Remember Old Town Road? Remember Lil Nas X from that hit?
Yes, we all do.
Did you know that Lil Nas X is an openly gay man?
I didn't, but I found out when a lovely lesbian friend of mine told me "The new Little Nas X Video is ICONIC"
But she couldn't prepare me... for how gay it was.
And I LOVED EVERY SECOND
EVERY FRAME
Iconic. That's the word. This is Iconic.
She could not have prepared me anyway, for how revolutionary a video like this. For such a mainstream rapper to talk about gay love and sex so openly. For a deconstruction on the oppressive force Christianity has been on the lgbtq+ community for decades, centuries even.
And he did it in style.
"In life, we hide the parts of ourselves that we don't want the world to see." Lil Nas X tells me, "We lock them away. We tell them no. We banish them."
Yes we do man, it's fucked up.
"But not here... welcome to Montero."
Hmm?
Of course we start out in idealized heaven, or at least a garden of Eden. with Nas X doing bro shit, sitting under a tree - relaxing. And then a serpentine creature pops out from under the non metaphorical apple tree to tempt him.
Oh really? Might there be meaning to this?
And then they make out. Gay alien Nas X making out with aquaman getup Nas X, and I go "alright. This is great."
Then he's on trial wearing full Hunger Games meets Ruby Rhod, and I'm just 💋💖 👌
Next he gets knocked out by a buttplug.
Really, he does, go pause the image! It's a buttplug!
As he passes on, looking to the heavens, he instead takes a pole in hand and strips down to hell. Gyrating along the way. Struts into the kingdom of the fallen in heels, before giving Satan himself a lap dance.
Then he of course takes the only logical course of action from there: He murders Satan, stealing his crown.
💣 I C O N I C 💣
But anyway...
I really enjoyed displaying Eden as alien, otherworldly. Not idealistic paradise. An alien unattainable place. I suppose if I want to go all high school English class and analyze the video, Nas X is saying that Paradise is an unattainable goal. Through that logic, we can see that he - using iconography of the snake - is saying that within himself he saw the alienness of a perfect churchly lifestyle. Yet he might as well be an alien in that world, and just to the lyrics of the song, he decided to live in sin. Chilling with his friends.
It's clear that in his past, there were times when he tried to banish things about himself. Unwanted desires, and then at some point he 'fell to temptation' and found it was more familiar than anything. He walks into a colosseum with a smile, dawned in pink while the judgmental parts of himself all in blue press their verdict. These are both striking colors, but also the symbols in our culture of femininity and masculinity, and while being gay is not inherently feminine, femininity and therefor pink is thrust onto gay men as an insult. Whether they enjoy femininity or not.
Judging him is blueness, masculinity. Which are still parts of himself, but they cannot banish what is "pink" We may want to banish the truths about ourselves if others will judge us for being them, if we judge ourselves. But we can never banish what is part of us.
Nas X, tempted by the snake - which is himself as an alien, and then he knows the snake. Then he falls, and accepts the temptation. But instead of taking on shame, he does it with passion, with thigh high boots and fishnets. Accepting what was once a taboo as his identity. Himself, acting in the truest notion.
Then he dances with the devil, dances for the devil. But he does not do this simply for pleasure. By taking Satan off guard, he is able to assassinate the king of hell - taking his horns. Realizing a destiny as the fallen angel of Montero.
And one must beg the question: Who was Satan really? Because in the world of Montero, taking the crown was the most powerful, holy thing he could have done. That Montero could have done for himself.
The video has received an extreme backlash for it's blatant homoerotic imagery, it's usage of satanic themes to tell a story. Of course the backlash is primarily from those who follow the Christian faith. Many voices say "A good church would have never made a gay man feel this way." When that is not the point. The point of Montero, Lil Nas X's real legal name and identity, is that he has decided to go against that path because nonmatter what good Christians preached, he found it useless to his happiness, as he was left out of the equation. The damage is done and Christians should see the pain and the pleasure of self discovery in a homophobic world. Christians need to take up the mantle of pro gay, anti homophobic. They need to be loud for the queer community if they want us to be saved by their god.
But for many of us, we find dancing with the devil much more enticing. Why not? Satan gave Eve knowledge. God punished her for it. Maybe an ancient religion from two thousand years ago, one that has been retranslated and re-contextualized so many times that the original texts barely have meaning anymore, doesn't have all the answers,
Personally, as a member of the LGBTQ+ community myself, I find this wonderful. Let them know that we will dance with the devil if it means we get to be who we are. Satan has no power over us, we're just gay. We are just becoming who we are, we aren't deviant - those who are deviant are those who follow the steps of a devilish way are those who preach homophobic words. Words from a bible that might kind of say something about having gay sex - but the line "thou shalt not lie with another man" has also been translated as "thou shalt not lie with a child." And that line is in a section of the bible that bars the consumption of shrimp.
That isn't even diving into the deep meaning of a black male rapper being the man to speak these words within a genre traditionally overtaken by a male gaze that would admire female bodies the way that Montero is admiring himself.
And honestly, I love this for Lil Nas X.
Fuck yeah Montero. Let's go queer history, textbooks better keep up.
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