Ending Homophobia, brought to you by The Hallmark Channel by Jaron Gross

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After a nearly year-long run on Broadway that brought critical acclaim, and getting snubbed at the Tony awards (which is a rite of passage for any good musical nowadays), The Prom closed its doors on August 11, 2019. Although a national tour was announced, fans were left wanting more of the smash hit show about LGBTQ+ inclusivity. Naturally, the vultures at Netflix seized another opportunity to take a beloved piece of artwork and destroy its beauty for a quick buck.

When young Emma Nolan (Jo Ellen Pellman) gets her prom taken away simply because of her sexuality, Broadway’s most recent failures, Dee Dee Allen (Meryl Streep), Barry Glickman (James Cordon), and Trent Oliver (Andrew Rannells) rush to Indiana to save the day and hope to get some good publicity while they are at it. But alas, they misunderestimated the hatred Hoosiers have for those that are different. After all, they did produce Mike Pence.

On paper, The Prom movie seems like one of the best movie adaptations of a musical since My Fair Lady in 1964. Hollywood and Broadway legends such as Meryl Streep, James Cordon, and Andrew Rannells in starring roles, given the opportunity to set a gold standard of movie-musicals. However, I must remind you that the crew members of the Titanic were probably really good at their job. It was the captain that sunk the ship.

Ryan Murphy takes the “lipstick on a pig” saying to a whole new level with his latest creation. Instead of telling a meaningful story about bigotry in Small Town, USA, and how to counteract it and grow together as a community, Murphy decided to try to be quirky to relate to a young audience. Granted, the music written by Chad Beguelin has audiences dancing in their seats, with pop anthems about the challenges of life, no matter who you are, gay, straight, or somewhere in between. Nonetheless, Murphy decided to take a wholesome story about a young lesbian girl getting the prom of her dreams with the help of a few washed-up broadway actors, and turn it into a post-High-School-Musical-3 Disney Channel Original abomination by focusing all the attention of the film onto the stereotypes of the characters, rather than the story itself.

A prime example is the leading gay character in the movie, Barry Glickman, portrayed by the very straight James Cordon. Instead of having Cordon play the role as an actual human being, or casting an actually gay actor for the role, Murphy creates a walking gay stereotype with a hideous accent whose phone password is Beyonce’s birthday.

Creating outrageous stereotypes of characters does not tell a story. It tells a joke. Murphy made a joke out of the struggles of LGBTQ+ youth in America. If you are a fan of cheesy movies like those from the Lifetime and Hallmark channels, then The Prom is for you. If you want to see actual representation of gay people and their struggles to overcome bigotry, then I suggest looking in other places.

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