English Abstract Exemplary painting of an era and a struggle. Far from the stridencies and arbitrariness of his other fictions, a realistic and well-advised Ryan Murphy offers us in Pose a social and cultural chronicle of the Afro-descendant and Latino trans and drag movement in New York in the mid-80s, with his “ Houses ”and“ Ball Culture”, spaces of containment, construction and resistance of the trans culture in the middle of the Reagan era and with AIDS as an ominous backdrop.

A whole period painting, with interesting and very well delineated characters, many endearing ones, several extraordinary dialogues and all the glamor, emotion and fierce humor of his Balls.

English Review

Season 1 (I'll add S2 soon)

Pose portrays the Afro-descendant and Latino trans and drag movement in New York in the mid-1980s, in the middle of the Reagan era and the spread of AIDS.

On the one hand, we enter the world of "Houses”, where a trans woman shelters other trans girls and boys, gay or not, becoming their" mother" or protector and forming true substitute families for people generally expelled from their biological families for their gender and sexual choices and in serious financial distress. Think of the many factors of marginalization and discrimination (even within the gay community itself) that these people carry and much more at that time.

On the other hand, Ryan Murphy introduces us through this series in the culture of Ball (Ball Culture): in some nightclubs, the Houses competed in thematic parades for which their members prepared and produced, with a jury that will award trophies . The Ball constituted a space both for identification and social reaffirmation as well as for resistance, as well as for the satirization of certain cultural standards of the time.

Pose is a choral story with a remarkable gallery of characters, standing out Elektra Abundance (the imposing Dominique Jackson) a "mother" certainly despotic but with a good economic time, queen of the Abundance House, Blanca (MJ Rodríguez), who leaves Elektra to founding his own Evangelist House with the beautiful Angel (Indya Moore) and Pray Tell (Billy Porter), dressmaker and scathing ringmaster of the Balls; Through him and his partner, the series introduces us to the painful and terminal reality of AIDS at that time.

The Reagan Era is also present in the figure of Stan Bowes (Evan Peters), a young and rising executive married with two children who works in the Trump Towers who develops a relationship with Angel and deals with his ruthless boss.

Far from the stridency and arbitrariness of his other fictions, a very well advised Ryan Murphy gives us a mature story, with interesting and very well-delineated characters, great performances, several extraordinary dialogues and all the glamor and fierce humor of his Balls.