The category is … prestige TV realness. Ball culture, which emerged from the marginalised black and Latino queer community of 1980s New York, has now sashayed defiantly into the mainstream. Those “voguing” moves are borrowed by every pop star from Madonna to Willow Smith, its lingo has become the lingua franca of social media sass and its shade is thrown as far afield as Lagos and Leamington Spa. But the ultimate proof of ball’s bourgeois acceptability is that they made a primetime TV show about it. Pose, from Glee and American Horror Story showrunner Ryan Murphy, just wrapped up its first series on BBC Two. A second is due on US channel FX as soon as June, though it may take a little longer to reach the UK.
Any season finale is supposed to bring together storylines in some kind of climatic spectacle, and Pose, which treats us to at least one ball per episode, has the means ready-made. The annual Princess Ball is extra-special as it’s the one in which the House Mother of the Year (a kind of team-captain-meets-adoptive-mum) will be crowned. Here was also a chance for underdog Blanca (Mj Rodriguez) to finally vanquish her House of Ferocity rivals and former House of Abundance sisters, Lulu (Hailie Sahar) and Candy (Angelica Ross) while movingly making peace with her own estranged house mother, Elektra Evangelista née Abundance (Dominique Jackson).
But Pose also has a more unusual narrative tension to resolve. Out in the real world, these queer people of colour face erasure, discrimination of all kinds, poverty, disease and violence. In the safety of their sorority, the worst that can happen is having your wig viciously “read” and fingers snapped in your face. Yet this show has treated both the street and the ballroom as equally high-stakes arenas. If that order of priorities sometimes surprised, then the finale reminded us why it never should have. What matters – what’s real – has always been down to these women to define for themselves. As Angel (Indya Moore) triumphantly tells her “white boy from the suburbs” lover Stan (Murphy regular, Evan Peters): “You’re not my first Prince Charming. You’re not real; we were just good ideas in each other’s minds.”
Not every performance in Pose is as assured as Moore’s, but since this show has assembled the largest cast of trans actors in scripted series history, including several with little or no screen experience, perhaps what’s more notable is just how many of them are very good indeed. Elektra’s slightly stiff line reads have become a part of the character’s magnificence (she’s wooden like the mighty Californian sequoia tree is wooden), while Moore, Rodriguez and Billy Porter as master of ceremonies Pray Tell should all be in line for an Emmy this year. Moore in particular. Not many could deliver a line as potentially on the nose as, “Go; be a man!” in a way that sounds only serene and forgiving.
Whoever said camp can’t also be sincere? The choreography of Leiomy Maldonado and Danielle Polanco (both voguing legends in their own right) shone once again in the ballroom competition scenes, while Ricky’s cut-off sweatshirt stole the music video audition (underpec is the new underboob. You heard it here first). But razzle-dazzle showmanship isn’t Pose’s only source of infectious joy. Watching the slow, still-unfolding process of these characters becoming more and more their true selves is as exhilarating as the opening bars of Cheryl Lynn’s Got to be Real. Self-actualisation isn’t easy, but it sure is beautiful.
Pose has never shied away from sentiment (that Christmas special could rival a John Lewis ad for ruthless tearjerking) and of course it’s pleasing to see characters so deserving of love finally receive some. Yet even this happy ending was never purely an exercise in audience gratification. Yes, Pray Tell has his new man, and Lil’ Papi has returned to the fold, and Elektra no longer has to work quite so hard for the money, but Angel’s romantic dream is over and Blanca’s bleak diagnosis hangs over them all.
No doubt next season the House of Evangelista will be forced to further confront its mother’s HIV status, as well as the impact of HIV/Aids on the wider community. The epidemic claimed so many of ballroom’s great innovators – Dorian Corey, Willi Ninja, Angie Xtravaganza – and robbed them of this chance to enjoy global recognition at last. That’s why Pose’s most moving coda might be the one that’s soon to take place not only outside the ballroom, but off-screen entirely: last week’s news that antiretroviral drugs can reduce the risk of HIV infection between sexual partners to zero, suggests a cure is finally within kissing distance.
