The Vito Russo Test: How Film Studios Fail Poemosexual Fans

As you might know, the Bechdel test was developed in the 1980's as a way of assessing a film's treatment of its female characters. To pass the Bechdel test, a movie must have at least two female characters (preferably named) who have a conversation about something other than a male. This seems like a really low bar, but only a small handful of major studio films pass every year. Basically, the Bechdel test shows us that mainstream films continue to hew to a long misogynist tradition in popular culture to marginalize the female experience.

Since Poemosexuality has become a thing, I've been thinking a lot about gay characters in media, and specifically in sci-fi/action films--and whether anyone tracks the treatment of LGBT characters along criteria like those of the Bechdel test.

I discovered that GLAAD does an annual Studio Responsibility Index (SRI), which surveys and inventories major film studio releases. For purposes of the SRI, GLAAD groups films into 5 categories: comedy, genre (sci-fi, action, and fantasy), animated/family, drama, and documentary. The SRI then identifies as "inclusive" any film that has LGBT characters of any stripe, major or minor. Next, as part of their evaluation, GLAAD applies the Vito Russo test, inspired by the Bechdel test, to assess an inclusive film's treatment of its gay character(s). Under this standard, a movie includes a meaningful LGBT character if the following are true:

• The film contains a character that is identifiably LGBT.
• That character must not be predominantly defined by their sexual orientation or gender identity. This refers to the depth of the character: flimsy two-dimensional stereotypes vs. actual characters who have personality and attributes beyond just their gayness.
• The LGBT character plays a meaningful role in the narrative. In other words, the character is not window dressing to provide commentary or situational humor, like gross-out or gay-panic jokes. Rather, the character must be significant enough to the plot that the character's removal would noticeably alter the story.

I was gratified to see that the gay characters in Cloud Atlas passed the Vito Russo test a few years ago. I know that the Wachowskis' films have not been great since The Matrix, but at least they're doing LGBT representation in film right!

Aside from that, the 2015 SRI, which reviewed films released in 2014, reveals what I've been bitching about all along: 

1. Other than documentaries, genre films had by far the lowest percentage of inclusive films out of the other categories: just 6.5%, which means that only 3 out of 46 genre films released in 2014 had LGBT characters in them at all. And it's not getting better. In 2013, GLAAD counted 43 major release films in the sci-fi/fantasy genre, and 4 (or 9.3%) had LGBT characters. 
2. It's not so easy to discern from GLAAD's summary exactly which 2014 films it counted as the 3 inclusive genre films. (Maybe Exodus: Gods and Kings? ...Not sure what the others were.) But as far as I can tell, no sci-fi films passed GLAAD's Vito Russo test in 2014. That means there were zero characters of substance in any major studio sci-fi film the entire year. Zero.

[gratuitous fan art]

I understand that people might dispute whether Oscar Isaac's lip bite and his other acting choices are enough to substantiate Poe's character as canonically gay. What I don't get is people who think that LGBT representation in modern pop culture is just fine, and that we gay fans are somehow being too greedy in wishing/hoping that Poe is gay, and that we should just be satisfied with comedies and dreary awards-focused dramas that include LGBT characters. But as the surge of the Poemosexual Agenda has demonstrated, we fans of sci-fi/fantasy in general and Star Wars in particular are clearly not satisfied that there are no LGBT protagonists in a major studio genre film. 

I really want the first to be Poe, because Star Wars has been my jam since 1977 and it would mean the galaxy to me as a gay fan to be able to say that Star Wars broke that ground. If he was just "identifiably gay" in a way that didn't rely purely on innuendo or code, he would clearly satisfy the other two criteria of the Vito Russo test, and we would have our first heroic LGBT protagonist in a major studio sci-fi/fantasy film.