So, let’s talk about the holidays and media and representation for a moment.
I’m pretty excited that we’re starting to see some diversity. Okay, it’s still kind of...bland, but honestly, most holiday-themed movies are generic. Swap out a few plot details and the protagonists’ hair colors, and you’ve got yourself a new movie. This fits with that a bit by swapping out one of the protag’s genders.
I’ll admit that doesn’t bother me much. I’m sure a few people will be skeptical, since I’m not a big reader of straight-up romance novels. But I absolutely adore cheesy holiday rom-coms. The cheesier the better. It’s all pure escapism. So if you throw in a cute same-gender pair, I’m even more likely to tune in.
It’s true there isn’t a lot of diversity...yet. We have the sweet gay guys and the cute lesbians, and that’s about it. Also, yeah, plots around coming out aren’t super creative. Of course, neither are big-city-girl-goes-country and corporate-guy-makes-deal-to-screw-over-hometown. Actually, I think those were both plot points of the same movie last year.
There’s no need for me to rehash problematic elements of this year’s offerings. Plenty of other people have already done so. The fact is, some people will love those movies. Some will hate them. This is true of pretty much every holiday movie ever. Would I like to see better representation? Of course. Right now, this is what we have. There just aren’t a whole lot of options.
That said, it’s still pretty great that the mainstream holiday movie Powers that Be have decided to join the twenty-first century, even if they’re not exactly giving us the queer romance of our dreams. Hopefully that will come in time. I’m not exactly holding out hope that next year will bring us a bisexual love triangle that ends in polyamory, but my fingers are crossed that it’ll have more depth than yet another “Mom, I’m gay” plot. Please?
What we really need is a team of creative people who:
- love Hallmark movies
- are LGBTQIA+
In the interest of making the perfect LGBTQIA+ holiday film, please feel free to use this plot generator and gender-swap as necessary. You can even switch holidays!
I’ll take “A recently single baker returns to her small town during Hanukkah to save the family business and magically falls in love with some gal and her cat...and also the only old man in town might actually be the real Hannukah Harry” (you’ll get it if you are a GenXer who watched SNL in the 1990s).
Let us know what you come up with!