On Representation

     Since it's my job as a gay person to make definitive statements about the rest of you, this week I'm going to be extra judgy.  One of the worst parts of being a homosexual, apart from all of the institutional discrimination and the fact that straight people want nothing more than to torture me to death and then cum on my body, is that I am unwillingly exposed to other people's opinions about children's TV.  I have no data to back this up, but it's pretty obvious from a cursory survey of my college friends that more grown adults than ever are obsessed with media ostensibly made for children.  I say ostensibly because many of them are marketed towards adults.  Their existence on streaming services is a testament to this.  No child with homework is going to binge watch three seasons of She-Ra, but a woman in her 20s probably will.

    One of the main selling points of modern kids' TV is that it features characters who are, to varying degrees, non-straight, non-white, and (occasionally) non-cis.  The appeal of this is obvious.  Being closeted in your teenage years leads to the perception, true or not, that we never saw ourselves in the media we consumed.  If we had, or so this line of thinking goes, then we would have known we were gay earlier.  This is a bit of a fantasy, but even if it weren't it would still deposit a seed of longing deep inside of us for the ideal gay childhood we didn't get to have.  This is why we love the idea that homosexuality is being deliberately inserted into media for kids.  This is also why we are filled with so much anger when it isn't done "properly."

    For the entirety of its runtime, Steven Universe was a lightning rod for Discourse.  This was egged on its creator, who was very vocal in interviews about what the series' more mystical elements were meant to represent.  For example, some of the characters in the series are capable of fusion, which works exactly the same as in Dragon Ball Z but has now been transfigured into a metaphor for being in a sexual relationship.  The metaphor here is stretched really far, with multiple gems fusing representing polyamory, and fusion with a person you don't like representing an abusive relationship.  Not to quibble with words, but what stands out to me about these examples is that they represent, but they don't depict.  In other words, they don't say anything in and of themselves, but are mere shells for adults to fill with their own "lived experience."

    It's natural that a show on Cartoon Network wouldn't feature anyone actually bumping uglies.  That's fan artists' job.  Furthermore, there are literal lesbian relationships in Steven Universe which the creators fought hard to include.  In terms of the phenomenology of representation, however, this doesn't particularly matter.  The pleasure we derive from seeing these characters adopt homosexual behavior is projected onto a hypothetical audience of innocents who will benefit from it.  Ironically, moral panics about gay characters are buttressed by the same psychological mechanism.  Invoking children is a way to project both entitlement and innocence onto an imaginary battlefield where one does not have to take responsibility for one's behavior.  It's depressing that so many gay people have internalized this in order to justify their libidinal investment in children's media.

    Is representation important?  More precisely, does the presence of gay people in media have a positive effect on us?  Of course it does.  That being said, we need to rethink how we engage with representation if we are to make it better.  For example, there is a tendency to expect gay characters to be virtuous.  Somehow they must ride the impossible line of being distinct from the heterosexuals around them and also just as "good."  As a result of a lack of real life gay role models, many queer young adults turn to media as a way to find their ideal selves.  Unfortunately, this also means that we expect all queer characters to be well, ideal.  Not only is this boring, but it also reinforces a kind of self-seriousness that is antithetical to actual maturity.  If we're successful, we pretend that we're perfectly successful.  If we're victims, we pretend to be perfect victims. There's no room for the nuance inherent in human experience.

    One reason I'm baffled by demands for media representation is that it often boils down to including us in otherwise straight worlds.  Plenty of "first gay characters" exist alongside a completely straight cast, and whether they are tokenized or not are openly touted as teaching straight people that we exist, and that hating us isn't okay.  This is condescending at best, and I question the value of even allowing straight people to understand our experiences.  We'd like to believe that homophobia is primarily a function of ignorance, and that if enough facts about our lives are made public then homophobes will magically decide that the fantasies they violently cling to are wrong.  Actually, what's more important is that we teach people that they aren't allowed to hurt us.  If they feel like they can then they will, regardless of their stated reasons.

    Let's escape universal representation as a coherent goal.  No cosmology can possibly accommodate every possible kind of person.  In many cases, good queer narratives don't even appeal to every gay person, let alone an entire ocean of straight audiences as well.  As I've gotten older, I've become less convinced that being included in straight stories or straight institutions is worth it.  Neither is "queering" these institutions, unfortunately, despite what the gay drone pilots among us might have us believe.  A major problem with modern homosexuality is that it has in many ways become a marketing category, which depletes both our political will and our ability to relate to one another in authentic ways.  Rather than demanding perfect representation, we need to refuse to be perfectly represented, and start speaking to one another directly.  That's not going to solve all of our problems by any means, but if we try it might at least make us less annoying online.