In the new season four trailer for What We Do in The Shadows, the vampire's neighbor asks, "What's the word for what you guys are." The neighbor says that he was thinking like a dirty hippie when he answered " Polyamorous?"
This kind of explanation of the house's relationships is something that we don't know for stalwart viewers of What We Do In The Shadows. Over the past three seasons, we've heard of the various sexual exploits of our favorite undead housemates, and a lot of their storylines tie into finding love.
The queerness is present in the show. In the very first episode of the first season, we learn that two married couples have had affairs with one another. In an interview with the Advocate, it was confirmed that Nadja has had affairs with both men and women. In season one, another vampire roommate, Nandor, failed a citizenship test because he identified George Washington as the first gay president, and in season two, it was revealed that Laszlo and Nandor had an affair. In the third season, Nandor explicitly says he likes men and women. The main character in the series, who is the token human in the house, is implied to be asexual as well as being the only one who doesn't kiss and tell.
While nobody has ever come out and said the words, "queer," "gay," "bisexual," "pansexual," or "asexual" on the show, What We Do in the Shadows has still established that it is queernormative and casually comical. You can do a show about queer people without making them feel bad. When the vampire goes through their lives, they don't think about their sexuality. There are no coming out stories, queer trauma, or overt fights against political authorities who try to define or restrict their queerness. The show felt revolutionary when it first aired.
So now? Our Flag Means Death takes the queernormativity of What We Do in the Shadows and ramps it up to 11 by making a queer romance the entire hinge of the show. As the pirate Edward "Blackbeard" Teach, who co-wrote and co-directed the Shadows movie, and is a producer and occasional director and co-star on the FX series. There are no malice or apathy in the play of non-binary pirates, gay scribes, and polyamerous ladies. The pirates are just trying to get by and thank you very much.
It is impossible to ignore the fact that there are more than one player here. Even though both shows were developed in the U.S., they still have the same kind of comedy. They don't have to worry about being put into a box that might make assumptions or limitations of their narratives.
It's easy to say that the shows that share the same creators, actors, producers, and names are pushing forward a queernormative agenda. The audience for Our Flag Means Death was prepared by the existence of What We Do in the Shadows, two works of representation on screen.
Representation doesn't have to be that deep sometimes. It can exist in order to expand the narratives of marginalized groups. The point is that casual representation of any identity will always mean more than no representation at all, and will only serve to make that identity more visible in stories. Creating empathetic characters with meaningful back stories and wonderful plots about queer people is an important tool in television. What We Do in the Shadows and Our Flag Means Death are things we can use to show others how it was done.
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