The blade of the knife is already digging into the skin, Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh) is helplessly at the mercy of the killer Villanelle (Jodie Comer). But instead of stabbing, she bends over the investigator’s neck and inhales the scent of her perfume. The perfume she had sent her earlier. It seems like a scene that can be seen in many series or films when homoerotic subtext is intended to lure the viewer – it’s called “queerbaiting”. Not so trendy killing eve. Here the homoeroticism is not hidden, but revealed. Villanelle is bisexual, she celebrates her preference for women – and quite apart from clichés.
If lesbian women otherwise murder in films and series, they usually have to do so as a “pathological killer lesbian”: A woman living in a lesbian partnership decides (rather surprisingly) for a man, whereupon the ex goes crazy and becomes a psychopathic murderess . You know that from films like “Basic Instinct” or series like crime scene and NCIS.
The communication scientist and journalist Elke Amberg is annoyed that this, as she says, “propaganda cliché of the 1950s” has persisted to this day and “is still considered an accepted variant of portraying lesbian characters on television”. In the study “Beautiful! Strong! Free! How lesbians are (not) portrayed in the press” she examined the visibility of homosexual women in the media. From her results, she concludes that there is a demand for more diversity – in reporting and for series characters.
Studies such as the American CARD Report by the Annenberg School of Journalism and Communication at the University of South California show that lesbian and bisexual love in particular is underrepresented in films and series. In 2014, he examined a total of 414 films and television series for diversity and inclusivity. Of the 11,194 characters with identifiable sexuality, only 158 were gay, 49 were lesbian, and just 17 were bisexual.
killing eve There is a small ray of hope here: a spy thriller that plays with the motifs of the genre and thus breaks with its conventions. There are many reasons to rave about the series: the surprising, often sarcastic dialogue and the spot-on timing with which the cast delivers it. Because of the camera, which gets so close to the protagonists that an almost exaggerated intimacy arises. Because of their pace. Because of the soundtrack and the setting, which between grandeur (Villanelle’s Parisian apartment) and dreariness (the London investigation quarters) does not neglect even the smallest detail.
But the central achievement of the series is the character drawing of its protagonists: The investigator Eve initially seems to fulfill the cliché of the ailing cop when she has a hangover on a Saturday and stumbles into MI5 headquarters much too late. But it quickly becomes clear that on the contrary she is organized and tidy, has a loving, almost boring relationship and spends her free time at her husband’s bridge club.
The sexuality of many characters does not correspond to the heterosexual norm. In addition to Villanelle, there is Eve’s colleague Bill. He has a gay side that he doesn’t want to be misunderstood as contradicting his marriage to his child’s mother. Although openly discussed, the queerness of the characters is never the defining characteristic or the characters’ motivation for action.
The communication scientist Amberg believes that this is an important step towards the equal representation of homosexuals. In order to escape from clichés, characters have to be characterized realistically, she says. In killing eve works through ambivalence. It is the attractive murderess who lives out her queer sexuality most openly. In addition, she murders out of a veritable, unexplained desire to kill, without being equipped with a moralizing backstory as justification. But she is also quirky, moody and sarcastic. And sometimes almost childlike – for example when she plays little pranks on her contact Konstantin, arranges a birthday party for him with an opulent cake and an apartment full of balloons and dresses up as his doppelganger with a glued-on beard and denim jacket.
Assassin with flair: Villanelle (Jodie Comer) confidently celebrates her femininity – and her fondness for women.
(Photo: Copyright BBC America)
Villanelle is a female character that has never existed in pop culture before: an evil, cynical psychopath, most comparable to Hannibal Lecter. And like Lecter, the viewer has a fascination and sympathy for her, although the moral compass actually points in a different direction. The cultural scientist Sabrina Eisele describes such characters in her book of the same name as “unbounded figures of evil”. So far, however, they have been predominantly male. “When women do something bad, it’s usually portrayed as an act of revenge,” says Eisele. “That will gradually change in our film culture, since the image of women is also changing.”
That the female figures in killing eve are so complex, is probably also due to the team that adapted the novel “Codename Villanelle” by British writer Luke Jennings for BBC America. It’s mostly female. Head writer and showrunner Phoebe Waller-Bridge intentionally created the series as a “female narrative.” It was produced, among others, by Sally Woodward Gentle and the leading actress Sandra Oh.
This shows that for a more realistic depiction of diversity in fiction, there needs to be diversity behind the scenes. This is the only way to finally defeat stubborn clichés – like that of the killer lesbian. Until then is killing eve probably the most advanced representation of queerness in the crime genre.
“Killing Eve”, on ZDF neo and in the ZDF Mediathek.
Note d. Red.: This text from March 2019 was published again on the occasion of the free TV broadcast of the series.