715: Forbidden Love
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Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that is a little concerned about what the queer community’s obsession with ‘forbidden romance’ says about us.
This week Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out to talk about the trope that has historically overwhelmingly dominated queer media, forbidden love.
The allure of forbidden love makes it a popular trope across all media, not just queer media, and dates all the way back to Romeo and Juliet. However, forbidden love is so overrepresented in queer media that it is difficult to even name a story where it isn’t the dominant trope. Sure there are the obvious examples, the period pieces like Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Ammonite, but it goes much deeper than that. Everyone’s favorite romcom Imagine Me and You? Forbidden love. Campy classics D.E.B.S. and But I’m A Cheerleader? Forbidden love. It’s the one thing that nearly all queer stories in our media have in common with very few outliers.
When considering why forbidden love is so pervasive within queer stories, it is impossible to ignore the very real consequences of gay relationships throughout history.
For example, ignoring the forbiddenness of a queer relationship for an American film set in the years between DOMA and Obergefell would be historically inaccurate. Because of this all gay stories were technically stories about forbidden love up until quite recently. The interesting thing is that even after ‘gay’ no longer immediately equaled ‘forbidden’, queer stories continued to find ways to incorporate the trope. There is something too appealing about forbidden love to leave it in the past. Now there are just extra steps included for why the relationship is forbidden such as an affair (Imagine Me and You), a concerning age gap (Carol), or unhealthy power dynamics like the ever popular student/teacher relationship (Loving Annabelle). One of our favorite unique twists on the forbidden love trope is actually the short-lived Netflix series First Kill, which flipped the genre on its head by making the forbidden aspect be that one of the girls was a vampire and the other a monster hunter. Whether we should all be in therapy for our penchant for forbidden love remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure, we aren’t going to stop eating these stories up anytime soon!
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