SNL Reveals The Problems With Lesbian Period Dramas

In a new skit, Saturday Night Live poked fun at the subgenre of lesbian period dramas, highlighting some of the problems in common across recent releases. The episode was hosted by Carey Mulligan, who appears in the skit alongside Kate McKinnon and Heidi Gardner. Drawing from a range of tropes and themes that appear in many such movies, the clip makes several points about the way these stories are told and who tells them, while also being very funny.

The skit takes the form of a movie trailer for a new film unsubtly called Lesbian Period Drama, and sees Mulligan playing the wife of a man who accompanies her to a physician with the symptoms of being “abummer“. She’s diagnosed as being “medically upset” and the doctor prescribes seagull noises, grey air, and long, rocky walks. The woman is set up with a “female companion” to stay with her while she convalesces. What follows is a bingo card of tropes heavily used by films telling a lesbian story in a period setting: grazing fingers, brusque conversation, sad flirting, straight actresses, “glance choreography,” and a drawing scene.

The clip pokes fun at what’s become a subgenre of queer film in itself. Recent movies like Portrait of a Lady On Fire and Ammonite – while praised by critics and audiences alike – feature many of the above storytelling crutches in order to convey a tragic story of lesbian couples in the past. It’s clear in many other productions across film and television, too, from The Favourite and Carol to The Haunting of Bly Manor and The World to Come, leading the likes of LGBTQ+ magazine Out to wonder why sad period dramas are the only kinds of stories people want to tell about queer women. The full clip teases a movie that asks the key question: “Will these lesbians be lesbians together?“

But the Saturday Night Live skit goes further in order to skewer films in the genre directed by a man, describing the made-up movie as “two hours of excruciating tension all building up to a sex scene so graphic you’ll think, ‘Oh right, a man directed this.‘” It highlights the issue of such stories and who tells them. When a man tells the story, scenes that depict lesbian sex can come off as being shown from the male point of view. Cinema has long been held hostage by the male gaze due to the prominence of straight, white, male storytellers in the film industry and when that gaze is applied to a relationship between two women, intimate scenes can become gratuitous. While this is changing with time – more women, queer, Black, and POC directors, screenwriters, and producers are coming to prominence and recognition due to a variety of factors – there are many relics that demonstrate the male gaze on lesbian relationships through their storytelling methods.

The clip also takes on the phenomenon of “Oscar bait” movies. Biopics involving physical transformations for the actor at their center have long suffered this reputation, but queer period dramas are beginning to earn the same label. Lesbian Period Drama casts “Best Supporting Actress nominee, The Wind“, as well as making use of “Academy Award-winning glance choreography“, and actresses who “dared not to wear makeup“. Just like other films in the subgenre that take a tilt at awards season from their inception.

Cinema is subject to the same shifting trends that affect other industries, and when certain stories or methods of storytelling succeed and attract accolades, other filmmakers are inspired to tell similar stories. If there’s already a fan base for a genre or story type, they’re guaranteed an audience. With the success of other films depicting tragic romantic relationships between women in bygone eras, more of these stories have come to the fore. Saturday Night Live wraps up the clip with a telling line of dialogue: “You only get one a year, so make the most of it.” While the skit makes fun and highlights tropes that are becoming common on screens, the telling of more queer stories should be celebrated overall – there just needs to be consideration of who tells them and why they lean so heavily on the same storytelling scaffolding.

Next: SNL: Maya Rudolph’s Beyoncé Can’t Handle Hot Ones

About The Author

Mitch Brook
(75 Articles Published)

Mitch Brook is Features Editor for film and TV at Screen Rant. He’s a writer and editor with a history in a range of media, including as editor for travel and lifestyle titles. The movies he always comes back to are Little Women (2019), Orlando, A Single Man, and The Lord of the Rings.

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