Anyone to like? Rami Malek Without Freddie Mercury

Anyone to like? Rami Malek without Freddie Mercury

During high school, Kuwait, we were chanting We will rock you to intimidate our opponents, then later [ We are the champions to declare victory. I also remember wondering if Queen had really sung bismillah in Bohemian Rhapsody. And even though, at the time, I could sing on many Queen's songs without remembering the date I heard the lyrics, I did not know anything about the band members until I watched the biopic Bohemian Rhapsody in theaters. It's outrageous, I know.

Is this the real life?

When Rami Malek won the Oscar – and earlier BAFTA and Golden Globe – for best actor for his role in Bohemian Rhapsody, I woke up the next morning with an animated news feed on Facebook. There were aunts, uncles and friends, as well as cultural and political organizations – homophobic and non – rummy claiming Rami as one of theirs: A Coptic! An Egyptian! An Arab! After his recent success, his publications on Facebook were accompanied by a selection of Rami's speech: "I am a son of Egyptian immigrants, a first-generation American, and part of my story is being written. "With minimal visibility of the Egyptians and especially Copts, in Hollywood, many went on social media to celebrate how Rami achieved the so-called American Dream. Even AMIDEAST.Egypt shared a comical image of Rami Malek holding his Golden Globe to announce their English clbades as a way to succeed in the world.

Open your eyes, look to the sky and see …

I am struck by the widespread intensity of praise and applause.

Rami Malek owes his recent success to his role in Bohemian Rhapsody as Farrokh Bulsara, better known as Freddie Mercury, Queen's lead singer. Freddie is also a story of immigration and success; He is a descendant of parish Indian parents who moved to Zanzibar and then settled in England. To this day, Freddie Mercury is widely regarded as one of the greatest singers and performers of all time. What strikes here is not the celebration of Rami's success. It is rather the invisibilisation and the absolute denial of the queerisme.

Unlike Rami, Freddie is bibadual. And the unknown of Rami's celebration of success is the importance of representing the baduality of a brown immigrant on the screen. My Facebook feed is filled with images of award-winning Rami Malek and none of his roles in Freddie Mercury – a flamboyant androgynous and strange legend.

Deleted from his posts on Facebook – intentionally, I think – is not part of Rami's speech. points out that the film indeed speaks of "an immigrant homobadual who has lived his life without any excuse". The selective celebration of immigration and not of the madness is blatant, and the heroism of Rami Malek as an immigrant puzzles me if he would have been so quickly claimed as' l & # 39; One of us was himself a fagot.

Bismillah! We will not let you go. (Let me go!)
I will not let you go. (Let me go!)

Perhaps, in some ways, Rami Malek has also contributed to the invisibilisation of queer people. It belongs to a legacy of heterobadual and cis actors who have won Oscars for playing strange roles. Moreover, while Rami recognized his Egyptian and Coptic origins – and quite charmingly – and even acquiesced in the violence against the Copts in Egypt, he kept a deafening silence against the horrible repression of Egyptian queer individuals. . For years, while LGBTQ + Egyptians were incarcerated and tortured en mbade, the Coptic Church and other religious institutions held conferences to "treat" homobaduality. in the city of Nagaa Hamady, in Qena, 700 km south of Cairo, January 9, 2010. Photo credit: REUTERS / Asmaa Waguih

So you think you can stone me and spit? So you think you can love me and let me die?

Once, I watched an Orthodox Coptic priest tell a high school hall that there are no weird cops. He said this during Sunday school, in front of a play that was undoubtedly inhabited by homobaduals and who interrogated the Copts. This claim is scandalous and denies the existence of queer Copts and justifies creeping homophobia and transphobia within the Coptic communities. To combat such cases, the recent efforts of the Coptic Egyptians – namely CopticQueerStories and LGBT Coptic Christians – have sought to elevate the existence, reality and theology of homobadual Copts. These platforms highlight the struggle of homobadual Copts who often feel "alone" in navigating and juggling their multiple and seemingly competing identities

. aspiring to stories like this, "we are. We aspire to the success stories of homobaduals, browns and immigrants. And I look forward to a Facebook feed and wider communities, which celebrate immigration without invisibilising nor erasing the fact that queerness. Anyway, the wind is blowing.

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