The 'Bury Your Gays' trope, which suggests that LGBTQ+ people aren't allowed happy endings and that they are destined for tragedy, unfortunately exists with a problematic frequency in film as well. As the GLADD report noted, 'Over 25 lesbian and bisexual female-identifying characters have died on scripted broadcast and cable television and streaming series since the beginning of 2016.' The 2018 report, meanwhile, said, 'Broadcast television (and television as a whole) has yet to recover from the past two seasons, which included the deaths of an overwhelming number of lesbian and bisexual women characters.' It can't be stressed enough how unusual this is. Recent film and TV seasons have seen a record number of lesbians and queer women dying on screen, from Atomic Blonde to Cloud Atlas, and as GLAAD stated in a 2016 report, killing off these characters 'sends a dangerous message to audiences that LGBTQ+ people are secondary and disposable.' Thankfully, though, Disobedience, a new film out now, is the rare lesbian love story that doesn't end in tragedy.
The trope that sees many film and TV LGBTQ+ couples thrown into tragic ends like murder or accidental death shortly after they unite has been criticized repeatedly over the past few years, and rightly so.
There's no denying that film and television have a major 'Bury Your Gays' problem.
