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The ‘Bury Your Gays’ trope is a well-explored phenomenon in different forms of media, ranging from comics all the way to the big screen. The reason behind it is the result of decades, if not centuries, of demonizing members of the LGBTQ+ community. Today, it’s not as often encountered, but there are plenty of films from your childhood or early youth that have employed this trope. Here’s a closer look at the history of the ‘Bury Your Gays’ trope, along with five examples from TV and film.
Possible Reasons Behind the ‘Bury Your Gays’ Trope
In a similar vein as the ‘Black Guy Dies First’ trope, gay characters in older media were often seen as expendable when compared to their heterosexual counterparts. This could be due to a multitude of reasons, but one that sticks out is the fact that gay characters were never in a leading role, making them prime targets for a tragic end. For slasher films, this was almost guaranteed since the lead role (and survivor) was often a woman, as seen in the ‘Final Girl’ trope.
Another possible reason is that in the early years of the film industry in America, the Hays Code regulated what should and shouldn’t be shown in film. The Hays Code also assumed that the audience was wholly white straight males, which means that any sort of content that doesn’t directly appeal to such an audience of that time is immediately a no-no.
Something as simple as a man questioning his sexuality would be extremely taboo, not to mention the fact that the USA hadn’t even begun to come around to the rights of LGBT individuals at that point in time, let alone Black people. Remember, the Hays Code was introduced in 1934 and ended in 1968, which is also coincidentally the end of the Civil Rights Movement.
The Hays Code basically made it so that gay characters weren’t allowed on screen unless they were playing some sort of villainous character or showing how “abhorrent” such behavior is. This makes them an easy target for early filmmakers looking to portray a villain who meets an untimely end or who winds up getting punished.
Moving forward, LGBT rights and characters eventually became more acceptable, causing Hollywood to move away from depicting these characters as villains and instead as tragic characters suffering in a world they feel they don’t fit in. Then there was the AIDS epidemic, and gay characters began dying of that left and right in film and TV.
Essentially, if a character gets introduced and their whole personality is the fact that they’re not heterosexual, and they get killed off while the majority of the cast survives, you’re looking at the ‘Bury Your Gays’ trope.
These days, it’s not as common to find a film where the LGBTQ+ character dies simply because of their sexual or personal preferences. There are still movies and series where these characters die, of course, but that has less to do with the trope and more to do with the fact that characters die, oftentimes regardless of their sexual orientation. Not every death of an LGBTQ+ character fits this trope, but there are definitely a lot that do. Let’s take a look at five examples from TV and film that play this trope to a tee.
1. Supernatural
There’s burying your gays, and then there’s “sending your gays to super hell the moment they admit for the first time on-screen that they’re gay.” Supernatural is guilty of this trope and a little bit of “queerbaiting.” If you’re unaware (spoiler alert), there’s a character named Castiel who everyone assumed was queer due to hints from the showrunners. To make it even more interesting, Castiel was supposed to be in love with one of the main characters, Dean.
Sounds great, right? Well, Castiel ends up confessing his love to Dean in the third to last episode of the show, only to get dragged to Super Hell right after, thus ending that whole possible love story and crushing any fan’s hearts. Some fans were upset, as they felt that they were baited into watching the show to see how Castiel’s love pans out, only for him to get sent to hell like all those screaming religious nuts want. Not a good look, Supernatural, not good at all.
2. Degrassi: The Next Generation
Not necessarily gay, Adam Torres, a trans senior from Degrassi: The Next Generation, ended up pissing a lot of fans off when he was unexpectedly killed in what appeared to be a message about “texting and driving.” Not the best move to kill off Adam, especially since he was in the stages of transitioning and had just found love, only to die sending a text while driving.
3. Land of the Dead
What was the deal with gratuitous sex scenes and lesbians back in the day? And talk about gratuitous; George Romero’s Land of the Dead had a lesbian couple on screen for about 5 seconds before one of them was pulled through a wall by a zombie and killed. That’s it. No more lesbians after that or any real mention of the couple ever again. It’s just a scene to show two lesbians kissing before killing one of them.
4. Braveheart
This film is chock full of inaccuracies, but to add one more to the fire, we see King “Longshanks” Edward of England chuck the prince’s lover out of a window, which is historically inaccurate and doesn’t exactly make sense given the actual events that took place. But again, Braveheart is filled with inaccuracies, it’s just a weird choice to make one of those inaccuracies throwing a gay guy out of a window to his death.
5. The 100
This one irked fans so badly that after Lexa was killed off on The 100, fans got together and created a nonprofit called LGBT Fans Deserve Better, but it seems to mostly be defunct now as the site has largely gone un-updated and the Twitter page rarely posts. Lexa was a major character on the show and was in a relationship with another character named Clarke. Unfortunately for them, a man named Titus doesn’t like it, and in an attempt to shoot Clarke, he accidentally hits and kills Lexa. Yeah, it’s safe to say that didn’t go over too well.
Know another example of the “Bury Your Gays” trope in TV, film, or any other form of media? Let us know in the comments below!
