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bisexuality on TV
So Wuff and I were sitting watching Scrubs (it's a shameful thing, I know), and one of the characters - known as The Todd - made a comment about plastic surgery: 'Its amazing, just when you think you cant see another great pair of boobs, you see a great dong'. That kinda led to a discussion about openly bisexual characters in television series.
We had a bloody hard time thinking of any. Most characters who have had relationships with people of both genders have not identified as bisexual. The great majority, in fact, have simply declared themselves either gay or straight after pairing up with particular characters. Take Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for example. When she begins her relationship with the witch Tara, she identifies as entirely lesbian. The same happens in Sex and the City and ER. In other cases, a character who identified as bisexual (for example, Callie on Gray's Anatomy) changed actors, after which the character suddenly became definitively lesbian.
Even when a character declares an attraction to both genders, such as Susan Ivanova in Babylon 5 or Angela Montenegro in Bones, the word 'bisexual' is never used.
Another major factor is that even nominally bisexual characters tend to be female, with the exception of The Todd and Tim Bayliss in Homicide Life on the Street. Where they are male, they are often automatically assumed to be gay (as in the infamous 'down-low' episode of Law and Order SVU), or prove very quickly to be twisted sexual predators.
The glaring exception to this is, of course, Torchwood, where sexuality is beyond fluid (James Marsters even eyes off a poodle in his first appearance). The 'Word of God' (that is, a pronouncement from the series' creators which is not technically canon, but is designed to address a controversy) is that all the main characters are bisexual.
It's not an exhaustive list - it's what we were able to come up with after a quick brainstorm - and it doesn't look at film or literature. (Interestingly, there seems to be a lot more admitted bisexuality in books than in video.) Still, it gave us pause. These days, it's a lot easier to find a gay character on TV than it is a bisexual one ...
We had a bloody hard time thinking of any. Most characters who have had relationships with people of both genders have not identified as bisexual. The great majority, in fact, have simply declared themselves either gay or straight after pairing up with particular characters. Take Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for example. When she begins her relationship with the witch Tara, she identifies as entirely lesbian. The same happens in Sex and the City and ER. In other cases, a character who identified as bisexual (for example, Callie on Gray's Anatomy) changed actors, after which the character suddenly became definitively lesbian.
Even when a character declares an attraction to both genders, such as Susan Ivanova in Babylon 5 or Angela Montenegro in Bones, the word 'bisexual' is never used.
Another major factor is that even nominally bisexual characters tend to be female, with the exception of The Todd and Tim Bayliss in Homicide Life on the Street. Where they are male, they are often automatically assumed to be gay (as in the infamous 'down-low' episode of Law and Order SVU), or prove very quickly to be twisted sexual predators.
The glaring exception to this is, of course, Torchwood, where sexuality is beyond fluid (James Marsters even eyes off a poodle in his first appearance). The 'Word of God' (that is, a pronouncement from the series' creators which is not technically canon, but is designed to address a controversy) is that all the main characters are bisexual.
It's not an exhaustive list - it's what we were able to come up with after a quick brainstorm - and it doesn't look at film or literature. (Interestingly, there seems to be a lot more admitted bisexuality in books than in video.) Still, it gave us pause. These days, it's a lot easier to find a gay character on TV than it is a bisexual one ...