Episode 5:

About

Do we influence the media or does the media influence us? This is just one of the many questions that Chris and Soren try and tackle in today’s episode. What is the importance of queer representation in the media and how has the presence, and the absence, of queer identities in the media, shaped both Chris and Soren’s development? Why is representation so important for members of marginalized groups and how does seeing positive depictions of queer stories impact our community?

*Please note that this episode contains sensitive behavioral health topics such as suicide and substance use. If you are experiencing a behavioral health crisis, please contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling 988 or visiting www.988lifeline.org.

**This podcast is for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be considered health advice. This podcast is not intended to replace professional medical advice.

Transcript

Chris: Soren, welcome back! I feel like it’s been a hot minute since we’ve been in this studio.

Soren: Uh, yeah, it’s been a second, but for the audience it will have been a week.

Chris: But in that week, we’ve had a little bit of a glow up. Ah, yes. We’ve got some new signage, we’ve got some table decorations.

Compliments to Chris, our designer. Um, well, I dare say, yeah, I’ll take it, I’ll take it. Working on accepting compliments.

Thanks, Soren. Yeah, it’s our pride-themed succulent pot. It’s modern art.

It’s modern art.

Soren: Yeah.

Chris: And not-so-modern art, but I just think it’s fun.

Soren: Yeah. I think that it invokes emotion, thusly, it is also art.

Chris: I agree. I agree.

Soren: How you been? Um, me? Well, I’ve been swell.

We just had AP tests, uh, so that’s kind of what’s going on in my life. But, um, no, I think I’ve been doing wonderfully.

Chris: How about you? I’m good. It feels like spring has been very busy, but I am absolutely looking forward to summer.

You must be too.

Soren: Oh, I was just talking to my mom earlier. I’m so excited for summer. I’ve been, like, hiking pretty much every day, trying to in there, or like, at least getting some exercise.

Yeah. And I’m gearing up for, like, summer. I’m so excited.

Actually, I considered about, um, like, applying for a trail maintenance job at Acadia National Park.

Chris: That would be right up your alley.

Soren: I would love that, but also, it’s an hour drive and, like, 40-hour work weeks, so I don’t know if that’s, like, feasible for me. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. For our listeners outside of maybe the main area, Acadia National Park is, um, Mount Desert Island by the harbor, and it’s probably one of the spots, when I talk to friends who don’t live in Maine, they’ve all heard of Bar Harbor or Acadia National Park.

It’s beautiful.

Soren: It’s the second most visited national park in the nation, I believe.

Chris: Yeah, yeah. I believe it, actually. It’s absolutely gorgeous.

Yeah. And here’s what I know about you. You take energy from being outside, being in nature, being physically active.

Soren: Well, I feel like, I don’t know, that’s, like, a pillar of my existence, I think, like, movement and the outdoors. I think it’s such a rewarding experience to be out there.

Chris: Yeah.

Soren: And it’s really beautiful.

Chris: And it fills your cup.

Soren: Yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. Speaking of other things that might fill your cup, today’s topic, queer media.

Chris: Yeah. I’m excited about that.

Soren: Uh, yeah. I think that it’s a super interesting topic because I feel like we have quite different perspectives on it, right?

Chris: Yeah, we do. We do. We’ve talked about this already a little bit in warming up today.

Soren: Yeah. So. So let’s get into it.

Chris: Yeah. So for our listeners who might not be as familiar with just sort of the more robust way that we’re using the term media, for the purposes of this conversation, when we say media, we’re talking about all of it. We’re talking about music, TV, movies.

We’re talking about magazines and books and, um, uh, and even, uh, TikTok.

Soren: Yeah. Social media platforms. Social media.

Chris: Thank you. I was struggling with that one.

Soren: Really like any content that an individual might engage with, uh, which is like a very broad, uh, category, but I think like our media defines so much of our cultural outlook.

Chris: Absolutely.

Soren: Uh, and can be so like pivotal to individuals like experience and the way they view the world. So it really, although it may seem like frivolous media, it is super important to the human experience, at least in the modern world.

Chris: 100%. And I think what makes this conversation so exciting for me and interesting for me is there’s a little bit of a chicken and egg thing. When I talk about the role of media is does media shape us or do we shape the media?

And maybe there’s some relationship that goes back and forth and it’s kind of the snake eating its own tail kind of image for me, but what I think about when I think about the role of media in influencing and reflecting queer culture, I think about how much has changed and for somebody from my generation, sadly, how much still remains the same.

Soren: Yeah, yeah. Well, like the interesting thing about how queer people have been represented in media is like decades ago, the vast majority of queer representations were negative and or non-existent. And now we have, uh, like such a wide variety of content that is positively catered towards queer people.

Uh, but we also do still have a lot of stigmatized media. And I think that like the media of the past has impacted, um, like older generations and their image of queer people considerably. Like you were talking about Silence of the Lambs earlier actually.

Chris: Yeah. So in some of my, um, D, E, I, and B training, I talk a lot about the role of media, not just on LGBTQ plus identities, but really on shaping either reinforcing stereotypes, shaping maybe unconscious bias of how we think about communities that we don’t necessarily have lived experience with or a lot of interactions with. And so when I think about growing up in the eighties and early nineties, and I think about what was available for queer role models on TV, there are absolutely, well, let me say it a different way.

I can think of more negative depictions of LGBTQ plus identities in media than I can positive.

Soren: Yeah.

Chris: Yeah. And I think that’s the difference you were talking about in modern media is in modern media, we now can identify more queer positive storylines and characters than what I remember growing up with. And so to your point, the Silence of the Lambs, which was a movie that absolutely pointed me in the direction professionally of behavioral health, mental health.

I watched the Silence of the Lambs when I was in high school. And I said, that’s what I want to do. I want to be Jodie Foster.

I want to dig into the mind of folks who are not well and figure out what makes them tick. Like it was fascinating to me what she did in that as a character of that movie. And I remember reading books by the author of the Silence of the Lambs back then as well.

And what some folks might not even know is the character of Hannibal Lecter shows up in several other books, which are some of the main movies and some have not been made into movies. But the movie Red Dragon, the movie Hannibal, there’s now a TV, a recent TV series based on the Hannibal Lecter character. So very like from a pop cultural phenomenon, Thomas Hardy’s works, books have been remarkable.

Absolutely. And what folks also remember about the movie, the Silence of the Lambs, is the put the lotion in the basket character. And when I think back of watching that movie, I remember wanting to be Jodie Foster.

And I remember being terrified of this person who was impersonating a woman, you know, in my formulated mind, that the whole concept of transgender identities was not really talked about or known in the 80s and early 90s. And I just remember it being a character that was disgusting. It was a character we were supposed to loathe, fear, and maybe pity.

I think watching as an adult, there’s elements of you feel sad, confused.

Soren: Well, I remember that being like my primary emotion after watching that film, like a mix of like disgust and like pity. Which I think falls in line with the vast majority of the queer portrayals. Like being queer or trans was seen as predatory and like a mental illness.

Absolutely. In the time period. And I feel like the character of Bill was the name?

Buffalo Bill. Buffalo Bill.

Chris: Yeah.

Soren: Perfectly encapsulates the two like primary ideas that were, or rather emotions that were associated with great people at the time.

Chris: Yeah. Well, and it’s a direct parallel to what we saw in movies like Psycho, where again, this crazed murderous individual dressing up like his mother in Psycho. Spoiler alerts for folks who haven’t seen these movies.

Soren: Didn’t that movie come out in like the 40s?

Chris: Yeah.

Soren: Yeah.

Chris: So there is a fascinating documentary that I believe is available even still on Netflix called Disclosure. And one of the producers behind the movie Disclosure, or the documentary Disclosure, is Laverne Cox, known from Orange is the New Black and other really prominent movies. One of the first openly trans actors, actresses to actually win awards for their work.

And the whole documentary Disclosure is really about the depiction of non-binary or trans identities from silent movies all the way up until recent times. And how some of them have improved in terms of the depictions, but some sadly have remained the same. Characters that we’re supposed to fear or feel sorry for, or who are supposed to reflect mental illness.

As a clinical social worker, I can parallel what was even going on clinically in the DSM, the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders, where homosexuality, transvestism lived as diagnosed conditions in the American Psychological Association’s literal Bible, clinicians diagnosing. So again, it gets to that chicken, egg, snake in its own tail, like which comes first? This horribly harmful and inaccurate depiction of queer identities, and then the media follows suit?

Or did we have these stereotypes in the media that medical science is then following suit?

Soren: Yeah, well, I feel like, especially for mental illness diagnoses, especially with our limited understanding of neurochemistry, this is, I feel like, the most heavily impacted by culture of the entirety of the medical field. And it’s really dependent on what society deems to be a disorder of the mind. What we deem to be irregular, abnormal, and something that needs to be fixed.

Chris: It can be treated, therefore it can be cured.

Soren: Yeah, yeah. And I think the transition for transgenderism in the DSM-5, going from being trans as the issue to the gender dysphoria as the issue, I think that’s a really interesting, I guess, transition that we’ve made as far as diagnosis goes.

Chris: 100%. It’s probably one of the most impactful, from modern diagnosing perspectives, one of the most, I think, impactful changes into the current DSM that we as clinicians use now. Yeah.

You know, when we were talking about this earlier, you had shared that you’re maybe not as familiar with some of the old movies. Like I was rattling off a bunch of movies that…

Soren: Yeah, yeah. And honestly, like in one ear and out the other. And I think that it’s really interesting because we talk about, in these old movies, queer people being portrayed as predatory.

But as far as media that I watched in my youth that I found to be sort of fundamental and pivotal and something that really brought me a lot of joy, I wasn’t exposed to a lot of these negative depictions of queer people. Instead, I remember watching Big Mouth and seeing the character of Matthew develop and just being elated because I felt like someone like me was being depicted. And obviously, to some extent, Matthew is a stereotype, but also I feel like Big Mouth does a really fantastic job of portraying the teenage emotions through its vulgarity and humor.

Chris: And arguably, Matthew’s character is probably the healthiest character of all the characters on that cartoon.

Soren: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I’d say.

Chris: Which is like a huge flip from some of these other movies and media that we’re talking about. You know, as you were talking, I was thinking about, even though you haven’t necessarily seen all the movies that I was talking about, The Crying Game, I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry, Chasing Amy, The Talented Mr. Ripley, I mean, on and on, haven’t necessarily seen them. However, in current news media, in some news media, those stereotypes persist.

Oh, yeah, yeah. This whole narrative that men dressed as women are trying to get into women’s bathrooms to perpetrate some kind of sexual violence.

Soren: Well, we can see the shadows of these negative depictions in what culture views these people as, right? I feel like, especially a lot of parents these days, or older people, only have the exposure of these, I would say, quite vile projections of what it means to be trans. And that’s the only data that they’re operating off of.

That’s the only image that they have of trans people. So obviously, from those images, when you hear that trans people are going to be going into others’ bathrooms, that is scary and inflammatory, but it’s entirely misinformed as far as perspective, and they don’t view them as actual people. Actually, I think that’s a big problem that I have with a lot of queer media, is in order to fit it into a palatable and digestible plot, you need to boil down queer characters to the stereotypes which define their group, right?

And I think that leads to a really shallow and hollow projection of what it means to be queer. But that’s what you have to do in order to create a successful franchise in media. That’s right.

Chris: That’s right. Because we know that it’s a business, just like any other business. And so sales and advertising, dollars and tickets, and all of the revenue associated with Hollywood, it’s feeding what the masses might want to consume.

Yeah, yeah.

Soren: Yeah.

Chris: For sure. It’s been, for me, it’s been this, looking back at the role of media in my life over the last four-ish years, is when you were describing that sense of elation with the character on Big Mouth Matthew, when I watched the show Heartstopper for the first time, my heart literally stopped. It was, as an adult, just within the last couple years, it was one of the first times that I’ve seen queer characters that weren’t the victim of violence.

They weren’t dead by the third episode. They weren’t accused of murder by the fourth episode.

Soren: Yeah, yeah.

Chris: You know, they weren’t, they were struggling with everyday teen problems. That depiction of queer joy and gender euphoria did not exist when I was growing up.

Soren: Yeah. Oh, another show that just, like, I was so elated when watching some of the depictions in it, and I found to be a really impactful show in my, like, early teens, was Sex Education.

Chris: Oh, yeah.

Absolutely. Such a good show. The normalization of this idea of a spectrum and non-binary identities from both a sexuality perspective and a gender perspective, but how these characters are just so seamlessly woven into the scope of the show that, you know, I remember shows, I’m gonna, you might not be able to relate to some of this, but I remember shows like Growing Pains and Family Ties, like, those 80s family sitcoms.

There was the very special episode where the LGBTQ plus character has a cameo, and then they’re never to be seen again.

Soren: Yeah, yeah.

Chris: And it was really about how the main characters react to this non-traditional character who’s entered the storyline. And that wasn’t my, like, I didn’t want to see myself reflected as a stand-on or a walk-on. Like, my storyline was playing out, and I wanted more than just a very special episode.

I wanted a whole nine-season arc of what a life similar to mine might look like. Yeah, yeah. And I think, like, another problem that, like, using stereotypes presents is you are not creating a character with other aspects to your personality.

Soren: There’s no dimension.

Chris: You’re putting a gay person on stage, having them be gay, and then having them leave. And exit. And, like, obviously we’re talking about, like, specifically the queer aspect right now, but I feel like boiling down an individual to exclusively being queer is, like, such a disservice to them.

And, like, what I really liked about the depictions in Sex Education is, A, yes, being queer was, like, an important thing, but it wasn’t the personality. It wasn’t the only personality trait. It was simply a variable thrown into the mix.

And, like with Sex Education, they showed such a variety of experiences. Like, obviously the main character’s best friend was one end of the spectrum, and then there was, like, the bully guy. Yeah, that’s right.

And I thought that that showed two very different yet parallel experiences as being, like, a gay man. Yeah, which went throughout several seasons.

Soren: Yeah, yeah.

Chris: I mean, it wasn’t just, to your point, it wasn’t just a walk-on role. I mean, these are main characters living their main character lives. And I feel the same way about Heartstopper.

You know, I remember watching the FX series Pose, which is a telling of queer life in 80s New York and drag culture and drag ball culture. And that show makes history having the most openly trans actors on that show portraying trans characters. So actually using folks with lived experience to play folks with lived experience.

And it’s just such an inclusive, in some ways heartbreaking, because also in that period of time is full-on AIDS crisis. And so it’s gay New York City, drag ball culture, and this epidemic that was killing thousands of individuals to an incredibly tone-deaf administration who didn’t seem to care. And so the telling of all those stories interwoven is such a moving drama.

There are heartbreaking moments, but there are such moments of queer joy created in these shows. And you and I could go on and on. I mean, from TV, the depiction of queer identities in more modern TV series, they’re not the very special episodes.

These are woven within the fabric of who these characters are. And then we have music, right? We have a whole generation of out queer musicians and artists, Lil Nas X, Troye Sivan, who are not hiding this element of their sexuality or gender.

They’re writing lyrics and singing from their experience. Ben Platt’s new song, Ben Platt is Broadway.

Soren: Yeah, yeah.

Chris: I’m familiar. Kevin Hanson, Roland Deer. I’m a politician and such.

Soren: Yeah, a politician. I love that show.

Chris: Another really good show. But Ben Platt’s new single is called Andrew. And it’s told from his perspective of a queer boy who’s fallen in love with his classmate.

And I related to every lyric of that song, thinking about my own middle school, early high school days. It’s just, I sometimes sit in Awesorn with folks your age. And there are moments that I think about how might my adolescence have looked different if every time I turned on the radio, there was a queer artist performing.

If every time I turned on the TV or went to the movie theater, or sat in a traveling show, I saw queer characters depicted positively instead of every time turning on the TV, it was the queer character is struggling with substance use disorder, struggling with homelessness, struggling with being bullied, murderous rages, deceitful, malicious intent. That was every queer character I saw. Yeah.

Actually, I think another part of the music industry that’s been really formulative in my development is show tunes. I love show tunes. Actually, I’ve been listening to a lot of Mean Girls and Heathers.

And I think the depiction of queer characters, I love My Dead Gay Son. Obviously, unfortunate situation, but I think that song is so slick. Yeah.

My husband and I just got back from New York City, actually, last weekend. And one of the shows we saw just recently was a show called Ann Juliet, which is a modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet, which asks the question, why does Juliet have to die at the end of Romeo and Juliet? What would happen if Juliet allows Romeo to be dead and finds that her life can continue without her teenage boyfriend?

But the LGBTQ plus storylines woven within Ann Juliet, and the soundtrack is all Britney, Katy Perry, Kelly Clarkson, Backstreet Boys. It is a, my 90s, early 2000s playlist. It was such an empowering, energy-ridden show that also highlighted queer joy.

Soren: Yeah.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. It’s an amazing show.

You and I were also talking about this idea of allies and the number of musicians and performers who are very public about their allyship and supporting the community. And that has become a part of their brand. So of course, we were talking about- Kelly Swift.

Soren: My girl Tay.

Chris: But how this has become an incredible part of who she is and the culture of her fandom that she creates. That she is a fierce ally. Shade never made anybody less gay.

And therefore, her fan base feels very similar to that. And her fan base, with the exception of being 50-year-old gay guys, it’s primarily adolescents and young adults.

Soren: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris: Who are resonating with these lyrics. I think allyship is such an interesting thing to look at. Because, I don’t know, I do like Taylor Swift’s music, but when I first saw Calm Down come out, I was like, I kind of scoffed at it a little.

Because I do think that it’s a very important thing, and I love allies for being allies. But also there’s part of me that wants to gatekeep and be like, this is my thing. This is my in-groups stuff.

Don’t steal that from us. I get that. I also, because I am such a Swifty, you know this, because I am such a Swifty, I know a little bit about the backstories of these songs, and how the videos get made, and what shows up.

So the video for Calm Down is very intentionally over the top.

Soren: Yeah.

Chris: The images and the cameos, lots of- I like that video.

Soren: Yeah.

Chris: The video is just a banger. But it really was an attempt to push back on critics, who at the time were criticizing her for trying to cash in on this idea of allyship, that it was performative, that she was throwing bones to- Oh, so she was intentionally evocative with it. 100%.

I think that shifts my viewpoint a little. 100%. Yeah, she leans all the way into it, and therefore her fans lean all the way into it.

Well, I think it really is- Allies are very important. And I think that goes for allying with any downtrodden group. You need, as a person of privilege, to represent groups that are not privileged.

And I have an immense amount of privilege, like my socioeconomic status, the color of my skin, the area in which I’m raised. And it is my obligation to attempt to aid other minority downtrodden groups, and attempt to make the world a better and easier place to live in for everybody.

Soren: Yeah.

Chris: You and I are carbon copies of that mentality, for sure. And what I love also about this conversation with queer media and allies, is we’ve seen an evolution of the portrayal of an ally also happen through queer media. And so, what used to be the stereotypical ally was the single, youngish woman who hung out with the gays because she feels safer, it’s less pressure, they’ll tell it like it is, it’s my sassy gay best friends.

I think I was talking to one of my friends who is, dare I say, flaming. And he feels used by a lot of the women that attempt to enter his life and become friends with him because they’re looking for him to fit into a box, be the stereotype which they think he is. And he doesn’t feel like they’re attempting to create a connection with him.

He feels like they’re attempting to hang out with a model of a personality type, right? Yeah. Interesting.

But also too, he forms very genuine relationships and he really enjoys those. It just like, I don’t know. He also too has a really interesting perspective on queer media.

I think we’ve talked about it a lot and he feels that maybe as some internalized homophobia, but he sort of like scoffs at and thinks that there’s too much queer representation. Oh, really? Which I think is a super interesting perspective because he’s like, I love gay people, whatever.

He’s like very ally. Well, he’s very gay, but he always says, I’m very ally, but like too much gays. Yeah.

I couldn’t disagree with him more. Coming from a childhood where none of this existed or none of it from a positive perspective, I’m of the mindset that we only need more of it to make up for the horrendous lack of representation, lack of healthy representation that’s been in existence for decades. So I say bring it on, but bring it on in a way that feels seamless and doesn’t feel forced.

Like some of the shows we’ve been referencing master that. Well, like I was saying, like being queer isn’t like the thing. It’s just a facet of being like a human.

It should not be the thing that the emphasis is placed upon. The episode is written around. Yeah.

Yeah. But like, I forgot where I was going with that. My apologies.

But I think it’s a fascinating conversation and one that maybe in future episodes, we should invite your friend in to have this conversation live. And in the moment, my perspective as a almost 50 year old gay man and as a behavioral health professional, I know the impact that lack of representation and inclusion had on my upbringing and some of the internalized homophobia that I had to manage and struggled with because in part of, I think this, the lack of representation in the media around me. So I come from that perspective and clinically, I know the value of representation.

And I would argue, and I, if your friend was here, I would say having that opinion also comes from a place of privilege. Yeah. The privilege is saying we have too much representation.

I was going to comment on that because I think that statement comes out of a not understanding what it is like to operate as a queer person in a vacuum, not having any semblance of cultural identity. And you’re just flying blind. But I think it’s super interesting because they thought that it’s oversaturated.

And I say, we can’t have enough of it. Bring it on more, more, more, more, more, more, more. And again, that is me saying we have decades of reparative work to do.

So having more of it in a meaningful, intentional way is only going to better this next generation of queer youth who need desperately to have a different role model experience to have. I mean, I actually, maybe I’m being quite optimistic and maybe even bordering on naive here, but I think if the media can get their shit together and start intentionally dismissing the stereotypes of the past, perhaps things like internalized homophobia, perhaps things like externalized homophobia and transphobia can be extinguished by increasing the representation of this community and depicting us in a way that doesn’t have us killing our moms, burying women in our basement dungeons, or manipulating people so we can get them in the sack. Well, I think in the future, the very close future, and to some extent now, at least in my generation, being queer and the queer experience has become so normalized that it’s just seen as a universal experience to some extent. And it’s no longer of interest.

It’s just become a very regular thing. It’s not a hot button topic anymore. It’s just, oh, that’s a thing that’s a thing.

Yeah.

Soren: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris: Rather than it being a controversial issue or whatever, it’s just a normal part of living in society. And I think that that is the place where we need to be at. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It doesn’t.

It’s no longer. I think it’s the place we’re headed to. I think you’re right.

I think you’re right. I’m excited to continue this conversation. You’re providing us a little spoiler of what our next episode is going to be about around stigma and mental health.

So we’ll get there next week. Sorin, this has been a super interesting conversation with you today. I think it’s been marvelous.

I love it. Taylor, if you’re listening, call me, call me. All right, all.

Thanks so much for spending another episode of Inspired Insights podcast. I am Chris McLaughlin. I’m Soren Peterson.

And we’ll see you next time. See ya.

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