…Does anybody else feel that What We Do in the Shadows has failed terribly at queer storytelling? Not even necessarily about character gender or sexuality but the like idea of it?
Like look at Our Flag Means Death even the romance aside Stede was a depressed man forced into an arranged marriage he wanted no part of, he lived a dull ordinary life that left him feeling empty. Then one day he buys a ship and becomes a pirate, we watch this man slowly fully become his true self. He dresses flamboyantly, he loves to read and write, he’s awkward and funny and bitchy, he’s romantic and violent and kind.
Look at Hannibal and specifically the journey of Will. Will is awkward, he can’t make eye contact in most conversations, he’s typically withdrawn and painfully awkward. Then through Hannibal and this complex horror Will becomes undone. He can stare you not just in the eye but deep into your soul, he stops fighting his darkness and instead embraces the beauty of it because he is no longer alone and judged. He can be violent, he can be artful and disturbed under the understanding gaze of Hannibal Lectar.
Look at Gotham and specifically Ed. Ed dresses in mute tones, he dotes and follows Harvey and Jim and Kristen mothering them in hopes of them becoming his friends only for all three to constantly find him irritating and unmanly “strange”. When he kills Tom he starts to change, he finally gets the girl and he becomes more social, more bold. After killing Kristen and befriending Oswald he changes more. Each time we see Ed he changes, he dresses in vibrant greens and is flamboyant and loud, he is no longer afraid of how others perceive him. The same goes for Oswald and his constant stages of reinvention as he learns through Ed and Fish Mooney to love himself.
These are stories while with queer stories and queer characters are also just in general stories about people who try desperately to play “normal” in order to be accepted by work and family and society to eventually end their stories covered in glitter and sometimes blood and free of the restraints of a world that shamed them.
….What We Do in the Shadows doesn’t do this.
Guillermo had two paths to bis truer self; become a vampire which was his allegory for freedom in his sexuality or embrace being a vampire slayer.
Becoming a vampire is shown as a horrible thing he instantly regrets and he retreats far into the fucking closet after one minute of it, but he also isn’t a slayer. Season four he dresses nice, he dresses in a way that seems free and more comfortable and confident but then immediately goes back to dressing like a grandfather and following Nandor and the others as their slave/pet. Guillermo does not have a story where he comes out the other end changed, freed, living his true self.
I know we still have one more season to go, but the show has fumbled for five seasons and has constantly been openly scared of allowing him to actually come out.
Which is frustrating because out of the shows listed here it is the one where everybody involved, Simms especially never shuts the fuck up about it being the most gay show to ever gay give us a trophy for being gay.
This isn’t about romance in Shadows or any of these shows either, this is solely about the allegory of the queer experience, of finding peace and freedom in who you really want to be and how Shadows keeps a firm chokehold on its characters refusing to let them change.
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