The Dilution of Queer Media

Queerness is present from the earliest pieces of media found throughout the world’s archives. Having a heavy influence in progressive foreign media, specifically, American audiences and studios alike remained skeptical of queer representation on the screen. So, filmmakers, turning to more nuanced reflections of reality, found themselves layering queerness as a metaphor on characters through their underlying relationships.

A notion that Dr. Larry Gross, Professor Emeritus of Communication, has found in his extensive research. A specialist in the area of media and culture, Dr. Gross has devoted his analysis to the media’s portrayals of minorities, helping set the groundwork in the field of gay and lesbian studies, which he attributes to the increase in societal provocativeness.

“Creatives look for various kinds of things that are different, expressive and evocative that they can use, and queer people have often been a source of just that,” said Dr. Gross. “They blur, blend, and cross lines — or they're a little more explicit or a little more visibly erotic than is otherwise quite respectable.”

Dr. Gross mentions that characters throughout the media, without being explicitly gay, are inherently queer. Considering characters like Ursula from Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” (whom was based on a drag queen, Divine) or Norma Desmond in “Sunset Boulevard” (overplaying the long-held stereotype of exaggerated femininity), filmmakers purposefully characterized queer identities in a way that was coded, to appease audiences while still introducing a sense of uniqueness to their storytelling.

However, when unscripted television content from television networks in the early 1990’s began introducing real life queer individuals into their programming, there was a significant switch in the way that audiences perceived the LGBTQ+ community.

From “The Real World” to “Room Raiders,” MTV’s prominence in the transition to 21st-century media set a turning point for the increase in literal depictions of queer characters.

“The nature of what is often considered career success for minority audiences is being assimilated into the system, where, even if it's now by them, it's still created for majority audiences with the intent of trying to make money,” said Dr. Gross.

The steady increase in real queer stories on television helped propel queer media to where it is today. While queer representation continues to rise, however, a consistent trend of studio fear to appeal to mass audiences has steadily lowered the popularity of openly queer characters of substance.

Dr. Traci Abbott, an associate professor of media at Bentley University, prioritizes her research on investigating cultural representations of gender and sexuality in American scripted entertainment. She not only sees this downward trend of character actuality, but identifies it as a homonormative tendency that has become a driving gear of queer media.

From her perspective, mainstream media is increasing the number of gay characters, but lessening their actual authenticity in queer-centric relationships.

“Some types of queerness are now more validated. Homonormative — particularly monosexual — gay men and lesbians are much more visible than bisexual women and trans women,” said Dr. Abbott.

Younger filmmakers are seeing this exact pattern, as well, focusing their evaluation one step deeper, criticizing the limiting identities of queer characters in the media.

“Pansexuality, asexuality — any people who present themselves in a way that does not conform to society — are still depictions that people are very close-minded to,” said Thomas Fitzgerald, a USC School of Cinematic Arts Film and Television Production student, who feels as though audiences of today want to support queer characters, without actually wanting to know much of their identity.

Fitzgerald, who identifies as a gay male, has noticed the distinct correlation being reflected in mass media, with larger studios preferring to sprinkle in queerness, rather than evaluating it to a complete extent.

“It’s kind of vague,” said Fitzgerald. “Tokenism, now more than ever, is using people's identity or queerness as sentimentality — trying to make you feel for them, instead of actually understanding their character.”

To this extent, Dr. Abbott’s research in the field notes a significant uptick in portrayals of gay male characters, most prominently in “cutesy, non-threatening” depictions. Utilizing these characters to somewhat fulfill the standard requirement of including a queer character, without actually wanting to give purpose to their existence.

According to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), of the 350 films released theatrically by the ten major distributors in 2022, about 30% highlighted at least one character who identified as LGBTQ. However, with this same metric, 55% included gay men and 45% included lesbians, 21% highlighted bisexuality, and just 12% had transgender characters.

Films so centralized to gay male identities, like Lukas Dhont’s “Close” and Barry Jenkins’ “Moonlight,” have led to mainstream media’s hyper-fixation on portraying the undertones of gay identity from youth.

Sean Guzmán, a current film student studying at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, believes these portrayals dehumanize the actual sexuality aspect of what it means to be queer, discounting the proper encapsulation of queer life.

“Seeing somebody who identifies as queer on screen is one thing, but then to also have them engage in those sexual acts on screen is an additional form of empowerment that is overlooked,” said Guzmán. “There's not a lot of conversation about the implications of that — and inherently, engaging in non-heterosexual sexual acts is radical.”

Guzmán, who identifies as a gay man of color, notes that coming out means something different to everyone, but the perceptions of queer love through a heteronormative lens detracts stories from representing queer identity, depicting them as asexual beings.

Up-and-coming creatives are seeing this portrayed across all queer media, even finding that societal standards and misogynistic fantasies play a strong role in the representation of queer sexuality on screen.

“In many people's eyes, it’s still not socially acceptable for there to be a physical relationship between two men as opposed to how society uses two women’s physical relationship as a fantasy,” said independent filmmaker Elizabeth Griesser.

Griesser, who identifies as a bisexual woman, maintains the ideal that queer identity in entertainment has no reason to be uniform.

“Two of the most prominent examples in queer media would be ‘Call Me By Your Name,’ which does have gay sex in it, but focuses way more on their romantic relationship, whereas ‘The L Word,” is entirely focused on queer female sex,” said Griesser.

A sentiment she is attempting to oppose in her own work, Griesser cites the distinct difference between queer identities in the media boils down to how society idolizes sexuality in general. Griesser believes that lesbian relationships in the media are exclusively devoted to diving into their sex lives, whereas relationships between two men are given a developing romance.

Griesser critiques the fetishization further, citing Céline Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” and Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Favourite” as the beacons of the widespread media’s obsession with queer stories set in socially repressed eras.

The influence, which Dr. Abbott characterizes as the “Brokeback Mountain Effect,” focuses on queer centered media in the past, so that nobody feels the need to examine what's happening now. “So we can all go, ‘oh my God, it was so much worse then, right?’” said Dr. Abbott.

Dr. Abbott, much like the queer filmmakers wanting to enter the industry, denounces the approach, wanting media creators to distinguish what it means to be queer in modern culture.

“Mainstream entertainment is queerbaiting Gen Z, who really want to watch themselves — their sexually fluid, gender fluid selves — but they do it in such a way that it's not threatening, to appeal to the mainstream,” said Dr. Abbott.

Despite the oversaturation of queer-coded characters and rainbow-tinted optics in media today, the future of queer storytelling is far from hopeless, but is very much in need of a revitalization. The call from creators and audiences is no longer centered around inclusion alone, but rather an ever-developing intersectionality of identity.

Dr. Gross believes that the systemic barriers within Hollywood continue to slow progress, a sentiment Dr. Abbott feels similarly towards, as her research has taken notice of smaller entertainment markets, such as in the United Kingdom.

“Late-stage capitalism is a huge part of the problem — it's very hard to get things made and done,” said Dr. Abbott. “The reason there's not anything like an American ‘Heartstopper’ is that the UK television film industry is so small, and is at least half publicly funded.”

To Dr. Abbott’s point, Hollywood creatives are more focused on cherry-picking track record talent as the driving force behind their projects. In contrast, international markets that are publicly funded cherish the ideals set by independent creators.

“America seems to have a lot of gay white men and women of color who are heterosexual running productions — as the showrunners, as the directors — but not very many other people.”

— Dr. Tracy Abbott

This system in American entertainment not only limits creativity, but pigeonholes the queer genre as a whole.

“Everything that's happening with studios and the general homogenization and monopolization of the film industry has the potential to go very south and has already begun doing so,” said Fitzgerald.

A central notion that young filmmakers agree upon is that the stories shared need to begin evaluating all aspects of queer life, not just sexuality.

“There is still work to be done in the realm of acknowledging the lack of minority-focused queer stories, as it pertains to racial and ethnic background,” said Guzmán.

“A lot of queer stories now are about coming out and there's nothing more to it,” said Guzmán, who craves to see different identities portrayed on the screen. “There's a lot of nuance when you come into play with racial identity — those specific coming out stories haven't even been told enough because they involve an additional layer of intersectionality that has yet to be addressed.”

The solution creatives crave to present is led by the initiative to facilitate stories in the mainstream that are created by queer individuals, a steady uprise we are seeing with the rise of public figures entering into the independent space.

“I think the most important aspect of telling queer stories is having queer voices in the process,” said Griesser. “Whether that’s in front of the camera, behind the camera, or in the writing room.”

The driving force is needed now more than ever, as ongoing legislation proposals are attempting to diminish the survivability of the arts in the modern era.

However, efforts are already being seen with Kristin Stewart’s “The Chronology of Water” and Tommy Dorfman’s “I Wish You All the Best,” upcoming productions that are setting the path for established queer individuals to enter the industry behind the camera, set to overall expand queer perspectives in the mainstream.

In the 35 years since the release of “Paris is Burning,” the queer community has built the basis of visibility in the media. Productions have not waited for permission, but created their own pursuit into the public view.

These beliefs act as the core of upcoming creators’ work, inspiring them to further take control of the narratives they want to tell.