I’m a Virgo.
When I saw the trailer for Boots Riley’s I’m a Virgo, though I was drawn to the giantness of the protagonist, the strangeness of the premise and the Blackness of the show, I wasn’t quite sure it was for me. I say that not as a statement against the show’s quality (even then it looked amazing), but because the older I get, the more I feel drawn to the same messy dramas—I like shows that center love, maybe, and relationships and family (all of which I’m a Virgo addresses, it turns out). This show seemed like it had a lot of moving parts. It appeared that there were superheroes and big battles to fight and why is he so tall?
It felt like too much for me and my tired, love-driven brain. But it was getting all this hype and I liked Sorry to Bother You, so I decided to check it out anyway. I thought I’d just watch the first episode but that bled into the second, which bled into the third, and even when I finally got off the couch to take a break, I still found myself thinking about it for days.
Reading all of this Black literature lately, I think what struck me about this show is how bold it is, how much like those we consider Black classics — stories that come at the same, centuries-long issues with striking clarity and from new directions.
What is it like to be a Black person, trying, constantly, to figure out how to live in a world that was not designed with you in mind, that often tries to keep you out of sight so that it doesn’t feel intimidated? How do you navigate that, and what if, for some, it doesn’t look like being enormous but being too fast for a world that moves slowly, for people who can’t hear you until you slow all the way down? And for some, maybe it looks like being tiny, having to improvise when you can’t do anything that— in a more balanced world—you would be able to. Riley explores all of this, a number of iterations of what it might feel like to be out of place.
What is especially compelling about his project is that though it faces the issues of both race and class, it doesn’t deflate you. It strikes this effective equilibrium between being depressing and being foolishly optimistic — it rides that wave, moving upbeat while at the same time acknowledging how many obstacles seem to always be in the way.
I told my boyfriend I couldn’t stop thinking about the show, and then he watched it all in one day. I, on the other hand, was wary to get back to it because now it felt like I liked it too much, that if I watched it, it would be over, and I wanted to keep it there to return to.
I like how Jharrel Jerome plays the protagonist Cootie, how fumbling and innocent and awkward and mistake-prone that character is and how quickly he falls victim to representing all the things people project onto Blackness, the disconnect between who we are and how we get portrayed. I like how Kara Young plays Jones too, how queerness gets to lead in this show, gets to be the one with some sense, the one who understands what might inevitably be the way forward.
In the show, Riley explores how maybe all of our struggles boil down to capital and how if we just stopped participating, our very oppression might come to a screeching halt — something Ida B. Wells said back in the 1800s. In her pamphlet “Southern Horrors,” she writes, “The appeal to the white man’s pocket has ever been more effectual than all the appeals ever made to his conscience.” Boots Riley illustrates this idea in a way that feels innovative and memorable to me.
I love I’m a Virgo because it reminded me that yes, we can still talk about these old old issues in new ways, through new ideas. Yes, Black people are allowed to be weird, just as Black life is weird, and how we communicate this life — through giants or body snatchers or secret thriving cities—is ours to explore, to create.
(Here’s the trailer, in case you want to check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSyKhFwEo7c.)
Image: Amazon Prime
