The Borgias‘ website frames Micheletto as a tragic figure. The practice became so common that one reformer moaned that “here is no distinction between the sexes or anything else anymore,” and “to Florence” was slang for sodomy in sixteenth-century Germany. In this culture of bachelors, sexual relationships often formed between older and younger men. Men often did not marry until their thirties, and then took brides barely in their teens. Renaissance Italy was relatively tolerant of same-sex relations, generally speaking.
By applying a homogenous, contemporary framework to the varied past, these series provide a misleading portrayal of the ever-shifting concept of sexuality in culture.įor example, The Borgias follows the titular clan’s schemes for ever-greater power across the Renaissance Italian city-states. A sampling of such shows featuring queer experiences is in the chart below. This trend is most obvious on shows set in the distant past, beyond the easy recollection of our parents or grandparents. Yet many historical television series apply our contemporary understanding of gender and sex to their period, ignoring the ideas unique to that era and culture.
Quite the opposite: the meaning and experience of same-sex desire has shifted radically across periods and cultures. And neither this nor any other unified definition of homosexuality has applied throughout history. Indeed, the Western concept of binary sexual orientations – i.e., of homosexuality and heterosexuality as mutually exclusive and immutable categories of personhood is of radically recent vintage. These historical same-sex experiences, though, are far from equivalent to the present-day concept of homosexuality. By depicting queer figures in history, then, television has the power to break through this seeming invisibility, and give queerness a voice where many assume it had none. This illicit connotation means that, while historical accounts do exist for the eagle-eyed researcher to find, the archival record of queerness is often hidden from view. Across many periods and cultures, people who pursued same-sex attraction often faced dire ramifications for their actions, legal or otherwise. But it’s also important to remember that, historically, the nature of queer experiences have been an especially difficult to track.
Yes, portraying modern, everyday queer experiences has great socio-cultural importance. While little explored, these kinds of representation are arguably even more important than contemporary portrayals of queer experiences. It is at the intersection of historical and LGBT representation, then, that we find a curious (or, shall we say, queer) niche: same-sex-oriented characters in non-modern contexts.
In spite of increased numbers of LGBT characters on television overall, the quality and diversity of their representation remains spotty at best, with the Spring 2016 “Kill Your Gays” ] epidemic serving as just one recent example. If we change the question to how much LGBT representation matters, though, the stakes are exponentially higher. The setting, historical or present-day, is ultimately a stage on which the characters and stories play. With the exception of the occasional diehard historian, though, most audience members don’t see significant harm in these changes – and perhaps rightly so. In a much discussed, example, The Tudors decided that Henry VIII didn’t need to grow round as he aged. Although many historical series are conceived of as prestige productions, their fidelity to the eras they depict is hardly by-the-book. How much does historical representation matter? On television, it is in a grey area at best. A queer seduction in Renaissance Italy on The Borgias between Micheletto (Sean Harris) and Pascal (Charlie Carrick).