Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Klaus and Dave in
The Umbrella Academy, Raymond and Kevin in
Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Yorkie and Kelly in
Black Mirror’s ‘San Junipero’ and the list goes on. But what about the LGBT relationships that were never meant to be?
Queerbaiting, a technique deployed by creators in entertainment to tease the development of a queer relationship between two characters without ever actually confirming it, has been used for decades to attract the support of LGBT audiences and increase viewer ratings. The suggestion of certain characters having an LGBT identity can be an exciting prospect for an audience in need of representation and its momentum can be sustained for a long time. It’s only when the creators or the characters themselves speak to the contrary that these illusions of queer representation are shattered, and a show’s reputation for inclusivity is taken away as quickly as it was gained.
As someone whose household didn’t have access to the Disney Channel until the age of twelve, at which point I had surpassed the right time to get overly obsessed with the likes of
Hannah Montana, I am a firm supporter of Team Nickelodeon, and I’ll jump right in with why I think it is objectively the superior channel.
Firstly, Nickelodeon demonstrated a range of characters from non-traditional families, for example in
Drake and Josh, whose entire premise relies on the fact that the titular characters belong to a newly-established blended family, and
iCarly, in which all three of the main characters have at least one parent completely excluded from the show, if not both. Rather than pushing the “American dream” family, Nickelodeon provided representation for kids watching who were living under circumstances different to the traditional family model.