I have absolutely zero idea when this started happening, mostly because I cannot bear to watch the stupidity that is official media, but the topic of homosexuality has been put to my notice many times as if in a recent surge. I just started to notice it, through news outlets like Google and reddit, and I suppose less presentable imageboards. I cannot say that I’m necessarily impacted by this, at least directly. If this were to happen in my own country, then I’d have quite something to write about, but not here. However, it is still a bit startling to see, simply because of how it’s out of the ordinary. I recognise fully that a lot of presentations I see are simply romanticised versions of the real world, and should be taken with a grain of salt. The thing is that has been true for everything else in the media anyways; so honestly it does not strike me as odd, and is also one of the reasons television is never to be taken seriously. However, it still paints gay people in a much more positive light that I have seen before, that I care to see.
Maybe it’s the gradual climb of acceptance towards it that made it so artists and writers can be more liberal with their works when it comes to this kind of interactions. People rile up and support them for it, and while there is always going to be those blokes somewhere being ridiculous, they were never the targeted demographic. This means that whatever art being created is then given the term ‘edgy’ or ‘exciting’ or ‘rebellious’, those words that used to actually stand for something are now being thrown around like hot cakes because everyone just likes drama. My biggest problem with this ‘movement’, or whatever I’m supposed to call it, is the fact that a lot of this creative outlets feature gay and/or lesbian couples for the sake of them being there. The plot, if there ever is one, is usually lose and weak. In turn, this leads to romance for the sake of romance, and it turns out to be nothing more than shock value. It’s quite sad that it was even shocking in the first place, but because people are still getting used to it, apparently that translates to media success.v Same thing with the sex scenes involving them. It’s nothing but gratuitous and crass depiction of reality. While I don’t have any problems with that, because that’s what fiction is for, it doesn’t mean they don’t do it terribly.
The same thing with the term ‘lesbian fiction’, or to a lesser extent ‘gay fiction’ because apparently men have been looking for lesbians in literature since forever. What does that even mean? Fictions written by lesbians? Fictions written about lesbians? Fictions written for lesbians? The first makes no sense. The second has no context. The third is honestly the one with most clarity, but it also doesn’t mean anything. The term isn’t a genre, but it’s being used as such. That it isn’t ‘new age’, that’s honestly just lazy writing. Most of them are basically just a romance novel with a lesbian couple instead of a straight couple. It offers absolutely nothing new, and should always be marketed and marked as romance, instead of whatever the sod people are looking for now. Someone came to the romance section of the book store and didn’t like it? Tough luck. They were offended? Tell them the writers are offended of them, see how it goes. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the use of sorting, but only if it doesn’t break genres for the sake of being ‘edgy’. If these people are falling in love just for the sake of falling in love, putting these books in the romance section would help me avoid them entirely. Or movies, for that matter, that’s what categorisation is for.
Honestly, this new surge of media gets zero support from me. While it’s good that people are branching out, as per my usual routine, I judge everything exactly the same. Tact-on and forced romance has never been good, and I’m not giving people points for making it different. If they made it good, I wouldn’t care what they were writing about. That’s the thing, a lot of these new media are not up to standards, granted so has old media, but it’s getting undeserved attention and praises for something that should have been completely irrelevant to the quality of the piece. Well, you ask me, what WOULD be a quality piece of fiction with homosexual theme. I point you no further than Netflix’s very own ‘Orange is the New Black’. Yes, there were women fucking each other; but if you strip all that away, pun somewhat intended, you have a painting of cruel realities that never crossed the minds of so many people. Spoiler: Piper represents the majority of the audience, being lead through an entirely different series of scenes that they would never be expecting their entirely life. It reminds me of the Shawshank Redemption, not because of the plot, but with using the prison setting to take people out of their comfort zone.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, while I do not have a particular strong sense of support, I am not against it either. I always say quality trumps everything when it comes to art, and god do we need more of that. For those few of you who actually reads my fictions, through other unrelated outlets, you can see that I do indeed apply my own thoughts to my work. It’s quite of a bit of a pain and is insanely harder than slapping ‘romance’ and let it die, but I did talk a lot. I didn’t actually know what conclusion I was going to reach before writing this, to be honest, but I suppose it is good that I don’t feel like lynching someone.
Although I still find it amusing that the gayest thing on television right now is the Olympics.
Image taken from Avicii’s music video “Addicted to You“
The Omelette Ode 