Sexuality in Films

[The Welsh Paddy]

I guess this thread could have been posted in The Lifestream, but since this topic is more specific to films. I think this could make for a pretty interesting debate here.

So, basically... sexuality is something that gets made into a big deal in films if a certain character is revealed to be gay or whatever. At least that's how it seems to me. Deadpool got announced as being pansexual, that got pasted all over headlines in various film articles. There was a lesbian couple with an adopted child in Finding Dory, that was a huge deal. Before all that, I'm certain I recall there being a huge deal about someone in How to Train Your Dragon 2 being gay. More recently, there was some character in the live action Beauty and The Beast who was gay and it's now become apparent that the Yellow Ranger in the new Power Rangers movie is either lesbian or at least bi.

On one end of things, you get the people who still seem to be living two centuries in the past who get all outraged at the fact that an LGBT character would show their face in a film. Fair enough, people are entitled to hate what they want and all that...

Then there's those who, to me, seem to want to have these character's sexuality to be the biggest deal ever.

Now, my argument here is that... isn't the whole point in equality with diversity to normalise things such as race and sexuality, etc? Making a huge deal about a character's status as LGBT dehumanises a character purely because it means their sexuality being the one trait that defines them as a character. So what if a gay character doesn't have some overarching plot in the film explaining the how and the why of their sexuality? So what if they're gay? So what if they're straight? The sooner people stop making a big deal about this, the sooner people will start treating LGBT characters as normal people and not like tokens.

A while back I saw this little rant from Morgan Freeman about race equality and I definitely think it could apply to sexuality equality.

So, what are your views on character's sexuality in films?

 

[Soulcorruptor]

I do agree with your point there, especially linking it with the video. Mostly in the sense is that is my issue with it is just making the big deal out of it to make it seem as a forced sense of acceptance. If people on both sides just take a step back and make decisions based on personality and not other traits like skin color and orientation, I think we could begin to enjoy things more in these forms of media, but when too much focus is put on a said characteristic we get all this nonsense and fighting over something that in a grand scheme of things doesn't concern us or personally really affect us when it comes to media enjoyment.

 

[Dionysos]

I think there are good and bad ways of dealing with diversity. It is quite possible to have a diverse cast and still be able to tell a story outside of that.

Star Wars does gender and racial diversity quite well, for example. It is never about race or gender there, yet a variety of races and genders are represented without it seeming as if they are making a ‘thing’ about race or gender. It took me a while to realise that the Rogue One cast consisted of a woman, a 'Hispanic', two Chinese men, a Muslim, with the only white male being digitally replaced with a droid. Did that bother me? Nope. It didn't come across as a political statement to me because Star Wars just is diverse without making anything about it. Race or gender does not matter. People do.

It should be similar with sexuality. I wouldn't want to tell creators what they can and cannot create, but I think that making sexuality the main theme can run risks of creating a caricature and drawing attention to it more than to the other aspects of a character. If you make a character ‘the gay character’ then people will start to look to that character for how gay people must behave in the real world, where in reality gay people behave in as many ways as straight people do. They are people all the same.

This is the day of identity groups where people seem keen on identifying themselves with a particular demographic. To me, that is very sad and misses out on what being human is - individuality. I get that people want to wear labels with pride, but why should people even want to find a label for themselves?

I think we should start looking beyond labels and look at the people underneath. What are their characteristics? What are their interests? What is their personal history? Etc.

 

[Linnaete]

I've had this similar conversation with a couple of people this weekend. We are all of the notion that tokenism is an unfortunate outcome of writers who may simply lack the adequate perspective, understanding and/or ability to properly convey realistic human depictions and dialogue of minority social and ethnic groups they purportedly seek to portray. If you want a serious portrayal of an LGBTQ character without perpetuating the superficial, outmoded portrayals that are actually socially harmful on a pervasive and subtle level, you damn well hope you're a writer who isn't wholly out of your depth. Treat the subject matter with utmost respect and care and consult members of LGBTQ communities if need be to properly gauge a deeper understanding of what they feel and what they think.

For example, and I wager this could be something few people have really ever thought about: a poor writer may, with good intentions, seek to have a transsexual character in their work of fiction. Given how few transsexual people exist and are represented in popular entertainment media, this is by in itself an excellent gesture, but it's also a mile of egg shells to tread on. Get the portrayal wrong and at worst you perpetuate unfortunate and unconscious social norms relating to transsexual individuals. So if for instance the character is engaged in a conversation with another, preferably someone who is not an acquaintance, it is too easy a trap to fall into for the transsexual character to suddenly deadname themselves unprompted in a casual conversation. If that occurs, it suggests to me that the writer lacks a comprehensive understanding of how a trans individual thinks. It's not like a song artist who has elected to change their stage name and persona. A trans individual would usually not willingly deadname themselves casually without a proper reason to because they have already undergone perhaps a lengthy emotional journey to disavow an identity not their own. If would tell me that this writer is simply out of their depth and at worst it unfortunately perpetuates the idea that deadnaming a trans individual is something that is fine to casually do (which is a form of transphobia so I have been told). Poorly-handled and unsubtle methods to inform the audience that a character is transsexual presents suggests to me an unfortunate lack of adequate respect. It's planting a giant neon arrow on top of the character's head to make it as transparent as possible to the audience that this is a trans individual as if there was a checklist to go through and this was one of the items on the list.

Someone did provide me with a counterpoint to the notion that we ought not to make a big deal about a character's sexuality, as if that sexuality is the one sole characteristic about them worth talking about and depicted. She said to me that it's another version of the argument that LGBTQ characters are welcome in fiction...so long as they are well written. So I asked her: why is this argument a bit problematic? She replied: the issue with the argument is how often it is used by people who do have an issue with the presence of minorities in fiction, but aren't bold enough to come out and say it. Such people choose to dress up their sentiments in moderate phrasings that sound inoffensive and agreeable to many. So when you say "only if the writing is good", it serves as a dog whistle to say that you're personally not comfortable with non-heterosexuality (or any minority) in fiction and would like it swept under the rug and made an invisible as possible.

Now, I could see her point. I can certainly see how easy it is for a cowardly bigot to co-opt that argument and use it as a dog whistle to state in coded terms their abject hatred of seeing anything more than heteronormative characters in their films, TV shows, video games, etc and how little they want to see any of that. However, I don't think it's fair to say that everyone who espouses that general stance is a cowardly bigot, because as posts in this thread has already articulated, there are many fair reasons to disapprove of poorly-written minority characters and lazy tokenism at its worst. But neither do I want portrayals of minority characters in fiction to be left at the wayside with no progress made because of how relatively few writers there are able to pull it off amiably. We should absolutely demand better and film studios should bear all this in mind before they're quick to champion from the rooftops about how they have a lesbian character like they've unlocked a trophy in a video game or something.

 

[Dionysos]

If I was forced to identify myself then I'd have to say that I’m a white heterosexual male, and yet I never truly see myself represented in films or other media because I am far more than my sexuality, gender, and race. I have very little in common with the vast majority of characters, even if there are some minor aspects of the characters which I can partially relate to on some level. Sometimes. Rarely.

While my particular demographic is well represented (or over represented if you like), that doesn’t mean that I need to relate to these characters at all. I couldn’t be more different to the majority of characters I see in fiction. Some characters I can aspire to emulate, while others are people I wouldn’t dream of emulating even though they are considered the heroes of the story. I see the characters for who they are themselves in their own universes without worrying about finding myself in them. I don't take offence if the lead hero is a douche-bag because the lead hero doesn't have to be like me.

To me the idea of finding a ‘right’ way to present a minority character is a bit backward. The focus should always be on who the character is first, and how this character would think and behave if they lived and breathed in their universe. Human beings are diverse in their behaviours and thinking. I’m for diversity in films, but diversity comes in character creation as much as it does in which identity group the character belongs to. If you focus too much on the latter then you risk just creating a characterless protest piece with a projected image which can be harmful. It might perpetuate the idea that there is a war between identity groups and I think that is an unhealthy way of considering the issue (and it invites people to take 'sides').

Would it be possible to treat minority characters the same as white, heterosexual, male characters? Would it be possible to make the character about their personal qualities, history, interests, etc, rather than being entirely hinged on their sexuality, etc? There must be ways of creating characters like this, and when they are represented with the diversity of characterisations that white, heterosexual, male characters enjoy then perhaps we can say that they are truly being represented.

I think some films might have achieved this already.

 

[Shu]

Great article, and great responses all. I want to break a few things down in categories to try to get a granular detailed approach.

1) Gay/Bi/Tran: This is harder to implement than race in my honest opinion. People get hung on the fact that someone likes a specific person, and/or the same sex, different sex but changed sex and it impedes someone's ability to read into the story or the conversation. The focus is never around the character's actual behaviorism / trust / actual love / relationship. It comes down to the concept that, no matter what, the viewer is seeing them as someone almost defective. To be relevant, how many gay/bi super heroes do you see in today's eye? Its almost unheard of. Marvel and DC pretty much are pretty straight forward that each TV/Movie comic book hero had a male or female counterpart. I don't think that will stop today, and if there is a movie with a gay super hero, it most likely will get very little notice. Northstar.. ever heard of him? Nope, and if Marvel does release his back story people will perceive it as an "abstract," which is pretty messed up f you ask me.

2) Race: Race in my opinion has been a standard token symbol, NOT ALWAYS, but most of the time. You have Tyler Perry films in which try to break down culture very well in my opinion (obviously mostly comedy). Then you will still have the token white person to bring in the small bit of humor to the plot. I would say the same thing with fast and the furious. Although you bring in a bunch of different races, the film isn't really drama oriented it's action oriented so the story and culture doesn't exactly clash. I know you can't give a good adaptation of intertwined cultures every time, but you can at least strive to make it seem more down to earth. Whether it's Latino, Mulatto (mixed), Black, or white in culture, there are intersections where a writer/producer can explore. I feel like it's poor victims of fitting into the space of society today. Again, utopia is hard to enforce At least Luke Cage, Black Panther, War Machine, Nick Fury, and Falcon were finally given amazing black actors. Time to see more female, black actresses take the stage!

3) Gender: Male vs Female... So for a lot of folks, well this should be straight forward. Type casting happens a lot more than I would like between sexes. For example: Megan Fox. Is she a good actress.. I'll leave you up to that, but for every fella who saw her for the first time in Transformers, we were like... woa. The issue is with female actresses in the past, you have those that could act, and those that were there for literally the look. For male actors, I think more or less it's a gambit. The action/comedy scene has been plagued by horrible actors, but guess what.. they are funny by their personality and due to it they are strongly type casted. There are reasons I find it super hard to find Adam Sandler anything but wash up, but he's worth far more in the industry due to movies like Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore. Women, I figure the same way.. you put a man and a woman in the same movie. Are they attractive looking people? If not, are they actually a good actor? Well in my opinion it's easier to market a less attractive male than female. Even though society has changed, there are still direct correlations to men vs women actors/actresses. I feel bad for trying actresses, but even women have a hard time NOT focusing on someone's blatently annoying character and looks.