Our M. Night Shyamalan Twist
Queer Cinema Catchup

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Sept. 28, 2025

When Queer Coding Works Better Than Representation: A Look at The Summer I Turned Pretty

In this month’s Queer Cinema Catchup video essay, I dove into queer representation in the popular YA series The Summer I Turned Pretty. In this corresponding blog post, let me first fill you in on my relationship to the Belly, Conrad, Jeremiah…

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June 15, 2025

What The Daddy Trope Says About Us

Happy Father's Day! As I stated in Queer Cinema Catchup’s monthly video essay, the internet has defined Pedro Pascal as Daddy, reaching a particular fever pitch when the first season of The Last of Us aired back in 2023. Watch any of Pascal&rs…

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May 1, 2025

The Surprising Definition of Love in HBO's 'The Last of Us'

In a Queer Cinema Catchup video essay, I took the time to explain how the first season of the HBO television series The Last of Us uses queer love stories to suggest something important about love as a universal concept. Unlike many great stories, T…

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April 7, 2025

Predicting the End of 'Hacks' Using Reversals in the TV Comedy-Drama

In Queer Cinema Catchup’s latest video essay, I examined how the use of reversals throughout a television series can, when considered alongside tone and character development, help us predict where a show might ultimately end. Specifically, th…

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Sept. 12, 2024

Manic Pixie Dream Girls Are More Than a Trope

When I studied abroad at La Universidad de Sevilla in Spain, I took an art history course. As the class was in a foreign language and many, many years ago, I can only remember the most general of lessons. Zeus and his lightning bolt; Ares and his he…

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Aug. 4, 2024

MaXXXine As a Metaphor for Fame

At one point in MaXXXIne (Ti West’s movie about a porn star seeking crossover fame), a director (played by Elizabeth Debicki) tells the eponymous main character she booked the part in her big, splashy movie because of what she had said after h…

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July 10, 2024

The Queer Lady Writer and Me (A Writer who is Queer, a Lady, and Unsure of What This Means)

I came out and began to call myself a writer in the same year. The year was—wait, that’s not right. I began an MFA program and wrote my way out of the—no! Sorry, not right either. Let’s try again. Just once more. In 2019, I…

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June 4, 2024

The Wallet You Stole: Coming Out with the Help of Gaylor Swift

The clock on the giant video screen had hit zero. Pink and orange parachutes appeared. My sister and I started screaming as a woman emerged and began to sing about a cruel summer. I would have screamed for the next 3.5 hours of the Taylor Swift conc…

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May 16, 2024

I'll Keep the Vampires from Your Door: A Deep Dive into Queer Cinema Catchup's Second Episode on All of Us Strangers

In grad school, I took a Writing Horror, Fantasy, and Supernatural course where my professor stated there was a difference between a horror film and a ghost story. Both contain scares and incite dread, but the former ends without relief, plunging yo…

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May 7, 2024

You're Ny-Ver Too Old: Diving Deep into Queer Cinema Catchup's Take on the Oscar-Nominated Film Nyad

Welcome to Queer Cinema Catchup, a podcast where we talk about queer-related themes in film and TV. Who’s we, you ask? Joe Murphy and Allison Theveny, movie-lovers who have a long history together. That history began in the 90s and almost end…

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