Critical Essay Sample: "Queerbaiting or Storytelling"

Accurate or sufficient LGBTQ+ representation in modern-day media is slowly becoming normalized but there are creators who often fall short. This is most evident with how Dreamwork’s Voltron: Legendary Defender’s showrunners Lauren Montgomery and Joaquim Dos Santos handled the introduction and use of a gay character in the show’s seventh season. I will assess whether it was ethical for showrunners Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery to kill off a gay character in the seventh season of Voltron: Legendary Defender after using the character to promote the season. On the one hand, it was ethical because they confirmed with DreamWorks’s studio diversity consultants about the storyline, advertisers threatened to stop sponsoring the show if the character played an ongoing role in the series, and killing the character helped to maintain the show's ongoing theme of fighting hate crimes. On the other hand, it was unethical because these showrunners have a history of exclusively killing off gay characters for no narrative reason, DreamWorks promised to include more LGBTQ+ characters in their programming, and the action created a lot of negative press against the series. I concluded that the action was unethical. I will justify my decision as to the ethical nature of the action taken by processing them through the four steps of the Potter Box, starting with the primary and secondary facts.

The important people and company involved in this case are Lauren Montgomery and Joaquim Dos Santos, Voltron’s showrunners, and DreamWorks Animated Television, the production company. The action taken was the use of a gay character, Adam, as promotion for the show’s seventh season who died off-screen after being present in one scene. Adam was first introduced in a teaser clip played at South Diego Comic Con (SDCC) and revealed to be in a relationship with one of the main characters, Shiro. On August 10th of the same year, the seventh season of Voltron was released on Netflix. In the first episode of the season, the SDCC clip was shown. In the eighth episode, Shiro stood in front Adam’s memorial plaque; Adam died off-screen in an alien attack. Other than these two instances, Adam did not show up in the season nor was it explicitly stated in-show that Adam was Shiro’s significant other. I will dive deeper into this case by exploring my rationales further.