How We Are Seen: The Fight for LGBT Equality on the Silver Screen

The past few years have proved to be full of successes in the fight for LGBT rights. For example, in 2015, the landmark Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges made marriage equality the law of the land. The community has definitely made far strides towards equality, and  the climate towards diversity is looking better than it did in the days of Stonewall and the AIDS crisis. Despite this, there is still one area that we as a society need to pick up slack on, and that’s the portrayal of the LGBT community in the media. If there’s ever any representation at all, it can be rooted in age-old, harmful, and “pre-existing” stereotypes. This lack of well-rounded and healthy representation of queer folk in the media is harmful.

First of all, gay representation is hard to come by. In GLAAD’s yearly report of LGBT characters on TV entitled “Where We Are on TV”, they found that out of the 895 regular characters featured on Primetime TV in 2016, only 4.8% of them were LGBT+. Even further, only 17% of the characters on Primetime TV were lesbians and 4% were transgender. The most popular form of LGBT+ representation on TV came in the form of gay men. This lack of diverse representation on TV is concerning to say the least; and circumstances don’t seem to improve when this community does get represented.

Any person who watched TV in the nineties can pretty much tell you exactly where they were when Ellen Degeneres’s character on her show Ellen came out of the closet. Queer characters help create more diverse stories, and there have definitely been an influx of queer characters since Ellen’s days on TV. Sadly, the stereotyping of LGBT+ characters is a problem that is still seen on TV today. GLAAD noted in their representation report that among bisexual characters in particular, they are often portrayed “as untrustworthy, lacking a sense of morality, and/or as duplicitous manipulators” (GLAAD, 24). Sheng Kuan Chung points out in his journal Media Literacy Art Education: Deconstructing Lesbian and Gay Stereotypes in the Media that even reality shows like Big Brother, The Amazing Race, and The Real World pick “diverse” contestants who fit an outrageous stereotype of whatever sexuality or ethnic group they belong to.

It’s hard to argue for healthy representation in the media when LGBT+ characters, specifically sapphic women, are brutally murdered on TV at rates higher than any counterpart. Sapphic refers to a woman who, to some extent, is attracted to women. GLAAD found in their report that the past two years have seen an increase in the deaths of bisexual women, seen on shows such as The Family, The Catch, Empire, and more. Earlier in the same report they noted the increase in deaths of lesbians on shows like Chicago Fire. This harmful trope is titled “Bury Your Gays”, which, as it sounds, is when writers kill off queer characters in a show, book, or other media for no probable reason other than for shock value or to further the plot of straight counterparts. Autostraddle found that out of the outcomes of lesbian and bisexual female characters on TV, the most common outcome was dying, at 30% of all endings. They further found that out of the 11% of shows with sapphic characters, 84% of those shows did not have a happy ending for those lesbian and bisexual characters. Some of the most famous lesbian deaths recently have been Lexa from The 100, Poussey from Orange Is the New Black, and Victoria Hand from Agents of Shield.

Yes, it can be argued that representation for the LGBT community has improved compared to the past, and it definitely has. The main point in that argument tends to note the amount of LGBT+ characters. Though there are few, there have been an increase in non-straight characters on TV; that can’t be denied. But it’s important to consider quality over quantity. TV is one of the most popular and widespread mediums of information and media in the world. It has the potential to tell so many different and diverse stories, yet writers seem to only be telling certain people’s stories. When writers do tell the stories of the LGBT+ community, they’re often shrouded in harmful tropes and stereotypes.

Despite the progress being made in favor of LGBT+ rights and justice, there’s still a plethora of work to do. This lack of well-rounded and healthy representation can begin to be remedied by placing more queer writers at the helm of queer stories. To truly understand the real queer experience, someone who has lived it first-hand should have a say in the creative process. Whether it’s on cable TV or streamed on services like Netflix and Amazon Prime, Television is a way that people connect to other people and their stories. If writers aren’t telling everyone’s stories accurately and without bias, Television cannot reach it’s potential audience. Progress is being made, but true equality cannot be attained until everyone’s stories are told.