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Queerbaiting

Marketing technique for fiction

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Accusations of queerbaiting have been made towards films, television series, books, music, advertisements and other forms of media, but also towards celebrities who express an ambiguous sexual identity through their works and statements. The term arose in and has been popularized through discussions in Internet fandom since the early 2010s. It comes from a larger history of LGBTQ+ discourse in media representation dating back to the 1970s from subtle marketing to LGBTQ+ people through commercials and books.

Assessments

Queer audience concerns

Julia Himberg, a professor of film and media studies at Arizona State University, claimed that queer identities have been used and commodified by media producers to convey an "edgy identity".

Fans have derided, for instance, queer characters being used as plot devices rather than as characters for their own sake. Glee, for example, a series with many queer series regulars, was criticized by fans for presenting "superficial stereotypes of queerness for dramatic effect".

Queer fans consider queerbaiting as "a way to throw us a bone when we normally wouldn't have anything, to acknowledge that we're there in the audience when the powers that be would prefer to ignore us." Emmet Scout wrote that "queerbaiting works on its audience because it offers the suggestion that queer people do have a vital place in these stories, that they might even be the defining figures, the heroes. The suggestion—but not the reality." Rose Bridges summarized the practice's effect on queer fans as receiving "just enough" representation "to keep us interested, but not enough to satisfy us and make us truly represented."

Critiques

Critics of those who engage in queerbaiting discourse point to its similarity, and perhaps confusion by audiences, with subtext. Subtext became popular in media, especially in film, during the 1930s due to the Hays Code which limited what can be shown on screen. The use of subtext has been a literary ploy to tell a variety of stories since. However, those who engage with modern queerbaiting discourse firmly argue that LGBT representation no longer needs to be in the shadows of media. Instead of adding artistic value, queer fans view this tactic as perpetuating LGBT marginalization for further capitalization.

Societal shifts

Media scholars such as Eve Ng have noted that audience complaints about queerbaiting parallel the shift towards increasing queer representation in media and pop culture. According to Ng, as representation has increased, so too have expectations for that representation—and frustrations arise when those expectations are not met. She noted that rather than simply being satisfied with any degree of representation, queer audiences want to be represented through "respectful and meaningful depictions." That is why, according to media researcher Julia Himberg, the ambiguous sexuality projected by twentieth-century entertainers such as David Bowie, Elton John and Madonna was not scrutinized to the same degree as that of their successors.

Various businesses and corporations, such as Starbucks, Ben & Jerry's, and Tylenol have showcased queer people and queer families in advertisements, helping to normalize and increase awareness surrounding the queer community.

Queerbaiting has brought the spending power of the queer community to light, and businesses make economic decisions that promote and support the queer community and its representation that ultimately entices the pink dollar. Terms associated with the queer community, like pink money, have shown the importance of queer people within an economy and a society.

In May 2020, reviewer Sophie Perry, writing for a lesbian lifestyle magazine, Curve, noted how queerbaiting has long endured in LGBT representation, noting how She-Ra and Harley Quinn both had same-sex kisses, happening within stories that could have turned out to be "typical queerbaiting" but did not. Perry added that the "queer conclusion" of the She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is thanks to ND Stevenson, describing it as very different from the conclusion of The Legend of Korra, which confirmed Korra and Asami's relationship but left it "purposefully ambiguous" so it could air on a children's network. She concluded by calling She-Ra and the Princesses of Power culturally significant and added that as more creative queer people come to the fore, inevitably queerbaiting will "become a thing of the past".

In March 2021, a writer for Vanity Fair, Joanna Robinson asked when "queer coding" veers into the territory of "queer baiting", with Dana Terrace saying it happens a "lot in modern anime", and Robinson saying this is also seen in shows like the end of Supernatural or the "hubbub around Finn and Poe in The Rise of Skywalker".

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