Fire Island on Hulu

To celebrate the beginning of Pride Month, Hulu released Fire Island; a modern retailing of Pride and Prejudice but gay and at one of the summer meccas of the Queer community. Its the perfect summer movie full of rom-com moments, humor, and lots of queer people having their best life. There is also a self-awareness to the movie, as described in the Rolling Stones review “It’s also the sort of movie that wants to deliver those big, unabashedly broad rom-com moments while having characters scream about how someone is getting their big, unabashedly broad rom-com moment.”

The movie also felt approachable, especially as it both revels in and critiques the exclusiveness of segments of the gay community and how the hierarchies among the gay community are as much about race and class as they are about body type and sexual preferences. The movie allows its characters to be vulnerable about how they feel left out of the gay community for their race, class, and body size. It’s refreshing to see movies about queer people made for the queer gaze, where tragedy and trauma aren’t essentialized as part of the queer experience. It also helps that there are lots of beautiful people to watch on screen; that’s almost always a good thing.