Media consumption: Boots on Netflix
Oct. 24th, 2025 08:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickI pay for a Netflix and sometimes I watch Netflix things. I don't watch as much tv as I used to, and sometimes I am a bit sad about that, but right now I read vast amounts of KU slush so... meh?
I also watch a shitton of nonfiction YouTube but I expect ya'll aren't terribly interested in all the things I learned about King Leopold II of Belgium (from my investigation into Why is Belgian chocolate?) even though there are some very interesting parallels (abuse of language, kind of the "Fake News" of its era) to be drawn (pedophile, paid for sex with very young girls) from the facts I learned (enriching self by abusing his power of position) about his reign and some similarly vile leadership we have today. But enough about that, let's talk Pink Marines 'cause that is what this show is about.
In Boots, our Main Character dude (Cope, which I fucking love that name, kinda describes his character in one fell swoop.) tags along into the Marines with his best friend. Cope is gay, which (it's 1990 in the show) is forbidden in the Marines at the time, and his best friend Ray is aware of both Cope's gayness and of the Marines not allowing gay folks in the Corps. Ray is perhaps not the best friend a boy could have.
For younger readers, DADT (Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which was a bullshit half measure to let gay people serve AS LONG AS THEY CONVINCINGLY PRETENDED NOT TO BE GAY AND NOBODY ASKED THEM ABOUT IT) started as a policy with the Clinton Administration, on December 21, 1993, and it was the way of the military until September 20, 2011, when, I guess, Obama put an end to that. Thanks, Obama! (Not being sarcastic. If we are gonna let soldiers straight-fuck and straight-marry, then they should also be allowed to gay-fuck and gay-marry. Fair's fair. If soldiers using their genitals with partners as they see fit is a problem, we could go all monastic and see what the fuck *that* does to recruitment numbers.)
So, Cope needs to appear not-gay and he's... pretty femme. The Marines, obviously, do not have a lot of time for "hit like a girl" dudes and so if you are one of those dudes, you're gonna have to work your shit out so that you don't look like one of those dudes. Quite a bit of the show focuses on Cope, well, coping and trying to be more Marine-like and less soft femme boy. It's a struggle.
Now, in real life there are a lot of beefy, tough gay dudes. But, those gay dudes pass as straight a lot more easily and there's not as much story to tell about Becoming A Marine when your gay dude shows up at Parris Island already looking and acting like a Marine. In the show and in the real world, Parris Island is where boys are made into Marines. That's like a huge theme of the show, it takes place (allegedly) on Parris Island and we get to see all sorts of straight boys being made into Marines the same time that Cope is being made (and making himself) into a Marine.
Short derail: I don't think that being a Marine and having femme traits are incompatible goals. You can do both. Being good and effective in missions has nothing to do with whether or not you like show tunes or whatever. Being an excellent shot or having an affinity for sneaking through jungles or deserts or urban landscapes has no bearing on your fondness for mascara or manicures. Do both. Be fabulous, kill things. It's fine.
Anyway, we, the audience, have absolutely no difficulty reading Cope as gay. We're told up front that he's gay, like in Episode 1. It's not at all left to our mighty powers of deduction, so I'm not gonna talk about that.
I'm gonna talk about our other gay character (I'm... six episodes in, here. It got to be bedtime and I responsibly went to bed instead of watching more episodes.) who is Sullivan, a drill sergeant (I took four tries to spell this word, none of them correct, and finally googled it) back from Guam to replace Knox, the racist jerk who slugged Ray. (Knox the racist jerk got shuffled sideways to a different group of recruits on the same base. He didn't get, like, fired or anything.)
Sullivan is gay. The show has flashbacks of Sullivan in Guam with his boyfriend, but that's, like, the big reveal for the slow of thinking. I'm pretty sure the audience is supposed to notice that he's gay well before the Big Reveal thing. (Also, actor Max Parker, you work out a lot and your diet is on point. Thank you for your fanservice.) I think I spent about five minutes of screentime with Sullivan before I was yelling at the laptop that he was gay. I do not have exceptional media skills and I'm not good at gaydar and I clocked Sullivan very early on, so we are SUPPOSED to be able to notice he's gay. Like, if I can see it, so can everyone else with half a brain.
I'm gonna have to rewatch because there are tells and we, the audience, are supposed to catch the tells and know Sullivan as gay before the show, er, shows him being overtly gay. What I'm interested in is how the show limns a character as gay without telling us in words, for sure? (This is not evil gay, that's a different thing where the gay part is to clarify the evil part. This isn't that. The gay part here is just gay, not evil.) In Boots, Sullivan is a foil storyline for Cope, in that he's set up to reflect upon (Like tin foil reflects, kinda!! Lol. I bet that's not why it's called a foil. Wikipedia says "comes from the practice of backing gems with metal foil to make them shine more brightly". Well fuck me, Wikipedia, that makes a ton of sense and is a great analogy for what narratives do with foil characters. And also, yes, it is totally "like tin foil reflects". Today I learned.) the choices Cope makes and the struggles that he faces and shit.
I suspect they're gonna throw Sullivan under the bus as a tragic character crushed by the dipshittery of the No Queers policies of the times and I hope they don't do that because damn I'm fucking tired of tragic gays. Gay people deserve happy endings, though in the Marines in the early 1990's, that's not super likely. Sullivan is a good Marine. He fucking loves the Corps and cares about his recruits and wants to make good Marines out of them. And all of that is why I think the show is gonna throw him under the bus, dishonorable discharge, etc. Man, if they do that, it's gonna suck. *sigh*
Anyway. Gonna have to rewatch to see how they make Sullivan be gay when he dresses just like all the other drill sergeants and everybody has the same fucking haircut and the same shiny boots and the same precise movements and they're all sort of buff and shouty. There have to be tells, maybe tells in the performance? I don't know. I will rewatch and report back. Watch this space for updates, possibly with screenshots. (Is this just a ploy to get more time with the image hosting site? LOL only I know for sure.)
I do have a busy weekend planned, so it may be some time until I get to this. Also, I will try to get pictures of the project ponies for all readers who are interested in seeing the project ponies.
I also watch a shitton of nonfiction YouTube but I expect ya'll aren't terribly interested in all the things I learned about King Leopold II of Belgium (from my investigation into Why is Belgian chocolate?) even though there are some very interesting parallels (abuse of language, kind of the "Fake News" of its era) to be drawn (pedophile, paid for sex with very young girls) from the facts I learned (enriching self by abusing his power of position) about his reign and some similarly vile leadership we have today. But enough about that, let's talk Pink Marines 'cause that is what this show is about.
In Boots, our Main Character dude (Cope, which I fucking love that name, kinda describes his character in one fell swoop.) tags along into the Marines with his best friend. Cope is gay, which (it's 1990 in the show) is forbidden in the Marines at the time, and his best friend Ray is aware of both Cope's gayness and of the Marines not allowing gay folks in the Corps. Ray is perhaps not the best friend a boy could have.
For younger readers, DADT (Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which was a bullshit half measure to let gay people serve AS LONG AS THEY CONVINCINGLY PRETENDED NOT TO BE GAY AND NOBODY ASKED THEM ABOUT IT) started as a policy with the Clinton Administration, on December 21, 1993, and it was the way of the military until September 20, 2011, when, I guess, Obama put an end to that. Thanks, Obama! (Not being sarcastic. If we are gonna let soldiers straight-fuck and straight-marry, then they should also be allowed to gay-fuck and gay-marry. Fair's fair. If soldiers using their genitals with partners as they see fit is a problem, we could go all monastic and see what the fuck *that* does to recruitment numbers.)
So, Cope needs to appear not-gay and he's... pretty femme. The Marines, obviously, do not have a lot of time for "hit like a girl" dudes and so if you are one of those dudes, you're gonna have to work your shit out so that you don't look like one of those dudes. Quite a bit of the show focuses on Cope, well, coping and trying to be more Marine-like and less soft femme boy. It's a struggle.
Now, in real life there are a lot of beefy, tough gay dudes. But, those gay dudes pass as straight a lot more easily and there's not as much story to tell about Becoming A Marine when your gay dude shows up at Parris Island already looking and acting like a Marine. In the show and in the real world, Parris Island is where boys are made into Marines. That's like a huge theme of the show, it takes place (allegedly) on Parris Island and we get to see all sorts of straight boys being made into Marines the same time that Cope is being made (and making himself) into a Marine.
Short derail: I don't think that being a Marine and having femme traits are incompatible goals. You can do both. Being good and effective in missions has nothing to do with whether or not you like show tunes or whatever. Being an excellent shot or having an affinity for sneaking through jungles or deserts or urban landscapes has no bearing on your fondness for mascara or manicures. Do both. Be fabulous, kill things. It's fine.
Anyway, we, the audience, have absolutely no difficulty reading Cope as gay. We're told up front that he's gay, like in Episode 1. It's not at all left to our mighty powers of deduction, so I'm not gonna talk about that.
I'm gonna talk about our other gay character (I'm... six episodes in, here. It got to be bedtime and I responsibly went to bed instead of watching more episodes.) who is Sullivan, a drill sergeant (I took four tries to spell this word, none of them correct, and finally googled it) back from Guam to replace Knox, the racist jerk who slugged Ray. (Knox the racist jerk got shuffled sideways to a different group of recruits on the same base. He didn't get, like, fired or anything.)
Sullivan is gay. The show has flashbacks of Sullivan in Guam with his boyfriend, but that's, like, the big reveal for the slow of thinking. I'm pretty sure the audience is supposed to notice that he's gay well before the Big Reveal thing. (Also, actor Max Parker, you work out a lot and your diet is on point. Thank you for your fanservice.) I think I spent about five minutes of screentime with Sullivan before I was yelling at the laptop that he was gay. I do not have exceptional media skills and I'm not good at gaydar and I clocked Sullivan very early on, so we are SUPPOSED to be able to notice he's gay. Like, if I can see it, so can everyone else with half a brain.
I'm gonna have to rewatch because there are tells and we, the audience, are supposed to catch the tells and know Sullivan as gay before the show, er, shows him being overtly gay. What I'm interested in is how the show limns a character as gay without telling us in words, for sure? (This is not evil gay, that's a different thing where the gay part is to clarify the evil part. This isn't that. The gay part here is just gay, not evil.) In Boots, Sullivan is a foil storyline for Cope, in that he's set up to reflect upon (Like tin foil reflects, kinda!! Lol. I bet that's not why it's called a foil. Wikipedia says "comes from the practice of backing gems with metal foil to make them shine more brightly". Well fuck me, Wikipedia, that makes a ton of sense and is a great analogy for what narratives do with foil characters. And also, yes, it is totally "like tin foil reflects". Today I learned.) the choices Cope makes and the struggles that he faces and shit.
I suspect they're gonna throw Sullivan under the bus as a tragic character crushed by the dipshittery of the No Queers policies of the times and I hope they don't do that because damn I'm fucking tired of tragic gays. Gay people deserve happy endings, though in the Marines in the early 1990's, that's not super likely. Sullivan is a good Marine. He fucking loves the Corps and cares about his recruits and wants to make good Marines out of them. And all of that is why I think the show is gonna throw him under the bus, dishonorable discharge, etc. Man, if they do that, it's gonna suck. *sigh*
Anyway. Gonna have to rewatch to see how they make Sullivan be gay when he dresses just like all the other drill sergeants and everybody has the same fucking haircut and the same shiny boots and the same precise movements and they're all sort of buff and shouty. There have to be tells, maybe tells in the performance? I don't know. I will rewatch and report back. Watch this space for updates, possibly with screenshots. (Is this just a ploy to get more time with the image hosting site? LOL only I know for sure.)
I do have a busy weekend planned, so it may be some time until I get to this. Also, I will try to get pictures of the project ponies for all readers who are interested in seeing the project ponies.
