Identity I Am More Than My Trauma
By Maura Cowan I began questioning my sexuality when I was 12 years old, and during this time, I felt as though I stood at the edge of a world that I was not prepared to enter. Desperate to find stories that could help me make sense of my identity, I eagerly consumed any LGBT+ media I could find. What I found time and time again were stories of pain and suffering, with gay and transgender characters living traumatic lives and their narratives leaving them unloved or dead. Where were our happy endings? These overproduced and insensitive storylines are known as tragedy, or trauma, porn, which is a phenomenon used in media that exploits the suffering of others for the entertainment of consumers,
according to Medium. It appears in a variety of dramatic narratives, and it especially impacts marginalized communities. The amount of LGBT+ characters in books, movies and TV shows is steadily increasing, but there is still not enough. When the majority of our representation in media is through stories of tragedy, it is easy to internalize intense suffering as an intrinsic part of our lived experience. Noticing this phenomenon over and over left me unsettled, so as time went on, I started to do my own research. I discovered that the tragic narratives of LGBT+ characters have deep roots in the history of the television and film industry. The Motion Picture Production Code, more commonly known as the Hays Code, was a set of industry censorship guidelines
that dictated what studios could and could not air from 1934 to 1968, according to Men’s Health. It forbade any positive portrayal of characters whose lifestyles could be defined as “sinful,” which directly reflected fear and hatred of gay, transgender and gendernonconforming people. As a result, the media rarely included explicitly LGBT+ characters. When they did appear, they were villainous or tragic figures, with narratives often ending in death or imprisonment. While the Hays code ultimately phased out, its influence continues to impact the portrayal of marginalized people in TV and film today. LGBT+ characters, especially lesbian or bisexual women, suffer death or trauma on-screen at extremely high rates, whether inflicted by others or themselves.
