As recently as fifty years ago, positive representation for the LGBTQIA+ community was a dream. Many public service announcements centered around the view that queerness was a bad thing: queer people had to watch out for danger, not because of homophobia, but because they were queer. Homosexual, gender non-conforming, and queer-coded characters in fiction were vilified or exaggerated with tired stereotypes for cheap laughs. Now, queer characters pop up in books, movies, and even children’s cartoons, bringing about positive, relatable experiences for queer folk. Representation is undeniably important… but people ask why when queerness already seems so rampant. “Representation” has become a buzzword in the media industry, but what does it really do for people?
One of the biggest reasons why representation is important — and why homophobic and transphobic parties decry it — is because it normalizes the queer experience. According to GLAAD’s 2019 survey report on the attitudes of non-LGBTQIA+ Americans towards the exposure of LGBTQIA+ people in different media, respondents who had been recently exposed to media that represented queer people were quicker to accept people of the community and were more open to interacting with queer people as a whole. It was also found that these people were even more familiar with orientations and slang from the community than those who weren’t recently exposed to queer media. This study of more than 2,000 respondents only goes to show that good, frequent, and humanizing representation not only benefits queer audiences but allows non-queer audiences to relate to queer people, understand them, and see them as human. In the 20th century, the inverse of this was true, in that gay-coded villains were often aligned with sexual deviance, murder, and mental illness and thus queer people were also seen as villains by the public in real life.
The stereotyping seen in the 20th century is something we have to continue to combat. Many queer-coded characters in mainstream film, stage, and television at the time were written by people not part of the community and who used those characters as plot devices, comic relief, or gags. These characters couldn’t be called canonically queer due to censorship, so filmmakers used visual shorthand like hyperfemininity in men or notes of masculinity in women that eventually turned into the stereotypes we know today. Because of this early establishment of queer characters’ roles, the standard of what queer characters ought to look like and what stories they ought to have was inadvertently set. British YouTuber Rowan Ellis explains that more queer representation allows creators, both part of the community and not, to better explore and tell stories about queer characters and fight the mold, empowering queer creators to tell their stories their own way, in a way that speaks to them and their audience.
Allowing works to strike a chord with one’s audience is the ultimate goal in the end. There is no greater thing in the world than to be seen and recognized. On growing up without queer expressions of love and identity on television, gay actor T.R. Knight recounts his experience, saying, “You feel starved, and you feel lonely. … It ain’t [sic] healthy.” Proper representation allows audiences to identify with these stories and enables audience members to realize new truths about themselves in a comfortable, accepting way. A study on media role models for gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals found that positive role models encouraged queer individuals to come out and explore their identities, as well as provided these individuals a sense of “pride, inspiration, and comfort.”
The word “representation” may be worn weary by now, but what it stands for is nonetheless important to the LGBTQIA+ community. We have come so far in the last fifty years. Maybe even the last ten years, as the 2010s was a landmark era where more rights had been given to the LGBTQIA+ community, which led to a time wherein more characters that identified as queer cropped up in media. Yet, there is so much yet to do as nations around the world are mulling over homophobic and transphobic legislation today. While the media runs with the times, the times won’t stop us from existing. We are here and we are queer and we continue to deserve representation that tells people we exist. Simply erasing us from view will not shove us back in the closet.
REFERENCES
Ellis, Rowan “The Evolution of Queerbaiting: From Queercoding to Queercatching.” Rowan Ellis. Youtube, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riKVQjZK1z8&list=PLFGPmk4Y8i2-vP4D6EhLFxr368ID655F7.
“Executive Summary - GLAAD.” Accessed May 10, 2022. https://www.glaad.org/sites/default/files/P%26G_AdvertisingResearch.pdf.
Gomillion, Sarah C., and Traci A. Giuliano. “The Influence of Media Role Models on Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Identity.” Journal of Homosexuality 58, no. 3 (2011): 330–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2011.546729.
Italie, Leanne. “LGBTQ Representation in Children's TV Is Growing: 'We're Talking about the Love of a Family'.” USA Today. Gannett Satellite Information Network, July 31, 2019. https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/parenting/2019/07/31/ltbtq-representation-growing-childrens-television/1875892001/.
“LGBTQ+ Representation in Children's Media - a Video Essay.” Night Owls. YouTube, June 20, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPN3VPUERJ8.
Ellis, Rowan “The Evolution of Queerbaiting: From Queercoding to Queercatching.” Rowan Ellis. Youtube, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riKVQjZK1z8&list=PLFGPmk4Y8i2-vP4D6EhLFxr368ID655F7.
Comentarios