Do Orange Is the New Black Fall Into the ‘Bury Your Gays’ Trope?

HOW ‘ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK’ HELPED ME REALIZE I WAS GAY (COLUMN)

As the first season gaed massive and mastream populary, I watched iends embrace gay culture and the unfiltered reprentatn of whout battg an eyelash. The years of anxiety I felt about beg gay melted away mut.

Case pot: In October, The CW will break ground wh Batwoman, the first live-actn drama seri revolvg entirely around a lbian superhero who also is played by an openly gay actrs (hello aga, Ruby Rose). "No; fuck, not gay.

ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK, WHE, STRAIGHT, GAY, AND EVERYTHG BETWEEN

— Gee Menz to Joe Caputo, rponse to him askg whether motach are regard a "gay thg". Not only is Orange is the New Black highly addictg— was released on Netflix all at once, so many viewers bge-watched all 13 episos—but on top of that, tackl several ntroversial issu like sexualy, homophobia, patriarchy, class, and race, often simultaneoly. Intersectnaly is the ia that thgs like racism, sexism, homophobia, and other typ of bigotry, do not act penntly of one another; stead, the forms of opprsn terrelate.

He was actor died on Tuday, acrdg to a rep, but no e was appeared Netflix’s “Orange Is the New Black” as Di Pistella, a gay rrectns officer at Lchfield Penentiary who served as the ma antagonist of Season 4 and 5. Lren Morelli, a former Orange is the New Black wrer and -executive producer, wrote an op-ed 2014 tailg her g-out journey, tled “While Wrg for Orange is the New Black, I Realized I Was Gay. Most notably, the terveng years, gay marriage was legalized.

"I'm not gay, sir.

ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK MA TV—AND ME—GAY

But more poted, and more troublg this se, is that Posey Washgton’s sexual orientatn mak her one on a ightengly long list of gay characters who don’t get to survive their own TV narrativ. For a sense of how wispread and furiatg this trend has been, browse through Autostraddle’s list of 160 ad gay and lbian characters on TV, nsir the ongog reverberatns of Lexa’s ath on The 100, read more about why that particular ath mattered, or jt scroll down the “Bury Your Gays” entry TV Trop. OITNB, nversely, Posey’s ath to illtrate exactly the issue that “Bury Your Gays” seeks to highlight.

Lchfield is full of gay and bisexual mat — Bayley uld’ve leaned too hard on Nicky’s back and killed her stead. The plotle is meant to draw parallels to the Black Liv Matter movement, and Posey is a gay, black woman, who has been almost unfailgly sympathetic on a seri where most characters are pated wh more nuanced moral flts.

But ’s a ttament to the re and gutss of Orange Is the New Black’s storytellg that she was only one of several proment gay characters on the show, and that her ath is a lite, trite terweavg of many cultural and narrative threads.