Hi, welcome back to Who We Are. My name is Eden Bassett and I'm the opinion editor. And my name is Kat Schof and I'm the Deputy Pin and Editor. And on this, our second episode of Who We Are, we're going to discuss queer characters and narratives in film, television, the arts as a whole.
And among the topics we're going to touch on are the portrayal of queer characters, whether it's done by straight actors or queer actors or cisgender actors or transgender actors. The quality of narratives around queer characters, so the ones that center on violence and tragedy versus on, you know, success, joy, connection. We're also going to talk about the over-secular sexualization of queer characters, queer stories, and lots of other things. And we're going to touch on hopefully as many different examples as Kat and I have to mind.
One of the first things I thought to bring up when we were discussing this episode was Pose, which I think Kat and I both have only seen maybe a few episodes of each. And I'm currently watching with my girlfriend. And the reason I think Pose is a great example to start with is it feels in many ways like the culmination of tons and tons of progress over the years about queer narratives, about how to treat queer characters, how to center queer stories. And I know many people have, you know, rightly feted Pose for having maybe not a majority of its cast, I'm not quite sure, but a plurality of its cast, I think at the very least, who are queer actors of color or particularly trans women of color.
And it's a phenomenal example, both of representation and in many cases, really rich stories, sincere ones that don't rely over much on cliches or are really grounded in historical accuracy. For people who have seen Paris is burning, much of the setting of Pose will seem very familiar, all the language, all the niche vocabulary of the New York City, drag scene and queer scene. So I thought we'd jump off there. And I'm curious to hear Kat, whether you feel like Pose, from what parts of it you have seen or other stories, whether you think they represent success in queer narratives or if you think there are kind of classic failures that pose and other pieces you can think of or maybe still guilty of.
Yeah, I think that you're totally right when you say that, I don't know, it represents almost like a culmination of what the queer community has bought for a long time in terms of presenting characters, especially queer characters as real human beings, as fully well-rounded people and characters, not just some generic sim with queerness attached to it, having that queer and as we all that defines them. I'm super, unfortunately, only seen one episode of Pose, but I have seen this documentary on Netflix called Disclothes. I think that doc really shows how the evolution of representation has taken so long, but finally we have these shows like Pose or movies like Moonlight, the Foster's or Tales of the City where these queer characters are centered and they're freaking human beings. Like we're real people, oh my gosh.
I think one of the most interesting things about having queer characters in so many stories in television and film today, I'm going to mention Moonlight as well, I think one of the great shifts in a cultural understanding of any marginalized group is whether you decide they're worth being secondary characters, they're the trope of the gay best friend or something like that, or if you believe their stories are worth being the whole narrative, they are the protagonist, they are the central character whose motivations and concerns and fundamental desires are the story. The beautiful thing about Moonlight too, for example, is it demonstrates lots of dimensions of a queer character's life that are not about being queer, or that are about being queer in very indirect ways. So without trying to spoil Moonlight for people, multiple characters seem to really violently repress their sexuality, the fact that they are gay is intolerable to them in many ways, and it's also irrefutable, and it causes them profound loneliness, but it's also, they go about really normal lives, Moonlight is an inescapable queer film, but it also does a really wonderful job of demonstrating how queer characters are human beings first and queer additional, and not the other way around, that they are the gay best friend, and also maybe have a story. They are really fully fleshed out human beings, and I think that's definitely one of the biggest pieces of progress in queer cinema and queer television that I can think of in our lifetime for sure.
I think that Glee as a show of characters like Santana and Brittany and Unique also has really illustrated that well, especially since the actors have portrayed them fought for accurate and realistic representations of queer people. You know, although Glee has its own issues, I think that that show, and also, I don't know, for me when you contrast them with movies like Love, Simon, and even like the accessories Love, Victor, where in the characters battle about queerness is the entire story, I think the stories are still important to tell, but the undivided focus on like, oh, will they or won't they come out? Are they gay? Are they bi?
What is their journey? Like that fixation really troubles me. What do you think about that? Well, I feel like it's very analogous to how, you know, Hollywood is famous for hypersexualized depictions of women and especially kind of terribly disordered depictions of women on the part of male directors or male screenwriters, and I feel like in the sexism and misogyny of those depictions, you really get a sense of the male gaze of men want to see women doing certain things in certain capacities and very sexual capacities, and that's the point is women are there for the male consumption, and I also feel like, you know, not to disparage Love, Simon too much, but I definitely feel like stories where, you know, and again, these are young adults or teens who understandably, as you know, as we talked about last time, are coming to terms with their sexuality, so maybe it's more salient than it will be if, you know, if you caught up with Simon 20 years later or something, but I do feel like you get the same effect on queer characters when their sexuality, their journey with their sexualities, the whole story.
You get a real sense of like the straight gaze, if you will, of like, this is what people who aren't queer really believe or really are interested in seeing about queer lives is just what you clearly must be thinking about this all the damn time, and there's really nothing else to your life other than, gosh, are you gay? And if you are, how are you going to tell everybody? Because clearly that's the thing they really want to know about you. So in some ways, I agree that it's great when queer characters can be a protagonist, but I also think you can still have queer protagonists and reduce them to their sexuality, and you know, there's ways to do that well and there's ways to do that for women.
And I think that's especially problematic when, for young kids or teens that are figuring themselves out, they see these representations in these struggles and, oh, the only interesting thing about me is my queerness, so much though that all these shows and movies only focus on whether these queer characters think they're queer or not, like that's really problematic though. I don't know, queer representation for kids and youth, I think about Latin decora, which I don't know if you've seen that, but at the very end she ends. Yeah, she ends another female character, they grasp each other's hands and walk into this portal, and it's really unclear whether or not they actually end up together, like there's no onscreen kiss, there's nothing, because I think that Nickelodeon was like, oh gosh, that sounds like it. Yeah, exactly, they're taking away from those queer experiences, but at the same time, you know, a more or more of a show, like Steven Universe, I think people on the bunch of like, yeah, like really out and proud, like, oh, they're queer characters, and this is a role model that I, as a young child growing up in the US, can look up to, because, wow, they're a queer hero, like they are my hero.
Yeah. You know, and Legend of Korra isn't that old, it's, you know, certainly newer than Avidor the Last Airbender, which was its predecessor series, but I think even just the compare and contrast, I also don't know exactly how old Steven Universe is, but my sense is it's more recent, and I think you get a sense of, even just in the last decade or so, shows that a little older will censor queer romance as, you know, in a long tradition of, in the same way that back in the 50s and 60s, gay individuals were, you know, when they were labeled as having mental disorders, or they were considered like, innately pedophiles, there was something seen as fundamentally perverse and dirty about homosexuality, and so, you know, it's a little bit of a thing that's going on in the past, and it's going to be a little bit more like, you know, like, like, like, like, a little bit of a thing that I think is going to be a little bit more like, like, it absolutely wouldn't be fit for children in a way that Avidor the Last Airbender at the end, there's a heterosexual kiss between two characters, and, you know, generally, it's children's television, it's, it's all on the whole pretty banal and anadine and even prudish at times. I think it is interesting how, subtly, that censorship, even just a few years ago, gave probably implied to kids the sense that if you're going to be sexual and be queer, you're doing something wrong. There's something fundamentally that shouldn't be seen about that, and so, I very much agree that it's great that we have more shows like Steven Universe that are just treating it as a fact of life, not as something that needs to be hidden, or that it's not, you know, that it's not just a fact of life, but it's not a fact of life, it's not a fact of life, it's not a fact of life, it's not a fact of life, it's not a fact of life that shouldn't be seen, and I think that transformation is really excellent, especially for a kids television, which I feel like in many ways is, is the first place where you encounter meaningful ideas about the world, is on TV as a kid because all you do is go to elementary political court, so you're not exactly getting tonnes of representation of what real life is like except for immediate sources.
I also feel like, what one of the things that I think Steven Universe, I don't quite know who the voice actors are or anything, but I definitely feel like, going back to Glee as you mentioned, some characters like Chris Wulfur for example are in fact gay, just like the characters they portray. And I think that also really changes the portrayal, like for me in middle school I think I looked at least somewhat like Chris Wulfur and I would forever be compared to him. Like the first time anyone met me in sixth or seventh grade they would ask me, have you seen Glee? You really remind me of Kurt, which was the least subtle way possible they had to say, wow you really seem gay pal.
Yeah, pal. And he'd be right. Well, I don't think he's doing that forceful about it, but I think it's a meaningful difference when you have queer characters portrayed by queer actors and to a further extent like queer directors making queer films and stuff like I don't know much about the you know the screenwriters or direction of moonlight, but I definitely think that probably the way in general I would imagine most films get to capturing queer stories with elegance, with precision, with heart and nuance are they have queer people involved in crafting those stories. Either you know I don't believe commercial Ali is gay, but you know I think having gay performers present gay stories is a powerful thing not necessarily an essential thing.
Like you know I always mentioned people how much I love the Vergage just worship it and Nathan Lane of course is you know then openly gay for I don't know how long but Robin Williams to my knowledge wasn't queer and in some ways I feel like the interesting thing about that story is Nathan Lane is the more flamboyant cliche portrayal of a gay character even though he himself is the theoretically three-dimensional gay human and Robin Williams portrayal is much more measured and you know it certainly still plays into tropes and stereotypes but I feel like that's an example of a film where you didn't need to have queer characters portrayed by queer actors in order to have like it's ultimately yeah a rich and engaging and beautiful and heartfelt story which in some ways is doesn't really center queerness in the way that you might want it to but it's still a wonderful and I think ultimately constructive movie. I think it is constructive and it represents progress in a way but I honestly think that having queer actors portray queer characters is something that's so important it's almost like a sort of dual representation like damn they're awesome on-screen and off they're also gay or bi or trans on-screen and off like they they not only rock the rock you like rock you which are entertainment wise on screen but also like in the real world and I don't know I feel like that was kind of problematic in terms of like kind of love Simon where you know the main character is you know straight in the real world and in believe it too I think that the two trans characters on the show unique in coach beast I think the character that plays unique is non-binary in the world but like not of them are actually trans and yeah yeah like there's something that you can't you can't get a holistic real like capital R real representation of a trans or gay or pan character unless they're actually portrayed by someone who like identifies that way and you know there's a current debate about having like white actors voice actors voice you know people of color and in cartoon shows and I think that the same rule applies here yeah I also think it's not always the case that queer actors are going to better portray queer characters but you know going back to pose as well Billy Porter owns and embodies yes is role in a way that I mean Billy Porter has been a sensation since Kinky Boots and has been you know rightly celebrated for the excellence of his career in a lot of different roles so obviously he's just a very capable performer and frankly I would trust him in lots of roles that don't necessarily have to be queer but I also feel like you're touching on something really excellent which is that like Brokeback Mountain is a great film I really like Brokeback I'm like getting to watch Jake Gyllenhaal and he'd like to be passionately in love in in a deeply repressed and also incredibly steamy way is is fantastic I mean it's it's terribly entertaining and also I really wonder to myself if they found two actors who you know how niche is it to a have grown up gay in the 70s and also be in Hollywood like how realistic is it to find people who have the lived experience of the characters they portray all the time probably pretty unrealistic and I think it's not again the job of an actor is to take on the role and do the role with excellence irrespective of their own story like lots of actors are coming from affluent acting families and so they're not gonna have you know the most diverse set of experiences but I do feel like that's an example of yeah Brokeback Mountain was good without necessarily any real queer actors in the film but I think typically it's more like I would say Billy Porter is the rule that queer actors do well as queer characters and Brokeback Mountain is more of the exception that Jake Gyllenhaal and he fledged her we're very capable oh yes capable but I don't think it's generally the case that straight actors are likely to portray a queer character in a way that has no stereotypes no cliches exactly has that nuance yeah I just I don't know to my core I think that the industry should take it upon themselves to find that queer talent I just think that there's something inherently messed up with I don't know like for example watching Dallas Buyers Club the character Rayon is played by Jared Leto I think and Rayon is you know a transgender woman and I don't know seeing seeing and then seeing Jared Leto with his you know full on beard stand up to accept like Academy Awards and Golden Globe Awards for his role in that movie like that's just it just goes wrong to me and I feel like it would be wrong to whatever like you know trans fans of the character in the movie watching but I don't know I feel like we should maybe talk about where we think that the industry should take the education yeah like how can they find that town because I mean I'm sure that there are so many aspiring like queer and actors out there yeah exactly so what can the industry do to improve itself well I think not to cite pose as the perfect solution to all things but I think one of the reasons pose maybe has an easier time of it is I think the number of young actors young performers who are just getting their start are not well-established who can make a career in stories like that I think it's just so different from like you know when you think of Transparent with Jeffery Tambour portraying a transgender character I think yes like on some hand probably it was hard 50 60 years ago to get into well I guess 30 40 years ago to get into acting schools and be openly gay and like how much training how much support you know how much safety was afforded to aspiring queer actors probably slim to none and so like it makes sense to me that the number of openly queer performers who are available to portray older queer characters is pretty limited and that's definitely not an excuse but I think it's also an explanation for why like you get you get tons of like very fire island energy films and TV shows where you just presume that all characters all queer characters are very young very sexualized and you get very few of the what's it like to be 65 and gay like what's it what's it like to you know be near hospice with gay parent or something like that you just you're gonna get fewer of their stories which is why I think pose in some ways to set itself up for success because there are so many young aspiring queer actors with incredible talent, incredible ability and I think it's much easier to tell stories of younger queer people not just because there are more openly queer actors these days but just because those stories I think are ones Hollywood feels comfortable doing it knows how to tell stories that involve lots of like sex and drama and you know like Hollywood can't stand older characters having fulfilling sexual relationships so I think in some ways if Hollywood is leaning into the sexualization of characters that's why it's easier to have younger characters portrayed by younger queer actors yeah I see that especially I mean with blue is the warmest color I feel like we as a community just collectively cringe we think about that movie maybe honestly maybe documentaries is the way to go I I don't know if you I think Netflix has a new documentary about like an like an older lesbian couple that you're like I think it's called a secret love that kind of it kind of details their you know queer hecking journey through time and what it's like for them to be you know like tired and queer and finding like retirement community and like hey we're queers do you guys are you guys mad about that like yeah I don't know I feel like documentaries are so powerful in so many ways and I think in terms of like amplifying queer voices that's a great way to do it because it's it's so direct and immediate another issue I think that comes up with I don't know like straight or cis actors playing queer or trans characters and like this fixation on whether that like actor is actually queer or not like everyone's like yeah is he gay because like a this quarter of Twitter is thirsting for the so-and-so character like over here when you think about well I feel like I mean I don't know much about Twitter thirsting but I have to imagine that a good proportion of the people like me who passionately want Harry Styles to be by yes are themselves queer and so I would say the queer community is nothing if not very online and I think that it's you know of course you're gonna have excitement from young queer fans who are like celebrity X Y or Z like please like join the club I feel like there's definitely the tabloid angle of like is blank celebrity gay how do they handle it like has it disrupted their life like there's there's definitely the we're milking this celebrities personal life for tabloid fodder we are cheapening the discussion like there's definitely gonna always be that element of the dialogue but I also think one of the things about you know increasing queer acceptance especially for people who are very online on Twitter things like that is that the queer community is now voicing its desires of like no really if you are queer you can totally come out we're here for that that's the kind like that's the good content show up be queer right I also feel like personal lives definitely are just always gonna be interesting that's like those are kinds of things that are gonna show up in the media in interviews and features and you know if you if you read any major periodical that has an art section or something the chances that they're going to say like you know people have intimated for years that you're gay are you maybe not super high but I definitely feel like that discussion is going to come up and in some ways I feel like I don't know maybe my whole view of queer issues is filtered through time and age but I just feel like you know again the media speculates and even Twitter speculates very differently based on whether actors or you know performers of any kind are young or old like I never encountered a ton of speculation about Kevin Spacey's sexuality yeah and yet you know like of course Kevin Spacey botches his coming out by using it as an excuse for sexual assault and things like that so you know there are good ways in bad ways to come out but I definitely feel like I don't know I think that I think some of that speculation especially when it comes from queer people being like you know you could join the club is you wouldn't welcome you here yeah like like Harry Styles come on over to the dark side you know is is fun and good natured and you know I like I think there's there's always queer hating in the media and yet I think when it comes from the right place like the thirsting is I don't know like I'm a fan I want to read more articles speculating about why Harry Styles lyrics imply that he's into XYZ things that are obviously like like queer constellations in the stars like we just we just want it to be true so we're hoping yeah I really do that so much though like I love me a gay show honestly sometimes like if I hear that a show has some kind of queer story arc or queer actor involved just like I've got to see it like for the community but also the same time like for me I don't know seeing queer representations on screen like it just fills my heart in a way that is almost undescribable like I just I see myself in Korra I see myself in you know characters on the politician and love Victor and clean sex education like I'm just like that's freaking me like they're they're explaining an experience that I don't publicly often talk about or discuss a whole this podcast but like it it's so valuable to me in a very particularly indescribable way yeah I you know I feel like it's really interesting how the the vocabulary for queer identities is also like I encountered most of it through media like I didn't I didn't just have a bunch of 15 year old peers who when they were like yeah we're coming out we're like super ready to be like yeah you know what I'm like super butch you know like they're just there's there's a whole language that exists that we have as heritage from like older queer culture from yeah you know like handkerchief codes and all the different like the nomenclature for what exact kind of gay you are you're a twink you're an otter you're there and I feel like in in many ways we're indebted to media for keeping some of that language alive but I think we're also keeping some of those stereotypes alive like I think queer millennials queer Gen Z people just have because there are more of us who are out and safe in places where our lives and rights are increasingly accepted and respected I think there's there's more richness to newer stories to like I think legend of Cora she's like Cora's just a cool character like she's just impressive she's got Kutzba and I feel like you're oh she's a badass with a by-bob like we all just need to come in okay yeah yeah so I I think queer characters do a lot of good things to their viewers that are more than just communicate stereotypes or lack thereof and I especially feel like for newer shows newer media you get increasingly positive presentations of like queer actors succeeding by having breakout films or things like that and you also get really good examples of queer characters that have that richness like like older films older stories you know I'm watching this this TV show that's set in the 60s in a spy agency and one of the characters his boss finds out he's gay his boss blackmailed him makes him do all sorts of humiliating degrading things because it was a secret that just could never come out like it was just so understood to be the kind of offense that would you know maybe not then in France get you put to death but it would get you considered you know mentally handicapped like somehow sick and I just think one of the things I really resent about you know there's so many like cliches and tropes about queer characters never live they never survive in films they always they always that's the coded message is that your like being queer is a dangerous thing you shouldn't do it it's a sign that you're bad it's a sign that you're evil and so you know like Disney's famous for example for coding all its villains as queer and things like that and I think that as we lose older stories older time frames like sure they're always going to be historical pieces about what it was like to be catering World War II but I think the more we tell news stories or fresh stories more contemporary ones the more likely you to get better richer narratives less violence less implication that queer lives have to be tragic have to involve contracting AIDS or being you know beaten to death or you know deprived of your loved ones you know thrown from your home I think you know obviously presenting some of that is presenting history honestly but I think there's a fine line between presenting history honestly and presenting it gratuitously in a way that implies that to be queer is to suffer instead of to be queer is to face adversity and overcome I feel like that's a good ending point that was beautiful oh wow thanks I guess we did another wonderful episode of who we are next episode I think we're planning on talking about history and representation and other contexts that aren't the arts but thanks Kathy was really good to talk to you thank you and yeah join us next time okay before you stop could we look he just like missed off a bunch of queer shows and it was a recommend oh yeah that's a great idea um what are you watching that's good you're watching right now I'm definitely watching pose I would say I liked cats earlier recommendation about docs I think Paris is burning I think the more you can get actual queer history and not nearly like I watched a pseudo documentary that was you know really just fictitious about Stonewall it was super whitewash and like again always centered around the stereotypical like white twinks who's 21 and freshly thrown from his home and things like that I think the more documentaries people are willing to watch are interested watching the more you're gonna get the best purest version of history and not nearly more of the kind of fictitious representations which are likely to be skewed so maybe also things like the death and life of Marcia P Johnson yes yeah and while we're on the subject of the you know the arts generally like literature has tons of great options I would totally recommend people especially now read and the band played on what do your recommendations get in terms of books I most recently read The Grateful Leavers which is like kind of about art and AIDS in terms of movies and shows I love legendicora even though the queerness really comes with a tail end I think Zoe's extraordinary playlist which is like a newer show has a great fabulous non-binary character the politician has great representation the half of it oh so cute so good yeah yeah and we like always Loki Carol too I know that one's kind of problematic but I think it was a really good movie wow and Alex strange love which I think is a Netflix original movie but yeah like it's so accurately like represented how I felt in high school is coming out so I think that's also a gem yeah I would super encourage people to find queer classics as much as I bash them this episode is being outdated and you know violent and negative and tragic I really think especially for people who are willing to take a critical look at older films older pieces of art and say yes there are flaws here but what did it do at the time I would say films like The Bird Cage are you know certainly we can call them imperfect now reductive all sorts of things but at the time you know just getting queer characters and queer actors openly queer actors on screen so big deal in the 90s you know so I think I think definitely older arts older film like watch the Rocky Horror Picture show yeah yes no to that oh my gosh oh well sorry I got excited okay yes eight and ten we got we got a wrap up we got a lot the listeners go well thank you all for joining us for another episode of who we are and we will be back later in the week