Student Blog: A Love Letter to Queer Storytelling

Despite the fact that much of the evolution of the entertainment industry over the last century could easily be attributed to queer artists and their work, it is only in recent years that both audiences and producers seem to have become comfortable with receiving LGBTQ+ stories on a large scale. With a new season of Heartstopper in the works, the release of the movie-musical adaptation of The Color Purple, and the premiere of the series finale of Young Royals, queer media seems to have finally found a permanent mass footing.

This is not to say that these queer stories are the first of their kind. Alice Walker’s original epistolary novel of The Color Purple was, of course, released in 1982, long before the movie, musical, or movie-musical. Yet, previous adaptations to the 2023 movie-musical have been forced to downplay the queer aspects of the story that are almost as central as its racial conflicts. If not for the real-life views of producers or executives, these decisions are often made for the sole purpose of keeping stories desirable for mainstream audiences. The American viewership is not all in agreement on whether or not they would sit through a scene where two women kissed, thus reducing potential box office numbers. For a long period of time, executives and artists alike had two options when telling queer stories: downplay/eliminate the queer elements, or succumb to the creation of a “raunchy” or “inappropriate” story. In many cases, the only way to get queer people onto the stage was to exoticize their very existences, such as in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, The Rocky Horror Show, or Rent. Of course, stories such as Rocky Horror thrive on their raunchiness, but the cultural climate of the time could leave viewers wondering how other LGBTQ+ stories could have been told differently. 

Yet, there were artists who took advantage of this. Mainstream audiences did not desire a casual queer love story, but were willing to pay to see a hyper-gay performance. Thus, the art of drag entered the commercial realm. Merriam-Webster defines drag as “entertainment in which performers caricature or challenge gender stereotypes (as by dressing in clothing that is stereotypical of another gender, by using exaggeratedly gendered mannerisms, or by combining elements of stereotypically male and female dress) and often wear elaborate or outrageous costumes.” Although modern drag has been around in America since the Civil War, the art form did not fully develop into a source of entertainment until the rise of the vaudeville scene of the Prohibition era. As was stated previously, queer-focused art could not exist in spaces that were not considered “raunchy.” Vaudeville performances were infamous for their employment of not just drag, but burlesque and minstrel shows as well. Thus, drag struggled to move into acceptance within the public eye throughout the 20th century. The drag scene became more and more popular within nightclubs into the 70s and 80s, but the AIDs crisis would put yet another damper on its movement into the mainstream. Finally, with the rise of RuPaul in the 1990s, drag began its critical movement toward the acceptance we know and love today. Drag queens have their own TV shows, acts, movies, music, and more. Yet, public legislation and private interest groups still continues to challenge artists’s places in all aspects of life.

As mentioned previously, queer stories are finally escaping the confinement of oversexualization and separation from mainstream audiences. A key example of this in the modern theatre scene is Alanis Morisette’s Jagged Little Pill, which recently embarked on its first North American tour. Two featured characters, Frankie and Jo, are in a WLW relationship at the top of the show, though it does fall apart by intermission. Yet, the casual approach to this, with their sexualities not being particularly central to the conflict or their characterizations, was groundbreaking for the industry as a whole. Jagged Little Pill was praised by Variety for feeling “”very much of the moment,” which perfectly encapsulates my thoughts following my own viewing of the show in Tempe. This is no doubt connected to its queer representation, which is very representative of real life for queer and non-queer people alike: the LGBTQ+ community is part of everyone’s life in some way or another, so seeing such nonchalant representation felt very 21st-century. 

While the presence of queer stories is affecting the entertainment industry as a whole, perhaps its greatest effect is on LGBTQ+ individuals. There is an undeniable impact on younger queer people, who are experiencing the privilege of growing up with representation abound, and older queer people, who feel as though they are “healing their inner child.” Using Netflix’s Heartstopper as an example, the BBC’s Scott Bryan had this to say: "This show has left an impact on me in a huge way…this was a show that I felt that I wish I could’ve seen when I was 14.” Queer representation in media has never been more important, nor has it ever been more widespread. Many new beloved characters have arisen in the LGBTQ+ media canon, allowing audiences to feel seen in ways that non-queer people have for centuries past. The integration of queer people into our media is one of the best ways to promote acceptance in our world, and is without a doubt one of the keystone features of the modern entertainment industry.

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