We need to talk about the Super­girl cast’s atti­tude towards LGBTQ+ fans

At San Diego Com­ic-Con last week­end, the cast of Super­girl were asked, just as they were last year, to pro­vide a recap of the show’s most recent series. A sim­ple enough request, but part­way through Jere­my Jor­dan (who plays Winslow ​“Winn” Schott Jr) began pro­claim­ing that two char­ac­ters from the show, Kara Dan­vers and Lena Luthor (played by Melis­sa Benoist and Katie McGrath), are ​“only friends, they’re not gonna get togeth­er, they’re only friends.” Jor­dan almost shout­ed this into his mic before the rest of the cast joined in, laugh­ing and danc­ing at their co-star’s sud­den attempt to inval­i­date the show’s LGBTQ+ fans. Benoist even remarked ​“that’s pret­ty brave” when Jor­dan lat­er said that he ​“debunked Supercorp”.

Kara/​Lena aka Super­corp, as the f/​f ship has been dubbed, is a pop­u­lar pair­ing with­in Supergirl’s legion of fans, par­tic­u­lar­ly among young LGBTQ+ women. It’s ​‘fanon’, in the sense that it’s not offi­cial and doesn’t occur with­in the show but is sup­port­ed by fans – who didn’t seem to mind it that way, qui­et­ly cre­at­ing fan art and fan fic­tion for the pair­ing in their own time, while still engag­ing with the show. 

So things stayed rel­a­tive­ly qui­et. That is, until Jordan’s ill-con­sid­ered Com­ic-Con com­ments. No one even brought up Kara/​Lena before the recap, and so fans are both bewil­dered and hurt by the cast’s actions. While it may seem like harm­less fun, it’s far from it for Supergirl’s many LGBTQ+ fans. As Katie McGrath so elo­quent­ly puts after the recap, ​“the great thing about what we do is like any art, any­body can read into it what they want and take from it. So you can see any­thing and take from it what you like. And if that’s what you see in it, take it away.”

It’s still rare to find LGBTQ+ rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the main­stream media – so much so that LGBTQ+ audi­ences are often forced to look for inter­pre­ta­tions wher­ev­er they find sub­text. Actors, writ­ers, and pro­duc­ers involved in these shows, and any media, should not inval­i­date what is seen and inter­pret­ed with­in their art, par­tic­u­lar­ly if it’s not harm­ing any­one, and espe­cial­ly if those inter­pret­ing their cre­ations are just a ded­i­cat­ed and pas­sion­ate por­tion of their audi­ence. Noth­ing more than a group of mar­gin­alised peo­ple, so bad­ly want­i­ng to see them­selves and their expe­ri­ences rep­re­sent­ed on screen. 

A con­ver­sa­tion around this is need­ed as there is still so lit­tle LGBTQ+ rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the media that fans are forced to often find it for them­selves. Many have argued that since Super­girl has anoth­er canon les­bian cou­ple already, in Alex Dan­vers and Mag­gie Sawyer (or San­vers) that it isn’t need­ed – but rep­re­sen­ta­tion isn’t a one size fits all issue, and there needn’t be only one LGBTQ+ cou­ple (or indeed only one or two canon LGBTQ+ char­ac­ters) on a show, as if they’re sim­ply try­ing to ful­fil some kind of quota.

At the time of writ­ing, Jere­my Jor­dan has issued two apolo­gies to fans on his Insta­gram, first apol­o­gis­ing to any­one who took a ​“sil­ly joke about Kara and Lena being just friends” the ​“wrong way”. (Many had the same thought – what’s the right way the ​‘joke’ could be tak­en?) How­ev­er, he lat­er issued anoth­er apol­o­gy, and promis­ing to ​“be bet­ter” and open­ly engag­ing with fans on the mat­ter on his Twit­ter, prov­ing that he is try­ing to bet­ter him­self and that he did seem to have just gen­uine­ly made a (hurt­ful) mistake. 

Mehcad Brooks (who plays James Olsen on the show) has also com­ment­ed, writ­ing on his Insta­gram page, ​“I can assure you, no one in our cast makes fun of the LGBTQ+ fans… you’re only fight­ing your allies. W E A R E O N Y O U R S I D E.” Even though when they saw that clip, many fans of Super­girl, and LGBTQ+ peo­ple, can attest that they felt the cast was far from on their side, giv­en the fact that they were open­ly laugh­ing at them.

McGrath gave the short speech quot­ed above direct­ly after the recap, as well as a short and elo­quent answer to a ques­tion a few days after the event, on why fans seem to like Kara and Lena’s rela­tion­ship, say­ing that fans are drawn to their rela­tion­ship because, ​“it doesn’t mat­ter who peo­ple think you are, it’s who you are. You’re your own per­son despite oth­er people’s per­cep­tions,” some­thing which fans have appreciated. 

The rest of the cast, includ­ing Benoist and Wood (who play Kara Danvers/​Supergirl and her cur­rent love inter­est, Mon-El) have stayed silent, which only serves to dri­ve home the idea that they don’t real­ly seem to care about their LGBTQ+ fans. Every­one makes mis­takes, but when they’re made, a gen­uine, heart­felt apol­o­gy and an attempt to move for­ward and be bet­ter is the min­i­mum of what should be expect­ed, espe­cial­ly when peo­ple have been so affected. 

If this episode has revealed any­thing, it’s that LGBTQ+ rep­re­sen­ta­tion is still incred­i­bly impor­tant to talk about, and there’s still a long way to go in terms of mak­ing last­ing improve­ments. It’s clear from how the Super­girl cast has act­ed that far more needs to be done to improve LGBTQ+ rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the media – but also atti­tudes towards both LGBTQ+ rep­re­sen­ta­tion and par­tic­u­lar­ly LGBTQ+ fans who exist with­in fan­doms. Because no fan should fear being so brazen­ly inval­i­dat­ed by casts and peo­ple that they respect, espe­cial­ly when they have been so sup­port­ive of some­thing they iden­ti­fy with.