In the hands of Fuller and Mikkelsen, Dr. The show around him, with its operatic score and gore, also prizes the aesthetic experience. His taste (in clothes, in food, in decor) marks him as a modern-day dandy, though his imposing frame complicates the stereotypes of effeminacy that many have come to associate with such a label. With his immaculately tailored suits, his impeccably coiffed hair, and unnerving poise, Mikkelsen’s Lecter is both terrifying and alluring. Lecter’s (Mads Mikkelsen) fastidiously groomed world. Where past iterations of the character hinted at his lavish lifestyle, Fuller’s take immerses viewers in Dr.
This is nowhere more obvious than in Hannibal, Fuller’s refashioned take on Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Lecter. But he’s pushed to the forefront the idea that a striking aesthetic need not be seen as superficial. Given its penchant for slow-motion shots, fussy art direction, and love of color and patterns, Fuller’s work can often feel like an exercise in optics. Amid this media landscape, Fuller’s attention to non-sexual markers of queerness like fabulous fashion and an eye for interior design, gives his work a vibrancy that’s often lacking in shows that rightly and courageously push for gay content alone.
Yet, as the theorist David Halperin quips in his 2012 monograph on queer aesthetics, How to Be Gay, “a culture is not the same thing as a collection of individuals.” In many ways, pop culture today continues to prefer what Laurence Barber has aptly diagnosed as “ incidental gayness”-the “just so happens to be gay” line that’s cheered as a sign of progress when it comes to on-screen LGBTQ visibility. One can already hear the complaints: Not all gay men love fashion, melodrama, and bitchy divas. To connect Fuller’s flair for style (he does love a dapper plaid suit and can rock a killer floral crown) with his own sexuality may seem like a curious and even contentious proposition.
Fuller’s metaphors have seldom been subtle: The first episode of Pushing Daisies has its protagonist-who learns as a boy that he can bring the dead back to life, with a catch-discover he “wasn’t like the other children.” Mockingbird Lane, Fuller’s pilot for a modern take on The Munsters, hinged on Eddie Munster coming out as a werewolf.īut more importantly, these works have been framed by a devilish queer sensibility that’s put form and style at the center of his oeuvre. They’re queer narratives in the most literal sense of the word.
Fuller’s shows use allegories to probe what it means to grow up knowing you’re not like those around you, and that “normal” is something you’ll never live up to. Nor is the way it’s been anchored on metaphorical explorations of difference. But like his earlier work, this Starz series, which Fuller co-developed with Michael Green, is unequivocally the brainchild of a queer writer: Gaiman’s imaginative premise has made way for Fuller’s deliciously campy casting choices, playfully witty repartee, and emphasis on male beauty.įor fans of the Fullerverse-the imagined shared universe of Fuller’s television works- American Gods’ aesthetic is nothing new. and the New Gods that have come to take their place, this allegorical meditation on American culture is right in Fuller’s wheelhouse and well-tailored to his signature take on the fantasy-horror genre. Centered on a coming war between the Old Gods that roam the U.S. The openly gay writer and showrunner has returned to television with his most ambitious work to date: an adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s epic novel American Gods. The Exemplary Narcissism of Snoopy Sarah Boxer But perhaps most famously, Fuller’s trademark style enwrapped NBC’s horror-thriller drama Hannibal, where he turned a notorious cannibal and his FBI profiler into a homoerotic pairing that inspired a fan-fiction genre called Hannigram.
And he definitely made good use of it when, for the 2012 TV special Mockingbird Lane, he put the actor Cheyenne Jackson into a snug adult-sized Boy Scouts uniform.
You can’t miss it when, in the comedy-drama series Pushing Daisies, he got the Broadway star Kristin Chenoweth to recreate an iconic scene from The Sound of Music for a quick gag. You can detect it in Fuller’s 2004 series Wonderfalls, which cast Diana Scarwid-who played the young, abused Christina in the campy cult classic Mommie Dearest-as an overbearing mother. The writer and television producer may not quite be a household name yet, but his shows have rabid fanbases that have responded to his off-kilter sensibility and his, dare one say it, uniquely queer sense of style. There is something unabashedly and unapologetically gay about Bryan Fuller’s work.