"Ryan Murphy's TV empire is not explicitly female-coded, but given how often he casts older actresses to offer up camp and cattiness, it's taken on a certain (if often incoherent) feminine mystique. The Beauty, though, if not for the boys, is at least about the boys, in ways so simultaneously lurid and timely that the end result is surprisingly thought-provoking."
"The Beauty is obsessed with dicks - what they can do and what can be done to them - and shots of penis pumps, blowjobs, and amateur porn abound. But its real shock value is invested in what happens when people "get the shot" and are infected with the titular Beauty, emerging newly tan, muscular, busty, or bottom-heavy, from pulsing sacs that look like gigantic scrotums."
The Beauty centers on a serum that initially beautifies people but mutates into a sexually transmitted virus that consumes hosts from the inside. The series pairs lurid, campy aesthetics with explicit sexual imagery and grotesque body-horror transformation sequences, including pulsing sacs and slimy effects. The show foregrounds gendered spectacle and the politics of appearance, often focusing on male bodies and surgical or chemical alteration. The production evokes and amplifies influences from films that use visceral make-up and practical effects. The tone mixes tastelessness, provocation, and striking visual inventiveness to produce memorable, divisive television.
Read at Vulture
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