Sexualized Saturdays: Want Queer Characters? Don’t Go To The Movies—Watch TV

Just a few days ago, GLAAD released their 2014 Studio Responsibility Index, an annual survey inaugurated last year to grade major Hollywood studios on their representation of LGBTQ+ characters. Sadly, the results aren’t pretty:

Out of the 102 releases GLAAD counted from the major studios in 2013, 17 of them (16.7%) contained characters or impressions identified as either lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. In most cases, these characters received only minutes – or even seconds – of screen time, and were often offensive portrayals.

Ouch! Those are some low numbers. And the surveyors weren’t content with stopping there—they asked film professionals why this might be happening, but got differing answers from each side of the problem. As their introduction says: “From Hollywood executives, we repeatedly heard ‘We’re not getting scripts with LGBT characters,’ while screenwriters told us, ‘The studios don’t want to make films with LGBT characters.'” Some blame can probably be assigned to both parties, but while Hollywood is entrenched in its struggle over whether or not it’s profitable to produce stories with well-written queer characters, television is far outstripping its silver screen cousin.

Sexualized Saturdays: The Non-Homophobic Utopia

I’m trying to create a world where there’s no racism, there’s no sexism, there’s no homophobia. And I know it’s not real life, but I kind of don’t care. I’d like to create a world where none of that matters: you have the supernatural creatures for that to work as an analogy. In my mind, if you can create a world like that on TV, maybe life starts to imitate it.

—creator Jeff Davis, about Teen Wolf (x)

Welcome to the non-homophobic utopia, everyone. I don’t necessarily mean a utopian society; moreso, I mean a society where there are absolutely no built-in social mores about same-sex relations, to the point where discrimination based on such is unheard of and even confusing when outsiders bring it up. If this society is an alien race in a science fictional work, that race may not even have a concept of sexual orientation and instead be universally pansexual.

What I want to talk about is this: in terms of fictional queer representation, is it better to show a society where there is literally no discrimination against characters who experience same-sex attraction, or is it better to show characters dealing with the same prejudice a young reader might also be facing? Let’s consider the pros and cons of each.

Sexualized Saturdays: The Doctor and His Many Companions

I think I need to take a break from Doctor Who, at least in terms of article writing. As it stands right now, there is only one thing I have not done yet, and that’s to look which of the Doctor’s companions are in love with him and which aren’t.

The interesting thing about the companions is that they spread along the scope of sexual preference. Yes, most of the Doctor’s main companions are females that usually have deep seated crushes on the Doctor. But that’s not the entire makeup of the alumni.

Sexualized Saturdays: The Doctor is…?

Oh, have I ever been excited to write this post. For the purposes of this post which I am excited to write, let it be known that I am only familiar with the events and companions of the 2005 series and the first season of Hartnell’s Doctor. Also, I’m looking specifically at the person of the Doctor and how he behaves and what is in character for him, and not at the meta societal influences that have shaped the casting, writing, and acting choices made in the show.

The Time Lord we know and love is a tricky character, because we actually know next to nothing about him. We don’t know his real name, or if he even has one (although this season might change that?); we don’t know how Time Lords reproduce, or if they get married or have similar social norms. And since sexuality is tied up in gender, you have to factor in that it’s been introduced in canon that Time Lord regeneration is not restricted to one gender, and so therefore it’s difficult to put a label on that as well.

So given that we have only circumstantial evidence to go on, where do we go from here?

Doctor Who Series Seven: A Top Ten Wish List

I am starting to get tired of waiting for Series 7 and the 50th Anniversary special! Who’s with me?

Some plot spoilers and set photos and whatnot have been creeping out over the past few months, and we know that there are a few certainties: the Ponds are leaving, new Companion played by Jenna-Louise Coleman (and possibly named Clara?) is joining Team TARDIS, and the Daleks and Weeping Angels will be making appearances (as might Madame Vastra, the awesome lesbian Silurian Victorian ninja).

That still leaves a lot of wiggle room, though, for my wish list. I mean, we don’t even have any idea what will happen in the 50th Anniversary special, which won’t be occuring until 2013. Let’s throw out some ideas and hope Steven Moffat reads this blog.

1. Possibly!Clara has been billed as a fast-talker and a match for the Doctor’s exuberance.  Pleasepleaseplease keep her in check, or make the Doctor a little bit more subdued. He already has puppy-like boundless energy and he really needs a more Donna-like check on his craziness than someone who will out-crazy him.
2. The Ponds’ leaving has already been drawn out unecessarily what with bringing them back after the Doctor already said goodbye once. Give their farewell some dignity, don’t make it unnecessarily tearjerking just for the sake of tearjerkingness, etc.
3. Make the scary villains scary again. The Weeping Angels have been a little over-exposed in my opinion, and their appearance in Eleven clashed with the canon given in Ten that they could be any statue. The Daleks are sort of a joke at this point.  Make them scary again. (Although with a first episode titled ‘Asylum of the Daleks’, I think I may get my wish.)
4. Exciting new locales, please! Let’s try dinosaurs (which I seem to recall might have been hinted at, or I just saw fanart of the Doctor riding a dinosaur and got confused…) or, y’know, anywhere in Asia or Africa since they’re basically never been seen (an Egypt episode! or mix up the constant WWI and WWII stories with an Asian world war setting! Literally anywhere on those forgotten-by-the-writers continents would be nice!)
5. I’ve heard speculation that the ‘Doctor’s true identity’ plotline ties back into a plot arc that had to be scrapped when Seven was taken off the air twenty years ago. It would be really awesome if we could have a more solid tie to Old Who than just the recurring villains.
6. Lady Bacula expressly desires a Cervantes episode where Eleven is the inspiration for Don Quixote. I want an Oscar Wilde episode if they can make it a proper episode and not a PSA gay-issues story.
7. Can’t believe I’m saying this, but… Fewer timey-wimey shenanigans? The whole kerfuffle with River about broke my brain, and I have a high tolerance for timey-wimey stuff—hell, I’ve seen the Star Trek reboot at least ten times.
8. I’m still not exactly sure how the hole in the universe thing/the big bang affected the actions of previous Doctors, or the spinoff-series universes (I’m three seasons behind in Torchwood) but I’d like to see some reunions for past companions. I’ve heard ideas tossed around regarding a multi-Doctor mashup a la Time Crash or Old Who’s The Five Doctors, but that could be tricky considering Eccleston’s definitely not gonna come back and as much as I love Rose, she needs to stay in Pete’s World—she got several last hurrahs and a Doctor of her own, and bringing her back randomly would be a great way to make the fans think DW‘s writers are truly out of ideas.  Mostly I want Jack Harkness back. I know he’s working full time at Torchwood now but he could benefit from a more light-hearted adventure. And fan theories about him being the Time Agent who arrested River Song abound.
9. I see no real reason to switch Doctors at this point, but the world could be a better place if the 50th Anniversary special gave us a regeneration into a POC or female Doctor.
10. If nothing else happens in the whole of the seventh season and the 50th Anniversary special, FIX DONNA NOBLE. SHE WAS YOUR BEST FRIEND, DOCTOR, AND YOU RAPED HER MIND ‘IN HER BEST INTERESTS’ AND LEFT HER A SAD, SELF-ESTEEMLESS SHELL OF HER FORMER SELF. YOU WILL ALWAYS BE A DICK FOR THAT UNLESS YOU FIX HER. DON’T WHINE ABOUT GUILT—DO SOMETHING.

What else would you like to see in the upcoming season? Only two more grueling months of Wholessness till we can be happy (or at least angry at Moffat) again.

Sexualized Saturdays: Captain Jack Harkness

Ladies and gentlefolk: Captain Jack Harkness.

Jack appears in two shows: Doctor Who and its anagrammatic spinoff Torchwood. He first appears in my favorite Nine two-parter, The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, and he is probably the closest thing current television has to a pansexual character.

Let’s talk about some common responses to the revelation of a pan (or at least bi) character on Who/Torchwood.

First, we have the people who reject Jack’s pansexuality because most of his romantic entanglements onscreen are with men. I think that doesn’t necessarily negate Jack’s sexuality; it just shows that the writers tend to overcompensate by saying ‘Look at all the men he sleeps with even though he also flirts with girls! Totally subversive sexually, yes?!’ I still hold that Jack is genuinely attracted to (at least) both genders (of humans)—I don’t think he discriminates by species either (as long as they’re sentient).

Then we have the other big double-whammy with Jack: the nature of his pansexuality and its performance. First of all, the Doctor introduces him, saying to Rose that 51st century people like Jack no longer conform to the little boxes that Rose knows. This could be sort of problematic in that it implies that eventually everyone will be pansexual, which is a weird thing to think about a group that makes up a minority of the queer population, let alone all of humanity. Let’s instead interpret it as saying that the stigma on sexual expression has been greatly reduced in the 51st century.

The other problem is that Jack is, right now, basically the face of Boe of pansexuality on TV, and he’s portrayed in much the way that society stereotypes non-monosexual people: hypersexual, not picky, and always on the make. This is just another example of two-dimensionalized queer characters on TV. Jack is conventionally attractive, and because he’s a dude his constant in-your-face sexuality is easy to play for laughs.

What are your thoughts about good ol’ Cap’n Jack, folks?