The queer Hero versus the Fool bias of the queer trait: An archetypometric analysis of the collective portrayal of queerness in fictional stories
For media scholars and LGBTQ+ advocates, this quantifies a subtle bias in queer representation across many stories, warning against naive use of large story corpora.
The study analyzes queer portrayal in fictional stories using archetype quantification, finding that while highly queer-coded characters are often positive archetypes like Heroes, the trait of queerness itself is collectively biased towards the Fool archetype, away from Hero. This reveals a paradox in representation.
Visibility in media is pivotal for identity development and for broadening societal views of gender and sexuality. Queer representation has increased in recent years, yet damaging stereotypes and tropes persist. Here, we focus on queer portrayal and its perception by audiences in fictional stories (television, film, and literature) by studying characters by their quantified archetypes which are operationalizations of common conceptions such as Hero, Diva, and Outcast. We use the archetypometrics and Fandom's LGBTQIA+ datasets to study samples of fictional characters along the trait differential spanning straight to queer. We find, quantify, and explain a seeming paradox. The characters with the highest queer score present positive primary archetypes and are typically Heroes rather than Fools, Angels rather than Demons, and Adventurers rather than Traditionalists. But evaluation across many stories for the straight-queer trait itself reveals a strong collective-writing bias towards Fool (away from Hero) and no meaningful loading for the other two dimensions. Our analysis offers a population-scale view of the complexities of queer portrayal, while also pointing to risks in blindly training on many-authored story corpora.