Tag: Queer Representation

Episode 104: Pride and Representation

Pride and Representation 

This week, in recognition of Pride month, Andi and Lise talk about LGBTQ representation in media, including tokenism and how it intersects with queerbaiting and even bury your gays. When is tokenism “good”? When is it “bad”? Join them as they try to unravel some of this. 

Shout outs: Lise is stoked about an 8-episode mini-campaign for the D&D show Critical Role, which just wrapped up its second campaign. It’s another Exandria adventure! It features part of the regular cast, so you’ll still be getting great voice acting. Give it a whirl! Meanwhile, Andi is still obsessing over Acorn TV and she’s been watching a lot of the NZ mystery series Brokenwood, which features a really quirky lead detective (among a lot of other quirky characters) who loves old country music and drives a funky old car. Really cool to watch the characters gel, and there are some great mysteries. 

0

Episode 56: Queerbaiting and Burying Your Gays

This week, Andi and Lise discuss (and rant about) queerbaiting, which is a marketing technique used in entertainment and fiction in which creators hint at a same-sex romance but don’t actually give you one and have no intention of giving you one. This is done to attract (i.e. “bait”) a queer audience while at the same time avoiding alienating cisgender heterosexual consumers. They also discuss the “Bury Your Gays” trope in which a same-sex relationship is depicted, but as soon as there’s a kiss or consummation of some sort, one of the couple is killed off or is wrenched away, thus perpetuating the idea that queer relationships are always doomed and are inherently “bad.”

Andi just finished up the CW’s Legacies, and that, unfortunately, does fall into the Bury Your Gays trope while Lise notes that cartoons like Steven Universe and She-Ra are really good at queer rep and not falling into tropes.

Extra resources:
Queerbaiting
Bury Your Gays trope: history; fanlore wiki
GLAAD report on representation in TV, 2018-2019
Autostraddle has been keeping a tally on queer women killed off in TV since 1976
Autostraddle 2016 infographic

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑