Leah McAnespie

Professor Kamin

COMM 1000

12 April 2021

Queer-coding and Decoding: The 100

Content creators and artists are constantly using the beliefs and rituals of their society to cater to the beliefs of the intended audience. In television, writers and producers are tasked with including storylines that line up with the norms of society, meaning that they often encode certain messages without explicitly stating them. Encoded messages in television are often then used as discourse between those who have seen it. However, encoded messages are not always decoded the way they were intended by the original creator and sometimes viewers can come up with their own interpretations. Oftentimes, fans will find an opposite or unintended message that does not line up with their own beliefs, causing disagreements between them and the creators of the show. This occurrence can even lead to the people who once loved the show to become uneasy, causing them to view the show through a much more critical lens. One of the most recent and known examples of this phenomenon is how viewers of The 100 reacted to the show following the death of its first out queer character. The producer may have had his own vision when it came to what the death of this character meant for the future of the show and its legacy, however, that did not stop the viewers from collaborating with one another to create their own meanings from a show that they have received negative messages from.

In 2014, The CW debuted its new show The 100, based on the book series of the same by author Kass Morgan. While there were many similarities between the plots of the show and the book series, ultimately, the series distances itself from the book with the addition of new characters, plotlines, and relationships. The series, created by Jason Rothenberg, centers around main character, Clarke Griffin, and her life post nuclear apocalypse. Clarke and ninety-nine other criminal teenagers are used by their space-bound government as an experiment to see if Earth is inhabitable for them yet. Throughout the course of the show, these teenagers are forced to form bonds and depend on one another to survive new factors, such as dangerous strangers, harmful weather conditions, and a lack of resources. Fans of the show tend to appreciate and focus on many of the romantic or platonic relationships on the show, including the very popular relationship between main character, Clarke, and a more mysterious character, Lexa. In many fandoms, fans will come up with “ship names” for popular relationships by combining their two names, and to fans of The 100, “Clexa” was one of the most beloved. Although some viewers loved Clarke’s first boyfriend Finn, and others rooted for her and the enemy-turned-confidant Bellamy Blake to finally get together, many fans found themselves more invested in the relationship between Clarke and Lexa, the commander of the enemy tribe. Fortunately for those fans, Lexa and Clarke did end up having a romantic relationship and even before this happens in season three, Rothenberg had given the viewers the impression that he was a progressive writer when it came to social issues. In fact, many aspects of the show promoted tolerance and acceptance of others including the long running storyline that focused on the two enemy groups coming together in order to survive. Because the show promoted ideologies that were similar and in support of the dominant ideologies of younger generations like feminism and anti-homophobia, it quickly gained a large loyal following that including many young queer science fiction fans. However, many fans took personal offense to the death of Lexa’s character in season three, causing some audience members to stop watching completely. This happened because of Jason Rothenberg straying from his usual encoded messages in his writing. Before the unexpected death of this beloved character, viewers praised Rothenberg for his story writing because of how purposeful and meaningful it was to many people. Through the storyline and death of Lexa many fans decoded a message opposite of what Rothenberg thought he was encoding, creating hostility between the audience and the creator of the show.

All television shows and movies are encoded with messages or meanings whether the audience is aware of it or not. They also might not be aware that they are actively decoding these messages in their own minds based on their own personal experiences. Because these producers and creators depend on satisfied audiences to make money and gain respect in the industry, it is in their best interest to encode their programs with ideologies that are in line with the ideologies of their given culture. Encoding a show or movie with a non-dominant ideology and promoting it to viewers might lead to important discourse on the subject, however it would leave that writer at a severe disadvantage in the industry, making it in a producer’s best interest to encode popular messages into their stories and characters. While sometimes viewers simply disagree with the encoded message of a show, in other cases viewers can decode messages from something that was not intentional by the writer. Cultural theorist Stuart Hall argues that “the codes of encoding and decoding may not be perfectly symmetrical”, meaning that the encoded message in a given story might not necessarily be what is decoded by all members of the audience (Hall 510). When Lexa was killed off in season three, many fans found her death proved that Jason Rothenberg does not actually care about positive queer representation like he had claimed. Rothenberg spoke out against this, insinuating that the death was more intended for shock value, however, fans were more upset that he would fall into what scholar Erin Waggoner calls a “clichéd trope because of his previous vocalizations via Twitter and fan convention panels suggesting that he was going to provide ‘good’ queer representation” (Waggoner). This shows that the encoded messages are not the only thing that affects how audiences decode. The 100’s audience based how they decoded Lexa’s death based on what they were actually watching, as well as what they knew about the creator of the show. According to Hall, these misunderstandings or distortions of the original messages “arise precisely from the lack of equivalence between the two sides of the communicative exchange” (Hall 510). In this case, Rothenberg and his audience face a lack of equivalence when it comes to the understanding of queer issues and representation, forcing queer fans to find negative meanings in his work. Oftentimes, once a fandom as large as The 100’s decodes a negative message from a certain storyline, it is hard for fans to stay loyal to the show and writers, allowing them to branch out to other fans and attach their own meanings to the characters or storylines.

Queer fans of The 100 decoded Lexa’s death based on their previous online relationship with showrunner Jason Rothenberg and the situation presented in the show. In the episode of her death, Lexa and Clarke have sex for the first time, only for the scene to be followed immediately by Lexa being shot with a stray bullet that was meant for Clarke. To many fans part of the LGBTQ+ community, this death and the circumstances surrounding it was a step back for queer representation on television. Many viewers even believed that Rothenberg was going to give a voice to queer communities that may feel underrepresented in the media. Contributors to the Journal of Audience and Reception Studies argue that the eventual death of Lexa led to “triggered lesbian fan-tagonism against the showrunner Jason Rothenberg and the rest of the writers’ room who were accused of queerbaiting and marshalling ignorance about the collateral issues of lesbian representation” (Guerrero-Pico). Because of the way Rothenberg presented his show and the relationship between Clarke and Lexa, Lexa’s death seemed even more like a stab in the back to lesbian fans who felt understood and seen by the character. Fans that were decoding The 100 and its characters through a queer lens felt alienated by Rothenberg’s decisions and they made sure he was aware of it. Many people went to twitter to voice their opinions on the latest addition to the “bury your gays” trope: a phenomenon where queer characters are killed off television shows at much higher rates than their straight counterparts. Many fans felt strongly enough that they wanted the show cancelled, and they even got ‘#LGBTFansDeserveBetter’ trending on Twitter and refused to watch the following episode of the show, resulting in the show's “lowest ratings ever to date, including the pilot episode” (Waggoner). Many viewers were disappointed that one of their favorite shows had ruined the one thing that really kept them invested, leading to them taking matters into their own hands. It was common for diehard fans to write fanfiction on their favorite relationships in the show, much like it was in other fandoms. However, following the controversy of this episode, there was an “influx of fanfiction stories posted on Archiveofourown.org rewriting the ending to the seventh episode in which Lexa does not die” (Waggoner). People continued to exchange new and personalized “clexa” content long after the death of the character, proving that audiences can and will attach their own meanings to characters and stories, regardless of the creator’s intent. The 100 fans even branched out into other fandoms after learning that the actor who played Lexa, Alycia Debnam-Carey, would also be joining the cast of Fear the Walking Dead. This led to the fan-made “Elyza Lex”, who is supposed to be a Fear the Walking Dead character portrayed by Eliza Taylor (Waggoner). Waggoner claims “While there was an influx of fanfiction stories posted on Archiveofourown.org rewriting the ending to the seventh episode in which Lexa does not die, the more compelling fan response is their creation of the Fear the Walking Dead character” Waggoner). This fake character was used by fans of The 100 to reattach themselves to a relationship between the two characters, even if they are not the same two characters they fell in love with in the beginning. The presence Elyza Lex in ‘Fear the Walking Dead’ created some confusion within the fandom, sparking the creation of a separate fandom “Queer the Walking Dead” in which fans of The 100 bonded and created content about Clarke and Lexa in both fictional universes (Waggoner). Fan-made characters and storylines allow viewers that felt betrayed by the producer to keep their emotional connection to the show alive. This way they do not have to support creators like Rothenberg to enjoy characters that might have helped them feel understood by themselves and others.

Within every form of media or entertainment, there are encoded messages that are meant to be decoded by the viewers. Because of different personal and cultural factors, many programs can be decoded in ways that are different from the creators original intentions, causing a shift in the relationship between producer and viewer. Even if a writer encoded a positive or neutral message, audiences can still find negative connotations within the message, much like fans of The 100 found in the queer storylines represented in the show. Unfortunately, the death of queer characters in television is not uncommon, and fans often have to take it upon themselves to fight for better representation. in order to counteract the consequences of this type of oppositional reading, producers like Rothenberg should place more importance on including a more diverse group of writers and creators so that they will not unfairly represent or offend viewers. Not only does this allow for more viewers to feel represented, but it also would let the producers make more money because more and more people could find an aspect of the show to relate to. This is why fan-made content is becoming so popular in recent years. Audiences want the opportunity to see the characters they love reflect the things they love about themselves, so until this is possible for every viewer, the existence of fandom oppositional readings will only continue to grow.

Works cited

Guerrero-Pico, Mar, et al. “Dead Lesbian Syndrome: LGBTQ Fandom’s Self-Regulation Mechanisms in Fan-Producer
Controversies around ‘The 100.’” Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies, vol. 15, no. 1, May 2018.

Waggoner, Erin B. 2018. “Bury Your Gays and Social Media Fan Response: Television, LGBTQ Representation, and
Communitarian Ethics.” Journal of Homosexuality 65 (13): 1877–91. doi:10.1080/00918369.2017.1391015.