By Amanda Benson
Animal Pictures, founded by Maya Rudolph and Natasha Lyonne, produced a film in 2022 called Crush, now streaming on Hulu. It’s an entertaining coming-of-age comedy that I wish had been around when I was growing up. Its writing speaks to the sublime spectrum of sexuality while emphasizing how we’re here to express ourselves and find our people along the way.
There is a wonderful character in the film who is bi and an artist and is somewhat private about both. AJ Campos, played by Auli’i Cravalho, is smart and perceptive. She feels real and more fully formed than your typical teen movie character. Honestly, I wanted her to be the protagonist or for us to have a spin-off to look forward to! Crush delivers on a lot of levels. Paige, its main character, sets out to write an essay about her “happiest moment,” to get into the Cal Arts summer program. While dealing with common themes from lots of movies, Crush solves this and other problems in completely new ways and is a total blast to watch! It’s the queer rom-com I didn’t know I needed!
I haven’t seen a high school queer comedy that provided this many laughs since But I’m a Cheerleader, starring Natasha Lyonne. That being said, I love that she chose to produce this one! This time the themes aren’t heavy like that 1999 satire about conversion therapy. In fact, it’s cool to be queer at the high school in Crush and the main character’s mom, played by Megan Mullally, is incredibly supportive. She borders on being too supportive, providing awkward comic relief. I love that this is a direction romcoms are going in. It’s a genre I love to enjoy!
Yellowjackets, on Showtime, is one of my favorite shows on TV. The creators do a wonderful job of transporting the viewer to high school in the ‘90s, and since I graduated in 1999, I was instantly on board. These characters are unique and nuanced in their attractions and I was thrilled to see the show’s cast includes at least four queer characters. “Van” or Vanessa Palmer is played by Lauren Ambrose and won me over from the start. When we visit her in the present, she owns a video store somewhere in Pennsylvania. This show features some of my favorite music and movie references from the ‘90’s and really exemplifies how media can bring us back to a very specific time and place.
I remember watching the mesmerizing Angelina Jolie in Gia(1998) on HBO and subsequently discovering Foxfire (1996) starring her, Jenny Shimizu, and Jenny Lewis. These films led me to find All Over Me (1997) starring Leisha Hailey before she was cast in The L Word. I still love listening to the soundtrack from Velvet Goldmine (1998). It transports me right back to seeing its colorful musical montages and costume changes for the first time! The world was different then, but we are still dealing with a lot of the same inequities today.
Most of my favorite queer films from the ‘90s get progressively bleak as they play, and for good reason: times were tough. I do have a dark sense of humor, and maybe the repetitive nature with which I watched these films is partly why. Yellowjackets definitely translates some of the melancholy of the times, which is just as relevant now. But despite its heartbreaking subject matter, I really appreciate its celebration of female friendships and all the women the show employs in front of and behind the camera.
Finding a current film like Crush is so affirming and uplifting, no matter what your age, because it shows queer women as dynamic and unique individuals. It shows us creating art, finding love, and experiencing success as wonderfully complicated and creative human beings. Crush shows queer women supported by their friends and family. And above all, this movie really makes me laugh. Our stories can be fun and fulfilling to watch, over and over again through to the end. That’s what I want for us: to see bi+ characters experiencing joy in wonderful ways at any age because that is the reality I want to live in!
Amanda Benson is a freelance graphic designer living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the U.S. Her goal is to create authentic branding for businesses and help people reach their audience with uplifting design. Find her at airborndesigns.com.