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only queer actors should take queer parts

Still watching the video but this part of your comment really reminded me of something I've tried to work through. Maybe you can help. So race is different, for a lot of reasons I don't want to get into.

But I feel like as soon as you hit the inverse-implying a queer actor can't play straight -theres just a visceral "no".

Now on the one hand, I am sympathetic to the material reasons we should want queer actors in queer roles (just getting more jobs, full stop). So like when we just think of things like jobs, it feels like if a straight person takes a role from a queer person, that's bad for the queer actors income. There's also more lib representational concerns, but I'm less invested in that

However there's also a more aesthetic/theoretical concern. I can't exactly articulate it but perhaps it's because in performance, isn't part of it sympathetically understanding someone who isn't you? So to imply a queer actor can't understand the straight experience or vise versa is a stake in the heart of empathy more generally. Obviously "sincere" queer art has a certain cache, but all art is lies that lead to the truth. (I recognize this is only one school of acting/fiction theory, but it's the school I buy into so that might be it).

I guess part of what bugs me is there's this whole thing about making art "real" and that somehow the more "real" it is the better it is. Here's the fucked up example that I think brings this out. The animated Disney films from the 90s are legit art. Meanwhile every "live action" remake has been shit, even if it's more "realistic". Good art doesn't rely on realism as such.

Obviously casting a queer or straight actor isn't exactly the same as this, but there's a similar impulse behind it (i.e. a queer or straight actor being cast "cis" to their sexual orientation is somehow "more" real than the alternative, and "real" or "authentic" is the metric of quality).

I'm a bit drunk, so feel free to just ignore these ramblings. But if any comrades want to give some clarity on this thorny issue I'd appreciate it.

Video has been great btw.

I don't have a good cleanup to this, except to quote some Shakey from A Midsummer Night's Dream

The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

And as imagination bodies forth.

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen.

Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing.

A local habitation and a name.