As a generation that has been raised practically alongside the rise of inclusive media, it is widely known at this point that representation matters. In the current media landscape of 2020, it is seldom that one will browse Netflix or their TV guide and have great difficulty finding a show that doesn’t boast at least one gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender character.
While this type of representation is great, it is often simplified for ease of consumption, or tied to commercial interests. Being gay, a lesbian, bisexual, or transgender is easily comprehendible by audiences. In fact, that covers 80% of the letters in ‘LGBTQ+’. These four terms and identities are easy to define and to subsequently understand. However, popular media discourse often subtly reveals that including a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender character allows them to check off a box that says ‘We are an inclusive show/movie! We have representation! Look!’. Whether this box is checked off because the creators genuinely want to incorporate positive representation or they are simply trying to “distinguish themselves from the competition by creating connections with their consumer” (Himberg, 2017, p. 19) is a whole other question. But let’s say the creators have the genuine desire to include LGBTQ+ representation into their show: that’s great! Here I’m thinking of characters like Rosa Diaz in Brooklynn 99, or Mitch and Cam from Modern Family, two shows that are often praised endlessly for their ‘high-level’ of inclusivity.
Representation of any type is important. However, there are many more identities under the umbrella of ‘LGBTQ+’ that are scarcely included in mainstream media representation.
In 1998, queer studies scholars Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner wrote that the aim of their essay was to “describe what [they] want to promote as the radical aspirations of queer culture building: not just a safe zone for queer sex but the changed possibilities of identity, intelligibility, publics, culture, and sex that appear when the heterosexual couple is no longer the referent or the privileged example of sexual culture”. I believe, for the most part, that this ‘radical aspiration’ has been realized, as demonstrated by media texts like Schitt’s Creek.
Schitt’s Creek is the first television show I encountered that introduced a pansexual character in the most straightforward, eloquent, and simultaneously respectfully comedic way possible. A sitcom created by Canadian father-son duo Eugene and Dan Levy, Schitt’s Creek follows an affluent family of four, the Roses, after their business manager commits fraud and subsequently loses all of their money. Their sole remaining asset is a small town named Schitt’s Creek, which Johnny Rose purchased for his son David as a joke in the early ’90s. Forced to relocate to the town, the family moves into a run-down motel where they slowly adjust to life without money. Dan Levy, one of the co-creators, was one of the show’s main writers and directors and portrayed the character of David Rose. He identifies as a cis-gay man in real life.
For the majority of the first season, it was widely presumed by fans that David is gay. However, at the end of the ninth episode, David and his best female friend Stevie have marijuana-induced sexual intercourse. David’s presumed sexuality is openly challenged and addressed in episode 10, titled ‘Honeymoon’, which is set the morning after their first sexual encounter. It goes like this:
Later in the episode, David’s father Johnny, while also in a marijuana-induced haze, confirms to a friend that his son is in fact pansexual. The friend falsely assumes that 'pansexual' is a cookware fetish.
The simple fact that David’s sexuality was not brought up until the very end of the first season, and is then rarely brought up again for the remainder of the series, challenges what Himberg notes in her chapter Visibility: Lesbian Programming and the Changing Landscape of Cable Television (2017): in the modern consumer market, “sexuality became an especially prominent marketing tool to draw audiences”. If Schitt’s Creek were to have been marketed as a diverse and inclusive show, fans watching for that sole purpose would have long jumped ship by the ninth episode, as David’s sexuality was not so much as hinted at until the tenth.
Furthermore, the nonchalant but straightforward way in which Schitt’s Creek addresses David Rose’s sexuality without making it at his expense sets an example for how other comedic television shows, and media in general, should address such topics. Despite being credited as one of the first sitcoms to introduce a pansexual character, Schitt’s Creek received incredible reviews and went on to win several Emmy’s after their final season. This reveals that broadening the concept of media representation to include more than the LGBT within LGBTQ+ does not harmfully impact how well the show is received. In fact, the success of Schitt’s Creek demonstrates that including diverse sexualities in mainstream media texts did nothing but amazing things for the sitcom, as noted by their historic Emmy wins this past September.
While representation in media has certainly come a long way from 1998, when Berlant and Warner considered sex and sexuality in public to be a ‘radical aspiration’, there is still a long way to go. Many television shows are attempting to check the box of inclusivity by including gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender characters, but there still remain many sexualities and identities that go unnoticed and underrepresented. All in all, Author Kimberly Truesdale said it best in her 2015 blogpost: ‘Schitt’s Creek introduced a pansexual character, and the world didn’t end’.
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