Queerbaiting & Teen Wolf [Core Post 2, Laurel]

As Chris pointed out in his blog post, Mark Andrejevic’s model of online fan sites doesn’t necessarily fit with today’s style of online activity and auteur-esque TV production. I think Andrejevic’s model works well for reality tv shows and for ongoing, lower-budget, more consistently filmed shows. For example, an audience cannot have any illusion that they have an impact on a Netflix or HBO miniseries that was entirely filmed before release and has no plans for continuation. However, it’s much easier to indulge in that illusion when the show’s production schedule is much closer to real-time, like the reality shows or soap operas that Andrejevic discusses, or perhaps in between seasons of a show that’s been renewed. Further, the snarky tone he outlines is not as common or prevalent across other online fan communities, though of course there are certain sites, and points in certain shows’ trajectories, where this tone comes through in fan communities.
This reminds me of times when that illusion of participation and interactivity has been perpetuated by producers of particular shows, and the backlash that occurs when it is revealed to be false. This situation is so common around representations of LGBTQ characters and relationships that there is a term for the practice - “queerbaiting.”
One recent example is the show Teen Wolf, which, at one point, openly recognized and courted a large segment of their fan base that was interested in the show’s potential for queer characters and storylines. These fans mainly supported a relationship between two male characters - Stiles and Derek, known as “Sterek” - both for the pairing itself and for the potential of gay representation in a teen program. While the show itself provided only hints of subtextual chemistry between the characters and a coy refusal to categorically define Stiles as either heterosexual or bisexual, paratextual materials around the show leaned hard on the ship in order to draw attention and promotion to the show. Here and here, for example, actors Dylan O’Brien and Tyler Hoechlin clearly invoke the Sterek ship in promos for Teen Wolf at the Teen Choice Awards; here, showrunner Jeff Davis answers a question about Stiles’s bisexuality at New York Comic Con 2012; and at one point, MTV hosted a Teen Wolf fan fiction contest which significantly did not exclude slash fan fiction from the outset, and four of the five finalists involved Sterek in some way. Fan response was incredibly positive, drawing even greater attention to the show, and growing the fan base even more. However, by season four in 2014, the show began removing openly LGBTQ characters and storylines, systematically closing down the ambiguities that allowed for the possibility of a future Stiles/Derek relationship. Responding to a fan’s question about Derek’s heterosexual love interest around the same time, Davis said, “... the truth is no show is written by the fans. It’s written by normal people like me and my team of writers,” a statement which offended fans both with the negation of earlier promises of a collaborative relationship between fan and producer, and the construction of fans as abnormal. Through these and other diegetic and paratextual denials of the ship, the “forms of manipulation practiced by producers” (Andrejevic 37) were made clear, resulting in fan backlash that produced articles such as “The Trouble With Teen Wolf,” “The Dangers of Teen Wolf through ‘Queer Baiting,’” and “How to Kill Your Slash Fandom in 5 Steps,” just to pinpoint a few, and in many fans simply walking away from the show.
While Andrejevic presents a fan site in which two drives - the desire for transformative fan participation in the shows that they love, and the recognition that such participation, while seemingly enabled by digital media, will not be realized - are twinned, I would argue that in most cases there is rather a progression of fan understanding from one to the other. And I find it so intriguing that the cultivation of this ideal of participation, seemingly ideal for both producer and fan, can in fact be dangerous to producers and shows.