Are All Representations Equal?

My other half is a big fan of the mystery-comedy Psych, which I'd recommend as a genuinely feel-good fun series. The other day, however, she commented that there's one episode that left her feeling a bit uncomfortable.

[Spoilers ahoy! Click through for the rest of the post]



The storyline in question features a lesbian senior citizen who becomes romantically fixated on her housemate, and deals with this by killing off the housemate's potential suitors. My Lady Friend said that it was bad form for an otherwise good show to haul out a 'psycho lesbian' storyline, especially since this trope is about as persistent as it's offensive. I wasn't totally persuaded, and pointed out that the show is (by the requirements of its genre) heavily populated with people who think murder is an awesome solution-- in fact, an episode from the same season featured a straight woman killing off the love interests of the male object of her obsession.

My Lady Friend thought about that argument for second. 'No,' she said. 'The problem is there's lots and lots of totally normal straight people on the show, but that murdering old lady is the only gay one.'

She definitely hit the nail on the head. The core problem with having a character be the lone representative of their 'in-group'-- men, Nigerians, asexuals, deaf people, maths professors, Buddhists, or whoever-- their actions become much more loaded. By dint of having no context, these characters become the Authorial View on Group X, or even the In-Universe Facts About Group X. Group X doesn't even have to represent a minority or a marginalised group in the real world, although the impact may be a bit lessened.

One solution, which appears somewhat regularly, is to have the main cast be so diverse that everyone becomes the lone representative of their group. When there is no background 'default', every character becomes more clearly unique, rather than simply an exception to the 'norm'. The original Star Trek got good mileage out of this method, as have a number of other shows set in diverse environments.

Another solution, which works better for stories which will have a majority 'norm' due to the constraints of the setting, is to make sure the minority character doesn't go it alone. This doesn't necessarily mean saturating the main cast--