![]() It was presented as knowing, affectionate humor from the inside, but the pair now agree that there was a level of self-homophobia in those vintage gags. Occasionally they participated in the humor themselves, as with their appearance in a 1998 episode of the “Ellen” sitcom, set at a “womyn’s festival,” which the two singers watch back on iPads and grimace to recall today. The feel-good aspects are plentiful enough that it comes as sort of a rude reawakening late in the film when the filmmaker presents a pained segment that’s a sort of anthology of pop-culture moments in which the so-called “lesbian folk-rock duo” was the butt of a lot of jokes, usually based in the idea that the Indigo Girls represented something no man or straight person would want to go near. Perhaps most winningly of all for the film’s chances with a wider audience, though, Ray and Saliers just turn out to be a couple of women that almost anybody would want to spend a couple of hours with, whether you knew it or not from distant memories of the singers as one-time icons of VH1. Granted, there’s some of that, too, but any case Bombach builds for the Girls being heroes feels fairly well-earned, and less hagiographic than many recent music docs that have come down the pike. Those differences go a long way in making sure the film doesn’t end up being too much of a conferral of sainthood. ![]() It just means there’s a whole rainbow’s worth of shadings about what it means to be LGBTQ, or human, just between Ray and Saliers themselves. In this case, “couldn’t be more different” isn’t a euphemism for “don’t really get along,” as it often is in duo or band situations. ![]()
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