[quote] Also, some fantasy is good, I don't want to watch these characters experiencing relentless misery. We found joy under Trump and these people also found joy during McCarthy's witch hunts.
I disagree.
If you're going to tell a story about the hardships gay people experienced under McCarthyism, then tell the truth.
Show the actual hardships, like they did in the lesbian story. Where one ratted out the other, even though they were deeply in love. Now that was heartbreaking, and that was truthful.
But to show some black trans performers (one F2M and one M2F, naturally) singing in a white club, and then the M2F trans coming out to the front of the club to help her boyfriend and then cursing out the white bouncer at the front door? And the black reporter fighting with the white bouncer at the front door?
No, that would not have happened. The real truth is that the black performer would have stayed at the back of the house (like Tina Turner and Aretha Franklin did when they were on the road) and shut his/her mouth.
And the black reporter would have been rejected, and then walked away quietly, probably cursing under his breath.
I don't know why the writers are not afraid to show the hurt and pain experienced by white characters, but with black characters, they have to use kid gloves and always make them out to be some kind of "hero."
That's just not the way it was in those days.
For fuck's sake, they couldn't even use the same water fountains or restrooms as white people, much less walk in the front door of a white club and then fight with the doormen. That's ridiculous. And not truthful.
In those people, black people just sucked it up when they were treated badly. Because that's the way the world worked.
Just like gay people had to suck it up, when they couldn't live together in the same home. Or had to have bearding relationships, because anything otherwise would land them in jail. Or the red light came on at the bar, where gay couples had to immediately partner up with someone of the opposite sex so that the cops didn't arrest them.
And nobody fought back, because that's just the way it was.
To pretend that black people always fought back when they were mistreated - especially in the 1950's, and especially being gay - is just revisionist history.
