Late last night, before I went to bed, I started winding down by reading this New York Times piece by Mark Harris* about the resurgence of the gay male villain — one that, he notes, is no longer led by heteros hoping to demonize gay men, but gay men who realize that villainy is, you know, fun.
We can debate the premise of the piece at a later point in time, what I want to touch on is this absolutely bizarre paragraph that pops up midway through the essay, when Harris apparently realizes that you can only proudly claim villain status if you’re a cis (and probably white) gay man and that he should nod to that before continuing his argument:
To be specific, this is gay male villainy — lesbians and bisexuals, long underrepresented in a world of pop culture still dominated by male creators, are insufficiently ubiquitous in movies and TV to be reframed as fun bad guys. (A delightful recent exception: the homicidal lesbian elders played by Judith Light and S. Epatha Merkerson in Rian Johnson’s “Poker Face.”) And trans villainy is, right now, not an option in pop culture: The struggle for acceptance remains too imperiled for anyone to be glib or ironic about goals like positive representation. White gay men make better marks; as members of two dominant cultures, we’re easy targets in a world in which everyone’s hyperconscious of identity, and we have enough clout to be labeled part of the problem without that critique being racist or sexist.
Setting aside the fact that some trans men consider themselves to be a part of “white gay men,” I think we can largely agree that the latter half of this pargraph is fine. But the first half? I’m just struck with this sense of what is happening, because truly, virtually everything Harris says in those two brief sentences makes absolutely no sense to me.
Before I go any further, I should note that Harris’s essay opens with an example of fun gay male villainy from The White Lotus, a show** by Bisexual King™️ Mike White; for some reason, Harris does not call White bisexual, but instead opts to refer to him as queer. When I first scanned that, I thought it was an interesting choice, but once I got to this mess of a paragraph, it felt more significant.
Because let’s just dive into this phrase, with a little added emphasis for fun:
lesbians and bisexuals, long underrepresented in a world of pop culture still dominated by male creators, are insufficiently ubiquitous in movies and TV to be reframed as fun bad guys
What. Is. Happening.
I suppose we could be generous and assume that Harris is saying that male showrunners are either uninterested in or incapable of giving the world nuanced and thoughtful representations of lesbian life, which, sure (although Mike White has a very lovely lesbian character in The White Lotus, which Harris has clearly seen). But what on earth does the preponderance of male showrunners have to do with bisexuals on TV? Does… does Harris think that all bisexuals are women? Does Harris think that Mike White is incapable of creating bisexual characters because he’s a man?
(If he does, he should really check out Chuck & Buck.)
But the thing that really made my brain break, that made me question my sanity, was the line that comes immediately after:
(A delightful recent exception: the homicidal lesbian elders played by Judith Light and S. Epatha Merkerson in Rian Johnson’s “Poker Face.”)
I actually had to do some research after reading that line to confirm that my memory of Poker Face was correct, since it’s been a while since I watched the show. But friends: it does appear that I am correctly recalling that Light and Merkerson’s characters [spoiler] murder a dude they were dating; which makes calling them “lesbian elders” somewhat … odd. (I should note here that Autostraddle’s write up of Poker Face mentions Light and Merkerson and does not flag them as lesbians or even specifically queer, which definitely means they aren’t, as Autostraddle has never met a lesbian depiction on TV it hasn’t devoted endless digital ink to.)
In the grand scheme of things, none of this is particularly important, and yet, I simply can’t help but feel that it also kind of matters? If the paper of record can’t call a bisexual showrunner bisexual, if it identifies two women as lesbians even though they very clearly have had sexual relationships with men, if it handwaves away the lack of nuanced portrayals of bisexuals and lesbians on TV by saying it’s a product of TV being run by men — I mean surely, there is evidence of a deeper problem here, right?
If a gay male entertainment journalist can’t even fathom the possibility of bisexual male characters popping up on TV, let alone becoming fun villains, even on shows created by bisexual men, then what does that say about the withered imagination of the rest of the populace? If he can’t even properly identify which characters are and are not lesbians, what does that say about the state of The Discourse™️?
I dunno, friends. I dunno.
I mean, look: I don’t disagree with his point that it is maybe too soon to be putting a bisexual villain in the mix, but that’s more because we’re barely steps away from Basic Instinct-like “crazy” bi girl villains, because we’re still dealing with shows that present it as completely justifiable for people to see bi men as unsuitable dating partners (or, in the case of the much lauded I May Destroy You, suggest that a bi man having casual sex with a straight woman could be considered… rape… purely on the basis of the fact that his past partners were men.). Is some of that due to a preponderance of male showrunners? I mean, I guess (although, again, see: IMDY). But I’d offer that it’s also just due to a widespread culture of ignorance, one which Harris is sadly contributing to himself.
* AKA Tony Kushner’s husband
** And, I would argue, example of bisexual art
It’s also been months since I watched that episode, but I don’t even recall that those two characters confirmed a sexual aspect to their relationship, although staff and other residents at the retirement home were convinced they were having sex with each other and said so, repeatedly. But, as I say, months have gone by.