Murs’ video for “Animal Style,” a story about the tragic consequences of internalized homophobia and closeting, was planned long before Frank Ocean released the liner notes from Channel Orange that tell the story of his first love. But the timing’s been such that it enters an existing conversation that’s already underway:

The video itself plays into some very old narratives about self-hating black gay men that, while they may be a powerful dramatization of the worst consequences of internalized homophobia, are hardly the sum of the experiences of non-straight African American people. But there’s still something bracing about Murs’ willingness to play a gay man even though he’s straight and married, without any of the coyness or shock-value courting of Lil B’s I’m Gay (I’m Happy) album.

But no matter the content, one of the things that’s fascinating about the reaction to the clip is the anxiety some people appear to feel about its existence. “Since when is HIP HOP and being GAY ever intertwined,” complains one commenter on World Star Hip-Hop. “Wtf , why are rappers trying to capitalize on this gay shit now,” whines another. The idea that hip-hop has somehow been captured by a gay takeover is ludicrous, of course. But it’s amazing how threatened people feel by even a couple of positively-received efforts by rappers and R&B singers to explore sexuality and homophobia. Frank Ocean, Lil B, and Murs are a beginning of a conversation, rather than the end of it. And some people seem very nervous about the prospect of that conversation taking place anywhere, even if there’s absolutely no requirement that they participate in it, if only because they know that it means their views may no longer be dominant.

It can be obscured under a grime of casual homophobia and sexism in their lyrics and music video imagery, but the most radical thing about the music collective Odd Future has always been their matter-of-fact inclusion of their lesbian producer, Syd tha Kid. She’s always been a full member of the group, rather than a sexually-available hanger on, and for all the language and imagery members of Odd Future throw around, in practice, the collective seems entirely comfortable with non-straight people. That perception is even truer today after Odd Future member Frank Ocean posted the story of his first love on his Tumblr, a lyrical, painful reminiscence of falling for another man who didn’t, or couldn’t bring himself to, return Frank’s affections. Tyler the Creator, Odd Future’s flashy frontman, was immediately supportive, tweeting “Proud of that nigga cause I know that shit is difficult or whatever.”

His Twitter bio, of course, still reads “I AM NOT A DYKE.” And it’s not as if his pride in Frank’s personal courage means Tyler recognizes (or wants to acknowledge) the contribution of casual vernacular homophobia to the fact that “that shit is difficult or whatever.” Dream Hampton wrote, in an open letter to Frank, “The 200 times Tyler says ‘faggot’ and the wonderful way he held you up and down on Twitter today, Syd the Kid’s sexy stud profile and her confusing, misogynistic videos speak to the many contradictions and posturing your generation inherited from the hip-hop generation before you.” That evolution, that untangling of contradictions, happens in fits and starts. Earl Sweatshirt, another Odd Future member, came back from an extended stay at a school in Samoa, during which he did volunteer work with rape and assault survivors, sobered about the casualness of rape imagery in his lyrics. Maybe the same thing will happen with Tyler. Maybe it won’t.

But whatever happens, Syd and Frank are here. They are visible. Tyler’s support for them is visible. Jay-Z’s tacit support is visible in letting Hampton publish her letter on his Life and Times site. And visibility is the long-term death of bias. I don’t really think that Odd Future will be the wheel that turns the entire ship of hip-hop (or R&B, the genre which Frank is more rooted in) here. It was never going to be that a major talent in a musical genre came out and the next day we woke up to the bloom of a thousand gay and gay-positive mix tapes. That’s too much freight to place on any one person, and far too much to expect of an entrenched industry with well-established norms, even if those norms do that genre harm. But at the end of Angels in America, Tony Kushner’s main character, Prior Walter, said something that I think gets this kind of event exactly right. “We won’t die secret deaths anymore,” he tells the audience directly. “The world only spins forward. We will be citizens…The Great Work begins.” There are all kinds of countries, and all kinds of citizenship to be claimed.

The bridge is yours.

-Carmen Sandiego, Latina role model.

-In a Don Henley v. Frank Ocean fight, I know which side I’m on.

-Warners v. Hotfile and takedown notices.

-This HBO series about war photographers sounds pretty great.

-I really hope Lindsay Lohan is okay. I miss her:

The video for Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “Ni**as in Paris” isn’t exactly something we’ve never seen before:

Visually, it’s a clear descendant of both the Gnarls Barkley video for “Crazy”:

And the ghostly big cats seem like they probably strolled over from the menagerie on the set of Frank Ocean’s video for “Novacane”:

But “Ni**gas in Paris” does a really nice job of showing us a pulsing crowd that almost seems to be undergoing mitosis looks from the perspective of the men on stage. There’s something profoundly disconcerting about the way a normal audience suddenly splits into wild geometry or the passage through the crowd is suddenly full of horror-movie sets of identical twins. If this is what the world looks like when you’re an insanely famous person, it’s a lot less appealing than it looks from the outside.

The bridge is yours.

-Who needs product integration when you can set the show at the company?

-New Frank Ocean!

-Thinking about democracy and the internet beyond SOPA.

-Get your Avatar: The Legend of Korra fix with this clip.

-Apple is super-upset about the Times’ series on working conditions in their supply chain.

One of the best things about writing about multiple media is that you’re not subject to the tyranny of Best Of lists. I could no more decide between Shame and Hugo for a numbered slot than I could pick between Revenge and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (though can we please get Kanye writing rhymes for and about Emily Thorne? I need an update on Snoop Dogg and his Sookie Stackhouse obsession). However, there were a lot of things that made me happy this year, and because Oprah’s not rockin’ it anymore, here is a semi-chronological-but-unranked list of my 26-odd favorite things to consume or discuss in 2011. A similar list of my least favorite things will follow tomorrow.

1. Frank Ocean makes us all hurt so good: I’m more irritated than anything else by the antics of Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All. But it’s worth it for Frank Ocean, who rocks specific melancholia like nobody’s business. “Novacane” was one of my favorite songs of 2011.

2. Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch: Before y’all accuse me of getting all Armond White up in the business, let me be clear. I don’t think Sucker Punch is an affirmatively good movie or that Snyder is a visionary director (though I appreciate that he actually has a distinctive visual style). But as aestheticized meditation on the horrors of lobotomy, a frightening and overlooked part of American mental health history, I found it unexpectedly moving. Plus, Snyder circumvented a ban on female leads with the movie.

3. Cedar Rapids sets Ed Helms loose: Up In the Air, but for people who actually live in flyover country, and Parks and Recreation with a deeper undercurrent of bitter darkness and isolation. There should be more popular culture about the struggle to be fundamentally decent.

4. War photographers movie The Bang-Bang Club and HBO’s biopic of the Louds, Cinema Verite: After the death of Tim Heatherington and as Joao Silva recovered from his injuries, The Bang-Bang Club offered a look at what it takes not just to put yourself in danger as a war photographer, but at what it means to be an observer rather than someone who intervenes. Conversely, Cinema Verite went back to the invention of reality television to explore what it means to be watched — and dissected — by a mass audience.

5. Game of Thrones is brilliant, and even the frustrating A Dance With Dragons is grist for the mill: I worry that George R.R. Martin’s universe is spiraling completely out of control, too big for any series to contain. But the first season of the HBO adaptation featured great performances, particularly by a host of very young actors and a smart sense for cuts and world-building. I don’t know if we’ll reach the end of this fascinating, maddening saga any time soon. But the ride looks like it’s going to be delightful.
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-New Frank Ocean is always a cause for celebration.

-Ah, the days when computers were young and Cosmopolitan spent time convincing readers that programming was just like planning a dinner party.

-Attack the Block promises it’s The Wire with aliens, if you needed convincing to watch it.

-I would absolutely take a political science class taught by Martin Starr.

-I love how whoever cut the teaser trailer for The Avengers can’t resist lingering on Chris Hemsworth’s ripped Thor arms: