Oh, yeah... we didn't get around to it.
CAUTION: I've put in links to sources for quotes, but consider them potentially chock full of spoilers.
I've been involved in fandom a long time, and back in my early days of reading slash, you wouldn't have been able to convince me that Hollywood would ever show a same-sex relationships. The best we'd get was some wink, wink, nudge, nudge stuff that writers had been sneaking into movies and TV shows for years.
It was the status quo for quite some time, but some TPTB finally took a chance that people, both gay and straight, would be interested in queer characters without it being for comedic effect. It was mostly on the pay channels, such as Showtime's Queer as Folk, because they don't have to run under the restrictions American broadcast TV networks are required to follow, and most other cable channels are a middle ground between those worlds and were still leery of pushing too far. The cast and crew of Queer as Folk were rather surprised to find the majority of their audience were female, both straight and queer. Fandom wasn't surprised one iota.
As more fans went online and felt more comfortable speaking up about onscreen representation being important, we started to see more shows with queer characters. In the sci-fi world, is was a big deal for fans of diversity just to have Captain Jack Harkness on Doctor Who, but to have him kiss Rose and The Doctor and it's just accepted as normal? It's such a widely viewed show, it automatically is a big deal to have such acceptance.
While it may have been a big deal to some fans, according to Barrowman, “I remember when I kissed the Doctor in Doctor Who it didn’t even make the headlines, nobody even bothered about it. But it was only when Jack had his own spin off show and he was saying that he was omnisexual and that he would have sex with anything with a postcode that people started going “ooh”. So it’s how you deal with it that makes it sensational.” [source]
What's been bugging me a lot is the shows that hint at queer characters, but never payoff, or outright shove the queer back in the closet (or into a coffin). Or it's not gay, but TPTB want to claim it is. For example, in Stargate Atlantis, they tried to claim they had the first M/M kiss in sci-fi, but in reality it was a female character's mind sharing the body of a male character due to an accident who kissed a guy she had a crush on before undergoing the risky procedure to restore her to her own body. So... not gay. Also, this was after a Jack and the Doctor kiss, so not first in TV sci-fi either. I believe they later amended it to first in American sci-fi, but I still don't believe it qualifies as first M/M kiss.
Stargate Atlantis also had issues with “invisible queers”, with TPTB telling viewers about gay characters in blogs and interviews, but it was never shown on screen because they never got around to it. [source] A military character was lesbian, but those scenes were cut, and she ends up dead anyway. Another character was supposed to be gay, but it was never shown or mentioned onscreen. Fannish money tended to be on Major Lorne, but I can't find any confirmation that was the intent, because I quit watching before the show ended, and I don't want to peruse Joseph Mallozzi's blog. I'm not a masochist. I didn't watch Stargate Universe, but I understand they finally had out queer characters on that show, but I have no idea how well they handled it.
I could write an entire dissertation on the problems of queer representation on Teen Wolf, but I'm just going to link to this bit from The Advocate, in which actors who all play straight characters are interviewed about how awesome the show is with representation, when most queer characters die or disappear without further mention, and there has so far been no canon queer lead character. The worst bit is they keep patting themselves on the back for being inclusive. I usually avoid reading comments on articles, but for this one, they're gold.
While the Doctor Who franchise has been rather progressive, including several queer guest characters, as well as a recurring lesbian couple comprised of a lizard woman from the dawn of time and her human wife who live in Victorian England, it's still had at least one case of an “invisible queer” and it was one that rather surprised me when I stumbled across this fact, but circumstances beyond their control meant the story arc couldn't be completed, though even before that, a cut scene makes me wonder if they really would have gone through with it.
The Sarah Jane Adventures was a spin-off featuring popular companion from the classic and new series, Sarah Jane Smith. In the first episode, Sarah Jane adopts a young boy, Luke, who is technically human, but created by aliens to be super intelligent, but he's “born” as a teenager and has a lot of socially awkward moments as a result. Sarah Jane, Luke, and two of his friends have adventures solving mysteries involving alien elements, with the show aimed at a younger audience. A bit sillier in some cases, but it honestly made me think of classic Doctor Who quite a bit because of it.
According to show creator Russell T. Davies, a simple exchange that gives a big hint was cut from the episode The Nightmare Man, “In the very last scene he says goodbye and Sarah Jane says, ‘Have a lovely time at university. You’ll grow up, you’ll find a girlfriend,’ and he says, ‘Oh, could be a boyfriend!’ And she replies, ‘Well, as long as it’s not alien, I don’t care!’” [source]
Not only would it have been a same-sex relationship, but Luke's boyfriend was to have been his friend at university, Sanjay, who was mentioned but not seen during Skype sessions with those at home. So one would expect it would have also been an interracial relationship, which could have brought up some interesting cultural and perhaps religious issues. And then there's the whole thing about his boyfriend not having a belly button since he wasn't born in the traditional sense. Would Sanjay have been let in on that secret, and the other secrets at 13 Bannerman Road? Sadly, we'll never know. The actress portraying Sarah Jane, Elisabeth Sladen, passed away midway through filming the fifth season. Watching the episodes and knowing that very few people on the set knew she was dealing with cancer, it's amazing to see her performing until the end.
OK, now that I've complained about shows getting it outright wrong, or close but a miss, how about talking about shows you feel are getting it right? Off the top of my head, I have to say Orphan Black and In the Flesh, both on BBC America in the US, get it right, or at least do a better job than most shows.
Orphan Black has had gay, lesbian, and transsexual characters, and to quote one character, “My sexuality's not the most interesting thing about me.” The show has straight, gay, and lesbian sex scenes, including some mild nudity at times (butt shots). The wildest thing is that many of these scenes feature the same actress, but different characters. There's also some subtle and not so subtle stuff about female bodily autonomy.
In the Flesh could be easily written off as a zombie show, but it's a post-zombie show, where a cure has been found and the Partially Deceased Syndrome sufferers try to reintegrate (or not) back into society. Series creator Dominic Mitchell says of lead character Kieren Walker, “He’s not gay but he’s not straight. He’s more in love with the person than the gender.” [source] Making him pansexual, though he's only shown sexual interest in men so far.
Events in the series also make me wonder if a term is created for those who have specific sexual interest in those with PDS. There's talk in the first series about people sending PDS sufferers letters along the lines of what some people send to serial killers in prison. They don't know them, but they damn sure want to have sex with them. There's also an actual relationship between a PDS sufferer and a person who's still alive, and I've got to say it kind of squicked me out at first. Not due to the whole “previously dead” thing, but because there was a bit of stalker behavior and shame over being attracted to someone with PDS that manifests in a rather skeevy way. The show develops the relationship over time, and it works. This show made me like a het relationship! That's an accomplishment! :)
Anyone else have suggestions for current or recent shows with good representation of sexual identities? Or you can add your rant about shows that got it wrong, because that's a lot more common.
I've been involved in fandom a long time, and back in my early days of reading slash, you wouldn't have been able to convince me that Hollywood would ever show a same-sex relationships. The best we'd get was some wink, wink, nudge, nudge stuff that writers had been sneaking into movies and TV shows for years.
It was the status quo for quite some time, but some TPTB finally took a chance that people, both gay and straight, would be interested in queer characters without it being for comedic effect. It was mostly on the pay channels, such as Showtime's Queer as Folk, because they don't have to run under the restrictions American broadcast TV networks are required to follow, and most other cable channels are a middle ground between those worlds and were still leery of pushing too far. The cast and crew of Queer as Folk were rather surprised to find the majority of their audience were female, both straight and queer. Fandom wasn't surprised one iota.
As more fans went online and felt more comfortable speaking up about onscreen representation being important, we started to see more shows with queer characters. In the sci-fi world, is was a big deal for fans of diversity just to have Captain Jack Harkness on Doctor Who, but to have him kiss Rose and The Doctor and it's just accepted as normal? It's such a widely viewed show, it automatically is a big deal to have such acceptance.
While it may have been a big deal to some fans, according to Barrowman, “I remember when I kissed the Doctor in Doctor Who it didn’t even make the headlines, nobody even bothered about it. But it was only when Jack had his own spin off show and he was saying that he was omnisexual and that he would have sex with anything with a postcode that people started going “ooh”. So it’s how you deal with it that makes it sensational.” [source]
What's been bugging me a lot is the shows that hint at queer characters, but never payoff, or outright shove the queer back in the closet (or into a coffin). Or it's not gay, but TPTB want to claim it is. For example, in Stargate Atlantis, they tried to claim they had the first M/M kiss in sci-fi, but in reality it was a female character's mind sharing the body of a male character due to an accident who kissed a guy she had a crush on before undergoing the risky procedure to restore her to her own body. So... not gay. Also, this was after a Jack and the Doctor kiss, so not first in TV sci-fi either. I believe they later amended it to first in American sci-fi, but I still don't believe it qualifies as first M/M kiss.
Stargate Atlantis also had issues with “invisible queers”, with TPTB telling viewers about gay characters in blogs and interviews, but it was never shown on screen because they never got around to it. [source] A military character was lesbian, but those scenes were cut, and she ends up dead anyway. Another character was supposed to be gay, but it was never shown or mentioned onscreen. Fannish money tended to be on Major Lorne, but I can't find any confirmation that was the intent, because I quit watching before the show ended, and I don't want to peruse Joseph Mallozzi's blog. I'm not a masochist. I didn't watch Stargate Universe, but I understand they finally had out queer characters on that show, but I have no idea how well they handled it.
I could write an entire dissertation on the problems of queer representation on Teen Wolf, but I'm just going to link to this bit from The Advocate, in which actors who all play straight characters are interviewed about how awesome the show is with representation, when most queer characters die or disappear without further mention, and there has so far been no canon queer lead character. The worst bit is they keep patting themselves on the back for being inclusive. I usually avoid reading comments on articles, but for this one, they're gold.
While the Doctor Who franchise has been rather progressive, including several queer guest characters, as well as a recurring lesbian couple comprised of a lizard woman from the dawn of time and her human wife who live in Victorian England, it's still had at least one case of an “invisible queer” and it was one that rather surprised me when I stumbled across this fact, but circumstances beyond their control meant the story arc couldn't be completed, though even before that, a cut scene makes me wonder if they really would have gone through with it.
The Sarah Jane Adventures was a spin-off featuring popular companion from the classic and new series, Sarah Jane Smith. In the first episode, Sarah Jane adopts a young boy, Luke, who is technically human, but created by aliens to be super intelligent, but he's “born” as a teenager and has a lot of socially awkward moments as a result. Sarah Jane, Luke, and two of his friends have adventures solving mysteries involving alien elements, with the show aimed at a younger audience. A bit sillier in some cases, but it honestly made me think of classic Doctor Who quite a bit because of it.
According to show creator Russell T. Davies, a simple exchange that gives a big hint was cut from the episode The Nightmare Man, “In the very last scene he says goodbye and Sarah Jane says, ‘Have a lovely time at university. You’ll grow up, you’ll find a girlfriend,’ and he says, ‘Oh, could be a boyfriend!’ And she replies, ‘Well, as long as it’s not alien, I don’t care!’” [source]
Not only would it have been a same-sex relationship, but Luke's boyfriend was to have been his friend at university, Sanjay, who was mentioned but not seen during Skype sessions with those at home. So one would expect it would have also been an interracial relationship, which could have brought up some interesting cultural and perhaps religious issues. And then there's the whole thing about his boyfriend not having a belly button since he wasn't born in the traditional sense. Would Sanjay have been let in on that secret, and the other secrets at 13 Bannerman Road? Sadly, we'll never know. The actress portraying Sarah Jane, Elisabeth Sladen, passed away midway through filming the fifth season. Watching the episodes and knowing that very few people on the set knew she was dealing with cancer, it's amazing to see her performing until the end.
OK, now that I've complained about shows getting it outright wrong, or close but a miss, how about talking about shows you feel are getting it right? Off the top of my head, I have to say Orphan Black and In the Flesh, both on BBC America in the US, get it right, or at least do a better job than most shows.
Orphan Black has had gay, lesbian, and transsexual characters, and to quote one character, “My sexuality's not the most interesting thing about me.” The show has straight, gay, and lesbian sex scenes, including some mild nudity at times (butt shots). The wildest thing is that many of these scenes feature the same actress, but different characters. There's also some subtle and not so subtle stuff about female bodily autonomy.
In the Flesh could be easily written off as a zombie show, but it's a post-zombie show, where a cure has been found and the Partially Deceased Syndrome sufferers try to reintegrate (or not) back into society. Series creator Dominic Mitchell says of lead character Kieren Walker, “He’s not gay but he’s not straight. He’s more in love with the person than the gender.” [source] Making him pansexual, though he's only shown sexual interest in men so far.
Events in the series also make me wonder if a term is created for those who have specific sexual interest in those with PDS. There's talk in the first series about people sending PDS sufferers letters along the lines of what some people send to serial killers in prison. They don't know them, but they damn sure want to have sex with them. There's also an actual relationship between a PDS sufferer and a person who's still alive, and I've got to say it kind of squicked me out at first. Not due to the whole “previously dead” thing, but because there was a bit of stalker behavior and shame over being attracted to someone with PDS that manifests in a rather skeevy way. The show develops the relationship over time, and it works. This show made me like a het relationship! That's an accomplishment! :)
Anyone else have suggestions for current or recent shows with good representation of sexual identities? Or you can add your rant about shows that got it wrong, because that's a lot more common.