Please add lesbian, gay, and LGBTQ+ to genres

a-17

IMDb member since July 1999

https://www.imdb.com/user/ur0390118/

The 1st List Of: Gay/Lesbian/Bi Industry People, Both In Front and Behind The Camera

by a-17 | created - 31 May 2013 | updated - 05 Mar 2019 | Public

2,023 names

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls053772895/

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If you agree that LGBTQ+ means Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and others. Those are sexual orientations just as Heterosexuality/Straight

IMDb's definition of "Genre" is:

 Genre should relate to the main driving force behind the story arc, any sub-plots may be better represented via keywords.

I'm practically certain that everyone can conceive that if the sexual orientation of the protagonist isn't relevant to the main story arc then it shouldn't be considered as a genre. 

So logically, we are debating to decide whether or not the sexual orientation protagonist is relevant in a love story. As I interpret IMDb's definition, LGBTQ+ doesn't define the story arc, the mood, the conflict of a love story as well as "Romance" does.

Replace Juliet by Julius in Shakespeare's play, Romeo and Juliet, and you won't get a much more different film.

Even if exactly the same language were used, the play would have a very different narrative twist, not least because two men were unable to marry in that particular period, and because it would be unbelievable for nobody to mention or have issue with a same sex couple.  To use your own descriptors, the mood and conflicts would have additional layers, and if being realistic additional conflicts and story arcs would emerge.

For many LGBT+ films, the sexuality/gender status of the characters IS the plot, and this is so common that these films have because a genre in themselves, or a co-genre i.e Transamerica is a 'LGBTQ+ drama'.  Without the Trans issue, it is just a plain old road trip movie.

Maybe, or maybe not.

Regardless, the general idea invariably is predicated upon defining "genre" in such a way as to account for movies tailored to human group identities. With that in mind, advocates of this stuff could throw in, for lack of a better word, all the dimensions: sex, age, color, ancestry, heritage, culture, religion, faith, profession, diet, military service, medical condition, criminal tendency, personality type, socioeconomic class and political wing, in addition to sexual orientation and gender identity, or wherever upon the sexuality spectrum a human being can possibly fall.

And just to note, "LGBTQ" as a phrase does so proceed to group several ideas together that do not always belong together in all contexts. That is because the acronym represents a grouping that is of a sociopolitical strategic nature. In other words, some people who "belong" to any one of the letters want nothing to do with people who "belong" to another of the letters, or any of the other letters.

@LovelyLabrys It's an interesting point. On one hand there will be less complaints from such people here, but on another... Validity of such complaints is questionable to begin with. Having less of that here won't fix the problem of people not being tolerant.  

I don't know. The way these high-profile streaming services categorize things may be stirring confusion in moviegoers (rather people who interact with the world through their smartphones).

@TastyFineWine "SO yes please add a new genre entry of LGBTQ+"

Are you saying that a film with the genre Romance would need a second genre if it was a romance between two women instead of a romance between a man and a woman? Are you saying that Die Hard should have another genre attached to it if John McClane happened to be a gay man? Why do you want to single out the LGBTQ+ community?

Read my post in its entirety. I went from Genre change to just moving the Tag listing.

@TastyFineWine Ok, fair enough.

I did at some point effectively express openness to the idea of implementing a genre designation for works in which not all the characters are the same sexual orientation and in which that very condition or situation is somehow instrumental to the plot.

Hopefully, we can at some point, spend some time evaluating the definition of "genre", because one thing that has always somewhat stood out how the large body of "Western" flicks (the stories set in North American frontier, from the years 1840 to 1920, with certain styles or themes) are considered to belong to a genre. Seems like Western is the only genre like that, as far as IMDb-recognized genres go.

Having thought about this and discussed this even more, why not add the Tag 'Straight' because tagging a show as LBGT+ is the same as saying 'straight is normal and LBGT+ is not. This could even apply to 'Caucasian' as opposed to 'Asian'.

Labels in and of themselves can be hurtful and damaging!

I've suspected that the way some popular streaming services conjure up new "genres" (be the monikers for them new or old words), or categorize the contents of their catalogs, has obfuscated the matter. On the other hand, analyzing the situation, we do have to wonder why Western is a genre when apparently no such thing exists for Period pieces taking place in other era, locations or cultures. For instance there is no moniker/designation for films focused on battles between marines and high sea pirates, be it in/around the Mediterranean or the Caribbean. Seemingly cultural "zeitgeist" governs the way society chooses to categorize entertainment (and education) in one medium or another.

Wikipedia defines "genre" as "any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time." If you only pay attention to movies released since the 1990s, you might be forgiven for thinking the Western genre is an oddly specific category, because in recent years, Westerns have become increasingly rare. However, from about the 1920s-1960s, Westerns were enormously popular in America. Like many film genres, Westerns had their roots in literature. Pulp novels from the late 1800s told sensationalized stories about life on the frontier, and they became so popular and numerous that they established a whole set of tropes and expectations that people came to characterize as "western". The advent of film further expanded on these tropes, developing the 'agreed-upon conventions' more and more until eventually they became cliche and the genre more or less died out. Virtually every western made since the mid-1960s has been in some way a "deconstruction" of the genre, and since the 1980s they've appeared only sporadically, despite occasional bursts of interest. But for a long time, it was a really thriving, full-fledged genre.

So, to answer the question, "Why don't they have a moniker/designation for battles between marines and high sea pirates", well, as a matter of fact, they do. "Swashbuckler" films, as they were called, enjoyed some popularity from the 1930s-1950s, with such stars as Errol Flynn typifying the genre. However, the "swashbuckler" is usually considered a subgenre of "adventure" movies, rather than its own separate genre. The difference between a genre and a subgenre can be somewhat subjective, but the key difference is that a true "genre" must have sustained popularity/prevalence in the media for a long stretch of time, whereas a "subgenre" tends to be more infrequent, rare or "niche", and almost always fits under a broader genre.

Some other subgenres that revolve around specific time periods and settings include:

Samurai films (set in Japan during the 1700-1800s or earlier)

Sword-and-Sandal films (epic films set in Ancient Roman times and earlier)

Medieval fantasy/adventure (set in Europe in the Middle Ages)

Etc.

During the 1950s, the sheer amount of individual western TV shows airing at the same time was staggering, especially considering how few channels there were on TV at the time. There's never been a point in history where swashbuckler, samurai, sword-and-sandal or medieval films came close to matching that level of popularity, prevalence and sustained development. That's why, as of now, they haven't been granted "genre" status.

This is not to say that a subgenre can never be elevated to genre status. Throughout the 20th century and up until very recently, "superhero" would have been considered a subgenre of "action", because they weren't really that common. In the past decade, "superhero" films have become ubiquitous. Already, people are starting to see this as a full-fledged genre instead of a subgenre, but that definitely wasn't the case in the 1970s-1990s, when Superman and Batman were basically the only two franchises representing it. Still, personally, I think it would be premature for IMDb to add "superhero" as a genre at this point. A true genre needs to show that it has staying power, and a single decade or so isn't as long as people think it is.

Basically, zeitgeist has a huge effect on what's considered a genre. Western fiction just happened to be part of that zeitgeist at the time that film was first being developed as an art form, and as a genre it thrived for over half a century.

@jeorj_euler​ 

Now that IMDb has opened the door widely to subgenre keywords, it may make sense to designate one or more of these types of keywords as subgenres. 

There are many potential "subgenre" keywords of this nature, some of which could and should be merged at some point. Here is just a sample of these types of keywords currently in existence.

queer-cinema (502 titles)

new-queer-cinema (22 titles)

experimental-queer-cinema (5 titles)

transgender-cinema (2 titles)

lgbt-interest (265 titles)

lgbt-cinema (391 titles)

lgbtq-movie (7 titles)

lgbtq-series (30 titles)

lgbt-film (51 titles)

lgbtq-film (29 titles)

lgbtq-short-film (3 titles)

lgbt (2166 titles)

lgbtq (1641 titles)

lgbtqi (80 titles)

lgbt-plus (325 titles)

lgbtq-plus (15 titles)

lgbtqiaplus (2 titles)

lgbtqia-theme (2 titles)

lgbtqia (76 titles)

lgtb (11 titles)

lgtbi (7 titles)

lgtbiq (2 titles)

@keyword_expert​ I was under a strong impression that New Queer Cinema is a way larger wave, hm. Something to think about.

I also really need to see more Gregg Araki. 

Of Araki's work, I've only seen Mysterious Skin and Kaboom, and so far apart in timing that I didn't even pay attention to the fact the two involved the same storyteller, but that happens a lot, unless a filmmaker's body of work is always done in a consistently niche style so as feel familiar if any one of the materials had been seen before.

@jeorj_euler​ I am infinitely intrigued by the fact that like his first three pictures are no budget, because it means he persisted despite no one offered jobs or budget after a first feature. 

And it's not like he's so underground he's opposed to this kind of stuff, since he directs television in between movies, most recently an episode of "Dahmer". 

The comment by keyword expert reveals a way to find movies and shows that may be within lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, experimenting, queerish, androgenous or gender-non-binary interest in some way. A lot of us have bore in mind that none of these adjectives or descriptions reflect an actual type/style of story. Are all of the movies that feature these people, ideas, experiences, themes or motifs, front and center, enough alike to actually constitute belonging to the same genre? That's the question.

Well, the fact that IMDb is unable to actually expand the domain of assignable values to the genre data type would be shocking to anybody who hasn't been really monitoring the technical progress of the website over the decades.