Netflix shows ‘Eldorado’ and ‘Glamorous’ Get You Thinking About More Than Pronouns
Miss Benny, left, as Marco and Kim Cattrall as Madolyn Addison in the Netflix series ‘Glamorous.’ Credit: Netflix.com
A friend asked me to explain the emphasis on pronouns, why people sign their emails with the pronouns they use, why this all of a sudden it seems we’re doing this. Did this just happen?
No. If you go back and read gay literature in the early part of the 20th century, gay men used to, and we still do it to some extent, refer to other gay men as “she” or “How’s your wife?” and the response, “Oh, she’s doing very well.”
Or gay men refer to other gay men in using female pronouns. That’s an important distinction because they used it to disguise who they were and not to describe what’s going on or the way people present or feel. It’s a different rationale because people were hidden, closeted.
But read about the New York City underground in the ’20s and ’30. This is not new. And people have been “cross dressing” over centuries. But we're just acknowledging it. That's the difference. We’re acknowledging something that's been there all along and I think that’s the rub for people.
My friend and I had a long discussion, and I plan to refer her to Glamorous, something I’ve been watching on Netflix. It has Kim Cattrall from Sex in the City, who this time plays Madolyn Addison, a former super model who runs a cosmetics business.
The focal point, though, is the character of Marco, who plays Madolyn’s assistant. The promotional material for the show talks about Marco as a gender non-conforming queer person. Marco identifies as he. He wears beautiful makeup and dresses in high heels and skirts. He wears plunging necklines that show chest hair. That blows apart the binary of boy/girl, male/female. That’s LGBTQIA+.
If you watch Glamorous, it’s all out there. It also brings new meaning to diversity. A lot of people think of diversity in binary terms, black and white. But it’s really much more than that. Glamorous is the intersection of diversity, acceptance, LGBTQIA+. And it’s also very funny.
There’s another show on Netflix that is the antithesis of Glamorous, and that’s the documentary Eldorado: Everything the Nazis Hate. It’s about the Nazis coming to power and the persecution of gay people. A lot of Eldorado is what we’re seeing in the world today. But I don’t want to get too political. I recommend watching both these shows. Start with Glamorous. Tell us what you think of Marco. Watch Eldorado, and then watch Glamorous again.