On a recent episode of Hacks, Hannah Einbinder’s Ava Daniels sits at a hotel bar having a glass of Avaline wine. She’s not a white wine girl, not usually, but she wanted to try Cameron Diaz’s organic, vegan-friendly wine brand. “Good for her,” the casino CEO sitting next to her says of Diaz’s entrepreneurial endeavor. “Is it good?” she questions aloud. “Isn’t it bad that the goal for actors now is to, like, be good at art so you can sell CBD lip balm or whatever? But then again, actresses have historically had their image monetized without any control over how that image was used, so maybe if this gives them more power and agency, it’s a good thing. But then again, doesn’t capitalism only ultimately benefit evil rich white men regardless of who heads any one company, so maybe it’s bad? But also, who am I to judge? I work for a giant media conglomerate. I’m just gonna go live in the woods.”
One of my favorite plot points on Hacks throughout its stellar Season 3 was Ava grappling with class dynamics. She’s spent her professional life identifying as working class, despite not being and never having been. Like many young millennials, she’s thoughtful about her place in the world, her status and how her choices affect others. Like some young millennials, she’s deeply unaware, or perhaps in denial of, the way her class privilege affects all of that. Later in the episode, after almost fucking a Republican oil heiress who wants to pee on her, Ava tells Jean Smart’s character Deborah: “Trying to be a good person is hell, but at least you’re trying.” What she means by that is that within her value system, the effort deserves reward. It’s easy to poo-poo this notion — a participation trophy — but what Hacks skillfully tries to grapple with is delivering that line with a conviction and sincerity that warrants consideration.
Let’s do more of that: considering.
There's a long-standing eye roll around what's commonly called the corporatization of Pride. This was crystalized and perhaps apexed when Meg Stalter (a castmember on Hacks — sensing a theme?) parodied this minefield in 2021. "Hi gay!" she famously declared. “Happy Pride Month. We are sashaying away with deals… We love gay, and it’s awesome. And we also make candles now? Wouldn’t a candle be awesome for gay stuff? In the bedroom or just hanging out…?” The joke, if it needs to be explained, was highlighting the dissonance between brand messaging around Pride Month and actual queer people. The timeline of Pride being born out of a protest against police violence and fighting for liberation now resulting in Bank of America touting how they’ve been “pioneering on LGBTQ+ inclusion for over 20 years” highlights the reality that we are, indeed, living in a The Other Two simulation.
Should we all go live in the woods? “On stolen land?” the casino CEO asks Ava, who lowers her head onto the bar in lieu of throwing her hands up in the air. And thus a question I’ve been asking myself lately: If we can concede that it’s never enough, can the effort be worth something? But let’s back it up a beat and try to figure out how Marsha P. Johnson & co.’s efforts detoured from liberation and somehow crash-landed on bisexual couches.
In other words: How and when did the commercialization or corporatization of Pride first begin?
The first Pride March, which took place in 1970, a year after the Stonewall Riots, was a source of much contention amongst its organizers. Should the 51-block event be called a gay pride march or a gay power march? Should there be a dress code? “Internal conflicts have become a hallmark of gay pride marches ever since,” noted the New York Times in their 2017 piece “Gay Pride’s Choice: March in Protest or Dance Worries Away.” It wouldn’t be until nearly three decades later, in 1999, that Pride advanced from a march to a full-blown month, thanks to President Bill Clinton formally establishing “Gay and Lesbian Pride Month.” (This is the same man who enacted the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” bill years earlier, so you can understand why our applause isn’t being roused.)
Absolut Vodka, United Colors of Benetton, Subaru and Ikea (purveyors of the aforementioned bi couch) were all key players in both marketing specifically to our community as well as featuring gay and lesbians in advertising in the late 80s and early 90s. But the most explicit shift can be observed in the wake of the landmark 2015 Supreme Court ruling that federally legalized same-sex marriage. It wasn’t just the Supreme Court ruling; it was also public opinion becoming more favorable toward gay people that brought about a shift in Pride as a commodifiable entity vs. a celebration (or protest). A Gallup poll from 1996 had 27% of the country in support of gay marriage. By May 2015, a month before the ruling, that number had risen to 60%. This is key to understanding the low risk of brands aligning (and in some instances tethering) themselves to the LGBTQ+ community.
From the brand perspective, it makes so much sense. Supporting gay rights was increasingly popular, and brands want to seem in the know with cultural machinations. That, and the perception at the time that gay men defined taste. “I think [gay men] have the greatest taste and the greatest wit, aside from being fabulous hairdressers and everything else,” gay icon Bea Arthur once remarked. “I don’t think you can show crap to gays. I think they’re above it and beyond it.” Another ingredient: The uptick in out LGBTQ+ employees at companies, many of whom were in senior roles that included decision-making on matters like corporate spending. All of this coalesced and resulted in ads like Bud Light reimagining the LGBTQ acronym as standing for “Let’s Grab Beers Tonight, Queens” in 2021 or Burger King’s 2022 offering of a Pride Whopper featuring your choice of two “top” buns or two “bottom” buns. (Get it?)
It’s easy, with examples like these, to understand the growing apathy and disdain around brands’ involvement in Pride. They co-opted liberation into a capitalist pursuit.
But then again, harkening back to Ava’s monologue from Hacks, many of these brands donate proceeds to charitable organizations operated by and for LGBTQ+ people and most of these brands employ LGBTQ+ people within their organizations (some of whom ideate and execute these very campaigns or initiatives). Maybe, just maybe, this is the result of our community* being given power and agency? The asterisk because, like the erasure of trans people from Clinton’s Gay and Lesbian Pride Month, it’s often the most highly privileged in our community that sit on the boards of these entities — both the corporations donating and the charitable organizations receiving. And so, it’s often (optically, at least) the benevolent, privileged queers and their allies pandering to the most marginalized in our community in a way that reinforces a power structure that ultimately, as Ava Daniels pointed out, benefits evil rich white men. “So maybe it’s bad?” she asked. I wonder this too.
Do I chuckle at a pin distributed to JP Morgan employees that reads “Hello, my pronouns are…” because it’s objectively funny? Yes.
Do I think it’s net positive that a multinational finance company is attempting to make its LGBTQ+ employees feel seen and supported? I do. Do I believe that seeing brands slathering their logos with rainbows and creating Pride merch is benefiting the community as much as they suggest? No. Do I believe that it can be a net positive nonetheless? I do. As Naveen Kumar noted in his fantastic 2019 essay “The Double-Edged Sword of Corporate, Commercialized Pride”: “Recognition as a consumer base is a hallmark of minority progress in America. The fact that the queer community and its allies have attained enough influence to warrant a flood of national campaigns is certainly a major milestone.”
I’m reminded of the heel turn from a brand like Snickers, who once had to pull an ad accused of homophobic messaging in 2008. Seven years later, they had created rainbow packaging for Pride month that read “Stay who you are” on the wrapper. They tweeted it out with the #LoveWins hashtag timed to the legalization of gay marriage. Did this save lives? No. But it did signal a shift that I think is worth recognizing with regard to the public perceptions of LGBTQ+ people. However, as Kumar points out, “many consider the co-opting of a political uprising for corporate gain antithetical to the spirit of resistance.”
Like the “no kink at Pride” discourse which rears its head annually (this year’s is particularly harrowing in recognizing just how on-a-loop online discourse has become), I think it’s perfectly okay, healthy even, to disagree on how (or if) corporations should show up for Pride.
Growing up in the 90s, I never even knew of Pride, existing only with shame and guilt which eventually coalesced into rage. Would something like Pride Listerine have accelerated my coming out or made me less self-hating? No. But I think posts like this one from Sesame Street’s social media account might have.
It features the characters assembled to form the Philadelphia Pride flag (designed in 2017, adding black and brown stripes to the six-striped rainbow flag in order to give representation to queer and trans BIPOC) with the caption: “Happy #PrideMonth from Sesame Street! Today and every day, we celebrate and uplift the LGBTQIA+ members of our community. Together, let’s build a world where every person and family feels loved and welcomed for who they are.”
And some of these corps go to lengths greater than just a one-off donation. For instance, Starbucks execs wrote this blog post in which they announced an “expanded” partnership with the National Center for Transgender Equality that offers trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming employees the opportunity to be reimbursed up to $500 for costs related to name and gender marker changes on their state or federal IDs. That, from my vantage point, is a meaningful way for a corporation to find a way into Pride.
This could be an effort to offset some of the bad press that came out of last year’s Pride parade in New York City in which Starbucks Workers United members jumped in front of the Starbucks corporation’s Pride float, raising banners that read “Starbucks took down Pride Decorations & LIED about it” and “STARBUCKS UNION-BUSTING IS HOMOPHOBIC.” And thus the ongoing conundrum, and the reason it’s important that listicles like “These rainbow flag-waving corporations donated millions to anti-gay members of Congress” exist to help us discern.
One step forward, two steps back? One step forward, one step back? Can we consider recognition and reparations for past indiscretions a true step forward? That’s, of course, not up to me to answer, especially in recognizing my proximity to Ava Daniels. Which brings me back to Hacks.
“You a lesbian?” Jean Smart’s Deborah Vance asks her prospective new employee in the show’s second episode. "Not sure you can ask me that," Ava counters before divulging anyway: "I used to only hook up with men, but when I masturbated, I thought about women. So then in college, I finally hooked up with this amazing TA, Phoebe, and I realized that I could connect more emotionally with women, which led to deeper sexual experiences. But sometimes I do still need penetrative sex with a dick to come. But I don't know, maybe I was just conditioned to the porn that was fed to me by the algorithm, you know? So anyway, I'm bi."
Hacks premiered on HBO Max (now Max — still shaking my head) in May 2021. It features four out LGBTQ+ actors amongst its core cast of seven (Hannah Einbinder, Carl Clemons-Hopkins, Megan Stalter and Mark Indelicato). Throughout its three-season run, in addition to queer storylines, the show has featured a bevy of out LGBTQ+ talent including Poppy Liu, Johnny Sibilly, Lorenza Izzo, Margaret Cho, Dan Bucatinsky, Luke Macfarlane, Guy Branum and Mario Cantone. It’s recognized and celebrated for its overt queerness. The Independent: “The new season of Hacks is gayer than ever and I couldn’t be happier.” Out Magazine: “How Carl Clemons-Hopkins & Hacks are updating queer visibility.” Harper’s Bazaar: “Hacks doesn’t bill itself as a queer comedy, but it’s one of the queerest shows on TV.”
“Our show is about women and queer people,” said co-creator, executive producer and star Paul Downs. “I think especially today, we felt a lot of pressure to make sure we told that story well and continued to have people connect with it because now more than ever, it’s so important for people to watch and see stories about women, about queer people.” It’s a sentiment echoed by Hannah Einbinder in Time Magazine: “We have queer actors playing queer characters in every instance. So it's nice for all of us to be telling our own stories.”
And yet the show exists on a network owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, a giant media conglomerate. It’s telling queer stories, nuanced ones at that, and employing queer favs. Does David Zaslav, “a villain in Hollywood,” give two shits about queer people, our interests and our livelihoods? Is he up at night thinking about how his programming can directly help impact LGBTQ+ children and young people validate their experiences? I don’t know for certain, but like Sister Aloysius, I have doubts. And yet, Zaslav has employees who do. And thus, like Ava, I’m going to refrain from living in the woods… for now.