Tag: Supergirl

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

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Episode 13: Queer Rep

Andi and Lise talk about queer rep in media following the now-infamous incident at San Diego Comic-Con 2017, which occurred over the July 20-23 weekend and involved members of the cast of Supergirl. The upshot was an impromptu song in which a cast member sang an overview of Season 2 that included a belittling of Supercorp, a f/f fanon* ship** between Lena Luthor and Kara Danvers (Supergirl’s “secret” identity—omg glasses are not the best disguise…). That cast member then went on to say that he “debunked Supercorp” and was told by another cast member that what he did was “pretty brave.”

The fallout was immediate, and LGBTQ fans were hurt and bewildered, so Lise and Andi wanted to address this, which isn’t just what happened with Supergirl. It’s about rep overall, and this is just the latest example.

And yes, Andi and Lise have some strong feelings about this, so language may be strong as well.

*fanon: a term used in fanfiction and in fandoms to describe commonly accepted ideas among authors and fans even if the idea is not expressed in the canon work, which is the official storyline from the original work.

**ship: in fanspeak, a “ship” is a relationship (often romantic) between two characters, whether canon or fanon. “Shipping” is when fans imagine a relationship between characters (say, in TV shows or movies) that may or may not have been intended by writers or creators.

Some other links about this incident:

The Mary Sue
The Refinery
Pink News
Affinity Mag

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