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I just finished the series finale of Pose.
It was beautiful. I loved everything about it. They really nailed it having a solid ending. It feels so uplifting.
It was the perfect ending for the show, but sadly the rest of us are stuck in reality. And the reality is that the 1998 era was a wasteland of broken connections, defunct organizations, lost lives, survivor's guilt, grief etc. I originally wrote a ... I originally wrote a few longer posts but the tl:dr is that I am super white but I had conversations in that era with Queer POC in the NYC area about it being a wasteland in the wake of AIDS. All the histories and studies I've read are biased towards the white experience, but I am not 100% up my own ass here when I say that the show's hopepunk ending and ending tag about scooping up all the lost children is a painful contrast to reality.
I want to say a lot more about how the impacts are felt today, but Pose is about a specific tradition I am not part of and my comments would be about more general things. So, a post about Pose isn't the best place for those observations.
[editing to add] I loved the ending when I first watched it, but the more I think about it the more stressed it makes me. It's like the show had to make a hard turn from reality to have a fitting ending. Elektra's mob business goes perfectly, the massive dress robbery is never even looked into, the vast majority of main characters live, Blanca's perfect boyfriend from thin air, the survivors have the bandwidth to take on all the new kids, etc. The show was about being lucky / talented / loved enough to still thrive despite everything, but it went from 'super unlikely but plausible' to 'fairy land' for me.
It was beautiful. I loved everything about it. They really nailed it having a solid ending. It feels so uplifting.
It was the perfect ending for the show, but sadly the rest of us are stuck in reality. And the reality is that the 1998 era was a wasteland of broken connections, defunct organizations, lost lives, survivor's guilt, grief etc. I originally wrote a ... I originally wrote a few longer posts but the tl:dr is that I am super white but I had conversations in that era with Queer POC in the NYC area about it being a wasteland in the wake of AIDS. All the histories and studies I've read are biased towards the white experience, but I am not 100% up my own ass here when I say that the show's hopepunk ending and ending tag about scooping up all the lost children is a painful contrast to reality.
I want to say a lot more about how the impacts are felt today, but Pose is about a specific tradition I am not part of and my comments would be about more general things. So, a post about Pose isn't the best place for those observations.
[editing to add] I loved the ending when I first watched it, but the more I think about it the more stressed it makes me. It's like the show had to make a hard turn from reality to have a fitting ending. Elektra's mob business goes perfectly, the massive dress robbery is never even looked into, the vast majority of main characters live, Blanca's perfect boyfriend from thin air, the survivors have the bandwidth to take on all the new kids, etc. The show was about being lucky / talented / loved enough to still thrive despite everything, but it went from 'super unlikely but plausible' to 'fairy land' for me.
