Trigger warning for mentions of murder, suicide, and suicidal ideation.
In the third episode of Dracula,
two gay characters died violently and graphically. When I heard about this, I
didn’t find it upsetting so much as eye-rollingly predictable. Modern television
has a long tradition of killing off its gay caracters with extreme prejudice.
But the actual image of Daniel, a young gay man, shooting himself after
watching his lover die violently was very upsetting. (This episode also included the violent murder of two characters of color. And while this particular post is specifically about the queer death trope, I don't want to ignore the fact that killing characters of color is just as tired and harmful a trope as killing queer characters.)
I
know that Dracula is a work of fiction, and a rather surreal and ostentatious
one at that. And I know that things are a lot better now than they were a
hundred years ago or even ten years ago.
But
right now, today, there are still so many of us who feel lost. Too often, we
are still scared and ashamed and isolated. Too often, we still have a good
reason to be scared. There are still people in the world who devote time and
energy and resources to making us believe that we deserve to feel lost and
scared and ashamed.
I
am not saying that the writers of “Dracula” are the same as the people who are
trying to deny us our fundamental rights; in fact, I’m quite sure that the
writers of “Dracula” had good intentions when they introduced Lord Laurent and
Daniel (and queer Lucy as well). When writers kill off their queer characters, I
know that they are not doing it to be mean. They are not out to get their queer
audience members. They are not trying to hurt us.
But
as a queer person, watching a gay character die can be hurtful in ways that
it’s hard for a lot of people to understand. When Tara MacClay was gunned down
on Buffy, Joss Whedon assured viewers that it hurt him just as much as it hurt
them. And I’m sure that Joss Whedon had empathy and affection for Tara as a
character, and that it made him sad to kill her off. But there were people in
the world who decided not to kill themselves because of Willow and Tara’s
relationship. And I’m not sure that Mr. Whedon completely understands how
hurtful it was to those people (and a lot of other people) when that bullet
tore through Tara’s heart.
“Oh, so you’re saying that nothing bad can
ever happen to gay characters?”
No,
I am not. Death is a part of life, and stories about death are essential to our
understanding of our world and ourselves. I understand why someone decided to
tell the stories of Omar Little and Jack Twist, and I’m glad they did. Those
stories needed to be told.
But
here’s the thing: off the top of my head, I can count the number of books and
movies I’ve seen where things ended well for the gay characters on one hand.
“But isn’t it ok to kill off gay characters
if you kill off straight characters too?”
Honestly, I don’t want to make any
grand pronouncements about when it is or isn’t ok to kill off your characters,
gay or otherwise.
But I will say this: when a straight
character dies, it is often tragic. Fans of the character are devastated. But
it does not feel like a referendum on who or how or why that character
loved. When a gay character dies, it often does feel like a referendum on the
way that character lived and loved.
And here’s why: remember the Disney
movies you watched as a kid? Many of those movies feature a heterosexual couple
at the center of the story. And when their love triumphs over adversity, and
when they kiss each other at the end, it is good. It is right. In our culture,
we are introduced to stories that celebrate heterosexual love and affection at
a very young age.
So imagine, if you can, going through
childhood seeing zero portrayals of people like you kissing each other and
living happily ever after. Imagine getting a little older and seeing a few
people like you on TV only to discover that they die horribly a surprisingly
large amount of the time.
Stories matter. They matter so
much. The stories my mother read to me as a child played a huge role in my
developing sense of empathy and kindness. They affected the way I see myself,
the way I treat others, and the way I live in this world.
For a gay kid or adolescent, a story
can literally be life-sustaining. Unfortunately, stories also have the power to
be harmful, especially to young, queer people.
Sometimes it is so goddamn hard to
be brave. And it’s easy to believe you’re going to end up alone and miserable
when most queer love stories end in tragedy. It is easy to notice the number of
characters with non-normative gender identities who are portrayed as morally
suspect. It’s easy to believe that there’s something icky and shameful about
physical intimacy between same-sex couples when so many TV networks are still
so goddamn squeamish about same-sex kissing. It’s easy to believe that you are
doomed when so many gay characters are the villains who have to be killed off
for the greater good, or the redshirt who has to heroically sacrifice herself
so the straight heroes can live happily and heteronormatively ever after.
We live in a day and age in which
people are making “It Gets Better” videos and photographing themselves with
duct tape over their mouths and almost every TV show has a token gay character
(who may or may not ever actually kiss anyone and/or die horribly in the third
episode).
But you remember Daniel crying
alone in his room? That is still happening today. There
are still far, far too many of us who are lost, and silent, and scared. There
are those of us who want to die, because eternal, dreamless sleep seems preferable
to the demons that haunt our steps and hide in our shadows, whispering that we
are doomed.
So for the sake of those of us who
are still scared, still silent, still lonely, I’m asking all the storytellers
in the world to do something: give us hope. Don’t just tell us that It Gets
Better and call it a day: give us a reason to believe that it gets better.
Don’t just tell us stories where we die. Tell us stories where we live and love
and laugh. Tell us stories in which our love and physical intimacy is not punished or
frowned upon. Tell us stories in which our love triumphs over adversity. Give us something to believe in. Give us courage. Give us strength.
Give us hope.
