Bi by Julia Shaw

Author:Julia Shaw
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2022-06-28T00:00:00+00:00

SEX PERVERSION

In a bizarre turn of events in my life, in January 2020 I was asked to advise on the script for a new German TV show called 8 Zeugen (“8 Witnesses”). The protagonist was to be a young female scientist called Dr. Jasmin Braun who is an expert on false memory and helps the police solve a difficult case. I agreed to help the writers work on the script, and flew to Berlin to meet the team. They picked me up, and we traveled, the four of us squeezed into a tiny car, to the building where the writers’ room was housed. We started to chat about the project and I asked where they learned about my work. It was then that I learned that the whole story, and the female lead, were in fact based on me and my work.

In a spacious, glassy, and bright room I spend the rest of the day advising on the feasibility of the story and of Jasmin as a character. It was basically a case of me saying “I would never say that, that’s not how memory works,” and “Have you ever met a woman?” At some point during this process we spoke about the character herself. Who is Jasmin Braun? What is she like? And it was amidst this discussion that I perked up and said, “She should be bi.”

Why should a TV character be default heterosexual? When I was growing up in Germany I don’t remember ever seeing a bi character, never mind the bi lead of a TV show. So how amazing would it be to help breathe such visibility to life? The team were open to the suggestion. But then came the big question: How do we show that she is bi without it being a focal point of the show? We all wanted her to be a character who is bi as a matter of fact, to treat it as a perfectly normal thing for her to be, rather than as a great big reveal. And we certainly didn’t want to reinforce bi stereotypes. But how?

Maybe through flirty glances or interactions with men and women she finds attractive? Maybe she could receive a text message from an ex who is a woman? Maybe in a moment of downtime from helping with serious police work we see her on Tinder and she swipes right to a man and a woman? It was a long conversation and we finally agreed that they would write it in the character brief and see what happened. In the end this was too subtle; in the final version of the show absolutely no one could tell that she was bi, even though when I asked the actress she cheerfully said, “But she is bi.” Next time I write a character she’ll be wearing a full suit made of bi flags the whole time and that’ll be that.

Unless it is really obvious, film often represents sexual attraction as the moments between the dialogue. A glance, a smile, a lingering touch.

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