November 30, 2016 • 49 mins
For LGBTQ characters on TV, it's been an especially deadly year, and fans are fed up. Cristen and Caroline unpack the Bury Your Gays trope, how it affects offscreen culture and whether the Lexa Pledge will make a difference.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you from how stupp
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and today we're talking about a
TV topic that a lot of you lovely listeners have
asked us to investigate. Yeah, and that is the barrier
(00:25):
gaze trope, also known as the dead lesbian syndrome or
dead lesbian trope. Basically, things reached a fever pitch recently
with lesbian and by characters specifically getting killed off of shows,
and a lot of you guys wrote in Yeah, and
if you aren't familiar with the trope, which honestly I
was not before doing research for this episode, you can
(00:48):
already tell just by the names of barrier gaze and
what's the lesbian dead lesbian dead lesbian syndrome? Probably not
positive depictions going on. And it's an extension too, of
conversations that you and I have had and also when
we had a transactivist and friend, Raquel Willison here just
(01:10):
about the issue of the tragic queer character, both in
literature and big screen and small screen. And today we're
really focusing in on television and why people are specially
concerned and calling it out today as in, like right
(01:30):
this very day, the day you're listening to this these days. Okay, Well,
first we do want to give you a breakdown basically
of what this trope is, what it means, what it indicates,
and how it sort of exists at a cross section
of a few other tropes. But basically barrier gays or
dead lesbian syndrome tropes involved gay characters getting killed off.
(01:53):
Not surprisingly, that's pretty pretty self evident. Uh, it's another
way of not allowing them happy endings. It's obviously the
most extreme version of not allowing them happy endings. Uh.
And it, like Kristen said, it goes along with that
tragic gay or tragic queer character trope of like you've
got to be punished for your subversive activity or going
against the norm. Um. And as TV tropes dot Com
(02:18):
explained it, it's a great, great resource. Uh. This exists
at the intersection of the sex is evil trope and
the all gays are promiscuous tropes, so sex is evil.
You might also see that, of course, and like horror
movies when the virgin has sex and she's like instantly killed.
Horror movies are a trope um. Corn ucopia, oh, coucopia
(02:40):
of tropes solicition. I take that to Thanksgiving with me.
But it doesn't have to happen to LGBT characters in relationships.
They don't have to actually be having sex or be
dating for them to be killed off. In case you're wondering, Um,
you also might have the trope of the psycho lesbian
or the depraved homosexuals tropes. Um. Basically, uh, the gay
(03:05):
character or you know, the LGBT character in question might
simply be getting punished, especially if he or she tried
to pervert another character on the show. So if you
had a lesbian character confessing her feelings to a presumably
straight lady character, um, that character is probably gonna get
(03:26):
killed off. Yeah, because if you look at film history,
gay characters have typically been evil because of their deviant sexuality.
And that also ties into the trope of all gays
or promiscuous. They're evil by virtue of their sexual proclivities
and insatiable sexual appetite. This is also something that we
(03:48):
talked about a lot in our Bisexual Erasure podcast. Um,
and if they aren't evil, then they must die, you know,
and the usually die in a magic Pixie dream girl
kind of way in order to further a straight person's narrative,
or they might even uh serve the role uh that
(04:11):
you see often with like the magical black person who's
so wise hashtag legend of bagg Er Vance. I don't
know why I needed a hashtag that. That's just the
title of a movie where where hashtag Morgan Freeman. Yes, um,
where the gay character doesn't really have any storyline to themselves,
(04:31):
but they're just there to share their gay wisdom and
then disappear gay wisdom in order to though only develop
with stre people. That the plot of Queer Eye for
the straight guy gay wisdom. I think so. Um yeah,
I love that you brought up the manic Pixie dream
girl because while the manic Pixie dream Girl is punished
for her cuteness and quirkiness by having to date the
(04:54):
whole the drag of a main character hashtag exact breath.
We just hashtag all of the name so we mentioned
hashtag zac breath. Listeners are saying, um, well, the the
magical gay character just gets killed off. Um it ties
into these other troops. One is too good for this
(05:17):
sinful earth or the heroic sacrifice trope, um with the
justification that you know, these people are just they're too good.
And you saw that trip start to evolve as our
attitudes towards LGBT people I r L in real life
started to improve. So like, well, all right, we don't
want to necessarily like punish someone for being gay because
(05:41):
it's not so devian anymore. We're more accepting now, so
let's just kill them off because they're too good, they're
too cure. They're still not being humanized as characters. But
caveat here. A queer character dying on screen does not
necessarily always meet the qualification of this barrier gaze trope,
(06:05):
because if you're working with on anyone can die trope
situation allah Game of Thrones, it's probably not there to
teach anyone anything or indicate prejudice of some sort. It's
just George RR. Martin being like I love killing people.
I love fred Red wedding exactly, and especially when you
(06:29):
have so many characters on Game of Thrones who do
have sort of fluid sexuality. Yeah, um, it's like, oh, well, good,
so they're just being killed off because on the way
that any other human character would be killed off off
it's equal killing, you know, and that's what we're really
about here, equal killing, equal character murder. Before we go
(06:52):
any further in this podcast episode, though, we must issue
a spoiler alert, and I mean and that goes out
saying like murdering characters is like the whole topic of
this spoiler. So the first spoiler alert applies to show
the one hundred, because an incident in this show is
(07:13):
really what sparked a lot of conversation and backlash against
Barrier Gaze and has now reached the industry Hollywood that's
now grappling with, well, how should we do this? Because
the fan outrage was so loud and so strong when
(07:34):
a beloved character, very tough woman, luxA, was killed and
it seemed like she was senselessly killed. Yeah, and that
was the tipping point. But she was not the first
such character to die. So in February, in March of
like a whole Messa women were killed off. You had
Rose killed. She was on Jane the Virgin. That was
(07:57):
in February. She was killed off. Then let Pa on
The One, then Kira on The Magicians, and then Denise
on The Walking Dad, who I think got a like
an arrow through the eye as she was talking. Yeah, yeah,
a lot of these barrier gays deaths and with just
stray bullets, they like catch other people's bullets or throw
themselves in front of someone else, sort of sacrificial lamb style.
(08:21):
But in the in the case of Alexa, you know,
the bullet I believe that killed her um wasn't meant
for her. And people were especially outrage because not only
is she a queer character, but in the story arc
she had just reached this pivotal moment with a romantic plotline,
(08:43):
and I think that they had finally had sex for
the first time and then boomed death. Yeah, well exactly.
And I mean these women in that show were allowed
to be fierce warriors, independent, they had agency. Alexa in particular,
was her Clans warrior commander, and she was in a
(09:05):
relationship with Clark, who was the leader of her own people.
And these Clexa fans, because everybody loves to put names together,
Clexa fans did have a real reason to hope. I mean,
they were in contact with series creator Jason Rothenberg and
his staff. They were talking on Twitter, they were talking
all over the internet, and they'd really engaged the audience
(09:27):
and encouraged their love of Clark and Alexa. They were like, yeah,
these are great characters. Were glad you love them, continue
to love them. We're gonna make them fall in love
with each other. But it's gonna be complicated because you'll
love that even more because that's how relationships were. But unfortunately,
the actress Alicia debnham Carey who played Alexa, was getting
ready to move over to Fear the Walking Debt. She
(09:49):
got a new job, so they had to kill her off.
Just so happens that her character was a really powerful lesbian. Uh.
So she ends up taking a stray bullet and all
the nerd rage. But so you mentioned like, oh, but
she had just reached this pivotal point in her relationship
and character. The audience loved her, and then all of
a sudden she dies. That exactly parallels earlier nerd rage
(10:11):
from two thousand two. Hollywood Reporter read all about this.
Uh when Tara on Buffy was killed. So, as Hollywood
Reporter points out, both of these characters, Tara and Lexa
were shown consummating their relationships with their female love interest
just minutes before getting killed. Both were hit by stray bullets.
(10:34):
Meant for another person. Both died in their lover's arms,
and both have led to fandom outrage, and in the
case of Alexa, the fans also felt bamboozled in a
way because they felt like their their fandom had kind
of been used against them to sort of draw them
(10:54):
in with the what they felt like was a direct
contact with the showrunner UM and suddenly the thing that
they loved and we're rooting for was taken away for
them from them UM. So that started the hashtag LGBT
Fans Deserve Better on Twitter, and they're now two websites,
(11:16):
We Deserve Better dot com and LGBT Fans Deserve Better
dot com, which has a ton of great resources if
you want to learn more about these tropes and just
about l g B t Q I a representation UM
in film and television. Uh, that's quickly developed into a
great source for that. Yeah. But they also channeled their
(11:39):
frustration and nerd rage into in real life activism as well.
They helped raise tens of thousands of dollars for this
group called the Trevor Project, which is a nonprofit focused
on l g B t Q youth suicide prevention. So
this is not just something that you can dismiss with like, oh,
those are angry fan girls and fan boys. No, these
(12:00):
are people who are putting their money where their mouth
is and saying, Okay, are you going to continue to
show negative representations or not allow gay characters to have
happy endings? Well, we are going to counteract that in
real life and try to counteract any effect that those
negative depictions might have and support our fellow l g
B t q i A community members. Which makes sense
(12:22):
when I r L again, I think this episode might
be the most times we've ever used I r L
and I'm totally cool with it, um, but also to
the betrayal of being a queer fan sitting there and
seeing this happening, and then when you turn off a
TV and you have to walk outside, go to school
and be in public and also be concerned for your
(12:44):
safety potentially, you know, like there there are a lot
of layers to this. This is about a lot more
than just having a beloved character taken away. And as
a result of this fandom force, the mains stream media
has taken note and uh Rothenberg, the show creator, directly
(13:05):
apologized UM and it sparked a lot of coverage from
Auto Straddle in particular. Auto Straddle always sit on the
podcast all the time. They're a terrific site for all
things queer, so check them out if you haven't already. Um.
But they put together a list of killed off lesbian
and by characters beginning in nineteen seventies six and even
(13:28):
looking outside of shows in the United States, and they
revised it to then include a total of one hundred
sixties six. When they opened up, you know, the comment
thread to fan saying, Okay, who have we missed? And
boy is it startling how many they did miss Yeah,
And you know, because that list does open it up
to shows all over the world. Germans, you've got a
(13:50):
lot of dead lesbians on your media's. There was that
one show in particular too where I can't remember what
it wants. There were a lot yeah German listeners, if
you know what we're talking about. Because scrolling through it
was like every other one, it was like good dust house.
(14:10):
That's and that's the well my favorites. So anyway, because
so many of the shows were not U S Bace shows,
I had not seen a lot of them. Um. And
some of my favorites though, and that's a weird thing
to say your favorite character dirforite characters who were then
also killed. Um, we're definitely Rachel from House of Cards. Um,
(14:33):
she's a bisexual character who had met a terrible fate,
poor thing, bless her heart. But also from Boardwalk Empire,
one of my favorite shows that I legit miss being
on the air. Um, Angela Darmody who was Jimmy Darmity's wife.
Uh so another bisexual character and her lover, Louise Bryant.
(14:55):
They were killed in this tragic misunderstanding. This gangster show
s up to kill Jimmy, but he gets there and
it's only Jimmy's wife And when her lover comes out
of the bathroom, he thinks it's gonna be Jimmy because
there's his wife in bed, right, so that's got to
be Jimmy. No, it's another woman, and he like confusedly
and panic e lishly shoots both women and it's it
(15:20):
was horrible. It was so sad, panicky lishly. Also, it's
my new favorite advert, you're welcome. Well, I just Angela
Darmony's character was so great on on board Walk Empire,
And if you haven't watched the show, I recommend you
do it. Um. It's a good binge watching show. Um.
And it kind of follows a pattern that I casually
(15:42):
noticed scrolling through that auto straddle list, where it seems
like for lesbian and bisexual women who were killed off,
there's also that negative undercurrent of uh, the deceitful lesbian
and by actual woman usually she's perhaps like cheating on
(16:03):
her husband with a woman and he is then enraged
and kills her. There's a lot of murder by jealous
lovers going on as well. Now. The thing is, though,
all of these character deaths go back way farther, way
farther back in time than Lexa getting killed on the
one hundred, and both the character killings and the audience
(16:28):
reactions are tied into a lot of views about the acceptance,
honestly of LGBT people in real life, in reality. And
so we are going to dive into some of that
historical representation of LGBT folks on screen. We come right
back from a quick break, so to put a little
(16:57):
historical context on this conversation, as we like to do you
you here at stuff Mom never told you. We're relying
a lot on a book by Stephen Shropiano called the
Primetime Closet a history of gays and lesbians on TV,
and as it's probably not surprising as the l g
(17:18):
B t q I A community has gotten louder and
more visible off screen, uh, they've become more fed up
with that lackluster and often discriminatory media representation, which today
is mirroring what happened back in the sixties and seventies,
(17:39):
which is when we see the first lesbians in particular
start dying on television. Yeah, and so if we go
back to the nineteen sixties, basically through the mid sixties,
the discussion and representation of gay people on TV was
generally limited to talk shows. I thought that was interesting.
I had never thought about that really, And that is because, uh,
(18:03):
you know, the same way that today, on like sixty
Minutes or Barbara Walters or something like that, they might
take a social issue that a lot of people are
scared of, like heroin abuse or opiate overdoses and go
dive deep into it for an hour to address people's fears.
The same freaking thing was happening with LGBT people back
(18:25):
in the day. So in response to viewers presumed concern
over gay people these talk shows. Uh, we're investigating homosexuality
along the same lines as alcoholism or drug abuse, because,
like Kristen was saying, as the LGBT community is getting bigger,
more vocal, more visible, so is the concern and the
(18:50):
homophobia around them. Well, at this time it was mostly
focused towards gam in because at the time people were like,
what lesbians, that's just you have some like weird problem
where maybe your husband isn't satisfying you. But gay men,
we're watching you. That's deviant. And I would also like
(19:10):
a quick side note when you said talk shows, the
first thing I thought of was like Jerry Springer style
talk shows. But I don't know that Jerry Springer show
is not on in the sixties and seventies. But I
would imagine that you would also see them on daytime
talk shows, but more in the freak show style of
look at these you know, she didn't know her husband
(19:32):
was gay kind of thing. Just like again, being treated
as characters rather than people. Uh. And in nine seven
oh Mike Wallace and CBS News produced a special report
on gay people literally called CBS News the Homosexuals. I mean,
(19:55):
it would be funny if it weren't so awful, right,
I mean, very much a product of its time. But
Mike Wallace interviews all these gay men and describes them
as quote the most despised minority group in the United States, which, Okay,
he might not be off the mark there, but then
he starts talking to psychoanalysts, and this is really where
(20:18):
the the thing just goes right off the side of
the cliff. Yeah, because one of those psychoanalysts that he
talked to emphasized being gay as a mental illness which
has reached epidemiological proportions. He also indicated that it's a
learned behavior tied with an unnaturally strong tie with the mother,
which disrupts normal gender identity, triggers separation anxiety, and prevents
(20:44):
him from forming heterosexual relationships in adulthood. Oh good, So
we're not quite past Freud yet, we're still very very
afraid of what it means to be gay. But not
too long after that's b S Report comes out, you
have some massive cultural shifts going on, because in June
(21:05):
n sixty nine you get the Stonewall Riots, which marks
basically the beginning of the modern vocal gay liberation movement,
and that means more than ever. The community is more visible,
and it's a more viable political force, and quick Stone
Wall shout out to trans women of color. Yeah, and
and so things start falling like dominoes when it comes
(21:28):
to the gay rights movement. In nineteen seventy three, the
American Bar Association passed a resolution supporting the repeal of
state sodomy laws, and just a year later, in seventy four,
homosexuality is finally removed from the from the American Psychiatric
Association's list of mental disorders. The same year, um you
get federal anti gay discrimination bills introduced into the House,
(21:51):
and it failed, but similar measures were passing in cities
and counties around the country, and all of us is
being mirrored on television in the nineteen seventies where you
actually start to see gay characters on TV medical dramas
like The bold Ones Medical Center, which I like how
(22:13):
it's like you, well, you know what you're getting with
that one, and Marcus Welby m D. Yeah. And I mean,
just like we've seen in these in these trends we've
been talking about, in response to the growing gay rights movement,
LGBT characters are starting to get treated with a more
liberal attitude. That's great, right, yeah, more liberal attitude, but
(22:36):
but we're still scared of them, right, that that fear
and condemnation that sort of pervaded all of the earlier
talk shows and CBS specials um was just replaced with pity, intolerance,
not acceptance and treating them like human people. Yeah, I
mean still there's a there's this old saying that I
(22:58):
remember from my Christian upbringing of love the sinner, hate
the sin, and very much that that kind of mindset
with this, oh well, we accept you, but not actually really,
because we think that inside your core something is broken, right,
and so on these shows, if it was the patient
who was gay, Uh, the sexuality itself was not treated
(23:22):
as a disease, which okay, good um, but that's so
called or so deemed sexual confusion or homosexual panic was
often part of the plots medical mystery and linked with
some other condition like diabetes, heart disease, or ulcers. You
know how these medical shows even today always have to
have some like underlying drama driving the plot. It's not
(23:46):
just like she came in with a headache. It's like
she came in with a headache because she's in the
medal of homosexual panic. I'm trying to now imagine an
episode of House or It's like, well, it turns out
he's gay, that's it. So in other words, basically, with
these plotlines, you had to resolve the questionable sexual orientation
(24:10):
before you could uncover and treat that underlying medical condition.
And of course being gay was usually linked with a
parent and or just choosing the lifestyle. So, for instance,
this one example that author Stephen Tropiano gives is you
have this man in this one episode on a medical
show who he's diabetic, He's gaining a lot of weight,
(24:31):
He's miserable, and so is his wife. His miserable wife
is complaining about how basically she doesn't get laid anymore
and she wants to divorce him. And their son is
quiet and withdrawn. So, like all of these health problems
combined with social and marital and parental problems, what's going on?
Diagnosis gay? Yeah, Basically, the doctor figures out that this
(24:52):
diabetic man is gay, and the diagnosis, so to speak,
basically sends him into deep depression and he attempts sue
is side, which, hello, we already have like a super
high rate of LGBT people in this country being more
likely to attempt suicide. So the character attempts suicide, goes
to a shrink. Oh, but it's a happy end in Christina.
(25:14):
What happens, right, Well, he goes to the shrink and
he finds out that he's not actually gay. It's just
his fear of homosexuality that's at the root of a
neurosis oh called internalized homophobia. Right, so thank god? Right, Like,
he's not actually gay, you just hate gay people, and
therefore he doesn't have to die. Yeah, exactly. Um, and
(25:37):
if we hot forward across a lot of doctors and
nurse characters at this time who are never really fully
fleshed out, but they might be gay and they don't
necessarily die, but they're just sort of like sideshow freaks really,
right Like, So if a doctor comes out, it's usually
not going to be a recurring character a doctor a nurse.
It's it's going to be someone who's in there to
stir up a bit of drama. And because they've stirred
(25:58):
up drama, they're put either their lives or the patient's
life at risks. So you gotta go, sister, get out
of here, Get out of here and literally get out
of here one woman did. Okay, that's a weird way
to say that the character was killed off. So when
we get to the nineteen seventy six, there's a soap
opera called Executive Suite, and this is the origin of
(26:24):
the so called dead lesbian syndrome. So on an episode
of Executive Suite, there's this woman Julie who confesses to
another woman, Leona, that hey, Leona, I'm a lesbian. And
Leona is like, oh my god, Julie, I'm a lesbian too,
and I'm very attracted to you. And but they're both like,
(26:47):
but diagnosis gay. This can't be right. And so Julie
gets so upset and she rushes after Leona, who's just like,
you know, trying to I guess, trying to run away
from her lesbianism. And Julie gets hit by a truck.
And then get this Julie's husband, because of course here
(27:11):
we go with like the deceitful sexuality thing. Julie's husband
then blames Leona, and Leona has a nervous breakdown. So
we only have one dead lesbian here. The other one
is safely tucked away in a some kind of mental institution. Yeah,
so good, we're all safe, right, the lesbians were putting
them away. Um, but yeah, that that executive suite has
(27:35):
always cited as the first time you start to see
lesbian or by or gay characters just getting killed off
his punishment not having to quit their line of work
as a doctor on a show. And even though old
Twitter and snap chits didn't exist, there was protest. So
(27:56):
as gay advocacy groups and activists in all eyes started
noticing this pattern on television, especially on primetime TV, they
began to stand up against it, especially because primetime television
was critically symbolic in their struggle to gain acceptance in
(28:17):
wider society. Because it's like, if if you can be
portrayed as an actual human person who's not broken, you
simply like everyone else, possesses sexual orientation of some sort,
then that is a sign of a cultural shift in
a positive direction. Um and gay activists succeeded in sending
(28:40):
a clear message to television producers and broadcasters and listen,
these negative, malicious stereotypes are not gonna be tolerated. So
history is repeating itself really in terms of activism around it. Yeah,
it seems like the more vocal and this is not
just for LGBT fix but the more vocal a marginalized
(29:01):
group is the harder and weirder. The pushback is from
dominant groups. And we are going to get into this. Um. So, listeners,
if you have insights, please share them with us. But
I am now curious, since this what's going on in
the seventies and uh, gay advocacy groups were making headway,
(29:24):
what impact then the AIDS crisis had on all of
it this? If it stalled it, if it pushed it back. Um, well,
I think that would play into and please, I do
want to hear from listeners, but I think that would
play into the pity the gay person. Um, don't fear
the gay person or condemn the gay person as much,
at least as it played out on TV or in
(29:46):
mini series or things like that. But here's the thing, Caroline.
Straight characters are killed off all of the time. It's true.
What's wrong with that? We're going to talk about that
when we get right back from a quick break. So
(30:12):
in the words with Jerry Seinfeld, scene field as I
like to call, what's the deal with the straight characters dying?
And we're not calling it the barrier straights trope. I'm
playing like an an culturish devil's advocate right now, and
I really don't like it. Well. Reese over at Auto
(30:33):
Straddle puts it really well. Um, so I will quote her.
Reese says, we comprise such a teeny tiny fraction of
characters on television to begin with, that killing us off
so haphazardly feels especially cruel. And this is something that
Dorothy Snarker love your Last Name Dot echoes over at
Hollywood Reporter. She says, it's not that lesbian and bisexual
(30:55):
characters shouldn't ever die on screen, far from it, but
currently our track magic endings are shown at an inordinately
higher rate than our happy ones. Yeah, I mean painting.
And this was something too that this makes me think
a lot of Raquel Willis in our conversation with her
about trans characters on television in particular, and just her
(31:18):
desire and that we share with her to see portrayals
of trans people who aren't tragic, who can fall in love,
who can like live a life like everyone else you know,
and and just be characters, um, rather than having to
be the tragic other. Um. And you also have to
(31:40):
keep in mind statistically, just the disproportionate rate of these
kinds of characters being killed off if you look if
you compare to population wise, not only their representation on screen, um,
but also more broadly, Yeah, I mean LGBT characters are
super underrepresented on TV, but their deaths are overrepresented. And
(32:03):
so basically, if one straight character is killed, there's still
going to be a whole mess of other straight characters left,
a whole mess of home, a whole mess of them,
and this shows lousy with them. Um. But if a
gay character is skilled, it's not like there's going to
be so many other LGBT characters in the wings too.
I don't want to say cushion the blow, but like
(32:24):
it's it's a harder hit basically character wise, if like
you're one gay character or you're like two gay characters
are killed off, and chances are that's not even going
to be a lead character, So you don't even have
a fully fleshed out like person there. They might just
beIN robbing up the storyline. Yeah. Um and Vox tallied
(32:45):
up all of the deaths, all the TV deaths from
seventy six to and they were focusing on American television
because they noticed especially with and they only do tie
it to um spoiler Ned Starks death on Game of
Thrones starting this trend of a lot of death on television.
(33:12):
So for an idea of just how deathly TV has become,
so Vox crunched the numbers and found the two characters
of all characters on TV died between the fall and
spring television seasons, and that about ten percent of those
(33:32):
were lgbt Q women. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, we we
do love statistics here, so I have some more for you. Um.
Auto Straddle also crunched some numbers and posted this fabulous
infographic that looked at lgbt Q characters deaths between nineteen
seventy six and twenty sixteen. Uh. They said that there
(33:54):
were more than fifteen hundred shows with straight characters and
just one hundred and ninety three featuring lesbian or by characters,
which is about eleven percent. Of those one shows, sixty
eight had dead lesbians, and about half of those were
shows where anyone can die, like a Game of Thrones.
(34:15):
And again, of the lesbian featuring shows, just sixteen had
happy endings for lesbian and by characters. And the thing
that is emphasized over and over again is that, ay,
this is not great. Why are we over representing gay
characters death, Well, we just talked a lot about it.
But also this negative representation is reinforcing a lot of
(34:37):
cultural bs that is happening right now, because we all
want to see ourselves represented positively in media, right and
when LGBTQ kids or adults for that matter, only see
themselves as tools facing imminent demise, as Snarker writes, death
sadness and despair can seem like a self fulfilling prophecy. Yeah.
(34:59):
And and if you even see a gay character on television,
um GLAD studies this every year and keeps talies and
um in. Out of one regular roles on broadcast TV,
only four percent or thirty five of them belonged to
(35:23):
l g b t Q characters. Um. So, first of all,
they're you're you're not even seeing them, But then when
you are, you're seeing them meet tragedy. And in the
context of our off screen wave of anti lgbt Q
sentiment and legislation like the whole bathroom bill issue that
(35:44):
is now made its way up to the Supreme Court.
Um and the fact that you can still be fired
for your sexual orientation in most states. UM. And also
on top of that, issues like the super high unemployment
rate among trans individuals, the homelessness rate among lgbt Q youth,
bullying UH, and links to attempted suicide and drug abuse,
(36:10):
like it's it's not offering very much, hope. You know
that's not exactly. You know, we watched TV a lot
of times as an escape, right, but that's not an escape,
it's just a reinforcement. And I mean, tropes are tropes
for a reason, right. They exist as tropes because they
happen so often, and they are props for storylines that
(36:32):
are used so often that you can spot them, and
they are coded in a certain way so you know
what is happening and why something is happening. And to me,
like we can live a lay filled it because otherwise
it's clearly just becoming lazy storytelling. At some point now
it's already become lazy storytelling. And so that's why it's
so interesting to study UH storylines that take this dead
(36:56):
lesbian syndrome trope or this barrier gaze trope and put
a different bend in the storyline so that it is
tragic when a character dies, when a queer character dies,
when a character of color dies. Um, but that it
doesn't have to be meaninglessly tragic. And an example of
(37:19):
that and major spoiler alert to Orange is the New Black.
Fans who are not caught up on the show, skip
ahead or just listen to another episode because this is
a big one. So in the latest season finale, pos
Se is tragically and senselessly killed during a peaceful protest
(37:46):
at the prison where the show takes place. Yeah, and
as you can imagine, people freaked out. I know, she
was one of my faves. She was probably my favorite. Um,
she was a great character. Her relationship with Taste, Yeah,
she's She's a great character on TV, but also a
great depiction of just just a kind like if you
(38:08):
were in real life, I would want to be friends
with you. Um. And and you can imagine that people
freaked out, not just because she was such a beloved character,
but here she has a queer character of color. And
Katherine Van Aaron Donk, another great name over at Vulture
in June really kind of investigated Pussy's death from the
perspective of all of the anger that fans were feeling,
(38:31):
especially through the lens of the Barrier Gaye trope, like
why do we have to kill off yet another queer
female character, and Van Aaron Donk basically comes to the
conclusion through her piece of like, well, this isn't the
same thing really as Barrier Gaze. Pussay's death was not
(38:52):
simply there to prop up a straight white character storyline,
even though a white character is technically the quote unquote
lead of that show. Yeah, if she had like taken
a bullet for Piper or something, we would be having
a different conversation, right, But pus Say is not the
only queer character on the show, not the only queer
character of color on the show. And she wasn't killed
because she was a queer woman. Yeah. And and clearly
(39:16):
her being senselessly killed by hired law enforcement UM in
the case of the prison, by these correctional officers UM,
mirrors what is happening offscreen with police brutality and black
lives matter. And the entire episode became really a eulogy
(39:42):
to Pussay, Yeah, and a eulogy for the black people
in this country who have been gunned down by police UM.
And it's also a commentary on our prison system, our
justice system. Uh, the fact that someone who was so beloved,
a character who was so beloved by the other characters
but also the audience could just be um wiped off
(40:04):
the face of the earth in just a moment like that,
in a moment that they were trying to restrain her
and they accidentally killed her. It is senseless, but it
has so much meaning, and it was monumental for the
show and for the other characters. It wasn't treated as
just like and now the storyline progressed, right, and now
a joke from Pensa chucky right. And of course another
(40:29):
show and again massive spoiler alert, but another show that
really does kind of an interesting take on the traditional
barrier gaze trope is Black Mirror. They're all standalone episodes,
and the episode titled San Junipero, features two queer women
characters who fall in love. So you imagine, like, well,
(40:52):
tragedies right around the corner, and it kind of is,
but there's a happy ending. Oh yeah, they pull this
off flawlessly. I thought I loved the episode. Um, how
do we even describe it? It's such a I don't
I want listeners to watch it because it really is
a beautiful episode and very unblack mirror and it's uh
(41:14):
and it's happy ending spoiler alert, um, But it doesn't.
While Yorki one of the characters, we know that her
family was not accepting of her being a lesbian and
that when she came out, she uh left the house
(41:34):
I believe, and was in a terrible car accident the
paralyzed her. Um. So you do have like that element
of punishment. But when it comes to their love story,
it's really pure and beautiful. You know, it's too It's
it's fun to watch because it's two young women being
so giddy in their love for each other. And there's
(41:55):
drama and there's conflict and should I should we do
I love you? Do I not? Do I want to
be with you? Um? And they do get to be together.
But here's the twist, so again spoiler like if you're
still listening together, UM. But the whole thing is this
exists in the future, and in the future, when you die,
you have the opportunity to basically be uploaded to some
(42:17):
spirit cloud. Basically Apple is our overlord, um. And it
is through this program that these two women who would
not have otherwise been able to even meet or be together.
Uh got to not only meet and not only fall
in love and be giddy and have great sex, but
(42:39):
they got to go off into the sunset in a
jeep wrangler and live happily ever after together. So yes,
is their punishment? Is there? Uh the acknowledgement of life
not being not easy for queer people. Yes, but through
death they get to live together forever. Um. And also
(43:00):
the fact that we have Kelly Um who is proudly
and openly bisexual, and she's a woman of color, and
her character also was married and had a child. Um
and her husband and a daughter had had both since
died and chose not to go to uh the cloud.
(43:24):
It chose not to go to the Steve Jobs heaven. Um.
So that too is a pretty revolutionary depiction that you
rarely see on television. So I thought that they handled
it swimmingly. And this was certainly a fine example of
queer people dying on a show, but the death being
(43:48):
joyful and yeah, and it being just the beginning. They
get to have their their happy ending together. And there's
been this thing called the Lexa Pledge that UM some
creators developed in the wake of fan protest over Lex's death.
In the one hundred um that has sparked more conversations
(44:10):
about show runner responsibility for how they depict gay characters,
because there is that line between not wanting to stifle
the creative process but also understanding that as a creator,
you have a responsibility to your audience and if you
care about the impact of your media that you're making
on the world at large, then it's something that you
(44:34):
absolutely need to consider. Um So, I'll be really curious
and I'm hopeful to see whether this barrier gaze trope dies,
whether we can bury it um and I know that
we have probably missed a lot of examples of this.
Um So, listeners, please phillis in um let us know
(44:58):
what you think about it and if there are any
similarly troubling tropes that you also think need to die.
Mom Stuff at how stuffworks dot com is our email address.
You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or
messages on Facebook, and we've had a couple of messages
to share with you right now. Well, I have a
(45:20):
letter here from Rua. I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly.
Rua in response to our Madam President's episode. She wrote
in specifically about Ireland. Uh So, she says, First off,
I'm proud that we've had two women presidents in our country. However,
the president has no real power and is mainly a
figurehead who represents the country. The leader of the country
is the t shock, and we have never had a
(45:42):
woman as t shock. Having said this, Mary Robinson was
not only the first woman president, she was the first
president to take the job seriously. Before her, the job
was basically a retirement position, but she really advocated for
more modern Ireland and pushed for women's rights, travelers rights,
better immigration policy. She annoyed people in power by not
doing what she was told, for example visiting the Dali
(46:05):
Lama despite everyone saying it was a bad idea and
would annoyed China. Anyway, Mary Robinson is a generally badass lady,
and talk about a change. When Mary mcleys was elected
after her, there was only one male candidate out of four.
Asked for the odds of having two Marys in a
row as President of Ireland, those odds are pretty high,
I'd say, as we have a lot of Mary's here.
(46:27):
I'll also briefly respond to your question on why when
we elected such a forward thinking awesome, lady. As far
back as and why we still haven't cracked a legal
abortion yet, I think you have to understand how far
we've come. Since Robinson was president, it was illegal to
sell any sort of contraception except under prescription to a
married couple. Homosexuality was still a crime, marital rape was
(46:47):
not a crime, divorce was illegal and impossible, and mother
and baby homes as well as Magdalen laundrys had only
just stopped operating legally. I believe at the time only
fringe and underground groups even said the ward abortion, and
people like Robinson advocated for the more immediate and possibly
viewed as more acceptable access to contraception. Things have changed now,
(47:09):
and tens of thousands march on the street for legalized
abortion rights. It's a question of when, not if at
this stage. Anyway, Sorry for going on so much. Just
thought that since you enlighten me so often on so
many things and brighten up my day while doing so,
I thought I may, in a small way return the
favor was with some Irish knowledge. Well, thank you so much.
We appreciate that Irish knowledge, and I have a letter
(47:31):
here from Helen about our Madam President's episode and Helen writes,
I've definitely seen the barriers women face in politics and
loved hearing the framing of the glass cliff something that
makes a lot of sense. It happened here in Canada
with our only female Prime Minister, Kim Campbell, as a
Canadian and someone who campaigned for the Liberal Party during
(47:52):
our election last year. I really wanted to say how
much I love the way you talk about Justin Trudeau.
I've met him a few times, Jelly, and he really
is a pretty amazing guy and someone I feel so
lucky to have as my prime minister. But your love
for him cracks me up the best way possible. Every
single time. I happened to be walking past Parliament while
you were talking about him in the Madam President's episode,
(48:14):
and it was just such a hilariously perfect moment. Thanks
for all the amazing work you both do and all
the love you send Canada's way. Can't wait to hear
what you have to talk about next, Oh, Helen, thank
you so much. And you know we send love to
Canada because y'all send a lot of love our way
as well. And uh, certainly today I am extra jealous
(48:38):
Justin Trudeau and I would just like to to make
a small side note. UM, I did notice this was
not a majority of emails by any stretch, but I
did notice that we had received at least one email saying, Hey,
it sounded like you think prime ministers don't work as hard,
or don't have as much responsibility, or aren't as good
as presidents. What gives? And I just want to assure
you that that's not at all we're trying to say. UM,
(49:00):
just that the parliamentary and the presidential systems are quite
different and they elect people differently, and that that's all
you're saying. And now, friends, you can send us your
thoughts as well. Mom stuff at how stuff works dot
com is where you can send them and for links
to all of our social media as well as all
of our blogs, videos and podcasts with our sources so
(49:22):
you can learn even more about television tropes, head on
over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
stuff Works dot com
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you from how stupp
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and today we're talking about a
TV topic that a lot of you lovely listeners have
asked us to investigate. Yeah, and that is the barrier
(00:25):
gaze trope, also known as the dead lesbian syndrome or
dead lesbian trope. Basically, things reached a fever pitch recently
with lesbian and by characters specifically getting killed off of shows,
and a lot of you guys wrote in Yeah, and
if you aren't familiar with the trope, which honestly I
was not before doing research for this episode, you can
(00:48):
already tell just by the names of barrier gaze and
what's the lesbian dead lesbian dead lesbian syndrome? Probably not
positive depictions going on. And it's an extension too, of
conversations that you and I have had and also when
we had a transactivist and friend, Raquel Willison here just
(01:10):
about the issue of the tragic queer character, both in
literature and big screen and small screen. And today we're
really focusing in on television and why people are specially
concerned and calling it out today as in, like right
(01:30):
this very day, the day you're listening to this these days. Okay, Well,
first we do want to give you a breakdown basically
of what this trope is, what it means, what it indicates,
and how it sort of exists at a cross section
of a few other tropes. But basically barrier gays or
dead lesbian syndrome tropes involved gay characters getting killed off.
(01:53):
Not surprisingly, that's pretty pretty self evident. Uh, it's another
way of not allowing them happy endings. It's obviously the
most extreme version of not allowing them happy endings. Uh.
And it, like Kristen said, it goes along with that
tragic gay or tragic queer character trope of like you've
got to be punished for your subversive activity or going
against the norm. Um. And as TV tropes dot Com
(02:18):
explained it, it's a great, great resource. Uh. This exists
at the intersection of the sex is evil trope and
the all gays are promiscuous tropes, so sex is evil.
You might also see that, of course, and like horror
movies when the virgin has sex and she's like instantly killed.
Horror movies are a trope um. Corn ucopia, oh, coucopia
(02:40):
of tropes solicition. I take that to Thanksgiving with me.
But it doesn't have to happen to LGBT characters in relationships.
They don't have to actually be having sex or be
dating for them to be killed off. In case you're wondering, Um,
you also might have the trope of the psycho lesbian
or the depraved homosexuals tropes. Um. Basically, uh, the gay
(03:05):
character or you know, the LGBT character in question might
simply be getting punished, especially if he or she tried
to pervert another character on the show. So if you
had a lesbian character confessing her feelings to a presumably
straight lady character, um, that character is probably gonna get
(03:26):
killed off. Yeah, because if you look at film history,
gay characters have typically been evil because of their deviant sexuality.
And that also ties into the trope of all gays
or promiscuous. They're evil by virtue of their sexual proclivities
and insatiable sexual appetite. This is also something that we
(03:48):
talked about a lot in our Bisexual Erasure podcast. Um,
and if they aren't evil, then they must die, you know,
and the usually die in a magic Pixie dream girl
kind of way in order to further a straight person's narrative,
or they might even uh serve the role uh that
(04:11):
you see often with like the magical black person who's
so wise hashtag legend of bagg Er Vance. I don't
know why I needed a hashtag that. That's just the
title of a movie where where hashtag Morgan Freeman. Yes, um,
where the gay character doesn't really have any storyline to themselves,
(04:31):
but they're just there to share their gay wisdom and
then disappear gay wisdom in order to though only develop
with stre people. That the plot of Queer Eye for
the straight guy gay wisdom. I think so. Um yeah,
I love that you brought up the manic Pixie dream
girl because while the manic Pixie dream Girl is punished
for her cuteness and quirkiness by having to date the
(04:54):
whole the drag of a main character hashtag exact breath.
We just hashtag all of the name so we mentioned
hashtag zac breath. Listeners are saying, um, well, the the
magical gay character just gets killed off. Um it ties
into these other troops. One is too good for this
(05:17):
sinful earth or the heroic sacrifice trope, um with the
justification that you know, these people are just they're too good.
And you saw that trip start to evolve as our
attitudes towards LGBT people I r L in real life
started to improve. So like, well, all right, we don't
want to necessarily like punish someone for being gay because
(05:41):
it's not so devian anymore. We're more accepting now, so
let's just kill them off because they're too good, they're
too cure. They're still not being humanized as characters. But
caveat here. A queer character dying on screen does not
necessarily always meet the qualification of this barrier gaze trope,
(06:05):
because if you're working with on anyone can die trope
situation allah Game of Thrones, it's probably not there to
teach anyone anything or indicate prejudice of some sort. It's
just George RR. Martin being like I love killing people.
I love fred Red wedding exactly, and especially when you
(06:29):
have so many characters on Game of Thrones who do
have sort of fluid sexuality. Yeah, um, it's like, oh, well, good,
so they're just being killed off because on the way
that any other human character would be killed off off
it's equal killing, you know, and that's what we're really
about here, equal killing, equal character murder. Before we go
(06:52):
any further in this podcast episode, though, we must issue
a spoiler alert, and I mean and that goes out
saying like murdering characters is like the whole topic of
this spoiler. So the first spoiler alert applies to show
the one hundred, because an incident in this show is
(07:13):
really what sparked a lot of conversation and backlash against
Barrier Gaze and has now reached the industry Hollywood that's
now grappling with, well, how should we do this? Because
the fan outrage was so loud and so strong when
(07:34):
a beloved character, very tough woman, luxA, was killed and
it seemed like she was senselessly killed. Yeah, and that
was the tipping point. But she was not the first
such character to die. So in February, in March of
like a whole Messa women were killed off. You had
Rose killed. She was on Jane the Virgin. That was
(07:57):
in February. She was killed off. Then let Pa on
The One, then Kira on The Magicians, and then Denise
on The Walking Dad, who I think got a like
an arrow through the eye as she was talking. Yeah, yeah,
a lot of these barrier gays deaths and with just
stray bullets, they like catch other people's bullets or throw
themselves in front of someone else, sort of sacrificial lamb style.
(08:21):
But in the in the case of Alexa, you know,
the bullet I believe that killed her um wasn't meant
for her. And people were especially outrage because not only
is she a queer character, but in the story arc
she had just reached this pivotal moment with a romantic plotline,
(08:43):
and I think that they had finally had sex for
the first time and then boomed death. Yeah, well exactly.
And I mean these women in that show were allowed
to be fierce warriors, independent, they had agency. Alexa in particular,
was her Clans warrior commander, and she was in a
(09:05):
relationship with Clark, who was the leader of her own people.
And these Clexa fans, because everybody loves to put names together,
Clexa fans did have a real reason to hope. I mean,
they were in contact with series creator Jason Rothenberg and
his staff. They were talking on Twitter, they were talking
all over the internet, and they'd really engaged the audience
(09:27):
and encouraged their love of Clark and Alexa. They were like, yeah,
these are great characters. Were glad you love them, continue
to love them. We're gonna make them fall in love
with each other. But it's gonna be complicated because you'll
love that even more because that's how relationships were. But unfortunately,
the actress Alicia debnham Carey who played Alexa, was getting
ready to move over to Fear the Walking Debt. She
(09:49):
got a new job, so they had to kill her off.
Just so happens that her character was a really powerful lesbian. Uh.
So she ends up taking a stray bullet and all
the nerd rage. But so you mentioned like, oh, but
she had just reached this pivotal point in her relationship
and character. The audience loved her, and then all of
a sudden she dies. That exactly parallels earlier nerd rage
(10:11):
from two thousand two. Hollywood Reporter read all about this.
Uh when Tara on Buffy was killed. So, as Hollywood
Reporter points out, both of these characters, Tara and Lexa
were shown consummating their relationships with their female love interest
just minutes before getting killed. Both were hit by stray bullets.
(10:34):
Meant for another person. Both died in their lover's arms,
and both have led to fandom outrage, and in the
case of Alexa, the fans also felt bamboozled in a
way because they felt like their their fandom had kind
of been used against them to sort of draw them
(10:54):
in with the what they felt like was a direct
contact with the showrunner UM and suddenly the thing that
they loved and we're rooting for was taken away for
them from them UM. So that started the hashtag LGBT
Fans Deserve Better on Twitter, and they're now two websites,
(11:16):
We Deserve Better dot com and LGBT Fans Deserve Better
dot com, which has a ton of great resources if
you want to learn more about these tropes and just
about l g B t Q I a representation UM
in film and television. Uh, that's quickly developed into a
great source for that. Yeah. But they also channeled their
(11:39):
frustration and nerd rage into in real life activism as well.
They helped raise tens of thousands of dollars for this
group called the Trevor Project, which is a nonprofit focused
on l g B t Q youth suicide prevention. So
this is not just something that you can dismiss with like, oh,
those are angry fan girls and fan boys. No, these
(12:00):
are people who are putting their money where their mouth
is and saying, Okay, are you going to continue to
show negative representations or not allow gay characters to have
happy endings? Well, we are going to counteract that in
real life and try to counteract any effect that those
negative depictions might have and support our fellow l g
B t q i A community members. Which makes sense
(12:22):
when I r L again, I think this episode might
be the most times we've ever used I r L
and I'm totally cool with it, um, but also to
the betrayal of being a queer fan sitting there and
seeing this happening, and then when you turn off a
TV and you have to walk outside, go to school
and be in public and also be concerned for your
(12:44):
safety potentially, you know, like there there are a lot
of layers to this. This is about a lot more
than just having a beloved character taken away. And as
a result of this fandom force, the mains stream media
has taken note and uh Rothenberg, the show creator, directly
(13:05):
apologized UM and it sparked a lot of coverage from
Auto Straddle in particular. Auto Straddle always sit on the
podcast all the time. They're a terrific site for all
things queer, so check them out if you haven't already. Um.
But they put together a list of killed off lesbian
and by characters beginning in nineteen seventies six and even
(13:28):
looking outside of shows in the United States, and they
revised it to then include a total of one hundred
sixties six. When they opened up, you know, the comment
thread to fan saying, Okay, who have we missed? And
boy is it startling how many they did miss Yeah,
And you know, because that list does open it up
to shows all over the world. Germans, you've got a
(13:50):
lot of dead lesbians on your media's. There was that
one show in particular too where I can't remember what
it wants. There were a lot yeah German listeners, if
you know what we're talking about. Because scrolling through it
was like every other one, it was like good dust house.
(14:10):
That's and that's the well my favorites. So anyway, because
so many of the shows were not U S Bace shows,
I had not seen a lot of them. Um. And
some of my favorites though, and that's a weird thing
to say your favorite character dirforite characters who were then
also killed. Um, we're definitely Rachel from House of Cards. Um,
(14:33):
she's a bisexual character who had met a terrible fate,
poor thing, bless her heart. But also from Boardwalk Empire,
one of my favorite shows that I legit miss being
on the air. Um, Angela Darmody who was Jimmy Darmity's wife.
Uh so another bisexual character and her lover, Louise Bryant.
(14:55):
They were killed in this tragic misunderstanding. This gangster show
s up to kill Jimmy, but he gets there and
it's only Jimmy's wife And when her lover comes out
of the bathroom, he thinks it's gonna be Jimmy because
there's his wife in bed, right, so that's got to
be Jimmy. No, it's another woman, and he like confusedly
and panic e lishly shoots both women and it's it
(15:20):
was horrible. It was so sad, panicky lishly. Also, it's
my new favorite advert, you're welcome. Well, I just Angela
Darmony's character was so great on on board Walk Empire,
And if you haven't watched the show, I recommend you
do it. Um. It's a good binge watching show. Um.
And it kind of follows a pattern that I casually
(15:42):
noticed scrolling through that auto straddle list, where it seems
like for lesbian and bisexual women who were killed off,
there's also that negative undercurrent of uh, the deceitful lesbian
and by actual woman usually she's perhaps like cheating on
(16:03):
her husband with a woman and he is then enraged
and kills her. There's a lot of murder by jealous
lovers going on as well. Now. The thing is, though,
all of these character deaths go back way farther, way
farther back in time than Lexa getting killed on the
one hundred, and both the character killings and the audience
(16:28):
reactions are tied into a lot of views about the acceptance,
honestly of LGBT people in real life, in reality. And
so we are going to dive into some of that
historical representation of LGBT folks on screen. We come right
back from a quick break, so to put a little
(16:57):
historical context on this conversation, as we like to do you
you here at stuff Mom never told you. We're relying
a lot on a book by Stephen Shropiano called the
Primetime Closet a history of gays and lesbians on TV,
and as it's probably not surprising as the l g
(17:18):
B t q I A community has gotten louder and
more visible off screen, uh, they've become more fed up
with that lackluster and often discriminatory media representation, which today
is mirroring what happened back in the sixties and seventies,
(17:39):
which is when we see the first lesbians in particular
start dying on television. Yeah, and so if we go
back to the nineteen sixties, basically through the mid sixties,
the discussion and representation of gay people on TV was
generally limited to talk shows. I thought that was interesting.
I had never thought about that really, And that is because, uh,
(18:03):
you know, the same way that today, on like sixty
Minutes or Barbara Walters or something like that, they might
take a social issue that a lot of people are
scared of, like heroin abuse or opiate overdoses and go
dive deep into it for an hour to address people's fears.
The same freaking thing was happening with LGBT people back
(18:25):
in the day. So in response to viewers presumed concern
over gay people these talk shows. Uh, we're investigating homosexuality
along the same lines as alcoholism or drug abuse, because,
like Kristen was saying, as the LGBT community is getting bigger,
more vocal, more visible, so is the concern and the
(18:50):
homophobia around them. Well, at this time it was mostly
focused towards gam in because at the time people were like,
what lesbians, that's just you have some like weird problem
where maybe your husband isn't satisfying you. But gay men,
we're watching you. That's deviant. And I would also like
(19:10):
a quick side note when you said talk shows, the
first thing I thought of was like Jerry Springer style
talk shows. But I don't know that Jerry Springer show
is not on in the sixties and seventies. But I
would imagine that you would also see them on daytime
talk shows, but more in the freak show style of
look at these you know, she didn't know her husband
(19:32):
was gay kind of thing. Just like again, being treated
as characters rather than people. Uh. And in nine seven
oh Mike Wallace and CBS News produced a special report
on gay people literally called CBS News the Homosexuals. I mean,
(19:55):
it would be funny if it weren't so awful, right,
I mean, very much a product of its time. But
Mike Wallace interviews all these gay men and describes them
as quote the most despised minority group in the United States, which, Okay,
he might not be off the mark there, but then
he starts talking to psychoanalysts, and this is really where
(20:18):
the the thing just goes right off the side of
the cliff. Yeah, because one of those psychoanalysts that he
talked to emphasized being gay as a mental illness which
has reached epidemiological proportions. He also indicated that it's a
learned behavior tied with an unnaturally strong tie with the mother,
which disrupts normal gender identity, triggers separation anxiety, and prevents
(20:44):
him from forming heterosexual relationships in adulthood. Oh good, So
we're not quite past Freud yet, we're still very very
afraid of what it means to be gay. But not
too long after that's b S Report comes out, you
have some massive cultural shifts going on, because in June
(21:05):
n sixty nine you get the Stonewall Riots, which marks
basically the beginning of the modern vocal gay liberation movement,
and that means more than ever. The community is more visible,
and it's a more viable political force, and quick Stone
Wall shout out to trans women of color. Yeah, and
and so things start falling like dominoes when it comes
(21:28):
to the gay rights movement. In nineteen seventy three, the
American Bar Association passed a resolution supporting the repeal of
state sodomy laws, and just a year later, in seventy four,
homosexuality is finally removed from the from the American Psychiatric
Association's list of mental disorders. The same year, um you
get federal anti gay discrimination bills introduced into the House,
(21:51):
and it failed, but similar measures were passing in cities
and counties around the country, and all of us is
being mirrored on television in the nineteen seventies where you
actually start to see gay characters on TV medical dramas
like The bold Ones Medical Center, which I like how
(22:13):
it's like you, well, you know what you're getting with
that one, and Marcus Welby m D. Yeah. And I mean,
just like we've seen in these in these trends we've
been talking about, in response to the growing gay rights movement,
LGBT characters are starting to get treated with a more
liberal attitude. That's great, right, yeah, more liberal attitude, but
(22:36):
but we're still scared of them, right, that that fear
and condemnation that sort of pervaded all of the earlier
talk shows and CBS specials um was just replaced with pity, intolerance,
not acceptance and treating them like human people. Yeah, I
mean still there's a there's this old saying that I
(22:58):
remember from my Christian upbringing of love the sinner, hate
the sin, and very much that that kind of mindset
with this, oh well, we accept you, but not actually really,
because we think that inside your core something is broken, right,
and so on these shows, if it was the patient
who was gay, Uh, the sexuality itself was not treated
(23:22):
as a disease, which okay, good um, but that's so
called or so deemed sexual confusion or homosexual panic was
often part of the plots medical mystery and linked with
some other condition like diabetes, heart disease, or ulcers. You
know how these medical shows even today always have to
have some like underlying drama driving the plot. It's not
(23:46):
just like she came in with a headache. It's like
she came in with a headache because she's in the
medal of homosexual panic. I'm trying to now imagine an
episode of House or It's like, well, it turns out
he's gay, that's it. So in other words, basically, with
these plotlines, you had to resolve the questionable sexual orientation
(24:10):
before you could uncover and treat that underlying medical condition.
And of course being gay was usually linked with a
parent and or just choosing the lifestyle. So, for instance,
this one example that author Stephen Tropiano gives is you
have this man in this one episode on a medical
show who he's diabetic, He's gaining a lot of weight,
(24:31):
He's miserable, and so is his wife. His miserable wife
is complaining about how basically she doesn't get laid anymore
and she wants to divorce him. And their son is
quiet and withdrawn. So, like all of these health problems
combined with social and marital and parental problems, what's going on?
Diagnosis gay? Yeah, Basically, the doctor figures out that this
(24:52):
diabetic man is gay, and the diagnosis, so to speak,
basically sends him into deep depression and he attempts sue
is side, which, hello, we already have like a super
high rate of LGBT people in this country being more
likely to attempt suicide. So the character attempts suicide, goes
to a shrink. Oh, but it's a happy end in Christina.
(25:14):
What happens, right, Well, he goes to the shrink and
he finds out that he's not actually gay. It's just
his fear of homosexuality that's at the root of a
neurosis oh called internalized homophobia. Right, so thank god? Right, Like,
he's not actually gay, you just hate gay people, and
therefore he doesn't have to die. Yeah, exactly. Um, and
(25:37):
if we hot forward across a lot of doctors and
nurse characters at this time who are never really fully
fleshed out, but they might be gay and they don't
necessarily die, but they're just sort of like sideshow freaks really,
right Like, So if a doctor comes out, it's usually
not going to be a recurring character a doctor a nurse.
It's it's going to be someone who's in there to
stir up a bit of drama. And because they've stirred
(25:58):
up drama, they're put either their lives or the patient's
life at risks. So you gotta go, sister, get out
of here, Get out of here and literally get out
of here one woman did. Okay, that's a weird way
to say that the character was killed off. So when
we get to the nineteen seventy six, there's a soap
opera called Executive Suite, and this is the origin of
(26:24):
the so called dead lesbian syndrome. So on an episode
of Executive Suite, there's this woman Julie who confesses to
another woman, Leona, that hey, Leona, I'm a lesbian. And
Leona is like, oh my god, Julie, I'm a lesbian too,
and I'm very attracted to you. And but they're both like,
(26:47):
but diagnosis gay. This can't be right. And so Julie
gets so upset and she rushes after Leona, who's just like,
you know, trying to I guess, trying to run away
from her lesbianism. And Julie gets hit by a truck.
And then get this Julie's husband, because of course here
(27:11):
we go with like the deceitful sexuality thing. Julie's husband
then blames Leona, and Leona has a nervous breakdown. So
we only have one dead lesbian here. The other one
is safely tucked away in a some kind of mental institution. Yeah,
so good, we're all safe, right, the lesbians were putting
them away. Um, but yeah, that that executive suite has
(27:35):
always cited as the first time you start to see
lesbian or by or gay characters just getting killed off
his punishment not having to quit their line of work
as a doctor on a show. And even though old
Twitter and snap chits didn't exist, there was protest. So
(27:56):
as gay advocacy groups and activists in all eyes started
noticing this pattern on television, especially on primetime TV, they
began to stand up against it, especially because primetime television
was critically symbolic in their struggle to gain acceptance in
(28:17):
wider society. Because it's like, if if you can be
portrayed as an actual human person who's not broken, you
simply like everyone else, possesses sexual orientation of some sort,
then that is a sign of a cultural shift in
a positive direction. Um and gay activists succeeded in sending
(28:40):
a clear message to television producers and broadcasters and listen,
these negative, malicious stereotypes are not gonna be tolerated. So
history is repeating itself really in terms of activism around it. Yeah,
it seems like the more vocal and this is not
just for LGBT fix but the more vocal a marginalized
(29:01):
group is the harder and weirder. The pushback is from
dominant groups. And we are going to get into this. Um. So, listeners,
if you have insights, please share them with us. But
I am now curious, since this what's going on in
the seventies and uh, gay advocacy groups were making headway,
(29:24):
what impact then the AIDS crisis had on all of
it this? If it stalled it, if it pushed it back. Um, well,
I think that would play into and please, I do
want to hear from listeners, but I think that would
play into the pity the gay person. Um, don't fear
the gay person or condemn the gay person as much,
at least as it played out on TV or in
(29:46):
mini series or things like that. But here's the thing, Caroline.
Straight characters are killed off all of the time. It's true.
What's wrong with that? We're going to talk about that
when we get right back from a quick break. So
(30:12):
in the words with Jerry Seinfeld, scene field as I
like to call, what's the deal with the straight characters dying?
And we're not calling it the barrier straights trope. I'm
playing like an an culturish devil's advocate right now, and
I really don't like it. Well. Reese over at Auto
(30:33):
Straddle puts it really well. Um, so I will quote her.
Reese says, we comprise such a teeny tiny fraction of
characters on television to begin with, that killing us off
so haphazardly feels especially cruel. And this is something that
Dorothy Snarker love your Last Name Dot echoes over at
Hollywood Reporter. She says, it's not that lesbian and bisexual
(30:55):
characters shouldn't ever die on screen, far from it, but
currently our track magic endings are shown at an inordinately
higher rate than our happy ones. Yeah, I mean painting.
And this was something too that this makes me think
a lot of Raquel Willis in our conversation with her
about trans characters on television in particular, and just her
(31:18):
desire and that we share with her to see portrayals
of trans people who aren't tragic, who can fall in love,
who can like live a life like everyone else you know,
and and just be characters, um, rather than having to
be the tragic other. Um. And you also have to
(31:40):
keep in mind statistically, just the disproportionate rate of these
kinds of characters being killed off if you look if
you compare to population wise, not only their representation on screen, um,
but also more broadly, Yeah, I mean LGBT characters are
super underrepresented on TV, but their deaths are overrepresented. And
(32:03):
so basically, if one straight character is killed, there's still
going to be a whole mess of other straight characters left,
a whole mess of home, a whole mess of them,
and this shows lousy with them. Um. But if a
gay character is skilled, it's not like there's going to
be so many other LGBT characters in the wings too.
I don't want to say cushion the blow, but like
(32:24):
it's it's a harder hit basically character wise, if like
you're one gay character or you're like two gay characters
are killed off, and chances are that's not even going
to be a lead character, So you don't even have
a fully fleshed out like person there. They might just
beIN robbing up the storyline. Yeah. Um and Vox tallied
(32:45):
up all of the deaths, all the TV deaths from
seventy six to and they were focusing on American television
because they noticed especially with and they only do tie
it to um spoiler Ned Starks death on Game of
Thrones starting this trend of a lot of death on television.
(33:12):
So for an idea of just how deathly TV has become,
so Vox crunched the numbers and found the two characters
of all characters on TV died between the fall and
spring television seasons, and that about ten percent of those
(33:32):
were lgbt Q women. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, we we
do love statistics here, so I have some more for you. Um.
Auto Straddle also crunched some numbers and posted this fabulous
infographic that looked at lgbt Q characters deaths between nineteen
seventy six and twenty sixteen. Uh. They said that there
(33:54):
were more than fifteen hundred shows with straight characters and
just one hundred and ninety three featuring lesbian or by characters,
which is about eleven percent. Of those one shows, sixty
eight had dead lesbians, and about half of those were
shows where anyone can die, like a Game of Thrones.
(34:15):
And again, of the lesbian featuring shows, just sixteen had
happy endings for lesbian and by characters. And the thing
that is emphasized over and over again is that, ay,
this is not great. Why are we over representing gay
characters death, Well, we just talked a lot about it.
But also this negative representation is reinforcing a lot of
(34:37):
cultural bs that is happening right now, because we all
want to see ourselves represented positively in media, right and
when LGBTQ kids or adults for that matter, only see
themselves as tools facing imminent demise, as Snarker writes, death
sadness and despair can seem like a self fulfilling prophecy. Yeah.
(34:59):
And and if you even see a gay character on television,
um GLAD studies this every year and keeps talies and
um in. Out of one regular roles on broadcast TV,
only four percent or thirty five of them belonged to
(35:23):
l g b t Q characters. Um. So, first of all,
they're you're you're not even seeing them, But then when
you are, you're seeing them meet tragedy. And in the
context of our off screen wave of anti lgbt Q
sentiment and legislation like the whole bathroom bill issue that
(35:44):
is now made its way up to the Supreme Court.
Um and the fact that you can still be fired
for your sexual orientation in most states. UM. And also
on top of that, issues like the super high unemployment
rate among trans individuals, the homelessness rate among lgbt Q youth,
bullying UH, and links to attempted suicide and drug abuse,
(36:10):
like it's it's not offering very much, hope. You know
that's not exactly. You know, we watched TV a lot
of times as an escape, right, but that's not an escape,
it's just a reinforcement. And I mean, tropes are tropes
for a reason, right. They exist as tropes because they
happen so often, and they are props for storylines that
(36:32):
are used so often that you can spot them, and
they are coded in a certain way so you know
what is happening and why something is happening. And to me,
like we can live a lay filled it because otherwise
it's clearly just becoming lazy storytelling. At some point now
it's already become lazy storytelling. And so that's why it's
so interesting to study UH storylines that take this dead
(36:56):
lesbian syndrome trope or this barrier gaze trope and put
a different bend in the storyline so that it is
tragic when a character dies, when a queer character dies,
when a character of color dies. Um, but that it
doesn't have to be meaninglessly tragic. And an example of
(37:19):
that and major spoiler alert to Orange is the New Black.
Fans who are not caught up on the show, skip
ahead or just listen to another episode because this is
a big one. So in the latest season finale, pos
Se is tragically and senselessly killed during a peaceful protest
(37:46):
at the prison where the show takes place. Yeah, and
as you can imagine, people freaked out. I know, she
was one of my faves. She was probably my favorite. Um,
she was a great character. Her relationship with Taste, Yeah,
she's She's a great character on TV, but also a
great depiction of just just a kind like if you
(38:08):
were in real life, I would want to be friends
with you. Um. And and you can imagine that people
freaked out, not just because she was such a beloved character,
but here she has a queer character of color. And
Katherine Van Aaron Donk, another great name over at Vulture
in June really kind of investigated Pussy's death from the
perspective of all of the anger that fans were feeling,
(38:31):
especially through the lens of the Barrier Gaye trope, like
why do we have to kill off yet another queer
female character, and Van Aaron Donk basically comes to the
conclusion through her piece of like, well, this isn't the
same thing really as Barrier Gaze. Pussay's death was not
(38:52):
simply there to prop up a straight white character storyline,
even though a white character is technically the quote unquote
lead of that show. Yeah, if she had like taken
a bullet for Piper or something, we would be having
a different conversation, right, But pus Say is not the
only queer character on the show, not the only queer
character of color on the show. And she wasn't killed
because she was a queer woman. Yeah. And and clearly
(39:16):
her being senselessly killed by hired law enforcement UM in
the case of the prison, by these correctional officers UM,
mirrors what is happening offscreen with police brutality and black
lives matter. And the entire episode became really a eulogy
(39:42):
to Pussay, Yeah, and a eulogy for the black people
in this country who have been gunned down by police UM.
And it's also a commentary on our prison system, our
justice system. Uh, the fact that someone who was so beloved,
a character who was so beloved by the other characters
but also the audience could just be um wiped off
(40:04):
the face of the earth in just a moment like that,
in a moment that they were trying to restrain her
and they accidentally killed her. It is senseless, but it
has so much meaning, and it was monumental for the
show and for the other characters. It wasn't treated as
just like and now the storyline progressed, right, and now
a joke from Pensa chucky right. And of course another
(40:29):
show and again massive spoiler alert, but another show that
really does kind of an interesting take on the traditional
barrier gaze trope is Black Mirror. They're all standalone episodes,
and the episode titled San Junipero, features two queer women
characters who fall in love. So you imagine, like, well,
(40:52):
tragedies right around the corner, and it kind of is,
but there's a happy ending. Oh yeah, they pull this
off flawlessly. I thought I loved the episode. Um, how
do we even describe it? It's such a I don't
I want listeners to watch it because it really is
a beautiful episode and very unblack mirror and it's uh
(41:14):
and it's happy ending spoiler alert, um, But it doesn't.
While Yorki one of the characters, we know that her
family was not accepting of her being a lesbian and
that when she came out, she uh left the house
(41:34):
I believe, and was in a terrible car accident the
paralyzed her. Um. So you do have like that element
of punishment. But when it comes to their love story,
it's really pure and beautiful. You know, it's too It's
it's fun to watch because it's two young women being
so giddy in their love for each other. And there's
(41:55):
drama and there's conflict and should I should we do
I love you? Do I not? Do I want to
be with you? Um? And they do get to be together.
But here's the twist, so again spoiler like if you're
still listening together, UM. But the whole thing is this
exists in the future, and in the future, when you die,
you have the opportunity to basically be uploaded to some
(42:17):
spirit cloud. Basically Apple is our overlord, um. And it
is through this program that these two women who would
not have otherwise been able to even meet or be together.
Uh got to not only meet and not only fall
in love and be giddy and have great sex, but
(42:39):
they got to go off into the sunset in a
jeep wrangler and live happily ever after together. So yes,
is their punishment? Is there? Uh the acknowledgement of life
not being not easy for queer people. Yes, but through
death they get to live together forever. Um. And also
(43:00):
the fact that we have Kelly Um who is proudly
and openly bisexual, and she's a woman of color, and
her character also was married and had a child. Um
and her husband and a daughter had had both since
died and chose not to go to uh the cloud.
(43:24):
It chose not to go to the Steve Jobs heaven. Um.
So that too is a pretty revolutionary depiction that you
rarely see on television. So I thought that they handled
it swimmingly. And this was certainly a fine example of
queer people dying on a show, but the death being
(43:48):
joyful and yeah, and it being just the beginning. They
get to have their their happy ending together. And there's
been this thing called the Lexa Pledge that UM some
creators developed in the wake of fan protest over Lex's death.
In the one hundred um that has sparked more conversations
(44:10):
about show runner responsibility for how they depict gay characters,
because there is that line between not wanting to stifle
the creative process but also understanding that as a creator,
you have a responsibility to your audience and if you
care about the impact of your media that you're making
on the world at large, then it's something that you
(44:34):
absolutely need to consider. Um So, I'll be really curious
and I'm hopeful to see whether this barrier gaze trope dies,
whether we can bury it um and I know that
we have probably missed a lot of examples of this.
Um So, listeners, please phillis in um let us know
(44:58):
what you think about it and if there are any
similarly troubling tropes that you also think need to die.
Mom Stuff at how stuffworks dot com is our email address.
You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or
messages on Facebook, and we've had a couple of messages
to share with you right now. Well, I have a
(45:20):
letter here from Rua. I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly.
Rua in response to our Madam President's episode. She wrote
in specifically about Ireland. Uh So, she says, First off,
I'm proud that we've had two women presidents in our country. However,
the president has no real power and is mainly a
figurehead who represents the country. The leader of the country
is the t shock, and we have never had a
(45:42):
woman as t shock. Having said this, Mary Robinson was
not only the first woman president, she was the first
president to take the job seriously. Before her, the job
was basically a retirement position, but she really advocated for
more modern Ireland and pushed for women's rights, travelers rights,
better immigration policy. She annoyed people in power by not
doing what she was told, for example visiting the Dali
(46:05):
Lama despite everyone saying it was a bad idea and
would annoyed China. Anyway, Mary Robinson is a generally badass lady,
and talk about a change. When Mary mcleys was elected
after her, there was only one male candidate out of four.
Asked for the odds of having two Marys in a
row as President of Ireland, those odds are pretty high,
I'd say, as we have a lot of Mary's here.
(46:27):
I'll also briefly respond to your question on why when
we elected such a forward thinking awesome, lady. As far
back as and why we still haven't cracked a legal
abortion yet, I think you have to understand how far
we've come. Since Robinson was president, it was illegal to
sell any sort of contraception except under prescription to a
married couple. Homosexuality was still a crime, marital rape was
(46:47):
not a crime, divorce was illegal and impossible, and mother
and baby homes as well as Magdalen laundrys had only
just stopped operating legally. I believe at the time only
fringe and underground groups even said the ward abortion, and
people like Robinson advocated for the more immediate and possibly
viewed as more acceptable access to contraception. Things have changed now,
(47:09):
and tens of thousands march on the street for legalized
abortion rights. It's a question of when, not if at
this stage. Anyway, Sorry for going on so much. Just
thought that since you enlighten me so often on so
many things and brighten up my day while doing so,
I thought I may, in a small way return the
favor was with some Irish knowledge. Well, thank you so much.
We appreciate that Irish knowledge, and I have a letter
(47:31):
here from Helen about our Madam President's episode and Helen writes,
I've definitely seen the barriers women face in politics and
loved hearing the framing of the glass cliff something that
makes a lot of sense. It happened here in Canada
with our only female Prime Minister, Kim Campbell, as a
Canadian and someone who campaigned for the Liberal Party during
(47:52):
our election last year. I really wanted to say how
much I love the way you talk about Justin Trudeau.
I've met him a few times, Jelly, and he really
is a pretty amazing guy and someone I feel so
lucky to have as my prime minister. But your love
for him cracks me up the best way possible. Every
single time. I happened to be walking past Parliament while
you were talking about him in the Madam President's episode,
(48:14):
and it was just such a hilariously perfect moment. Thanks
for all the amazing work you both do and all
the love you send Canada's way. Can't wait to hear
what you have to talk about next, Oh, Helen, thank
you so much. And you know we send love to
Canada because y'all send a lot of love our way
as well. And uh, certainly today I am extra jealous
(48:38):
Justin Trudeau and I would just like to to make
a small side note. UM, I did notice this was
not a majority of emails by any stretch, but I
did notice that we had received at least one email saying, Hey,
it sounded like you think prime ministers don't work as hard,
or don't have as much responsibility, or aren't as good
as presidents. What gives? And I just want to assure
you that that's not at all we're trying to say. UM,
(49:00):
just that the parliamentary and the presidential systems are quite
different and they elect people differently, and that that's all
you're saying. And now, friends, you can send us your
thoughts as well. Mom stuff at how stuff works dot
com is where you can send them and for links
to all of our social media as well as all
of our blogs, videos and podcasts with our sources so
(49:22):
you can learn even more about television tropes, head on
over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
stuff Works dot com
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