Representation of Homosexuality in the Comedy Genre.

"A study by the US gay rights campaigning organisation Glaad has found that only 17 of the 102 movies from major studios in 2013 featured lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender characters and, of those 17, the majority were offensive and defamatory portrayals." Statistically, homosexuality in film, especially comedies, is a topic where characters are seen as others, other than a white, straight, male/female, which signifies this point of this being a negative representation, and also extremely offensive, to these specific audiences, which is what I am about to discover with in this research.

"These studios have the eyes and ears of millions of audience members and should reflect the true fabric of our society rather than feed into the hatred and prejudice against LGBT people too often seen around the globe." Homosexuality is reflected upon, in the media, socially and globally as negative. Offensive portrayals in these massive box office films are clearly homophobic, which reflects on the people behind the scenes and their thoughts, or either the ideological message of how society treats homosexual people. The fact of the more people 'coming-out' to the world, reflects more modernly therefore the topic becomes "more visible on screen".


Reasons as to why homosexuality appears more in cinema now, more positively in a general sense is due to mostly due to the fact that, "generally these days, there seems to be far more attention given to the LGBT community, with a real push for equality, acceptance and primarily, normality." However, Hollywoods reasoning of making homosexual based films is not due to homophobia, but money as they "are famously cautious, and the risk that an LGBT movie wouldn’t make as much money as a ‘straight one’ is something which will flash through every studio executives’s mind when faced with a new gay script." Yet gay men aren't shown in these films in comparison to lesbians. "When it comes to the girls, you’ll find more lesbians in mainstream movies (think Black Swan), but cynically yet again, it’s because girls kissing girls is easier to sell to the public than boys kissing boys; it’s exploitative, and executives see this as an asset when faced with a male-dominated audience."

There has been a massive improvement within the representation of homosexuality in film as, it is more than less accepted as more and more studios are making these films possible. "Progress is being made, slowly, but it’s unlikely that LGBT representation in modern cinema will improve anytime soon, despite the current state of world affairs." Due to the views of society still, in states, and even countries around the globe, therefore, "Hollywood that shapes the culture" of these films.