Dubai, and the UAE in general, have become something of a hotspot for young twenty-something influencers in the last ten years or so. We’ve all seen the holiday snaps of the Burj Khalifa, the livestreams from the month-long Shopping Festival, and we reckon we can probably now recognise a few of the rooftop swimming pools on sight.
But homosexuality remains illegal in the UAE. So, how do we reconcile the two?
When it was football’s turn to confront this thorny question of international diplomacy, the demands from the British public to their idols were clear – show solidarity with the queer community; boycott the 2022 World Cup; rainbow armbands. At the same time, it felt unfair that it was young footballers, in their late teens and early twenties, who had borne the brunt of the backlash – it’s fair to say their choices were more limited (or at least, their only real choice would have been professionally catastrophic).
It also seemed to us that the same demands don’t seem to hold true of other celebrities – or at least, the steady stream of influencers posting bikini shots from the Jumeirah coastline doesn’t seem to be stopping any time soon. The silence that accompanies high-profile stories about Dubai – see the recent case of the Irish air attendant who was arrested for attempting suicide – strikes another dissonant chord.
We wanted to write about this paradox, but the more we spoke to queer friends about it, the less a consensus seemed to emerge. Many of our queer friends saw holidaying in the UAE as hypocritical and implicitly endorsing a homophobic regime. Others, though, including gay Emiratis, pointed out that there is a queer subculture in Dubai, just not an official one – it was even suggested that it would be racist to imply the UAE was homophobic. But it seemed to us that if the UK made homosexuality illegal, we would be rallying in the streets, and whether or not there was an unofficial queer subculture, that wouldn’t be good enough. It is not racist to critique human rights abuses around the world.
This is an idea that we explore in our play – how can you criticise another country’s culture and values without being labelled as xenophobic?
Love’s A Beach is a comedy about the first gay winners of a Love Island-style reality show. Six months on, their fame is beginning to fade – and while Ben is happy to return to normal life, Cyrus is desperate to cling on to celebrity, whatever the cost. When they get offered an influencing deal in Dubai, their different attitudes to the offer threaten to drive the couple apart…
Exploring this conundrum through a queer couple who take opposite stances seemed like the perfect way to create a comedy-drama that was balanced and nuanced in its approach to this sensitive issue. In Love’s A Beach, Ben refuses to hide his sexuality, and contingently refuses to accept an influencing deal in Dubai, while Cyrus is more than happy to jet out to the UAE, and sees the need to hide his sexuality as a question of respecting custom.
At the same time, though, it’s a play about the pressure that is put on young celebrities, and especially young queer celebrities, to be role models. Being in the public eye is exhausting – your every move is scrutinised, and for every cause you advocate for, there will be someone asking why you’ve been silent on another, equally worthy one. The idea that those with platforms have a responsibility to use them well has morphed into the idea that celebrities are public property and must stand as beacons of morality and virtue at all times. Para-social relationships turn into reality when follower counts, and numbers of likes have a direct impact on your finances, and influencers are forced to morph into what their followers want to see, whatever the cost to their own integrity (or mental health).
We also wanted to point out the ridiculousness of reality stars and footballers having to be the face of our diplomatic effort when we frequently do trade deals with countries with less-than-perfect human rights records (to say the least), and nobody tries to cancel the Foreign Secretary. But if an influencer endorses a cause – or holidays in a country – that seems to conflict with the values we hold common, the consequences can be ruinous.
Love’s A Beach is a comedy about both those hypocrisies, but most of all, it’s a comedy about a young queer couple in 2024 who have everything going for them and are, for the most part, living their best lives. For every joke about international diplomacy, there’s ten more about Denise Welch, and the show is far more fun than we’ve made it sound, we promise! We can’t wait to bring Ben and Cyrus to the Edinburgh Fringe, and we hope you’ll join us – in the Baby Grand at 12:45pm (and then subsequently at the bar).
Love’s a Beach runs from 31 July to 26 August (except 13), 12:45, at Pleasance Courtyard, 60 Pleasance, Edinburgh EH8 9TJ.
