Pop Culture Fix: Lena Waithe Week Continues After Her Big Emmy Win

Big week! Erin’s liveblogging Carol Blackout 2K17 as we speak. I got my tickets for Battle of the Sexes (and will have a review for you on Friday). And The CW has greenlit a “dark” “coming of age” “horror” reboot of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, which will be brought to your TV by the folks behind every gay woman’s secret favorite show, Riverdale. Here is the official thing The CW says:

“The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’ reimagines the origin and adventures of ‘Sabrina the Teenage Witch’ as a dark coming-of-age story that traffics in horror, the occult and, of course, witchcraft. Tonally in the vein of ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ and ‘The Exorcist,’ this adaptation finds Sabrina wrestling to reconcile her dual nature — half-witch, half-mortal — while standing against the evil forces that threaten her, her family and the daylight world humans inhabit.”

And here is the official Autostraddle response:

Heather: oh cw is letting riverdale remake sabrina the teenage witch as a “dark coming-of-age horror series.”
Riese: will the lesbian moms be lesbian moms this time?
Yvonne: omg i love sabrina
Riese: SHE HAS TWO MOMS
Riese: AND A TALKING CAT
Riese: how is that not a lesbian household?
Yvonne: remember every teen show would always some how have an episode where they switch genders for whatever reason? like i recently watched the sabrina version of that episode on prime and it was the gayest thing ever

Riese: oh wow
spitting image of devon sawa


Teevee

+ Hem hem: Natasha Lyonne and Amy Poehler Teaming for Netflix Comedy

+ On the TIFF red carpet someone asked Allison Janey what C.J. Cregg would say to Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

+ This is a pretty chill headline.

+ At Jezebel: Barb From Stranger Things Is Gucci’s Gaudy New Inspiration

Queer Humans, Out and About

+ Marie Claire has a really good interview with Asia Kate Dillon.

I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that only gender non-conforming, non-binary, or trans people have a gender identity. But the truth is, everyone has a gender identity. Some people’s gender identity conforms to the sex they were assigned at birth, and some people’s identity doesn’t. That realization was certainly very freeing for me—and could be very freeing for other people.

+ Shondaland.com is here and right out of the gate Mallory Ortberg is writing about binders.

I cannot promise this will happen for you, but here is what happened for me: I put on a shirt over the binder and I saw a look on my own face I had never seen before. There was joy in it, and amazement, and utter delight. There were other things, too, that I do not yet have words for. I felt, at thirty years of age, a wholly new feeling about my own appearance that I had not known it was possible to experience, and that is worth something, in my opinion. I had no idea a person could feel that way about themselves, much less about the way they looked in clothes! How funny that is. It felt like a compulsion, but it was not. I made a series of choices, and they produced an overwhelming feeling within me. Writing about it now feels like a compulsion, but it is not; it is a choice that I am making, however difficult I may find that to believe.

+ How about a couple of interviews with EMMY WINNER Lena Waithe? Here she is in Vulture and here she is in The Daily Beast and here she is in The Los Angeles Times and here she is in The New York Times. On her speech:

Aziz was like, “You should write something down.” I don’t believe in that. I know that’s a little scary. I just like to speak from the heart and to go from the dome. I would never pull out a piece of paper. I mean, I knew who I had to thank. I knew my main people like Aziz, Alan [Yang], Netflix, my lady, cast and crew. But I knew I had to speak from the heart. I knew I wanted to share that moment with the queer community, with women of color, women writers, anyone who’d ever been othered. I knew I wanted to say something from my heart and my soul and my gut.

And Finally

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Heather Hogan

Heather Hogan is an Autostraddle senior editor who lives in New York City with her wife, Stacy, and their cackle of rescued pets. She's a member of the Television Critics Association, GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, and a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer critic. You can also find her on Twitter and Instagram.

Heather has written 1718 articles for us.

12 Comments

  1. I was hoping when I heard about the fact that they were doing a “Sabrina” show that she would be Cheryl’s lesbian love interest that Madelaine Petsch was pushing for. I would also want Dove Cameron to be Sabrina.

  2. Can’t wait for your review of Battle of the Sexes!! I’m so excited about that movie I love tennis and I love Billie Jean King and you reviewing it is the best news ever.

  3. Oh HELL, YES. I am so incredibly excited for Sabrina. I read the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina the Teenage Witch earlier this year, and it’s one of my favorite comics now. Just beautiful and twisted. I am all ready for it.

  4. Nipplesandtoes23!!!!

    Thanks for all the Lena Waithe love. That episode was great to rewatch.
    Especially after hearing some of the backstory in these interviews.

  5. There can never be enough Lena Waithe in the world.

    I love how, in that Vulture piece, she and Donald Glover are content to share the spotlight–there’s a myth sometimes that underrepresented communities need to fight over recognition and success when there’s plenty to go around.

    And I love how, in that piece from the Daily Beast, she’s: 1. shouting out Laverne Cox’s role in Doubt and noting how it represented a huge leap forward and 2. she wants to put a black lesbian in primetime.

    Yes. Yes. Yes.

  6. Riverdale is queerbating garbage that glorifies rape and erases asexuality. Not my secret favorite anything. I find it weird too, how “cool” people are all crazy about Riverdale when they mocked and/or never gave PLL the time of day, even back when it was good and at it’s most feminist. Make a bland white guy the lead of the show and now it’s worth paying attention to?

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