The wheels of progress are slow and aggravatingly risk-averse.
The growth of Queer representation in mainstream media has been sluggish as molasses for the past couple of decades, despite the progress made. Stereotypes abound and the roles are slim pickings overall, especially where blockbuster films are concerned—a proverbial no man’s land where the mere idea of a queer personage seems like a dream to many fans.
But there’s a new trend in Hollywood that makes this all the more irritating; the plea for fans to ‘wait and see!’ what scraps of representation they can expect from beloved stories.
There have been wink’n’nudge gay characters slotted into films and television since the inception of both mediums, so it’s no surprise that the trend continues. With the Hays Code in place from the 1930s to the 1960s (which prevented the depiction of homosexuality unless it was portrayed as evil or laughable, among a list of other rules) characters in movies like The Maltese Falcon, Ben-Hur, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope were carefully rendered so that nothing was too overt or complimentary in the depiction of gay characters. The code was rescinded after a lax period of enforcement in 1968, leading to more overt portrayals of queer folks, but they were still often rendered as dangerous, villainous, or good for a laugh (see: The X-Files: I Want to Believe, Basic Instinct, and Mrs. Doubtfire, respectively). While the world continues to speed up and make headway, the film industry is utterly nonchalant about their desire to make any films starring queer characters that won’t win heaps of awards—and are therefore typically tragic stories (see: Philadelphia, Brokeback Mountain, The Dallas Buyers Club, etc). Looking for a queer character in a major blockbuster is another matter entirely, despite the vocal efforts of fans to make headway on the issue.
Unfortunately, the desire to better answer the inevitable “what about LGBT characters?” query in interviews has led too many creators to claim that they have offered representation when they haven’t, or that they will soon when they have made no concrete plans to do so. Actors can claim that they are playing characters as though they’re in love, but it doesn’t mean a thing if there’s no confirmation within the text. Graham Norton can tease performers about all the fan art that has been created around a romantic pairing of two characters they portray, but that’s rather like rubbing salt in a wound. The idea of seeing queer relationships in a blockbuster seems light years away when even individual queer characters are so few and far between. Power Rangers was one of the few blockbusters in recent memory to bridge that divide, and even that coming out was covered in a vague scene where Trini, the Yellow Ranger, was less than forthcoming due to being accidentally outed by a lucky guess. Star Trek Beyond managed to give fans a fleeting moment where Hikaru Sulu met up with his husband and daughter, but it was framed largely as an ode to George Takei, the man who originated the role and went on to become something of a gay icon. The industry is still largely at square one.
We can give a bit of credit to animated features of recent years for making baby steps. Laika’s ParaNorman featured the first openly gay character in a major animated film (Mitch, the group’s jock who reveals that he has a boyfriend at the end of the movie), but this is an outlier in terms of creating characters who are clearly queer and present within a narrative. The stories of missed opportunities and misunderstandings keep cropping up; the trailer for Finding Dory caused a kerfuffle when it featured two women around a stroller, and fans leapt to ask whether they were a same-sex couple with their kid. (“They can be whatever you want them to be. There’s no right or wrong answer,” said director Andrew Stanton.) The director of How To Train Your Dragon 2 told fans that the film would have a gay character; this turned out to be Gobber the Belch—voiced by Craig Ferguson—whose sole line to that end was “This is why I never got married. Well, this and one other reason.” Not the most clear-cut declaration, considering that it would sail over the head of a good portion of the audience, especially children. And before anyone makes the comment that children don’t need to see queer characters in fiction: children can be and are queer, and deserve to see people like themselves in stories they care about.
This problem continues to perpetuate itself in the most awkward of ways. Disney’s Frozen came under fire when it was accused of featuring a gay man in a brief supporting role—Oaken, the owner of a trading post who introduces Princess Anna to his family. And while it is fairly clear that the animators were intending to drop that character in under the radar, more direct questions did not yield more direct answers from the film’s co-director and writer Jennifer Lee, who told The Big Issue: “We know what we made. But at the same time I feel like once we hand the film over, it belongs to the world. So I don’t like to say anything, and just let the fans talk. I think it’s up to them.”
Mark Hamill has said much the same regarding his character Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars saga. In an interview back in 2016, he mentioned that fans who were going through trying times in their lives sometimes asked him if Luke could be gay, and his reply was: “I’d say it is meant to be interpreted by the viewer. If you think Luke is gay, of course he is. You should not be ashamed of it. Judge Luke by his character, not by who he loves.” Of course, being an actor who does not own the character he plays, that’s about the kindest thing Hamill could possibly say to that end. But it brings up the same issue; of course Luke can be gay in your head, but the official canon of the story does not align with that point of view, and likely won’t any time soon.
In its stead, Star Wars fans have turned hopeful at the thought of Poe Dameron and Finn ending up together in the current trilogy, but the chances of that are slimmer than anyone is willing to admit. Episode VII director J.J. Abrams can talk all he wants about putting a queer character in the Star Wars universe, but having your two new male leads fall in love would very likely cut into Disney’s profit margins, putting the film at risk for being turned down in national and international markets. A theater in Alabama refused to play Beauty and the Beast after the director told Attitude magazine the film contained an openly gay character; censors in Malaysia wanted four minutes cut from the film, citing a “gay moment” plus a few other innuendos. Losing money from moviegoers across Asia can cost a movie like Star Wars hundreds of millions of dollars in profits; China only screens 34 new releases from overseas each year and competition for those slots is fierce (though the quota could expand). Importantly, depicting gay characters doesn’t result in automatic rejection from these major international markets, and the rules around what is acceptable in entertainment is changing everywhere… but the chances of film companies taking the risk when profits are on the line are not very likely. It’s not right that these are the primary factors in these decisions, but it’s also impossible to ignore that money is Hollywood’s primary goal, and always will be.
Recent examples of how a giant conglomerate like Disney seems intent on answering these questions can be found in Beauty and the Beast and Guardians of the Galaxy 2. The former was directed by a gay man—Bill Condon of Chicago fame—and he revealed to the press circuit before the film’s release that LeFou, Gaston’s tagalong yes-man, would be gay in the film. But the talk around this move was all irritatingly subtle and bogged down in double-talk. Condon assured fans that LeFou would have an “exclusively gay moment” (whatever that means), which would be the “payoff” for LeFou’s confusion around new feelings he was experiencing. Fans shared worries that LeFou might be into Gaston—a likelihood when you take in Condon’s statement that “LeFou is somebody who on one day wants to be Gaston and on another day wants to kiss Gaston”—making Disney’s first openly gay character besotted with a despicable villain.
When the film was released, it turned out to be far more subdued than that; one of the strapping young villagers gets a makeover from the wardrobe during the film’s final battle… and he clearly likes his new dress and makeup regime. Then the same fellow spins himself into Le Fou’s arms at the end of the movie and the two begin to dance. Hardly a great big neon sign, especially given that it was perfectly acceptable for straight men to dance together in social settings in centuries past. (That would be why no one blinks an eye when Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson danced together in A Game of Shadows.)
Trouble arose again when James Gunn was asked whether or not there would be LGBT characters in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. His reply was annoyingly obtuse as well, to the point of insult: “Absolutely. I would love to be able to. We might have already done that. I say watch the movie. Check it out. See what you think.” We might have? See what you think? What does that even mean? Those who have seen the movie know that there is likely only one possibility on that front; a couple of the ravagers are seen spooning in a scene before a whole crew of them are brutally murdered by Yondu and Rocket. This is after said group of ravagers torture little Groot seemingly for fun. As examples of LGBT+ representation go, this possibility was both hamfisted and barely fleshed out or developed, in addition to the potential queer characters in question being abusive criminals who torture a baby tree, and are then killed off.
Realizing the faux pas, Gunn later walked back the statement in an interview with Digital Spy: “What I meant to say is this: There are a lot of gay people in the world. There are a lot of bisexual people in the world. There are a lot of characters in the MCU. We’ve barely gotten to know the sexuality of any of those characters. We know Gamora and Quill are interested in each other. That’s about the only sexual relationship that exists within the Guardians. We know Drax has a past with a wife so he’s got some sort of interest in women. But we don’t really know who’s gay and who’s not. It could be any of them.”
In other words, Hey, we might address that at some point in time (though there are no plans to), but for now, it could be anyone! That’s great, right?
Mind you, this was already two years after Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige claimed that he thought there would be an LGBT character added to the MCU… within the next ten years or so. By that point (in the year 2025), the Marvel Cinematic Universe will have likely produced two or three films a year for nearly two flipping decades, and only then will we finally (maybe) see a queer superhero on a movie screen. Feige deflected the question further by pointing out how they often look to the source material for inspiration on the films, but given the slim pickings in Marvel Comics canon (and the fact that more than one LGBT superhero falls into the X-Men pantheon, which 20th Century Fox has the rights to), they’re going to have to work a little bit harder on appeasing LGBT fans, canonical material or no.
The difficulty with this form of will-they-won’t-they representation should be clear. It means that anyone is free to project whatever they like upon a character—which fans already do regardless, as the world of fanfiction and fan art proves—but it also means that queer fans do not have a solid example that they can hold up to their friends, family, and peers. It is representation by omission, imagination, and hope. It is the equivalent of walking an invisible dog. You might briefly feel as though you own a pet, but no one else can see it or interact with it, so it’s eventually pretty obvious that you don’t have one.
Oh, by the way, there is one technical bit of representation in the Marvel Cinematic Universe—it’s in the one-shot titled “All Hail the King,” a short film starring Ben Kingsley’s Trevor Slattery (Iron Man 3), with a brief cameo from Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer. Both characters are in prison, and at the end we see the former weapons mogul attended to by a young man who attempts to cuddle him as Hammer complains about how he used to own a boat. When the younger inmate gets too close, Hammer says to him, “Not here, baby, not here.” So Justin Hammer is apparently bisexual, or maybe just bisexual in prison, and also hey, let’s make light of sexual abuse in prisons while we’re at it, and have this be the only example of open queerness in this fictional universe.
It’s fine if you’re gay, as long as you’re okay being the butt of an incredibly damaging joke.
Look, queer fans of these multibillion dollar franchises aren’t asking for much. They would like a few reflections among a vast sea of sameness, something that lets them know that there is a place for them in the worlds they adore. No one expects the companies that own these stories to look beyond their wallets, and that’s part of the problem; you can talk about how it’s all about the money, but that answer isn’t good enough. It shouldn’t be good enough. And if it is, these creators and producers and directors deserve every complaint and awkward question that fans throw their way—because these patient devotees deserve better.
No one should have to “wait and see!” if their humanity counts.
Emmet Asher-Perrin is going to create her own blockbuster franchise titled “Queer and Present Danger.” You can bug her on Twitter and Tumblr, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.
Hollywood is basically made up of cowards and as a rule twenty years behind the rest of the country when it comes to what’s acceptable. BTW I really don’t like the phrase ‘toxic masculinity’.
As usual, TV is better on the representation front than movies. The Netflix Marvel shows feature a prominent lesbian character, Carrie Ann Moss’s Jeri Hogarth, who was featured in Jessica Jones along with her estranged wife and her new girlfriend, and who also appeared briefly in Iron Fist and will be in The Defenders. Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD featured a recurring gay character, Joey Gutierrez, as a member of its “Secret Warriors” team of Inhuman agents in season 3. Also, there are two upcoming Marvel ensemble shows, at least one of which is set in the MCU, including characters who are lesbian in the comics, Karolina Dean in Runaways and Debrii in New Warriors, though whether their sexuality is portrayed openly on TV remains to be seen.
@2 – And to further Emily’s point, Jeri Hogarth is, maybe not Evil, but certainly not a good character.
@3/Austin: Jeri is a human character. She’s complex, she’s textured, she’s not an unrealistically idealized paragon. She has a storyline that would seem perfectly normal for a male character, a screwed-up and complicated love life, a failed marriage and a new romantic partner she’s crazy about. It’s a good thing that she gets to be portrayed as having something so normal as a failed marriage. It’s a good thing she gets to be just as dysfunctional as the other characters in the show, to be treated the same as everyone else rather than as something exceptional. That’s the way sexual diversity is often portrayed in TV these days — same-sex relationships are written exactly the same as opposite-sex relationships, without any special commentary or attention, without being treated as unusual. It’s just matter-of-fact, routine, taken for granted as part of everyday life. And that’s the way it should be. TV has reached that point, but movies are still a long way from catching up, largely because of the economic pressure from countries whose cultures are still less accepting.
The reason TV is ahead of movies is obvious, depressing, all too understandable, and right there in Emily’s article: “Losing money from moviegoers across Asia can cost a movie like Star Wars hundreds of millions of dollars in profits…”.
For exactly the same reason Hollywood is addicted to sequels and reboots, Hollywood will always, always, ALWAYS lag behind 90% of the world in social advances. Even if Alabama were 100% down with LeFou’s mancrush (and they are clearly not), China and India will not be anytime soon, and if you are pouring hundreds of millions into a movie you do not mess with the ability to get butts in seats in Beijing.
Which is why this is ultimately insolvable and frustrating. Insolvable because it takes along time to change culture, and when almost no aspect of the culture is pushing for something (as in China and India) it’s REALLY slow to change.
Frustrating because while I would *love* to say that the exec’s in Hollywood putting the nix on Finn/Poe are BAD PEOPLE, they really really aren’t. They’re not willing to risk tons of money for entirely understandably and frankly, insurmountable reasons (because if there were studio execs willing to say, “Damn the return on investment, we’re doing what’s RIGHT,” those folks would be immediately fired and replaced with execs who did NOT risk butts in Beijing).
The problem is not even with American culture (and this is why TV is more forward, smaller budgets combined with a primarily North American audience) Alabama notwithstanding. It’s overall world culture and the degree to which a movies success these days depends on international sales. And that leaves you, ultimately with no “bad guy” to point and shout at. There’s no villain, just a vast immovable block of unaccepting culture against which you push, slowly, oh god, so VERY slowly, and no matter how well you do in North America and Western Europe (and since those guys have most of Antarctica’s science stations, Antarctica) there are still four and a half CONTINENTS where acceptance is thin on the ground.
You can yell at a continent’s worth of people but it’s not satisfying, or productive. So you yell at execs, and frankly it’s NOT THEIR FAULT the world is the way the world is.
I remember, in the first fifteen years after I first came out in the mid-eighties, mentally tallying up the number of lesbian (or bi female) characters in assorted media offerings, including TV, film, and SF/F. With this tally went the other tally: was this character a) a hot and sexy homicidal psycho, b) an ugly homicidal psycho, or c) not a homicidal psycho at all? (Examples: Single White Female, Quantum Leap, Jerry Pournelle, Mike Resnick)
You can guess how the tally ended, with c) still waiting for its first item. I could have added bonus points for “pedophile”, “rapes straight women”, “stalker”, and “dies”, but why bother? It wasn’t just the thin representation: it was that I was only represented as a human monster. In the eyes of pop culture, I was by default evil, criminal, and deserved whatever horrible fate awaited me.
@5/Rdclark53217: I think what we need is to reform Hollywood’s financial culture as much as anything. Movie budgets have become absurdly huge, not just because of the push for huge spectacle and action and effects, but due to systemic inefficiencies and waste, overinflated salaries, etc. What we need is a shift toward more modestly-budgeted movies, both smaller movies and more economically made big movies. That would help reduce the pressure to appease overseas audiences — and even aside from that, it’s just a general fact of life that the more something costs, the more cautious and conservative people are about it. So lower-budgeted movies would be more able to take risks, to break formula.
@5 The main barrier to Asian markets isn’t the response of the audience to a gay representation but the censor’s. While I understand the reasons for movie execs to bow to those rules, I find it more objectionable than simply catering to potential audiences.
@7 This strikes me as the same “waste, fraud, and abuse,” argument right wingers make about government spending. Movies cost what they cost because actors, directors, and studio’s get a ton of money, and most of what a studio does is, in fact, value add whether your average critic admits it or not. YOU might be the kind of person who keeps an eye out for mid- to small-budget films, but to break through all the competition for customer’s entertainment dollars and more importantly time, movies have way more to compete with now, unless as part of your reform of Hollywood’s Financial Culture includes shutting down the Internet and replacing everyone’s copy of “Skyrim” with the Atari 2600 version of PacMan. If not, then yeah, the costs of promoting movies are value add, and the VPs and Marketing Directors for films are actually doing something that produces a return.
@8 That simply moves the responsibility one layer back…the censors are enforcing their cultural norms, and if you for one second think that culturally, the average Chinese person would be just fine with all kinds of LGBTQ on screen, I have a bridge I would like to sell you.
@7/Christopher and @5/Rdclark53217: The problem is in order to do that kind of reform, you also need to revamp the current multiplex theater system. Unless you’re actively pursuing small independent theater outlets or something like the Alamo Drafthouse, you’re not going to find theater owners willing to screen anything that’s not either a blockbuster or a guaranteed commercial hit. Small scale films that do find their way into multiplexes are 99% of the time awards contenders, with an already costly marketing campaign behind them.
You made a point about people making conservative choices. The multiplex system as it is discourages people from going at all. It’s become too bloated and expensive to just go out. So if they do attend, they usually go for something with a proven track record. Why risk spending upwards of 50 dollars on an unknown film (that could disappoint) when you can find something original on Netflix, Hulu or Amazon?
Which comes down to audience preference. Are that many people willing to settle for smaller films? I’m not talking about American in this case. I’m talking about international markets, including my own. Take into account that many of these markets have a population with far less income to spend. They want instant gratification. Chances are Transformers 5 will draw more audiences than something like Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver.
@9/Rdclark: There’s no call to get personal. Nobody who knows anything about me would ever accuse me of right-wing inclinations. This isn’t about my preferences, it’s about what I’ve read over the years about the systemic waste in Hollywood that’s led to budgets growing out of control. As I said, I’m not just talking about wanting more small, indie-type movies, though that would certainly be fine. I’m talking about finding ways to make big, tentpole movies more economically, to get more bang for fewer bucks, so that tentpole filmmakers don’t have to rely so much on overseas investors to get their movies made and overseas box office to recoup the cost.
@9 If people wouldn’t see movies with LGTB representation, there’d be less need to censor it. Do you have any data regarding Chinese audiences’ attitudes?
I’m skeptical of arguments about what people won’t go see, especially when made by/for studios justifying their prejudices. If they were so good at predicting their audiences’ tastes, their movies would be a lot more successful.
ETA; @10 aren’t based on pretty things with loud noises a lot easier to translate? If the meat of the film is just visual spectacle, it’s less critical for the translation and dubbing to be top notch. Forget anything but the broadest comedy.
@12 A brief google of “Chinese Attitudes towards homosexuality” shows that while younger citizens are more likely to be accepting of homosexuality, Chinese (and Koreans) are generally unaccepting (25% of medical students in from Hong Kong felt that it was a disorder that required treatment. 25% of highly educated people in the most “Western” region in China…).
Indians are even worse. (also googling “Indian attitudes towards homosexuality” In the aggregate, that is 2.6 Billion people. You can be as skeptical as you want. But people who get in peeing contests with facts tend to end up wet.
@11 I wasn’t calling you right wing, I was pointing out the magical thinking that right wingers engage in in assuming that, say, the State Department is a cesspit of waste is mirrored in anti-capitalists assuming that because a corporation is large, it must be full of waste. In both cases, there is waste, sure, but not 100s of millions of dollars worth. You just can’t get there from here.
But does unaccepting mean it will stop them from going to movies? That’s the only questions that matters.
@14 You’re stretching now. Admit the point and move on.
@13/Rdclark: I don’t believe briefly googling data provides researchers with any remotely accurate data regarding people’s opinions. You don’t get the complete truth or the nuances and complexities that come from varying opinions by doing a token sample polling.
No, the argument is that Chinese and Indian people won’t go see movies with substantial LGBT representation in them, even if those movies got past state censors. While broad surveys of general societal attitudes may be suggestive, they aren’t conclusive.
@16 It’s more accurate than saying “I don’t like the conclusions so I’m going to pretend there’s NO data whatsoever.”
The more productive way to engage the conversation, rather than assume that if only the dastardly censors weren’t opposing you, China or India would be a land of happy acceptance is to ask what would change the attitudes.
In that I’m afraid what needs to happen there is what happened here…back in the 80s a ton of prominent folks who were gay got outed against their will, followed by more and more gay folks outing themselves (“If ROCK HUDSON is gay then…”), which in turn led to more acceptance in the general (under the rubric, “Jeff is a nice guy, who grills a mean steak. Jeff is gay. Maybe other gay men…”).
But we can’t do that FOR them…for one thing, in many of those societies, it’s likely that being an early outee will be extraordinarily personally (and probably legally) hazardous. And thus they have to make that decision for themselves in their society. And centuries of in gorup/out group dynamics means that pointing out all the wonderful gay Americans/Canadians/English/Germans/etc. is useless.
It has to be someone they know…personally.
You need to start watching more TV. Both STITCHERS and WYNONNA EARP now have gay romantic couples. KILLJOYS has just introduced a gay relationship. MIDNIGHT, TEXAS has a gay angel couple.
@19/MByerly: “KILLJOYS has just introduced a gay relationship.”
And has been playing up the sexual tension between those two actresses for two seasons now, although one of them was playing a different character at the time. There was also Pree’s rather passionate reunion with his ex-boyfriend a couple weeks back. Killjoys is a creation of Michelle Lovretta, whose previous series Lost Girl starred a bisexual succubus whose longest-lasting romance was with another woman.
Of course, there are a lot of same-sex relationships in TV today. The DC Arrowverse shows on The CW have a number of LGB characters — Alex and Maggie on Supergirl, Curtis and Paul on Arrow, Nyssa and Sara on same, Captain Singh and Hartley Rathaway (separately, not as a couple) on The Flash. Riverdale has Kevin Keller and Joaquin (and Moose, to an extent), and is introducing a character next season who’s bisexual in the comics. Gotham apparently played a romance between the Penguin and the Riddler, and Barbara Keane has been bi from the start. The title character on Lucifer has been established as bisexual, though only in dialogue so far. There are many other examples. It’s become pretty much routine these days, which just makes it more frustrating that feature films are still essentially in denial about it.
For TV shows, don’t forget about Orphan Black and its several same sex pairings.
There was a major gay character in The Imitation Game, Alan Turing. As I haven’t seen the movie, I know nothing else about it.
He was probably more important to winning WW2 than 95% of the generals.
@21/RobMRobM: Yeah, and of course Sense8 with its various flavors of sexual and other diversity. Really, there are too many examples in current TV to give an exhaustive list, which is basically my point.
Now, there is no doubt in my mind that Hollywood tries to have it both ways. But it’s a thorny kind of problem, isn’t it? On the one hand we have pressure from LGBT activists and allies to depict the LGBT experience more fully; the observation that representation is often hard-fought and inadequate is real. On the other hand you have people coming from a completely opposite perspective who hate and fear the representation of ‘other’ people, and who suspect that Hollywood is a bunch of commies who want to show the gay down our throats. A gross reaction, but they’re not exactly wrong that portrayals of LGBT in art probably does open peoples’ minds and break down barriers. As for Hollywood itself you probably have a lot of individual people who will readily agree with LGBT activists, or at least can be talked into coming around, but collectively the studio system is risk-averse.
In China and India meanwhile, you don’t just have social attitudes to deal with–you have governments that are very willing to censor films, and who ultimately have a lot more power than any movie studio. Even in the U.S., the MPAA has the arbitrary power to smack a film with an R-rating for the wrong kinds of sexuality. I feel like that is an institution that doesn’t get nearly enough opprobrium–mostly because it is so secretive.
@24/Colin R: Reducing it to “pressure from activists” is missing the point. LGBTQ people are in the audience. They’re the consumers of the product and their money helps pay for it, so it only makes sense to recognize their presence and include them in the fiction. And, of course, LGBTQ people are making a lot of the shows. There are plenty of high-profile LGBTQ creators in Hollywood — Greg Berlanti, Bryan Fuller, Bryan Singer, the Wachowskis, etc. — people who are telling their own stories, putting their own experience and reality into their shows, not merely caving to pressure from outside. The LGBTQ community is not some discrete fringe group isolated from everything else, they’re an integral part of both the industry and the audience. So making them an integral part of the fiction is simply acknowledging reality. The ideological pressure comes from the people resisting that reality, the people still clinging to the delusion that everyone is heterosexual and insisting that fiction continue to embrace that pretense.
Very interesting article, Emily; thank you. I’m actually writing an article of my own on Queer themes in the “Supergirl” television series, which is coming out in a McFarland collection next year, and I’m going to cite your article. :)
Interesting comments, as well! I am VERY FAR from an expert on the international film/television market, but one conclusion I’ve personally come to: in the current world-historical moment, Hollywood will probably not LOSE money by pandering to a heteronomative ideology. Yes, it’s nice to talk about filmaking as art and there are any number of independent films out there that do a good job of depicting Queer characters. But what those of us who are Queer and/or care about Queer representation in big-budget films need to do, IMHO, is simultaneously continue speaking out against the lack of overtly Queer characters AND use our spending power to boycott films that aren’t Queer-inclusive and/or tease us with the “blink and you’ll miss it” Queer moments.
I agree that television currently does better in terms of Queer representation. However, there are still problems – one of them being that the Queer characters are usually “second-string” characters. Listen, I adore Alex and Maggie to death, and if I was artistically talented I’d be making fanart of their wedding. But *Supergirl* didn’t come out as Queer and isn’t going to. We see that in a lot of other shows: Bill Potts from “Doctor Who,” Titus Andromedon from “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schimdt,” even Willow from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” (There are a lot more I could name but I’m not writing a listicle here; if anyone needs more examples let me know and I will provide them.) All of these characters are well-developed and interesting in their own right. But even inthe more flexible medium of television, including direct-to-streaming television, the message still seems to be that Queer characters are okay as long as they’re not the MAIN character. That level of representation still seems to be too challenging. :(
I’ll conclude by bringing up one happy exception: “Steven Universe.” IMHO, “Steven Universe,” while being nominally a children’s show, does a great job of showing all different types of identities and orientations and depicts those identities with respect. I honestly think it’s the “Queerest” show on television! :)
@26/jaimew: As I mentioned, the lead character of Lucifer has been established in dialogue as bisexual, though his interactions so far have been almost exclusively heterosexual. Also from DC/Vertigo, the lead of Constantine is bi in the comics, but they didn’t get around to establishing that before his show was cancelled. But CW Seed is reviving it as an animated webseries, so they may establish it there — considering that another upcoming Arrowverse animated webseries, Freedom Fighters: The Ray, features a gay lead character.
As also mentioned before, the lead character of Lost Girl was bi and had mainly same-sex romances, and the lead character of Killjoys from the same creator has been implied to be at least a little bi, as has the lead character in its Syfy sister show Dark Matter. Then there’s Sense8, whose eight theoretically coequal leads include a lesbian trans woman (who seems to be a creator surrogate for Lana Wachowski) and a gay man, with their respective partners as key supporting players.
@25: I don’t dispute any of that; I’m just observing that the locus of power in who decides what gets represented stretches beyond the artists involved in creating a work of art. It never seems to be people in the MPAA or the financial backers put under the spotlight and asked about representation, sadly. It’s inspiring see creators and artists refuse to bow to pressure, but it’s not hard I guess to see why they don’t always have the nerve to do that. Not simply for their own paychecks, but for those of film crews and everyone else involved in projects.
None of which is an excuse, to be clear.
@ChristopherLBennett: I personally see those as some happy exceptions. I also note how many of them have been cancelled. (IIRC, “Sense8” has been cancelled, but due to fan reponse there is a film coming out that wraps up the series.) John Constantine’s sexuality in the comics depends on which version you read by which writer; he was created by Alan Moore in the 1980s re-boot of “Swamp Thing” and has been written by many, MANY other writers since then. One might also argue that Constantine is not necessarily the “poster child” for positive Queer representation because his entire identity includes multiple layers of transgression, including literal deals with the devil that many people might find blasphemous and might see as “explaining” his non-heteronormativity.
I notice you make two mentions of animated series; my “best” example of Queer television was the animated series “Steven Universe.” I wonder if animation makes Queer identity less “frightening” for some people than live-action does?
I personally, as a Queer person, am sick of characters’ Queer identity being “hinted at” or “verbally established” with no actual plots involving their Queerness. For example, Wonder Woman is now canonically bisexual in the DC comics universe. While I *adored* the “Wonder Woman” movie, there was only a short line of dialogue about “erotic pleasure” that *kind of* established her as non-heterosexual, and which occured just before she fell into the arms of the nearest available man. Yes, that is a BIG step forwards from what we’ve had before. However, I’d like to see less of this sort of “hidden” diversity and more actual, open acknowledgement of Queer identity. I think this is especially important because children and young people aren’t watching independent films or now-cancelled television shows. They are watching mass media stuff. If they see positive representation there, they may internalize anti-Queerphobic ideologies.
@26 I take some offense at your suggestion that TItus Andromedon on The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is a “well-developed” character. He’s entertaining and has been given some interesting/cool character moments, but most of the time he’s just another gay clown – stupid, shallow, theatrical and ridiculous. I get that Unbreakable is a comedy, just like Will & Grace or Modern Family, but while somewhat entertaining, all of these shows present gay men as either uptight, neurotic and prissy or stupid and flamboyant. It’s not representation – it’s an insulting gay minstrel show and I am tired of it.
@30, my personal experience suggests that gay men are as a rule quiet ordinary folk impossible to tell from straight until you meet their significant other.
@29/jaimew: “I personally see those as some happy exceptions.”
Yeah, but these things always start as exceptions before they become normal. I prefer to see them as the first cracks in the wall. There will be more.
“I also note how many of them have been cancelled. (IIRC, “Sense8” has been cancelled, but due to fan reponse there is a film coming out that wraps up the series.)”
Most shows get cancelled. People tend to react to cancellation as though it were some shocking aberration with some sinister agenda behind it, but the reality is that success is never guaranteed, and for every show that makes it there will be several that don’t. New TV shows are like the wild animal babies on all those nature documentaries — they aren’t sheltered and protected from harm like human babies, but have to fight for survival in a hostile landscape where only the strongest and luckiest will make it. Making TV shows is expensive, and capturing enough of an audience to recoup that cost and turn a profit is not guaranteed. Sense8 in particular was an incredibly difficult and challenging show to make, shot on actual locations all over the world and requiring incredibly careful coordination to make scenes shot months apart on different continents seem like they were happening simultaneously — not to mention the cost and difficulty of flying all these actors and directors all over the world. Such a logistically complex show would’ve had trouble getting good enough ratings to justify its cost and difficulty regardless of who the main characters had been — although I grant it’s likely that some viewers were scared off by its overt and explicit exploration of diverse and flexible sexuality. It’s actually kind of impressive that it even got a second season at all.
As for Lost Girl, it didn’t get cancelled, it completed its full 5-year run and brought its story to a planned ending.
“I notice you make two mentions of animated series; my “best” example of Queer television was the animated series “Steven Universe.” I wonder if animation makes Queer identity less “frightening” for some people than live-action does?”
I think it’d be the reverse, given that animation is stereotyped as “for kids” and prejudiced people see queerness as an “adult” concept. As a rule, animated shows have to tiptoe around such things — both The Legend of Korra and Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated had lesbian romances (Korra-Asami and Velma-Marcie) that they had to leave strictly subtextual and implicit, just hinting at them in their final episodes and leaving the rest to the imagination.
The reason the Arrowverse shows are so LGBTQ-friendly is because they’re from sexually diverse creators and on a network whose largely “Millennial” target audience is open-minded about sexual diversity — and also, probably, because superhero comics have a long (though not unbroken) history of being socially progressive and welcoming to those considered different. The CW Seed animated shows are in that same continuity and for that same audience, so the fact that they’re animated is secondary. And the fact that they’re online rather than on commercial TV might mean they’re able to go a bit farther than a network show can. Note that CW Seed had a superhero series with an African-American lead (Vixen) before The CW got one (the upcoming Black Lightning).
Emmet Asher-Perrin is going to create her own blockbuster franchise titled “Queer and Present Danger.”
You should do that. The answer to not seeing what you want to see is to make what you want to see, not try and force others to do things they don’t want to do
I’m often puzzled by pieces like this because it seems some people want an OVER-representation by LGBT people, given this: http://www.gallup.com/poll/183383/americans-greatly-overestimate-percent-gay-lesbian.aspx
Also, the LGBT people I know don’t have outward traits that would be seen in a film. They look and act like non-LGBT people. So to me, they’re represented.
What I’m tired of is the constant romantic notion that every character needs to homo /or/ hetero. There are stories where it is germane, obviously, but it’s tacked on everywhere, and it’s unnecessary and dilutive to story.
@36/trike: “…not try and force others to do things they don’t want to do”
What? Again, this nonsensical idea that all creators in Hollywood are heterosexual and LGBTQ people are some outside special-interest group putting pressure on them. I mean, good grief, the entertainment industry has historically has been much more inclusive and tolerant of queerness than mainstream culture. So of course they want to tell stories that include queerness. That’s just part of everyday life, including their own lives, so why wouldn’t they want to do it? It’s the bigotry of the past — and the lingering bigotry of the present — that’s forced them not to do things they wanted to do, that’s imposed artificial limits on their freedom to tell stories from different perspectives. So you have it backward.
@37 There are other surveys that suggest 12% of the population identifies as LGBT, with 20% millenials identifying as LGBT.
But even if only 1 in 25 people are LGBT, how many characters are there in, say, the MCU? From looking at Wikipedia, there’s at least 45 that appear in more than one film. Now sure, we don’t see romantic/sexual relationships or attraction from all those characters. But there’s a lot of characters that show up in only one film were we do see relationships or attraction. So it’s already looking like the MCU is unrealistically under-representative, even if we take the most pessimistic numbers for LGBT people. And that’s just one set of movies. How many characters are there in all Disney animated movies? Or all of Star Wars?
This is a fabulous and powerful piece.
I just have one area of disagreement and I know it’s one where I’m in the minority.
Where you say “Actors can claim that they are playing characters as though they’re in love, but it doesn’t mean a thing if there’s no confirmation within the text. ” I strongly disagree that it doesn’t mean a thing. It means a lot, for me, and probably for other viewers as well. And I think you’re prone (as us writers and readers often are) to privileging the textual over other kinds of statements.
Oscar Isaac cheerfully asserting that his character has a thing for Finn, Cole Sprouse saying that he has to work with what the writers give him but he knows Jughead is canon asexual – and then clearly doing his best to *play him that way* even in the romantic, sexual contexts the writers keep pushing on him (check out how relieved he looks every time he and Betty are conveniently interrupted before much happens) -, and a bunch of other examples of similar behavior…. these things are not *meaningless*. They indicate that regardless of what the suits think, actors are feeling more able to assert that the world is diverse, that characters *ought* to be diverse regardless of what is currently happening. And this changes both the on-set environment for QUILTBAG actors, and the Overton window for writers and producers. Can you imagine Rock Hudson affectionately saying his character and any other male character’s romance was all in the other actor’s head? Never. Would. Have. Happened. Never would have come CLOSE to happening.
It’s definitely NOT enough, but it isn’t nothing and it’s different from writers who queerbait (just as writers who insistently write subtext regardless of what notes the network imposes are different from producers who queerbait). People’s motives still matter. Actors who sincerely want their characters to have more options for sexual identity are important, perhaps even more important in contexts where finances mean there is a lot of corporate pressure otherwise. They make the stories richer in terms of the 70 percent or whatever it is of communication that is *not* verbal (body language, intonation, etc.), and by stating their opinions out loud, they are part of the movement that is going to effect real change. 50 years is nothin’ in cultural terms, let alone 30.
Now if we could convince all the socially conscious actors who’ve already made it to take the millions/hundreds of thousands they’ve already earned, and go find directors and producers who aren’t primarily focused on money and doing stuff that requires a lot of money… that would be 100 x more awesome.
But right now when people do that, they don’t get distributed. And then we don’t know about them and/or they can’t even make a living.
So I’ll take the “yeah, I agree but the writers don’t” people and the “there’s certainly plenty of room for that interpretation” people and even the *says nothing, acts the hell out of my headcanon* people over the “nooo, how could you POSSIBLY think that about my character????” people, any day of the week. And I appreciate what they’re doing.
@42/Rhoanna: I recall a study reporting that over 60% of female college students expressed at least a willingness to experiment with same-sex relationships, and a fairly high percentage of male students. I suspect that most people are at least somewhat sexually flexible, but how or whether they express it depends on how accepting their society is of such things. People raised in less tolerant climates might assume themselves to be heterosexual and see any curiosity in the other direction as “not counting,” if they admit it to themselves at all; but people raised in a more open society would be more willing to acknowledge that flexibility in themselves. It’s probably easier with female students than male because our society conditions men to be less comfortable with same-sex affection than women are.
I’m thinking of the recent Doctor Who episode “The Eaters of Light,” where Bill encountered Roman soldiers who considered bisexuality to be normal and were politely tolerant of her atypical preference for just one sex (her own). Which is more or less accurate, though simplified. Romans considered it normal for a man to be sexually attracted to both women and young men, as long as the young men were socially subordinate and took a passive, “feminine” role. So cultural attitudes do a lot to shape what we consider “normal” sexuality.
@Matthew W.: Your point is well-taken. I’ve probably got some unreasonable love for “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” because of my VERY unreasonable love for Tina Fey. But Titus is *definitely* a problematic character who DOES buy into a lot of the terrible stereotypes about gay men (the racist implications of his character are NOT OKAY either). I apologize for neglecting to say that and he is not the best example I could have given.
@ChristopherLBennett: I, too, hope that these “exceptions” are signs that things are changing for the better. In regards to young viewers, I might note that Alex did not come out as Queer until the second season of “Supergirl,” when the show moved to the CW network, which is primarily geared towards younger people. I’d like to interpret this (and other diversity in the Arrow-verse and elsewhere) as a sign that younger people are becoming more and more tolerant and open-minded.
@Bob Jonas: Other commenters have responded to you probably better than I could. I might just note that creating art/entertainment based solely on statistics is (1) maybe self-defeating because statistics about things like sex and gender identity are in constant flux and (2) IMHO, not a good idea because a lot of those statistics are not accurate. There are MANY Queer people in the U.S. who don’t report themselves as Queer in surveys because they are afraid to “come out” on any level.
Representation is essential. Straight people (especially straight people who are white and male) have absolutely no dearth of representation and of role models. Queer people do, and many of the role models that DO exist are complicated. For example, as I’ve said, I *adore* Alex and Maggie in “Supergirl.” But neither of them is Supergirl. Neither of them is the superhero of the series. We’re not going to see Supergirl, or Superman, or Wolverine, or Batman come out as Queer any time soon. Instead we Queer people get a line or two in the “Wonder Woman” movie and Iceman and Wonder Woman being bisexual in the comics. We still don’t see ourselves represented in many of the characters we admire.
@45/jaimew: I would add that it doesn’t make a lot of sense to expect fictional characters to conform to statistical averages because most fiction is about exceptional people and events. The characters who dominate in fiction are the ones who have the most interesting stories to tell — which is why so many of them are outsiders or eccentrics or exceptionally gifted in one way or another. The percentage of gruff, antisocial geniuses in charge of investigative teams is probably far higher in fiction than in reality, for instance, as is the percentage of exceptionally attractive young adults who are struggling to make ends meet yet nonetheless live in incongruously roomy and luxurious apartments.
@30:
To be fair, every single character on The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt falls into the category of “stupid, shallow, theatrical and ridiculous” regardless of their sexuality. And the whole point of the show is to play up stereotypes and laugh at how ridiculous stereotypes are. The show is unapologetically offensive across the board, whether you’re talking about asians, native americans, blacks, gays, rich people, liberal new yorkers, conservative midwesterners, etc…
@9 “the censors are enforcing their cultural norms,”
They are enforcing the norms of the governing party. In some places these may refelct the “culture”, in others, especially authoritarian ones like China, they can be wildly different. There is a huge market for porn in China, for instance, none of which would pass the censor’s approval. It circulates fairly freely in a black economy as long as the right bribes are pad. But of course, it’s no way for overseas porn makers to earn anything. Even if their product is popular, it will all be pirated.
China’s censors reflect the prejudices of the Communist Party elite. No one else has a say.
So more than sex, the real red line is politics. There was a big deal made about casting of “The Ancient One” in Doctor Strange here, the character being “Celtic” instead of the Tibetan mystic he usually is in other media. People were beating up Tilda Swinton as an example of “whitewashing”: the real reason the race was changed was that China would not have allowed a film that depicted Tibetans positively to be shown. Also of course this is why we have token Chinese characters in films like “Independence Day 2”. It’s sometimes painful the way they are shoehorned into a story.
@50/Gweilo: On the other hand, there are more Chinese people on the planet than any other single nationality, so it only makes sense to include them in fiction, particularly a story with worldwide scope like Independence Day. I mean, how could an invasion of the entire planet not affect China? I haven’t seen that movie, but I don’t see how that can be called shoehorning. If anything, focusing exclusively on Westerners in a story like that would be far more artificial.
Very well put, Emily. In the end, however, this is not about the directors or writers, but about those who make the decisions at paygrades waaay above them.
@2 – Rdclark53217: I think you’re underestimating the acceptance of LGBTQI* people that exists in South America. No country here (that I can think of) will ban a movie for including representation. Of course, our box office money is negligible when compared to China’s.
@19 – MByerly: The article is about film, not TV.
@22 – swampyankee: But that was A movie about a historical gay figure. First of all, this article is about the film genres covered in Tor (fantasy, science fiction, superheroes, etc), second it’s about representations where there is no substatial representations, that is, movies where 99.99% of the characters on screen are heterosexual and cis, and they only hint barely and tangentially to a character maaaaaaybeeee being queer.
@26 – jaimew: Not to invalidate your own experiences, and I do agree that we need more main queer characters, but I hardly think Willow can be called “second-string”. Yes, the show is called Buffy, but Willow is quite important as a character.
@27 – Chris: Cool, I didn’t know they were making a The Ray animated show. Not that I have much interest in the character, but the more, the merrier.
@36 – trike: Sure, because indie things have the same reaching power to mainstream audiences than major studio productions.
@52, sometimes it seems that the social representations in sf/f are much more conservative than in mainstream films, possibly because many (but not all) sf/f films are all about the explosions. Even disregarding that , it’s really difficult to have a fully fleshed LBGTQ character when a film doesn’t have any fully fleshed characters, period.
@9, the censors aren’t necessarily enforcing cultural norms; they’re enforcing the norms the rulers wish enforced. These may coincide with those of the people, but don’t necessarily do so, even in an ostensibly representative country.
@50, it doesn’t have to be a totalitarian state. Even in a representative democracy, there are going to be single-issue voters or voters who may be neutral or even positive towards LGBT issues, but consider these issues a lower priority than something else, like the local tax rate or they don’t want that Walmart approved.
@jaimew I think you’re being unfair to Alex calling her a second-string character. She’s a main character, perhaps second only to Supergirl in importance. She certainly gets more coverage than any of the other main cast members in the opening credits (and in Season 1 she was the only main character other than Supergirl to appear in the opening credits). She’s as main as you can get without being the title character.
@53 – swampyankee: Still, even when a movie doesn’t have developed characters, there should be LGBTQI* characters that are not jokes, that are not evil. If you can have hetcis characters who are “normal” in the setting, you should also have LGBTQI* characters as “normal”.
I enjoyed the many innuendos in Deadpool. Ryan Reynolds stated in an interview that he would be up for a boyfriend in the next installment…. but it doesn’t look likely since Morena Baccarin is cast in Deadpool 2 as his girlfriend. Although I do love Morena Baccarin as Vanessa, this makes me sad.
Too many hints!
But Deadpool having a boyfriend would be worked for laughs, we need serious, valid examples of LGBTQI* people in genre fiction.
@57/MaGnUs: Not necessarily. It’s possible to portray a relationship in a comedy without the fact of the relationship being treated as a joke. The first Deadpool movie treated Wade and Vanessa’s relationship sincerely and with a fair degree of dramatic poignancy even though there was also a lot of humor in their interaction. All that’s needed is to do the same with a relationship that happens to be same-sex.
There is definitely need for more diversity in movies. I say that from a heterosexual white girl’s viewpoint, anyway the real world has it all, why movies can’t? At least books have more variety, but it’s high time Hollywood seriously changed its policies.