Hollywood

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: This is wildly offensive. It’s one thing for Ryan “You’re all minorities, you’re in the glee club” Murphy to posit that racism and homophobia could’ve been eradicated in 1940s Hollywood if the effected groups just believed in themselves a little bit more. But to drag real people like Rock Hudson and Anna May Wong into it and turn their trauma into self-congratulatory fan fiction? He is sick in the head and should be in prison!! And yet I’m rewatching it. There’s just something about it that reels me back in. Sure, the cast is pretty. I’m a day one Darren Criss stan and if this thing had any hand in landing David Corenswet the role of Superman, it might all be worth it. They also give the cast plenty of delicious scenery to chew on. I’m a sucker for this period of fashion and design. But the one thing I weirdly admire about this show is how cynical it is. The entertainment industry is so self-obsessed and always writing itself “love letters.” There’s some of that here, but it also seems to have a strange contempt for the era it’s depicting and not even just for the obvious reasons. Every real person is either depicted as a depraved monster or a helpless victim of said monsters. And it goes without saying that historical accuracy is not the priority here. This could’ve been interesting if they stuck to the reality of what a cesspool Old Hollywood was, but the insulting alternate universe angle is just baffling, even the second time around. This is Ryan Murphy’s magnum opus and I mean that in the most derogatory way possible.