Gay Characters Research Articles

The dynamics of sexual repression, deceit, and coming out in African homosexual narratives

Homophobic attitudes continue to militate against the coming out of homosexuals in African societies. In this study, I examine the agentic difference between forced outing and self-outing among male homosexual characters in selected African fictional narratives. The texts employed are Jude Dibia’s Walking with Shadows and Tendai Huchu’s The Hairdresser of Harare. I argue that in forced outing, male homosexual characters undergo sexual oppression, are subjected to psychological oppression, and are denied their individual agency. In order to survive homophobia, these characters become liars, deceivers, and cheats. In their quest for social acceptance, they knowingly suppress their homosexual identity and pretend to perform societally normative heterosexuality. What is obvious in these novels is that queer visibility still represents a major challenge for members of minoritized sexual communities who consequently have to explore non-conventional measures in order to survive.

Indirect contact and adolescents' intentions as bystanders to LGBTQ+ microaggressions

Adolescents are less likely to step in as bystanders in instances of homophobic discrimination. Here, two studies assess whether indirect media mediated contact with gay characters is related to bystander intentions in a hypothetical homophobic microaggression scenario. In study one, 72 participants (Mage = 12.32, SD = 0.71, 55% boys, 45% girls) watched either an extended contact or control video. Participants in the contact condition were more likely to implicitly challenge the homophobic microaggression, and boys in the contact condition were less likely to explicitly support the aggressor. Study two (96 participants, Mage = 14.78, SD = 0.70, 51% boys, 49% girls) extended these findings by demonstrating that in an extended contact condition, boys were more likely to negatively evaluate a microaggression, which was in turn related to bystander intentions. These studies demonstrate that media-based contact can encourage assertive bystander intentions in instances of homophobic prejudice, especially amongst adolescent boys.

Fashioning The Gays: A Representation Study on the Gay Protagonists in the 2000s Gay-themed American TV Series

This study focuses on the relationship between fashion and the gay community by observing the 2000s American TV series with gay characters as the protagonists. It intends to explain the way fashion is portrayed and its significance for gay culture. It can contribute to theory enrichment in cultural, literary and media studies. It would also increase people’s knowledge about fashion in and for the gay culture. This research incorporated the main data in the form of dialogues as well as pictures of scenes showing fashion worn by the gay characters obtained from Will Grace (1998-2006), Queer as Folk (2000-2005), Six Feet Under (2001-2005), and Some of My Best Friends (2001). By applying Hall’s representation theory to analyze the data, this study discovers that the gay protagonists in the 2000s gay-themed American TV series are portrayed as fashionable people, who think of fashion as their pride. However, the fashion used in portraying gay characters has shifted from the effeminate looks that are mostly composed of women’s clothes. Instead, they are still seen concerning with their appearance, but their exploration of fashion is sticking to men’s clothes. This portrayal has two essential significances for the gay community. It affirms the modish of their identity, while at the same time refusing the feminine stereotype.

Media representation matters: The effects of exposure to counter-stereotypical gay male characters on heterosexual men’s expressions of discrimination

Presence of gay men in mainstream media may have a positive impact on viewers’ attitude change. However, gay male characters are often stereotypically portrayed as feminine, and no research has yet explored audiences’ reactions to counter-stereotypical gay characters. Heterosexual Italian men ( N = 158) were exposed to a clip portraying (i) a stereotypical feminine gay male character, (ii) a counter-stereotypical masculine gay male character, or (iii) a nature documentary. Compared to the other conditions, exposure to the counter-stereotypical gay character increased discrimination toward gay men, in the form of anti-gay jokes, the higher the level of participants’ prejudice against gay men. Results further demonstrated that this effect was explained by reduced perceived stereotypicality of the character. Findings are in line with the social identity theory prediction that when gay men (outgroup) are perceived as too similar, and potentially threaten the group identity, heterosexual men would attempt to restore ingroup distinctiveness.

The Conflict of sexuality in Films: Analysis of Nollywood depiction of Homosexuality

This study addresses a sensitive subject in the context of the socio-cultural, political, legal and religious opposition to homosexual groups in Nigeria. It addresses the social depictions, honest portrayal, and conflicts between heterosexual and homosexual characters based on sexuality in Nollywood films. The study adopted a quantitative content analysis of twenty (20) Nollywood films. The study revealed that homosexual characters are depicted as physiologically, psychologically, socially and spiritually misfits. However, the film producers made an educational effort in exposing practices seen as offensive to societal norms and values. Further findings reveal that homosexual characters are portrayed as morally negative. This demonstrates the truism of the normative hypothesis that media take colouration of society in which they are situated. Finally, the study revealed a high level of perceptual conflict of non-acceptance, stigmatisation, rejection and prohibited reaction by heteronormative characters towards homosexuals based on their sexuality. In this sense, the Nollywood films examined by this study illustrate unwelcome, stereotypic, anti-social and homophobic narratives of homosexual characters that align with Nigerian society's social, civil, cultural, and religious belief systems. It is recommended that well-researched based content on sexual minorities beyond the depiction of the social position on their sexuality to more issues relating to the causal factors and ways of addressing such sexuality should be more focused on since in it has been marked as a crime in Nigeria.

Pain and glory: Narrative (De)constructions of older gay men in contemporary Spanish culture and cinema

If (older) gay men have recurrently been stereotyped as hypersexual and as sexually voracious, they have also been represented as weak and effeminate, miserable and lonely, and as less manly than their heterosexual counterparts (Goltz, 2014; Freeman, 2010). Quite often, as Goltz reminds us, the two stereotypes intersect, as in classic films such as Death in Venice, Gods and Monsters, or Love and Death on Long Island, to name but a few, where ageism and homophobia combine to judge intergenerational relations as inappropriate and gay characters as “dirty old men” eager to recover their lost youth. Given these negative images, it is no wonder, then, that both youthism and ableism have become part and parcel of contemporary gay culture, which may also be linked to the few positive cultural images available of aging or disabled gay male bodies (Goltz, 2014). Starting off from the assumption that bodies are shaped and reshaped in complex interactions between physical and symbolic dimensions, the paper will demonstrate, however, how (auto)biographical narratives of older gay men, what we call “egodocuments,” may be useful to rethink such traditional (mis)conceptions. Crossing the traditional divide between the Social Sciences and the Humanities, the study will draw on both life stories and film representations of older gay men in Spain, focusing on Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar's (2019) latest film, Pain and Glory, as a (semi-)autobiographical re-vision of traditional representations of gay men's aging. While Almodovar's protagonist and alter-ego, Salvador Mallo, appears as “prematurely aged” (Curtis and Thompson, 2015) due to bodily pain and disability, the film also travels back and forth from Mallos's childhood and youth to his maturity. This shows aging not only as a life-course experience, but also helps redefine it as a “queer” rather than linear or “straight” experience (Halberstam), allowing for both “pain and glory” to coexist in old age. Almodóvar's portraiture of gay aging will be compared to the life stories collected in a number of focus groups with Spanish older gay men, which will provide equally complex, varied, and often contradictory narratives.

STRUGGLING AGAINST STEREOTYPE: A STUDY OF MASCULINITY IN AMERICAN GAY TV SERIES

This study aims to analyze the concept of masculinity in the gay male community and identify the image of masculinity in gay men shown in the American gay television series. Data for this qualitative research was gathered from several American gay TV series in the 2000s. The data analysis process involved representation theory in interpreting the dialogs and the scenes in the television series. The study found that masculinity does not always have to be associated with physical strength and heterosexuality because there are other essential aspects such as the ability to achieve success and to meet the needs of life that can be used to conceptualize masculinity. It also revealed that American gay television series frequently showed the representation of masculinity in gay characters to reject the stereotype through images such as physical strength in sports, attractive physical appearance, profession, and ability to achieve success.

The Formation of Gay Space in Joko Anwar’s Arisan!

Although the notion of gay space started out as a cultural geographic study that predominantly focused on Western countries where gay visibility was high, more scholars have begun to show keenness in tracing the existence of gay space in Asian regions in recent years. This article traces the formation of gay space in Jono Anwar’s 2003 movie Arisan!. Set in modern day Indonesia where homosexuality is still deeply frowned upon, the movie explores how the male protagonist - Sakti struggles to come to terms with his own homosexuality in a world governed by heteronormativity. This study argues that the gay space in Arisan! is not formed by merely portraying the gay characters in a positive light but rather, by toppling the heteronormative structures that shaped the core of sexual hegemony as portrayed in the movie. This study examines how the formidable heteronormative structures are destabilized by toxic masculinity, toxic femininity, and the problematizing of heterosexual world for the purpose of making room for the formation of gay space.

Poetics of Love in Henry James’s “The Beast in the Jungle”

May and Marcher in Henry James’s “The Beast in the Jungle” pursues an odd relationship interpreted by James’s critics as fraudulent, self-victimizing, or queer. While May is reduced to a witness to Marcher’s psychosomatic complexities, an evidence reliable to justify Marcher’s troubled heterosexuality, Marcher is deprived of any romantic yearnings for her. This article, departing from simplistic psychosexual interpretations having ended up demoting May to an inferior position and Marcher to a homosexual character, suggests the main problem of their relationship is the contrast between their love styles. In this relationship, the communication is prevented not so much by May’s subordinate silence/assent as by Marcher’s narcissism. John Allan Lee’s typology of love helps individually explicate each character’s psychological traits and romantic advances under Lee’s comparing terms of eros/ludus and storge/mania. The result of this case-by-case analysis is to prove their relationship is nothing but the obsession Dorothy Tennov redefines in her limerence theory based on such terms as idealization, crystallization, and intrusive thinking. After proving May and Marcher as limerent lovers, each pursuing a love style fundamentally at odds with the love style of the other, this article finally, based on Sigmund Freud’s notion of cathexis, concludes it is Marcher’s narcissism or self-cathexis that bars the doors of proper communication and mutual recognition.

Hero loves Hero: Understanding the Changing Rendition of Sexuality through the Movie Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan

In the contemporary scenario, there is a growing number of shows in films and television that include gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or queer characters as central figures and have a queer thematic structure. This paper intends to explore the homosexual themes in the bollywood film Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan (2020). The film is a big leap in bollywood culture of queer films being bollywood’s first mainstream film presenting the love story of a gay couple Aman Tripathi and Karthik Singh. The paper focuses on locating the specific instances where queer themes of identity, acceptance, homophobia, and same-sex love emerge. The paper also aims to capture the response of traditional Indian family and society to same-sex relationships as depicted in the film.

RELIGION AND SOCIAL TOLERANCE: GENERATION Z'S VIEWS ON EXPOSURE TO HOMOSEXUALITY IN THE MASS MEDIA

The media exerts a considerable influence on individuals' views, attitudes, and behaviors, particularly on those who lack access to alternative sources of information or are still shaping and forming their identities and perspectives. Attitude towards homosexuality has been different in understanding to type of societies’ cultural and moral development or political circumstance. Arising out of this issue on homosexuality is the idea of natural law and some interpretations of that law as forbidding homosexual sex. Traditionally, homosexuals have been underrepresented and misrepresented in television series and feature films. Homosexual characters have been cast in stereotypically negative roles purely for amusing the audience. In this paper, the researchers were able to analyze how the introduction of content presenting and detailing LGBT individuals and concerns into the mainstream media affects the audiences' attitudes and acceptance of the issue, particularly the Generation Z. The findings indicated that the majority of generation Z residents in Isulan, Sultan Kudarat, aged 15-19, are not influenced by the media in their views on homosexuality, and the interpretation revealed a neutral conclusion in terms of fully tolerating homosexuality in the community.

Movie Media: Misrepresentation of Homosexual Characters Within Comedy Films Since the 80s Caused by Heterosexist Ideals in the Acting and Directing Process

Critical discourse analysis is a qualitative research approach used to study social inequalities, in which it creates the connection between social practices and the social context. The use of film analysis variables of non-discourse and discourse practices relating to this analysis approach was examined from one film representative of each decade; the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. The heterosexism found within the acting and directing process of films within the comedy genre while structuring a gay character in screenplay was examined through the research process by honing in on specific variables. The conducted study’s research process involved multiple viewings of each movie: Victor/Victoria, Clueless, and Bridget’s Jones Diary where 3 scenes were chosen from the film regarding variables such as materialisations, speech, and actions that held correlation to the portrayal of a homosexual character. By the film variables directly corresponding with the characterization, the research analysis demonstrated heterosexist actor’s and director’s choices throughout the filming process and their correlation to common stereotypes against homosexuals being drawn off of for comedic effect. Over the span of 3 decades, the use of stereotypes within homosexual movie media representation; although progressive towards inclusion, has strictly portrayed such characters in comical, non-serious scenes. It is with a comparison of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s take on gay portrayals that the founded extremity of the use of such common stereotypes was recognized as they continuously, negatively impact the LGBTQ community through the continuation of use constituting these portrayed personas as correct.

Coming out in a ‘faux-lesbian comedy’: authenticity and queer identity in MTV’s Faking it

ABSTRACT In a special report for Entertainment Weekly in January 2011, Jennifer Armstrong noted that ‘gay characters have gone from one time guest stars, whispered tragedies, and silly sidekicks to not just an accepted but an expected part of teen-centric television’ (36, original emphasis). Within this genre, the coming out narrative has gained prominence as the dominant means of articulating and representing LGBTIQ+ identities and experience. This article traces a lineage of teen texts that negotiate authenticity and queer identity through LGBTIQ+ coming out stories where queer-coded characters attempt to pass as heterosexual, performing ‘fakery’ for personal safety and as a means of fitting in to the teen social milieu. MTV’s Faking It (2014–2016) flips the script on this queer teen narrative, following two unpopular best friends, Karma (Katie Stevens) and Amy (Rita Volk), who pretend to be lesbians to climb the high school hierarchy. While controversial upon its release, Faking It has since been credited with ‘changing the nature of queer representation on TV’ through its novel representations of gender and sexual diversity. This article examines how teen sexualities are articulated and understood in the series. Through close textual analysis, this article demonstrates how Faking It engages the theme of fakery to undermine classical notions of the coming out narrative as an expression of authenticity, which have long been central to LGBTIQ+ youth narratives in film and television.

Queer Bandits and Partisans: Reimagining Male Homosexuality in Early Post-War Italy

ABSTRACT Despite state-sanctioned antipathy towards homosexuality, queer content began to proliferate in Italian art during the mid-to-late 1940s. It is now a commonplace that representations of homosexual characters in this period fell into a paradigm of fascists-criminals-paedophiles, but this essay challenges that notion. Tracing cultural representations of male homosexuality in Italy demonstrates that vilification was only one strategy employed by Italian artists of the early post-war years. Indeed, writers and filmmakers alike utilised increasingly realistic depictions based on actual cultural practices of homosexual men. In particular, Alberto Lattuada’s film Il bandito (1946) and Angelo Del Boca’s short story collection Dentro mi è nato l’uomo (1948) exemplify this trend. Analysing and contextualising these efforts, this essay contributes to a cultural history of homosexuality in Italy by elaborating on two tropes – cruising and egalitarian relationship structures – which make it possible to reconceive both how homosexual men were represented and how they may have lived.

Homophobia and Antisemitism in Otto Julius Bierbaum’sPrinz Kuckuck(1907/08)

Starting from existing scholarship on the relationship among masculinity, sexuality, and Jewishness in the German-language cultural sphere, this article analyzes the connection between antisemitism and homophobia in Otto Julius Bierbaum’s fin-de-siècle novel Prinz Kuckuck. By tracing the respective paths of the Jewish protagonist and his male homosexual counterpart, the article elaborates on the specific versions of Jewishness and male homosexuality that Bierbaum’s novel creates. It can be shown that the novel exposes both the Jewish and the homosexual character as deficient and harmful. The novel, however, does not restrict itself to mere parallelization but establishes an intrinsic connection between the Jewish and the male homosexual character by integrating homosexual codes into the Jew’s “parasitic” repertoire. The article concludes by offering an explanation of this connection that draws on Moishe Postone’s critique of modern antisemitism. Antisemitism and homophobia are shown as two complementary and intrinsically connected ways of dealing with two dimensions of the experience of modernity: capitalism and social contingency.

"We are the new Lithuania"

In the Baltic States, LGBT representation in the media is limited at best. While LGBT activism continues to gain support and visibility, LGBT characters are considerably less common on film and television, and only Lithuania has produced films with openly gay or lesbian characters in main roles. This stands in contrast to the tendency in Baltic media and politics to lay claim to Nordic values and to identify as Northern European rather than Eastern European. In this paper I examine how two Lithuanian films grapple with identity and place in their depictions of gay characters. Porno Melodrama (Romas Zabarauskas, 2011) follows a gay couple as they are forced to choose between nationalistic homophobia and fleeing to “safer” cities in Western Europe. Nuo Lietuvos Nepabėgsi (You Can’t Escape Lithuania, Romas Zabarauskas, 2016) features a fictionalised version of its director in a meta-narrative meditation on the meaning of cinema as well as the place of queerness in the “new” Lithuania. In this article I interrogate how sexual and national identity are placed in contra-distinction to one another in the two films by Romas Zabarauskas: in Porno Melodrama, where gay identity is met with violent retribution; and in You Can’t Escape Lithuania, where queerness serves as a critique of the underlying foundations of gender, sexuality and nationalist narratives of belonging. I critique Western conceptions of homonormativity and homonationalism, where their problematic mapping onto a Baltic context fails to take into account the diverging reality in which neoliberalism has not been accompanied by more inclusive attitudes to sexual and gender diversity.

MAURICE: THROUGH THE LENSES OF LACANIAN “MIRROR, MIRROR, ON THE WALL…”

Maurice, a bildungsroman by E. M. Forster, revolves around the theme of homosexuality. By presenting homosexual characters, who are on a futile quest for their actual identity, Forster attempts to be the voice of the unspeakables in the Edwardian period in England, where all acts of homosexuality were considered illegal. In this paper, the identity of the characters is analysed through the lenses of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory by focusing on the concept of mirror. This paper attempts to reveal to what extent cultural codes and societal norms of the Edwardian period are functional in forming the identity of the characters. Besides, this study uncovers that Forster wisely uses Lacanian concepts such as imaginary order, symbolic order and real order in creating his characters. It is concluded that the mirror, which reflects the actual self of the characters, just like dreams and music, plays a significant role in (re)forming the identities from compulsory heterosexuality to voluntary homosexuality.

Idiosyncratic Ambiguities of Queer(able) Experience in Polish Film in the Early 2010s

ABSTRACT The search for queer/queerable moments in the post-1989 Polish cinema is a frustrating feat. While increasingly featuring LGBTQ+ characters, especially in the current decade, Polish cinema films rarely break away from heteronormative and, less frequently, homonormative stereotypization, which takes on a limited range of offensive or empathetic manifestations. The former, represented by low-brow comedies, such as Weekend (dir. Cezary Pazura, 2010) and Sex Change (dir. Konrad Aksinowicz, 2009), would continue the infamous tendency of cis-male filmmakers to poke fun at anal sex and dildos, which they apparently identify as representative of non-heteronormative sexual practices and behaviours. The latter, usually featuring one or two gay or lesbian characters in the roles of sidekicks to the protagonists, would constitute sympathetic responses to socio-political situations of LGBTQ individuals in Poland, marked by homophobia, coming-out hardship, and/or heavily non-egalitarian legislation in Poland. Yet, in the early 2010s, a few cinema films brought about cracks in the dominating trend, proposing instead multi-layered though heavily ambiguous studies of non-heteronormative characters living in contemporary Poland. Suicide Room (dir. Jan Komasa, 2011) presents a story of adolescent homophobia in a private secondary-school setting, simultaneously questioning the sexual identification and cis-ness of the protagonist. Floating Skyscrapers (dir. Tomasz Wasilewski, 2013) focuses on a cis-male swimmer who falls in love with an openly gay male while being in a romantic relationship with a woman. Secret (dir. Przemyslaw Wojcieszek, 2012) combines a reflection on non-heteronormative forms of kinship and of sexual identification with the non-memory of Shoah – it is one of several films released around that time, which are reactionary towards the discussion concerning the Polish participation in the pogroms on the Jewish Poles in the 1930s-1940s.

Queer Utopia in Klaus Mann's Der fromme Tanz

Klaus Mann's Der fromme Tanz (1926) was the first German mainstream novel featuring a homosexual character. Critics have focused on autobiographical aspects in the novel, particularly the difficult relationship the author had with his father, Thomas Mann, as well as on the author's open and positive attitude towards homosexuality. The article contends that Mann's novel is more than a historical document of queer life in Weimar‐era Germany; it also fostered hope for new worlds of relationality and queer desire. To make this case, the article analyzes Der fromme Tanz alongside texts by Ernst Bloch and José Esteban Muñoz, making the idea of utopia relevant to contemporary queer theory again. The main character's determination to find his own path, even his inability to consummate his love, is a refutation of the widespread homophobic belief that same‐sex desiring men are incapable of establishing long‐lasting relationships. The character's unflinching hope in the future expresses a longing for new social relations and alternative ways of being an individual in the world.

DISNEY’S SEXIST LANGUAGE: FEMINIST STYLISTIC APPROACH IN BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (2017)

Through the feminist stylistic on Walt Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (2017) Live-Action remake, the paper argues that Walt Disney is not as inclusive and progressive as rumoured, but sexist. The study aims to uncover the characteristics of sexism in the context of linguistic derived from a gender-specific term. This study is qualitative research. The objects and data of this analysis are determined by purposive sampling. The object of this study is the text that appeared in the film Beauty and the Beast (2017) on a live-action remake. The data for this study are lexical items (single word, chain of words, and part of a word) that relate to gender-specific. The data analysed using the linguistic determinism theory of Sara Mill's feminist stylistic framework. This study reveals the presence of sexism at the word level. The findings are Walt Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (2017) Live-action remake shows the use of generic-noun and generic-pronouns appear in a sexist way, diminutive naming of gay and female characters, and negative terms used to portray female characters.