As someone who watches a lot of movies I always found queer relationships in films quite disappointing. I remember when IT Chapter Two was released and I was so excited to watch it and see how maybe the relationship between Eddie and Richie might blossom.  I was extremely upset when I watched the film and Eddie gets murdered while trying to save Richie from Pennywise. IT Chapter Two isn’t a particularly “queer film” , but Call Me By Your Name is, yet the main characters don’t get their happy ever after either. This is because most queer relationships in films are destined to fail, the stories are written in ways that make these relationships feel fantasy-like.  It is very common for the dynamics within these relationships to be controversial as well, bringing us further from a happy ending. The effect of this misrepresentation of queer relationships in film stems from heterosexual norms and stereotypes that are still being pushed by filmmakers to appeal to mainstream media. This issue doesn’t just harm the LGBTQ+ community but to straight people too. 

Call Me By Your Name was the first film I watched that centered homosexual relationships, and it was also one of the first films that made me realize that I wanted to take part in the creation of films. I was very pleased by the cinematography in the film, and that really blinded a younger me from some of the issues within the film and within the dynamic the two main characters had. This is a common pattern in mainstream queer films; Brokeback Mountain, for example, is another mainstream queer film that has a problematic dynamic between the characters. The film follows two men who have heterosexual lives with wives and children, but they meet up a couple times a year for a trip to Brokeback Mountain. The cinematography in this film is also quite nice with beautiful shots of the landscape and the nature around them, like a fantasy or a dream. Of course meeting only a couple times a year due to the fear of what society might think of them is more of a nightmare that’s only going to lead to more pain.

After I watched Call Me By Your Name, I went down a rabbit hole on the internet searching for more, and I realized how problematic many people on the internet believed it was. A big issue between Oliver and Elio’s relationship was the age gap; Elio is a 17-year-old boy, while Oliver is a 24-year-old man who is working as Elio’s father’s assistant. Elio was young and was exploring his sexuality as many teenagers his age do; he looked to Oliver for guidance in the relationship, which led to Oliver having most of the control in the relationship. Elio’s parents didn’t question this bond between the two and even let them go on a trip together. In an article written by psychiatric doctors, they question the activities that took place on said trip: “Is it appropriate for a 24-year-old experienced in drinking to have sex with an inebriated and vomiting 17-year-old? Little is mentioned, and after the three-day fling, Oliver leaves, and Elio returns home heartbroken.” (Sorrentino & Turban). Oliver being the older one in the relationship, as I said, gave him more power, and this is a way that he used that power in a harmful way; he knew Elio was naive and used him for that summer then went back to his normal life in America. The relationship was so much more important to Elio than it was to Oliver, leaving him heartbroken when he tells him he is getting married to his fiancee, who happens to be a woman.

This isn’t just an issue in films that center gay relationships but also films that involve queer characters in general. Vicki Eaklor, in her article, focuses on the show The Kids Are Alright, which centers on a lesbian couple who is going through relationship troubles. Jules, one of the lesbian characters, does some questionable things, as stated in the article.

Jules, we are to believe, is a lesbian who, when feeling alienated, unappreciated, and insecure will be open to an affair … with a man. Here I think Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler of Saturday Night Live could express best what I and so many lesbians thought: “Really?” ” Really?!” On a superficial level this reinforces just about every stereotype of lesbian sexuality, from the inability to “see” feminine women as woman centered to, “All she really needs is a ____ good “(Eaklor 161)

In reality it would be quite odd for a lesbian to cheat on her wife with a man; it’s like a straight man choosing to cheat on his wife with a man because of normal relationship issues. This portrayal of lesbians is harmful, and it feeds into stereotypes that are far from reality.

Trans people are also subjected to this false portrayal of who they are on screen. An example Katherine Galland mentions in her article is Jules from the TV show Euphoria. Jules is a 17-year-old trans girl, and in the beginning of the show we see how she is talking to older men on dating apps and even meeting up with them at sketchy hotels. When it comes to her relationship with these men, her identity is invalidated. “The show goes back and forth between insinuating that Jules’ sexual relationships with men in the show affirm her womanhood and claiming that the men who have sex with Jules in the show are secretly gay—implying that Jules is not a woman” (Galland). She sleeps with men who are in relationships with women but want to keep their sexuality a secret, which is odd that it affirms her womanhood since most of the time she labels herself as a gay man to sleep with these men.

The films that I have mentioned are all mainstream and have a wide range of audiences; therefore, normalizing these harmful dynamics and relationships not only creates a false sense of what queerness is to straight people but also to a young queer audience. “Oversexualization of queer folks in the media runs rampant and gives both LGBTQ+ and heterosexual people incorrect, damaging, and confusing pictures of what the expectations of queer relationships are.” (Galland). Showing a young queer audience a film like Call Me By Your Name normalizes a power dynamic that isn’t good in any relationship; Elio, in a way, was groomed by Oliver, and that is already a big issue in queer adolescence. “Heralding such a film as a ‘masterpiece’ is dangerous because it dismisses the exploitation in the relationship and is yet another example of the public’s reluctance to identify problematic sexual behavior” (Sorrentino & Turban). Instead of queer films becoming more progressive, they seem to be regressing; these films aren’t old, yet they hold onto old beliefs.

The misrepresentation of queer relationships and dynamics in films are frequently talked about by members of the LGBTQ+ community due to its controversial nature. “Russo argued that lesbians and gay men had been continually marginalized and demonized in Hollywood films and that these ‘negative images’ were both a result- and continued to promote- deep-seated social homophobia” (Bronski 23). Mainstream media is mainly dominated by straight people, so when we watch the films that they make on queer dynamics, most of the time we are seeing a straight person’s perception of what LGBTQ+ people are like. The leading actors from the films I have talked about are also straight actors playing gay characters, so it’s very hard to even see actual representation of queer people on screen. The lack of real representation makes these films seem more regressive than progressive.

These films try to appeal to the masses so they tend to show things that won’t offend their audience too much. Queerness has been seen as something controversial and taboo for so long in the film industry, and these films, although quite new, still show old stereotypes of what queerness is. “This process positions queerness as something to be ‘overcome or, more fatefully, punished'” (Seitler 601). Queerness is always implied in such constellations, akin to how heteronormativity necessitates queerness to maintain its superiority in a binary constellation that pits norm against deviation” (Zitzelsberger 364). In society the reality of somebody’s queerness is constantly in question, and films creating fantasy settings and fantasy stories just make it all seem less real. In Call Me By Your Name Oliver marries a woman at the end, making it seem like all that happened between him and Elio was just a passing feeling, something that he was eventually cured from. 

The worst part of the issue is that even when there are LGBTQ+ filmmakers taking part in the creation of said films, they still choose to take this approach because it will most likely get them the most viewership and money. The Kids Are All Right, which I mentioned before, has lesbian filmmakers yet pushes very harmful beliefs about lesbians. “Or, most likely, as if the filmmakers wanted to please their straight, ‘they’re just friends’ audiences and their lesbian audiences who recognize a couple when they see one.” (Eakler 160). Filmmakers are trying to show progression in their films by showing queer characters and appealing to the LGBTQ+ community, but they are also trying to please the audience that already has a certain belief in queerness. By pleasing the majority, they know they will make their profit even if it is at the cost of a whole group of people.

LGBTQ+ youth have a hard time finding guidance in the real world because of the stigma and judgment around being queer. Films are a great way to discover things about the world, but when we are young, it’s hard to differentiate what’s right or wrong. When films normalize things like grooming and hooking up with older men while being underage, it puts queer youth in danger. “Taken together, data from the CDC and a recent study by Macapagal and colleagues suggest that one in four gay and bisexual boys between the ages of 14 and 17 are on these “hookup” apps. A total of 69% have had sex with someone from the apps” (Sorrentino & Turban). The conversations and experiences they are likely to get from these hookup apps are most of the time very harmful. Dating apps and hookup apps are not a great place to look for guidance, and normalizing such behavior in a TV show as popular as Euphoria will just increase these statistics. It seems that when filmmakers create these characters and portray these dynamics in their films about queer people, they don’t actually take into account what would benefit the community.

Another particular reason filmmakers keep making films that seem to push society’s stereotypes about queer people is because that’s the way films have dealt with the topic of queerness. Filmmakers often take inspiration from past films to create something that they believe their audience would want to see. 

“While past scholars have done a splendid job explicating the role of an often closeted gay sensibility in the work of noted Hollywood directors such as James Whale, Mitchell Leisen, and Vincente Minnelli, recent scholarship is now faced with coming up with new ways to evaluate the shape and the form of gay sensibility in the works of a new wave of film directors who are

openly gay, and often draw upon the work of past artists” (Bronski 26). 

As Michael Bronski points out in his article, many of the old queer films that new filmmakers are looking at for inspiration usually have a closeted gay character as their representation of queer people. A closeted gay character in a film during a time where queerness was never really seen on the big screen because of the prosecution the LGBTQ+ community faces is definitely progressive. Having a character now on screen that is portrayed in a similar way is regressive, though, since there have been changes in society and challenges to the restrictions that filmmakers had back then.

Social events such as the Stonewall riots and the Gay Liberation movement helped shape modern-day cinema. As society started to accept queerness in reality, it was slowly allowed onto the big screen and other forms of media. “As the homophile movements of the 1950s changed into gay and lesbian rights and the liberation activism of the 1960s, and with the virtual explosion of queer visibility and organizations in the forty years since, Hollywood was forced at times to reconsider these narrow and negative images: the protests over Cruising (1980)” (Eakler 156). The portrayal of queerness was not good enough during this time, and it was obvious films wouldn’t get away with homophobic ideas at a time when those beliefs were being challenged. So much change has occurred in society since these movements, yet it doesn’t feel like queer cinema is progressing much at all. It’s true that you are more likely to see a queer character now then back then, but representation isn’t always good, especially when the way queer people are being represented is feeding into harmful stereotypes that they have fought so hard to break out of.

To move forward in society, many aspects of our everyday life have to change, including the kind of media content we consume and produce. “It is absolutely essential to view realistic queer media for both LGBTQ+ and straight people in order for society to have a better understanding of what it means to be queer” (Galland). Current mainstream films on queer dynamics are spreading misinformation on what queerness really is, and that misinformation makes its way from the screen into our reality. “This film has the potential to cause real harm by normalizing this kind of sexual predation. It could be particularly damaging for LGBT youth, who are already at high risk for depression and suicide.” (Galland). The author was referring to Call Me By Your Name in this quote, and at the end of the film, Elio is crying and looks very wrecked over Oliver getting married. Although this film is very visually appealing, allowing it to represent the LGBTQ+ community is allowing people to believe a toxic dynamic between a 17-year-old and a 24-year-old is okay; it makes it seem like a norm among queer people when it really is not.

A lot of people skip past the controversial representation of queer people in mainstream films because of how beautiful the other aspects of these films are. It’s nice to finally get to see more and more queer characters on screen, but it’s very disappointing how this “progression” comes with a cost. Filmmakers need to be more considerate of the beliefs they push in their films, and we have to get some real representation to actually help queer cinema improve. For groups like the LGBTQ+ community that have been shunned from these spaces, it’s nice to see more queer characters, but it’s good to differentiate what is good representation vs. bad representation. Both consumers and producers of films have to be more alert about the stereotypes and beliefs that are presented in films, especially when they’re targeted to a large audience. We have to allow more queer voices in the making of these films so there is actual progression in queer cinema and good representation for the community.