[…] In fact, one of my favorite pieces of recent queer pop culture distinctly lacked the positivity we yearn for. Earlier this year, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” opened and closed with gay spree killer Andrew Cunanan murdering the titular gay designer. A Ryan Murphy endeavor through and through, the FX show was coated in darkness, a far cry from any of the upbeat portrayals we’ve demanded in the years since LGBTQ characters were routinely punished or villainized. And yet there was a catharsis to the series that “The Boys in the Band” lacks. “Versace” offered a painful and detailed reminder of what self-loathing can do to a person, and to a community. It showed more than vodka tumblers and confetti scraps strewn across a sassy man’s expensive living room. 

“Versace” has a poetry that “Boys” does not, largely because it never reduces Cunanan or anyone who orbits him to a caricature. In juxtaposing Cunanan and Versace’s disparate work ethics and quests for fame, Murphy created a textured dynamic. Behind every performative gesture lurked a deeper tragedy indicting the malevolent strictures that turned Cunanan into a ladder-climbing con artist incapable of loving himself or others.

Gay Self-Loathing Hasn’t Gone Away. It Just Looks Nothing Like ‘Boys In The Band.’