“Queer Eye” thinks inside the box
When Queer Eye for the Straight Guy premiered on Bravo in 2003, the concept was simple: Five gay men would cast their presumably discerning queer eyes on a sloppy heterosexual male. As daring as it was then considered to put five gay men on TV, the formula was blandly and comfortingly familiar: It was a makeover show. There was no broader lesson and no politics, aside from the mainstreaming of queerness itself. As its full title, Queer Eye: More than a Makeover, suggests, the Netflix reboot, which premiered in 2018 and released its sixth season at the end of 2021, aspires to more.