It is a makeover show and more. The show transcends the superficial limitations of that genre to become something more special. Queer Eye (2018) uses the framework of a makeover show to address deeper issues of self-confidence, alienation and selflessness. It presents a template for a personal transformation that’s not just on the surface, literally, a transformation that addresses past traumas, difficult life circumstances and social inequalities. It’s also a journey into the diversity of America and reaches un-popularized corners of geography and subcultures.. We journey as they do to inner-city apartments, crowded single-family homes, lonely households, isolated farms, communities, camps, gentrified neighborhoods, and many others, all led by the same eccentric, loud and personal Fab Five.
Reality TV has sometimes been derided as irredeemable trash, the fast-food of media, consumed by the unwashed masses, where Trump himself found a jumping board to presidency. But what if reality TV could be something more? What if it could be an intelligent commentary and documentary on lives and communities that are under-represented? What if it could point out and modestly offer some solutions to social problems that are underrated like the loss of ability to cook, the loneliness of social isolation, people being overwhelmed by their own homes? What if it could convince those unwashed masses to wash up, and to love themselves more?
The concept of Queer Eye is simple: five queer guys (including Vann Ness who has recently come out as non-binary, in a move that surprised no one) travel to a city to do makeovers. Each one has a specialty: fashion, home renovations/decor, food, hair/grooming and “culture” (whatever that means). The Netflix show is a reboot of “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” (2003), which had a similar concept: five queer guys transforming heterosexual males lives in beauty, fashion and style. Fifteen years after the first version, the current iteration of the show, went beyond surface makeovers, into issues of self-confidence, social alienation, and cultural isolation. It brings forth, though in a sideways manner, the deep sense of disconnection and isolation that emanates in USA even among those with relative material prosperity. It also addresses toxic masculinity, which influences men to shy away from expressing their feelings. These rarely exhibited issues are addressed through the warmth narrative and eclectic styles of the Fab Five, humanized by their personal experiences within similar social structures but through a queer lens that does not essentialize these oft-gendered qualities.
Some episodes help people with more sever problems, such as loss of a partner, accompanying the person through both a physical and emotional journey into a “better” state. In one episode, they persuade someone who stopped smiling to hide his missing teeth, to get dental help and smile again. But all of my favorite episodes are the ones where they just polish — in a phrase often used by Tan (the fashion expert) “it’s still you, but elevated”. The episodes, the people, the issues are relatable, they are human, and their journeys are inspiring. Who among us does not have minor, lingering issues with our dresses, or our house or our hair that could be fixed?
Episodes have touched on pressing societal issues such as racism, homo-phobia, queerdom and family, queerdom and religion, loss of a life partner, and socio-economic divides between rural and urban areas. Other episodes touch on seemingly different problems such as slackness or partying like a frat boy at adult age. But while these might seem more individual problems, they are still reflections of deep disconnects that can blight someone’s life and they are dealt with in a serious way.
Each episode of the show focuses on makeover of a new person (called “heroes”) but the real character arc of the show is the Fab Five themselves. As the show progresses they slowly share pieces of their personal stories and their struggles.
Antoni Porowski, the food expert, is something of a bisexual Canadian Antony Bourdain. He was born in Montreal to Polish immigrant parents, and has also lived in the American South for a few years during his childhood. His passion is in connecting people to their ethnic and family food cultures: teaching people how to reconnect to a love of food and to their roots. Sometimes he challenges people who can cook to take the next level, but often his work with those who have never cooked at all — one of his ‘heroes’ did not know how to crack an egg. This really demonstrates an issue that is often not acknowledged: many people in America have lost their will and passion to cook through assimilation and alienation. This poses a serious nutritional issue, not to mention one of cultural loss, especially for people disconnected from their family background. He personally acknowledges his problematic relationship with alcohol, and his tense relations with his father due to his queerness. Antoni deals with such issues sensitively, as he is still a white guy — and the only one of the Fab Five who with a straight-passing demeanor. Although this becomes mildly annoying at times, like Bourdain he serves as an example of how to be a white dude and interact with other cultures with respect and understanding.
Tan France is the fashion expert. He is British, the child of Pakistani immigrants, which he uses to connect with various Desi and Middle Eastern males in the show. He is married, and fits the popular culture’s flamboyant impression of gay males, in affect and style. However he is less connected to the gay community and politics than the rest of the Fab Five. He only came out to his entire family during the filming of the show — representing the more traditional model of gayness in the dominant culture, that calls for more privacy and selectiveness in exposing one’s identity. Furthermore, he illustrates that not all gay men are automatically experts in gay politics — even if they work in fashion, as deemed popular in mainstream culture. This is really illuminated in the trans episode where he is relatively ignorant about trans issues but eager to learn more: he models for the audience a learning process and an ability to admit ignorance and asks questions respectfully. He also finds a trans-competent tailor to give hero Skyler a fantastic suit. Unlike other fashion makeover shows, Tan does not push his personal style to all, but rather respects their personal expression and life conditions: a struggling working dad was taken to Wall-Mart, while some others to a boutique. He, however, never shies away from advocating for the “french tuck”, .i.e. half tucking in your shirt to get a casual yet slimming look.
Jonathan Van Ness is the hair and beauty expert, but more importantly represents a more blatantly transgressive queerness, with a signature mustache-with-skirts-and-heels look. He has catch phrases like “yess Queen” and “gorg” (short for gorgeous). He shaves a lot of beards and cuts off mullets, truly on-point. His representation of fierce (yet Jesus looking) queer-as-fuck expression is the most transgressive on the show and is very important. Through the seasons, he also more fully develops himself as gender non-binary vs gay. The progression is very evident throughout the episodes: at first, there are a couple moments where he looks a bit uncomfortable at being forced into a cis gay mould, but by later seasons he is more regularly rocking skirts and heels and fully embodying fabulous non-binariness. One thing I love about Van Ness is that he works with local hairstylists, and especially when dealing with Black hair he often defers to the expertise of Black barbers and dreadlock experts. He convinces people to try out their natural hair without forcing it or being awkward. Who among us does not respect the transformative power of an amazing haircut?
Bobby Berk is the architectural or home-makeover expert. He also deals with hoarding, and people with emotional attachments to their stuff. It’s Bobby’s personal story that is the most moving: he grew up in a very Christian household, praying every day to not be gay, he was eventually kicked out of his house at 15 when he was outed, and spent time homeless and couch-surfing. This experience partly inspired his love of decor and renovation when he finally got his own permanent place to live. His familiarity with financial struggles and overcoming them is the most emphatic part of the show. He visibly struggles and grows in his relationship with religion over the course of the series, becoming more tolerant of religious people: in the first season he could barely enter a church lurking at the doorway but by the fifth episode he makes over a progressive Philadelphia pastor. In interviews, Bobby has spoken about getting letters from pastors who have decided not to preach hatred of gays from the pulpit anymore after hearing Bobby’s story. His crew also spends probably the most money (except when Van Ness needs to fix a missing tooth) and has the most everlasting effect on the daily lives of the heroes, many of whom are defeated and overwhelmed by their own possessions or lack of possessions.
Someone needs to give Karamo his own show. Karamo Brown is the culture expert, in no way limited to the definition of the word, he is the person’s person. Karamo Brown is the only Black member of the team, and he’s also the wisest and most insightful. In the third episode, there is a moment that’s clearly meant by the show-runners to be a fun hijack but it ends up having serious racial implications, because Karamo happened to be driving the group van. He is pulled over by a cop who turns out to be the best friend of that episode’s “hero”, also a cop; you clearly feel the tension and fear in the van. This was an early example of Netflix starting to deal with race issues in America. Karamo is a veteran of Reality TV, having been the first Black gay male on TV in the 2004 season of “The Real World: Philadelphia”, but he’s also grounded in reality having worked as a social worker and physiotherapist for over a decade. Karamo is the heart and soul of the new show. In the episode “North Philadelphia Story” where Karamo is allowed to shine a bit more than the rest of the Fab Five, he helps a Black community organizer who had a difficult upbringing. If you only watch one episode of Queer Eye make it this one. The hero of the episode is burdened by the the fact that he does not know why his guardian gave him up, and he blames himself for some unknown behavioral slip. It is Karamo that reaches to the guardian and learns she was faced with a very difficult problem at the time: she was unable to get her sick grandchild out of foster care while she was taking care of another child. Karamo’s insightful comment on this situation is this: “There is a lot of the confusion that was happening here: she had to make a hard decision because the State was making her have it.” But he is cut off by the editors who apparently are not ready to discuss the awful realities of the American social welfare and foster system on Black families. Although all the “Fab Five” do this to some extent, it is Karamo’s job to get them to open up emotionally and deal with longstanding social or other issues they’ve been ignoring. In a show that’s more focused on males, this is important as in America males are often told to ignore or repress their feelings.
Queer Eye made a brave decision to base itself mostly in the southern regions of USA, and not to flinch from the realities of life in small town and southern America for queer people, Blacks, Latinos, and people in lower income brackets. The audiences journeys with the Fab Five to places and lives that the TV usually shies away from, exposing the structural and systematic reasons for people’s troubles — but in a dignified way, always staying away from poverty porn. At the same time, the series show how white men, supposedly the backbone of the dominant culture, and others with relative privilege, are deeply suffering especially in isolating themselves from their emotions and communities. It is a show that’s full of compassion and connections, but it’s not suffering from toxic positivity or hippie bullshit. Sure, it has some of the tropes of the reality genre: the big reveal of Bobbi’s home renovations, the new wardrobe and the haircut and beard shave. But Queer Eye is not a competition. It is about transformation and improvement. It is human.
It is also so fucking wholesome. It’s larger than the sum of its parts. It does what activists and organizations often struggle to do: connects a broader social project of changing the culture as a whole with the deep knowledge that healing also happens on an individual level. The show is us people, suffering from social isolation, overwork and dealing with grief, exhaustion, alienation, loneliness, helplessness and all their individual problems — and shows it is not all one’s fault, and how to triumph over the structural and systematic issues that pushed humanity to such corners. Bringing the gay to straight America, they bring insights, and they also take on the not-insignificant challenge of helping gays and other outsiders live in the rural South. It shows that reality TV, though an under-appreciated genre, really does have the potential to be something more: an insightful social commentary, a documentary on working-class conditions and a kind of therapeutic uplift with substance.
Alternatively, you could just watch The Floor is Lava, also available on Netflix.
© 2020. UniversalCinema Mag.