tired and obsessive

The absolutely pervasive mentality that unwanted criticism or critique shouldn't be given and should be ignored is why fans of color don't stay in fan spaces.

And I am not going to mince words here:

A lot of you are racist. A lot of your fan works are racist.

That might have been difficult to hear. And if it was, you should probably reflect on why that was.

"Fandom etiquette" has created a space where fans of color either bite our tongues and eventually leave or say something, get dogged on, and then eventually leave.

As fun as the movie is, with its kitsch aesthetic and garish costumes, it offers potent mix of comedy and serious drama.

📸 Toni Collettte and Bill Hunter in 1994’s Muriel’s Wedding. Photograph: Collection Christophel/Alamy.

PJ Hogan’s classic Australian film Muriel’s Wedding is 30 and it plays as well today as it did when it had its world premiere. Muriel might have been “terrible” but the film was a great success.

Australians love to laugh at themselves, and everyone loves an underdog. Muriel’s Wedding took more than $15m at the box office in Australia – making it one of the country’s highest-grossing feature films of all time.

As fun as the film is, with its kitsch aesthetic, bold colour palette and garish costumes, it offers a potent mix of comedy and serious drama. It slips from the absurd to painful realism, with more depth than your average comedy and a plot twist that made it an original take on the genre.

While Australians generally have received it as hilarious, audiences elsewhere were more attuned to the tragic elements. But it worked for audiences everywhere who warmed to the representation of friendship, its emotional compassion and the critique of the narrow mindedness of small-town communities.

‘Proud of who you are’

Sometimes it is stars who can bring in an audience and make a film successful. Although there were a lot of experienced actors in Muriel’s Wedding, Toni Collette (Muriel) and Rachel Griffiths (Rhonda) – whose performances were exceptional – were both playing lead and supporting roles for the first time in a feature film.

It was also Hogan’s first full-length movie, so it is unlikely star power drew in audiences (although all of them were to become stars, and Hogan later directed Julia Roberts in My Best Friend’s Wedding, one of the best-loved romantic comedies of all time).

It did, however, have a wonderful trailer.

I asked Griffiths what she thought was the key to the film’s success and she identified its universality: it translated for an array of audiences and enabled broad identification.

She described the film as having one foot in the grotesque and the other in Ridley Scott’s 1991 getaway heist Thelma & Louise – another film about female friendship, independence and personal growth.

Griffiths gave the example of going with the film to New York on its release and discovering it was wildly meaningful to the LGBTQIA+ community. In a conversation with a gay man in his late 20s, he described it as a parable for Aids, which at that time was a full-blown crisis.

According to Griffiths, he said: “We’re all Muriel. We don’t fit in.”

People like him grew up in small towns where they were “the freak”, he said, hiding their musical tastes:

We’re the outcasts in our family. Our fathers belittle us for being feminine. We escape to the big smoke with the promise of becoming ourselves and following our own journey. We replace our families who have rejected us with our chosen family who celebrate us.

And when one of their own is struck suddenly by this terrible affliction, they are sent home as Rhonda was, to be looked after – their worst fear. The aspiration is to be rescued by the adopted family, taken back to the big city and shown unconditional love.

Griffiths says:

That’s the ending and the survival story of both Rhonda and Muriel, you go back to that kind of pride moment, to be proud of who you are.

For Griffiths, Rhonda and Muriel have “a kind of blood-sister friendship, a bond that can’t be broken”.

We all long for that deep acceptance. It is a parable of inclusion, in which Muriel and Rhonda truly see and accept each other and themselves.

‘A fundamental kind of feminist journey’

I asked Griffiths if Muriel’s Wedding was received as feminist on its release. She said it wasn’t – but this has come up since then.

Her explanation is informative regarding film criticism. Critics at the time were 90% male, she said, and their take on feminism expected powerful female lead characters who pursued their goals and achieved them in the face of competition.

In this story, a young woman escapes patriarchal control. Muriel’s father, Bill Heslop (Bill Hunter), is a bully and narcissist who blames everyone else – especially women – for his failures.

Griffiths aligns Muriel to the Cinderella story because in the beginning she thinks value will only be ascribed to her once she marries. The film, Griffiths said, is “a fundamental kind of feminist journey”.

The central focus is Muriel’s personal growth in rejecting ideology that promotes romantic coupling as a woman’s pinnacle of happiness. Instead she embraces her own worth and her friendship with Rhonda. Marriage is portrayed as a patriarchal structure that ideologically binds women – the marriages are variously fraudulent, starting with Tanya and Chook, then Muriel and her parents.

There are many elements that make Muriel’s Wedding an Australian classic, from its universal themes and relatability to its ability to extend beyond national borders. The film leaves us with admiration for resilience in the face of adversity, signaled by Muriel and Rhonda grinning assuredly at each other in the final scene.

It also goes without saying that bioessentialism inherently can’t be trans inclusive no matter how hard you try. “All men including trans men—” probably not. “This is only a woman’s issue—” is it really? “Afabs only—” why? “All trans men are like—” what? what are they like? finish the sentence i dare you.