Lexa’s death and the closeting of Clarke Griffin
Javier Grillo-Marxuach, who wrote the fateful episode of The 100 that killed off Alycia Debnam-Carey’s beloved character, defended the decision storytelling-wise, but also hypothesized what went wrong.
“I don’t think that the failure here was to discuss it, the failure was to recognize the cultural impact it would have outside the show,” he said. “…And to act accordingly outside of the show.” - http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/bury-your-gays-atx-festival-901800
The failure here was not only not recognizing the cultural impact it would have outside the show, it was both not knowing the roots of the trope in stark homophobic terms (that it was policy for tv, movies, & books to never let gay people have happy endings, usually ending in death), and having a writing staff that also couldn’t recognize the full real life context into which their story was being placed and from where it was being viewed.
“The 100” not only fell headlong into the trope (or, it could be argued, jumped into it with complete disregard), it managed to write a perfect storm of homophobic tropes, while seemingly being completely unaware of the dangerous messages it was sending to both LGBT viewers and homophobic viewers alike.
To start, there was the “find happiness, have gay sex, get dead” part, which it must be noted, does not have to be intentional to still reinforce the notion of “punishment for being gay”. But there are two other MAJOR parts of this which haven’t been addressed a lot in the mainstream and need to be, for the sake of understanding the width and breadth of how these tropes operate to undermine the humanity of the LGBT audience watching them take place.
The second part of this is the relationship between Lexa and Titus, the man who accidentally shot her. Titus was Lexa’s advisor, who had played a huge role in raising her as a child and represents a sort of father figure for her. His target was her lover Clarke, who Titus felt had too much influence over Lexa and who he felt was turning her against the “traditional” ways of their people. Hm. Sound familiar?
It’s his adherence to “traditional values” that leads him to attack Clarke, and in the chaos, accidently shoot Lexa. A father figure kills his queer daughter while trying to kill her queer lover. Nothing too lifelike about that, right? Except sometimes, parents of queer children do these things.
In 2015, a man was indicted on charges of killing his lesbian daughter and her lover and leaving them behind a dumpster in Houston, Texas. Her mother says the reason was because he was angry about her “lifestyle.”
In March of this year, a gay man was found dead, his father suspected of killing him for being gay.
In 2010, a father was indicted for the murder of his daughter’s lover. People close to the couple maintain the reason was because they were lesbians.
I could go on and on with more examples. And that’s the point. Queer people are intimately acquainted with violence from parents and parental figures simply because of their sexual orientation (and for younger people, their inability to escape from it). Most of the time it’s not murder, sometimes it’s just physical violence, and sometimes it’s just psychological. But all of those things are real, and most queer people have experienced them, either directly or indirectly (via the experiences of partners or friends).
Straight people don’t know this relationship to familial violence directly connected to their sexuality in the same intimate way. So either the writers didn’t see this connection and how impactful it would be to put this beloved queer character through the same thing, or they did, and they capitalized on it for maximum effect. Either way, the result was disastrous. What was already an intensely painful experience for LGBT viewers based sheerly on the exhaustive repetitiveness of seeing beloved queer characters they felt such deep connections to fall to the “Dead Lesbian Trope”, had added impact due to the personal nature of the violence itself.
The third problem is the least talked about thus far, because it’s not as direct and is spread out over the remaining episodes of the season: the closeting of Clarke Griffin.
Over the course of the rest of the season, Clarke speaks about Lexa to her friends in abstraction. She talks about Lexa in context of “the chip” (where Lexa’s consciousness is stored) several times, but her reactions are curiously bereft of any mention of her feelings or relationship with Lexa. The only time she shows her friends any emotions at all regarding Lexa are when an AI-controlled character tries to get a rise out of her by saying she probably got Lexa killed. She gets angry and threatens her, but again, nothing else. Moments where mutual pain and support could have been shared with other (straight) characters who had publicly spoken about and grieved similar losses were ignored completely.
The only time post-Lexa’s death that Clarke ever acknowledges her feelings are when a stranger (Luna) asks if she had feelings for Lexa and she says yes. But she notes “Lexa was special” without also noting that the feelings were reciprocal. No “I was in love with her”, no “we were together.” Nothing.
So even counting that exchange, Clarke never ONCE tells anyone about their relationship. Even in the finale, after Lexa appears in the AI-based City of Light and saves her, she doesn’t tell anyone who saved her and why once she is safely back in the real world. Nor does she express her grief at losing Lexa again.
The decision to keep Clarke mum about her feelings and relationship to Lexa is absolutely closeting her character. That is the very nature of the closet: being queer and being quiet about it. And one of the things that I and many other fans repeatedly stated, was that we needed Clarke to speak of her in terms of their relationship, and we needed for her to show some feelings, some grief. Something to show that her feelings and their relationship meant something. Something, anything. But it never happened.
And again, this is something that could just be straight writers completely not understanding the necessity of a queer character giving voice (and thereby legitimacy) to their emotions and feelings, but it’s hard to read it as anything BUT intentional, given that everyone else (straight) who lost someone on the show is allowed to speak of their loss (even if they are not allowed much time to grieve in the middle of a war). Regardless of motive, it absolutely belies the repeated statements from showrunner Jason Rothenberg that sexuality is something that “no longer matters” in the world of “The 100.”
Even if giving a generous read to the intent of the writers as just being ignorant to the layers and complexities that come with writing a queer character in a decidedly still homophobic society, it must be mentioned that the ignorance itself is absolutely a contributor to homophobia and heterocentrism.
The unsubtle message it sends to LGBT people is that our relationships are doomed to end in violence, that our families will not accept us (and might even be the ones to kill us), and that unlike our heterosexual counterparts, our silence about ourselves and our loves is required, even when grieving the loss of a lover to death.
And the message it sends to homophobes and virulently anti-gay types is one of validation, reinforcing their beliefs that our punishment for loving should be death and our silence is mandatory.
These shows do not take place in a vacuum. We invite them into our lives (literally into our homes) and we see our culture both reflected and influenced by what goes on in them. It’s the job of writers to understand exactly what it is they are saying with their writing, to understand the historical and social context when they bring in characters who belong to marginalized groups, and to ask themselves if there are messages they are sending that they missed entirely because they didn’t bother to check their stories with anyone (or listen, because believe me, we were telling them long before this happened) who belong to those groups.
Javier’s not wrong in this statement (and I give him a lot of credit for listening and learning to queer fans in the days following Lexa’s death). Still, it’s important that he and those who come after understand not just that Lexa’s death was problematic. They need to truly grasp that how it happened and what came after it not only drove the knife in deeper for LGBT fans, but also undermined the argument that the roots of it were benevolent storytelling.
Avoiding these tropes in the future means not only understanding how the death part of the trope works, but understanding the other subtle layers of homophobia that still lurk beneath the surface in the minds of even the best-intentioned people. The social conditioning that feeds it will continue to be reproduced culturally until those who create culture stop repeating it.