Olga Burmakova

LGBT Representation In Movies Widely Released In Modern Russia

In modern Russian, the level of homophobia, personal and institutionalized, is high. It is one of the most legitimized display of xenophobia, accepted and even encouraged by people, including the political, cultural and spiritual leaders. From watercooler talks and blog posting to the top politicians’ and human rights defenders’ speeches, homophobic slurs are abundant. LGBT rights are considered ‘an icing on the cake’, and unnecessary addition to the development of tolerance and democracy. Ignorance about what exactly is LGBT, what are the rights this social group needs, and why they aren’t a privilege, but basic human rights, goes hand to hand with homophobia and creates a barrier to the activists’ work and any progress in these issues.

In this situation, an issue of LGBT representation in media becomes an important one. Without sex-ed classes (or including LGBT-related topics in said classes), the only possible source of more or less reliable information about LGBT for majority of people is media. It’s proved long ago that mass media and art is a powerful tool for creating a narrative in which minorities are perceived by society, and in which they construct their own life. It is probably twice as true for LGBT community, because it differs from most of other minorities in two aspects: a) it’s invisible (doesn’t have any external features like colour of skin), and b) it’s disconnected (an individual can’t receive an identity and support from family and has problems finding a community itself). Also, there’s a strong negative mythology about LGBT, feeding and fed by homophobia and ignorance, which is often recreated in media and internalized both by the members of the community and by the majority.

Thus, representation of queer people in media serves the purpose of forming a narrative for people inside and outside of community. Queer people can be represented in different ways:

a) Information - educational reports, facts and statistics in media messages, discussion of LGBT-related issues.

b) Personas - openly LGBT-identified celebrities and non-celebrity individuals appearing in media. Their behavior, conforming to stereotypes and personal positions in important matters, as well as their life stories.

c) Fiction - fictional characters in TV-shows and cinema, their storylines, using the tropes and creating the narratives.

Each way of representation contributes to the overall narrative. Specifically, fiction forms an ideal, a romanticized example of life. On the other hand, some people are more prone to be open-minded regarding fictional characters that real people, which helps to build a narrative in society in general.

During my studies of the concepts of gender and sexuality in society and in culture, I became interested in the ways in which fiction reproduces, creates and reforms the common narrative, including stereotypes, myths and facts. Fiction can be a powerful tool for minorities trying to inform the majority of their issues. On the other hand, it can be as powerful a tool for the spread of said myths and stereotypes. Basically, all art depicting the minorities is a political instrument, especially when the minority is as severely underrepresented and mis-represented as LGBT.

As I study the whole specter of cultural narratives concerning gender and sexuality, and also the issues of LGBT rights, I combine two of my topics of interest in the study of cultural narrative about LGBT in media. In this essay, I plan to concentrate on the fictional characters, specifically on characters of movies. I decided to concentrate on movies only, though there is a number of queer characters in TV-shows. Studying TV-shows is a research that demands more resources that are available at the moment.

For my research, I’ve chosen two groups of movies: 1) foreign movies that were demonstrated in general release in Russia in the period of 2000-2010, 2) Russian wide-screen movies filmed during the same period. This period is chosen because it is the decade following the de-criminalization and de-pathologising of homosexuality (1993 and 1999 correspondingly). It marks an important step in affirming LGBT right in Russia; and this last decade reflects the progress to the next step on the way. Foreign movies shown in general release are an example of which tropes and storylines about LGBT the Russian viewers receive during this period. Russian movies made during the same period show how Russian LGBT community creates it’s own narrative, or what narrative is created about it in the country.

The question of queer representation, as any representation of minority, includes the aspects of quantity and quality. The quantity is reflected in the proportion of queer-related movies to the release in general, the proportion of Russian to foreign movies, the running period, and box office success of such movies. The quality of representation is a more difficult question, as there are a lot of overlapping tropes and stereotypes repeated in mainstream queer-related movies. In general, the attention must be paid to following aspects of the storyline:

  • Plot and composition - whether it is centered on queer issues or not, what functions the queer character(s) serve.
  • Issues - which issues are raised, on what way, what points are made about it.
  • Myths and stereotypes - which myths and stereotypes about LGBT are recreated, reversed or otherwise used in the narrative.
  • Tropes - which of the common queer-related tropes are used, recreated or reversed.
  • Characterization and personal storyline - how is/are the queer character(s) depicted, what is their storyline, whether the ending is positive or negative, what narrative it creates for a queer person.
  • Relationship - whether the queer character(s) has/have romantic/sexual relationship, how they develop, how they are depicted; whether the queer character(s) has/have non-sexual relationship with other queer or non-queer characters, how they develop, how they are depicted.

Another important issue in studying queer representation is public’s reaction: professional critics, general public and LGBT community itself.

The main method I intend to use is content analysis. First, I intend to study the movies by the criteria outlined above, defining the narratives and storylines which are communicated to general Russian public via the movies. Then, I study the public reaction expressed in critical reviews, in viewers’ comments on web-sites for general public and for queer public specifically. It reflects the level of acceptance, tolerance, understanding of queer issues and connection with the suggested narratives. Also, reviews often include the references to political situation around LGBT and social narrative about the queer minority, comparing it to the movie’s narrative. All in all, the analysis of widely released movies and the public’s reaction reflect the narrative about LGBT in Russia created during the last decade, the first decade of freedom from crime and diagnosis, and its interaction with the political climate surrounding the LGBT issues.

References:

  1. Clint C. Wilson,Félix Gutiérrez.Minorities and media: diversity and the end of mass communication.
  2. Gail Dines,Jean McMahon Humez. Gender, race, and class in media: a text-reader.
  3. Harry M. Benshoff,Sean Griffin. Queer cinéma: the film reader.
  4. Queer TV: theories, histories, politics / edited by Glyn Davies and Gary Needham.
  5. Бурмакова О. «Любовь, которая не смеет называть своего имени».
  6. Кон И. «Гомофобия как форма ксенофобии».