Tag: queer representation

‘I want rather to call for a commitment to a new morality, a critical and sensitive morality, bent on healing and resistance against cheap tricks and emotional cons. I want us to consider where our storytelling resources go, and why the people whose stories are swept aside are not given the means to tell them. I want to call for the stories we tell to come from a place of vulnerability and honesty, not spectacle. I want us to be allowed to have our adventurous and lighthearted women who love women, played by women who love women. I want them to live.’

– Jo Chiang, Women Who Love Women Aren’t Tragic – NY Times

Queering the screen

blinktumble:

The Hollywood Code was introduced more than 80 years ago. Every prohibition in that code has been abolished, except the one that remains more or less explicit to this day: the treatment of queerness as a perversion that inevitably brings with it the homophobic lesson of grief, punishment or death.

We have seen this time and again. In the previous two years, as the film and tv industry noticed that there was a market for queer rep, the numbers of queer characters increased onscreen but the implicit recourse to homophobia didn’t abate all that much. So, in 2016 – which parts of fandom have called The Year of the Great Gay Massacre – we not only had more queer characters, we also endured more deaths, bashings, vilification, poor treatment along the way. It’s been rough, to say the least. And it’s been painful watching people try and justify the continuation of the byg trope and variations on that theme – the “I don’t see sexuality” being the latest bit of bullshit from a showrunner who should have known better but is fast disappearing up their own overinflated ego.

So where are we now?

I’ve been curious about the ease with which many of us, myself included, have slipped into either/both being fearful or apprehensive that a queer ship might become canon because we have learned to expect a bad outcome, and saying that if it was going to be handled poorly we’d rather it wasn’t canon at all.

I totally get all of that, and I’ve said it more than once.

But at the same time, it makes me angry when I think about the implications of this. Because what this means is that we’re being trained to accept invisibility and the closet for fear of violence. Think about that. It’s one thing for individuals irl to have the freedom to make decisions about their own safety – that’s everyone’s prerogative, because only they know their circumstances.

But what we’re talking about here is pushing queerness back into the closet at the level of a social imagination and as a kind of policy setting of the tv/film industry. We saw it explicitly with the network prohibition on Ghostbusters. And we’ve begun to internalize that prohibition when we accept that it might be better to not have queer rep than run the risk of having queer rep handled poorly or badly.

I’m not really interested in another article on byg, or another panel at another con. I’m not interested in reducing the movement into a platform for a few people, or getting bogged down in skirmishes over who represents the movement. None of you do if you don’t make a difference.

As for how people are feeling, here’s the thing: the onus isn’t on queer fans to push their feelings under and leave the field for homophobes to range freely. The onus is on the media industry to do better, act responsibly, even if that just means failing better next time, hearing people out, taking the criticisms on the chin and fixing it without another round or pearl-clutching poor-me-victim rubbish from powerful people who have been otherwise happy to exploit fans’ desire for better rep.

And the onus isn’t on queer fandom to explain, justify or persuade the industry to give us decent rep. No one really expects or demands that of straight relationships onscreen.

The onus should now be on that industry to explain to us why they’re not giving us decent rep.

Please tell us why there isn’t decent rep onscreen, because we want to hear you fabricate a series of lame-ass excuses before you’re eventually forced to confront your own prejudices. We see you, we see your bullshit, and we’re not so fearful that we’ll go away and hide this time or the next. And in the process, we’ll all become better people, make a better world.

“Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others.
Past and present. And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our
future.”

– Sonmi, Cloud Atlas.

Should creative freedom for TV writers trump a responsibility to a minority audience?

So this happened:

image

This is the show runner of an American series called Pretty Little Liars – a programme that has, to date, killed off 3 (or 4) queer characters already.  

This commentary didn’t exactly make a happy spark with lgbt fans of her show who gave her a literal smackdown on why her ideology is flawed (I’ve not seen this show, so will not comment on that aspect) – which she more or less ignored, instead blocking anyone she considered rude and signing off – instead of taking the opportunity to engage with some of the serious and thoughtful feedback she was getting. 

In fact, her response reminded me of Jason Rothenberg immediately after Lexa’s death – refusal to engage, posting only compliments on his Twitter and signing off.  Defensive posturing instead of braving the seriousness of what is leveled against them (yes, some people can be harsh – telling someone to ‘shut up’ or ‘stop tweeting’ isn’t really helpful) – especially when they are in positions of authority with the ability to influence millions of lives – is looking more and more like a boilerplate response from people in this industry.  Are they so closed off in a bubble of privilege?  I hate to assume, but I feel this might be the case.  

Putting ‘creative freedom’ before that very heavy responsibility means likely being out of touch with your audience’s reality.  If the audience’s reality is homophobia and all that comes with it: isolation, scorn, abuse, violence and death, then killing of representative characters only echoes that depressing reality – and reinforces it. It is cruel.  

For queer audiences there is another level of cruelty: if we find one show lacking, we don’t always have the privilege of being able to turn the channel and simply find another – on the American network The CW, they killed off several lesbian/bisexual characters this year alone. Finding some kind of positive representation is incredibly difficult, especially when you are represented by less than 5% of the characters on television.  

It is therefore, really, remarkable that someone like King can state she ‘is there’ with equality when so very few are – how did she get to that point?  How did she determine things were equal, that killing off her queer characters was not an issue for her?  If she is living in such a bubble, isolated from her audience, she doesn’t appear to want that bubble burst.  Since the death of Lexa, however, the audience is now armed with points.  Killing off what little representation there is doesn’t build a bridge to ‘there.’  

I’ve talked before how, in the days and weeks following Lexa’s death, we saw the evolution of one writer’s understanding and empathy with the audience: Javier Grillo-Marxuach has set something of a standard for behaviour with his willingness to engage, almost daily, with angry and hurt fans; he listened to what they had to say and kept posting their comments, good and bad.  Much of what he shared was to remind others to be kind, especially in the face of all the anger that was let loose at that time.  He has also spoken at length about the post-Lexa experience and I want to borrow this quote from him and let it be the last word:

…there’s a lot of fear that engagement with fans will rob us of our creative soul…”

“it doesn’t. if done properly, with a real openness of the heart and soul, it expands your perspectives in a very wonderful way.”

gracept:

Supernatural constantly queer baited me, and that pissed me off so much, I stopped watching it altogether because I don’t want to support a creative team that takes advantage of its LGBTQ fans and mocks them by denying ever queer baiting. Since I left, one of their only decent female characters-who was homosexual, has been killed off.

I stopped watching Teen Wolf because in order to get more votes for a competition, they filmed the Stiles and Derek actors becoming jokingly intimate, saying we’d get more of it if we voted. They obviously had no intention of making Sterek canon, but they gladly used it to hook in the LGBTQ fans for more votes. I was more than insulted when its main actor called Sterek a demented thing, that I was watching the show for the wrong reasons even though a main plot for three seasons was a heterosexual teen romance.

I stopped watching The 100 after Lexa got shot. I loved her character, she was probably my biggest reason for watching the show. She got shot after having sex with Clarke. Just like how Tara got shot after making up with her girlfriend, Willow, in BTVS.

I am allowed to stop watching TV shows after I feel absolutely betrayed as a bisexual individual. You are not allowed to make me feel guilty for feeling manipulated by the entertainment industry, who will create subtext to imply homosexuality for the sake of getting more fans and money from the LGBTQ community. I am sick of being given false hope, of no one recognising the impact this has on LGBTQ members, and the people who dismiss the issue as shippers being crazy.
We’re not crazy. We’re different, and we don’t feel accepted for it because having a person not identify as their assigned birth order is deemed too strange for media to portray, or people of the same sex being together would be inappropriate unless it’s to shoot one of them.

This.  

All dead lesbian and bisexual women on TV: 2016-2017 – LGBT Fans Deserve Better

lgbtfans:

Are you ready? Because the 2016-2017 season has come out of the gate running. Perhaps most interestingly, since the now-infamous death of Poussey Washington on Orange is the New Black, less than a month after the season’s debut, the two additional deaths to have occurred were also on shows lauded for their female casts and known amongst fans as shows with LGBT representation. Which demonstrates once again that just because a show does a lot of things right, does not exempt them from making mistakes or falling into the traps of the trope.

Bea Smith from Wentworth is perhaps the most notable death so far. Not even when they are the lead character, are Les/Bi women safe from the reaper. It’s hard to decide which aspect of the trope used here was most offensive. The fact that after coming out and giving her happiness the writers no longer know what to do with her and violently wrote her off, or the fact that she committed suicide and attempted to frame it as murder?

Sara Harvey of Pretty Little Liars bit the dust less than a week after her predecessor, becoming the third death of the season as well as the third queer female to die on PLL, and in effect, giving the show the dubious honour of having killed more queer girls and trans women than any other. What makes her death troubling isn’t that she was well-loved or even good representation, but rather that she illustrated a common problem when writing LGBT characters: that they are no more than ‘fillers’. In Heather Hogan’s own words: “Sara Harvey was a terrible TV character. Everyone hated her. Not because she was written to be hated, but because she wasn’t written at all.” 

All dead lesbian and bisexual women on TV: 2016-2017 – LGBT Fans Deserve Better

brittanaluv:

natblida:

gaymigration:

All jokes aside, you’re a fucking dick and I want to punch you in the face

I can’t believe his brain actually produces thoughts like that.

Oh Jason, Jason when will you learn.

Jroth is the very personification of the entitled straight (white) male, given power he hasn’t earned, doesn’t deserve, doesn’t have the talent to work with, ignorant about women/queer sexuality, the least qualified to lead a small army with millions of dollars available to him and he continues to fetishise his ‘bisexual’ female lead.  

This is status quo in Hollywood.  The Clexa revolution has got to stick, has to keep pushing to end the toxic placement of men like him in positions of influence.  People like Jroth don’t care that their influence affects society in negative ways.  People like him don’t care how our cultural lives rot from the sickly paste they shove down people’s throats – they only care about the power they have to do what they want.  

The CW would have been wise to replace him, it might have saved their show. Politically, thousands hate or fiercely dislike him and will do their best to influence others not to watch his programme.  He’s a liability – but because he’s a straight white male who toes the line for his studio, no one is dismissing him.  

Fascinating, that.  

When showrunners ‘kill’ off their queer (female) hero only to ‘revive’ her the following season (denying they had any other intention), is the equivalent of parents taking away a child’s favourite toy…knowing how devastated they will be, then returning it, a year later, saying…see, we didn’t lose it!  Hahahaha…no hard feelings, right, kid?  

The child:

That angry anon about the cake kinda hurt my heart. “If someone ruined the cake I would stfu and keep eating it because not many people get cake.” Tbh that’s part of the whole problem within the community as well. We don’t have an obligation to except an inferior product just because someone lowered themselves enough to give us something. We deserve and can ask for just as much as anyone else, and I at least generally appreciate that you’re doing it.

laynemorgan:

You’re totally right about that. Thanks for pointing it out.

‘We deserve and can ask for just as much as anyone else’ 

Why the fuck are you supporting Layne? She is the WORST. She is out there putting Ben down & you can’t understand why we don’t want her at the con? people like her don’t represent US.

First: yes, she does represent us. She’s a queer woman.  I’m a representative too.  If you’re queer, so are you.  Don’t try to invalidate another human being because you don’t agree with her.

The WORST? I thought that was Donald Trump.  Hyperbolic language does not endorse you.  

My problem with all of this? Queer women seeking to invalidate another queer woman because they do not agree with her point of view.  Queer women seeking to silence another woman because they feel she is ‘unprofessional’ or should ‘behave better.’  

I’m ashamed of anyone who supports this. You’ve literally twisted another human being’s validity into an argument over how things should look.  

This fandom has some moral authority over Layne Morgan?

How is trying to silence or invalidate another queer voice – just because you disagree – the right thing to do?