I Miss When Homoeroticism Was Erotic

Ah, the never-ending Wicked promotional tour! The Bataan Death March of theater kids over-enthusing about the most cynical fucking expression of parasitical cultural regurgitation I can imagine, a horror show of emaciated celebrities gritting their teeth, doing a bump, and going through the motions of selling movie-like product to dead-eyed Gen Alpha zomboids who spend most of their time trading their Vyvanse for Robux… on it grinds. The online world stands agape, bathing in the awesome erotic power of the relationship between whatever’s left of Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, a pairing absolutely throbbing with sublimated passion. We know this because, well… they’re vaguely nice to each other? They seem friendly? They’re professionally warm? Yes friends, this is the stuff that launches a million thinkpieces about sapphic desire, these days, a couple of women rising above the challenges of autophagy to kind of gently coo and paw at each other for the cameras. FEEL THE HEAT.

Let’s set aside for the moment that there has absolutely, 100%, undeniably been multiple meetings in the marketing department at Universal Pictures where they conspired to make the world’s most gullible people think that there’s some sort of romantic entanglement between Erivo and Grande. Let’s set aside that the studio probably sent notes like “There’s an extra $50K in it for you if some good gifs of you holding hands start making the rounds.” Let’s set aside the fact that the entertainment industry is just galactically cynical about this stuff and knows that if you scatter a little Gay Dust on the publicity effort, the rubes will fall all over themselves to suck it up. Completely substance-free waves at theoretical queerness are about as edgy as your average episode of Young Sheldon, these days, but nevermind. Set aside your understanding that Big Gay exists. Focus just on these two women: there is of course no reason at all to detect any actual homosexual longing between these two, other than the only one that matters anymore, which is that the most annoying people in the world have wishcasted the pairing together, “shipping” the two actresses, taking to social media to declare that they love each other and if you express doubts about that claim you may as well have personally tied Matthew Shepard to that fence.

But, no. I hereby express my doubts about this focus-grouped, Astroturfed theoretical gay pairing; apologies to the X