Cadet Kelly has a gay agenda (but not in a fun way)

The queer subtext of Cadet Kelly can help us understand the rhetoric surrounding LGBTQ rights amidst US invasions in the Middle East and the War on Terror. Cadet Kelly is one of the biggest DCOMs of its era, and many viewers read a queer relationship between Kelly (Hillary Duff) and Jennifer Stone (Christy Carlson-Romano). In this video essay, we’ll take a look at that relationship in the context of the movie’s themes relating to the military, freedom, and family. Joseph McCarthy played by the the undefeated @HizzyHay Thanks to Max Tohline for invaluable feedback and help in writing the conclusion for this one! As mentioned at 7:14, one example would be the “brute” or “mandingo” trope as seen in the films The Birth of a Nation (1910; dir. DW Griffith) and Mandingo (1975; dir. Richard Fleischer). You can also see this trope with Black men in whole genres of “adult” films. Obviously this is a stereotype that doesn’t stop in fiction—this same idea is used in real life to criminalize Black