The "Bury Your Gays" trope

I've noticed this over the years. The tendency to kill off or depict as suffering all LGBT characters in films. Even in "real life" dramas, this trope plays out. The first player on Survivor to get voted off is almost always the masculine "dikish" woman player. Admit it. People overall just seem to have an aversion to such people. Such don't fit neatly into our comforting male and female stereotypes. They are harder to relate to. So people like to see such "types" suffering or even being violently killed on the silver screen. But thankfully that seems to be changing, if not in social reality at least in how LGBT characters are depicted in film and TV shows. Here's a great analysis of this stubborn trope over the years:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0fZjSluzI8

The "Black Dude Dies First" trope
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M...eDiesFirst

Red Shirt (throwaway victim of the hegemony)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshirt_(...character)

Doubtful that the claimed pecking order really holds up across the board, though. For instance, the Black character in "Night of the Living Dead" (arguably the hero) didn't get killed till the very end. And the Warrick Brown character of CIS didn't die till the start of season 9, when maybe most of the whole original cast also began incrementally leaving (but he was the only one who departed the show in that manner). And events like those were ironic examples of "killing the marginalized character" for some kind of social justice statement or empathy, rather than the usual asserted motive. In Hollywood's twisted mind, these were a wayward form of unfortunate yet "dignified reason deaths" that highlighted such issues.

One must be able to separate fact from fiction. Here’s an interesting study….

https://scitechdaily.com/when-fiction-fe...20friends.

Then again it could be art imitating life or the other way . Oscar Wilde..

Quote: Life imitates art far more than art imitates life".

I remember noting before I even knew about this trope the violent knocking off of probably the most interesting character in Hitchcock's film "The Birds"--- the suspiciously lesbianish school teacher played by Suzanne Pleshette. She was found on her front porch pecked to death. I thought to myself what a waste of a good character! Perhaps a token nod to the simmering homophobia of that time.

(Oct 10, 2025 10:45 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: I remember noting before I even knew about this trope the violent knocking off of probably the most interesting character in Hitchcock's film "The Birds"--- the suspiciously lesbianish school teacher played by Suzanne Pleshette. She was found on her front porch pecked to death. I thought to myself what a waste of a good character! Perhaps a token nod to the simmering homophobia of that time.[

Yah, even three years before a certain medical television show started addressing bias against lesbians in one episode, there was "Barefoot in the Park" (1967). After Robert Redford died, I watched it for the first time in ages. There was this segment...

FONDA: Paul, what's the matter?

REDFORD: I just had an interesting talk with the man down in the liquor store. Do you know that we have some of the greatest weirdos in the country living right here in this building?

FONDA: No kidding! Like who?

REDFORD: Well, like, to begin with, in apartment 1C are the Boscos -- Mr. and Mrs. J. Bosco.

FONDA: Who are they?

REDFORD: Mr. and Mrs. J. Bosco are a lovely young couple who just happen to be of the same sex. And no one knows which one that is.

FONDA: Crazy!