Medical anthropologist, cat dad, culture critic. PHD, MFA. Teaching prof in Public Health at UC Irvine. All views are mine, mine, mine. 🏳️🌈🧙♂️🐻👨🏫💊
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Articles by Ted Gideonse
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FEATURES Single in the City '99 What's Love Got to Do With It? BY LILY BURANA Dating up, dating down, dating for dollars or real estate or sex: Hooking up has never been more complicated in a city where size (as in assets) often matters more than sighs. Where To Find It Dating up, dating down, dating for dollars or real estate or sex: Hooking up has never been more complicated in a city where size (as in assets) often matters more than sighs.
Checking In With AIDS Researcher David Ho
Before the 1996 International AIDS Conference, in Vancouver, few outside the HIV-research community had any idea who Dr. David Ho was. But at the conference, Ho made an announcement that made him the most famous AIDS scientist in the world. He explained how, by using a “cocktail” of AZT and several new drugs called protease inhibitors in the early stages of infection, doctors could reduce HIV in the body to undetectable levels. Patients on the drugs had already made remarkable recoveries.
Pandemic | Anthropology News
Ted Gideonse is a medical anthropologist who studies the effects of public health discourses about HIV and drugs. Political myth-making about America’s rural “heartland” is doubly pernicious, increasing rural vulnerability to COVID-19 and ignoring the disintegration of rural health services. Tips and affirmations for starting a meditation practice and staying grounded during this global pandemic. Higher education is at a crossroads.
A stunningly beautiful and very funny movie
I’ve written before that I cry easily at the movies, and I’ve cried at some terrible ones. I’m still embarrassed that I cried at a screening of the wretched and sappy Jack Frost in 1998. But I’ve never been ashamed that animated Pixar movies have moved me to tears, partly because I’m joined by millions of other weepers, but mostly because the films tend to be so well written that the audience’s emotional responses feel earned rather than manipulated.
Two great queer-themed films open
Opening this Friday, God’s Own Country has been described as the British Brokeback Mountain, which is both accurate and hyperbolic. Both are about star-crossed lovers who meet while tending to livestock in a sparse landscape, but this time it’s Yorkshire, not Wyoming. Johnny (Josh O’Connor) is the only son of a debilitated farmer (Ian Hart), and his bitterness about being trapped on the farm has led him to alcoholic shenanigans including but not limited to hooking up with strange men in barns.
A beautifully shot but somewhat tame biopic
I can’t remember the first time I saw one of the drawings by Touko Laaksonen, better known as Tom of Finland. It’s as if they were already in my head, iconic of gayness and man-ness, when I came out in 1992. I’d been titillated by some of the drawings of superheroes in the comic books I loved as a teenager, but Tom of Finland’s work was wonderfully, deliciously pornographic to me. His work and that of his imitators did the same for men all over the world, this its omnipresence.
An essential document for our collective queer history
Marsha P. Johnson was at the Stonewall Inn when the police raided the bar June 28, 1969, and she helped start the riots that mark the beginning of the modern gay rights movement. She was a beloved fixture in Greenwich Village for 30 years; she co-founded Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, modeled for Warhol, protested with ACT-UP and performed cabaret in a troupe of drag queens.
The match that became a circus
When I was coming out and learning about the various LGBT people who came before me, one of the images I saw repeated the most was the last shot of the absurdist tennis match called the Battle of the Sexes, when then-closeted Billie Jean King backhanded the ball past chauvinist huckster Bobby Riggs’s right and then he jumped over the net to shake her hand.
A powerful and haunting mystery from Jane Campion
I could watch Elisabeth Moss do anything. A few years ago, at the height of her fame as proto-feminist Peggy on Mad Men, Excedrin started rerunning an old commercial she did for them, and it’s utterly unlike anything else you might see on TV selling something; she could be doing a monologue from A Doll’s House about aspirin.
A modern western thriller with a conscience
Taylor Sheridan writes modern western thrillers with something like consciences. In Sicario, drug war on the U..S Mexico border corrupted the best of intentions. One of last year’s Best Picture nominees Hell and High Water was about two brothers who robbed a scurrilous bank that had cheated their mother out of her land. Wind River, Sheridan’s directorial debut, is a murder mystery set in a Wyoming Native American reservation both neglected and exploited.
'Atomic Blonde' is a landmark as a super-queer action film
Twenty years ago, Rupert Everett, fresh off his star making turn in My Best Friend’s Wedding, lobbied to become the star of a gay superspy franchise. It never happened despite Everett seemingly being born to play such a role. Neither Hollywood financiers nor the action film ticket-buyers were quite ready for such a character, or at least not ready enough to support a big budget tentpole film a la James Bond.
This show is as absolutely bonkers as it is fabulous
In the pantheon of TV series not about gay men that gay men tend to be obsessed with, Absolutely Fabulous is bigger than Designing Women and on a par with The Golden Girls. Almost obscenely popular in the U.K. (with ratings comparable to Cheers at its high point), Ab Fab has more of a cult status in the United States, mostly because of gay men.
'Okja' shouldn't be missed
I think the best reason to applaud the ascendance of the Netflix and Amazon TV and film studios is their willingness to fund the ambitious projects of artists like the Wachowskis (Sense8), Jill Soloway (Transparent) and Aziz Ansari (Master of None) – and now Bong Joon Ho, who directed the insane, groundbreaking Snowpiercer, as well as the modern Korean classics Memories of Murder, Mother and The Host.
A most salient portrait of evil
When Miguel Arteta and Mike White started filming Beatriz at Dinner last August, I doubt they could have predicted how salient the film would be when it was released ten months later. The biting, mostly comic commentary on class, race and manners is particularly unsettling because Trump won, because what may have been written as satire a year ago is naked reality now. It’s a tragicomedy, but in our country’s current predicament, its more tragic, making the film’s bleak ending creepily logical.
Finally, 'Wonder Woman' is here
Infamously, since Warner Bros. decided to create a crossover-heavy “universe” with its superheroes, the studio’s comic book films have been at best wrong-headed and underwhelming (Man of Steel) and at worst incompetently made and pointless (Suicide Squad). The fear that they’d screw up a Wonder Woman film after waiting decades to greenlight it was justified. Thankfully, they didn’t screw it up at all.
Ridley Scott delivers another slice of deep-space terror
Alien: Covenant is the eighth movie in the 38-year-old sci-fi horror Alien franchise. Following 2012’s Prometheus, the financially successful but fan-loathed prequel, Covenant tries to walk a fine line: The film throws enough red meat to ravenous Alien fanboys with stomach-bursting, face-sucking, don’t-go-in-the-basement grotesquery to get away with continuing Prometheus’ much-maligned, but wildly ambitious origin story of both the aliens and the human race.
Sally Field is brilliant in 'Doris'
At various times in my life, I’ve frequented nightclubs: loud music, overpriced drinks, spinning lights, smoke machines and usually young people dancing in outfits chosen to attract the gaze and attention of other, hopefully very attractive dancers. Occasionally, people would stick out.
Exploring the phenomenon of the 'gay voice'
When I figured out that other people were figuring out I was gay, or maybe gay, or maybe just weird, say around the age of 14, I became hyper-vigilant about how I might be perceived by, well, everyone who was close enough to perceive me. Most of it was in my clothes (carefully disheveled instead of carefully dapper), my proclaimed interests (basketball not Bronski Beat), and my physical gestures (unlimp that wrist).
DVR This: The Magicians
Lev Grossman’s series of novels that begins with The Magicians is not terribly original; he clearly combined Harry Potter with The Chronicles of Narnia. At an invisible school in Upstate New York, college students study magic and a few of them discover that the beloved novels about the mythical land of Fillory were actually true stories.
Fear the Walking Dead
The first spinoff of AMC’s wildly popular zombie apocalypse soap opera The Walking Dead, Fear the Walking Dead focused on the first few weeks of the zombie epidemic that is in full swing when the original show started. The publicists don’t want us to call it a prequel, but it clearly is.
Looking | LGBT Weekly
The second season of HBO’s divisive series about a group of gay men in San Francisco has arrived. The first season began with screeching fights on social media about the show and its narcissistic, somewhat unbelievable characters, but as the episodes piled up, those of us who kept watching saw Looking become more complex and the characters less irritating. Jonathan Groff is naïve techie Patrick who is torn between Latin barber Richie (Raúl Castillo) and his British boss Kevin (Russell Tovey).
Cucumber and Banana
Russell Davies, who created Queer as Folk and rebooted Doctor Who, has returned to gay dramedy with two shows Cucumber and Banana, which have already premiered in the U.K. and have now landed in the U.S. on Logo. Davies’ original version of Queer as Folk was leaps and bounds better than the U.S. version, and I am thrilled that we’re getting two new gay series from him.
DVR This: Please Like Me
Josh Thomas’is what HBO’swould be if it were gay, Australian, and not irritating. Thomas is preternaturally talented and very young (like Lena Dunham), and he has written every episode of’s two seasons. Thomas plays Josh, who in the first episode gets dumped by his girlfriend (Caitlin Stasey), comes out, and then finds out his mother (Debra Lawrance) has tried to commit suicide.
DVR This: Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever
The “Internet sensation” known as Grumpy Cat – named so because it’s a cat that always looks grumpy – has been monetized into a Lifetime Christmas movie. This sounds awful and absurd, but it’s also potentially rather funny, since the cat is voiced by the hilariously deadpan Aubrey Plaza (Parks and Recreation, Safety Not Guaranteed).
Supergirl | LGBT Weekly
CBS’s Supergirl is based on Superman’s cousin’s heroic adventures in Los Angeles-like National City. Avoiding the darkness of the DC heroes’ films, Supergirl, like The Flash, is bright and cheery, positive and inspiring. As Kara Danvers and Supergirl, the titular Kryptonian refugee who becomes super-powered under the Earth’s yellow sun, Melissa Benoist is delightfully sweet, eager and Clark Kent-ish in both her clumsiness and her employment at a newspaper.
DVR This: Penny Dreadful
The season premiere of the postmodern horror drama introduces a new big bad: witches, led by mystic Evelyn Poole (Helen McCrory). She becomes the nemesis of our heroine, the disturbed medium Vanessa Ives (Eva Green), who I think is the most exciting character on television right now.
DVR This: Wolf Hall
The first episode of Wolf Hall, the BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Book Prize winning novel, is sitting on my own DVR. One of the highest rated television shows in British history, it was also wildly praised by critics, and PBS’s Masterpiece is bringing it to the U.S. with great fanfare.
Empire | LGBT Weekly
Lee Daniels has called his hip-hop soap opera “the black Dynasty” and that’s all I needed to want to record it, but having Terrence Howard as a music mogul, Taraji P. Henson as his criminal wife and Courtney Love wandering around being insane has made me desperate to watch. The overacting is a given, but Daniels and writer Danny Strong are responsible for the most ridiculous campfest known as The Butler, so Empire could be more fun than it has a right being.
Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp
Michael Showalter and David Wain’s 2001 cult classic Wet Hot American Summer is funny but is particularly impressive for having cast so many eventually super-famous people: Amy Poehler, Paul Rudd, Bradley Cooper, Elizabeth Banks and Ken Marino joined already or at-the-time famous Christopher Meloni, Janeane Garofalo, Zak Orth and Marguerite Moreau in a parodic homage to early 1980s movies about summer camp.
DVR This: The Family
In some ways, Joan Allen is playing a very similar character in The Family to the one she played in last fall’s Room. Both had teenage children kidnapped by sexual predators who returned years later. But her character in Room is doting, kind and selfless. In the new TV drama The Family, Allen plays the deeply cynical Claire Warren, the mayor of a small city in Maine, whose political career was made by her son’s kidnapping and who uses his return to propel her to the governor’s mansion.
Vinyl | LGBT Weekly
HBO’s latest newest prestige drama was created by Mick Jagger and Martin Scorsese and it focuses on the 1970s music business in New York. With that pedigree, it shouldn’t be surprising that the show is full of drugs, sex, violence, raw rock and roll and sublime R&B.
DVR This: The Expanse
Possibly the best show since Syfy’s beloved Battlestar Galactica,The Expanse is another space opera, this time about the conflicts caused by humanity’s colonization of the solar system 200 years into the future. Earth is run by a ruthless United Nations, Mars is an independent military power, and the asteroid belt is inhabited by a motley crew of miners, outcasts and weirdos.
DVR This: Jessica Jones
Marvel’s team up with Netflix produced last winter’s Daredevil, easily the best television show about a superhero ever made, and now they’ve given us the remarkable Jessica Jones. Jessica (Krysten Ritter) is a private investigator living and working in the same New York neighborhood as Daredevil and his alter ego Matt Murdock. She was once a superhero, but after a disastrous run-in with a mind-controlling sadistic sociopath named Kilgrave (David Tennant), she became an uncostumed PI.
DVR This: Silicon Valley
The tech bros of the Bay Area are lovingly satirized in Mike Judge’s fantastic sitcom Silicon Valley. Now in its second season, the show has figured itself out after a shaky beginning, and it is now one of the funniest on TV. Thomas Middlemarch plays Richard, a delightfully awkward computer programmer who comes up with a brilliant new method of compressing data.
DVR This: Black Mirror
Black Mirror Posted by LGBT Weekly DVR This Wednesday, December 24th, 2014 by Ted Gideonse dvr this DirecTV, Christmas, 9:30-11 p.m. Also on Netflix Instant This British import is a contemporary Twilight Zone, mostly focused on the dark, dark possibilities of over-reliance on technology. Each episode is creepy and perfectly plotted and a little unnerving and stars someone pretty great.
DVR This: Game of Thrones | LGBT Weekly
Last year’s season finale of the sword and sorcery epic series Game of Thrones ended with the seeming death of one of the show’s three main characters. People drop dead left and right on that show, but fans all assumed that at least noble warrior Jon Snow (Kit Harrington), Machiavellian-with-a-heart Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage), and divinely inspired, dragon mom Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) would make it through to the end.
Daredevil | LGBT Weekly
The first series in the Netflix portion of the Marvel Comics cinematic universe, Daredevil sets the scene for a gritty Manhattan-based world featuring Jessica Jones, Power Man and Iron Fist, all who will eventually form the Defenders. I’ve always found Daredevil to be one of the more fascinating superheroes. An accident with toxic chemicals blinds Matt Murdock as a child and also gives him heightened hearing and smell, making it possible for him to “see” a lot of things few blind people can.
DVR This: The Flash
After the success of Arrow, the CW and DC Comics created a spin-off focused on the red-suited speedster superhero called the Flash, whose real name is Barry Allen.
DVR This: The Affair
The season finale of the much-buzzed about Showtime soap opera will probably not answer the key question of the show: Will Noah (Dominic West) and Alison (Ruth Wilson) end up together, dump their spouses (Maura Tierney and Joshua Jackson, respectively), and live unhappily ever after? If it’s answered, there won’t be a second season, after all. The show has an innovative structure, with one half of each episode from the perspective of Noah, the other from Alison.
Glee | LGBT Weekly
I never gave up on Glee, though I understand why so many people did after the second season, when things started getting so absurd, inconsistent and repetitive that it was hard even to call it camp. Last season was disastrously bad, with half of the action taking place in New York with the original cast and the other half back in Lima, Ohio with a whole new generation of singing, dancing outcasts, who combined had barely half of the charisma of Darrin Criss.
DVR This: Broad City
Broad City Posted by LGBT Weekly DVR This Thursday, February 19th, 2015 by Ted Gideonse Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer in Broad City dvr this Comedy Central, Wednesdays, 10:30 p.m. Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson play Ilana and Abbi on the absurdly, filthily funny Broad City, a series about two young women in New York trying to have fun, have sex, get high, fall in love and be as cool as young Brooklynites are supposed to be.
Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer
Of all of the very strange novelty songs and of all the weird Christmas tunes, Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer is possibly the pinnacle. As song by Elmo and Patsy, it’s a crass, tasteless, and very funny yarn about what happens when Santa Claus kills grandma on Christmas Eve. As turned into a terrible, animated courtroom drama, it’s defanged – she lives! – and very dopey. But it’s also kind of amusing, with enough spiked egg nog.
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, who created 30 Rock, arguably one of the greatest sitcoms in history, have dropped 13 episodes of their follow-up. It is a comedy about an absurdly cheerful woman (Ellie Kemper) who spent 15 years in a cult, isolated from the world. After being rescued, she moves to New York, gets a black gay roommate (Tituss Burgess), and proceeds to be amazed by modern life. Because it’s Fey and Carlock, the writing is brilliantly funny, weird, and quotable.
DVR This: RuPaul's Drag Race
It actually doesn’t matter when Logo airs Drag Race because it gets repeated constantly, but new episodes arrive on Mondays. In case you’ve been living in a hole, the show is American Idol crossed with Project Runway, but for drag queens.
Better Call Saul
Before Breaking Bad finished its much (and perhaps overly) praised run, AMC announced that they would be a producing a prequel series about meth dealer Walter White’s lawyer Saul Goodman. Saul is one of the few characters from Breaking Bad who was always funny, though there was a deep pathos underneath the humor.
iZombie | LGBT Weekly
When I watched the premiere of iZombie, I felt like I was wrapped in a familiar blanket of easy fun. Then I discovered it was created by Rob Thomas, who also gave us Veronica Mars. And iZombie is a cross between that iconic CW show and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It’s about a young medical examiner, adorably played by Rose McIver, who is secretly a zombie – a sentient one, but undead nonetheless. Only her boss knows, while the detective she assists thinks she’s psychic.
Grace and Frankie
When I heard that Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin were going to team up for a comedy about two very different women thrown together when their husbands leave them for each other, I imagined a new Golden Girls, with broad comedy and lots of zingers. I was shocked and immensely surprised that Grace and Frankie is not just very funny but also a very smart, very insightful, very moving show about aging, betrayal, love, friendship, grief and hope.
DVR This: Please Like Me
A few weeks ago, I instructed my readers to catch up on Please Like Me before the third season premier, which is Oct. 16. The Australian comedy about the comedy of star Josh Thomas is a gay love child of Girls and Louie, both brilliantly funny and dramatically resonant.
The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story
Ryan Murphy’s second anthology series, after American Horry Story, is focused on one major crime story a year, and he has started with OJ Simpson being accused and tried for the murder of his ex-wife and her friend. Without even watching the non-stop coverage of the events when they actually occurred in the mid-1990s, I ODed on OJ, so I’ve not been excited by Murphy’s take, since Murphy can go over-the-top and high-camp when it’s not always a great idea.
Glee | LGBT Weekly
The two-hour final episode of the once-groundbreaking, then nationally joked about and finally begrudgingly respected musical comedy about a high school show choir arrives after a strangely brilliant final season. Almost all of the plot threads were tied up by last week’s episode. A double gay wedding put Kurt and Blaine and Britney and Santana together. The latest iteration of the club won sectionals and secured their place in the school.
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