What is it about?

‘Queerbaiting’ is a fan-conceived term that describes a tactic whereby media producers suggest homoerotic subtext between characters in popular television that is never intended to be actualised on screen. It has decidedly negative connotations and has attained a degree of cultural currency in the popular sphere, the pervasiveness of which makes scholarly consideration important.

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Why is it important?

I confront the negative connotations of the term and point to the agency of audiences, using the practices of ‘slash fans’ within the Merlin fandom as my case study. I trace definitions of queerbaiting in recent scholarly work and suggest comparison with another term, ‘hoyay’, which has more positive connotations. My central argument is that as this concept begins its inevitable permeation into academic work, worth considering are the queer readings that ‘queerbaiting’ in fact make possible, even plausible, which is an understanding of the term that is in line with the ‘poaching’ and ‘playful’ spirit of media fandom.

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This page is a summary of: Queerbaiting: The ‘playful’ possibilities of homoeroticism, International Journal of Cultural Studies, February 2016, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1367877916631050.
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