# @michigandaily on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/CtPYf5_vsvX
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/7132209-michigandaily-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/c0e2028239.jpg
- **Posted:** 2023-06-08T19:00:53.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** The Michigan Daily (@michigandaily) — https://gondola.cc/michigandaily

## Caption

#Arts: There aren’t enough plots in the cemetery for all the Queer characters butchered before their time. The #BuryYourGays trope has claimed countless fictional lives and, without fail, the hashtag will be trending after each untimely passing to mark the occasion. The trope itself had its inception at a time when homophobic legislation backed Queer artists into a corner, leaving them to either kill off their representative characters or not include them at all. Now, at least in Hollywood, the trope serves no noble purpose other than to exploit Queer trauma for viewership and shock value. These stories have become so disrespected that they’re being dragged from our screens entirely. 

“Bury Your Gays” refers to the trope in which Queer or Queer-coded characters are more likely to meet a gruesome, tragic end than their cishet counterparts. Thus they are treated as more expendable and become punished by their storylines. In the Victorian era, it gave Queer artists the freedom to incorporate Queer stories without being persecuted for “endorsing homosexuality,” which was illegal at the time. The unfair treatment of Queer characters was necessitated by the context of the time to even justify their existence. With works like “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and “Hamlet,” the Queer-coded character deaths served a larger purpose within the story, they even granted those characters the gift of life, but they remained to punish those same characters for their Queerness. 

We’ve moved beyond the point of needing this trope to include scraps of representation in so many parts of the world, especially in Hollywood. Now, rather than being used to lovingly provide an ounce of representation for an underserved community, it is used to exploit members of that community. TV and movies boast their inclusivity within their cast of characters to garner Queer viewers until they brutally kill those characters off. 

To read more, click the link in our bio.

✍️: Mina Tobya
🎨: Sara Fang

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## Tags

arts, buryyourgays

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