My Hot Take on What’s Really Wrong With “The Prom”

Remember when I said I had An Opinion about A Thing but I wasn’t going to share it? Hahaha, I’m irrepressible!

I watched The Prom! I really loved the first 30%! I felt smart when I recognized Patti LuPone’s haircut! I thought James Corden was just fine, probably because I’d read so much criticism about his performance, the bar was sufficiently lowered! I found the ham-fisted moralizing to be typical Ryan Murphy! I want Meryl Streep’s turquoise silk dressing gown! I found the songs, with their INexPLICabLE PItcH ChANgeS to be pretty dumb but fine! Keegan Michael Key is a national treasure! Nicole Kidman’s part really needed to be played by a dancer! I really loved 70-something Meryl having a love interest in his 40s — flip that script, Meryl!

But here’s my big beef that I can’t let go of: the plot hinges on a pernicious, seductive lie. It’s a lie that suckers us, a trap that the left — including me — falls into all the time. It’s dangerous, it’s killing us, and we have to shake off its stultifying effects before it’s too late.

The lie comes when Andrew Rannells goes to the mall to sing to the homophobic teens, to get them to stop being little shits to our lesbian heroine. He sings a cute lil’ number pointing out all their hypocrisies — how, yes, the Bible may say homosexuality is bad, but what about your…