As it turns out for Netflix‘s Boots, there’s no better endorsement than having the Trump administration bash your show.
Following the Pentagon‘s statement referring to the LGBTQ military series based on Greg Cope White’s memoir The Pink Marine as “woke garbage,” show creator Andy Parker expressed his gratitude as Boots climbs the streamer’s charts to No. 2.
“I guess we have to give some credit to the Pentagon there, don’t we?” Parker told Vanity Fair.
Last week, Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson bashed the show in a statement shared with multiple outlets. “Under President Trump and Secretary Hegseth, the U.S. military is getting back to restoring the warrior ethos. Our standards across the board are elite, uniform, and sex neutral because the weight of a rucksack or a human being doesn’t care if you’re a man, a woman, gay, or straight,” she said. “We will not compromise our standards to satisfy an ideological agenda, unlike Netflix whose leadership consistently produces and feeds woke garbage to their audience and children.”
Despite the pseudo-moralist outrage, Parker noted Boots isn’t the “queer fantasia of sexcapade and homoerotic fantasy” some viewers expected, but it’s also not “this polemical screed against the military—this really scathing takedown.”
“I certainly never set out to make anything that was propaganda and I really reject the idea that it is. The fact that we seem to be situated between these two different sides is evidence of how the show wants to approach these really thorny, interesting questions. [Boots] is trying to navigate this in a nuanced way that isn’t so overtly strident in its attacks or in its politics. I think it’s after something more subtle,” said Parker.
“I would be very surprised if the Pentagon actually watched the show,” he told VF. “The premise itself instigates or incites some kind of reaction or assumptions. What I would invite people to do is to watch the show, and see how they feel about the questions the show is trying to provoke.”
Explaining that he didn’t want to depict “an unblemished view of the military,” Parker said the show is “more about the human experience of what it feels like for these guys in this particular time and place to go through this experience.”
“We were on an emotional mission,” said Parker. “There’s politics involved in all of these questions—what’s happening to trans people now, and the policies that are being inflicted on trans service members now. What our show shines the light on is, what is the cost of that? What’s the cost to the people who are affected by those policies? What is the cost to the institution itself, when they have to inflict that on service members who want to serve honorably and with dignity?”
In its second week on Netflix, Boots doubled its weekly audience to 9.4M, rising to No. 2 on Netflix’s English TV rankings.
Boots stars Miles Heizer as 1990s closeted teen Cameron Cope, who impulsively follows his best friend Ray McAffey’s (Liam Oh) lead in enlisting in the United States Marine Corps, fearing consequences if his sexuality is discovered.
White’s book was set in 1979, when he joined the USMC with his friend Dale. Gay people could not openly serve in the military until Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was repealed in 2011.
Hegseth has long been a supporter of the Trump administration’s ban on transgender troops in military service, also going after pronouns and ordering the USNS Harvey Milk to remove the name of the gay activist from the naval ship.
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