"THE WORLD TO COME," A Case for LGBT Sensitivity Viewers in Hollywood

BY. Karen Frost

Sensitivity reader: an individual who reviews unpublished manuscripts in order to identify potentially sensitive depictions of representation, bias, culture, etc.

***Spoiler alert: This article includes spoilers for “The World to Come,” “Ammonite,” “The Favourite,” “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” and “Brokeback Mountain.” Please read at your own risk***

The 2005 movie “Brokeback Mountain” was a landmark for LGBT representation. Using A-List Hollywood actors, it told the story of same-sex male attraction in one of the most heteronormative environments in America, showing how this environment and the societal factors influencing it can have an ultimately toxic impact on the men living within it. For years, the lesbian community hoped for a similarly quietly epic, emotionally intricate opus—the lesbian “Brokeback Mountain.” 2021’s “The World to Come” should have been that movie. The story of two farmer’s wives in antebellum New England, it is a glimpse into the hidden desires and lives of women living in the pinnacle of domesticity. Like Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby are exquisite in their roles. Their chemistry is palpable. But the movie is not the sweeping love story it purports to be, and its direct parallels to “Brokeback Mountain” undercut rather than help it. 

Much of the punch of “Brokeback Mountain” lies in its poignant ending. The death of Jack Twist and the sorrow and regret of Ennis Del Mar highlight the tragic outcome of homophobia in American society. The ending carries a deep and powerful message about love in the shadows and the toll it takes. Similarly, “The World to Come” uses death to make a point: in this case, a commentary on the violence of some men and their possessive, sexist nature. But the cultural landscape that exists in the LGBT community today is very different from the one that existed 16 years ago. In 2005, “The World to Come” might have been just as powerful as “Brokeback Mountain.” In 2021, its timing is too late. The “Bury Your Gays” trope has been a lightning rod issue for the LGBT community since 2016, and as a result, the death of one of the queer female characters becomes not forlornly tragic—as the filmmakers intended—but rather a betrayal of the community toward which the movie was at least partially marketed.

Why didn’t the filmmakers see it coming? (Or did they?) 

In the novel writing community, sensitivity readers have become all but mandatory for authors writing about minority communities of which they’re not a part. Sensitivity readers act as a check for unintentional slights against or misrepresentations of minority communities. This serves to pre-empt any potential controversy post-publication. However, the film industry, for unclear reasons, seems to have eschewed the use of what we might call “sensitivity viewers.” In the case of “The World to Come,” a sensitivity viewer would have picked up on the movie’s glaring problem immediately: it’s yet another “dead lesbian” story. For the presumably heterosexual writers, director, and producers of “The World to Come,” the death of one of the queer female protagonists and the emotional trauma that it causes her partner is hauntingly beautiful. It shows the ephemeral nature of love and the agony of private grief. It shows the resiliency of the human spirit by way of imagination. For queer female viewers, however, it’s just one more bait and switch by Hollywood. The chasm between these interpretations is both vast and avoidable.

As of April 2021, only 5.2% of the 1,307 TV shows catalogued by LezWatch.TV are tagged as having given happy endings to their queer female characters. Although statistics don’t exist on happy endings for queer female movie characters, the number is likely the same. In comparison, an estimated 60% of heterosexual US movie characters get some form of happy ending. One reason for this high percentage of unhappy endings is the high kill rate for queer female characters. Of all the queer female characters on TV catalogued by LezWatch, 21% have been killed, a rate orders of magnitude higher than non-minorities.

Enter a sensitivity viewer.

A sensitivity viewer would have told the creators behind “The World to Come” that Hollywood has an endemic problem with how it tells stories about queer women, and that the ending of this particular script as written would be off-putting to many queer female viewers, who are painfully aware of the extent of this problem. A sensitivity viewer would have highlighted that the juxtaposition of lesbian sex scenes with scenes of the character’s dead body would recall the legacy of the Hays Motion Picture Production Code, which implicitly mandated that LGBT characters had to either be villains or depressed, pathetic figures who received unhappy endings so that their “perversion” would be “punished” before viewers. The lasting effect of this “morality clause” in film means that subconsciously, viewers are primed to interpret the death of some characters (“sluts” in horror movies, LGBT characters, etc.) as being morally justified. Put another way, the ending of “The World to Come” inadvertently told viewers that queer women deserve death for abrogating social norms. 

A sensitivity viewer, in short, would have suggested the filmmakers change the ending, while leaving them the ultimate choice of whether to do so and how.

Although it may sound like it, this is not a scree against “The World to Come” and its lost potential. Not at all. Rather, this article is about how many of Hollywood’s forays into lesbian content have suffered these same defects. “The World to Come” is the rule, not the exception. It is common for filmmakers to use the misery of queer women as fodder for their own ideological messages. Among recent movies, “Ammonite,” for example, pats itself on the back for the artistry of Mary Anning refusing to become the object in a glass case Charlotte Murchison hopes she will be, denying its queer viewers a happy ending in favor of a self-satisfied metaphor. “The Favourite” sees all three of its female protagonists end wretchedly to show they’re victims of their own political machinations and personal manipulations. Even the queer directed and queer starring French movie “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” sacrifices the potential for a happy ending in favor of denouncing patriarchy. When looked at from a further distance, there are very, very few lesbian-themed A-List movies that don’t fall into the trap of queer female pain as the climax or denouement.

The role of a sensitivity viewer, whether such a thing exists in reality or only in theory, isn’t to say to content creators, “You can’t do this,” but rather to say, “Have you considered…?” In 2016, after approximately a third of queer female American TV characters were killed in a single TV season, the Lexa Pledge was developed as a way to encourage Hollywood to change its approach to queer female representation. It asked content makers in Hollywood to give queer characters meaningful story arcs, to consult queer resources when crafting stories, and to be cognizant of the pernicious persistence of Bury Your Gays in storylines. It asked shows, in essence, to make use of sensitivity viewers. The pledge fizzled after receiving only sixteen signatures.

There are many resources that filmmakers could tap to act as sensitivity viewers, from GLAAD to LGBT Fans Deserve Better to LezWatchTV. Even individuals within the LGBT community with a strong background in understanding the history of LGBT representation on screen would be well-positioned to offer advice (WhatAboutDat would happily do it, to name just one). With so many opportunities to vet content through experienced sensitivity viewers, it’s unclear why Hollywood rejects what would otherwise be a simple fix. Whether it’s pride, ignorance, or something else, the truth is Hollywood needs help. Until it learns to ask for that help, it will continue to produce movies like “The World to Come”—almost perfect, but deeply flawed.