“Without The Physical Act”
Andrew Garfield’s comments tell us why we need to stop giving straight actors LGBTQ+ roles.

Earlier this month, in an interview with the Gay Times in anticipation of his upcoming role in Tony Kushner’s classic “Angels In America”, Andrew Garfield said of his casting as the gay protagonist: “A big concern was, what right do I have to play this wonderful gay role?”
Fear not however, Garfield’s preparation for the role has been particularly method: “I [watched] every single series of RuPaul’s Drag Race. I mean every series. My only time off during rehearsals — every Sunday I would have eight friends over and we would just watch Ru. This is my life outside of this play. I am a gay man right now just without the physical act — that’s all.” Apparently, watching every episode of “Ru” has given him a profound personal insight into what it means to live as a gay man in a homophobic society.
This supposed validation of his stake in gay culture emphasizes exactly why most straight and cisgender men are entirely unsuitable for LGBTQ+ roles. Because they have dedicated neither time nor consideration to the people on whom their performances will have the biggest impact. This shallow understanding of the LGBTQ+ experience often translates to performances that reaffirm the stereotypical representations we’re tired of in the media. As was the case with Eddie Redmayne and Jared Leto’s hyper-feminine portrayals of transgender women in The Danish Girl and Dallas Buyers Club, that to anyone who knew anything about transgender people would have understood were cringe-worthy at best and deeply offensive at worst.
Yet, it was enough to indulge the appetites of Hollywood’s liberal elites as both performances were showered with accolades and critical praise, only serving to emphasize how truly misguided the mainstream media is in mistaking such portrayals as a tribute to the transgender community rather than an insult. And in lies the root of the problem. Straight and cisgender actors who continue to take LGBTQ+ roles despite the more than publicized criticism of those who have done so in the past, have clearly neither listened nor acted in the interests of the community they are purporting to honour.
Many straight liberals like to think they are allies of the queer community simply because they don’t oppose their very existence. But when was a friend a friend simply by virtue of the fact they don’t hate you? A friend is somebody who listens to your experiences and asks how they can help. They don’t just turn up once a year for your birthday party. If you only turn up for Pride you’re not an ally, you’re a parasite.
When was a friend a friend simply by virtue of the fact they don’t hate you?
We’ve just laid witness to the most controversial Pride months yet, plagued with criticism over it’s exacerbating commodification of gay culture in an attempt to market the movement to straight people, for capital gain, over and above those who actually identify as LGBTQ+. Pride has become a party for corporations and straight people alike to celebrate their liberalism rather than a political movement invested in achieving de facto rights for the spectrum of the queer community who continue to be oppressed. The white middle-class gay man who has slowly but surely become palatable to mainstream society is allowed to lead the parade, whilst those who continue to suffer atrocities are kept out of sight and out of mind for fear of debunking the heterosexual myth that modern Britain has conquered prejudice.
Ru Paul’s Drag Race itself is part and parcel of the mainstream commodification and fetishization of gay sub-cultures that are now marketed to straight audiences as Sunday night viewing. This is the “fun” part of gay culture that commercial media platforms are willing to broadcast as prime-time entertainment, as opposed to the grim reality that on July 2nd there was the 15th reported incident this year of a transgender person being brutally murdered in America because they are transgender. Such violence is disproportionately targeted towards transgender women of colour.
This “pinkwashing” of gay culture conceals the harsh realities of homophobia in 2017 in favor of encouraging the heterosexual mainstream to pat itself on the back for allowing gay people to exist. Earlier this year we witnessed the director of the live action remake of Beauty and the Beast touting Disney’s first ever “exclusively gay moment”. It was a brazen attempt to capitalize on LGBTQ+ audience with a token gesture that you could have blinked and missed. It reeked of the “queer-baiting” trend in popular television shows such as Sherlock and Riverdale, which embellish leading characters’ platonic friendships with implicit homosexual subtext in an attempt to court a queer audience. Yet again this sends out a message to queer people that mainstream culture will happily benefit from your custom but isn’t actually willing to fully integrate you into society.
To witness a same sex romance in a mainstream production can provide a powerful sense of validation for LGBTQ+ audiences, but that is somewhat immediately undermined by the fact that an actual gay actor was not deemed worthy of this role. Gay narratives must be told from the mouths of straight men to make them appealing to a mainstream heterosexual audience.
Where Andrew Garfield will benefit immeasurably from his role in “Angels in America”, affirming his artistic versatility by “convincingly” imitating homosexual romance, adding a gay stereotype to his repertoire and solidifying his status as a method actor à la Daniel Day-Lewis, LGBTQ+ actors continue to struggle for opportunities. And when the opportunities do come their way, they come in the form of stereotypes: an effeminate “gay best friend” or a transgender sex-worker, or some other one-dimensional stereotype that deludes a straight audience into thinking that being gay means binge-watching Ru Paul on a Sunday night with a Strawberry Mojito and a sprinkle of glitter. That’s the “fabulous” homo-highlife straight people like to imagine gay people experiencing, rather that than the bit where you get the shit kicked out of you on a night out or suffer from a crippling mental illness.
The sad thing is, when LGBTQ+ actors are given opportunities it creates tangible change. Laverne Cox was little known before her breakout role in Orange Is the New Black and since being catapulted into the spotlight has used her platform to amplify the fight for transgender rights in a capacity that simply was not possible without such exposure. Still, maybe more people would have tuned in for Andrew Garfield in a dress.
