Don’t kill the lesbian: TV edition
It’s an all-too-familiar trope in the LGBTQ* community of television viewers — the lesbian or bisexual character is killed tragically, often accidentally. Since the very first queer characters appeared on television, there have been many women who loved women killed on screen, but the complaints have been flooding the internet after a recent episode of The 100. I’d like to add my voice to the masses as I rage against the writers who so frequently kill their queer female characters, and I’ll argue that maybe, just maybe, we’ve reached the end of this “Bury Your Gays” road. Warning: spoilers amass ahead.
The 100 is a sci-fi show on The CW about a group of teens who grew up in space and now have to figure out how to live on the ground amongst the native humans, the “grounders,” who did not grow up in space. The main character, Clarke, played by Eliza Taylor, cycles through her series of male lovers before falling for Lexa (Alycia Debnam Carey), a grounder.
This in itself was a big deal. As a strong and powerful bisexual character, Clarke became a role model for the many queer teens who watch the show. Bisexuality and other non-binary sexualities are often overlooked or even erased in popular culture, so, for so many people, Clarke and Lexa’s first kiss was a victory for representation.
But then, on March 3, 2016, everything changed. In an episode titled “Thirteen,” Clarke and Lexa have sex and a heart to heart, and it really seems like everything is going to be okay. They’re finally going to be together. A queer couple is finally going to have a functioning relationship on a show about something other than how groundbreaking it is for a queer couple to have a functioning relationship. Then Lexa is killed. How, you might ask? In the most frustratingly predictable way possible, by a stray bullet!
Lexa was written off the show because Carey is a series regular on another show, AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead, but her stray-bullet death is all too reminiscent of the death of another fan-favorite lesbian character from a CW show: Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Tara.
Tara was killed in a similar moment, right after she has reconciled with her girlfriend Willow, Buffy’s spell-casting best friend. Willow and Tara have literally just finished hugging when Tara is shot by a stray bullet through the bedroom window. And just like that, she’s dead, and everyone’s heart is breaking.
Lexa and Tara are not the only examples of the “Bury Your Gays” trope. Naomi from Skins, Dana from The L Word, Sarah from Arrow and so many more met their ends to further the plotline of another character, usually a straight character. LGBTQ* characters are underrepresented as it is, and too many of them meet an untimely end. Most recently, Lexa’s death has sparked a lot of controversy that will hopefully push TV writers in the right direction.
Three weeks after Lexa’s on-screen death, the show’s creator, Jason Rothenberg wrote a blog post detailing his reasoning for what happened on the show.
“The thinking behind having the ultimate tragedy follow the ultimate joy was to heighten the drama and underscore the universal fragility of life,” he wrote. “But the end result became something else entirely — the perpetuation of the disturbing ‘Bury Your Gays’ trope.”
He went on to apologize for the way the episode played out.
“Despite my reasons, I still write and produce television for the real world where negative and hurtful tropes exist,” Rothenberg wrote. “And I am very sorry for not recognizing this as fully as I should have. Knowing everything I know now, Lexa’s death would have played out differently.”
The aftermath of Lexa’s death means something real. It signals to TV executives and showrunners that people care about queer characters. Representation is important, and LGBTQ* characters deserve to be so much more than an afterthought in a half-assed storyline. This is especially true for bisexual and transgender characters, who are even further erased from the pop culture canon.
We live in an incredible and diverse world, and it is important that the media we consume reflects that. It’s important that young children who struggle with their sexualities have positive role models in the shows they watch. It’s important that conservative parents have examples of successful LGBTQ* people to look at in the event that their child comes out to them. It’s important that people feel like they can turn on the television and see someone who looks like them, who acts like them, who feels like them. Everyone deserves to be seen, heard and represented.
I don’t think Lexa died in vain. She has become a martyr for queer ladies on television screens everywhere. She will protect them every time a stray bullet is suggested in the writer’s room. We said good-bye to a beloved queer character, but maybe, just maybe, she’ll be the last one to go like this. Maybe the backlash against her death will pave the way for more dynamic queer characters in television.
Gillian Lelchuk is a sophomore Writing Seminars major from Los Alamitos, Calif.
