Hollywood's "Bury Your Gays" Trope Explained: History & Controversy

In recent years, audiences have heard more about the "bury your gays" trope, leading to questions about its history in Hollywood and why it's so controversial. Even as LGBTQ+ representation in film has improved, LGBTQ+ narratives in film largely revolve around the concept of suffering. Death, villainization, abuse, and tragedy are all common components of the LGBTQ+ experience in Hollywood. Though some stories are slowly starting to break the mold, the bury your gays trope is one that continues to plague LGBTQ+ media.

Proper LGBTQ+ representation in media is invaluable. Not only can it provide empathetic education about LGBTQ+ issues and identities, but it also works to help dispel negative stereotypes surrounding the community and to increase self-acceptance and actualization in queer people. When TV and film only tell stories of suffering and death for their LGBTQ+ characters, it drives home the idea that to be queer is only to suffer. As death tolls continue to rise for LGBTQ+ characters — especially in television, where queer characters are being killed off at a disproportionate rate — the community has called for media creators, including series such as The Walking Dead and The 100, to do better with their portrayals of queer characters and their surrounding narratives.

The number of queer deaths in television and film has reached such a height that online databases have begun to keep track of LGBTQ+ deaths in media — and the fewer cases where the LGBTQ representation of queer characters leads to a happy ending. Does the Dog Die, a popular crowdsourcing site that tracks triggers and content warnings in media, has a dedicated section to track whether an LGBTQ+ character dies. One nonprofit organization, LGBT Fans Deserve Better, was created in response to the disproportionate amount of death and unhappy endings for LGBTQ+ characters, especially female LGBTQ+ characters, which have been killed at an alarming rate over the years.

What The "Bury Your Gays" Trope Means

Sean Penn stars as Harvey Milk and stands at the podium of a political speech

The "bury your gays" trope has been so named because LGBTQ+ characters are far more likely to die in film and television than their cisgender and heterosexual counterparts. If trope treats queer LGBTQ+ characters as if they're easily expendable and undeserving of their own development. It also dangerously normalizes the idea that to be queer or LGBTQ+ is to live a life full of suffering, trauma, or unhappiness.

Queer Representation In Early Film

Wings 1927 Charles Rogers as Jack Powell and Richard Arlen as David Armstrong

In early film and 19th-century literature, the bury your gays trope was actually a refuge for queer authors. In order to get LGBTQ+ stories published, authors would use the death of their queer characters as a way to subvert censorship; if their queer character suffered a terrible fate, the authors were no longer promoting "perverse acts," which could prevent publication at the best and result in arrest at the worst. This workaround allowed LGBTQ+ stories to be told but came at the price of queer characters being portrayed as mentally ill or simply confused and often resulted in their lovers being "fixed" of their homosexuality after their deaths. As films explored various subjects over the years, LGBTQ+ characters became more prevalent, though they were still subjected to exploitation and suffering. The films of the 1920s and early 1930s were far racier than those of the decades to come, openly featuring sexually-liberated women, violent activities, and queer characters, though, creators frequently had to toe the line in order to escape criticism. Films like Wings (1927) and Morocco (1930) both featured same-sex kisses, but would walk the thin line between romance, friendship, and performance in order to get away with their use of queer characters.

"Bury Your Gays" And The Hays Code

Shirley MacLaine as Martha and Audrey Hepburn as Karen in The Children’s Hour

As Hollywood pushed the boundaries with salacious films in order to draw in meager crowds during the Great Depression, conservative forces began to push back. Former Republican Congressman William Hays left his role in politics to become the head of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association. With the backing of conservative and religious groups, Hays enacted the Will Hays' Hollywood Production Code of 1930, commonly known as the Hays Code. Implemented from 1934 to 1968, the Hays Code was a set of self-imposed industry guidelines, consisting of 36 rules that prohibited things like profanity, graphic violence, and "sexual perversion." The enactment of the Hays Code would see outrightly queer characters and LGBTQ+ representation disappear from the silver screen for the next three and a half decades. The open, positive expression of LGBTQ+ characters was strictly forbidden under the Hays Code, and creators of the time were forced to use negative stereotypes and villainized depictions of queer characters in order to avoid mass boycotts of their films. This era truly gave birth to the concept of queercoding, where certain characteristics and subtle symbolism are used to impart the queerness of a character or story into the audience's subconscious. Following the Hays Code was technically voluntary, but those who did not comply — especially openly queer creators, like filmmaker Dorothy Arzner — were simply erased from history.

The Hays Code never succeeded at removing LGBTQ+ characters from film; it simply turned them into villains whose deaths audiences could celebrate. This time period in film is largely responsible for many anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments in American society, as the repeated villainization of queer characters reinforced the idea that queerness is inherently immoral and something that must be punished, often by death. One of the greatest examples of the bury your gays trope under the Hays Code is The Children's Hour, which tells the story of two boarding school teachers who are accused of having a lesbian affair. When one of the teachers — Martha (Shirley MacLaine) — finally confesses to feeling romantic love for her coworker, Karen (Audrey Hepburn), she laments her guilt and disgust at herself before taking her own life. Because the film did not positively promote Martha's queerness, the movie was allowed to be released as it was.

"Bury Your Gays" In Modern Films

Pennywise holds Adrian Mellon in It: Chapter 2.

Though Hollywood has moved beyond the Hays Code, the bury your gays trope is still heavily present in LGBTQ+ narratives. IT Chapter 2 ends both queer relationships in the film with graphic deaths. Though some of these stories ultimately end with happiness and acceptance, a happy ending should not have to feel like something that is revolutionary for the LGBTQ+ community.

Moving Beyond The Trope

Simon smiles at a potential boyfriend during Christmas in Love, Simon.

Despite the prevalent history of the bury your gays trope, there is still hope for the future of LGBTQ+ narratives. As more and more queer characters are having their stories told, creators are beginning to move away from the idea of inherent struggles to tell stories of love, friendship, and acceptance. Movies like Love, Simon may not always be happy, but they explore deep, enriching stories that don't reduce their queer characters to being martyrs and victims. LGBTQ+ stories can't always be happy, but when movies tell the stories of queer characters and allow them to matter instead of reducing them to an expendable plot device, queer characters are finally allowed to be nuanced, complex human characters. As more queer stories are being told, more diverse queer stories are being told, and creators are leaving behind "bury your gays" to instead embrace fully-developed LGBTQ+ characters and their stories.

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