[ecrea] Journal of Fandom Studies 6.2 published

Intellect is delighted to announce that the Journal of Fandom Studies 
6.2 is now available! For more information about the journal, click here 
 >>https://bit.ly/2xMh3MX

Special issue: Queerbaiting

Content

Introduction: Queerbaiting

Authors: Joseph Brennan
Page Start: 105

Fans employ ‘queerbaiting’ to call out media producers and performers 
who they believe have deliberately inserted homoerotic subtext in order 
to court a queer following and yet never actualize this subtext; it has 
attracted a level of cultural currency in the popular and scholarly 
field. In this introduction to the Journal of Fandom Studies special 
issue on the topic, the issue’s guest editor sets out how the term has 
developed in extant scholarship, including more recent expansion to 
account for manifest queerness deemed negative. Articles of the present 
collection, five in total, are then introduced in line with their 
connection with current debates and how they advance understandings of 
the term. Future research directions for scholars writing on the topic 
are also considered.

A genealogy of queerbaiting: Legal codes, production codes, ‘bury your 
gays’ and ‘The 100 mess’

Authors: Elizabeth Bridges
Page Start: 115

Contemporary queerbaiting is a historically situated phenomenon that in 
significant ways parallels reactions to nineteenth-century legal-medical 
discourse on the nature of homosexuality, and the subsequent punishment 
of it through enforcement of sodomy laws and/or blackmail against 
(primarily) gay men. In the twentieth century, movie and TV morality 
codes enacted a parallel dynamic of enforcement and punishment, at first 
with the banning of any mention of homosexuality altogether. Later, as 
codes relaxed and homosexuality became visible on-screen, film and TV 
moved from silencing to punishing, with the tendency kill queer 
characters or otherwise present them as miserable and morally 
compromised. The ‘bury your gays’ (BYG) trope, a phenomenon adjacent to 
queerbaiting, developed out of these decades of the 
enforcement-punishment dynamic and continues even decades after the 
codes lost sway. In contemporary television, where queerness is no 
longer entirely taboo, queerbaiting often gives way to canon queer 
characters, who are still killed at vastly disproportionate rates 
compared with their heterosexual counterparts. The fandom of one such 
character – Lexa, killed off from the American CW network’s series The 
100 in March 2016 – brought the dual problems of queerbaiting and BYG 
into the open via a series of unprecedentedly well-coordinated media 
actions that have, perhaps, led TV writers to rethink how they present 
their queer characters in the context of socially aware, interactive 
audiences.

The contest of queerbaiting: Negotiating authenticity in fan–creator 
interactions

Authors: Michael McDermott
Page Start: 133

Queerbaiting emerged as a named phenomenon through fan communities 
challenging the purportedly intentional exploitation of their queer 
sensibilities and desires. Analysing how this dynamic is staged through 
fan–creator interactions is paramount to understanding queerbaiting. I 
suggest that ownership over and claim of a single, authentic textual 
meaning and story is at the heart of the contest of queerbaiting. I 
employ fans and creators of the television shows Supernatural and Teen 
Wolf as case studies and analyse their interactions in online videos of 
fan conventions. I argue that the authenticity and commitment to a 
supposedly singular meaning is negotiated in these interactions through 
the humorous sexualization of the actors and characters. My central 
argument is that fan–creator contestations demonstrate that accusations 
of queerbaiting ultimately rely on notions of authorial intention and 
control.

‘Smile, Derek. Why don’t you smile more?’: The objectification of Derek 
Hale and queerbaiting in MTV’s Teen Wolf

Authors: Jaquelin Elliott And Megan Fowler
Page Start: 145

Holding in mind Barbara Creed’s assertion that the werewolf is a 
‘feminized male monster, a queer creature aligned to the primal 
uncanny’, this article explores gender trouble and queerbaiting in MTV’s 
Teen Wolf – a series infamous in online fan circles for baiting fan 
favourite pairing Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski (dubbed ‘Sterek’ by fans) 
while largely failing to fulfil its promises of dynamic, 
three-dimensional LGBTQ representation. This article enumerates the 
queer cues embedded in Stiles and Derek’s narratives, paying special 
attention to Stiles’ implied bisexuality and Derek’s constant 
objectification by the camera, repeated sexual victimization, and the 
often queered repositioning of his body into the role of ‘damsel in 
distress’. By doing so, this article attempts to contextualize Teen Wolf 
fans’ reasons for shipping Sterek and will argue that this queer reading 
is indeed not a ‘willful misreading’, but one drawing upon a complex web 
of queer affect and queerbaiting in the show. This article will also 
examine the ways in which fans use both fan works and social media not 
only to explore readings of Derek and Stiles as queer and fight back 
against queerbaiting, but also to articulate the reparative potential of 
a consensual relationship with Stiles for Derek’s healing from his 
repeated trauma.

The homoerotics of the boyband, queerbaiting and RPF in pop music fandoms

Authors: Emily E. Roach
Page Start: 167

This article analyses pop music fandoms, exploring the relationship 
between LGBT communities and popular music, the homoerotics of the 
nineties boyband, Nick Jonas and performative allyship, the phenomenon 
of One Direction and related slash ship, Larry Stylinson and the queer 
appeal of solo artist and former One Direction member, Harry Styles. 
Through these examples, this article explores the trends towards 
marketing and styling boybands with an eye towards homosexual men and 
heterosexual teenage girls and/or a large fandom producing queer works 
of ‘Real Person Fiction’. This article interrogates the perilous line 
between being baited for economic gain and the transformative 
possibilities of queer coded pop and homoerotic subtext, which can have 
an affirmational impact on queer fans. It considers the problems with 
making incomplete assumptions about fandom demographics and draws out 
complexities involved when real lives and sexualities are at the 
forefront of anti-queerbaiting rhetoric and fan activism takes a toxic 
turn. The article explains why ‘queerbaiting’, as the term has been 
broadly defined in relation to fictional narratives, is not quite the 
right terminology to use when interrogating the behaviour of pop stars 
and their interactions with the fandoms built around them

Slashbaiting, an alternative to queerbaiting

Authors: Joseph Brennan
Page Start: 187

This article analyses discourse on gay and lesbian Internet forum 
DataLounge that discusses homoeroticism in the BBC’s Merlin. Merlin is a 
cult series that is commonly associated with the ‘queerbaiting’ 
phenomenon, a fan activist term that criticizes unrealized homoerotic 
suggestiveness in mainstream texts. Textual analysis is performed on 
seven relevant threads created between 2009 and 2012, which have 
attracted in excess of 700 responses. The threads were authored by 
predominately gay men and align with the airing of the series, 
commentators posting in real time. Focus is given in the analysis to 
discussion of homoeroticism in the text, in particular on how this 
homoeroticism is interpreted by viewers. Notably, across this sample, 
homoeroticism in Merlin is discussed in a celebratory way, with no 
mention of queerbaiting or the exploitative connotations that underscore 
the term. In fact, such homoeroticism is routinely described as a form 
of ‘fan service’ across the sample. The study provides empirical 
evidence that a sizeable proportion of the Merlin viewership (gay men) 
have a more ‘playful’ approach to the queerbaiting phenomenon. The 
discourse also supports the coining of a new term, ‘slashbaiting’, which 
is in line with a view of homoeroticism in contemporary media as a form 
of fan service, in particular for slash fans.

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