Our conversation in class this week got me thinking about a talk I attended at SCMS this year about cinema/TV and the law. One of the presenters had a paper on the politics of "copaganda" channeled through the queer characters portrayed on Brooklyn Nine-Nine. This paper really stuck with me, because this was a difficult point of contention I also encountered when watching the show, specifically with Rosa's coming-out as bisexual in Season 5.
In recent narrative TV, bisexuality has found greater narrative representation, but mostly in the form of villainous antagonists. And while I absolutely love the Villanelles, Harley Quinns, and Annalise Keatings that exist on screen, sometimes it feels a bit restrictive to greater bisexual representation. Especially because this feeds into the issue of portraying bisexual characters as people who cheat and deceive, something that has been at the center of a lot of bi-phobic discourse in the past. So on the one hand, I feel so starved for bisexual representation through a character that isn't positioned as a manipulative villain, yet on the other hand characters like Rosa Diaz don't quite satisfy me either either. While I absolutely love Rosa for all her complexity and defiant stoicism, it feels difficult to sympathise with a character who is so multifaceted, yet whose main ambitions in life was to become a police officer.
In the panel I attended, Jennifer Moorman also furthered this issue by denoting the fact that Rosa Diaz and Raymond Holt are both queer characters of color who thrive on the show as police officers. Their immense likability as characters invites queer spectators and spectators of color to identify with them, yet also leaving them to grapple with the fact that these characters uphold a system of oppression through their police work that often specifically targets queer POCs. This feels somewhat irresponsible and irreconcilable.
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