As we approach the second decade of the twenty-first century, no one can deny that the plight of LGBT people is far from over. While groundbreaking progress has been made in the United States since the gay rights movement of the 1970s, LGBT individuals still face barriers to marriage and gender reassignment, and are lacking the basic protections for job security, house availability, and safety in schools and the workplace. However, there is are new frontiers opening up, and there is one that has seen great leaps and bounds in the past several years: LGBT representation in media. While many people point to the grand increase of LGBT characters appearing on the screen, there is a deep, nuanced discussion about this representation that is broiling beneath the surface.  

More or less, the argument revolves around two central points: quantity and quality. Regarding quantity, it appears on the surface to be a cut and dry debate. The loudest adversaries argue that there are enough LGBT people on TV, and ask: what more could you want? This question is what ties the issue of quality into the discussion, because when supporters respond “More,” it is not a one-word answer. Because the issue of quality is how the LGBT community itself is currently debating as what does or does not count as representation.  

The importance of quality in representation cannot be overstated – this is a common core argument. In an article titled, “Why Queer Representation Matters,” the author, Fabricio Leal Cogo, describes what it was like growing up in Brazil with LGBT representation: “The few times I saw gays on TV, they were always a punchline in a comedy—a source of laughter. Many people, I’m sure, are probably thinking: It’s just a joke, right?” Whatever is shown on media is both what the majority viewers will come to accept as the norm of the minority and what the minority will internalize about themselves. When media is full of people and none of them reflect who you are or how you feel, it leaves you with only one conclusion. Cogo uses a quote from a former University of Massachusetts at Amherst professor, Michael Morgan, that describes this conclusion best. “When you don’t see people like yourself, the message is: You’re invisible. The message is: You don’t count.”  

What counts as inclusion has been one subject of debate. A great example of this comes from the controversy surrounding several children’s franchises, such as the recent backlash faced by J.K. Rowling considering her representation of LGBT characters in Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts. Rowling has been public about one of the main characters of both franchise, Dumbledore, being gay, but she has yet to ever include any evidence of this in any of the published books or released movies. At the publication of the books, even a non-canonical announcement was a great step forward, but it is something that has continued with Rowling’s work, and LGBT fans and allies are beginning to get more upset.“He can be gay in Rowling’s public appearances and tweets, but not on screen,” said Ian Thomas Malone, a fan of the series that spoke to Kim Renfro, the author of “Why devoted ‘Harry Potter’ fans feel betrayed by J.K. Rowling and the ‘Fantastic Beasts’ franchise.” Renfro writes, “Rowling offered up Dumbledore’s sexuality as a post-book tidbit. But for some fans, that’s simply not good enough.” 

That sentiment is the tip of the iceberg of LGBT representation. Rowling suffered from the quality of her inclusion, but inclusion in published media is also a slippery slope, and there is no better place to look at this conversation develop than to turn to representation in cartoons made for children and young adults. This is an area that has seen a lot more representation as of late, and the fact that there is anything to be remarked on here at all is something that many point to as a milestone of itself. Alex Hirsch, a showrunner for Gravity Falls, said in an article published by Nick Romano on Entertainment Weekly, titled “From Steven Universe to Voltron: The fight to bring LGBTQ characters to kids’ shows,” that “Every time a creator or a network decides to try to go a little further and do something maybe other networks have been scared to do, suddenly we’ve opened up that space.”  

However, not everyone feels these works are sound. Many of the pieces that have received high praise for inclusion suffer from tropes that have plagued LGBT representation for years. Romano glazes over this in his article when discussing Voltron, a show that had announced one of their main characters was gay. When describing feedback from the show, Romano said the only negative response came from “viewers frustrated over a re-emergence of the “bury your gays” trope in the storyline, for which [Voltron’s creator] issued an apology to fans online.”  

While this wording certainly makes this seem very low stakes, the “bury your gays” trope in Voltron is both extremely pervasive in LGBT representation of old as well as incredibly harmful. It refers to the event of LGBT characters being introduced to a piece, only to have them be killed off very quickly. Voltron did this by introducing a love interest of a lead character and then killing him within the same episode. Lily Orchard, a transgender woman that publishes video essays to YouTube that often focus on minority representation in media, expressed the damage this trope can do in her “Glass of Water” series titled “Not Good Enough,” saying that this trope creates the implication that “gay people’s only role in life is to die.”  

Orchard is a very divisive personality, but she epitomizes the other side of this debate. She also touches on another trend for LGBT characters in her video, called the “last second relationship” trope. What made this trope skyrocket in cartoons came from The Legend of Korra, a cartoon that ended its last episode in 2014 with their two female leads getting together. This was widely celebrated, despite these characters’ relationship having developed only in the last few minutes of the show. This was more shocking when it aired in 2014, of course, but with it’s still being held up today as wonderful representation, it’s no wonder that a show like Voltron would also suffer from this, with their lead character being shown to marry a character he had no prior close relationship with in the very last episode of the show. 

While the “last second relationship” is certainly less harmful, Orchard uses it as part of her argument: that this sloppy representation is “largely because of both creators and audiences alike being too willing to concede too much ground.” The majority of these creators argue that this is as much as they can do; that the networks producing their shows will not allow more. Joaqium Dos Santos of Voltron said “Are there still boundaries? Well, for this type of ‘action adventure/product-driven/traditionally boys toys’ show the answer is unfortunately yes…. Have those boundaries widened since we first started the show? Yes. Is there still a TON of room to grow? 100 percent YES.” (Romano).  

Orchard argues in “Not Good Enough” that this ‘room to grow’ already exists, because many networks cave at the first sign of trouble. Hirsch of Gravity Falls said that “The truth is they’re scared of getting emails from bigots and they’re cowards. So they’re letting the bigots control the conversation.” (Romano). Orchard responded to this quote with, “Just like how creators are afraid of getting emails from bigots, they’re also afraid of getting emails from actual human beings for being bigots.” Her biggest example is Rebecca Sugar, creator of Steven Universe, and an episode that featured a same-sex wedding. Sugar received pushback from Cartoon Network over the episode, and she threatened to leave the network and take Steven Universe with her if she did not get her way. Cartoon Network caved to this despite, as Orchard points out, the fact that Sugar could not have gotten away with this, as Steven Universe had already seen lowering ratings for years and “her behavior as a creator was only a liability for the network.” This is among several other examples of executive pushback crumbling as soon as a creator questioned their mandates, such as Hirsch himself as well as Daron Nefcy of Star vs. The Forces of Evil, which would produce Disney’s first on-sceen same-sex kiss (Romano).  

Orchard says that this comes from LGBT audiences being “so starved for content” that they do not push back against whatever they’re given. “Creators are accustomed to not having to put very much effort into writing a decent story. The writers of Voltron didn’t even try pressing the studio further than ‘bury your gays’ because they were convinced fans would adore that garbage they’d written.” 

The discussion of LGBT representation in media is deceptively deep. It is clear that more is expected of it; more inclusion, more appearances, more well-written characters. While it might be easy to dismiss it, these points of view each harbor a direction for representation moving forward; these arguments may affect what children and adults alike will see of LGBT characters in a couple decades from now. It is a future that is coming fast, and the results is already long overdue.

Works Cited 

“LGBT Fans Deserve Better.” ClexaCon. 7 November 2016,
https://twitter.com/ClexaCon/status/795732685972869120.

Cogo, Fabricio Neal. “Why Queer Representation Matters.” New America Weekly, New America, 15 June 2017, https://www.newamerica.org/weekly/edition-169/why-queer-representation-matters/. 

Dolan, Tadgh. An old color TV depicting a rainbow. GCN (Gay Community News), 20 September 2018, https://gcn.ie/tv-shows-redefined-lgbt-television/.

“Glass of Water – Not Good Enough.” YouTube, uploaded by Lily Orchard, 19 December 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aFUyC_WhUY&list=PLhZTlV5Uagg_rJd63OTK-XZMbsfcDx5o8&index=7. 

Renfro, Kim. “Why devoted ‘Harry Potter’ fans feel betrayed by J.K. Rowling and the ‘Fantastic Beasts’ franchise.” Insider, Insider Inc., 2 February 2018, https://www.thisisinsider.com/fantastic-beasts-jk-rowling-dumbledore-lgbt-backlash-2018-2. 

Romano, Nick. “From Steven Universe to Voltron: The fight to bring LGBTQ characters to kids’ shows.” Entertainment Weekly, Meredith Corporation, 22 August 2018, https://ew.com/tv/2018/08/22/steven-universe-voltron-kids-cartoons-lgbtq-characters/. 

Willens, Kathy. A crowd waves rainbow flags. NPR, 28 June 2015,
https://www.npr.org/2015/06/28/418327652/after-marriage-equality-whats-next-for-the-lgbt-movement.