June is LGTBI+ pride month and the catalogs of the streaming platforms make it noticeable. Several documentaries related to the achievements and struggles of the community and starring icons such as the brave rapper Lil Nas X and the comedian Lily Tomlin. Equally relevant to social rights was the fight waged by several workers at the Mattel toy company to ensure that their flagship product, the always popular Barbie, represented the diversity of the society in which they lived.
‘Black Barbie’
It took more than 30 years for Barbie to have its black version. She arrived in the eighties. Filmmaker Lagueria Davis, without exactly being an admirer of this doll that in 2024 is still a great popular icon, tells this story almost in first person in this production by Shondaland, the company behind The Bridgertons and Grey’s Anatomy.
Her aunt Beulah Mae Mitchell worked for Mattel for decades. She was one of the African American employees who fought for the company to make dolls that looked like them. When it finally happened, designer Kitty Black Perkins thought of Diana Ross to create this pioneering plastic figure. This Netflix documentary is also a portrait of what it has meant over the years to be black in the United States.
Where to find it: Netflix.
‘Rainbow Humor: A Comedy Revolution’
Robin Tyler was the first lesbian comedian to come out on American television, in 1978. It cost her her career. This documentary remembers who she was and recovers the experiences of other well-known comedians, from Lily Tomlin to Sandra Bernhard, Margaret Cho, Rosie O’Donnell, Wanda Sykes, Tig Notaro, Marsha Warfield, Eddie Izzard and Hannah Gadsby.
If a good comedian knows one thing, it is how to overcome censorship, even that imposed by himself in a society terrified by the AIDS epidemic and with traditional family values dominating in the Reagan era. In this documentary screened at the TriBeCa Film Festival, other comedians are also mentioned, although not in a good way. They were those who perpetuated discrimination with their jokes, from Eddie Murphy to Mel Brooks.
Where to find it: Netflix.
Lil Nas X: Long Live Montero
Montero Lamar Hill, known as Lil Nas X, is not the first music star with a striking, colorful and camp look. But he is the first rapper mainstream in coming out of the closet in a world as sexist as that of R’n’B. What makes him so groundbreaking is that he rose to world fame playing with another genre that is also complicated for a gay artist, such as country in the song Old Twon Road.
This documentary by Mexican Carlos Lopez Estrada with Zac Manuel reviews the important tour that the American completed in 2022. Lil Nas from his position as a great innovator of current popular music.
Where to find it: Buy and rent on Apple TV+ and Rakuten TV.
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