The Controversy Of A Queer

Futurama (or Star Wars) as a Queer Utopia of the Future

 Sometimes, when I watch Futurama, I think about exactly this. I don’t particularly like the show — maybe because at times it feels too absurd, too loud. And yet it evokes a strange feeling in me: it reminds me how profound what we now call queer can be. How within these attitudes — often incomprehensible to me — there lies a certain truth about a world that is constantly changing.

At first glance, Futurama is a comedy about a robot, aliens, and humans from an absurd third millennium. But beneath the layer of humor lies something much deeper — a vision of a society where the boundaries of identity dissolve and difference is not only tolerated but celebrated.

In Futurama, there is no such thing as a “normal” body, a “traditional” family, or a “natural” way of being. The characters move across the spectrum of gender, species, and forms of existence: the robot Bender displays both gender and moral fluidity, Zoidberg embodies otherness embraced with affection, and planet Earth itself is home to thousands of cultures — human and non-human alike. Such a world necessarily rests on radical empathy and openness toward difference.

Those who love Futurama or Star Wars often carry within them an unspoken agreement with the idea that diversity is natural — that being can take infinitely many forms, and that the purpose of progress is not uniformity but variety. These worlds are queer in the deepest sense of the word: they challenge boundaries, rewrite rules, and allow new combinations of forms and identities.

This spirit is reflected in real cities — vividly in Berlin. A city where fashion experimentation becomes part of everyday life, where individuality flows into the streets as freely as music from the clubs. Berlin feels like a terrestrial version of Futurama — a metropolis where freedom of dress, belief, and desire is not an exception but the norm.

Perhaps it is precisely because we can fall in love with the world of Futurama that we carry within us the potential to live such freedom ourselves — here, on our own planet, in real time.

At the same time, this openness does not have to conflict with respect for history and cultural heritage. Preserving old buildings, neighborhoods, and architectural styles is not an act of rigidity, but of reverence — a form of care for the memory of a place and the people who shaped it. To have a relationship with heritage does not mean to reject new forms of freedom; it means understanding that even the future needs its roots.

Queer aesthetics and futurist thought do not need to erase history — they can complement it, revive it, reinterpret it. Maybe cities like Luxembourg (or Luxembourg) prove this: they combine a modern outlook with a deep respect for the past. Just like in Futurama, tradition and experiment, stone and light, past and future coexist side by side.

Architecture Between Decay and Endurance

 Who knows these differences in certain parts of Europe, they don’t understand the architecture itself. Ordinary houses, almost anywhere, seem to decay — or already look decayed even when new. Construction often feels improvised: one wall made from old bricks, another from concrete blocks, covered with plaster that doesn’t last long and soon turns dirty. There’s a sense of fragility in materials that should represent stability.

Even construction companies profit well from the so-called green economy — the Central European version of it. There’s constant trade in polystyrene and external insulation, as if sustainability meant simply covering things up. Some new houses are designed to be “energy-efficient,” but often with strangely small windows, built more from fear of energy loss than from any sense of harmony.

In the Netherlands, the difference is striking. Architecture there is naturally durable — solid brick structures, without plaster, designed to last for generations. The Dutch live in a flat, open landscape shaped by wind and water, with air constantly moving from the North Sea. Buildings are made to resist the wind for generations, not to hide from it. Their strength is not accidental. A West surfaces remain clean not because West is repainted, but because the material itself endures. Large windows open to the world, and no one would ever think of covering such buildings with unsustainable polystyrene and a weak plaster layer that would crumble within years. I think Dutch architecture doesn’t pretend to be ecological; it is ecological by its very nature — through longevity, openness, and respect for material truth.

That is perhaps the quiet essence of difference: in Central Europe, “green” often means concealing weakness behind artificial layers; in the Netherlands, strength and sustainability begin with what is left uncovered.

Narratives vs. Reality

 I think some media often speak of a “crisis” in Germany — mentioning refugees, rising drug addiction, and other social issues, supposedly linked to an alleged increase in crime, especially also around major train stations.

I say “supposedly linked to an alleged” rise in crime because when I arrive at a main station in almost any Czech city, it’s difficult to understand why the media paints Germany as a place one should avoid altogether due to conflicts with certain groups of people. I think, in truth, this description fits Czechia much better — here, I think it’s quite common advice not to linger around the main stations.

Everyone knows what Prague’s main station is like. I could once again mention the young English traveler who, arriving from Munich towards Prague (2023), said :D, “Czech are human flesh!” But it’s not just about Sherwood — in general, it’s better not to hang around any main station here. Sooner or later, someone will approach you asking for something. 

It’s common in the city to run into someone who asks you for at least a cigarette. Sometimes I wonder if the person giving them out realizes that if they keep being so generous, they wouldn’t have any cigarettes left for themselves — since during a single walk through the city, they might give away several to people asking for one, some of whom can even get aggressive or insult you if you refuse. This kind of thing doesn’t happen to me in Germany. 

Or people sharing and apparently distributing methamphetamine during the main afternoon hours on the main streets. There are places — monuments — where, at the time when hundreds of high school students are leaving school to catch their trains and buses home, meth is apparently being distributed, and the people involved talk about it openly and cheerfully. This also isn’t common in Germany.

Still, I don’t believe these issues apply only to train stations. It’s true that harm can happen anywhere — perhaps even at German stations. Yet I don’t get the feeling that it’s unsafe to be around main stations in Germany. To me, the reality is quite different from how some media make it appear.