The “Bury your Gays” trope in contemporary television: Generational shifts in production responses to audience dissent

Abstract

Abstract“Bury Your Gays” is the popular name used to describe the common television trope in which characters who are ostensibly gender‐ or sexually‐diverse are denied happy endings or “killed off”. Widespread online commentary among audiences reacting to incidents of “Bury Your Gays” are indicative of a public concern over the repetitiveness of this trope in contemporary popular culture. This paper investigates the cultural frameworks through which television producers respond to audience anger at “Bury Your Gays” incidents in order to provide a production perspective to scholarship on the topic. We compare two cases separated by a generation: the 2002 case of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the 2016 case of The 100. We argue that the difference in responses is indicative of (i) a solidification of the producer‐audience relationship since the advent of social media; (ii) the further embedding of a transactional approach to viewership in which “queerbaiting” is considered “false advertising” and (iii) the growth of cancel culture which fosters expectations that television representation will align with positive depictions and socially‐progressive cultural values. The paper argues that these cultural shifts underscore the way in which producers respond, no longer justifying the death of a queer character based on narrative need, but now balanced with attention to audience identity and social demand.