Currents

If you’re at all plugged into the world of entertainment or culture writing, you have been notified that bisexuality in films and television has finally “arrived.” “Bisexual Chaos is 2024’s Biggest Pop-Culture Trend,” reads a 2024 Bustle headline. They’re not alone in this assessment. Slate celebrates “The Long-Awaited Rise of the Bisexual Male Heartthrob in TV and Film”, Newsweek proclaims that bisexuality is finally entering the spotlight, and even the diversity-tracking magazine Incluvie concurs that bi visibility is improving. Movies and shows, we’re told, are more bi than ever. There’s a kernel of truth here, but not the whole truth. As someone who has reviewed more than a few bi films and shows, and edited more such reviews than I can count, I’ve noticed a bizarre pattern in recent years. Bi representation is indeed on the rise, but in a growing number of high-profile blockbusters, we see a very strange kind of bisexuality, one that, while virtually non-existent on screen, is later retconned into existence by the writers, actors, or filmmakers involved.

The Marvel and DC Comics movie franchises have been widely hailed for their LGBT inclusiveness, but in many cases, it’s difficult to tell which superheroes hide more: their secret identities, or their sexuality. In 2017, Wired dubbed Thor: Ragnarok the “queerest superhero movie yet” on the strength of Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie, who is bisexual. You’re probably wondering if you can’t recall Valkyrie ever doing or saying anything bi simply because the movie was forgettable, but the reason is, in fact, that it never happened. A scene that reportedly would have shown her bisexuality was cut from the film. So what gives? The bi-ness of Ragnarok stems from the fact that Thompson tweeted that Valkyrie is bi, plus nerds on the Internet “confirmed” that Valkyrie is bi in the comics. Look out for the word “confirmed” when it comes to the bisexuality or queerness of fictional characters. It’s one of those telltale terms, much like “flavored” in the food industry. George Carlin once joked, “Beware when they add the word ‘flavored’ to another word. ‘Lemon-flavored drink’? No fucking lemons!” If you have to “confirm” some important aspect of a character after the fact, that means it was never truly visible.

Co-star Natalie Portman later characterized Ragnarok’s sequel, Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) as being “so gay”, but yet again, no fucking lemons. The magazine Pride had to put out a piece titled “Valkyrie's Bisexuality in Thor: Love and Thunder Explained.” If a character is bisexual, the audience should not need to read exegesis on the matter. These are comic book movies, not the Dead Sea Scrolls. Ahead of the release of Wonder Woman (2017), star Gal Gadot joined legions of writers in applauding the bisexuality of the titular superhero. Variety even reported that Lynda Carter, who played Wonder Woman on television in the 70s, said “She’s a superhero for bisexuals!” I don’t need to tell you that there was no bisexuality in Wonder Woman or Wonder Woman 1984 (2020). Whence cometh the queerness? The Hollywood Reporter’s headline says it all: “‘Wonder Woman’ Comic Writer Confirms Hero Is Bisexual.”

The list goes on and on. 2022’s The Batman was called “a bisexual’s superhero dream” despite no bisexuality because Zoë Kravitz imagined her character Catwoman as bi (she’s apparently bi in the comics). Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) was cheered on by SlashFilm as “The Unapologetically Gay Movie Marvel And Disney Keep Claiming They Want To Make.” According to star Ryan Reynolds and the original comics, Deadpool is pansexual (a label that falls under the bi umbrella). Naturally, we never see it on screen. But not all reviewers are drinking the Kool-Aid. The Deadpool franchise has garnered some rare opprobrium from the culture press, not because of its fake bi visibility, but rather because it replaces the near-imperceptible bi dog whistles or off-screen retcons celebrated in other films with a constant flow of homoerotic gay jokes. Our well-heeled cultural betters can tolerate almost any amount of bi erasure, but not if it also smacks of National Lampoon. You can almost feel their shudders. How uncouth!

Perhaps the most egregious examples of the faux bi representation are Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019). Apparently, Lando Calrissian is pansexual. That’s odd, you might be thinking. There was no bisexuality in The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Return of the Jedi (1983), or the more recent Solo film. Ah, but you see, young Lando was a little too attached to his droid in the origin story film. Since droids are people, but also not men or women, this means Calrissian must be attracted to multiple genders, hence pansexual. Actor Donald Glover and screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan both “confirm” it, so there! I know movie logic can get pretty tenuous, but this makes Alex Jones look like Bertrand Russell.

In Rise of Skywalker, there was indeed a much-publicized same-sex kiss shared by two background characters for a moment, but what had the chattering classes abuzz was the supposed romance between Poe (Oscar Isaac) and Finn (John Boyega). When I first came across this notion, I had to wonder if I was watching the same film. Isaac lamented in interviews that this same-sex romance wasn’t explored more. Director J.J. Abrams further said in a Q&A that both characters were gay — a term Abrams seems not to understand, as throughout the trilogy, Poe and Finn each have romantic subplots involving female characters. If they were anything other than straight, then they would have been, by definition, bi. But what did anyone ever actually see in the film to give even an inkling that there could have been a romance between them? One scene where they briefly look at one another in a meaningful way? Only in space can a momentary glance do such heavy lifting.

In addition to these instances of completely bogus bi representation, there is a veritable ocean of “drive bis”, the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it flashes so many movies and shows hang their hats on to check the appropriate boxes. Birds of Prey (2020), The Suicide Squad (2021), Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021), Loki (2021–2023), and Cruella (2021) are just a few examples. At this point, if Margot Robbie stars in a movie, we can pretty much assume it will have some bisexual moment — either lightning-quick or fully imagined — and then be called a bi film.

What does it say about the state of bi media representation that the largest, most widely watched blockbusters feature bi “representation” that relies on post-hoc “Word of God” explanations from actors, writers, and directors? What does it say that studios look for every conceivable way to signal or allude to a character’s bisexuality except, you know, portraying them as bi on screen? Of course, this is hardly ever done for characters of other sexual orientations.

In 2007, after the Harry Potter book series was completed, J.K. Rowling announced that the beloved grandfatherly wizard was gay, even though neither the books nor the films indicated anything about his sexuality. (Dumbledore’s homosexuality was finally explored on screen in the abortive Fantastic Beasts franchise many years later.) What makes this case so notable is how rare it is for a character’s homosexuality to go unseen for 4,200 pages only to be later confirmed by sources close to the issue. It also demonstrates that the only practical way to hide a gay character’s orientation is simply not to give them a love life and avoid any gay-coded stereotypes in speech or dress. For Dumbledore to have had a love life, as he did in the later prequel films, is for Dumbledore to be seen as a gay man. Not necessarily so for bi people.

The reason why clarity around bisexuality is so crucial to bi representation is that, unlike straight or gay folks, bisexuality is not always immediately evident at a glance. If a character is in a relationship with someone of the opposite sex, people assume they are straight. If they’re in a relationship with someone of the same sex, they are assumed to be gay. Without either showing their attraction to both sexes or having them self-identify, bisexuality goes erased in plain sight. And just as with news coverage, everyone reads the initial stories, and only a small fraction read the later corrections. For every reader Variety or The Verge reaches with actor interviews revealing that this or that character is bi, 10,000 people watched the film in theaters and had no blessed clue.

Bi people are 4.5% of the US, including over 15% of Gen Z, and make up about 60% of all openly LGBT people. Combine that with the fact that bi folks are less likely than straight or gay folks to be out, plus significant numbers of straight-identified people reporting bisexual attractions, and it seems likely that the true number of bi people is quite large. Given this, it should not be like pulling teeth to get popular culture to show unambiguous instances of bisexuality on screen, and yes, to say the damn word “bisexual” too.

There are obvious reasons why studios play the games that they do. Sometimes it’s simple incompetence (never underestimate laziness as an explanation for any issues in life, big or small). Sometimes it may be the actors or filmmakers trying to insert something into the project on their own in a way they couldn’t do in production. In other cases, it’s a business decision. As Michael Jordan famously said, “Republicans buy sneakers too.” This is why the aforementioned shot of two women kissing in Rise of Skywalker was cut out of the versions shown in Singapore and the Middle East, and why gay dialogue from Fantastic Beasts was removed in China. Occasionally, studios accept the international hit and make a film with prominent gay characters. But when it comes to bi characters, they can have their purple cake and eat it too by having them seem straight on screen and then retcon bisexuality into them for domestic audiences. It’s cheaper than shooting alternate scenes.

To be sure, we are moving in the right direction, especially with television, as international broadcast syndication matters less, and as it’s extremely impractical to show bi characters on screen for scores of hours without ever seeing their bisexuality. As a result, there is a growing number of shows with prominent and visibly bi characters, such as The Witcher (2019–), The Boys (2019–), What We Do in the Shadows (2019–2024), Bridgerton (2020–), Interview with the Vampire (2022–), and Heartstopper (2022–). Regardless, fiction in general is going out of its way, more than it ever has before, to depict a wider range of people, walks of life, and backgrounds. Sometimes it becomes clumsy and heavy-handed. In other cases, the timidity with which filmmakers and studios dip their toes into bi waters is so subtle that viewers need the shark-like ability to smell bisexuality from hundreds of yards away in concentrations as low as one part per million. That simply won’t do.

Of course, an increasingly loud segment of society will ask why we need to know anyone’s sexuality. This, like most knee-jerk reactions, isn’t thought through. To expunge sexuality from fiction is to expunge sex and romance from fiction — an integral part of the human experience without which most stories would be shells of themselves. Naturally, no one ever finds romance or sex between a male and female character to be “rubbing their sexuality in our noses.” The problem they have is with LGBT folks if we’re being honest. One of the most beautiful aspects of fiction is its ability to expose us to people different from ourselves, and to put the audience in unfamiliar shoes. Bi erasure, or fake bi representation, isn’t just a slight against bi folks, it’s a disservice to audiences in general by depriving them of the opportunities to see fascinating bi characters in action.

It’s time to see some actual bi folks in blockbusters. They don’t need to have bi threesomes, just being openly bi is enough. Not subtextually bi. Not bi according to the actor, director, or original source material, despite no on-screen indication. Not aspirationally bi via plausible fan theories. Real, honest-to-goodness bi characters. We’ll get there eventually, I have no doubt, but I don’t think it’s too greedy to want some real lemons every now and then.

Published Sep 9, 2024