Does ‘Queer Narrative’ Mean ‘Trauma Narrative’ on TV? Exploring Television’s Traumatized Queer Identity

ABSTRACT

Often subject to similar modes of investigation and necessary confession as a facet of characterization as sexuality, trauma and recovery form key identity categories for TV characters. The act of claiming these identities is key to the character-focused style of primetime drama, connecting the confession of trauma with the confession of sexuality. This queer- and trauma-theory-focused textual analysis of three contemporary dramatic television series’ queer characters investigates the ways in which accepted narratives of queer consciousness proceeding from trauma and tragedy appear codified on television. This paper hopes to demonstrate that increased queer visibility contingent upon trauma, as demonstrated by these cross-genre examples, provides institutional justification – through the mass medium of television – for the acceptance of queerphobic violence and queer trauma as “to be expected” or otherwise key to forming a queer identity. This, in turn, may contribute to the lack of systemic pressures to eradicate violence against queer people and communities, and perhaps especially against queer youth, whose exclusion, abandonment, or abuse by family members and other adults become culturally naturalized by repetitive inclusion of these backstories.

KEYWORDS:

• Television
• queer identity
• trauma
• narratives
• representation
• confession

Notes

¹ This is more along the lines of Rothberg’s (2009) institutional and transmitted approach to trauma and memory.

² Series regular Alison DiLaurentis, originally missing and presumed dead in the narrative, later dates Emily and is revealed to be queer.

³ Fridging, here, refers to the narrative device of causing a loved one of a protagonist to die in order to feed character development for another character – most frequently the love interest of a male hero, often in comics (“Stuffed into the Fridge,” 2019).