![]() On my second watch, I was squirming - if a guy were to do the same thing to Beca, it would be terrifying.īut the scene isn’t supposed to be scary - we’re meant to laugh. Though Kendrick’s character is not stabbed to death in the first act of Pitch Perfect, the scene has an unmistakable air of uneasiness. “Get out of there, Beca!” I wanted to yell. My mind immediately jumped to Psycho and the sudden murder of Janet Leigh’s character. Beca sings in the shower, naked, while unbeknownst to her, someone enters the stall, quietly pushing the curtain aside. Two pairs of feet (a guy’s and a girl’s) in an adjacent stall pivot, following the music. Screenwriter Kay Cannon (who worked on all three films) and director Jason Moore (who didn’t) are incapable of melding the queer themes into the story organically and inoffensively.Īt that 20-minute mark, Beca strolls into the dorm shower, singing “Titanium”. Instead, every girl-on-girl encounter is scary and alienating - and not just in a freshman-year-of-college sort of way. ![]() ![]() The film’s afraid to break convention by diving head-first into the lesbian undercurrents of an all-female singing group comprising of extremely attractive college-aged women. Pitch Perfect plays things oddly safe from this point forward. Beca moves into her dorm room and during a club fair, rejects an offer to join the Bellas when Chloe and Aubrey ( Anna Camp) try to draft her. It’s benign, fun and eminently quotable - Fat Amy’s “les-be honest” has taken on a life of its own. Its cookie-cutter story sees Beca go to the fictional Barden University, where she’s drafted into the ranks of an underdog all-female a cappella group, the Barden Bellas, alongside Fat Amy ( Rebel Wilson) and a medley of other misfits, all intent on redeeming the group’s reputation. It’s a standard talent show – structured musical comedy about a cappella. So why’s it the queerest mainstream film series ever? We’re so starved for queer content that Pitch Perfect, which is a slap in the face to queer people everywhere, can win by default. It indulges in predatory depictions of homosexuality, and it queerbaits its audience with the ultimate gay siren song: Beca’s teased hookup with Chloe. The trilogy abuses queerness whenever it can. 2 (music producer Theo, played by Guy Burnet).īut alas, film after film, the series turns its back to its own queer leanings. 1 (Jesse, played by Skylar Astin) or Pitch Perfect 3’s Boring Dude No. ![]() Will she and Chloe ever do anything besides talk? Beca’s got a much better rapport with her than she does with Boring Dude No. The queerest question of the franchise is the constant will-they-won’t-they of Beca and her friend, Chloe ( Brittany Snow). Is Beca a repressed lesbian? Or is she bisexual? Will she follow through with her comments about how hot the female competitors are? The films give the character room to seriously explore her own potential bisexuality, even if they trip over themselves every step of the way. The series appears on all fronts to be queer-friendly, entertaining questions about Beca’s sexuality and encouraging the character to flirt with girls as much as guys. Sticking her with a guy at the end of the movie doesn’t erase the bisexual teases that come before it, but due to the absolute dearth of same-sex couples in Hollywood movies, Pitch Perfect’s unwillingness to pursue a lesbian relationship is a severe missed opportunity. Every entry teases a lesbian relationship for Beca before carjacking the Sapphic stuff and leaving her stranded with a dull male schmooze pal.īut regardless of whom she winds up with, Beca’s still sexually ambiguous. The series gets close to depicting same-sex romance, though. Pitch Perfect welcomes discussions of queerness, and the affections of its heroine, Beca ( Anna Kendrick), pendulate scene to scene between guys and gals. It’s an award that the series doesn’t so much earn as it has handed to it because there simply aren’t many other possibilities. There aren’t many contenders for the title, but until we get the Captain Marvel sequels, the Pitch Perfect trilogy will unfortunately continue to be the queerest mainstream film series of all time.
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