Comments | pocochina: hey, anyone noticed that television is kind of weird about gay men?

pocochina

hey, anyone noticed that television is kind of weird about gay men?

Oct 28, 2013 22:12

This is something that I think about a fair amount, but various media/fandom developments of the last few weeks have brought it to the front of my mind. The first half of this post is about ~stuff generally; the second half is specific to how it's apparently the Dean/Cas week of our ~cycle in Supernatural fandom.

( some observations about trends in depiction of male sexuality ~generally )

to/tvd: rebekah is the mf'ing princess, scandal, masculinity, orphan black, lgbtq, spn: dean what even, sexuality

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goldenusagi October 29 2013, 05:31:23 UTC

Ugh, I have so many thoughts on Supernatural, but I don't really want to type them out, because I feel like been there done that, and also I haven't watched the show in years. I suppose in summary, I feel like the writers are sort of queerbating. If they just told the story that they were telling and it happened to include intense looks between Dean and Cas, fine, but when they start adding actual wink wink nudge nudge into the show itself and then state outside the show that nothing is happening, I get annoyed ( ... )

waltzmatildah October 29 2013, 06:15:05 UTC

I think your whole second paragraph ties in neatly to Poco's Willa Paskin point right at the top that female sexuality in general still doesn't carry the same 'weight' as male sexuality and so Television People (whoever they might be) feel like they can be more flippant with it, like it doesn't have the same impact as male sexuality. Female homosexuality is also more likely to be treated as little more than indulgent titilation. Have I understood that correctly? So yeah, contrast this attitude regarding female sexuality with attitudes regarding male sexuality and what equals masculinity, and you get, well, you get modern television, I guess ( ... )

goldenusagi October 29 2013, 15:25:17 UTC

I think your whole second paragraph ties in neatly to Poco's Willa Paskin point right at the top that female sexuality in general still doesn't carry the same 'weight' as male sexuality

Yeah, I just got a bit rambly with it, but that's basically it.

the ONLY network television characters I've seen treated with the Suddenly Gay trope have been female

Ditto for my TV watching. I was actually going to make a post about this, about how it only happens to women, but I thought I'd better look it up first, and TV Tropes tells me it happens to men, too, though not on any of the shows I've watched, and not with as much regularity, I don't think. And not being familiar with any of the shows where a man was Suddenly Gay, I can't say how much of a main character they were or not.

waltzmatildah October 29 2013, 23:54:41 UTC

I just went through that Tropes page and I'm not familiar with any of the male Suddenly Gay characters, so I can't help there either.

pocochina October 29 2013, 06:29:57 UTC

With SPN...yeah, it's at the point where the only question is how chickenshit the current PTBs are because it's way past nods and winks. The characterization work has been laid down for Dean the whole time, the usual romantic tropes are in place for Dean/Cas, and the show's gotten a good deal more progressive since the days of "burn witch burn." I still think it's slightly less likely to happen than it is to happen, but it's, you know, 60/40 rather than "clearly we cannot have nice things."

I also feel like women's sexuality isn't viewed as character defining? Like, THIS IS DEAN, HE IS STRAIGHT. And then you've got Rebekah, and it's like, okay, why not, gay, straight, bi, she's a woman, whatever

Yeah, that's definitely one of the core issues. That female sexuality is just not taken half so seriously. And this doesn't do women any favors, but there are ways that this really warps GBQ male representation.

goldenusagi October 29 2013, 15:21:48 UTC

I still think it's slightly less likely to happen than it is to happen, but it's, you know, 60/40 rather than "clearly we cannot have nice things."As I said, I haven't been watching in a while, so who knows, it may be that I'm just totally out of the loop. I haven't watched the show, though I do see the occasional gifs come across my dash. What I do do, though, is keep up with conventions. Pretty much every SPN convention there is, I'm on tumblr that weekend on the tags. And it just seems like every time the Destiel question is brought up, it is either given a thoughtful answer by Misha or a diplomatic answer by Jensen. But the gist is the same: there's a connection between them for sure, (but). Fill in your own 'but' here. Misha is a little more outspoken, but the feeling that you still get is that they're the actors, and what they say about the characters ultimately doesn't matter because it's the producers who are deciding things. Even when Jensen or Misha says (paraphrase) 'it's something we all know but it doesn't make it ( ... )

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