Apologies to David Bowie.
Apple TV's crisp drama For All Mankind is no SNL sketch, but we find distinct comic potential in some of the political subject matter it broaches.
Being on lockdown in Vietnam finds us testing the limits of humanity's ability to consume television. Coincidentally, we found a surprise favorite in For All Mankind in the course of our mega-cross-platform-binge-viewing in the summer of 2021.
It is fun to consider the 'what if?' alternative history timeline that the series constructs with key events such as Soviet Cosmonauts beating American Astronauts to the surface of the moon and Ted Kennedy being able to run for president because he was called into a special session of Congress that cancelled a weekend trip to Chappaquiddick.
For any teachers: the alternative timeline news reports in the special features are absolute gold for any unit on news media that involves the concept of 'fake news.'
We appreciate the subtle commentary the show makes on all the biggies: gender, race, immigration, toxic partisanship...
Our favorite commentary, though? The gay rights thread that takes center stage in the last half of season one.
While we'd love to launch into a critical analysis of any or all of the motifs just mentioned, what we're really interested in is how easy it is to make fun of the US policy depicted in the show to harass and disenfranchise homosexuals.
The - surprise! - hyper-conservative FBI views gay men and women in the show as immediate threats to national security because of their perceived potential connections to 'subversives' and 'subversive' culture.
Oh how I do love that the FBI's main concern is KGB spies infiltrating...gay discos. Yeah, I bet the gays in the 1970s spent all their time selling state secrets to the Soviets. That seems like a thing that they would definitely have done all the time because you know how the Russians love homosexuals.
I mean - being a breeder myself, I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure homosexuality isn't a gateway drug to state espionage. But what do I know?
That would cast a new angle on the idea of sleeping with the enemy...
I don't know if I ever wished for anything more than for a twink in a rainbow space helmet and thong to break the tension of the stand-off between Astronaut Ed and Cosmonaut Mikhail at the edge of the Shackleton Crater. Better yet - a pair of Spacegays: one in a bedazzled helmet and thong and the other in a camo spacesuit and combat boots.
The well-oiled young man skips over to Cosmonaut Mikhail: "Oh hey, girl! Who wants some classified intelligence!?"
His burly companion plucks a plunger from her tool belt: "Someone got a clogged toilet?"
*Sigh*...if only.
To borrow from the philosophy of Paulo Freire: when will we stop allowing conservatives to decide what the histories of other people can be? I dare say we're better off and further along than in the 1970s, but we're still not there yet.
Until we are, though, it's so much fun - and far too easy - to come up with ways to spoof this absurd conservative obsession. Thank you, For All Mankind, for starting the commentary and leaving the space (pun intended) for others to exploit its comic potential.
Because honestly: what have the last fifty years of American politics been if not a sad joke? With the demented alternate reality in which the true-believer-closet-white-supremacist-anti-vaxxer conservatives live and the center-left pushovers who represent the clear majority but defend science and common sense about as well as a cat guards a piece of fish, the circus drones steadily on...
Thanks, Covid.
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