by Dominic Gonzalez
SPOILER WARNING: This article features spoilers to shows and movies featuring LGBTQIA characters. Please proceed with caution if you have not seen or finished these movies and shows: The 100, Jane the Virgin, The Walking Dead, The Magicians, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Rope, Rebecca, The Children’s Hour, Lost Girl, and Fox.
Why is everything suddenly gay?
Maybe you’ve been thinking this? Maybe you’ve heard people ask this? Maybe it’s meant as an actual question, acknowledging your lack of familiarity with LGBTQIA history. Maybe it's said with a tone of belittlement and annoyance. To put things in perspective, I’d like to clarify that not everything is gay. If you’re noticing more LGBTQIA couples and stories in movies and television, or noticing more people identifying as LGBTQIA, or even noticing more education being spread around through conversations, memes, and social media- it’s not because everything is suddenly gay (which is an inaccurate use of the term). What you’re seeing is representation. Your next question may be:
Well, why do we have to see so much of it?
The answer is simple: We’re not equal. Not yet.
Of course we’re all equal! We all have the same opportunities and chances to be whatever we want to be! All lives matter, not just LGBTQIA lives!
We’ve heard these phrases a lot. If you’ve said these phrases, you’re probably going to check out right about now. To explain briefly, we are not equal and we don’t have the same opportunities. And, of course, in an overall simplification, all lives do matter. The point is if you can say these phrases so easily, then why can’t you show them? Why can’t we feel them? If all that was true, why are we where we are today?
Film and television have always influenced society and American culture. The terms “Spill the tea” and “Pictures or it didn’t happen” originate from reality television that altered the way we navigate our world. When we see white princesses in cartoons as children, we don’t imagine anyone of color in those roles. And when we see a collection of straight couples onscreen getting their happily ever after, we refrain from including the LBGTQIA community with that ideology.
It’s implied.
No. No, it’s not.
You’re looking too much into it.
No. You’re not seeing the whole picture.
Image Courtesy of Warner Bros. Television: Sarah Shahi and Amy Acker | Person of Interest (2011 - 2016)
Our entertainment industry has the power to influence lives by normalizing what many deemed implied. How do you normalize things? You represent them. You show them. You include their stories. Seeing a Black mermaid princess doesn’t only include Black actresses in leads they’re normally not cast in, but it also shows young Black girls that they, too, can be the princess of the story. That they can also be the lead in a fantasy movie, not a movie where she’s chasing cars and running from the cops. When you see a lesbian couple have their happy ending rather than killing one off, what you’re seeing is a representation that includes lesbians with the idealogy of a happily ever after. Implication is like intention: it’s very hard to validate without substantial proof, which is often none. You can’t imply someone to life in prison. You can’t imply two people to be married. You can’t imply that all lives are included in cinematic stories. You have to show it, and you have to say it. You have to sentence someone to life in prison, or they don’t go. You have to ordain that a couple is married, or they are not. You have to show that all lives are included in cinematic stories, or they aren’t. Implication is useless. The entire picture isn’t being seen.
Image Courtesy of The CW: Alycia Debnam- Carey | The 100 (2014 - 2020)
Here’s something you may not have seen that the rest of us have: Although 2021 and beyond is starting to include more representation than ever, it wasn’t always that way. In the span of 30 days from February to March of 2016, four lesbian and/or bisexual female characters were killed off on their respective mainstream TV shows. It began on The CW’s Jane the Virgin with the murder of Rose (Bridget Regan). Then it continued with the high-profile killing of Lexa (Alycia Debnam-Carey) on The CW’s The 100. Next came Kira (Yaani King) on SyFy’s The Magicians, and finally the killing of Denise (Merritt Wever) on AMC’s The Walking Dead. However, the death of Lexa is what sent LGBTQIA fans over the edge that you may remember sparked an abundance of petitions, the hashtag #LGBTFansDeserveBetter and even launched the famous ClexaCon.
But that happens to straight characters too and you don’t see us complaining!
Not when the ratio of straight to LGBT characters measures 8 to 1. Sure it happens to straight characters too, there’s no denying that! There is simply more representation of straight characters, so when the majority of LGBT representation on primetime television is being killed off, what do you think that means? If you want to imply that all lives are represented in all forms of media, why is the implication that LGBT characters are meant to advance a heterosexual leading character’s storyline?
You’re looking too much into it.
Ok, maybe I am. Have you heard of the Bury Your Gays trope? According to tvtropes.org, it refers to “the presentation of deaths of LGBT characters where these characters are nominally able to be viewed as more expendable than their heterosexual counterparts.” It’s an actual trope because this happens so often. Since the LGBT community started to appear more in our entertainment, the undeniable pattern of deaths goes back as far as the 19th century, when to be queer was to be a criminal, punishable by prison or even death in some places. Author Oscar Wilde was refrained from telling LGBT stories without censoring them or altering them to the point of obscurity. Wilde was put on trial due to his character Basil, from The Picture of Dorian Gray, seeming to be attracted to Dorian. He had to alter the story by having Dorian kill Basil.
In the 1930s, Hollywood generated the Hays Code, which banned “depictions of sexual perversion.” This included LGBT stories, and if an LGBT character were to appear, they were always punished by death or worse: they were portrayed as villains. Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948) revolves around two characters who are gay. The film shows the murder they commit as an act of homosexual behavior. Or in Rebecca (1940), also directed by Hitchcock, Mrs. Danvers dies after being depicted as a predator and seductress. Or even in The Children’s Hour (1961), Martha (Shirley MacLaine) commits suicide after she and the woman she is hopelessly in love with (Karen, played by Audrey Hepburn) are shunned from their teaching positions at an all girl’s school after a young student accuses the pair of being lovers.
Even when the Hays Code was abandoned, the trend of poor and unequal representation of queer characters was not. Queer men were depicted as predators who engaged in sexual acts of violence, like in The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Queer women were characterized with the need to commit murder and were often hypersexualized, like in Jennifer’s Body (2009). And when they were not being villainized, they were suffering from either diseases or emotional turmoil like in Philadelphia (1993) or Brokeback Mountain (2005). No matter how good the film was or how groundbreaking, all queer characters have one thing in common: to be LGBT is to die, and if you do survive, you will suffer because you are dangerous.
By now, you’re probably researching the films Rope (1948), Rebecca (1940), and The Children's Hour (1961) because they date so far back, or even researching the Hays Code itself only to find that these films do exist and the code was put in place all those years ago.
It was a different time then.
You are absolutely right. It was a different time. To say that would be to admit that not everything is suddenly gay or that everything in itself is gay because it’s simply not. This means what you’re seeing now is a gallery of stories that merely represent a community that has been misrepresented for far too long.
But now there’s Q-I-A after LGBT. That’s just too much.
Perhaps it is if you believe that people have to be either-or. If you see people as simply good or evil rather than a mixture of both. If you see human beings as only one thing rather than a combination of so many things that we are still discovering today. If you believe that people are really simple and ignoring the fact that human beings are all but. Perhaps it is too much for you.
I’m not a simpleton.
Then why is it hard to understand that the ‘Q’ represents those who are questioning their sexuality because they haven’t figured it out yet? Why is it hard to realize that the ‘I’ represents those who identify as intersex, meaning they were born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t fit the boxes of “female” or “male.” Why is it hard to understand that the ‘A’ represents those who identify as asexual and experience little to no sexual attraction?
But why are there so many? There were never that many!
That was talked about, yes. But clearly, with the induction of the Hays Code, there’s more to being a human being than simply identifying as normal and not normal, straight or gay, male or female, or even sexual or not sexual. Human beings are not cans that you can slap labels on. We’re more complex than that. Is it such a bad thing to include the LGBTQIA community as actual human beings rather than predators, villains, victims, or even martyrs in the media?
Having a gay villain is not the core of the issue. It’s not a problem to have a lesbian psychopath with a high sex drive. Straight characters are those things as well. The question is, why are the LGBT community only depicted as those things? And while we’re at it, why isn’t there any intersex or asexual representation at all? Because we’re not all equal, and we all don’t have the same opportunities. When you’re not represented in entertainment, you’re not really being seen. And when you’re not seen, you’re not equal. And when you’re not equal, you don’t have the same opportunities. That’s what we’re trying to change.
Now, the rise of LGBTQIA stories is on the horizon with shows like Pose (2018), Euphoria (2019), Dickinson (2019), Love, Victor (2020), and the upcoming American Malice (2023), just to name a few. These shows are not replacing straight stories or traditional values but are simply an addition to our entertainment options so that everyone has a chance to feel seen and represented. More entertainment choices doesn’t mean fewer choices for you, it’s just sharing the love.
Of course, we can’t end this essay without acknowledging the films and shows that helped pave the way - even in the smallest way. After all, these shows and movies were watched by millions of people who identify as straight and LGBTQIA all over the world. Breakthrough stories like The L Word (2004) and Queer As Folk (2000) got the conversation going with LGBT characters in the lead. Shows like Lost Girl (2010) and Fox (2016) gave us stories where the LGBT characters were the leads in fantasy shows with Chosen One plotlines. They even gave us happy endings to go with it! Movies like My Own Private Idaho (1991), Bird Cage (1996), and Boys Don’t Cry (1999) made us laugh and cry by humanizing members of the community. Actors like Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Hilary Swank, River Phoenix, Jennifer Beals, Alycia Debnam- Carey, Robin Williams, Shirley MacLaine, Anna Silk, Gale Harold, Sarah Shahi, Amy Acker, Monroe Hayden, Eddie Redmayne, Timothee Chalamet, and Naya Rivera all played LGBTQIA characters during a time when playing such characters could have been career damaging and definitely raised a lot of eyebrows. All of these talented actors, writers, and filmmakers (and so many more not mentioned) are who we have to thank for getting us this far to make things more equal, so we can experience stories where LGBTQIA characters aren’t defined solely by their sexuality but allowed to be both extraordinary and ordinary, both good and evil. Stories where they can experience joy, happiness, love, and friendships just like straight characters, not just tortured souls with tragic lives. So when you see another show or movie that features an LGBTQIA character, remember not everything is suddenly ”gay.” We’re just being more human.
See Also:
Brokeback Mountain: Available on Apple TV (Free on Showtime)
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