How LGBTQ voices are reshaping music videos
TORONTO — Pop singer Ria Mae never considered herself an LGBTQ activist, but a recent music video shoot for the song “Gold” pushed the Halifax native to reflect on the boundaries of her own identity.
It began when a director pitched Mae the idea of playing a fictionalized version of herself caught in a passionate but troubled romance with another woman.
“I loved the story so much,” Mae says. “The only thing I was worried about was the relationship.”
She knew portraying a lesbian could potentially pigeonhole her music career, but Mae paused to question why she was so worried about putting her sexual orientation on the radar.
“I had this gut feeling, like, ‘Shut up. It’s good, and it’s important.’”
So Mae agreed to the storyline for “Gold,” a rare example of a music video where a lesbian relationship doesn’t exist solely for the titillation of straight men.
Getting the gay-positive video made was relatively easy, but the experience was an anomaly, even in today’s music industry.
“Gold” director Alon Isocianu says this wasn’t the first time he’d proposed a same-sex relationship for one of his videos, but it was the only instance that he felt practically no resistance.
“It’s happened for years where I would pitch a video that had a same-sex couple and the record labels were like, ‘We love all these scenes, but can you make that scene between the two high school kids a boy and a girl?’” he says.
Isocianu, who has worked with Kelly Clarkson and Pentatonix, thinks executives sometimes don’t want to “open that can of worms” with an artist, or risk making a video where the song is overshadowed by the sexual orientation of its characters.
“It always blew my mind that would be an issue,” he says.
In recent weeks, mainstream attention on LGBTQ issues has intensified, motivated partly by the Orlando gay nightclub shootings and June being Pride Month.
While music videos may seem like a minuscule concern in the bigger picture, they can play an important role for young LGBTQ people who — like many minority groups — are still searching for adequate representation in mainstream media.
“Pop music itself was, for many young people trapped at home in suburbia, all they had,” says Mark Simpson, a British author and critic of pop culture trends, reflecting on the era when MTV and Much Music ruled the airwaves.
“(It was) their only escape and their only connection.”
Rewind to the 1980s and most gay characters in music videos were either part of tragic stories, like Bronski Beat’s “Smalltown Boy,” or subjects of overt sexual repression like in the Pet Shop Boys’ “Domino Dancing.”
By the 1990s, some headway was being made as singers like kd lang and George Michael came out in their public lives.
Music videos took some time to catch up, however. Today, the portrayal of LGBTQ themes in videos is becoming more mainstream.
Tegan and Sara are putting the finishing touches on a video starring transgender teens, while others like Sam Smith and Hozier have released clips where same-sex relationships play a key role in the narrative.
Mae has found reaction to “Gold” has been overwhelmingly positive, especially from older gay women who thanked her for representing their identity in a positive light.
She says it caused her to reflect on the power of her own voice.
“Some people don’t want to be a statement, and I’m one of those people,” Mae says. “But sometimes just being yourself is a statement.”