I’ve been stalking the internet, meticulously consuming media on the art of queerbaiting. The definition of which ebbs and flows like a blooming flower. So, I took it upon myself to seek out the definition of what queerbaiting is. The oxford english dictionary spat out the following “The practice of incorporating apparently or potentially LGBTQ characters or relationships into a film, television show, etc., as a means of attracting or appealing to LGBTQ audiences, while remaining deliberately coy or ambiguous about the characters’ sexuality; (more generally) the practice of trying to appeal to and capitalize on LGBTQ audiences or customers in a deceptive or superficial manner” Which yeah seems pretty solid to me so I guess my work here is done, that’s the essay you guys.
It would have been nice because I’ve been mulling over this essay for the better part of two months. I’ve started and restarted, and I seem to never be fully content with it. For the sake of my sanity and yours, let’s first outline some basic rules;
Real people, like you and me, can’t queer-bait others because of the mere fact that we are made of flesh and bone, and our sexuality is truly no one’s business but our own. We can’t accuse others of queer-baiting. There’s an essay somewhere in this topic, but that’s for a different time.
Queerbaiting is typically described as the practice of alluding to a character potentially being queer without ever making it canon, which, in my opinion, is an incomplete definition because now writers, producers, and streaming platforms can be let off the hook on a technicality.
I’m not here to argue about whether certain ships are canon or not, because frankly, that’s just not what I care about right now. What I do care about is representation and the well-being of the LGBTQ+ community.
Now that we got that out of the way, let us dive into this potentially irritating conversation.
I don’t think we can get into queerbaiting and the way it has evolved without first understanding what rainbow capitalism is. Rainbow Capitalism is, well, the presence of capitalism in LGBTQ+ spaces. It’s not a new thing, but it’s not ancient, sitting somewhere in the middle of our timeline. I’m going to try to explain this as best as I can because I’m no economist, so just bear with me. As the LGBTQ+ community has grown (particularly in the West, keep that in mind) and become integrated, somewhat accepted, into the zeitgeist, they’ve been allotted purchasing power. Meaning with every step forward the community took, whether that be marriage, adoption, buying land, joint credit accounts, finding employment, etc., they’ve become active participants of our economy. None of the things I mentioned are cheap, and corporate America knows that.
Capitalism, in its infinite hunger, would never allow such an opportunity to pass it by. So, corporations start plastering rainbows on t-shirts, pride floats with Microsoft’s logo, love is love on sneakers, glitter rainbow makeup palettes, you get the point. They start popping up, not out of nowhere, not by accident— no. If a community is making money, if they have purchasing power, if they can ‘put their money where their mouth is’ corporations are gonna catch on, a ‘shit, well I want their money to go to me,’ sentiment. This is pretty easy to understand. It makes sense that as the queer community gains some financial power, companies will go out of their way to ensure that that money goes to them first and foremost.
The thing is that it goes deeper than that, at least I think it does.
It’s not just about purchasing things anymore; it’s so much more than that. It’s the opportunity to bait a community into watching your show, farming their hopes for attention, knowing damn well they’re not getting shit. Deliberately pandering to an audience so that you may use them as record breaking views, preying on them just enough so that they may renew their subscription or get a new one all together. I don’t think people realize how bad it is for us to not realize that that is what is happening.
I’ve been told before that I’m just simply looking too deeply into things I shouldn’t be looking into, but I know that’s not true. This is a pattern. It’s happened before. To name a few of the top of my head, Supernatural and Voltron. I didn’t even watch those shows but the disappointment was so overwhelming and loud I know about them. And okay fine, I can’t ignore it anymore the breaking point was byler okay? are you happy now? is that what you wanted to hear? yes this goes back to byler because that god forsaken ship is the last puzzle piece I needed to realize this.
And maybe, just maybe, I would have been happy enough to look the other way and give them the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps I could have swallowed my pride and agreed that maybe it was me, maybe I was the problem, perhaps I was the delusional one but then, then I saw a really interesting clip. Of one Mr. Finn Wolfhard receiving the painting that the character Will makes for him in the show. I thought huh kind of a weird thing to tease in hindsight ya know? like kinda odd to tease the painting the audience knows has oceans of meaning behind it. Kind of an odd decision to give it to Mikes actor and not, ya know, Will the one that’s gay. But obviously, obviously, that wasn’t a mistake or ‘odd’ decision because that’s not how marketing works because if it was just a series of mistakes nobody would even be watching the fucking show.
I’m not a marketing major; I study media communications, which isn’t exactly the same thing, but it’s like marketing’s little cousin, shall we say? I hate those damn classes because it’s so glaringly obvious that the main takeaway is just tell the audience what they want to hear so they buy your product and not someone else’s. You wouldn’t believe the time we allocate to dissecting our audience, building a profile of them, understanding them, what’s their age? What social media platforms do they use? Their gender, their occupation, their sexuality, political affiliation, their location, who they follow, their interests, what makes them buy something, and how we can use it to sell our product to them. So when people tell me that this is just a fluke, my blood boils because no, marketing is anything but a fluke.
The last thing I want to point out, the last idea I need to make my case that Byler was a deliberate act of LGBTQ+ audience farming, was the fact that Mike and Jane’s characters kissed once at the end of the final episode of the very last season. I picked up on this much sooner, basically as soon as it happened. Because how odd that they waited a whole season to have two of their main characters kiss, even though they were supposedly canonically together. And how even weirder it was that they amped up the interactions between the two characters they knew their queer audience wanted together. It just struck me as such an odd writing choice to have it be at the very end…unless. Unless it was done on purpose to keep that queer audience coming back after the release of each volume with the hope that their favourite ship might end up together. That sounds about right, and god did it fucking work like a charm.
Like I said, I’m not here to argue about whether Will and Mike should have been together and what not, this isn’t a character study. The two things I mentioned had nothing to do with character work and everything to do with marketing. Because that is what queerbaiting has become under capitalism. In a world where queer people have choices on where to spend their money every company is going to want them to spend it on their product. Queerbaiting isn’t just oh gay character implied but huh?? actually no gay character? We’ve evolved way past that (at least in the west).
We need to understand the way that these two things are interacting with one another. You can not have queer baiting without rainbow capitalism, and you can not have rainbow capitalism without queerbaiting. They feed off of each other because they are different sides of the same damn coin. To hell with representation, these people just want your cold, hard cash.
It seems, to me at least, that some of us can not get past the simple definition of queerbaiting. The one that’s about representation, that demands queer characters to be celebrated out loud instead of just implied. We have moved past implications. Because nowadays you have a gay character on a show so unimaginably influential and popular it damn right saved Netflix from bankruptcy. The weight of that can’t go unknown; we can’t just move past it, we have to understand it.
What do we want now? what does queerbaiting mean now that we even get to have characters that come out on large streaming platforms? what does it mean now that we get whole movies about sapphic love? (bottoms, love, lies, bleeding, i am not okay with this). What does it mean now that Red, White, and Royal Blue, a movie about men falling in love, was so successful they’re making a second one on amazon prime?
Because we have their attention, they know we want openly queer characters, the catch is they think that’s good enough, that there is nothing more to give. And in that belief is the satisfaction of knowing they can wring us dry of our money if they just imply, hint at the idea that we will get to see queer joy on our screens. Somehow, it always comes back to the joy, doesn’t it?
We need to agree on a definition (which apparently The Oxford Dictionary already has nailed down) of what queerbaiting has become and stick to it.
But, perhaps most importantly, we need to remember that at the core of all of this is capitalism. The beast is insatiable. Yes, representation is still important. But representation just to get us to watch something, or buy a new pair of sneakers, or get us into a bar, isn’t actual representation, it’s just a marketing ploy. And that is, at its core, enticing your audience to spend time and money where you want them to by manipulating their wants and needs.
Some might even say that it is baiting the queers.
you perfectly articulated this concept! this was something that i had considered but couldn't properly comprehend but you just put the pieces together so well - queerbait IS inherently tied to capitalism