“I am a virgin” is a triumph of imagination and ideology.
Created by Boots Riley, the series, which premieres Friday on Prime Video, is a boomerang throwback to Amazon’s early streaming years, when poignant oddballs like Transparent and Patriot Jeff Bezos dominated programming. It’s a revitalizing return to originality for both the platform and the franchise-heavy small screen itself.
Watch it with open eyes.
With dead-end basketball and branding deals, societal toxicity, fast food and a fast-paced love interest played by Oliva Washington in breakout fashion, the centerpiece of the poetic show is the 13-foot-tall Cootie, brilliantly portrayed by Jharrel Jerome . The When They See Us Emmy-winner brings the 19-year-old Oakland native’s uncertain steps into the outside world after years in obscurity, honing his already formidable skill to reveal a naturalism that rivals magical realism established around him.
It’s too late for this year’s Emmys, whether or not the ceremony takes place in September due to the ongoing Writers Guild strike. I’m a Virgo faces the challenge of not being remembered when the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards take place in 2024. Although the comedy categories will be profound, it would be a crime to ditch an actor as hugely successful as “I’m a Virgo” himself or the performances of Jerome, Washington and two-time Tony Award nominee Kara Young as the powerful Jones forget.
As one would expect from The Coup frontman Riley, it operates on multiple levels and there are many metaphors at work in “I’m a Virgo”. From a Sharp Point of View, this is a mixtape by Jonathan Swift, NK Jemisin, Samuel Becket, Kara Walker and Ralph Ellison. Nonetheless, in a very poignant way, the work is thoroughly soulful and skilful.
By any other name, Riley is a situationist who, for years, has created the game of long detournement for that moment and the seven-episode DIY series I’m a Virgo.
The Sorry to Bother You director, who penned a guest column for Deadline last month about his conflicting personal and professional feelings as a proud guild member over making his TV debut during the WGA industrial action, takes the occasion with a seriousness that embraces many more experienced films will close talent.
The goofy gag scenes that populate the supercharged coming-of-age narrative once Cootie breaks out of the gilded cage of his aunt and uncle (Carmen Ejogo and Mike Epps) play out across generational and economic boundaries. Like the best of Spike Lee’s canon, the obvious agenda-setting scenes prove fundamental long after their educational aura has faded.
Power outages, self-serving parenting, a rogue billionaire anti-hero named “Hero” (played by an adorable wig starring Walton Goggins), friendship, betrayal, comic book fandom, cults, and loving, awkward sex between Cootie and Washington’s Flora fill me up. I am a virgin. Amidst episodes written by Riley, Michael R. Jackson, Tze Chun, Whitney White and Marcus Gardley, the series is also packed with the legacy of Amiri Baraka’s Black Arts Repertory Theater, social unrest, local politics, an uncomfortable animated series within of the series, the crime business and critiques of capitalism that postulate what a collaboration between Buster Keaton, Angela Davis and Preston Sturges might have looked like in another world.
In this sense, “I’m a Virgo” puts American myth-making to the test.
The result, which never turns away from what it means to be young and black in the land of the free and home of the brave, is unflattering to the lies we tell ourselves and the truths we tell ourselves most turn away — whether they ban books and drag queen shows, attacks on trans children, or voting rights or not. Aside from a rather nerve-wracking ending that just begs for a second season, I’d just like to add that the overall combo reveals, among other things, the weak core of the assembly line crusaders, spin-offs, and revival content that has drawn the series’ attention since it’s been in Hollywood has had its lights on for far too long. That’s the difference between creativity and content by the committee.
To pick up a line from an early episode, what I’m a Virgo isn’t about is situations. This show is about what is going on and trying to see it in the moment that we are in. It’s about how in America, as Jones tells Hero towards the end of the season, “the newspaper is a placeholder for the violence.”
Sit down with both eyes open.