Artist Dylan Glynn channels Sex and the City to explore the social media habits of queer men

Queeries is a weekly column by CBC Arts producer Peter Knegt that queries LGBTQ art, culture and/or identity through a personal lens. 

With his new animated short film Thot or Not, Dylan Glynn couldn't help but wonder: what if he channeled his inner Carrie Bradshaw to explore the social media habits of gay men?

"I was watching Sex and the City way too much," Glynn says, remembering when he conceived of the short. "And then also gossiping with my boyfriend at the time about people in the community. Then all of a sudden at 3 a.m., I start to come up with these puns that amused me, and then this story just started to take shape."

Screening at this year's Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival, the short is just one of the many projects Glynn — a Toronto-based painter, animator and author — has offered up as of late. In 2020, he released his debut children's book Rain Boy, which he describes as "a queer, ugly duckling story," and earlier this year, he won two gold medals from the Society of Illustrators for his works "Wonder Makes Me Soar" and "Together Alone at the Zoom Funeral."

In Thot or Not, Glynn voices a pun-loving Sex and the City-inspired narrator over his own animation. 

The logline, Glynn says, is basically, "Why is it that when two boyfriends present virtually the same feed of thotty photos on Instagram, one is considered sex and inspiring and then the other one is considered cringey and try-hard when the materials look the same?" 

"I felt that there was a discourse like that in my community about certain people," the creator says. And those certain people shall remain unnamed. 

"I think people can feel that the short is based on real people, but I'm trying to take it to the grave exactly who each character is based on," he says. "Sometimes people start to ask me questions about it, but I'm not giving any clues. It was based on conversations I was having with my boyfriend about people who were in our life … Knock on wood, I feel like I fictionalized enough of it that it throws off the scent."

While the screening of Thot or Not at Inside Out will kick off Glynn's summer, he'll be spending much of the rest of it at the beach — at least when it comes to his work. One of his next projects is a series of paintings about Hanlan's Point, the clothing-optional queer beach on the Toronto Islands. He's appropriately titled the series with a pun: "The Garden of Hedon."

"In the past few years, I started becoming more inspired by painters that did homoerotic work," he says. "So that started to influence my own practice, and Hanlan's Point is a place that I really love."

Glynn said he started taking mental snapshots of scenes from the beach that he thought were "beautiful or inspiring or funny."

"And then I kind of came up with this concept about this whole 'Garden of Hedon' thing, which is about this idea of Hanlan's as this sacred queer space. It's more than a safe space. Take the cruising that happens on Hanlan's in the bushes. One friend of mine was saying how when he first saw it, he was so shocked because it's like broad daylight and what's going on is so blatant. And, like, if you're in that area and you're not participating, you're the one that's weird. That is pretty unique."

Hanlan's Point also has a place in Toronto's queer history books. 

"With the Garden of Hedon concept, it's about how we have this space that's such a special and sacred queer space, and how, historically, it's such a significant space because the first Toronto Pride was there in 1971. And the culture of that space still exists today. Yes, it changes. But it gets passed down and passed across generations. And that idea of it being passed down made me think about myths and legends. And then that made me think about incorporating that kind of imagery into the paintings that I would make about that space."

Look out for Glynn's Garden of Hedon project by checking back at this website, and go see Thot or Not at Inside Out on June 2 at 6:45pm.