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Queerbaiting and Heteronormativity in Television

3/10/2017

 
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Queerbaiting is a complicated topic with nuances which take some significant space to grapple with in detail. There are concerns with linking shipping with LGBTQ+ activism, complexities around drawing a distinction between queerbaiting and homoerotic subtext, discourse around why certain pairings become such fandom behemoths and arguments which suggest investment in shipping those characters pushes shows with plenty of LGBTQ+ visibility to the margins. Then of course there's the issue of ace erasure and a desire for more platonic male intimacy in pop culture in general.

Despite these complexities I attempt to reframe the debate in this short piece for The Mary Sue, with reference to a simple bugbear of mine. Why does desire for romantic endgames for same-sex pairings get side-eyed, when the same is rarely true when people hope for a romantic culmination to the story arcs of an opposite sex pairing? What does assumed heterosexuality of mainstream television characters and arguments which insist a character is 'straight' tell us about a general lack of LGBTQ+ diversity in television, bierasure and heteronormativity in the mainstream?

​The article can be found HERE.


jo link
7/11/2017 01:54:52 pm

you make some great points here! i have been following queer fandoms for years and so rarely do we get truly equal treatment of opposite sex and same sex ships! maybe you could quote "person of interest" for that one where a natural chemistry between actors translated on screen and was even played out at the end (despite some issues with how the writers chose to close that storyline/ series). and of course "lost girl" which became more and more confusing lore-wise in the end but always treated its lead character's bisexuality with respect

Emily
7/13/2017 03:53:36 pm

Thanks, Jo! I really appreciate those suggestions too, there are of course some shows that get this right and others which are just enormously frustrating. There's also something interesting too, I think, in the objects of fannish investment - how the fandoms with canon queerness fare as against those which have queer subtext of some sort, which tends to be the larger fandoms. I am curious about how those trends develop.


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