‘The Inspection’ has finally hit Netflix, bringing Black queer veterans back into focus
Invisibility crystalizes erasure.
The Inspection, a 2022 autobiographical film by Elegance Bratton now streaming on Netflix, breaks the imposed silence of a generation of Black queer veterans, offering audiences one of the first Hollywood-backed projects that takes us inside the life and times of a Black queer Marine.
Featuring a Golden Globe-nominated performance by Jeremy Pope, the film spotlights the indignities of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) and provides an opportunity to interrogate how the policy still affects the lives of former Black queer troops more than a decade after its repeal.
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The Inspection is an honest re-telling of the Director’s lived experiences surviving Marine boot camp under DADT. In a post-9/11 America, Elegance found himself homeless on the streets of New York City, abandoned by his homophobic mother. To alter his circumstances, he enlisted in the military to chart a new path for his life, only to find himself on the receiving end of prejudice-induced hazing that tested his fortitude. The film holds a mirror to the indignities of DADT and the violence and degradation it unjustly precipitated on young queer recruits.
Admittedly, I became acquainted with the team behind The Inspection shortly before production began. The Marine Corps and Department of Defense (DOD) Entertainment Media Office stonewalled, blocking their requests to film on location at military training posts in Mississippi and Oklahoma.
The DOD supports countless Hollywood films annually, allowing access to military bases, equipment, and personnel as long as projects are deemed “in the Nation’s best interest.”
Because the film was unabashed in homosexual themes – i.e. Elegance found himself fantasizing about his Drill Instructor (for the record, I can relate), its script was flatly rejected and access and support by the DOD was denied. A DOD liaison said, “The fictional nature of the script is in direct contradiction to our core values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment and stands in stark contrast to the discipline and professionalism displayed daily by the vast majority of our service members.”
When DADT was adopted, it was seen as a compromise to the witch hunt that pre-dated its implementation. Beginning in World War II, blue ticket discharges, disproportionately targeting Black and LGBTQ+ troops, left tens of thousands without access to veterans health, housing, and education benefits they’d earned after service.
Beginning in 1981, the Reagan administration adopted an aggressive campaign treating homosexuality as incompatible with military service. Seventeen thousand soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines would have their careers upended in the following decade.
While those policies encouraged invisibility, DADT encouraged silence.
From 1991 through its repeal in 2011,13,000 additional service members would find themselves outed and denied access to government-backed veterans benefits and services. These numbers don’t account for tens of thousands driven out by other means or countless others who endured sexual harassment, violence, and a life built on secrecy to remain in uniform.
Black LGBTQ+ troops have always been the most vulnerable, existing at the intersections of our military’s relationships to race, gender, class, and sexuality.
The Inspection tells that story.
The DOD doesn’t want it remembered.
And that makes the film’s ascendency remarkable – it exists against all odds.
In doing so, it renders Black queer veterans visible.
Richard Brookshire is the Founder and CEO of the Black Veterans Project.
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