Before we get fully immersed into all of the meaningful queer representation that does wonders for the LGBTQ+ community, I believe it is important to take a moment to dissect what I meant in my previous post by asserting that quite a bit of the current representation is “sub-par”. However, there is one piece of prerequisite knowledge that I need everyone to understand before I continue – not all representation is good representation. A piece of media does not deserve praise simply because they included a queer character, they must also do it well.

Notable gay best friend characters (Image source)

One of the biggest examples of failed queer representation would be the entire gay best friend trope. This trope reinforces harmful stereotypes about gay men by focusing on how they are there for the straight lead. The gay best friend character creates a narrative in which gay men only care about makeovers, shopping, and drama, and they only exist to support a straight person’s stories. Damian in Mean Girls, Michael in My Best Friend’s Wedding, and Christian in Clueless are all perfect examples of the gay best friend trope in action. These characters exist purely to support their straight friend and have virtually no individual storylines. Even characters from movies as iconic as Mean Girls perpetuate harmful stereotypes. Damian’s entire personality is that he’s “too gay to function”, but the audience only ever gets to know him as Cady’s gay best friend. This type of representation diminishes the queer experience to one in which everything is sunshine and rainbows as we wait for a straight person to add substance to our lives. When I see people like me on the screen, I don’t want it to be a person like Damian, Michael, or Christian. I want to see myself as the main character. It’s not enough to just see gay people in media, they need to actually be portrayed as their own people with their own stories and experiences.

Lesbian relationship in Lightyear that sparked controversy despite being on screen for less than two minutes (Image source)

However, it becomes difficult to not be thankful for this representation, even if it is incredibly lackluster, because it is a fight to even get the smallest scraps of attention from the media. Like I mentioned in my previous post, networks hesitate to provide meaningful queer representation because of the backlash they might receive for it. Take, for example, the recent controversy over a two second lesbian kiss in Lightyear that caused the movie to be banned in many countries as well as sparking outrage across the nation. Disney knew that this would be the case. The company anticipated the controversy, but rather than sticking their neck out for the greater good of the LGBTQ+ community, their first instinct was to take it out of the movie. Executives at the company had originally cut the scene from the movie, but after Disney was called out for their lack of a response to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” Bill they decided to reinstate the kiss. The kiss didn’t make it into the movie because of Disney’s acknowledgment of the need for queer representation, it was kept in because Disney cared about its reputation. Disney and many other networks and corporations have made it exceedingly clear that they don’t care about the good of marginalized communities. They just care about profit. This capitalistic mentality makes it so that pieces of media with meaningful representation are few and far between, and we must settle for this insincere depiction of queer characters.

These types of poor representation come from a place of companies not understanding the difference between representation and good representation. That’s what makes the lack of good representation so sad – most of the time the media companies don’t realize what they’re doing is harmful or insincere. Until recently, there weren’t open dialogues about what queer characters in media should look like. It was totally fine for movies and TV shows to have a sassy gay best friend get the main character ready for her date with the popular jock. In fact, that was a special thing to see. However, as society has progressed, we have placed higher expectations on corporations. We believe the representation provided should have progressed at the same rate as everything else, meaning we should be way past the days of background characters being gay but having no real queer storylines. Even if the name of the game for most companies is to turn a profit, they need to be aware of the impact they have on social norms. Media companies like Disney and Netflix have huge platforms – platforms they could be using for good. If these companies made a conscious effort to provide the best representation they could, queer characters in media would instantly be normalized.

Homophobic dog meme that describes the way homophobes feel about queer representation (Image source)

Of course, this route would result in a good bit of backlash, but eventually people will come around. I hate to say it, but people really just need to get over themselves (I don’t actually hate saying that. In fact, I enjoy it very much). Pieces of media should represent the world we live in, and that means that every group should be present as main characters with their own struggles and triumphs. The members of the general public that can’t accept that queer people exist in the wild and aren’t just a ploy made up by the liberals to get their kids to turn away from God need to take a good look outside and realize that everyone isn’t exactly like them. Meaningful queer representation would allow us to make great strides when it comes to normalizing queer characters and stories, so we need less of the insincere back burner representation and more media that accurately depicts the world we live in.