A lot of us recognized the lack of variety in media when it comes to queer characters, which commonly focus on tradegy or coming out. While coming out can be a profound and dramatic event, there are so many other moments in queer individuals’ lives and these are the aspects of one’s identity that often go unnoticed or untold in media. We decided to interview queer individuals in our lives to learn how these stereotypes from media have affected their outlook on identity and queerness as well as gain insight into these untold queer narratives that make up everyday life.
We are attempting to reveal the lack of representation when it comes to queer narratives in media by listening to anecdotes from queer individuals surrounding their experiences and examing why society focuses so heavily on coming out narratives for queer individuals. We purposely did not ask any of our interviewees about their experience with coming out and instead focused on the countless other elements that make up one’s relationship with queerness. Some of these other elements included their experiences at a school like Clark with a lot of queer students, their experiences growing up with certain queer characters to look up to (or lack thereof), and subtle discrimination they face that often goes unnoticed by those who perpetuate it.
Films about queer narratives usually focus a lot around coming out experiences as well as homophobia from family, so we wanted to make something that did not focus homophobia solely in this way in order to disrupt the common narrative that every queer person’s most difficult and defining hardships stem from coming out or blatent homophobia. Additionally, films tend to focus on discrimination from people outside of the LGBTQ+ community, whereas we made sure to highlight discrimination from within the queer community as well as microaggressions. For instance, many queer individuals are asked invasive personal questions that are uncomfortable and sometimes even unsafe for them to answer, or they are asked to speak on behalf of the entire LGBTQ+ community as if it were a homogeneous group. In a cinematic sense, the fact that our documentary was filmed with our friends over Zoom goes against the highly polished version of the often fictional queer stories that are commonly told in the media. Unlike the typical queer stories shown in media, queer people all have unique experiences that deserve to be heard. As one of our interviewees stated in our final clip, “There’s no perfect way to be queer.”