The A Quite Place universe is officially a graduate of JK Rowling School of Representation.
According to the JK Rowling School of Representation, a gay character can exist for a very long time in the universe’s canon without anyone knowing they’re gay.
It’s only later, when a director is doing an interview that they reveal the character was gay all along despite there being no indicators of the same.
Michael Sarnoski, the writer/director of the latest A Quiet Place film, A Quite Place: Day One, has revealed that Eric (Joseph Quinn) is indeed gay.
“The streaming [version] is coming out; the featurettes are coming out, and you’ll learn even more about Eric’s character and some things about, you know, it’s not really addressed in the movie, but in some of the behind the scenes stuff.
“Like he was initially, he’s intended to be a gay man, and that was like sort of a quiet little aspect of his character that um is, you know, sort of informing some of that is like this is a platonic relationship.”
To understand why this revelation is important, one must understand the kind of gay and queer representation audiences have had to bear throughout the years.
Viewers learned that not all representation is worth celebrating because some can be inconsequential at best and mortally harmful at worst.
When JK Rowling was criticized for the lack of any kind of queer representation in the Harry Potter films despite Harry’s story appearing like an allegory for queer existence, she one-upped the audience. Rowling revealed that Dumbledore was, in fact, gay.
The revelation was met with skepticism because the character has never shown any attraction to anyone of the same sex (maybe because he is advanced in age).
A young Dumbledore (Jude Law) was introduced to the Harry Potter prequel movie series Fantastic Beasts to fix this. However, the movies never got close to the hype Harry Potter got when it was least successful.
Apart from her constant attacks on transgender people, transwomen especially, Rowling invented this kind of “representation” where the character is queer in the eyes of creatives.
Why ‘A Quiet Place: Day One’ Hid Ethan’s Sexuality
The film is the latest entrant into the box-office hit franchise.
It tells the story of some of the survivors of the first day of the monster invasion. Quinn and Lupita Ny’ongo star as Eric and Sam.
Noticeably, the film lacks a romance plot as two people whose lives were not going exactly well fly from the pan into the fire. In their review, Out Magazine noted that the lack of romance works well with the film.
A cut scene from the film features a conversation between Sam and Eric, in which he talks in many words about coming out to his parents.
This makes a bad decision even more egregious. If they really wanted gay representation, they had all the time since the film has a little under 1 hour and 40 minutes of runtime. That scene would have made all the difference in a really short time.
But why didn’t they?
“. . . sort of informing some of that is like this is a platonic relationship.”
Michael Sarnowski
The most obvious reason is the one in the quote above. Eric’s queerness is intended to be a plot point supporting a significant part of the film.
Instead of just portraying a man and a woman as friends in a world-ending event, why not make the man gay because that way, it’ll never happen?
The Chinese Annoyance
However, films rely on ticket sales from international markets to break even or make a profit. One of the biggest markets is China, whose censorship laws for anything and everything queer is very high.
To appease Chinese censors, studios make different cuts for different markets as the censors see fit. For coherence purposes, queer characters (if they exist) have an insignificant role to play in the film. Even if all their scenes are cut, it has no effect on the film.
That’s how Disney has gotten away with several announcements of the “first gay character” in a Disney movie because people barely notice the previous ones.
The “Inclusive” Movie Problem
Also, this might be the classic case of eating your cake while keeping it.
The other reason might be that the studio is testing the waters on the Academy rules set to take effect soon. The Academy announced that films that meet certain representation criteria will be the only ones eligible for Best Picture nominations.
While studios like Netflix are not bothered by this new rule, others like Disney and its subsidiaries must scramble to devise a foolproof formula for meeting the requirements without sacrificing Chinese money. Hence, gay characters come out through the director after a film’s theatrical run.
The Casting Conundrum
Finally, it might have been a ploy to shield the film from bad press.
The conversation about queer representation has taken a turn as viewers question what counts as authentic representation or exploitive representation.
Having a non-queer actor play a queer character will be met by equal measures of criticism and support, but unless these are things a studio can twist to their advantage, then it’s not worth the risk.
Revealing that Ethan was queer while being played by Quinn, who doesn’t identify as queer, might have been a risk the studio was not willing to take.
But if one thing remains clear, A Quiet Place: Day One does nothing to advance gay representation from day one.