It's the same impulse that insists that Frodo and Samwise are pulling a Brokeback Mount Doom. People project sex into all kinds of situations, we're kind of programmed that way (whether biologically or culturally).
Common Writing Mistakes and Pitfalls
- Thread starter Captain Clark Terrell
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It's the same impulse that insists that Frodo and Samwise are pulling a Brokeback Mount Doom. People project sex into all kinds of situations, we're kind of programmed that way (whether biologically or culturally).
In my defense, being a gay man born in the early 70s, I've lived thru decades where there was virtually no LGBT representation anywhere. Even now gay men with much of a role in anything outside Torchwood (which was over years ago, and I'd debate how gay the men on the show actually were) there still isn't much gay male representation in sci fi/genre material. Not only am I very used to having to interpret media thru a queer perspective if I want to identify with it, media, including Star Trek, encourages that kind of perspective, by doing things such as trying to pass off a story about mind melds being taboo as a gay story.
I can admit that I'm reaching with Bashir and O'Brien (but not with Garek, at the very least on Garek's part the attraction is a very legitimate interpretation), but Sam and Frodo definitely can be read as gay - at the very least there's great love and devotion there, so much so that Sam's wife tacked on to the end of the story felt really jarring, like they'd flashed a neon NO HOMO just to make sure we didn't think there were actually two males in love there.
I see my perspective as interpreting their feelings as romantic more than sexual. There is a distinction, but yeah, sure, there usually is a sexual component to romance.
It's pretty normal I think to see ourselves in sci fi/fantasy settings, to imagine what it would be like to live with Hobbits and Cardassians and what not. But with LGBT invisibility in most genre media I don't see a place for myself in these fictional worlds most of the time, so I sometimes try to create a place for myself.
I'm hardly the only gay person that does that I assure you. It's a common thing among the gay people I know, just like how so many of us can seem obsessed with what celebrity we think is gay. We're looking for something to identify with. It can be frustrating and alienating to not see your kind represented, it's like society doesn't even acknowledge you exist.
Of course things are better than they used to be, but old habits die hard, and this mindset is probably hardwired into my brain by this point.
I can admit that I'm reaching with Bashir and O'Brien (but not with Garek, at the very least on Garek's part the attraction is a very legitimate interpretation), but Sam and Frodo definitely can be read as gay - at the very least there's great love and devotion there, so much so that Sam's wife tacked on to the end of the story felt really jarring, like they'd flashed a neon NO HOMO just to make sure we didn't think there were actually two males in love there.
I see my perspective as interpreting their feelings as romantic more than sexual. There is a distinction, but yeah, sure, there usually is a sexual component to romance.
It's pretty normal I think to see ourselves in sci fi/fantasy settings, to imagine what it would be like to live with Hobbits and Cardassians and what not. But with LGBT invisibility in most genre media I don't see a place for myself in these fictional worlds most of the time, so I sometimes try to create a place for myself.
I'm hardly the only gay person that does that I assure you. It's a common thing among the gay people I know, just like how so many of us can seem obsessed with what celebrity we think is gay. We're looking for something to identify with. It can be frustrating and alienating to not see your kind represented, it's like society doesn't even acknowledge you exist.
Of course things are better than they used to be, but old habits die hard, and this mindset is probably hardwired into my brain by this point.
If you're thinking my post was in any way an attack or rebuttal of the things you (and others) are saying about representation in the genre, let me tell you flat out that I'm in no way doing that.
Non-white, non-straight, non-cisgender characters are sorely lacking in basically all media, but especially in genre media. It's ever so slowly getting better by some small measure here and there, but it's still woefully lacking. As a white, straight, cis male, I can only sympathize not empathize with the feeling of not being represented in the media we chose to consume.
What I'm talking about isn't reading what's there and ambiguous in various ways (Garak-Bashir), rather the further side of reading into a situation things that simply aren't there (Frodo-Sam). As mentioned above, not every relationship is sexual, platonic relationships do exist.
Sure, I understand the need to find representation where it isn't overtly included. I just think friendship deserves representation too, and I get tired of the kneejerk tendency to try to read every close relationship, whether same-sex or opposite-sex, as a sexual one. For me it isn't about hetero vs. gay. There are a number of male-female relationships on TV that I'd hate to see turned romantic because they're such great friendships. The producers of The Middleman were constantly dismayed at fans urging a romance between the Middleman and Wendy, because they'd so clearly set up MM as a surrogate father figure for Wendy, making the suggestion rather incestuous. I know that I and a lot of Warehouse 13 fans felt offended and even betrayed by the way the final season forced Pete and Myka into a romance and thereby ruined and devalued the great, siblinglike platonic relationship they had. And I'm hoping that Ichabod and Abbie on Sleepy Hollow don't follow the path that the "Ichabbie" shippers want from them, because they also have a great partnership and friendship and don't need anything more. Don't get me wrong, I welcome the fact that these characters do have romances with other people. The Middleman's romance with Lacey was a love for the ages, and I think it's a crime that Myka didn't up fulfilling her romantic tension with Helena Wells. But I want characters to have close, meaningful friendships too. I don't want to see every friendship turned into a love affair.
The thing is, I haven't had that much luck with romance in my life. The most cherished relationships I've had have been friendships, often with women. So when I see friendship being ignored or shoved aside in favor of sex, I see that as a failure of the media to represent something that's been an important part of my life.
So I certainly understand why you want to see your life represented by the inclusion of LGBT relationships, and I have nothing against embracing subtext where it can be embraced. I just think it's become a bit too much of a reflex in fandom to try to read every relationship as a "ship" waiting to happen. So Garak and Bashir, sure, no problem. I can see the basis for that. But Bashir and O'Brien too? I just don't see that, any more than I see Pete and Myka as a couple. Can't Bashir have both a romantic chemistry with one man and a platonic friendship with another? The two aren't mutually exclusive, and representation should be for everyone.
Overgeeked, I didn't see your post as anything close to an attack, but I did want to explain why I do project romantic subtext on allegedly heterosexual characters. When the genre won't give me gays to identify with I'll queer the mandatory heterosexuals.
It was pretty obvious that tptb saw the white hot sexual chemistry with Garek and Bashir and cut way way way back on their scenes and instead focused on Bashir's friendship with O'Brien (but evil sorta bisexual women in the MU is a-ok!) I am even a little defiant in insisting on looking for the ho yay! anywhere I can find it. But my rational side does concede that Bashir and O'Brien don't REALLY have sexual chemistry.
Christopher, I do find friendship important too of course. One of my favorite Trek friendships is Sisko and Dax and how that friendship continued thru Curzon, Jadzia and Ezri, but with differences of course. (Admitedly, I like when Sisko hooks up with Mirror Jadzia so apparently I ship them a little)
Lately there has been a trend with genre tv shows "queerbaiting", teasing with hints and innuendo and fan service about their popular male characters being more than friends without actually having them be officially anything but heteronormative.
Since writing is the topic we're dancing around, I will add as I've said many times before than the more inclusive and diverse casts of the novels means the world to me, and I do thank every Trek writer who's included LGBT and queer-ish characters (since with sci fi you can get characters that aren't exactly gay but aren't exactly straight either) for making me feel included in the Trek world.
Whereas I thought that was a horrible decision, because Sisko slept with her under false pretenses while pretending to be a different person. Since she didn't know who he really was, she was deprived of consent. The term for that is rape by fraud or rape by impersonation. Not to mention the consent issues with the Prime-universe Jadzia and Kira, because Sisko got to find out what it was like to sleep with both of them without either of them having a say in the matter. And these are women he's supposed to consider friends and colleagues, who trust him with their lives. It's atrociously sexist that the writers only looked at it from the man's perspective as the fulfillment of a juvenile fantasy and totally ignored the woman's perspective -- one of several instances where DS9's all-male writing staff made such insensitive and objectifying choices regarding female characters (the worst being the revelation that the Prophets essentially roofied Sisko's mother Sarah so that she could be impregnated without her consent, so that Sisko's "divine conception" became an act of rape).
Not just male characters -- Myka and H.G. on Warehouse 13, Korra and Asami on The Legend of Korra, Root and Shaw on Person of Interest. And probably not just genre shows, although I don't watch many non-genre shows. And of course the ur-example was Xena and Gabrielle on Xena: Warrior Princess. In that case, it was about the producers trying to give the show's sizeable lesbian fanbase some satisfaction without alienating the audience that might have been offended by such things (since there was less acceptance of it back then). In the case of Korra, I believe it's also about sincerely trying to satisfy the fanbase rather than "baiting" anybody, but as a kids' show they're constrained from being open about it. And I think Amy Acker said in an interview that the Root-Shaw thing is pretty much something the actresses discovered in their own performance and that the writers have just gone with because of their chemistry.
I really hadn't thought about the consent issue of Sisko impersonating the Mirror Sisko. but I see what you mean. That does ruin the whole thing- I won't see that quite the same way now. That does put Sisko in a bad light. It's a slippery slope, as there are similar issues with characters getting sleazy with holographic copies of their friends and co workers.
I prefer Jadzia/Julian (and thus Mirror Jadzia/Mirror Julian) anyways.
I never did like the retcon with Sisko's mother. I get that they were trying to explain why Sisko was so special to the Prophets, but it was pretty creepy.
Another sexist aspect in the writing is how they did tease with all the women in the Mirror Universe being bisexual, with implications that their bisexuality was linked with their darker morality. But except for possibly a very vague hint, the men in the Mirror Universe are still seen to be heterosexual, because they're clearly just catering to heterosexual male sexual fantasies. The novels have expanded and improved on things, by doing things like exploring Mirror Ezri and Mirror Leeta having a healthy romantic relationship. I believe Peter David wrote Mirror McHenry as bisexual, which isn't too far of a leap since the regular McHenry did have a fling with a hermaphrodite.
Xena did tease, but they were a lot more upfront and classy about how they did things, and were more open to the relationship being interpreted how you wanted, which is better than what shows like Teen Wolf do. They tease, but it's never seriously suggested that those guys aren't straight - except for the token gay who gets a minute or two of screen time every few weeks. Xena also did develop the relationship, and by the end of the series it was harder and harder to not see Xena and Gabrielle as a romantic couple, with kissing and saying ILY all the time. I think Xena was pretty groundbreaking with exploring the subtext in a way that hadn't been done before.
I prefer Jadzia/Julian (and thus Mirror Jadzia/Mirror Julian) anyways.
I never did like the retcon with Sisko's mother. I get that they were trying to explain why Sisko was so special to the Prophets, but it was pretty creepy.
Another sexist aspect in the writing is how they did tease with all the women in the Mirror Universe being bisexual, with implications that their bisexuality was linked with their darker morality. But except for possibly a very vague hint, the men in the Mirror Universe are still seen to be heterosexual, because they're clearly just catering to heterosexual male sexual fantasies. The novels have expanded and improved on things, by doing things like exploring Mirror Ezri and Mirror Leeta having a healthy romantic relationship. I believe Peter David wrote Mirror McHenry as bisexual, which isn't too far of a leap since the regular McHenry did have a fling with a hermaphrodite.
Xena did tease, but they were a lot more upfront and classy about how they did things, and were more open to the relationship being interpreted how you wanted, which is better than what shows like Teen Wolf do. They tease, but it's never seriously suggested that those guys aren't straight - except for the token gay who gets a minute or two of screen time every few weeks. Xena also did develop the relationship, and by the end of the series it was harder and harder to not see Xena and Gabrielle as a romantic couple, with kissing and saying ILY all the time. I think Xena was pretty groundbreaking with exploring the subtext in a way that hadn't been done before.
Now, that doesn't bother me so much, as long as it's not a medically accurate scan, because then it's more just a fantasy or a speculation.
Yeah, they did kind of play into stereotypes and cliches about lesbianism and/or fetishistic sexuality (bondage, latex, etc.) being associated with evil. That always bugged me.
Never seen that one.
Rather remarkably, in the final season, the writing staff included Melissa Good, who'd become famous for her tasteful Xena/Gabrielle slash fanfiction. It's pretty rare for a fanfic author to be actually hired by the show itself, and particularly impressive that it was a slash author. And yes, in that season the subtext did come very close to being text. Not to mention that in their Norse-myth arc they had Brunhilde (I think it was) fall in love with Gabrielle pretty unambiguously.
Yeah, as far as I understand the term, queerbaiting isn't just hinting at homosexual or bisexual subtext without ever making it explicit, it's more when the writers include romantic subtext while insisting publicly that the characters are completely straight and anyone seeing anything more than a straight platonic relationship is reading too much into things, sometimes going so far as to mock people that claim the subtext is there. It's literally baiting a queer audience without ever having any plans on following through regardless of where things go, while meanwhile not just not alienating the straight audience by never making it official, but going out of their way to cater to them as well by assuring them out-of-text that there's not really anything there. Dean and Castiel on Supernatural is another classic example. Myka and Helena in W13 is an interesting example, because while the writers insisted it wasn't there, the actors went on record more than once that it was.
But yeah, I think to be queerbaiting, you need to have that explicit outside-the-material assurance from the writers or producers that no of course there's nothing non-hetero going on there.
But yeah, I think to be queerbaiting, you need to have that explicit outside-the-material assurance from the writers or producers that no of course there's nothing non-hetero going on there.
But that may not be intentional on the part of the writers. It may well be that they want to be inclusive, but the studio or network bosses who pay their bills are opposed to it, so they have to pretend to toe the party line and insist everyone is hetero in order to keep their funding, while secretly sneaking as much LGBT subtext as they can get under the radar.
There's a long tradition of writers being subversive, saying one thing to the press in order to appease the suits while getting their real message through in the subtext. Heck, this was a large part of why Roddenberry created Star Trek, and why Rod Serling created The Twilight Zone -- so that they could sneak subversive social commentaries about contemporary issues onto TV while pretending that they were just doing meaningless fluff about imaginary worlds. I've seen a Serling interview from 1959 where he insisted with a straight face that he'd totally abandoned doing anything serious or meaningful and only intended TZ to be harmless fantasy. Of course, we know now that nothing could be further from the truth, since Serling used TZ to make scathing condemnations of racism, war, and other contemporary issues that the censors and sponsors would never have let him talk about if he hadn't disguised them as fantasies.
So it may be unfair to assume that the writers you're talking about are "baiting" the LGBT audience with no intention of actually catering to them. It may be the other way around -- that their insistence on the characters' heterosexuality is a lie for the benefit of their bosses, while the subtext they sneak through represents their true intentions.
Just insistance, I can buy that, and you're right that it could be executive interference; getting back to Star Trek for a bit, I'm sure we're both aware of the Berman rumors at this point, for example. But I don't think who the blame rests on really changes the impetus of the term. Whether the denial ultimately has its source in the writers or higher up the chain, it is that denial that turns it from just subtext to queerbaiting. If there's nothing more than silence, it isn't.
And of course, in some cases there's more evidence that it does start lower in the chain than executives. Going back to Supernatural, for example, you have fans that see that subtext literally mocked in metareference in the text itself. Or you have people at fan conventions not just deny the subtext but tease and deride fans that ask about it (though admittedly that was Ackles in the case I'm thinking of, not the writers). You're right that it's sometimes execs, but in some cases there really is enough evidence to reasonably believe that it isn't. If you want to figure out where exactly to rest blame, I agree that it needs to be analyzed on a case by case basis.
And of course, in some cases there's more evidence that it does start lower in the chain than executives. Going back to Supernatural, for example, you have fans that see that subtext literally mocked in metareference in the text itself. Or you have people at fan conventions not just deny the subtext but tease and deride fans that ask about it (though admittedly that was Ackles in the case I'm thinking of, not the writers). You're right that it's sometimes execs, but in some cases there really is enough evidence to reasonably believe that it isn't. If you want to figure out where exactly to rest blame, I agree that it needs to be analyzed on a case by case basis.
I think there's a big difference between creators actively trying to avoid inclusion and creators who are trying to be allies as much as they can within the limits imposed on them. The former is reinforcing the status quo, while the latter is eroding it. The difference may not be immediately visible, but it's a major difference in terms of the long-term, cumulative effect.
Well, yes, that's my whole point, that you can't generalize. I'm not that familiar with Supernatural, but I found an article just now when Googling for "Supernatural LGBT characters," and it argued that, aside from Felicia Day's character, the show's been pretty bad about inclusion -- indeed, not only with sexuality but race, gender, etc. in general. (And I seem to recall some complaints about an episode that treated non-Christian world religions rather dismissively.) So of course there are some shows that do worse than others. But the ones that are sincerely trying shouldn't be lumped in with them.
Looking at it has a straight guy, I've actually been rather impressed by how Teen Wolf has handled this stuff. I've always been rather impressed with the fact that whenever we see the characters at a party or club or anything (it's a teen drama so this happens a lot) they almost always have at least one or two same sex couples mixed into the crowd. And when they did the one where the lesbian couple was attacked out in the woods, they pretty much just treated them as another couple, without really making an issue of their sexuality. And I've always thought Danny seemed like a pretty good character.
Teen Wolf when they've done inclusion, do it well. But Danny still only showed up for a cameo every three episodes or so until he disappeared without explanation.
They replaced him with a new token gay, who was less interesting and did nothing with him.
I'm probably more critical because the last season wasn't as good in general imo, and the LGBT diversity really went down with both Danny and Ethan both gone.
Teen Wolf's diversity gets more scrutiny because the cast and creators have been vocal in their praise of their support for gays. There was an news article where the cast all commented on the importance of gay characters on the show - but since they only interviewed the main cast, all the actors interviewed were playing straight characters. That was a little awkward.
But I can see where how we judge them is subjective. After all, there's still more LGBT diversity in one or two of any given episodes than the entire Trek tv series and movie franchise.
They replaced him with a new token gay, who was less interesting and did nothing with him.
I'm probably more critical because the last season wasn't as good in general imo, and the LGBT diversity really went down with both Danny and Ethan both gone.
Teen Wolf's diversity gets more scrutiny because the cast and creators have been vocal in their praise of their support for gays. There was an news article where the cast all commented on the importance of gay characters on the show - but since they only interviewed the main cast, all the actors interviewed were playing straight characters. That was a little awkward.
But I can see where how we judge them is subjective. After all, there's still more LGBT diversity in one or two of any given episodes than the entire Trek tv series and movie franchise.
Mirror Jadzia does get to hit our Sisko, at least.
I think that might have been the intent, to show up the Prophets as powerful beings only vaguely connected to conventional morality.
