Editor's
note: this post contains spoilers from Season 2, Episode 4 of P-Valley on
Starz.
If
you’re not watching Starz’s P-Valley,
why not?!
For
the month of June, Starz provided those with an Amazon Prime subscription an
opportunity to binge the first season of the series for free. In it, you meet
the charismatic and gender-irreverent Uncle Clifford, the wild and scrappy
employees of the Pynk (a strip club she owns), and a few other key players in
the fictitious town of Chucalissa, Mississippi. The storylines are plentiful,
but if you need a breakdown of them all, you’ll have to ask someone else. For
the purposes of this story, we are focusing on one Lil Murda.
In
season one of P-Valley, Uncle Clifford (Nicco Annan) finds
herself romantically intertwined with Lil Murda (J. Alphonse Nicholson) a local
rapper on the rise. This comes in spite of some initial protestations of the
bearded and shellacked nonbinary wonder who has a rule book that’s come to
govern the behavior of all of those inside the Pynk. Murda pursues Clifford,
building something akin to a relationship. And then Clifford’s own fears
materialize as, when faced with the choice of acceptance in rap and the budding
relationship, Murda chooses his own career over the possibility of love.
It’s
important to lay this out. Viewers watched Murda’s pursuit of Clifford, many
cheering it on. Some thought it was empowering: Clifford, a bigger,
dark-skinned, feminine presenting nonbinary badass, deserved love. So their
season one sex scene was welcome. And even in season two, Clifford’s second sex
scene seemed to be somewhat applauded.
Now
ignoring Murda, who came to regret publicly shunning her, Clifford finds
herself being approached by another attractive piece of trade at her birthday
party. One thing leads to another and Clifford is on the receiving end of a
blowjob, full-frontal nudity and all. And while there was considerable chatter
about the size of Clifford’s...appendage, the scene also seemed welcomed by
audiences.
This
differed from the reception of the show’s most recent sex scene where Lil Murda
reconnects with Big Teak (John Clarence Stewart) — an old friend who is fresh
out of prison — in more ways than one. Viewers watch Murda rip open a condom
before the pair engage in some pretty passionate, lube-inclusive sex. The
format of the scene hews closely to a catalog of work that executive producer
Patrik-Ian Polk has built over the span of his career that double as sites of
sex education for gay men. But for some reason, the scene has sparked a
backlash.
While
it may be laughable, some have raised questions about the sexuality of the two
actors — both Nicholson and Stewart are dating women and are not publicly
known to be queer — due to their acting prowess. Others have said that the
scene goes too far. But, for an episode that also featured a sex scene between
two women, what exactly about this tender moment was too much?
To
say that I haven’t hoped for this moment since Big Teak first appeared on the
Katori Hall-created series is a lie. There was no overt indication he was gay,
but for some reason...I hoped. When it finally happened, it felt natural. It
felt like — and still feels like — something I haven’t quite seen before. Since
then, I’ve been wracking my brain for a depiction of two masculine Black men
making love on film or television and I couldn’t come up with one. This isn’t a
critique, but there has always been something quite heteronormative about
depictions of gay sex in the mainstream. It, in part, was why Clifford’s
blowjob scene caused chatter: while those assigned male at birth of many
affectations receive blowjobs in real life, to see that reality appear on
screen seemed a slight wrinkle in the broadcloth of representation. Seeing two
pieces of rough trade going at it did the same.
I
will stop short of calling the scene historic because not only have I not done
a comprehensive study, but ideas around what and who is masculine are largely
subjective. But it is interesting to think about how still today, in 2022, an
audience that has been tuning in to watch a show centering around a strip club
and its gender rebellious owner for a season and a half could be turned off by
a gay sex scene — particularly one handled as carefully as this. While some may
contend it has more to do with how in-depth the scene went, few will convince
me that it’s not simply them tripping over a wrinkle.
SOURCE: OUT DOT COM
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