The Skinny Film Analysis

In today’s society, accurate representation of people of color in queer media is rare. However, in the film The Skinny, directed by Patrick-Ian Polk, almost the entire cast is made up of queer people of color. This film is especially interesting, because the main characters were black, queer, and Ivy League graduates representing Brown University. To see black queer people be represented in a film as educated, affluent, and generally happy is something to be treasured. Patrick –Ian Polk used the characters he created, as well as imagery, to encode the message that queer black people are not a monolith: we are diverse and complex, and deserve to be cared about and protected.

In focusing on diversity, Magnus is an essential character in this

There is also a character named Kyle, who is typically promiscuous and careless. There is Ryan, who had a hard time growing up and has had to partake in sex work since the age of fifteen. There is Langston, a black lesbian from Britain, who has a really hard time approaching other women. Finally, there is Joey, who not only has a hard time approaching other men, but is also dealing with the constant stress of living below the poverty line regardless of his Ivy League degree. Polk, being the creator, director, producer, and writer for this film, carefully and purposefully chose to have an array of characters with different experiences and personalities. The fact that this is an independent film, instead of mainstream, also impacts why this film is so diverse. The article, “Queer Cinema”, points out that “mainstream Hollywood films that deal with actual gay and lesbian lives and issues are extremely rare” and that mainstream films still produce “new versions of the old killer-queer stereotype”. So it makes sense that a film featuring complex queer black characters is an independent film. Since there was no massively influential industry to encode the message, the message turned out to be more inclusive of a broad and diverse queer audience, instead of just one stereotype that may be easier for our heteronormative society to