“I wish I knew how to quit you." "I've been bullied, outed,
and misunderstood."
Over the decades of LGBTQ stories told
onscreen, there is one dominant theme: Suffering. "And I thought of all the grief
and sadness and f-[BLEEP]ed up suffering in the world,
and it made me want to escape." We’ve seen LGBTQ characters
portrayed as criminals, "There’s a lot about me
you don’t know." hypersexual villains, "For me, stealing has always
been a lot like sex." or tortured souls. "But after a while, he runs out
of things to keep himself numb." But one pervasive feeling
tends to unite them: To be queer is to struggle. Even as we’ve moved further away
from limiting stereotypes, pop culture has still been
especially rough on LGBTQ people -— putting them through the wringer with
storylines about homophobia and abuse, "You can't punch the gay out of me
any more than I can punch the ignoramus out of you!" or even punishing them with death.
The longstanding convention
of narratives killing off queer characters far more frequently
than straight characters is known as the “Bury Your Gays" trope. Queer characters die so often
in movies and TV that the website DoesTheDogDie.com’s list,
“Does an LGBT person die?" has too many examples to count. The Bury Your Guys trope
is pervasive both in its literal form and also in its subtler impact --
because even when queer characters aren’t subjected to overt violence
or death, many of them still haven’t been allowed to be happy. "Chemical castration. Um, to, uh,
to cure me of my, um… [chuckles] homosexual predilections." So why have we insisted on
making our queer characters miserable? Here’s our take on how this trope
has dominated LGBTQ representations over the years,
and whether we can get to a place where suffering
isn’t always part of their story. “This just kind of feels
like one of those perfect moments that you dream about." You're watching The Take.
Thanks for watching, and be sure to share and subscribe. This video is brought to you
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and start exploring your creativity for less than $10 a month. "This is where some teenagers
beat a gay guy to death." The idea of burying your gay characters
has been around since the 19th century, an era when homosexuality
was deemed punishable by prison under indecency laws. LGBTQ authors like Oscar Wilde
were unable to write about queer characters without
enduring censorship —- or worse —- and were forced to obscure them. "It is, in this century, misunderstood.
So much misunderstood that it may be described as the love that
dare not speak its name." At his own indecency trial,
Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray,
was used as evidence of his depravity, because of the painter Basil Hallward’s
seemingly obvious attraction to Dorian. "I'm not sure I've ever fully
expressed my gratitude." But Wilde had intentionally
buried this homosexual subtext -— and even symbolically punished it
by having Dorian murder Basil. Although attitudes have certainly
changed since the 19th century, the Bury Your Gays trope
has remained pervasive. After Hollywood adopted
the 1930 Hays Code, which banned "depictions
of sexual perversion," queer characters all
but vanished from the screen, with homoeroticism again
relegated largely to subtext. "I embroidered this case for her myself,
and I keep it here always." And most of the time,
those implicitly queer characters were made out to be villains. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 thriller Rope
revolves around two characters who are explicitly gay
in the stage play it’s based on, although the film never mentions it. Nevertheless, as many critics
have picked up on, it codes their murder of a classmate
as a homosexual act. "Pity we couldn't have done it with
the curtains open, in bright sunlight." This implied link between queerness
and villainy would continue long after the Hays Code was abandoned. "It rubs the lotion on its skin.
It does this whenever it's told." Queer men, in particular,
were depicted as predators, given to acts of sexual violence. "Bring out The Gimp." For queer women,
their murderous tendencies often coincided with hypersexuality. "I thought you only murdered boys."
"I go both ways." Inevitably, they are killed,
with their deaths are presented as a form of justice,
leaving the audience relieved. "People were applauding the death
of the villain... but they were also applauding
the death of a homosexual." When they’re not killed
for being villains, queer characters are often
depicted as martyrs, with their lives naturally
ending in tragedy. “Angel helped us believe in love.” As the AIDS epidemic
spread in the 1980s, it became equally pervasive
in LGBTQ stories —- the specter that hangs over
everything else. In 1993’s Philadelphia, Tom Hanks
plays a lawyer, Andrew Beckett, who loses his job after
he’s diagnosed with AIDS. “And they don't want to fire you
for having AIDS, so, in spite of your brilliance,
they make you look incompetent, thus the mysterious lost files.
Is that what you're trying to tell me?” He brings a humanizing face
to the disease, but he’s also largely reduced to it:
Beckett never shares a real kiss beyond a peck with his lover,
played by Antonio Banderas, because ultimately, the film is about
Beckett dying -— not living. "I’m ready." These depictions have served
an important purpose, bringing valuable awareness to real-life
struggles faced by LGBTQ people. But they’ve also fostered the perception
that being queer is dangerous -— even deadly. Taken to its extreme,
this has seen LGBTQ characters dying at their own hand after
being tormented by their own sexuality. "It was not god's will
that Bobby climbed over the side of a freeway overpass.
Bobby's death was the direct result of his parents' ignorance
and fear of the word gay." The 1961 film The Children’s Hour,
adapted from Lillian Hellman’s 1934 play, offers one of the earliest examples
of this trope in its story of two boarding school teachers,
Martha and Karen, who are accused of having
a lesbian affair, which causes Martha to realize
her true feelings. "But I did love you!
I do love you!" Both film and play are based
on a real-life story that ended with both women only losing their jobs. But The Children’s Hour ends
with Martha committing suicide, overcome with guilt
about her own feelings. "Oh, it's all my fault.
I have ruined your life and I have ruined my own." We can still see this trope
play out even decades later. "A better world.
And I'll be waiting for you there." Often these stories depict their deaths
as a tragic sacrifice, made before an uncaring world. "I will make me a willow cabin
at your gate, and call upon my soul within the house." These stories not only normalize
and even romanticize suicide for queer characters,
they run the risk of influencing their audiences to feel the same way. "Today I practiced for my funeral.
It’s been that kind of day." In 1998, the makers of
the short film Trevor -— about a boy who attempts suicide after
his peers bully him for being gay -— established The Trevor Project,
dedicated to LGBTQ youth suicide prevention. In a 2020 study, it concluded that
40% of LGBTQ young people had seriously considered suicide. "I just never thought he'd hurt himself."
"It wasn't our job to know." "Then whose job was it?" And fictional depictions
do play a role in that: A 2010 study found that
the more a viewer identified with a suicidal protagonist,
the more likely they were to share those negative feelings. And as Stanford researcher
Samuel Clowes Huneke has argued, "so long as [LGBTQ] teenagers
see characters who look and talk and think like themselves,
and who then kill themselves, suicide will continue to suggest itself
as a plausible course of action." "Sometimes I imagine
that I will die an early death, and everyone will be sorry." The Bury Your Gays trope has faced some
of its greatest scrutiny on television. "I used to think, in time,
he would come around, but now I think that he
would rather see me dead than gay." TV shows have proved especially deadly
for female LGBTQ characters. Between 2015 and 2016,
42 lesbian and bisexual women were killed off in US TV shows -—
and in 2016, four of them died in a single month. The most prominent among these
was Lexa from The 100, who was killed just minutes
after finally sleeping with her love interest, Clarke,
and whose death prompted a widespread backlash against
the Bury Your Gays trope. For many, the most galling aspect
of Bury Your Gays is the way it often treats LGBTQ characters
as expendable, using their deaths solely as
a motivating plot point for others. These characters’ suffering
might serve simply to further the narrative arc of a
non-LGBTQ character, "Touch my friends again
and I'll blind you.” or provide a moment of shock. But even when stories
center their deaths, usually by depicting LGBTQ characters
who are murdered because of homophobia or hate crimes,
these characters still risk ending up as symbols,
rather than as people. "One casualty. Hospital said
our pregnant transvestite was DOA." As with those depictions
of AIDS or suicides, the deaths of LGBTQ characters
due to homophobic violence often reflect an ugly truth: The story of Sopranos’ Vito Spatafore
illustrates how gay characters would really be treated
in his hypermasculine mob environment. "You’re a [BLEEP] disgrace." Films like Boys Don’t Cry and
The Laramie Project have done much to bring attention to the realities
of homophobic violence through the true stories of its victims. Still, the sheer ubiquity
of this violence in fictional films remains divisive:
it underscores the feeling that LGBTQ people will inevitably
be rejected and abused. And collectively,
these stories reinforce the idea that to be queer is to live under
a cloud of violence and misery, where safety and happiness
are under constant threat. "Take off that f-[BLEEP]-ing hat.
Don’t want to give people the impression there are a bunch of f-[BLEEP]-ing
fairies like you in this town." "If we could just learn
not to hate ourselves... quite so very much." Even when LGBTQ characters
are allowed to live, they still face a disproportionate
amount of angst. "'Gay shame.'
That’s really what it is. “‘Cause most of us have
more shame than pride.” Often we see gay characters
who are lonely, melancholy, or outright depressed. "Uncle Frank gave up on himself." And typically, they’re given
obvious reasons to feel this way: LGBTQ characters are subjected
to discrimination, rejection, mockery, and violence. "What-what am I? Some sort
of forbidden fruit?" "I treated you terribly,
I know that." LGBTQ tales are also often about a
character’s struggle for acceptance -- “We cannot see a way that
you can live under this roof if you’re going to fundamentally
go against the grain of our beliefs." -- from their families,
from their communities, and even from themselves. "And you don't know how long it's been
since I felt this close to someone without all of this
getting in the way." And while these films -—
many of them also based on real-life experiences -—
usually end with the gay characters breaking free, accepting themselves,
and even finding some happiness, the prevalence of this narrative
in LGBTQ cinema again serves to underline that being queer
automatically means being alienated and unwanted by your community. "For a long time,
I was afraid to be who I am because I was taught by my parents
that there's something wrong with someone like me." As some critics have noted,
it can even sideline queer people in their own stories,
making it all about how straight and cisgender people
react to them. In The Danish Girl,
the story of Eddie Redmayne’s transgender woman Lili
is largely told through the perspective of her partner Gerda,
who struggles to adapt after Lili comes out. "We were playing a game."
"Something changed." And while the 2017 film 3 Generations
revolves around a transitioning teenage boy played by Elle Fanning,
it’s really about his family and their feelings. "It's been hard on her... him... us.
It's been really hard on us." Rarely are these characters
allowed to just be the center of their own narrative -—
let alone be happy in them. “Another tragic gay cliché.” This trope has become so pervasive,
the internet has even compiled lists of movies about LGBTQ characters
with actual happy endings, highlighting just how rare they are. Shame, rejection, and fear are all
real-world issues that LGBTQ people face. But it’s only recently that we’ve begun
to see stories that look beyond them to show queer characters not
just surviving but thriving —- and it’s telling that just allowing them
to be happy feels revolutionary. "David, I've spent most of my life
not knowing what right was supposed to feel like,
and then I met you. And everything changed.
You make me feel right, David." "Maybe life should be about
more than just surviving. Don't we deserve better than that?" In 2017, the death of Lexa on The 100
sparked such an uproar that fans actually created the Lexa Pledge,
asking TV writers and producers to commit to giving LGBTQ characters “significant storylines
with meaningful arcs,” to consider that “the deaths
of queer characters have deep psychosocial ramifications,”
and to “refuse to kill a queer character solely
to further the plot of a straight one.” But while some creators
were quick to sign it, others weren’t so sure. “If we say, in the name of progress,
we're going to sign a pledge that says we will-we will limit our
storytelling around these characters, we're going to have
the opposite of progress." Instead, they argued,
it was more important to focus on how their
LGBTQ characters are portrayed -— not just whether or not they die. To that end,
the increased representation of LGTBTQ characters
has come with richer, more complex stories about their lives. "Call me by your name,
and I’ll call you mine." 2017’s Call Me By Your Name
offers an honest portrayal of longing, love, and sexuality
that may end in sadness, but it also ends with both
of its queer characters alive, and grateful for what
they’ve shared -- “I remember everything.” -— something that’s even more
remarkable considering the film is set in the 1980s,
an era that lived under the specter of AIDS and rampant homophobia. Love, Simon tells the story
of a closeted gay teen that shows him grappling
with being outed and enduring bullying from his peers. "You like that, don't you Spier?"
"Oh yeah, Ethan, Simon like-y." "You have something
you wanna say to me?" But ultimately, the film isn’t about
his struggle for acceptance. It’s about Simon
finding love and happiness. [cheering] And in Booksmart, Amy has been open
about her sexuality for years, a fact that her peers
accept unreservedly. "Every time I come visit you,
you're just gonna be s-[BLEEP]-ing a different girl." On TV especially, LGBTQ characters
now come in endless variety, living equally diverse lives
in which their sexuality is only one part of who they are —-
even in death. When Orange Is The New Black’s Poussey
was killed in 2016, so soon after the deaths
of Lexa on The 100 and others, it, too, was criticized as being
yet another Bury Your Gays moment. "They didn't even say her name, yo!
They didn't even say her name!" But as Vulture’s
Kathryn VanArendonk argued, Poussey’s death represented
much more than that, writing: “It’s the story of
not just her sexuality, but also her love story;
not just her race, but also her individual history;
not just the things she signified, but also all of the ways
she was vibrant and angry and joyful and unique unto herself.” The point isn’t to avoid killing
LGBTQ characters completely, or even that they shouldn’t ever
be allowed to suffer. The point is to ensure that their lives
and their stories truly matter. "Maybe I'm gonna get my heart broken
in a thousand different pieces. But those are maybes. You can't live your life
according to maybes." As we see more and more
LGBTQ characters in general, it’s inevitable that
they’ll sometimes be unhappy, or even downright miserable -—
and yes, sometimes they will die. But we’re already moving past
the days when all queer stories were only about hate crimes,
suicidal teens, or their being shunned by society -—
or really, even just about being queer. Today’s LGTBQ characters
are allowed to be nuanced, complex, and even ordinary people,
whose lives aren’t solely defined by their sexuality. And more importantly,
they’re finally allowed to be joyful, experiencing the happiness
of fulfilling romances, careers, and friendships,
just like straight characters have for decades. And while they may suffer,
it’s not because they’re queer. It’s because they’re human. "Who is you, Chiron?" "I'm me, man.
I ain't tryin to be nothing else." If you're new here,
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