One of my favorite queer movies of all time is The Birdcage (1996), starring Robin Williams and Nathan Lane as a gay couple who pretend to be a traditional, straight family in order to help their son get married to the daughter of a Republican senator. When I was a kid, The Birdcage was the first film centered around a queer couple presented as positive queer representation. While the movie always stood out to me for its humor (which I admit I did not fully understand until I got older), complex but lovable characters, and challenging of stereotypes, I remember most how normal their relationship and their queerness felt to me. I remember how much I loved their relationship and their individual characters, as well as how many times I yelled at the tv when I was frustrated with their son, the senator, and even Robin Williams’ character at times. I chose this movie as my cultural artifact because it highlights the unique struggles for acceptance faced by the LGBTQ community and celebrates various queer identities, something that is especially important during an era that positive queer representations of relationships and family dynamics were not really talked about.
In our class, an important theme we have discussed is acceptance: in a society that prioritizes patriarchy, ableism, and heteronormativity, we have to learn to accept ourselves and love every aspect of our identities. We have also explored a variety of identities and how the intersections of social identities affect the writers and characters that we have read. For example, Prior in Angels in America is a queer man and former drag queen diagnosed with AIDs and author Eli Claire is a transgender man with cerebral palsy. In The Birdcage, the film explores many intersections of identity and their unique experiences, both positive and negative, such as a drag queen, queer male stepparent and Jewish queer male who have to perform the roles of a traditional family with “Christian and American family values” in order to make their child happy at the cost of masking who they really are. However, the movie ends with the son choosing the love for his parents by fully accepting his parents without hiding and stating that his stepfather is his real mom or real parent, ultimately leading to the families accepting each other. The movie reminds us the importance of us having acceptance and understanding for ourselves, our loved ones, and really just everyone we meet.