Tropes that became problematic

[u/KalzK]

The Persistent Suitor: A guy who is after the girl and just wont take no for an answer. Nowadays we just call stalking and harassment, but it used to be romantic. Example: The Notebook (2004), Noah asks Allie out while she's on a date with another man. She refuses, but he threatens to let go and fall unless she agrees to go out with him.

Comedic Woman On Man Violence: Mostly seen in anime, recently it has decreased a lot but years back every show had a woman hitting a guy and showed it as funny. Example: Toradora!, where the quintessential tsundere, Taiga, beats up the MC regularly.

Kid Bags Adult Baddie: I remember a few of these, sometimes it was to show how cool and awesome a kid was because an adult woman fell for him, now it's just seen as problematic shit. Example: Blank Check, the woman likes the kid and kisses him telling him to look for her in 10 years.

[u/MoonlightDahling]

“Bury Your Gays”

Way back in the day (in the 1950s and 1960s), a large number of gay characters were VILLAINS.

So, having one portrayed sympathetically, at all, was groundbreaking.

However: both due to society's attitudes, and also censorship laws, a trend started to form. Of said gay characters dying, at the end.

And, as positive representation has increased, and attitudes have changed, works that fall into the pattern are far more often criticised.

[u/MoonlightDahling → u/MoonlightDahling]

Look up about the Hays Code, if you’re curious. It was a strict set of guidelines that American films were under, from 1934 to 1968.

But, basically, any inference of “sex perversion” was strictly forbidden.

So, even the most sympathetic of gay characters (like Martha in The Children's Hour, or Plato from Rebel Without a Cause) would still end up killed off, at the end.

[u/MoonlightDahling → u/MoonlightDahling]

My image is from Philadelphia (1993), by the way.

(Which really isn’t a spoiler. We're told, from the very beginning, that he's dying)

[u/beigs → u/MoonlightDahling]

Mind you a movie about gay people in the late 80s early 90s, there is a reason there is a whole generation of gay men that aren’t with us.

[u/MoonlightDahling → u/beigs]

And I'm not denying that. It absolutely makes sense in that context.

But it’s not Andrew's death, alone, that’s the problem. It’s the pattern it falls into.

[u/theperfectonion → u/MoonlightDahling]

I feel like Philadelphia is distinctly not an example of the "Bury Your Gays" trope, because a) Andrew died not simply because he was gay, but because he had a disease, and b) its central theme was the rejection of the idea that he deserved pain, suffering, or humiliation.

You're looking at a movie centered around a gay man during the HIV/AIDS epidemic and getting frustrated that a gay man dies. Which, sure, it's a tragedy... But that's the point.

AFI states (quoting an NYT article I can't immediately find) that 43 of the 53 AIDS-diagnosed actors involved died by the end of filming. AIDS was absolutely a death sentence before we figured out anti-retrovirals. I once read that HIV was originally called the 4H disease, because it was known to present in homosexuals, heroin-users, hemophiliacs and Haitians - such that there was a joke about the hardest part of contracting HIV was telling your parents you were Haitian.

The point I'm trying to make is that in the 80s and 90s HIV/AIDS was commonly stigmatized in homosexuals, and living with the disease long-term was not likely. Philadelphia did work to combat that stigma by casting light on the tragedy of those affected. I just don't see it as fitting into the "Bury Your Gays" trope at all.

[u/MoonlightDahling → u/theperfectonion]

That’s fair. You make a lot of great points.

And I wouldn’t have strictly labelled it an example, either.

I'm also aware that it was, regardless, an incredibly important film for the time.

My only real reason, for using it as an image…is that it was literally the only non-spoiler I could think of, that even remotely fit what I was talking about.

(As the ending is, as I said, a foregone conclusion. “Gay character dies” would ruin nearly any other film, for someone, regardless of what I picked.)

[u/theperfectonion → u/MoonlightDahling]

“Gay character dies” would ruin nearly any other film, for someone, regardless of what I picked.

Doesn't that suggest that the frequency of the "Bury Your Gays" trope is at least in definitive decline, if someone would have reasonably expected a gay character to live unless told otherwise?

(I am not arguing that BYG isn't abhorrent; it is. I just don't know how prevalent it is now that mail/phone/internet have increasingly allowed for the visibility and proliferation of previously-diasporic communities such as LGBTQIA+. Pre-internet and before, and especially during the Hayes Code, yeah, BYG was at the very least financially incentivized.)

Edit: I changed "birth" to "visibility", for lack of a better term; I wasn't trying to suggest the information age spawned the gays (we're not that good). Just that LGBTQIA+ communities were far smaller and more underground (if such communities existed at all) until very recently.

[u/MoonlightDahling → u/theperfectonion]

Oh no, it definitely is. I'm not arguing there.

It still does exist, but it is absolutely less common.

(On film, at least. I watch very little television, but I have heard that it’s more prevalent there, nowadays)

[u/MoonlightDahling → u/theperfectonion]

For what it’s worth: there are plenty of films that I love that DO technically fall into the trope.

[u/Seananagan13 → u/MoonlightDahling]

I'd also add as something outside media that's still relevant, homosexuality was in the DSM as a mental illness until the 70's.

For those not familiar with the field of Psychology, that was and still is the most widely accepted source of classification in the field. Many still have concerns/complaints about even the current edition of it, but that doesn't change its relevance and impact.

[u/Ditto13248 → u/Seananagan13]

Everytime I try to discuss LGBT+ issues with my older relatives, they say this like it's a gotcha. They can't seem to accept that scientific consensus changes overtime. Some of them even think that the change is a part of a grand conspiracy to brainwash people into being LGBT+ as a way to control overpopulation. I am not joking or exaggerating

[u/Seananagan13 → u/Ditto13248]

I wish I was surprised by this, but I am sadly not. I have family members just like this too. They can accept science/medicine evolving when it benefits them and/or supports their views but when it doesn't it is the younger generation and/or groups they dislike making things up to ruin our country/the world. Especially if it is a topic/field they are uneducated on beyond what they see on social media and/or news sources that cater to their views.

[u/Tressym_92 → u/Seananagan13]

Transgender are still in the ICD under a new name and lot of psychologists still pathologize other types of queerness, especially asexuality and aromantic. It's not like it has gone.

[u/Ambaryerno → u/MoonlightDahling]

The most infuriating example of Hays Code stupidity I ever saw was an old SciFi movie riffed by MST3K. The Hero's love interest was as white as you could get. However, because the rest of her people were brown, they had her run off and die stupidly because the Hays Code barred the depiction of interracial relationships, and they were going by the "one drop of blood" rule.

[u/kookieandacupoftae → u/MoonlightDahling]

The second character was my first thought. The movie didn’t even outright say he was gay but he still got killed off anyway