“I’ve been up for 72 hours. I had a breakthrough. I discovered a new form of writing. I will go down in history. First I wrote all day, then I tore it all up and then that night it came to me, and the words poured forth like liquid from a stream. It’s all gold. Just open it anywhere and the magic will touch you. But I’m so tired. I must sleep. I am too tired to sleep.”
Ya’ll don’t have any idea how fucking brave and needed these plot lines were.
This was before Ellen came out.
This was before civil unions.
This was before Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
This was when your ass could be fired, blacklisted, and shunned with no legal protections for even being hinted at being gay.
And the Golden Girls said “Fuck you, Fuck this, we’re doing it anyway.”
I think it should be noted that Blanche’s quote about AIDS is also “It is not god punishing people for their sins” and that the episode also deals with slutshaming.
I don’t know if people realize how much activism these women did for gay right and during the aids crisis. If you think about it they were all long established in Hollywood and Broadway. They had tons of friends personally affected and dealing with the aids crisis. Estelle Getty lost a nephew. I think they helped plant seeds in people who watched Golden Girls that helped make things a little more normalized and mainstream.
Sometimes I remember that Scarface and The Golden Girls are both set in 1980s Miami, and the idea of what an interaction between Tony Montana and Dorothy, Sophia, Rose and Blanche might look like makes me happy
When I was little I used to sit on the living room floor doodling or playing LEGO while my grandma watched The Golden Girls, so it brings back a lot of memories re-watching it on Hulu recently.
