A Rainbow at Night, Reappraising the ‘Bury Your Gays Trope’ in Terms of Modern Queer Expression by James Bennett

A Rainbow at Night by James Bennett Reappraising the “Bury Your Gays Trope in Terms of Modern Queer Expression

Right up front I’ll say I have no problem with queer romance. Hell, I enjoyed Heartstopper (despite its somewhat squeaky-clean approach). Granted, I’m a middle aged queen and perhaps a more jaded member of the target audience. My school years under Section 28 and later during apartheid in South Africa are a horror that still evades my own fingertips on the keyboard. Besides, according to Amazon, I write ‘Erotic Horror’, don’t I? In this essay, Horror is the place I’m coming from, but I think the same applies to all queer entertainment as a broader discussion.

An idea I keep seeing, as I venture into the darker recesses of queer lived experience in fiction, is that ‘people don’t want negative queer-themed stories’. Yes, it’s a thing. The odd review that one-stars a story as a ‘downer’ (it’s a Horror story, come on). Other writers who tweet to say that our genre stories should all have happy endings. In its most hostile manifestation, I’ve even been told – and I quote – to ‘f*** off with your gay trauma’. A few have suggested – and to a writer who’s published a fair amount of ‘dark shit’ – that publishers ‘don’t want’ these kinds of stories anymore. Still others say that this stuff won’t sell because of ‘negative’ themes. If Horror is the province of the non-conformist, then lately it also feels like the last bastion of queer catharsis in genre literature.

To my mind, it’s important to note a fundamental distinction in the ‘Bury Your Gays’ trope and be mindful not to weaponise it against queer creatives of any stripe. Honestly, it’s fine if folks don’t want to read or watch dark queer entertainment. No one needs my permission. In light of the historical scope, I have to say I often find the notion that darker queer stories aren’t welcome or somehow detrimental a gross oversimplification. And one that’s usually – and oddly – advanced in an exclusionary manner.

On the whole, folks appear to be referring to the ‘Bury Your Gays’ trope that has lingered long into the modern era. For those who don’t know, the ‘Bury Your Gays’ trope is the portrayal of LGBTQ+ characters in entertainment that generally tends to result in the suffering and/or death of one or both of the characters in question. In its worst iteration, one of the characters may come to realise that they aren’t queer at all and have merely fallen under the spell of ‘perversion’ or ‘seduction’ (‘queer seduction/corruption’ being a prevailing delusion among bigots everywhere), then continuing life along the heteronormative lines that have ‘saved’ them once this or that troublesome queer is out of the picture. Either way, it’s clear in the presentation that being queer is seen as morally wrong and not to be supported.

In 1948, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope frames his implicit gay characters as heartless villains. Brandon and Phillip strangle poor David, their former classmate, to death in their Manhattan apartment – and as an intellectual exercise to boot! The film hints that the murder had a gay motivation, either unspoken jealousy or desire. Another classic example is the 1961 film The Children’s Hour (also a Horror movie), adapted from Lillian Hellman’s play of the same name. Two schoolteachers in a private boarding school are accused of having an ‘unnatural relationship’ by one of the resident girls. It doesn’t end well. The leads (a young Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine) undergo an ordeal of doubt, confusion and guilt, which culminates in suicide. In the 80s, we find Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, which frames queer experience in the shadow of AIDS as a dreary and inevitable act of martyrdom.

Throughout this period, we find the queer-as-villain employed the most enthusiastically, from Mrs Danvers in Rebecca to Norman Bates in Psycho to Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show to Dr Robert Elliot in Dressed to Kill to Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs. Even Jareth, the gender-bending Goblin King in Labyrinth, is portrayed as a child-snatching baddie. And don’t get me started on Disney.

Such renditions were the direct result of twentieth century laws and their enduring aftermath. The Hays Code was the informal name for The Motion Picture Production Code, adopted in 1930 and advancing a set of rules to govern Hollywood movies for over three decades, the toxic effects of which prevail to this day. Along with a general ban on portraying crime and violence in a positive light, the code outlawed topics considered ‘perverse’ and stated that they couldn’t be depicted in any tolerant, affirmative or compassionate way whatsoever. Quelle surprise that such topics included homosexuality – and unsurprisingly, up there alongside bestiality, paedophilia and rape. Historically, that was the gutter where society at large placed queer people, heedless of the danger it placed them in or the suffering it caused.
I wish I could say we’ve entirely shaken off such outlooks since.

Art and entertainment reflect the times.

The times reflect art and entertainment. It’s a cycle that has dictated much of queer rep for the past hundred odd years. In terms of visibility, queer folks have never enjoyed an egalitarian status and been excluded from much of the industry, especially in terms of creative influence and corporate power, which has played a big part in how we’re regarded and thus treated i.e. as less than human. Living in the here and now, we can all thank our lucky stars that times have changed for the better in our own era, however tenuously it may seem at times. All the same, and to illustrate the point of this essay, it’s advisable to remember our history. And to honour the voices of those who’ve come before us.

All queer artistic expression under systemic oppression has been marshalled, censored, criminalised and directed by bigots and their enablers. That’s simply a fact. The above is one aspect of the ‘Bury Your Gays’ trope, historically speaking, but the issue invites deeper inspection. Going further back, it was the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 that condemned homosexuality outright as an unlawful ‘perversion’, and which set the tone for oppression and exclusion in the modern era. Back then, in a climate of investigation, paranoia and arrest, some queers were disseminating pornography under pseudonyms (The Sins of the Cities of the Plain, Jack Saul) while Oscar Wilde himself went to prison (and later died in poverty) thanks to the scandal surrounding his affair with Lord Douglas.

It was Wilde’s ensuing case for libel that triggered the outrage that saw out the Victorian age, much of the condemnation stemming from public reaction to his ‘shameful’ gothic Horror novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Looking into the past, we see that Wilde wasn’t the only queer writer attempting to express himself in a highly reserved, sanctimonious and punitive society. Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, James Baldwin, Truman Capote, Christopher Isherwood, Pat Barker, Allen Ginsberg, Patricia Highsmith – to name but a few… All speak to us from those times, in varying shades of experience, and grace the long and fine tradition of queer literature. They shine like a rainbow at night, bright in the darkness. Present even when one couldn’t see them.

It’s important to note that all of these writers (and filmmakers, artists and actors besides), were working under the enforced bigoted laws and exclusionary codes described in this essay. All of them, in fiction and elsewhere, were forced to ‘bury their gays’. To bury themselves. These heroes and heroines of a much less enlightened age speak to us and symbolise the line between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ queer representation. It’s a line one suspects is often overlooked, or ignored, or that modern readers are simply unaware of. Sure, there are plenty of pernicious ‘Bury Your Gays’ tropes out there, from Braveheart where Prince Edward’s lover is flung out of a window to the violent dispatching of a Two Spirit character in Lovecraft Country. On the more sympathetic side, we have Brokeback Mountain, A Single Man and Moonlight.

Your mileage may vary in relation to these cinematic outings, sure.

There are a wealth of examples out there which I leave to readers to explore. The above serves to illustrate the different aspects of the ‘Bury Your Gays’ trope in the mainstream and to highlight the significance of gaze, approach and intent – nuances that often seem lost in the drive to advance the current evangelicalism of ‘positive’ queer rep.

We need to acknowledge that there’s a world of difference between ‘spectacle’ and ‘catharsis’. These days, the two are often conflated. Queer artists writing under oppression and taking care not to portray anything remotely positive about queerness because it was illegal and dangerous to do so isn’t the same as majority voices portraying queer folks in entertainment for ‘shock value’. Or framing our experience as inherently negative. Or punishing queer characters simply for being queer due to a bigoted outlook, religious, legal or otherwise.

• The latter fall under the heading of ‘spectacle’.

The queer as ‘pervert’, The queer as a perpetrator/victim of immorality, The queer as a cautionary tale. Or a punching bag. These are works inspired by prejudice and hate, chock-full of stereotypes and in most cases an effort to enforce queerphobia via cultural means.

On the other hand, queer artists portraying trauma in their work qualifies as ‘catharsis’. We see the queer artist making sense of their world, reaching out from the shadows, creating a record or a guide. Perhaps these works are a plea for understanding or a way to wrestle with one’s pain and thereby exorcise it. Perhaps it’s a call for a better world. Whatever. It is valid.

Ultimately, The Children’s Hour condemns queerness as an aberration, a moral misstep that can only lead to suffering. Brokeback Mountain depicts the experience of gay love in a socially hostile environment (hence the ‘wilderness as refuge’ motif). The first film hails from a biased point of view in the hope of impressing fear of the other and provoking moral panic. The second, while undeniably a downer, portrays a grim reality in the hope of fostering understanding and compassion. Today, we have Heartstopper to impress on us that being queer is something that everyone should aspire to, because it’s fabulous, fun and most of all, fashionable. The evangelicalism, admittedly, is understandable. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is also a book that all young queer folks should go and read.

What does all this have to do with Horror, you may ask?

Well, approach matters when it comes to queer representation, as much as it matters who gets to tell our stories and why. We should ask why some say that our experiences under oppression no longer matter. We should be able to ask why queer sex and the daily reality of homophobia are deemed inherently ‘negative’ when shown in entertainment. Is their erasure for the comfort of creatives who fear their works won’t fly if they feature them? Or for the comfort of a mainstream audience who’d prefer not to be reminded of the world we actually live in and how queer people get off? It’s OK to ask these questions. We should look to the past and be careful we’re not falling into the same trap.

Of course, history is changing. It’s changing all the time. Now we get to see queer characters in Horror films in healthy, loving relationships (Nia DaCosta’s Candyman). We get to see queer Horror novels on the shelves of bookshops (Manhunt Gretchen Felker-Martin, Red X David Demchuk, The Book of Queer Saints Mae Murray). In mainstream entertainment, we see iterations of queerness that aren’t focused on trauma or darkness at all – and that’s all well and good.

I mean it. I embrace, respect and support the space for queer joy. Even if I don’t always write it.

Still, there’s a danger in applying standards and expectations to queer artistic expression, and for the reasons mentioned above. A long history of censorship and suppression at the hands of a prejudicial regime and a morally averse society doesn’t recommend that we accept further restriction and shepherding in art and entertainment. For obvious reasons. Purity culture and the sanitation of queerness too closely echoes the laws and codes that have come before. Given time, such rigid standards could easily work against us. Why not? They always have in the past.

In conclusion

It isn’t good enough to say that all queer rep has to be sweetness and light these days in order to qualify as ‘positive’. Any more than it is to frame the darker, more cathartic works of our imagination as ‘negative’ – and by extension, culturally verboten. Queer catharsis has its place too. Queer Horror has its place.

As in all things, it’s how you go about it. Queer stories can act as a torch in the darkness and a survival guide. Where would I be without the phantasmagoria of Clive Barker and Poppy Z. Brite, for instance? I balance those books with Armistead Maupin and others. I’m open to all the shades of the rainbow. These authors not only inspired me to write. They told me I wasn’t alone. More than that, they told me my trauma was valid. And more than that, they showed me it was possible to succeed regardless.

Hear me out.

I put it to you that queer expression itself is inherently positive. Queer survival, that innate act of rebellion, is positive. The fact I’m sitting here as a gay man and writing this for a prominent Horror website is the definition of positivity. When you get your words published, when people read your stuff, all of it flies in the face of oppression, you see. Criminal Amendment Acts, Hays Codes and ongoing bigotry et al. The truth is we live in days that millions before us would’ve wept to see. We honour and celebrate that with every single piece of art we make.

Hopefully, we can foster a genre in which all queer expression is welcome and regarded in that light: no less than the first time in history where queer voices get to express themselves in the mainstream without fear of oppression, legal punishment and widespread moral condemnation.

Write without chains. Write free.

Enjoy Pride.

Preaching to the Perverted by James Bennett

Coming September 1st!

Preaching to the Perverted features thirteen dark tales, each drawn from gay lived experience and given a twist of horror. In these pages, you’ll find the erotic and the grotesque. A Kafkaesque alien comes out. Bigoted parents fall foul of fairies. A power-bottom Frankenstein wrestles with his conscience. A transgender thief throws a Pride parade in Lovecraftian Arkham. A bitter old queen makes a Faustian pact. And a dejected angel falls in love at the End of the World. Each story comes from the heart, throbbing with visceral gay energy. Save your prayers. And come inside.

Paperback, 298 pages

Cover and interior design by Ryan Vance

Pre- Order a Copy direct from Lethe Press by Clicking here

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