Thank You to the Evil Gays
By Anna Buescher
“I want to thank all the evil gays.” Jennifer Coolidge made headlines after giving her Emmy award speech. The 62 year old won an Emmy for outstanding supporting actress in a drama after her performance in the HBO’s new series “White Lotus”. While the actress’ speech was a fun, comedic moment during the Emmy Award Show, it also makes for a great segue to talk about the changing image of LGBTQ+ representation in media. We are finally reaching a point in history where there are well-rounded LGBTQ+ characters in media. In early years, LGBTQ+ representation often took the form of bad guys in the media whose sexuality was only ever hinted at through harmful stereotypes, and then a few years later through the traditional “gay best friend” character. In recent years there has been a push to include openly out, gay characters on television and in movies. Representation is important and we fought to be included. During the push for inclusion many companies added LGBTQ+ characters into their shows and movies. Disney during recent years created a bundle of side characters who are openly gay. These characters tended, however, to have short scenes, and were rarely important to the plot and storyline. Easy examples are the shopkeeper and his family in Frozen, the cyclops officer in Onward, and the briefly shown lesbian couple in Finding Dory.
At first these appearances felt like an incredible win. Representation was spreading, people were seeing other gay characters on TV who were no longer the butt of a joke, or a closeted “gay coded” character. However for a year or so even this representation took a lul. When companies began to include LGBTQ representation in the work, every single queer character was portrayed as the same do-gooder balls of sunshine. They were consistently two dimensional characters who were added to films to simply check a box off of corporations list of “How to make a show inclusive”. This kind of flourish to a show or movie gets old. Seeing the same cookie cutter character in everything you watch gets old, becomes cliche, and never shows the full picture of who that cutout was based on.
Creators noticed this and started writing some incredible LGBTQ+ shows like SheRa, the Owl House, and Gravity Falls, but oftentimes, the characters sexualities in these shows are not revealed until the finalies in order to maintain airtime without being censored and avoiding cancellations that will take them off the air. Companies would claim to be LGBTQ+ friendly and deny claims that shows were being canceled because of their queer content. But anyone looking in could see that LGBTQ+ shows were targeted. Writers and animators spoke out about being told to avoid talking about sexuality in their work and beloved shows were canceled out of the blue. I hope that we’ve finally pushed past that first speed bump and can finally move on to real, well rounded representation in media. Saltburn did an incredible job of breaking the LGBTQ+ cookie cutter characters and offers an incredibly important addition to this new wave of representation. The main character, Oliver, is not a ball of sunshine cookie character waving a rainbow flag with a welcoming smile. I would even say that he is the opposite. He is dark, he is sick, he is obsessive. This was his story and who he was, and who he loved was important.
This new wave of representation is what I am most excited to see in media. Real, well rounded, openly LGBTQ+ characters with loves, characters with faults, characters who are loyal to a fault, characters who are hypocrites, but most exciting, I’m looking forward to seeing LGBTQ+ people represented in shows as people. Without this next wave of representation all we would accomplish is creating a new box to try to fit into. I think Jennifer Coolidge made a much more important statement than we realized when she thanked the Evil Gays. Without them we will never have proper, human representation in media. So thank you Evil Gays! Thank you for reminding us that to be gay is to be human, and to be human you cannot be perfect.
About the Author
Anna Buescher is a current junior at Butler university studying Biology and French. She uses she/they pronouns and identifies as a queer woman. She is passionate about LGBTQ+ rights, climate change, fungi and much much more. You can reach out to her at abuescher@butler.edu.
