A Quote by Justin Simien
For whatever reason, gay characters, or characters that deal with sexuality issues, who are black, in 'black films'... are typically not dealt with with any sort of complexity. They're exoticized: their being gay is sort of the point.
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I think, almost, the film industry thinks that by making gay characters super masculine, it's an attempt at saying being gay is OK if you act like straight people. I don't think we should just have gay characters who are 100 percent femme, either. I just think it's about that mix and creating more diverse gay characters.
I probably haven't had enough gay characters in my stuff. When you're writing something, you're thinking, 'Why couldn't this person be black, white, gay?'
I feel like because I've done more gay characters, gay scenes, or gay projects than most straight actors, people see it as some sort of mission. It's more of a case-by-case basis, and just trying to capture figures that I love. I guess that a lot of the figures that I love were gay.
I'm interested in gay characters - not trying to sensationalize gay characters, just [representing] who are in my personal life. I'm interested in exploring my world and my friends, and a lot of them happen to be gay.
When we have gay characters on TV, they're just, kind of, gay for the sake of being gay. That's their personality. That's their whole backstory, that's their future story, that's their present story - it's just gay. Nobody's just gay.
Typically in horror films the character just services the plot, and you really are just going from 'point a' to 'point b,' just so that you can end up at 'point c.' They are just sort of stick characters. That's just not interesting to me.
I've sort of dealt with the characters' lives more; particularly the women characters.
Outside of the oppressive nature that the South offered to the black people, black gay people, black gay people who happened to be Christian, who wouldn't want to leave? I couldn't wait to get out of there.
The representation of gay characters on screen is important for us all to think about because there are sadly too few representations of gay characters on screen in mainstream cinema. If Marvel starts making movies about gay superheroes, then we'll be in a really great place. We're not at that place.
Being gay is harder than being black. I didn't have to come out black. I didn't have to tell my parents about what its like to be black.
I think Justin Timberlake verges on being gay, he gets gay airplay. Britney gets loads as well. If you're male and you're black you're not going to get much play in a gay club.
There is an obsession with black tragedy. If you see a black movie, it's typically historical, and it tends to deal with our pain. And listen, there have been some excellent films made in that vein, and there are some painful parts of black history that should be explored, but it is kind of weird that only those films bubble up to the surface.
Being born gay, black, and female is not a revolutionary act. Being proud to be a gay black female is.
I think being gay has resulted in gay characters standing front and center in all of my work.
I felt like it was a courageous show [Black-ish] from the beginning. We are a black family - we're not a family that happens to be black. But the show is not even about us being black. The show is about us being a family. That is groundbreaking - on TV, the black characters either happen to be black or they're the "black character," where everything they say is about being black. I think that's the genius.
That is the beauty of having characters that don't make a big deal out of being gay, or lesbian, or whatever. They are just what they are, and that is acceptable - and that nobody should question that and that love is love.
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