Politics of media consumption & comparing two queer American literature class syllabuses

Happy pride month! The hot takes for this episode feature a very belated discussion on the Matty Healy x Taylor Swift controversy, our response to a listener's questioning of their own identity as a lesbian, and offering advice on reading difficult texts— basically how to read theory!!! We also discuss our perspectives as POC on the constant presence of white people's racism, with Renaissance's unique view as someone growing up surrounded by white family members. In response to another hot take, we discuss (in the vein of Taylor's dalliances with Matty Healy) the ethics of consuming problematic artists’ art— especially as it relates pop music and the film industry and how much whose art you consume reflects your politics. When Woody Allen gets brought up, Sunny reads an excerpt from the novel Post-traumatic by Chantal V. Johnson that features a conversation at a dinner party about discourse surrounding consuming the art of known abusers and rapists. For the shared media analysis portion of this episode, we list and discuss every piece of media present in our queer American literature syllabi, ranging from Willa Cather to Carmen Maria Machado, while also discussing pieces of media such as Audre Lorde's essay collection Sister Outsider, the documentary on depicting transness in Hollywood called Disclosure, and much much more. Michael Bronski's A Queer History of the United States made up many of Sunny's assigned readings for class, and (spoiler alert!!!) very bad lectures and discussions were had in Renaissance's class. At the end of the episode, Renaissance recommends the early 2000s lesbian rom-com Kissing Jessica Stein (2001), and Sunny jointly recommends the film Daisies (1966) and the Jen Beagin novel Big Swiss. Thanks for joining us for this episode! You can find us on Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, Substack, Tik Tok, and Letterboxd if you want to connect! Send your hot takes to [email protected] and support us on Patreon for bonus content and early access: https://www.patreon.com/TheLavenderMenace