On November 2, audiences will get what they desperately need ahead of a sure to be contentious midterm election week—a singalong with the British rock band Queen in movie theaters nationwide. The second trailer for “Bohemian Rhapsody” was released this month, and it’s about as fun and anthemic of a preview as a movie studio could produce for a biopic on Freddie Mercury, the late frontman of Queen.
Actor Rami Malek is nothing short of riveting in his portrayal of Mercury, on a timeline spanning the early days of the band’s formation to its full bloom in the early 1980s. “We Will Rock You” bookends the story of Queen with the vulnerability and drama that comes with the rock n’ roll highwire filling out the core of the trailer. Fanfare for this movie is very real, but one can’t help but notice that “Bohemian Rhapsody” has dodged a new and peculiar kind of Hollywood controversy.
Less than a week before the new “Bohemian Rhapsody” trailer came out, actress Scarlett Johansson was the subject of entertainment and social media scorn for her casting in “Rub & Tug”, an upcoming film about the life of a trans man. After days of deluge from the LGBTQ community and politically aligned entertainment publications, she withdrew from the production—effectively leaving the movie’s future in limbo. Her detractors made the argument that Johansson should not act as a trans man since she is a “cisgender” woman, and the role by extension was taken from trans actors who would be more appropriate to tell such a story.
If you can suspend your disbelief long enough to accept this premise, that deep and layered human experiences can only be portrayed on screen by actors who have experienced those things themselves, you’d see Hollywood and film as being in an all-out crisis. For these political and social activists, having no movie at all is superior to a movie about the trans experience being captured by Johansson. Identity and representation is the be-all end-all of the cultural Left.
So why does this matter in the context of “Bohemian Rhapsody”?
Freddie Mercury stands out in the world of 1970s and 1980s stadium rock for a myriad of reasons, and his sexuality is one of them. Mercury’s sexual orientation is not a settled matter by any means, but bisexual is the best consensus that can be found in the evidence that was his fabled life. There is also a case to be made that Mercury identified as queer. Freddie Mercury died on Nov. 24, 1991, from complications associated with AIDS. He had a string of men and women in his life, notably partner Jim Hutton from 1985 to his final days.
If identity politics is what drives the progressive movement in Hollywood today, it’s a miracle that Rami Malek has dodged the ire that took down Scarlett Johansson, considering he is a straight actor. So whether you look back on Freddie Mercury as queer, bisexual, or a gay man who did not find himself until the end, you’re left with a person for whom identity and sexuality was a complex picture. The mindset that saw the end of Scarlett Johansson’s involvement in “Rub & Tug” inevitably would lead to the same outcome for “Bohemian Rhapsody,” unless the real cause of the controversy was spite toward Johansson and not the underlying, valid questions about who should play who on-screen.
When the first trailer for “Bohemian Rhapsody” was released, it did face criticism for not addressing Mercury’s sexuality in the initial sizzle reel. “Straight-washing” is a new term you might learn from range of reactions when the trailer first dropped in May. Yet there was no mention of the sexuality or gender identity of the actor in the lead role depicting this LGBTQ icon.
So what are the rules of the road? Eddie Redmayne swept audiences away in “The Danish Girl” with his depiction of a trans woman, Jared Leto did the same in “Dallas Buyers Club”, Jeffrey Tambor took home Emmy’s for his work in the series “Transparent.” These are just the most recent examples, leaving aside films from decades past, like “Boys Don’t Cry” (1999), that were groundbreaking in terms of exposure and positive representation for the real issues trans people face. Social media is a revolutionary tool, but it seems more and more that the rules governing societal norms, culture, and art are being written by a fraction of a fraction of online personalities with a platform and allies in the media.
That’s not inherently a bad thing. The plight of what we call ‘marginalized groups’ is that they are in fact marginalized–small in number and lacking for a clear voice. Where this goes wrong is when there is no consensus on the part of the larger culture, and the process of who gets figuratively beheaded in the public square is like drawing straws.
I don’t have a strong preference for the way in which this turns out. The myth of big name actors being needed to anchor risky films has been all but busted. There’s no business case to say Scarlett Johansson must be in “Rub & Tug” for it succeed, or that “Bohemian Rhapsody” can’t be led by an obscure queer Persian actor in the vein of Freddie Mercury for it to succeed. At the end of the day, no one seems to know what jobs they can and cannot take, or what stories they are allowed to tell without undergoing extensive online harassment. If there’s one thing Hollywood needs to develop, it’s clarity: Are actors allowed to act outside of their personal experiences? If the answer is no, then we should all prepare for reality TV to be the only TV.
Stephen Kent (@Stephen_Kent89) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the spokesperson for Young Voices and host of Beltway Banthas, a Star Wars & politics podcast in D.C.
