A new film explores the his­to­ry of queer women on television

In 2016, some view­ers start­ed notic­ing a trou­bling trend in tele­vi­sion. In shows like The Walk­ing Dead, The 100, Empire and Orange is the New Black, les­bian and bisex­u­al female char­ac­ters start­ed being killed off, rapid­ly and vio­lent­ly. ​“Peo­ple start­ed call­ing it the bloody spring of 2016,” explains a talk­ing head in Gabrielle Zilkha’s doc­u­men­tary, Queer­ing the Script.

Between 2015 and 2017, 62 queer female char­ac­ters died on script­ed tele­vi­sion. While les­bian and bisex­u­al women only rep­re­sent­ed two-and-a-half per cent of reg­u­lar char­ac­ters on script­ed tele­vi­sion at that time, they rep­re­sent­ed 27 per cent of all char­ac­ter deaths between those years.

“It’s not like there aren’t many straight char­ac­ters that die on tele­vi­sion, nor are these char­ac­ters real peo­ple, but when you’re queer and watch­ing these shows which have queer death all over them, that sends a pro­found mes­sage,” explains Zilkha. ​“The thor­ough line of Queer­ing the Script is that rep­re­sen­ta­tion mat­ters and that this is a big deal. So, like with most things in life, my moti­va­tion for mak­ing the doc­u­men­tary was to prove the cis het­ero white men who met my pitch­es with ​‘I don’t under­stand why this is such a big deal’ wrong.”

Queer­ing the Script chron­i­cles the changes in les­bian and queer rep­re­sen­ta­tion on Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion – from the sub­text of Xena: War­rior Princess to Ellen DeGeneres com­ing out to the rev­e­la­tion of The L Word to the hit suc­cess of Glee – along with the queer, online fan­doms that sprung up along the way. Orig­i­nal­ly, Zilkha was hired to make a much small­er doc­u­men­tary about the unex­pect­ed pop­u­lar­i­ty of the web series Carmil­la, but work­ing with pro­duc­ers who were well versed in the world of fan­dom the project quick­ly became much big­ger. ​“We realised there was a big­ger sto­ry about rep­re­sen­ta­tion and we want­ed to explore why it mat­ters so much to these people.”

By the time con­tracts were signed, Zilkha was already on a plane to Clex­a­Con, a queer fan­dom con­ven­tion named after the ship name of two beloved The 100 char­ac­ters, Clarke and Alexa. As the doc­u­men­tary is intend­ed to be both a love let­ter to fans as well as an entry­way into their world, Zilkha – an out­sider to the world of inter­net fan­dom – was the per­fect per­son to helm it.

“I learned so much about sub­text and slash fic­tion and tropes like Bury Your Gays from these fans,” she says. ​“My method of deal­ing with not see­ing myself rep­re­sent­ed had always been to not watch this stuff because I’m tired of see­ing queer women rep­re­sent­ed in a way that has no bear­ing on my life. But I real­ly came to appre­ci­ate fan­dom and the role fan­dom plays in push­ing cul­ture for­ward. ​“It’s not real­ly even about the shows – it’s about the fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty that’s formed around them.”

Queer­ing the Script demon­strates how pow­er­ful queer fan­doms have become, par­tic­u­lar­ly sur­round­ing the treat­ment of queer char­ac­ters. When The 100 vio­lent­ly killed off a les­bian char­ac­ter in 2016, fans felt betrayed, tak­ing their out­rage to Twit­ter. Inter­viewed in the doc­u­men­tary, the writer of that episode admits they got the trau­ma­tis­ing death ​“dread­ful­ly wrong.”

“Nor­mal­ly when we hear about fans in main­stream media, it’s about con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries or that they’re enti­tled or crazy,” adds Zilkha. ​“I want­ed to tell a sto­ry that was respect­ful to these com­mu­ni­ties and also showed the real world impli­ca­tions of rep­re­sen­ta­tion. What we see on tele­vi­sion impacts how we behave and our atti­tudes. As queer peo­ple we know that hap­pens and I think Black peo­ple and peo­ple of colour would also attest to that. For those who don’t have a gay or trans per­son in their lives, tele­vi­sion serves as proxy friend­ship. That is pro­found in shap­ing how some­one treats some­one or empathis­es or even votes.”

Queer­ing the Script is cur­rent­ly avail­able to stream until 18 Octo­ber as part of the Scot­tish Queer Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val.