By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | June 11, 2024 |
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | June 11, 2024 |
Happy Pride, my friends. It’s time for the LGBTQIA+ community to shine. Every evil corporation has changed its Twitter avatar to a rainbow. Chappell Roan is on top of the world. Landon Cider did a drag king routine as Wilson the volleyball from Castaway. It’s a good time for us. Pride is a riot, a deeply political force designed to combat centuries’ worth of systemic queerphobia and to push back against the dishearteningly prevalent hatred that has permeated society. It’s an opportunity for visibility and ferocity to shine in the face of destruction. But it’s also a chance for some shameless fun. Look, things are tough and I can’t spend all damn day talking about that transphobe who wrote those books about wizards who poo themselves. I’m tired, okay?! So, let’s celebrate something that has dominated my mind for 15 years: a core memory, a defining artwork, and the epitome of chaotic pride hotness.
audra mcdonald, anne hathaway and raul esparza (2009) pic.twitter.com/Bh4TAxoknE
— popculture (@notgwendalupe) February 7, 2024
See this right here? This is the sexiest image ever taken. No hyperbole, 100% objective, this is the universal truth of the world. Death, taxes, and this photograph. If you see this pic on your Twitter feed, you must share it within 30 seconds or risk bad luck for the rest of your day. I don’t make the rules. The photo rules all.
For those not in the know, this is Audra McDonald, Anne Hathaway, and Raul Esparza in a production of Twelfth Night from 2009, hosted as part of New York City’s annual Shakespeare in the Park celebrations. This version of the play was positively reviewed and seems to have been pretty popular with Broadway nerds. Its most enduring element, however, is its promotional images like the one above. I mean, look at it. How could it not become a major f*cking deal?!
This was an image designed to break the internet before that was even a thing. It’s Tumblr bait, fanfiction fuel, pure unfettered horny posting. Does your fandom have a love triangle where you keep asking, ‘Why not just triage it up?’ This image speaks to your soul and implores you to turn it into fanart of your faves. And fans have leaped to the occasion. Oh, Shakespeare’s too woke for you? Good! Woke it up, kids! Because Twelfth Night wasn’t queer enough.
I don’t feel like I have to offer much in the way of critical dissection to explain why this image has become such a big deal online. It’s just hot as f*ck, right? Anne Hathaway in drag, torn between two gorgeous Broadway legends, a sword adding some danger and phallic energy to the menage a trois. It’s Audra getting the kiss while Raul just clings on for dear life, and Annie is confused, aroused, and probably thinking, ‘Yup, that’s me. I bet you’re wondering how I ended up here.’ It doesn’t hurt that all three actors are extremely gorgeous, radiating both charisma and that theatre kid earnestness that feels so at home with queer Shakespearean drama (Esparza is also bisexual, so Pride just keeps on winning.)
Twelfth Night can make the case for being Shakespeare’s queerest play. In it, identical twins Viola and Sebastian are separated after a shipwreck off the coast of Illyria. She disguises herself as a young man under the name Cesario and goes to work for Duke Orsino. He’s trying to seduce the countess Olivia and is using ‘Cesario’ as his middle-man to profess his love. Olivia, however, falls for Cesario, while Viola falls for Orsino. You got all that? It ends with Viola marrying the Duke and Olivia married to Sebastian. It seems like a conveniently hetero happy-ever-after but the text is still extremely queer. Orsino’s final line is ‘Cesario, come, For so you shall be while you are a man. But when in other habits you are seen, Orsino’s mistress, and his fancy’s queen.’ It reads an awful lot like Orsino’s down with his new wife switching up her gender for some spicy marital fun.
Side note, but it’s always hilarious to me when the drama YouTubers and pound shop Ann Coulters try to stir up drama over modern re-imaginings of Shakespeare (as if they were ever going to go to the theatre in the first place.) We saw this recently with the abhorrent racism that Francesca Amewudah-Rivers received when she was cast as Juliet alongside Tom Holland in the current West End production of Romeo & Juliet. What, you think it’s woke historical rewriting for a Black woman to be in this play? You know all the female roles were originally played by men, right? Wouldn’t that be too radical for you if you saw that play now? Media literacy matters, kids, and so does gay Shakespeare!
It’s also just the epitome of chaotic bisexual power, both the play and the image. Oh no, I’m caught between two insanely hot people who both want me bad enough to spiral into a poetic existential crisis! My life is oh-so-impossible. Anne Hathaway was just living the dream, and looking gorgeous while doing so.
So, this Pride, celebrate the good things. Like this image. Go share it on social media now, make your fanart, and remember that the cishets could never.