The Video Store Made Me Gay

Emily Mills

10 Mar 2025 — 9 min read

Vol. 61

In This Issue: ESSAY | NOW READ THIS | TAKE ACTION | IN PERSON

Hello! Welcome to my new home at ghost. Thanks to their concierge service, all of your subscriptions should have automatically ported over to the new service (even those of you who are paid), without interruption or the need for you to do anything at all. Hooray!

Speaking of: Please consider becoming a sustaining subscriber to Grist From the Mills, AND/OR just leaving me a tip now and then. I’m currently working on an interview series that will begin to include more outside perspectives on issues that impact us all (yay exciting!) but that takes extra time and effort, so every little bit of support really does make a big difference. Thank you! And now, this:

I always had a sense that I was different, but I didn’t have any words or models for what I felt when I was very young. This was not an uncommon state of affairs for queer and trans kids growing up in the ‘80s and ‘90s. The most accessible, mainstream media offerings were deeply heterosexual and cisnormative. We were forced to sniff out crumbs of representation–often relying on our substantial, desperate imaginations to find queerness and subversion in content that offered the most meager fodder for inspiration.

I am so grateful that is no longer the case, and that main text queer and trans content exists in actual abundance now, that it’s relatively easy to access, and that queer and trans creators are, by-and-large, the ones creating it. Things ain’t perfect and could stand many improvements, to be sure, but compared to the landscape of my adolescent years? Friends, it is heaven.

And so I think very fondly of what opportunities I did have to find glimpses of queer possibility in popular culture–most notably, via my local video rental store.

They’ve largely gone the way of the dodo now, casualties of the rise of streaming and corporate cost-cutting. One notable exception exists here in Madison in Four Star Video. Now operated as a collective by a small but highly dedicated crew of cinephiles, Four Star has withstood the tests of time since first opening way back in 1985.

It was where I was inevitably drawn to as a fresh-faced arrival in 2000, when I moved to Madison for college. I was already a dedicated movie renter, having been raised first by the local indie near my home in Geneva, Illinois (R.I.P. East Side Video) and then the Blockbuster in Ardmore, Oklahoma. I remember fondly and a little sadly the days of renting two or more movies so that I could hide the “obviously” gay one behind the more mainstream title–movies like “The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls In Love” and “Gia” and even “Foxfire,” which were some of the earliest sips of oxygen I was able to ferret out as a baby closeted queer.

Four Star brought this lifeline to a whole new level. There, among the shelves, was an entire section specifically labeled as “LGBTQ cinema.” The clerks, some of whom I’m sure in retrospect were also queer, not only didn’t act weird or ask inappropriate questions about it, they were all-too happy to recommend titles to me. Thanks to their guidance, I had the chance to watch a diverse range of movies, queer and otherwise, that helped to substantially expand my personal and political horizons.

The early aughts weren’t great for new LGBTQ cinema but it was a good time to catch up on what I’d missed. It was because of Four Star that I first saw “Paris Is Burning” and fell in love with ballroom culture. I think I rented “Bound” dozens of times (still my favorite Wachowski sisters movie, and including one of the greatest lesbian sex scenes ever filmed). I thought “Desert Hearts” was a bit overwrought but still intriguing and eye-opening. I loved the silliness of “Better Than Chocolate,” and the way it treated its trans woman character (despite being played by a cis male actor, sigh) with actual depth, complexity, and compassion was positively revelatory for the time.

I saw John Cameron Mitchell’s “Shortbus,” with its overt queerness and sexuality and the possibilities of radical community building. Raw, independent films like “The Watermelon Woman” and “Go Fish” gave me glimpses of queer worlds I didn’t know existed. And I was fully turned on to the new queer cinema of Gregg Araki, whose Teen Apocalypse series (“Totally Fucked Up,” “Nowhere,” and “The Doom Generation”) is still one of my favorite film series.

I could go on, but suffice to say that I’m grateful to have had access to the human curation of local video stores, especially at a time in my life when I was first really digging into my identity and who I wanted to be, what I wanted to explore, and what possibilities there were for all of us. Streaming provides access to a wide array of titles, and the algorithm can be helpful in pointing me toward content I might be interested in. Still, it’s a far cry from the personal touch and guidance you could get from passionate movie nerds left to marinate in their obsessions for hours on end, in-person, under the fluorescent lights of a local shop.

I’m not here to argue that “things were better back then,” not by any means. You couldn’t pay me to go back to the ‘90s or early ‘00s, with their deeply regressive politics and mainstream cultural norms (or to being a teen/young adult generally - been there, done that, happy to be where and who I am now!).

It’s just that, especially as we’re faced with increasing monopolies on media output and distribution, and more control by opaque algorithms, I find myself recognizing more and more the value of real-life, messy, imperfect, enthusiastic human creation and curation. The kind of thing you could get at the local video store, record shop, or indie film club (R.I.P. Wis-Kino).

And it seems I’m not alone. My brother owns a record store that sells new and used CDs, vinyl, and even cassette tapes, and he’s noted seeing a decided increase in recent years of younger and younger people being more interested in physical media. The idea of actually owning the movie, music, or video game, rather than paying a subscription fee to a service and hoping your favorite titles will continue to be carried and not yeeted into the void according to the whims of some rich executive–it has merit!

Maybe it’s partially due to the fact that I’m officially middle-aged now and some amount of nostalgia is to be expected. Still, I feel like there’s an objective benefit to at least not throwing physical media out entirely, and finding a better balance between the benefits of both the digital and analogue worlds.

Photos that I have printed out and save in physical albums or frame on my wall tend to create more lasting memories than those I just leave in my phone or the cloud. Notes that I type or write by hand tend to stick in my brain a lot more than those automatically transcribed by AI. Movies that someone recommends to me, albums that I actually listen to all the way through, all of it creates a richer experience for me, one where I take time to get to know the creators and maybe even seek out more of their work. It’s harder to do that when I’m just letting a music streaming service hum away in the background, algorithmically offering up what it thinks I should be interested in.

How do you prefer to engage with your media? Have you lost something by going fully digital, or does it work for you?

In any case, I recommend dropping in on the folks at Four Star next time you’re in downtown Madison–and/or seeking out any indie video shops in your area. They’re still there, fighting the good fight, and might just be able to recommend something great to you that you didn’t know you were missing out on.

Now Read This.

“The State of the Union is…” [Garrett Bucks at The White Pages]

We are not currently asked to do anything that our ancestors haven’t done before. We are the nation of many horrors, but also millions of acts of resistance to horrors.

“Feminism isn’t ruining the American family” [Lyz Lenz at Men Yell At Me]

Feminist critiques of the structures that oppress us are not an effort at destruction but at renovation and rebuilding.

“The Old Rules Are For Losers” [Kelsey McKinney for Defector]

It is not new that politics runs on bullshit. What feels new is that elected Democrats continue to pretend that it is not happening. When you hear Democrats in power talk about events like this, they sound appalled and astounded despite constant evidence that this is established and common.

“Fight Fear, Build Power: Community Defense Works” [Kelly Hayes for Truthout]

It’s also how everyday people are going to be made complicit in things they claim to abhor, because people in the U.S. are already conditioned, as you mentioned, to say, “Oh, maybe it’s not so bad if they’re doing these things to criminals.” That is how they’re going to tear apart families, and punish people for ending their pregnancies, and punish trans people and their parents for seeking health care — by weaponizing our complicity with a violent system.

“Ukraine’s Secret Feminist Resistance Fighters” [Lauren Wolfe for Chills]

This may need to become our new motto for resistance anywhere/everywhere: “The eyes are scared, but the hands are doing.”

Take Action.

Whether or not you have any interest in owning or carrying a personal firearm (and I have a lot of thoughts/feelings on the matter myself!), I always recommend educating yourself on safe firearm handling and better understanding the laws and regulations around them in your state. The sad reality is that we live in a world filled with guns, and demystifying their use and the rules around them can help increase our overall safety.

I was grateful to recently stumble onto workshops offered by the Madison chapter of the Liberal Gun Club, which does a great job of offering inclusive and culturally-informed firearm safety, CCL, and Stop the Bleed training courses, free from right-wing B.S. The class I recently took was a diverse mix of folks–many trans and gender non-conforming, women, and people of color–and led by knowledgeable, friendly instructors.

Self-defense classes can be a helpful way to feel more comfortable in your skin and your environment, too. In Madison, there are two good options that I’m aware of: Chimera, a trauma-informed Empowerment Self-Defense class offered by the Rape Crisis Center, and Underground Self-Defense. Find a good option near you!

WISCONSIN - VOTE ON APRIL 1 (NO FOOLIN’)

There are several important races on the ballot, but perhaps none more important than the State Supreme Court Election. We’ve managed to eke out a narrow liberal majority on the court for the past couple of years and have only just begun to see the progressive fruits of that–the dismantling of our gerrymandered maps, taking down parts of Act 10’s union-busting, and potentially overturning the state’s outdated anti-abortion law, for instance.

Susan Crawford is the candidate we want to win. Her opponent, Brad Schimel, is a hardcore GOP operative backed by millions in dark money funding, including from current president-unelect Elon Musk. In fact, this election is set to become the most expensive state supreme court election in history, thanks to all that outside spending. Why? Because right-wingers see their chance to take back the majority on the court here, and run further roughshod over our lives with their power grabs.

So be sure you’re registered and that you vote on or before April 1. There’s a lot riding on this one!

In Person.

I’m dee-lighted to announce that I’ve been helping to curate and put on a new event series to highlight queer and trans performers at Gamma Ray Bar in Madison!

QT Club will be a monthly showcase of LGBTQ+ musicians/bands, DJs, and even occasionally performance artists. We’re kicking things off on Thursday, March 20, with a show featuring Muscle Memory, Raddish, and Blasfemme.

April’s edition will be on Thursday the 24 (lineup TBD), and May’s show will be Saturday the 17th and feature yours truly with LINE, alongside Kat & the Hurricane, and Biitchseat (from Cleveland!). Save the date! All shows start early, with doors at 6:30pm and start time at 7pm, because no one wants to go to shows that start at 10pm, thankyouverymuch.