Abstract
A concept of visibility frames much scholarship and public writing on LGBTQ+ representation in film and television, and underpins diversity reporting and inclusivity measurement. Although visibility is often depicted as a social good, there is a growing critical interest in asking if there are different kinds of visibility, and how these might be differentially valued. This paper reports insights gained from interviews with Australian stakeholders involved in the production of screen entertainment with LGBTQ+ content. The study found that stakeholders are motivated by to create texts that make LGBTQ+ stories and characters visible. The range of approaches to visibility was, however, nuanced and diverse: some understood any LGBTQ+ representation as valuable, while others discussed visibility in contexts of character depth, anti-stereotyping, and visibility tempered by concepts of human dignity. Although visibility is perceived diversely, it remains a significant lens by which creative artists involved in LGBTQ+ texts understand their work.
Keywords
Introduction
The casting of straight and cisgender screen actors in LGBTQ+ roles emerged as a point of public controversy in the mid-2010s, nearly two decades after the renaissance in mainstream film and television that saw a very substantial increase in LGBTQ+ narratives, themes and characters. A number of cultural factors converged to make questions of LGBTQ+ casting a social issue for public debate, including the advent of call-out culture, cultural practices promoting authenticity in representation and personal identity, and the cohering of increased demand for minority inclusivity in both representation and employment. Although of importance to media cultures, the debate has not been well-discussed in queer media and cultural studies scholarship, and primarily occurred in the context of public sphere dialog limited to the voices of community members, commentators, and actors. There has been little data gathered from the broader media, entertainment, film and television industries on perspectives and attitudes to the topic of LGBTQ+ casting held by industry stakeholders. The question of what can be called an expectation of ‘identity alignment’ of actors with the characters they portray has bearing upon the production and representation of cultural diversity in both the context of gender and sexuality, and minority identities more broadly.
This paper discusses the reactions of Australian film and television stakeholders (directors, producers, actors, and screenwriters) to the debate on straight/cisgender actors portraying LGBTQ+ characters. Drawing on a selection of stakeholder interviews gathered for a study LGBTQ+ entertainment media representation and practice in Australia, it can be discerned that stakeholders not only align themselves with ‘for’ and ‘against’ views on such casting but, drawing on industry knowledge as well as ethical practices of diversity, contribute more nuanced perspectives and ways of contextualizing LBTGQ+ casting that may help guide an ethical understanding of future practices. Stakeholder perspectives revealed in interviews reflected wider policy discourse on screen diversity, including particularly a 2016 Screen Australia report which surveyed 27 screenwriters, 90% of whom reported writing an LGBTQ+ character for television drama since 2011 that was ultimately cast with an actor of a different background from the one they’d written (Screen Australia, 2016: 30). The report, and the wider discourse, indicated not only a trend but a very strong likelihood in Australian screen production that an LGBTQ+ role will be played by a cisgender or straight actor. Public commentary and opinion writing, some of which is discussed below, indicates this likelihood continues to be reflected in film and television casting in the United Kingdom and North America.
This article begins with a discussion of the controversy in its international (primarily North American) context, including the key debates and the cultural conditions that constitute the emergence of this topic as a social issue for public discourse, such as the application of call-out culture, the critique of inclusivity, and the extension of identity coherence and authenticity frameworks to casting choices. Following a brief summary of the AusQueerScreen study, I will outline four frameworks for thinking about and addressing LGBTQ+ casting offered by six discrete interviewees: (i) a perspective condemning the casting of straight and cisgender actors in LGBTQ+ roles on the basis of the benefits of lived experience as well as the utility of employment for minorities; (ii) a framework that saw advantages – at times – from cisgender/straight actors taking on minority roles in ways that opened cultural questions about identity that was thought to aid audiences toward social change and acceptance; (iii) a framework that discussed the existing consultation practices in which straight and cisgender actors became informed about the minorities they portray; and (iv) a criticism of the debate for its focus on actors rather than the broader range of those involved in the creative production of screen texts. Providing a stakeholder perspective to the topic contributes a new perspective to a polarized debate on LGBTQ+ casting, not only because it reveals ‘insider’ practices governing ways of speaking about the topic that are normally excluded from public discourse, but because it demonstrates how film and television stakeholders navigate their practices in the context of attention to popular debate.
‘Real representation’ and the actor-character alignment discourse in public dialog
The question as to whether straight and cisgender actors should play queer and trans characters emerged largely in public sphere debate, journalism and opinion-writing from the late-2010s, with a key argument articulating the idea that non-LGBTQ+ actors playing LGBTQ+ parts in film and television was akin to other problematic casting choices, including particularly the portrayal of persons of color and persons of Asian descent by white actors using blackface and yellowface (Giese, 2021). The Hollywood use of blackface and yellowface both declined considerably – albeit not eradicated – alongside the rise of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s in the United States (Ma, 2019; Morrison, 2020). However, two cultural shifts occurring subsequent to this opened the possibility for LGBTQ+ casting issues in the 21st century. Firstly, although LGBTQ+ characters were never completely invisibilized nor always negatively portrayed in film and television (Russo, 1987), a renaissance in mainstream, positive representation occurred in the late 1990s (Cover, 2000), with increased marketability of screen entertainment media and a resultant increase in LGBTQ+ on-screen parts. This, of course, did not occur evenly or inclusively for all gender- and sexually-diverse identities under the LGBTQ+ ‘banner’, with a greater number of parts depicting white, middle-class gay men than other lesbian, bisexual and – especially – positively-depicted transgender characters. It also until very recently did not include considerable portrayal of LGBTQ+ characters whose identities are marked by intersections with minority race, ethnicity, and physical ability (Cover, 2019).
At the same time, from the late 1990s there were an increasing number of North American (including Hollywood), British and Australian actors who acknowledged publicly that they identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual (Osborn and Drillinger, 2021), dispelling an earlier framework in which it was rare for a North American actor to openly identify as non-heterosexual or non-cisgender. The increase in ‘out’ actors meant a greater pool of talent on which to draw to fill television and film roles, whether LGBTQ+ or otherwise. Together, these two shifts established the conditions for what I refer to in this paper as an actor-character ‘identity alignment’ discourse; that is, the popular cultural idea that an ‘identity’ depicted on-screen is ideally played by someone who represents that identity in their own lives.
A number of different cultural practices and discourses about ethical representation, diversity and minority inclusion has resulted in the past decade in the emergence of a public critique focusing on identity ‘misalignment’. This public discussion was one which called for what has sometimes been referred to as ‘real representation’ (Compton, 2021), and has been critical of straight/cisgender actors taking on LGBTQ+ roles, and of film production companies and television networks for casting them. Borrowing from the conceptual framework of blackface and yellowface critiques, the term ‘gayface’ emerged in approximately 2013 as a criticism of a number of Hollywood films that used high-profile actors to portray, particularly, gay male roles (Lowder, 2013). High profile cases circulated in news, online and opinion writing, including the casting of Michael Douglas and Matt Damon in a film about the final years of closeted gay entertainer Liberace, Behind the Candelabra (2013), Benedict Cumberbatch as gay mathematician Alan Turing in The Imitation Game (2014), Taron Egerton playing Elton John in Rocketman (2019), as well as stories retrospectively reassessing the acclaim of earlier performances such as those Health Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Annette Bening and Julianne Moore in The Kids are Alright (2010). Most Australian public sphere discussion of the issue has focused on North American examples and not addressed the debate in the context of Australian film and television in which there is a rich history of LGBTQ+ characters and themes (Cover, 2022).
The casting of cisgender actors to play transgender roles has often been collapsed into the same discourse and included in lists of actor-character LGBTQ+ misalignment, including particularly high profile cases that included British actor Eddie Redmayne being called out for portraying real-life trans pioneer Lili Elbe in The Danish Girl (Pate, 2014), Jared Leto playing a transgender character in Dallas Buyers Club (2013) and Jeffrey Tambor in the television series Transparent (2014–2017). In 2020, Halle Berry apologized for having previously announced an intention to play a trans character (Rosa, 2020), and Netflix streamed the documentary Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen in 2020 which included arguments by trans actors of the negative impact of casting cisgender actors to represent transgender characters both biographical and fictional. Although much writing and some of the stakeholder interviews discussed below consider both sexual minorities and transgender characters simultaneously, queer cultural theory has long-argued that sexual diversity and gender diversity are not necessarily coextensive (e.g. Sedgwick, 1990: 27), and the form and framing of the social tolerance of trans persons lags significantly and operates differently from the 21st century inclusivity of sexual diversity (Cover, 2019). Arguably, the impact and ethics of casting straight actors in queer roles and cisgender actors in trans roles is not necessarily interchangeable, equivalent or able to be discussed meaningfully together at all times.
The criticism of casting decisions that result in straight and cisgender actors portraying LGBTQ+ roles is not, however, an uncontested cultural narrative in the way blackface and yellowface are widely deemed unacceptable to contemporary, 21st century western society (Giese, 2021). Some public commentators noted the critical acclaim received by straight and cisgender actors who portrayed LGBTQ+ characters, and praised not only the performance but a perceived contribution to LGBTQ+ acceptance by taking on roles that might otherwise have been felt to be unpalatable or damaging (Bagwell, 2016). Lists of straight and cisgender actors who played sexually- and gender-diverse characters are regularly presented in magazines and online media for their contribution to LGBTQ+ pride (e.g. Bagwell, 2016; Lewis, 2018; Sarkisian, 2021). Several actors have spoken out both to apologize for any offense caused, but simultaneously defended their casting in LGBTQ+ roles as based on acting skill rather than lived experience (Hines, 2021), while some commentators have remarked that although casting cisgender actors in trans roles is ethically problematic, sexually-diverse characters should be portrayed by anyone on the basis that sexuality itself is perceived as a spectrum (Nicholas, 2021).
There are three discernible frameworks that both condition and help us make sense of how LGBTQ+ casting emerges as an ethical issue, and enters the public sphere for debate. Firstly, the debate involves an application of the practices of ‘callout culture’ that, arguably, demand non-complex alignment and the eradication of ‘gray areas’ in industry practice. While callout culture plays an important role in highlighting a range of gender issues from problematic employment practices to sexual assault, as witnessed in its deployment as a communication tool of the #MeToo movement, it has had a tendency to deride or reject nuanced social practices that are open to multiple readings, opting for the articulation of grievance without always the necessary engagement and critique that enables genuine social change (Bartlett et al., 2019). The more extreme elements of callout culture, it has been argued, take advantage of digital and social media’s capacity to produce pile-ons of mob outrage that sometimes risk scandalizing its subjects or shaming individuals rather than investigating systemic and cultural causes of problematic behaviors. Where #MeToo callouts were helpful, then, in reconfiguring older assumptions about the culture of North American film production and, particularly, the Hollywood ‘casting couch’, it has extended some of that critique into other areas of casting that warrant an understanding based in historical emergence in order to determine ways forward for social change, inclusive representation and equitable employment practices rather than an expectation of perfect identity alignment.
This is what Anderson (2018) has identified as callout’s demand for perfectionism whereby progressive and ethical critique of identity representation practices are replaced by a wholesale rejection of any ‘imperfect implementation of that identity into action [that] is grounds for termination’ (p. xiv). In that sense, the demand for perfect alignment conditions the rejection and calling out of actors who are seen to have ‘failed’ by taking on an LGBTQ+ role, including in years prior to the emergence of this position, sustaining what Halberstam (2011) identified as narrow and static models of success and failure (2) and a triumphalist approach to that misunderstands or ignores the complex, multiple possibilities that may be implicated in emerging progressive shifts in social relations (23, 162).
The second cultural condition that constitutes the emergence of LGBTQ+ casting criticism relates to wider social questions on inclusivity. While there is substantial international advocacy for on-screen diversity that pertains also to the inclusivity of LGBTQ+ actors and creative artists (GLAAD, 2018; Screen Australia, 2016), the demand for inclusivity is not something that can be fully realized through casting arrangements. As Hickey-Moody (2016) has pointed out, such inclusivity within existing liberal structures of representation may be more a mythical approach to an unrealizable utopian ideal (Fraser, 1990) than to the kind of radical destabilization of the very categories – such as gender and sexuality – that enable exclusion or invisibilization in the first place. The demand for LGBTQ+ actor-character identity alignment, then, falls into what Ahmed (2007) identified as ‘diversity work’ that focuses on gestures rather than the critical activity needed for inclusive social change. Here, the call for alignment of actor and character identity can be perceived as a demand for a particular kind of inclusivity that is palatable because it is a simple alignment drawing on narrow perceptions of stable gender and sexual identity (Cover, 2019), ignoring the creative and cultural pedagogies that might emerge from representations that casting that is ‘misaligned or that makes assumptions about actors’ own identities that simplifies and categorizes them into narrow labels. This is not to suggest that Ahmed’s position precludes the significance of public criticism in generating social change and industry inclusivity, but that the demand may actually fail to produce the social shifts in inclusive representation if simple, casting alignments are met. This may explain why critics, reporters and writers in Australia celebrate the relatively strong representation of gender- and sexually-diverse characters on screen (perceived as doing good diversity work) and are thereby less interested in actor-character alignment (perceived as an industry constraint).
Finally, it can be argued that the demand for actor/character identity alignment is partly the product of a cult of authenticity and identity coherence. Authenticity and coherence are, of course, ontological practices pertaining to the performativity of identity, for without them the subject is open to being (mis)recognized as incoherent, unintelligible or abject, and thereby failing to meet the liberal-humanist requirements for belonging and social participation. From a queer theory perspective, identity performativity is built on the repetition of a stylized act, giving it intelligibility over time that obscures the inherent potential of the ‘failure’ of repetition and coherence (Butler, 1990: 140–141). While in practice this applies either to the identity of the actor or the identity of a character within the internal logic of a screen text (Cover, 2000), the demand for actor-character identity alignment can be perceived as an extension of authenticity. That is, a cultural exigency is at play in which an authentic LGBTQ+ representation is understood to be possible only if the identity of the ‘real’ actor is coherently aligned. Although such an obligation rests on the disavowal of actual theatrics and play as the practices by which acting itself is understood, it applies an extension of the cultural demand for coherence beyond identity itself and into the ‘meta’ practices of representation such as casting.
The AusQueerScreen study
As outlined above, for a range of reasons conditioned by cultural emergences, audiences, and community members have expressed their concerns about the appropriateness of straight and cisgender actors playing queer and trans characters in film and television. Despite the public discourse, the views of production stakeholders – film and television producers, directors and screenwriters – has been largely absent. Opportune use of data collected for an Australian study of gender- and sexually-diverse film and television themes, narratives and depictions provides an serendipitous opportunity to consider the attitudes toward LGBTQ+ casting held by Australian film/tv stakeholders, how their views are formed and the ways in which an ‘industry perspective’ might contribute to debates beyond a for-or-against positionality.
The AusQueerScreen (‘Representation of Gender and Sexual Diversity in Australian Film and Television, 1990–2010’) study investigated gender- and sexually-diverse (LGBTQ+) characters, themes and narratives in Australian film and television 1990-present), and their impact on health, identity, and culture. Funded by the Australian Research Council, the study provided one of the first comprehensive accounts of Australian media production’s contribution to gender/sexual minority representation in the context of its importance for fostering (i) healthy identities, and (ii) acceptance of minorities to mainstream audiences. The study was premised on the fact that, contrary to myths of LGBTQ+ on-screen invisibility, Australia has a rich history of LGBTQ+ storytelling and character inclusion in its film and television history (Monaghan, 2020), although a tendency to depict younger LGBTQ+ characters through discourses of vulnerability (Cover, 2021).
As culturally-informed media research, the study was not interested in quantifying instances of LGBTQ+ visibility (Cover and Dau, 2021), but analyzing how creative production practices, reception and audience engagement play a role in constructing understandings about gender and sexual identity. The study undertook literature and archival research, and gathered new data from in-depth one-on-one interviews with 20 film and television stakeholders, and 40 audience members (aged 18–50) from across most regions of Australia, including both urban and rural/regional settings, and from a broad range of reported gender and sexual identities. Stakeholders included a sample of film directors, scriptwriters, producers, and actors, all of whom had worked on major Australian film and television texts that had been critically-noted for the ostensible inclusion of LGBTQ+ themes, narratives or characters. Key insights included noting that while older stakeholders and audience members celebrated all LGBTQ+ on-screen representation, those who were younger or became active in creative production later tended to be critical of gestural visibility, measuring instead the quality of representation in terms of depth, nuance and other intersecting industry practices.
Although unrelated to the study’s key aims, the topic of LGBTQ+ casting was raised by 6 of the 20 stakeholders interviewed for the study. Four different approaches to thinking about questions of actor-character identity alignment can be discerned from the interview data: those who were against mis-alignment, those who were in favor of straight and cisgender actors playing queer an d trans characters, those who discussed the issue in the context of practices of consultation in creative production, and those who identified wider issues beyond just actors but also other stakeholders involved in queer and trans screen texts. I will discuss and contextualize each of these four stakeholder views in turn. As many were speaking to the researchers about their experiences that included constraints on production of gender- and sexually-diverse content and negative reactions from key industry stakeholders such as funders and distribution companies, their interviews were undertaken on condition of anonymity. Human research ethics clearance was provide by the Human Research Ethics Committee at the University of Western Australia. Broadly, it was notable that nearly one-third of participants raised the issue without prompting, indicating the significance of the topic among their industry peers and because international debate on LGBTQ+ casting was providing a new lens through which to reflect critically on their work. Of the two-thirds who did not raise the issue, it is notable that they were more likely to be actors or scriptwriters, and therefore less involved in the practice of casting. The five directors and producers who did not raise the issue tended to focus their discussions strictly on the interview questions, which suggests that their silence on the issue is not necessarily indicative of disinterest in the topic.
Against straight and cisgender actors playing queer and trans characters
The first of the four frameworks through which actor-character alignment was discussed by stakeholders interviewed for the study indicated a broad opposition to cisgender and straight actors portraying gender or sexual minorities on Australian screens. There were, however, a range of ways in which attitudes and perspectives were discussed. One was to argue that the central concern of actor-character identity mis-alignment was a form of cultural appropriation for both sexual minorities and transgender subjects. As one film screenwriter put it: I’ve always been in favour of casting lesbian actors and transgender actors for these kinds of roles. There is something really off-putting about an industry that continues to think it is okay not to do this. . .. [W]hile there is poor representation we need every actor to bring genuine real experience to the roles so they’re not relying on stereotypes of what they think a transgender or lesbian person is like. When you put straights in these roles, they’re taking something away from queer communities.
The motif of cultural appropriation is one which figures the LGBTQ+ character and the subtextual experiences that underlie that portrayal as a form of ‘cultural property’ (Frow, 2008) belonging to LGBTQ+ persons. Such a perspective is to attach the experience, knowledge and understanding of LGBTQ+ persons to identity itself rather than assume research, consultation, a good script or adequate direction can provide an actor with fair knowledge of minority experiences. It is to suggest that something may be lost in even the most ‘convincing’ LGBTQ+ portrayal by a cisgender/straight actor.
Gender code appropriation has long been recognized as an issue for the ethical representation of trans persons, whereby the common 1980s and 1990s film narrative of ‘temporary transgender’ stories served in both the text (character) and the meta-framework (actor, marketing, acclaim) to appropriate the experiences of gender transitions for the purpose of humor or for the character development of cisgender characters, while reinforcing binary gender identities (Straayer, 1996). Alongside stories of liberal-humanist identity stabilization and resilience, such as in The Danish Girl, these two ways of representing transgender lives are the most common in film and television The complex real-world narratives around gender transitions, experiences of social belonging among trans persons, role as a normative ‘non issue’ part in contemporary social life, and disproportionately higher rates of trans youth suicide and self harm (Chang and Delaney, 2019), it can be argued that these two narrative forms appropriate and obscure lived experience of trans persons, exacerbated by the meta framing of those stories portrayed by cisgender actors. As one other stakeholder remarked, ‘how can they [a cisgender actor] have the experience to really perform something as complex as transgender?’
This perspective on cultural appropriation not only permits us to separate sexual minority experiences (which are better understood by a wider mainstream audience and community) and trans experiences (which continue to remain obscure and culturally-mystified), but primarily to understand cultural appropriation of trans stories as simultaneously a re-framed appropriation of, and denial of, lived experience. Insights about the significance of lived experience to the ethical formation of inclusive knowledge frameworks in healthcare, mental health and suicide prevention have shown their importance for the inclusive representation, dignity, and engagement with minorities and others excluded from expert knowledge practices (Hjelmeland and Knizek, 2017). Here, the lived experience perspective can be extended to other social and cultural institutions, including media and creative arts. Lived experience has the capacity bring nuanced social contexts to narratives of identity that are otherwise excluded from ‘ordinary’ public knowledge frameworks (Offord, 2019). By drawing on a discourse of cultural appropriation and the significance of ‘genuine, real experience’, this interviewee provides an important contextualization to a debate that has, in public sphere dialog, been limited to more narrow accounts of liberal authenticity and rights.
The second element in the anti-misalignment framework was a more utilitarian one related to benefiting LGBTQ+ actors by ensuring they have roles into which they can be hired. As one screenwriter argued, ‘when we put a straight guy into a gay man’s role or whatever, we’re leaving a gay actor unemployed, and there’s already enough unemployment from discrimination. Half the people who get the lead gay roles here or in America seem to be the guys who get all the work anyway’. The extent to which there is continued discrimination toward LGBTQ+ actors in Australia, and whether it relates to the numbers of identity-aligned roles available, is unknown, although – as noted in the introduction – Screen Australia found that 90% of LGBTQ roles were filled by actors who did not meet that background. Certainly in the last 2 or 3 years there has been significant celebration of the hiring of a greater number of transgender actors for trans roles than ever before (Cassata, 2017; Erbland, 2018). The high profile case of casting trans actor Georgie Stone in a sustained role as trans teen Mackenzie Hargreaves in the Australian soap opera Neighbors was remarked upon by several interviewees as a positive outcome, with one summing up neatly: ‘thank god we didn’t see a ciswoman playing Mackenzie, that would be an insult to trans people and an insult to the audience’. Although it is notable that Stone herself initially pitched the idea of a trans character to producers (Anderton, 2019), the stakeholders who raised her role all framed this as ethical casting, including those who were less concerned about aligning actor and character in relation to sexual identity.
Different from the first approach among the stakeholders concerned about identity misalignment, this approach focuses not on appropriation of stories but the benefits to actors. However, it does so in a way that unwittingly fixes experience to identity by tacitly assuming that LGBTQ+ actors are always more suited to LGBTQ+ roles rather than others. That is, LGBTQ+ identity is understood as automatically built on a shared experience, whereas LGBTQ+ experiences are genuinely diverse, with vulnerability and precarity experienced non-democratically and diversely. It also disavows the ways in which experiences of intersectionalities (racial, ethnic, and particularly class) may involve a more significant actor-character misalignment than straight actor playing a gay male character, for example, where a middle-class white actor takes the role of a homeless lesbian teen. In other words, the laudable focus on benefiting actors may result in other kinds of appropriation or denial of the significance of lived experience in ways which require more research and consideration of the ethical issues around identity alignment.
In favor of straight and cisgender actors playing queer and trans characters
The second framework through which interviewed stakeholders discussed actor-character identity alignment was one that favored remaining open to non-LGBTQ+ actors playing LGBTQ+ characters in film and television. Interestingly, several stakeholders argued this perspective on the basis of an equality argument that minimizes difference, for example, ‘I know lots of lesbians that play straight characters’. However, in all cases those stakeholders followed-up with more nuanced and complex views about the ethics at stake. This including reflecting on what actors do rather than what they represent. For example: I remember reading an interview with Cate Blanchett. It got into a lot of trouble in the media for playing—what would that have been?—a queer character. She got into a lot of trouble because they said, ‘well, you’re not!’ And she said, ‘well, God, I hope that all my career I’m playing roles that I’m not’.
Once reflections such as these were included, this framework prompted a revisiting of the lived experience arguments to ask not of the value of lived experience, but of the extent to which an actor (as opposed to, say, a commentator, a medical informant, or a political representative) requires lived experience in order to give a meaningful performance that appropriately reflects the diversity in stories and the basis of acting as always, from the beginning, a performance of something that one is not.
A second, utilitarian approach was also raised by those stakeholders who were not opposed to casting straight and cisgender actors in LGBTQ+ roles, on the basis of the difficulty of finding actors who were self-identifying. A key barrier to television casting of LGBTQ+ actors is, of course, that sexual and gender identity are not always represented visually and do not always form part of the profiles on casting agency databases. As one producer noted, ‘You don’t always ask about your actors and actresses’ [sic] sexual experiences, even if it’s for a queer role, and it’s not really appropriate to ask, so it’s sometimes about who you know who can do the best job; you can’t spend forever finding someone who fits the mould’. This pertained to television drama production which, in Australia, makes substantial use of casting databases for lesser-known actors rather than relying on networks of notable actors as in film. It also suggests that the more high profile the actor and text, the more likely that screen industry networks will enable knowledge that aligns actor and character identity, but that there may be resistance among some stakeholders out of concern they may be called out for ‘cynical’ casting (Elliott and Fowler, 2018).
A third approach in this framework was grounded in a desire to avoid making a right/wrong judgment about actor/character identity misalignment on the basis there may be critical advantages. These included perceiving misalignment as potentially beneficial to audiences because it helps represent, at a meta level, a juxtaposition between identities that may create new ways of thinking about identity fixity, security, authenticity and essentialism. As one director put it: ‘I think it helps to see a straight actor playing something queer rather than being seen to avoid it or reject the role because they think it’s a problem’. Such a view aligns with poststructuralist arguments that there may be benefits in complexifying identities for the public and audiences through this very misalignment (Cover, 2019). Here, the benefit is in undoing the strictures of hetero/homo and masculine/feminine and cisgender/trans dichotomies that are grounded in an over-reliance on authenticity and the perception that should extend to the authenticity of the actor.
That is, where the first framework included a ‘cultural appropriation’ critique grounded in an idea that LGBTQ+ experiences and knowledges are fixed to LGBTQ+ identities, this perspective acknowledges that social change and ethical responsiveness emerge from ‘cultural mixing, hyphenation and appropriation [that] produces an interactive interculturality’ that critiques the very nature of difference (Noble, 2011). For example, when a very straight, very masculine actor such as David Duchovny plays a transgender character in the television series Twin Peaks (1990–91, 2017) in a way which is not mocking, not for comedic purposes, not reliant on stereotypes nor represented as an issue of ‘identity struggle’ but, instead, is clearly sympathetic and empowered, then we arguably see a reduction in the radical exclusion of trans persons from cisgender norms that has marked much exclusion and violence. Instead, the audience is given the opportunity to see a cisgender actor embrace trans lives to the extent of embodying them on screen, obliging audiences to ask if Duchovny can play trans, can we too understand trans lives not through difference and distance but relationality and, in some cases, becoming (Cover, 2019). This is not, of course, to suggest that the appropriation of a trans role is necessarily therefore always ethical. Rather, it is to argue that the more ‘perfect’ (Anderson, 2018) casting choice that aligns trans actor and character may mean the loss of critical engagement that comes from misalignment.
This does not, however, indicate that for every actor who takes on an LGBTQ+ role has actively enabled the kind of radical disjuncture that may open up wider cultural acceptances. In some important scholarship, Martin and Battles (2021) analyzed the public interviews of straight actors who played queer characters to show that most actors went to considerable lengths to assert a boundary between their life experience and their role. The authors found that actors who played LGBTQ+ roles often used mechanisms to distance themselves from queerness by referring to their character development grounded in labor rather than experience, thereby reinforcing dichotomous representations straight/LBGTQ+ and cisgender/transgender. Such mechanisms suggest some actors seek to prevent their own identities from being ‘infected’ by the sexualities of the characters they depict, whereas actors routinely do not undertake such distancing work for other characters portrayed (e.g. serial killers, bullies, nazis, corporate elites, etc.). While no one mistakes the performativity of identity for the theatrics involved in playing a part on stage or screen, such anxieties over identity ‘slippage’ (Anderson, 2008) indicate that if there are indeed to be cultural benefits from the critical misalignment framework, such benefits will depend too on how the wider ‘metatexts’ of actor interviews describe and promote relational approaches to identity.
Practices of consultation in creative production
A third framework describing stakeholder attitudes toward LGBTQ+ casting related to how practices of consultation play a role in writing, building, designing and rehearsing a character whose minority status is not represented by the actor. One Australian actor who had played a non-heterosexual character pointed to the substantial consultation undertaken in developing the role, arguing that such consultation is not necessarily cynical but can be sensitive to the needs of a minority community: ‘the opportunity was there to explore someone’s life in a really positive, fabulous way’. This actor also noted that consulting community members not only allowed their lives to be inflected in her performance, but that those consulted were also often paid.
Significantly, this perspective helps move the debate away from questions of a linear actor-character alignment by suggesting that the performance is a gestalt outcome, built from a conglomeration of multiple insights, portrayals, stories, and labor, some of which emerges among the very communities represented. It rests on the argument that no portrayal emanates from an individualized subject in isolation of other deliberate and non-deliberate contexts or can be divorced from the sociality in which it emerges. Literary, media, and cultural scholarship has long recognized that the figure of a text’s author is only mythically constructed as singular, originary, and creative author favoring the understanding that no text is a purely original creation but authored in the matrix of history, intertextuality and multiplicity (Milner, 1993: 65). Following stakeholders who pointed to the portrayals built also on consultation, it is important then to also acknowledge the multiplicity of contributions, histories, experiences and persons involved in the construction (or authorship) of an on-screen character, despite the marketing frameworks that not only make the actor the face of the text, but attempt to align the individuality of a celebrity actor with the characterization.
One film director pointed to the extensive consultation with the author of the book on which the text he was adapting for screen was based and for which he had cast a young, straight cismasculine character in a gay teen role. The director, acknowledging limited recent experience with LGBTQ+ teenagers, was concerned about the extent to which he should guide the actor’s portrayal as one of vulnerability, the solution for which was: talking to [the author] about not depicting that character as someone who didn’t know if they were gay or not. Like, [the author] was very strong with this idea that that’s not what the story is about. He isn’t like an adolescent man discovering his sexuality. He is actually someone who knows his sexuality: he’s attracted to men, you know? [The author] was quite wonderfully helpful in terms of guiding me in terms of possibly what could have been some of the pitfalls. And the cliches and the stereotypes of what that character could have been like.
Here a director points to their own role in contributing to authoring the portrayal given by an actor; and subsequently draws the author of the book into what might be considered to constitute a ‘second round’ of creative contribution to the adaptation by providing further guidance beyond the original book for the actor. Such a perspective, then, obliges us to ask not just about the alignment of a character’s gender/sexuality with that of the actor, but also the identities of all those contributing – community members consulted, directors, scriptwriters, producers, funders, other actors, acting coaches, and so on. In other words, can the theatrical portrayal ever be limited to aligning one actor and one character? Significantly, this re-frames much of the question about actor-character identity alignment and misalignment by complexifying the source of that portrayal in the first instance.
Beyond the figure of the actor
A final, related framework engaged with the topic by question which actors (acknowledging distinctions between central and supporting actors in particular) and – perhaps more pertinently – why the focus on actors in LGBTQ+ texts (as opposed to other creative stakeholders). In the case of the first, one stakeholder expressed his concern for the local industry in terms of what he was viewing in the North American market and a 2014 biographical film of gay HIV activist Larry Kramer: I saw recently The Normal Heart, which was a beautiful HBO film. It was a beautiful film and done extremely well. And there was a lot of gay cast in it—gay for gay—except Mark Ruffalo played the lead. And he was great! But I’m like, why is every supporting actor a gay actor, but the lead role gets given to a very overtly straight man, and I just can’t understand it. And I think that’s a casting approach that you see a lot unfortunately—that the smaller roles get given to the gay actors as a sort of token gesture, or a gesture towards authenticity, but then the lead role is still given to a straight actor.
This important point encourages us to look at casting as itself a diverse practice in which one role is not always as significant as another. Actors performing in core roles in a film or television series will often also be the public face of the text across a range of ever-more-important paratextual media, including previews, trailers, interviews, celebrity gossip, images accompanying reviews, ‘sneak peak’ specials (Gray, 2010), as well as increasingly online marketing, social media sites dedicated to the series, and the subject of fan-created paratexts (Proulx and Shepatin, 2012). If we are to explore alternatives to a simple for-and-against dichotomy in LGBTQ+ casting debates, further work on considering the impact, meaning and ethics around differentiated roles and how they are cast will be a necessary consideration.
One other stakeholder raised the question as to why concentrate on actors (at all) and not on other key participants in the creative process of a screen text. I noted in the third framework above that there is significance in using the critique of the ‘originary author’ to see character portrayals as built on a gestalt matrix of intertextual and collaborative production. One stakeholder extends this by asking if the focus on actors per se is the right question to ask about identity alignment and diversity representation practices: I do fear sometimes that people in positions of power who can greenlight or kill a film have their own concept of what diversity is, and they come to that from their own oftentimes non-diverse backgrounds. And so an idea of what gay should look like on screen can often be filtered through the eyes of somebody that comes from a not-queer background, who comes from a white-centric background. And so it can mean sometimes that you get a feeling—and I had this in some script discussion—you get a feeling that your representation of what gay is, is ‘the wrong kind of gay’. And I think that is something which people really need to stop and ask themselves, when you’re looking at a character that falls into diversity, under the umbrella of diversity, that you ask, where is your point of view on diversity.
Another stakeholder asked in relation to straight and cisgender personnel involved in an LGBTQ+ text: ‘what about the writers, directors, costume people, everyone else?’ Where the influence of financiers, production companies and distributors has bearing on the casting choices, it opens the question as to why the demand for identity alignment is assigned exclusively to the actor and not to other stakeholders in the creative process. Such an assumption operates by a liberal-individualist conceit in which the actor is figured as exclusively responsible for circumstances of their portrayal, rather than the other figures and the organizational, systematic, precedential, normative, and cultural perspectives that condition and participate portrayal choices. Poignantly, this remark opens the key question as to whether indeed it is enough to cast an LGBTQ+ actor in an LGBTQ+ role if all other personnel who shape that characterization are straight or cisgender. Again, this is not to take a position but to argue that a genuinely ethical approach to casting raises questions that may have no definitive or desirable answer.
Conclusion
This paper has argued that there are a number of constitutive elements making possible a public debate on LGBTQ+ casting, ranging from practices of call-out culture and the form of liberal-humanist inclusivity discourses to the application of cultural demands for authenticity and identity coherence to the actor-character relationship. Important, however, in attempting to consider the topic from an ethical perspective is to avoid limiting the arguments for-and-against actor-character alignment only to those that are palatable to a mainstream community and audience, but to consider what approaches might provide ways forward for the dignity and benefit of the most vulnerable in the equation. The liberal disavowal of a multiplicity of possible readings, practices and ways of casting in favor of a ‘perfectionist’ alignment of identities under the umbrella banner of LGBTQ+ curtails the potential of accepting that multiple practices may be not only beneficial but the most feasible outcome. It also limits the opportunity to acknowledge that what is acceptable for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer actors and characters may not always be enough to respond to the social and cultural imperatives of trans actors and trans representations.
What the stakeholder interviews demonstrate is that LGBTQ+ casting is an issue that has greater nuance and subtlety than found in most public for-and-against debate on the issue when considerations of industry insiders is taken into account. Stakeholders were both in favor of actor-character identity alignment for reasons which included avoiding cultural appropriation and the benefits to actors, as well as in favor of remaining open to ‘misalignment’ for the possible poststructuralist destabilization of identity regimes a misalignment may provoke among audiences and communities. However, once we consider two further frameworks – the fact that consultation by actors with a wide array occur, and the fact that actors are not the only creators of an LGBTQ+ character depiction – the approach to LGBTQ+ casting can be seen to be more complex. The fact that differences among stakeholders emerged is, perhaps, indicative of a need for greater industry leadership on the issue – both in national and global contexts – and for that leadership to take advice from LGBTQ+ community leaders. Ultimately, it is when casting arrangements can promote an acceptance of minorities based not on categories of different but on promoting relational sociality across both casting and representation that an ethical industry future can be apprehended.
