Why can't TV shows and movies just let LGBTQ+ characters live their lives??
The "Bury Your Gays" trope has become a part of cultural knowledge in recent years, but not everyone has gotten the memo.
Back in 2016, the death of The 100 character Lexa inspired queer women’s site Autostraddle to make a list of every lesbian or bisexual woman on TV who had died in their shows. At present, the list now stands at over 225 characters.
That’s just TV. And that’s just queer women. The trope also extends to films and gay and bi men. No queer people are immune. Before Pose, basically, every example of trans representation ended with a trans woman dying.
This goes all the way back to the Hays Code, a rule in early Hollywood that said sexual acts considered “perverted,” including suggestions of same-sex relationships were banned, and that any sex outside of straight sex between a husband and a wife had to always be shown in a negative light and with negative consequences – usually meaning death.
Now, there are no rules, not even unspoken ones, that say queer characters have to be killed off, but the trope keeps coming back. Shows like Killing Eve, and most recently, House of the Dragon, are still brutally and needlessly killing off their queer characters instead of letting them be happy.
Throughout the entire series, fans were wondering if Eve and Villanelle would ever get together, and they finally did in the series finale. It seemed like fans were finally getting their happy ending. At least for a few minutes before Villanelle was shot by a sniper and left floating in the Thames. The fact that this happened in 2022 made it so much worse.
--- Out Magazine
