“(Queer) Bait and Switch” (2024-2025)
I started watching the shows mentioned in this essay, Merlin and Sherlock, in middle school because my friends told me the main characters were “pretty much in love.” Neither spark amounted to a confirmed gay relationship in the end and I was left wondering whether I was wrong for seeing a subtle romance that never ended up happening. I felt ashamed, almost guilty for it, and it was from that guilt that this essay arose.
I know—now—that I was drawn to queercoded media because I was searching for myself. As a queer individual growing up in a conservative place, I did not have the models or the language for those with similar feelings as I did. These shows, despite not being markedly queer, provided a safe space for me to begin understanding and naming those feelings. This essay became a covert self-exploration of how and why shows, with teased yet unconfirmed queer romances like Merlin and Sherlock, sparked a queer awakening in me if they aren’t explicitly so.
Yet coming into this course, I had no idea how to explore anything in an essay. I’m a problem solver in life and writing, but my professor’s prompt specifically instructed us not to try and “fix” the problem; whatever public issue we wrote about would likely be too big and deep-rooted for a single essay to come upon a solution. This starkly contrasted my preconceptions about essay writing; I thought essays needed to prove something, to finish with a sweeping declaration to a now-convinced audience that whatever side you were on (and you must choose a side) was the right one. I realized during the process, however, that sometimes sides don’t exist, and the author doesn’t need to proclaim a certain belief as ‘right’. The instruction to focus on exploration and not solution became my saving grace. It allowed me to separate myself, my embarrassment, my guilt from the shows themselves. What did they represent outside of me? What were they really? Were they queerbaiting like I was so determined to believe? Were they just the product of a society that discouraged queerness onscreen? Or were they something else entirely?
To answer that with any sort of certainty would misrepresent what I have learned. I do not need to solve or prove; I just need to write, to explore, tasks which are now, gloriously, one and the same.
Mikah Mazza is a rising sophomore majoring in Drama. They discovered their passion for acting and love for art in other forms like photography, painting, and writing at a young age and have spent every day since fostering it. Growing up outside of Austin, Texas, where being openly queer isn’t the easiest thing to be, inspired a deep desire for equitable, truthful representation of marginalized communities in mainstream media. Their essay serves as a sharply critical analysis of what is considered representation and, conversely, queerbaiting in artistic mediums and the roles played in it by the creators and the audience.