Culture Tiger

POSE is an award-winning U.S TV show with a third season in the pipeline. Yet the series barely gets a mention in workplaces and dinner parties (is the silence just in the UK?). It's not enough that my partner and a few queer friends and acquaintances have watched POSE. This is a must for everybody to learn about an often ignored part of LGBTQ+ history and culture that's not whitewashed. It's also packed with great performances. So I'm going to keep promoting the hell out of POSE.  Created by Ryan Murphy, POSE is a drama centred around the New York ballroom culture in the 1980s and early 90s. Marginalised black, latin, gay and trans competitors dance and walk for trophies in multiple categories. This is an underground scene that influenced Madonna (which season 2 touches on) and is frequently referenced in Rupaul's Drag Race.  The pilot bursts open with a thrilling break-in. Ran by the glamorous and domineering Elektra (Dominique Jackson), the House of Abundance wil...

If your life inspired a film or TV series, what would be on the soundtrack? Cinematic stories tend to exclusively feature songs released at the time they are set. But real life cultural influences are never straightforward. I spent the 90s listening to the likes of Suede and Blur. Yet this was also the decade where I bought CDs of Dusty Springfield and Iggy Pop. My parents played Paul Simon and Bob Dylan. So how did I discover pop and rock songs, from before I was born, that were not performed by blokes with raspy voices and boring jumpers? Being a weird only child guided my musical discoveries. I spent hours bingeing on VH1 which, pre-reality TV, was the auntie to MTV’s cool teenager. The Box channel, in its infancy, played decade-old videos by Cyndi Lauper and Blondie as well as the latest singles by East 17 and Salt N Pepa. My music television phase also coincided with the 90s’ embrace of nostalgia. This was the decade where Erasure, dragged up in lurex, covered Abba and Kula ...

This week has been a particularly thrilling one with the semi finals of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest from Malmö leading up to tonight’s grand final. On Tuesday night, viewers were stunned by a kilt-wearing giant carrying Ukraine’s Zlata Ognevich onto a rock, bedazzled by Ireland’s tattooed topless drummers and left aghast by Montenegrin dubstep astronauts failing to quality for the final. On Thursday, theatricality and drama were cranked up to the max with high pitched pop opera by a vampire cloak-clad Cezar from Romania and a dancer in a glass case mirroring the moves of Azerbaijan’s Farid Mammadov. This year’s contest will be a vintage year for Eurovision - viewers playing Eurovision-themed drinking games, such as a drink per smoke machine or folk musical instrument, will be pickled like gherkins.