absence of narratives about Black gay couples on major entertainment platforms, instead independent TV shows, web series and movies have filled this representation gap over the past two decades. And what we need, culturally, are more voices that amplify the social significance of life on the margins. “Sadly, what this amounts to in the dominant industry is watching works that predominantly allow us to move through the world from the subject position of a straight white man. These art forms allow us to occupy the subject position of another person,” Dr Artel Great, Black cinema historian and endowed chair in African-American cinema studies at San Francisco State University School of Cinema, told the Guardian. “One of the inherent powers of film and television productions is it allows for the expansion of broader horizons. But typically Black gay characters and their relationships are relegated to B storylines, if they receive any true development or inclusion in a script at all. Omar Little on The Wire also had two Black boyfriends during the series’ duration from 2002 to 2008. FX’s Pose featured two Black gay couples during its three seasons. There are a handful of productions that have centered Black gay couples – like the Academy Award-winning film Moonlight, which was written by the Black gay screenwriter Tarell Alvin McCraney and directed by Barry Jenkins. Photograph: © Copyright 2002-2008 Home Box Office Inc. In Glaad’s most recent studio responsibility index, only two Black LGBTQ+ characters were found in a year’s worth of wide-releasing movies.Įrnest Waddell and Michael K Williams in The Wire.
![black gay movies 2021 black gay movies 2021](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/f4/50/c4/f450c4ea939d58bce1421bdad110dbbc.jpg)
While on film, just Love Simon comes to mind. More regularly, Black gay characters are paired with non-Black partners, with the most prominent pairings made of Black and white or Black and Latino partners.Įxamples of this casting norm include Empire, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Brookyn Nine-Nine, True Bloods and the newly added animated couple in the upcoming reboot of The Proud Family. Everywhere,” Moore wrote in his reply to the comment, a statement easily supported by a quick assessment of the makeup of gay couples across both TV shows and films being produced by major studios and networks.īlack gay male couples remain a rare occurrence across Hollywood TV and film productions. “I’m tired of these people not showing us Black couples. But in a response to a comment on the post shortly after it went live, Moore revealed that his photo challenge had an even deeper motivation behind it – to call out the lack of visibility of Black couples across TV, film and other forms of media.