From Bury Your Gays to Queerbaiting

In Pride Month 2024 we celebrate queer stories and characters from films and seriesWe have already presented you with a number of current examples that we think are doing it right. If we look back at the history of films and series, however, queer representation has not always been so numerous and diverse – and it has not always contributed to positive things either.

Over the decades, certain tropes have developed from slowly growing social acceptance, a lack of visibility and still poorly established viewing habits, which unfortunately are still occasionally used today. Bury Your Gays to Queerbaiting We want to give you an overview of five of the most common.

Queerbaiting

Queerbaiting is composed of the English words queer and baiting Baiting can be translated into German as “baiting”. Accordingly, queerbaiting is often used in connection with characters and stories in films and series in which Queerness implied through conversations or behaviorsbut never openly lived out. According to Real Diversity, this is intended to appeal to a queer audience who consume content in the hope of seeing queer representation without ever receiving it.

Popular examples from the world of series include Supernatural and Sherlock. The friendship between Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch) and John Watson (Martin Freeman) is read and questioned as queer by other characters in the BBC series. The series plays with this reading by frequently placing the two in situations where they involuntarily have to be physically close or express their feelings for each other. Instead of making this true, however, the two characters and the series creators deny any homoerotic tendencies to an almost homophobic level.

Supernatural goes with main character Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles) and angel Castiel (Misha Collins) does something similar, but opens up even more problematic doors. For many fans, the implied relationship between the two men was part of the series’ canon, and was only openly addressed in the last season. In season 15, Castiel actually confesses his love to Dean – shortly before he suffers a tragic death and literally goes to hell. With this, Supernatural directly used another well-known trope.

Bury Your Gays

Bury Your Gays can be translated into English as “Bury your homosexuals”. The expression describes the pattern in films and series that lets queer characters meet a tragic fate – usually even a tragic deathThe pattern goes back far into film and even literary history, in which characters charged with queer subtext are confronted with death on the one hand “punished” for their sexuality became.

On the other hand, cheap and simple means are used Emotionality and compassion for groups of people who are already charged with a negative narrative, which in turn reinforces stereotypes and makes positive connotations with queer lifestyles almost invisible.

Classic Hollywood characters have already had to accept this fate, such as those in Alfred Hitchcock’s Cocktail for a Corpse or Nicolas Ray’s … for they know not what they are doing. The aforementioned Castiel from Supernatural is a modern example of this.

Also known as the Dead Lesbian Trope, female characters from the LGBTQ+ community have been particularly likely to fall victim to this pattern over the past decade, according to a report by GLAAD (via LGBTQIA+ Fandom ). Lexa (Alycia Debnam-Carey) from The 100who dies in the seventh episode of season 3 just minutes after becoming intimate with another woman.

Even Killing Eve, which is celebrated for its queer representation, tragically fell into this problematic trope in its final episode with Villanelle’s (Jodie Comer) death, which was staged for a cheap shock moment. You can hear exactly how this unfolds in our podcast on the worst series endings.

Sissy Villain / Depraved Homosexual

The Bury Your Gays trope is often accompanied by the Sissy Villain and Depraved Homosexual tropes. The former describes the pattern of villains with feminine characteristics and queer subtext to draw characters that strongly deviate from the masculine and heteronormative ideal of the hero. Since villains in films are often punished with death or a cruel fate, these characters are particularly often affected by the Bury Your Gays trope. Examples of this include Silva (Javier Bardem) from James Bond 007 – Skyfall, Moriarty (Andrew Scott) from Sherlock, and numerous Disney villains such as Jafar from Aladdin and Scar from The Lion King.

Depraved Homosexual describes the similar pattern of portraying queer-connotated figures as “spoiled”perverse or violent and murderous. These also often appear as villains and are just as rarely punished with death for their behavior. Examples are the aforementioned Loeb from Hitchcock’s A Cocktail for a Corpse, butler Thomas Barrow (Robert James-Collier) from Downton Abbey or Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) from The Talented Mr. Ripley (via Advocate ).

Word of Gay

The Word of Gay Trope (based on the expression Word of God“The Word of God”) refers to Statements made by the makers of the film or series about certain characters and their relationships without explicitly showing them in the films and series. An example would be the statements by JK Rowling about Albus Dumbledore’s homosexuality in the Harry Potter series, after the books were published. This meant that it was no longer included in the Harry Potter films.

In the Fantastic Beasts series, Dumbledore’s homosexuality was finally made an explicit theme in the script and film – but only from the second part onwards.

According to TV Tropes, this pattern is used by film and series creators in a similar way to queerbaiting to attract an LGBTQ+ audience while at the same time “not to upset those parts of the audience who are not comfortable with it”.

Gay Best Friend (GBF)

A queer character as the main character’s best friend is another common trope from the world of film and series, which often makes queer characters very one-dimensional and stereotypical as emotional support or fashion advice and at the same time acts as a comedic sidekick.

Examples include Kurt Hummel (Chris Colfer) from Glee, Stanford Blatch (Willie Garson) from Sex and the City or Kevin Keller (Ryan Grantham) from Riverdale (via Advocate).

Podcast in Pride Month 2024: How queer is the world of series really?

At Streamgestöber we do a reality check on how LGBTQ+ friendly series in 2024 actually are:

Even in 2024, it is still necessary to examine the queer-friendliness of the series landscape. Although the largest streaming provider Netflix has many queer characters and LGBTQ+ inclusive series available to stream, this unfortunately does not represent the rest of the streaming world.