While the portrayal of the LGBTQ+ has made great strides in the past few decades thanks in part to the larger public acceptance of the community, some specific members of the community still remain extremely limited in the capacity in which they are portrayed. There are only three massively popular portrayals of gay men that are portrayed in mainstream media and each portrayal shows the commodification of gay men.
The first portrayal is that of the stereotypical gay man, which many times is paired up with a serious, straight-laced gay man. Will and Grace arguably saw the first widespread positive success of the flamboyant gay man stereotype as a main character in a show by using the character Jack. While the gay character Will was portrayed as an established down-to-earth lawyer who is a clean freak, Jack was portrayed as an over-the-top feminine and flamboyant caricature. This set up continued its prominence with the show Modern Family. While the show was praised by audiences and critics for having gay life-partners and eventually husbands as the main characters, the characters’ personalities were almost identical to that of Jack and Will in Will and Grace. Mitchell was a down-to-Earth lawyer who is a clean freak while Cam is an over-the-top flamboyant and feminine caricature. The couple is also portrayed as the classic “funny man, straight man” comedic duo with Cam being the funny man of the duo due to his stereotypical antics. While the writers of the show claim to be showing relatable gay characters, this set up still portrays gay men as “the other” by making the audience laugh at one of the main character’s strange behaviors that are associated with gay men. Not only that but it also pushes the notion that audiences will only accept non-stereotypical gay man, like Will or Mitchell, if there is a stereotypical gay man to counteract this portrayal, like Jack or Cam. This set up shows that even when shows claim to be progressive and groundbreaking by having gay men as main characters, they still attempt to profit off of the mainstream popularity of the stereotypical gay man archetype and fear deviation from that archetype. The only way all the gay men in a show or movie are portrayed in a non-stereotypical manner is in a single specific narrative.
The second massively popular portrayal of gay men is in the “coming out” narrative. These narratives involve LGBTQ+ characters coming to terms with their sexuality or openly revealing their sexuality and facing backlash and being ostracized for doing so. Many mainstream movies involve this narrative such as Brokeback Mountain or Love Simon. A major problem with this portrayal is the same problem prevalent in the novels Monk lambasts in Erasure. Like in those stories, where the struggling single mother in a ghetto is seen as the universal depiction of African Americans’ struggles, the “coming out” narrative is seen as the universal depiction of the struggles of the LGBTQ+ community and, in particular, gay men. Like Erasure, while there is certainly truth in these stories for many members of the community, not all gay men have this particular experience when coming out; yet, this seems to be the only dramatic narrative involving gay men that is popular. This problem arises due to the fact that this narrative is the only widespread narrative where gay men are portrayed with little to no stereotypes in their personality, and, therefore, the only narrative that fully allows itself to be taken seriously by the audience. Moreover, the “coming out” narrative does not exclude stereotypical depictions, as those are still prevalent in shows or movies that use this narrative. Kirt from Glee, for example, goes through the “coming out” narrative and is still a stereotypical flamboyant gay man. However, if gay men in a television show or movie are all portrayed in non-stereotypical manners, the vast majority of the time at least one of the characters participates in the “coming out” narrative as this is the only narrative that writers and producers seem to believe is successful and profitable.
The last widespread portrayal of gay men that seems to be gaining more prevalence is the reveal of their sexuality outside of the source material by authors or studios. A recent example of this is the Disney live-action Beauty and the Beast, in which Josh Gad’s character Le Fou was said to be gay. However, while Disney claimed this to be the case in press releases, in the movie itself there are only slight innuendos to the character’s sexuality and the only seemingly substantive proof of this trait is a quick shot of Le Fou dancing with another man at the end of the movie. Another even more recent example of this is the treatment of Dumbledore and Grindelwald, in the Harry Potter franchise. This example is even more problematic as there is no actual elements or instances in the media that portray these characters as gay even though there has been a play, seven books, and ten movies, one of which revolved around these character’s conflict and relationship with one another. The only confirmation of these characters’ sexualities is the word of the author J.K. Rowling in interviews and Twitter. To much backlash, Rowling claimed Dumbledore was gay in 2007, over ten years ago, yet her refusal to actually show the character’s sexuality on page or screen still allows it to be a disputed fact among fans, leading to a backlash of the same magnitude when she reiterated that fact earlier this year. This reflects the commodification of the gay men in media as these pieces attempt to cater to both supporters and haters of the community by not mentioning the characters’ sexuality thus allowing for viewers to easily ignore them while still getting “points” for nominally including gay men in their stories.
