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god DAMN it
I had a terrible day at work, and then I got home to discover that the new word-of-god on Marcus Keane is that he's not gay, he's bisexual. From this interview with showrunner Jeremy Slater.
If they had shown Marcus as bisexual since the beginning, instead of clearly presenting him as gay and then changing their minds, I'd be fine with it. Hell, I'd have been thrilled! But I am deeply suspicious of why they're saying bisexual now; if they aren't making way for a romance, either past or future or both, with Mouse I'll eat my hat. And that just infuriates me, especially in the context of Marcus's having apparently, in 2x05, drawn back from starting a relationship with Peter.
I was so fucking happy to have a gay lead character that I love in a show that I love. And now that's been taken away, probably in the service of putting in a het romance.
It also fucks up the whole way I understood Marcus, which considering I was thinking of writing fic is a big deal.
I remember now why I so rarely get into open-canon shows: because they can break your damn heart.
ETA: Now that I'm calmer I want to clarify what I meant. Wanting to introduce a bisexual character on the show is, in itself, great. The showrunners could've taken a character previously assumed to be straight and revealed them to be bi. Or they could've made Peter bi, since there's nothing to indicate that Peter is necessarily gay and not bi. But no, the showrunners pickedmy gay action hero a lead character who has been strongly suggested to be gay ("I didn't think girls were your flavor" says the demon, and it doesn't make sense as a taunt unless Marcus is indeed not attracted to women/girls). So, yeah, we get a bi character added, but at the cost of subtracting a gay one. The total number of queer characters on the show has not gone up, even though there are plenty of presumed-straight characters to choose from. And I do genuinely fear that this is in preparation for introducing a het romance for Marcus, because if they didn't want to show him in a relationship with a woman, why not just let him be gay? There is no shortage of het romance in the media, and I really really really really ohmygodreally don't want to see another one when the prerequisite for it is "Oops, Marcus isn't gay after all!" Honestly I'm dubious about any romance on the show (unless it's Marcus/Tomas, which we aren't going to get), and the idea of a het one gets right up my nose. The most cynical part of me feels like this is a way for the show to get inclusivity points without the ratings risk of showing an ongoing romance between two men. ("But Marcus is bi!" cry the showrunners. "He kissed a man that one time, remember? How much more do you people want?")
It makes me angry that this decision pits queer fans (and fans of queer characters) against each other. Because obviously it's good to have more bisexual characters in the media! But the price we're being asked to pay for that--one less gay character, when gay characters are underrepresented already--is not good. The obvious solution is fewer straight characters. But heaven forbid straight people not see themselves vastly over-represented in the media. That might make them uncomfortable.
At least the Australian postal vote on same-sex marriage is turning out strongly in favor, so the day isn't totally awful.
If they had shown Marcus as bisexual since the beginning, instead of clearly presenting him as gay and then changing their minds, I'd be fine with it. Hell, I'd have been thrilled! But I am deeply suspicious of why they're saying bisexual now; if they aren't making way for a romance, either past or future or both, with Mouse I'll eat my hat. And that just infuriates me, especially in the context of Marcus's having apparently, in 2x05, drawn back from starting a relationship with Peter.
I was so fucking happy to have a gay lead character that I love in a show that I love. And now that's been taken away, probably in the service of putting in a het romance.
It also fucks up the whole way I understood Marcus, which considering I was thinking of writing fic is a big deal.
I remember now why I so rarely get into open-canon shows: because they can break your damn heart.
ETA: Now that I'm calmer I want to clarify what I meant. Wanting to introduce a bisexual character on the show is, in itself, great. The showrunners could've taken a character previously assumed to be straight and revealed them to be bi. Or they could've made Peter bi, since there's nothing to indicate that Peter is necessarily gay and not bi. But no, the showrunners picked
It makes me angry that this decision pits queer fans (and fans of queer characters) against each other. Because obviously it's good to have more bisexual characters in the media! But the price we're being asked to pay for that--one less gay character, when gay characters are underrepresented already--is not good. The obvious solution is fewer straight characters. But heaven forbid straight people not see themselves vastly over-represented in the media. That might make them uncomfortable.
At least the Australian postal vote on same-sex marriage is turning out strongly in favor, so the day isn't totally awful.
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Obviously I cannot speak for All Bi People™, but I am almost always in favor of fewer straight characters. I do not feel diminished by watching same-sex romances where only one participant is bi. I really enjoy them, actually, since the majority of romances involving bi characters are with straight characters, as if the alternative is just too confusingly queer.
I am not in favor of zero-sum games. I am in fact getting very sick of them.
At least the Australian postal vote on same-sex marriage is turning out strongly in favor, so the day isn't totally awful.
Yes by 61.6%.
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I want "fewer straight characters" to be my motto from now on.
It took me some hours to unpack my own furious and distressed reaction to the news, and to see that what's really at the core of the problem is this implicit quota system for queer characters. And how very deeply implicit it is, so that it took someone else's comment on Twitter to make me realize "Hey, they've could've made a straight character bi! Or a character with no established sexuality! Why didn't they do that?"
Being gay myself, it is gay male characters who speak to me in the most profound way, and that's why it hurts to lose one. But in a non-homophobic world, it would never be a zero-sum game. Tomas could be bi and Marcus could be gay!
I like that world better.
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Seriously, there are worse ones.
And how very deeply implicit it is, so that it took someone else's comment on Twitter to make me realize "Hey, they've could've made a straight character bi! Or a character with no established sexuality! Why didn't they do that?"
It's really tokenizing. And it does take some time to notice, I think because queer audiences are trained to be so grateful that there's a queer character onscreen at all who hasn't yet died. It's like the worst version of Highlander.
Being gay myself, it is gay male characters who speak to me in the most profound way, and that's why it hurts to lose one.
That makes sense. It's not that Marcus isn't still a heroic queer character, but he was a heroic queer character who directly reflected your experience (and a kind of heroic queer character we still don't see much of) and it will be a lot easier for mainstream straight audiences to elide his queerness if mostly they see him involved in a romance with a woman, with men remaining fleeting moments or theory (which is a whole other issue of its own). I would like for the show to handle this development well, and I remain engaged in acquiring the first season actually as we speak, but I can understand the feeling of bait-and-switch.
But in a non-homophobic world, it would never be a zero-sum game. Tomas could be bi and Marcus could be gay!
[edit] To be honest, if you wanted an unambiguous romance between two men where there was no chance of physical consummation, thus providing a fig leaf for assumed mainstream audience sensibilities and lots of crunchy emotional queerness for the rest of us, a situation where at least one of them was a practicing Catholic priest would have been ideal! That feels like a missed opportunity.
I like that world better.
Amen.
Your icon, by the way, is splendid. What's it from? Just fanart?
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And if that happens, it's not just straight audiences eliding his queerness, it's the text as well. What I mean is, obviously a real-life bisexual person is bisexual regardless of their relationships. But to me, the question of representation complicates things. If a bisexual character is primarily shown in het relationships or having het attractions, then, to the audience, their queerness is made largely invisible. (It doesn't have to happen that way, but I don't trust mainstream shows to put in the work necessarily to keep the character's queerness visible.)
Plus--if Marcus is going to have an onscreen romance, it's inevitably going to explore his many, many issues. It will probably presented as a good, healing thing. And if we're going to have Saved By Love, I want it to be same-sex love that saves. Male/male relationships in particular are still so often presented as transient, shallow, physical rather than emotional; The Exorcist has the opportunity to do something different, and I fear the show's going to squander it in favor of yet another male/female romance, as though we don't already have roughly 10,000,000 fictional examples of Troubled Man Saved By Love of a Good Woman.
I'm trying to hope for the best, because the shown has been so good in so many ways. But I'm not finding it easy.
if you wanted an unambiguous romance between two men where there was no chance of physical consummation
That would've been a fascinating story to tell, too. But apparently even on a show progressive enough to make one of the leads queer, you still can't have even an unconsummated romantic love between the two male leads. I will suppress a rant about how television still caters to the most homophobic segment of its audience, because for some reason straight male viewers are the only ones who matter.
Your icon, by the way, is splendid.
Thank you! It's not fanart, astonishingly. It's from the cover of a 1987 French magazine.
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I agree that is the kind of thing you worry about unless the show proves otherwise.
And if we're going to have Saved By Love, I want it to be same-sex love that saves.
I thought of your comment when I ran into this review of Helen Wright's A Matter of Oaths (1988):
"And Rafe, well. Rafe and Joshim are both men, and they end up lovers and strongly in love. And—in part because of this—Rafe gradually starts to recover pieces of his memory . . . Its vision of a space-faring society doesn't seem out of place to a contemporary reader, the way many other future visions of the eighties and nineties do, because Wright's space opera includes in positive, sympathetic ways people that those other visions leave out—like women reluctantly nearing retirement after a long career and men who love men."
It's not fanart, astonishingly. It's from the cover of a 1987 French magazine.
Go, Croc. The accompanying sketches are also delightful.
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Something I've seen on Twitter that baffles me is people citing Marcus's S1 interactions with the nun (the young one, not the abbess) and with Cherry Rego as proof that he was shown as bisexual all along. Now, I watched the show completely unspoiled and I had no idea Marcus was canonically queer until 1x05. Both those examples happened earlier, and I did not read them as indicating any kind of sexual interest. Slightly flirtatious, yes, but in a bantery way. I mean, they literally didn't register with me as saying anything about Marcus except that this is how he interacts with people (and I think Marcus's flirtation and charm is armor rather than emotional openness, but that's another rant). Plus, if we were meant to take it seriously, surely they could have shown him flirting with a woman other than a cloistered nun or a married woman whose husband is sitting right beside her (considering that we have no indication that they are poly).
But Ben Daniels has been agreeing with these claims. I don't know if he means it or if he's just supporting the line the showrunners are taking, as I expect he is contractually obliged to do.
*sigh* I've been in the fandom for about two weeks. Things have gone so fast from "fun slashy show" to "OMG show with a canonically gay lead" to "show retconning gay lead's sexuality and now there is wank" that my head is spinning. I've had to unfollow both of the two show-related Tumblrs I was following, because both were taking the line that anyone saying Marcus was established as gay is being biphobic. And I don't think that's true. Plus I think that argument conflates the way someone should react to an actual person coming out as bi--where doubting their word is not okay--with how we are allowed to react to representation, where there is no real person, only a character who is the product of writing choices. Because it's not like those choices are never influenced by things like "our focus group says that straight male viewers think the show is too gay, so we better fix that."
Argh, sorry, don't mean to rant on and on. I just feel like Tumblr and Twitter keep telling me that if I'm angry or upset over this retcon, that means I'm biphobic, and not that I loved my gay hero and now he's not gay anymore, and bisexual is not the same as gay, and I feel that as a loss. He was someone like me, and a hero, and now he's not like me anymore. And meanwhile the showrunners get pats on the back for inclusion and nobody asks why they couldn't have made one or more of the straight characters bisexual instead. (Because I do get that bisexual people also want to see heroes like themselves on screen. There should be plenty of room for both, but apparently mainstream TV has a queer quota or something?)
. . . and I seem to have kept ranting. I know I keep repeating the same points, even, because I'm just so frustrated. Shutting up now.
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This is such an important point, and very true.
I think one has to take to the view that there will always be someone on tumblr ready to say Your Feelings Are Morally Wrong *sighs* Anyone with an ounce of realism will say that - as I have felt several times about female bisexual characters - in MEDIA (again not in real life), bisexuality is a way to have 'kisses that do not make our viewers uncomfortable' occur in some higher ratio to 'same sex kisses'. Bisexual in media seems to usually mean 'one night stand with same sex, relationship with opposite sex'. If it more frequently meant the reverse in media I'd mind less about it because I would be more prepared to say 'ah, your noble representation of this orientation' and less 'this is just a way to have cake and eat it'
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Yeah, someone blocked me on Tumblr for saying that promoting The Exorcist on the basis of "it has All The Gay" might be misleading considering recent developments.
Anyone with an ounce of realism will say that - as I have felt several times about female bisexual characters - in MEDIA (again not in real life), bisexuality is a way to have 'kisses that do not make our viewers uncomfortable' occur in some higher ratio to 'same sex kisses'
Yes, this. Plus of course the fact that for a lot of straight male viewers (still the only ones the US network TV seems to care about), female/female kissing etc. is sexy, while male/male is ICKY and NOT OKAY, and they will stop watching. (A real, serious onscreen relationship between two women would probably bring back the discomfort factor for them, hence the one-night stands and Sweeps Week Lesbian Kiss-es.) I really don't understand why so many viewers are unwilling to admit that this is a factor. This weird sort of cult of optimism, or even of "be grateful to the creators for what they've given you" comes into play, where it's just about the numbers and not about the quality of the representation. I remember when London Spy came out, there were people celebrating it as a victory for queer characters despite most of the queer characters being killed.