SLAP-STICKING IT TO THE HETEROPATRIARCHY

As a closeted high schooler, I was thrilled when there was finally a lesbian character on one of my favorite TV shows... The Walking Dead. I clung to every word of the scenes between Tara and her new lesbian love interest. For a moment, the potential for queer love existed not only for the lesbian characters mid-apocalypse but for the closeted high schooler watching from the living room. Only two episodes later, however, she was killed. Tara’s (and my own) chance at queer love seemed to disappear.

Since coming out of the closet and declaring a Major in Film Production, with Minors in Screenwriting and Women’s & Gender Studies, I’ve learned that this moment on television was not an isolated incident. LGBTQ+ characters are so frequently killed off in television shows that this trope was given a name: “Bury Your Gays.'' As a writer, I am not only dedicated to promoting realistic and nuanced representations of LGBTQ+ characters, but I will give them narratives that do not end in tragedy. Instead, I plan to use comedy as activism, and laughter to mobilize change! In this essay, I’ll examine strategies for demanding representation as well as the work emerging feminist and queer comedy writers are doing to harness the power of laughter to disrupt heteropatriarchy.

I spoke with Sam Chase, a genderqueer writer and Former Outfest Contributor on not only the power of representation, but of the queer fandom. Chase mentioned their own participation in the #LGBTQfansdeservebetter hashtag movement that fought to put an end to the “Bury Your Gays” trope (by coincidence, they were even wearing a Marry Your Gays t-shirt). Navar-Gill and Stanfill explain, “queer fan hashtag campaigns are strategic interventions meant to alter both representational and structural television production processes by leveraging the importance of audience feedback in a connected viewing environment” (Navar-Gill and Stanfill 85). In this fandom-turned-coalition, the modern, interconnected world empowers fans to call attention to misrepresentations and its root cause: a lack of diversity in the writer’s room. As Sam Chase mentions, creators such as Emily Andras, Tanya Saracho, and Gloria Calderón Kellett are doing queer fandoms justice by staffing a diverse team of writers. In this way, heteronormative power structures can also be dismantled from the outside-in.

“I don’t even want to be doing this ‘update’ piece [on Anti-Asian Hate Crimes] I wanted to do my character, Gay Passover Bunny” (“Maya Rudolph” 44:11-47:46), begs Bowen Yang. Considering Saturday Night Live’s origins as a straight, white, “boy’s club,” this profound Weekend Update segment is a testament to the power of intersectional representation and comedy as activism. Originally a writer on the show, Yang championed and pioneered queer-centric sketches such as “The Actress” (with Emma Stone) and “Sarah Lee” (with Harry Styles). In regards to sketches like “‘The Actress’... a certain critical mass is necessary: You need enough LGBTQ+ people on the writing staff, enough LGBTQ+ performers to bring certain sketches to life, and showrunners who want to shine a spotlight on all of the above.” (“Queer Sketch Comedy”). Yang is now the first openly gay, Asian-American cast member in the show’s history who now has the opportunity to bring certain sketches to life that would otherwise not exist.

In this particular Weekend Update segment, Yang acknowledges the hurt of the Asian community by expressing the very burden of his spokesman-ship; he’s a comedian entrusted to educate non-Asians. He does not express this frustration directly, but rather, through a joke. “Tongue-in-cheek,” he names an “important” resource for non-Asians: “Six Ways To Check In On Your AAPI Friends And Tell Them They’re So Hot!” The audience’s laughter is an acknowledgement of Yang’s burden of educating non-Asians, but also of the emasculation many Asian men face (who may not feel they’re “hot” by America’s standards)! For a moment, laughter is able to disrupt racial and heteropatriarchal hate. Yang acknowledges and disrupts homophobia and Asian hate via jokes and laughter, respectively.

“If there isn’t a dead body, I don’t want anything to do with it,” said my writing mentor Wendy West. Wendy West’s credits include the emmy-nominated series, Dexter, The Blacklist, and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. As a crime drama writer, Wendy West is - and now “was” - a woman in a man’s world. At the start of her career, Wendy said she was often the only woman in the writer’s room. As she gained more experience and began to produce her own work, like Ultraviolet (2017-2019), she assumed more creative control over both story and the representation of women. West was quoted in a Variety article saying, “We had a number of female journalists observe what I am especially proud of: none of our plots feature sex crimes against women” (Wendy West on How Art Mirrors Life in “DIY CSI” Drama “Ultraviolet” - Variety).

West fought for creative control in order to promote the nuanced and thoughtful representation of women. By eliminating sex crimes against women, West refused to display, on-screen, women being dominated and nonconsentually fucked by toxic masculinity. As a creative in the field since before the #MeTooMovement, West was witness to a significant increase in the representation of women in front of and behind the camera. When I asked her about this critical shift in the entertainment industry, she mentioned the complete tonal shift in the writer’s room and the increased respect her male colleagues showed her. She also mentioned that due to the increased number of women in the room, overall, communication became more effective.

“You know, the vuh-yine-yuh is nature’s pocket. It’s, it’s natural. And it’s responsible” (“P*$$Y Weed” 2:20), Ilana explains to Abbi, encouraging her to store weed up her vagina. Ilana and Abbi’s die-hard female friendship is the heart of the Comedy Central series, Broad City. Although Comedy Central has its origins in raunchy male-centric humor, with the increased representation of unruly female comedians, there’s been a turn of the tide - or a pass of the blunt, so to speak. Katheleen Rowe argues that the unruly woman, “makes jokes, or laughs herself… her speech is excessive in quantity, content, or tone” (Rowe 31). It is this unruliness through comedy that disrupts the patriarchy. In this line alone, Ilana makes a joke, references weed, and names she-who-must-not-be-named… the vagina. In a heteropatriarchal world where there is so much shame attached to the vagina, Ilana as the unruly woman, is deemed excessive. In this way, Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson - as creators - use joking as a means to disrupt a patriarchy that demands women be meek and shameful.

Emma Aikman, a Drag Queen, and a Dyke walk into a bar… the heteropatriarchal bartender says, “We don’t serve your kind here!” and the queers say, “I didn’t want a gino-toxic masculinity anyway!”

As a creative, it is my mission to employ comedy as activism to disrupt the heteropatriarchy. I’ve been working hard to challenge heteropatriarchal culture with my recent script, The Devil in Drag! My comedy musical tells the story of a jealous drag queen named Eva Ville who dies and wakes in hell! She must then “werk” her way out with the help of her lover in heaven, Miss Allure, who she killed out of envy. My story pushes boundaries with its representation of complicated, queer characters/relationships as well as its queer sexual content. Just as, “You need enough LGBTQ+ people on the writing staff, enough LGBTQ+ performers to bring certain sketches to life, and showrunners … '' my story would engage and promote representation of performers and creators alike. The Drag Queen community, for instance, are almost never represented on-screen outside of reality television shows like Ru Paul’s Drag Race. With the immense talent of the Drag Community, they deserve opportunities to display their talent in fictional, narrative roles as well.

The sexual explicitness of my story also meets a Katheleen Rowe definition of “unruliness.” Eva Ville strums her bedazzled guitar and sings,“I’m afraid to shave my balls, just like I’m afraid to commit, or lick a clit, or touch a toolkit…” In the same way Ilana in Broad City is rauchy and boundary-pushing, Eva fearlessly challenges heteronormative views. In Rowe’s description of the unruly woman, she mentions, “She may be androgynous or hemaphroditic, drawing attention to the social construction of gender” (Rowe 31). As a bearded drag queen clad in a denim shirt and skirt, Eva Ville exposes and challenges gender dichotomies. My characters can also use jokes and laughter to express heteropatriarchal oppression in a palatable way.

With the emergence of queer and feminist creators and performers like Bowen Yang, Ilana Glazer, and Abbi Jacobsen, a vision of the world emerges for me as a creator - a world in which jokes and laughter provide a (therapeutic) outlet to vocalize and combat oppression. I am dedicated to doing right by women and LGBTQ communities and fandoms, and when I am in a position to hire others, I will be sure to make my writer’s rooms diverse and respectful. Until then, I will be unapologetic with my work (packed full of “unruly” characters) and continue to use joking as a means to express dissent with the heteropatriarchy.

Works Cited

Annemarie Navar-Gill, and Mel Stanfill. “‘We Shouldn't Have to Trend to Make You Listen’: Queer Fan Hashtag Campaigns as Production Interventions.” Journal of Film and Video, vol. 70, no. 3-4, 2018, pp. 85–100. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/jfilmvideo.70.3-4.0085. Accessed 23 Feb. 2021.

Chase, Sam. Personal interview. 1 February 2021.

Karlyn, Kathleen Rowe. "Unruly Women." Gender: Laughter, edited by Bettina Papenburg, Macmillan Reference USA, 2017, pp. 19-35. Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks. Gale eBooks, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3648400012/GVRL?u=loym48904&sid=GVRL&xid=adeb24c1. Accessed 19 Jan. 2021.

“Maya Rudolph.” Saturday Night Live, season 46, episode 15, NBC, 27 Jan. 2021. Hulu,

“P*$$Y Weed.” Broad City, season 1, episode 2, Comedy Central, 29 Jan. 2014. Hulu, https://www.hulu.com/watch/f91268cc-950e-46b9-9bbf-1079976b8ecf

Queer Sketch Comedy: How “SNL,” “A Black Lady Sketch Show,” and “The Iliza Schlesinger Sketch Show” Said LGBTQ+ Rights | Them. https://www.them.us/story/sketch-comedy-lgbtq-snl-black-lady-sketch-show-iliza-schleshinger. Accessed 4 Apr. 2021.

West, Wendy. Personal interview. 3 February 2021.

Wendy West on How Art Mirrors Life in “DIY CSI” Drama “Ultraviolet” - Variety.https://variety.com/2018/tv/news/wendy-west-guest-column-ultraviolet-polish-crime-drama-dexter-1202631619/. Accessed 4 Apr. 2021.