Guided by the tutelage of Toddy (Robert Preston, another old-school musical star known for originating the title role in The Music Man), Victoria attempts to turn her fortunes around by presenting herself as a male performer. Under the direction of her husband Blake Edwards, Andrews plays Victoria Grant, a starving soprano struggling to find her break on the cabaret circuit. Watch it on Amazon, Apple TV, and Google Playīy 1982, Julie Andrews was already something of a goody diva thanks to her star turns in ’60s classics The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins, but Victor/Victoria certified her as a queer icon as well. There’s also the fabulous dance student Leroy Johnson, played by Gene Anthony Ray, who has been described as a “flamboyantly camp” actor and choreographer that “brushed aside questions about his sexuality.” After various personal devastations and reality checks, the students redeclare their ambitions of stardom in the film’s closing graduation performance of the ELO-inspired ballad “ I Sing the Body Electric.” This ending message of hope amid an uncertain future and boldly celebrating one's unique self makes Fame a classic film among queer viewers and anyone else who is always in the process of becoming.
There’s the capricious Ralph Garci, who gets into burlesque drag in order to bully and seduce MacNeil.
Talking heads road to nowhere music video movie#
While its most obviously queer storyline involves Montgomery MacNeil, a sensitive drama student who anxiously mentions being gay in a philosophical monologue to his classmates, the movie is rife with other queer-coded characters.
The 1980 musical directed by Alan Parker tells the stories of a fictional group of students at New York City’s High School of the Performing Arts with realism and empathy, setting the bar for all performing arts high school movies to come.
Without Fame, there would be no High School Musical or Step Up. In depicting those invigorating moments on film (and creating their own), these movies showcase the diverse ways music finds its way into our lives: From Marlon Riggs’ electrifying video art merging dance music and poetry to Derek Jarman’s crushing combo of abstract sound and image, there is no limit to the ways queer film intertwines music and visuals into one enlivened work of art. While the very first queer films stretch back more than 100 years, it wasn’t until the advent of popular music in the mid-20th century that they became more explicitly about music. Queer cinema, an elastic catch-all for movies that focus on any mode of non-heterosexual desire, has often identified this truth with cunning inventiveness. As queer people, some of the most pivotal moments of our lives occur in spaces where music fills every corner: Moving as one in a heated club with your chosen family, singing along with your local drag queen, pressed against a throng of bodies at a life-giving concert-when it comes to expressing ourselves, music’s rapturous delights have always offered a clear path toward escape and ecstasy.
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