Music Queer, an animated miniseries broadcast on Arte starting this Saturday, June 20, revisits the origins of songs that became LGBT+ anthems. Rebecca Manzoni, its co-screenwriter, and Océan, who participated, talk to us about this project as joyful as it is engaged.
“You Make Me Feel”, “Smalltown Boy”, “I Will Survive”… Some songs have accompanied the struggles, the parties and the joys of several generations of LGBT+ people. After Music Queens, devoted to the great female figures of music, Rebecca Manzoni, a journalist at France Inter and co-screenwriter of the project with Émilie Valentin, continues her exploration of the invisibilized histories of pop with Music Queer, a miniseries produced by Arte that traces the origins of twenty queer anthems.
From Little Richard’s rock to Lil Nas X’s successes, via Charles Trenet, Juliette Gréco or Sexy Sushi, the series highlights the queer dimension of works that have become, for some, classics of pop culture. Through twenty episodes of less than three minutes, it traces the birth of these songs, their context of creation, as well as the journeys of their performers, all enhanced with anecdotes and a karaoke-style credits sequence. Carried by the animations of the illustrator and graphic novelist Leslie Plée, the episodes take us as well into Charles Trenet’s “Extraordinary Garden” universe as onto the dance floors of Sylvester to the sound of “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)”.
Queer Voices
“Music Queer has a mission to sweep a century of music across all genres and to show the influence of queer icons in global cultural heritage, explains Rebecca Manzoni to Têtu. Telling this story helps demonstrate how absurd discrimination is.” And she adds: “It was important for us to surround ourselves with artists who embrace their queer identity without being reduced by it.”. To bring these narratives to life, several queer personalities such as Tristan Lopin, Kiddy Smile, Aloïse Sauvage or Shirley Souagnon lend their voices to the episodes.
The screenwriters and the director, Amandine Fredon, have also enlisted actor, director and author Océan to address LGBT+ issues with nuance. “It is important not to forget the origins of queer culture and to put them in context today, especially when, over the course of history, that past tends to fade away, he tells us. While some pop songs seem very joyful, they often sprang from pain, particularly during the HIV/AIDS epidemic.”
Pari réussi : à mi-chemin entre capsule historique, hommage musical et outil de transmission, Music Queer propose de redécouvrir des chansons que l’on croyait connaître, tout en rappelant l’histoire et les luttes qui les ont vues naître.
