Put Ryan Gosling’s gay little wrist back

Ryan Gosling may be straight as an arrow, but Lionsgate just put his wrist through conversion therapy. (It’s still legal in 23 states, you know.) The film studio is rereleasing Damien Chazelle’s landmark film La La Land in theaters for its tenth anniversary and, to advertise the event, unveiled a poster with what it called “a minor adjustment.” Well, the studio adjusted it in the way that the Baptists tried to adjust Troye Sivan in Boy Erased. They straightened Ryan Gosling’s wrist.

In the iconic original poster for the film, Gosling’s so it’s at an angle from his arm, rather than continuing the line straight through. It is, for lack of a better term, a limp wrist — a classic signifier of gayness. Gosling revealed in 2024 that the wrist bothered him. “We’re dancing, Emma and I, and I didn’t know this would become the poster for the movie,” he told The Wall Street Journal. “We were supposed to have our hands up, and I thought it would be cool to put my hand like that: [Bends wrist gayly.] Even though everyone told me it wasn’t cool, I was sure it was cooler. And now when I look at it, and I have to see it all the time, you know what would’ve been cooler than this? [Bends wrist gayly again.] That. [Straightens hand.]” He then added insult to injury by saying it “killed the energy” and was “lazy,” noting that he called it the “La La Hand.”

Anyway, this sucks. The gay little wrist ruled. It was a reminder that, while La La Land is a movie about a straight relationship, it’s also a musical, which is the gayest genre. Plus this kind of revisionism flies in the face of the nature of time. Gosling made a decision to have a gay little wrist, and now it’s a part of film history. No take-backsies.

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