Current media representations of closeted queer men may be promoting harmful stereotypes and overlooking the reasons for their toxic traits.
By Mateo Daffin
Eric Dane as Cal Jacobs in HBO’s Euphoria / photo: HBO
Over the first two decades of the 21st century, the representation of gay and queer male relationships in media has become increasingly common. In 2022 alone, we’ve seen performances of teenage romance in Heartstopper to the navigation of middle-age in Uncoupled to the queer world of New York’s Fire Island in Fire Island. As stories and characters of gay men become more diverse and three-dimensional, however, one trope continues to haunt film and television in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways: the closet case.
This character of the closet case is a notorious villain. He’s a man who lives a double life and in the process lies and manipulates those around him in order to hide his crippling insecurity over being queer and thus less of a man. He’s fixated on achieving some form of a masculine ideal but his obsession is what often leads to the destruction of others and especially himself. This trope is laced with many truths but the message that these storytellers are sending may not always paint a full picture nor provide proper accountability for the factors that turn closeted men into harmful people. While being closeted can torment a man, leaving him feeling alone and bitter, their nefariousness cannot solely rest upon their queerness. Furthermore, while many closeted men may very well be toxic people, there should also be representations of men who just aren’t ready to come out, are still figuring themselves out, or will never come out but do not use it as a reason to make the lives of those around them miserable.
One of the most poignant examples of this trope is the character Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch) in the 2021 western, Power of the Dog. A rugged but well-to-do cowboy, Phil is immediately introduced as the film’s antagonist as he degrades and humiliates Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), the effeminate son of the local inn owner, Rose (Kirsten Dunst). Soon, she becomes the wife of Phil’s brother, a match that Phil vehemently opposes. As the movie progresses, the audience learns more about Phil’s obsession with his mentor from adolescence, Bronco Henry, who taught him the ropes of being a rancher and of becoming a man. It’s clear later on, however, that Phil loved Henry romantically after the audience discovers his secret stash of homoerotic magazines at a den near a creek. Although Henry is dead, Phil’s love for him lives on through his constant verbal reminiscence and his determination to replicate the same hyper-masculine aura of his former teacher.
This hyper-masculine ideal, however, is the same force that drives Phil to act maliciously towards Rose. The rancher insists on not bathing before meeting her, verbally insulting her, and humiliating her son in front of his friends, all of which eventually push her to become an anxiety-ridden alcoholic. By the last half of the film, Phil has taken her son on as a mentee in an effort to make him a man in the same vein as Bronco Henry. This new relationship quickly ends, however, at the climax of the movie when Peter kills him by placing anthrax in his tobacco; revenge for the cruel treatment of his mother.
While watching the movie, it's easy to loathe but pity Phil. A man who lost true love at an early age while also living in 1800s western America, Phil has little chance of ever reproducing such an intimate relationship with another man, leaving him isolated and bitter. Never actually showing homoerotic relations, however, the film obscures much of Phil’s character development, leaving the interpretation of him too ambiguous. If Phil isn’t actually the manly man he postures as, who actually is he? Phil’s true nature is reduced to memory, an abstraction that paints a harsh pipeline from queerness to villainy without examining the factors that lead to such toxic behavior.
Parallels can also be seen in the character of Cal Jacobs (Eric Dane) in HBO’s Euphoria. An abusive father and neglectful husband, Jacobs is introduced as a villainous side character responsible for the cruel, sociopathic traits of his son Nate (Jacob Elordi). It isn’t until the second season that the writers make a poor attempt to develop and humanize him using the show’s signature device of the flashback. Like Phil, as a teenager, Cal developed a secret sexual relationship with another male, but instead of his mentor, it was his best friend, Derek (Henry Eikenberry). The show employs stereotypical masculine characterizations, depicting them as star athletes and popular with girls. Unlike Power of the Dog, however, Euphoria depicts the two of them engaging physically with each other, with one of the most vulnerable moments of their relationship being an intimate dance at a local gay bar. Their romance ends, however, when Cal learns that his girlfriend is pregnant with Nate’s older brother and thus terminates their clandestine affair.
The backstory, however, is still not enough to explain the horrendous actions of present-day Jacobs. Cal embodies many stereotypes of contemporary closeted men. He is an unfaithful spouse, habitually cheating on his wife. He lurks behind a blank Grindr profile, shamefully hiding his true identity in the shadows. And most egregious of all, he has sex with a minor, giving credibility to the myth that many queer men are pedophiles. It’s important to note though, that Cal is not gay and proclaims his pansexuality to his family when he stumbles home intoxicated. This sexual fluidity, however, is represented by depravity, manipulation, and deceit all of which can not be blamed on sexuality alone.
Finally, in its most nuanced and ambiguous form, the closet case manifests in the character of Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen) in HBO’s Succession. The clownish husband of Shiv Roy (Sarah Snook), the daughter of billionaire media tycoon Logan Roy (Brian Cox), Tom consistently acts as the show’s comic relief. Having been born to an upper-middle-class midwestern family, Tom marries his way into American royalty and slowly climbs the ranks of his father-in-law’s megacorporation, Waystar Royco. He pays the price for his newfound status, however, after he is cuckolded by his wife and routinely humiliated by her and her entire family. While he puts on an obedient attitude around his wife and in-laws, however, he takes off his mask when he’s around Greg (Nicholas Braun), a cousin of the Roy siblings and his informal assistant.
Tom and Greg have one of the strangest and funniest relationships on the show. For Tom, Greg is the only immediate family member with less power than himself and is therefore his personal punching bag (metaphorically and literally). In the first episode alone, Tom hurls insults at Greg in an attempt to degrade him and throughout the show uses him for his own nefarious needs such as sending him to destroy internal company reports of serial sexual misconduct. This abuse, however, also reads as subtly sexual. In the aforementioned episode, viewers also witness Tom jokingly ask Greg to kiss him and as the show progresses, Tom routinely speaks to Greg with close body contact and isolates him from the rest of the family. The most explicit nod to latent queer desire is when Tom compares their relationship to Nero and Sporus, a psychotic Roman emperor who, after killing his wife, had a relationship with his male sex slave, castrated him, and then married him. Tom even goes as far as to tell Greg, “I would castrate and marry you in a heartbeat.”
Unlike Phil and Cal, Tom is not written as an explicitly non-straight character but is rather queer-coded through subtleties. He isn’t the typical hyper-masculine man and relies on being underestimated, especially by his wife, in order to quietly move up the food chain. Furthermore, he is relieved of being the main antagonist, another stereotype, because his wife and her entire family out-vilify him in nearly every episode. The show makes it clear that Tom is a terrible person but not because of his queerness. Rather, it’s because his main motivation in life is power, wealth, and social prestige, just like his entire family. His relationship with Greg indicates hidden sexual ambiguity but, like his Roy counterparts, he is incapable of expressing any type of authentic love even if it is behind closed doors. While the writers may not blame his malice on queer desire though, Tom is still at his most cruel during subtly sexual queer-coded moments. In this way, the writers don’t use queerness as a villain origin story but they connect queer male release to the harming of another individual.
While the three men above are just a few examples in recent media, tropes about closeted men can be found elsewhere both on and off the camera. We often accuse the most homophobic people of being secretly gay, but as advocates have pointed out, that only shifts the blame for homophobia onto queer people themselves. I want to be clear, though. Many queer men pedal toxic masculine norms and as a result, uphold gendered violence towards women and non-men. These offenses, however, cannot only be represented by closeted men and explained because of their queerness. We need to see the broader forces that turn men into liars, cheaters, or abusers. Furthermore, the path of self-discovery for many queer people isn’t straightforward and it would be interesting to see stories about queer males coming into their own who don’t injure themselves or others in the process. Just like most journeys, these narratives don’t have to be perfect, but we deserve to see how people can learn, grow, and eventually thrive as their most authentic selves.
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