Startling images

Ten years ago Matthew Shepard's murder caught the attention of the mainstream media and the public in a way that no anti-LGBT hate crime had done before or since, but it also accomplished another feat: it touched a chord in pop culture and the arts and led to a wave of plays, films, songs, poems, and other creative works, many aimed at mainstream audiences, that depicted his death and grappled with what it meant for American society.

Shepard's murder spawned a wide range of works, some, like Moises Kaufman's play The Laramie Project, that continue to live on, and others, like MTV's made-for-TV movie Anatomy of a Hate Crime, that have faded into pop culture obscurity. The number of songs written and recorded by major recording stars about his death, by artists ranging from Melissa Etheridge to Elton John to Peter, Paul and Mary to Ron Sexsmith, could form a meaty iPod playlist. Painted Leaf Press released a 1999 anthology of poems, Blood & Tears, composed solely of poems reflecting on Shepard's death. Shepard's murder even impacted niche sectors of pop culture and art where one might not expect serious depictions of anti-gay violence, including a 2001 Shepard-inspired story arc in the Green Lantern comic book series and an icon depicting a crying, blood-soaked Matthew Shepard painted by Catholic iconographer Fr. William McNichols.

The years since Shepard's death have seen no shortage of LGBT victims of hate-fueled murders - Gwen Araujo in 2002, Michael Sandy in 2006, Sean Kennedy in 2007, and most recently Lawrence King, a 15-year-old boy gunned down in school by a classmate last February, to name but a few. But none of these murders have dominated the mainstream media news cycles like Shepard's murder, and none of them have inspired the wave of artistic representations that followed Shepard's murder. Brent Hartinger, a regular contributor to the gay pop culture blog AfterElton.-com and author of popular gay-themed young adult novels like Geography Club, said that for better or worse, the audience interest in stories about anti-LGBT violence has largely evaporated in the ten years since Shepard's murder, both among LGBT and mainstream audiences. He said when Shepard's story managed to break through to the mainstream media in 1998 and through that into pop culture it changed the way the public thought about anti-LGBT violence.

"The very fact that that issue broke through the media clutter and became such a national topic of discussion, I think that changed things. It made the problem of anti-GLBTQ violence, it made people take the topic much more seriously," said Hartinger.

But LGBT representation in the media has changed in the years since Shepard's murder. Hartinger said Shepard's murder came at the tail end of two decades when media depictions of LGBT people were few and far between, and most of those depictions were designed to educate mainstream audiences about the challenges and obstacles that gay people face, whether it was coming out, AIDS or anti-gay violence. Ten years later he said both straight and LGBT audiences feel that they are beyond the point where LGBT characters need to serve an educational purpose, and they want to see strong, successful LGBT characters in film and television who have more to offer than a lesson about what it's like to be gay.

"We've seen the traditional it's-hard-to-be-gay story. ... Whether it's 100 percent accurate or not in this day and age, we want the character to be in control of his or her own life and not be an object of discrimination," said Hartinger. "We now want to tell the other stories, that there's a ticking time bomb and we have 20 hours to stop the bomb, from a gay perspective. ... It has to do with [the fact that] society has changed and the audience has already been there and done that."

By way of example he pointed to a storyline earlier this year from the soap As the World Turns, which has an ongoing plot arc involving a romance between two gay teens, Luke and Noah. A group of homophobic bullies attack the couple after their car breaks down by the side of the road and shouts homophobic slurs at them. The episode ended with a public service announcement urging viewers to work to end intolerance and discrimination. Hartinger said the response from AfterElton readers was that the story felt overly preachy and clich?d. He said readers felt that the story was a throwback to the days when gay characters on mainstream television were relegated to "very special episodes" where the characters' entire reason for existing was to teach straight audiences about the trials and tribulations of being gay.

Neil Giuliano, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), agreed that depictions of anti-LGBT violence in pop culture have been on the decline in the years since Shepard's murder, but he said the stories of real victims of LGBT violence still need to be told, not only in the media but also in the pop culture and the arts.

"We need the creative community ... to look at some of these other tragedies as opportunities to educate people through their creativity and through the arts," said Giuliano. "I'm sure there are other important stories to be told as well, but that should not eliminate the consideration of telling the stories of the victims and the families and people who have been around the victims of anti-gay hate crimes."

Giuliano said the films, plays, and other works inspired by Shepard's murder have had a lasting effect on the attitudes of young people and have taught the younger generation to abhor anti-LGBT violence. He said that education through the entertainment media is still needed.

"Those activities are what people talk about, and it moves from pop culture to conversation around the dinner table, around the cafeteria at school, into the classroom. And that's how a generation is being raised to care more about their LGBT friends," said Giuliano. "And that's because the stories are being told in the media. It's not because the government has done it, and it's not because our schools have done it. ... Our hope really is the young generation, and that's the people who've grown up over the last ten years."

Scarecrow
Boston-based singer-songwriter Colleen Sexton was one of many musicians across the country to write a song grappling with Shepard's murder. Her song "Scarecrow," released on a 2001 live album, took its name from the press accounts reporting that the person who found Shepard's body tied to a fence initially mistook him for a scarecrow, and that image clearly resonated with many artists reflecting on his death; Melissa Etheridge and Kristian Hoffman also penned songs about Shepard called "Scarecrow." Sexton's song looks at Shepard's murder as well as the dragging death of black hate crime victim James Byrd Jr., which took place the summer before Shepard's murder, as well as the 1997 assault by New York City police on Haitian immigrant Abner Louima, and she sings, "This hate is anger / Rage out of control / It's American as it old." She said Shepard's story and the horrible details about his murder resonated with her because the photos and descriptions of him in the media made him seem like someone she could have known in her own life.

"You can tell how it moved so many of us, Matthew Shepard's death, by the multitude of songs out there. ... And I think with Matthew Shepard there was just such a reaction to him. I think there was a real innocence about him," said Sexton. "I think particularly with gay people if you ask, who is Matthew Shepard, you think of his face. ... Even though we didn't know him we felt like we knew him, or we felt like we knew who he might have been."

She said "Scarecrow" is one of the heavier songs in her repertoire, but her audience seems to have responded to it and they regularly request it during her shows.

Shepard's death resonated with a wide range of singers and songwriters, both straight and LGBT, and it also inspired works that reached a mass audience, from the stage and film versions of the Laramie Project to the MTV movie Anatomy of a Hate Crime to the NBC made-for-TV movie The Matthew Shepard Story. (see "Matthew Shepard's pop culture legacy," page 35). But the reaction to his death was also felt in niche genres, including the world of superhero comic books. In 2001 DC Comics published a story arc in its Green Lantern series in which Terry Berg, the openly gay teenage art assistant of Green Lantern's graphic designer alter ego, is attacked by a group of homophobic thugs who spot him kissing his boyfriend on the street. Berg is hospitalized, and the story shows the range of reactions from other members of the series' supporting cast, from Berg's homophobic father, who blames Berg's boyfriend for the assault, to Green Lantern himself, who is so angered by the assault that he breaks his normal moral code and violently interrogates the attackers. Ultimately Berg recovers, and other characters confront Berg's father about his homophobic attitudes.

Judd Winick, writer of the story arc, said when he and his editor, Bob Schreck, who is openly bisexual, developed the story Shepard's murder was a key inspiration. Winick, who also appeared on the San Francisco season of MTV's The Real World, is no stranger to writing about LGBT themes, having written and illustrated an award-winning graphic novel in 2000 about the life and death of his openly gay castmate, Pedro Zamora, from complications from AIDS.

"Truly what I thought about was Matthew Shepard and thinking [about] who we reach with comics," said Winick. "Primarily our audience are teenagers, and this was an audience we wanted to reach, get this point across. ... It was our hope that it would foster a discussion about hate crimes once again, the horror, the tragedy of it."

The story drew the attention of the mainstream media, including the New York Times and the Associated Press, and Winick said generally the response from readers was positive, although he said there was a small vocal minority upset that a superhero comic would feature stories about gay people. Winick said he still gets positive letters from fans reading the story for the first time in graphic novel form. He believes it was successful, although he said some people criticize it for being too preachy.

"I'm proud about how we told it. I'll be honest. It lacked all kinds of subtlety. ... There are times a story really creeps up on you, and there are times the story has to approach you with a sledgehammer," said Winick.

Like Sexton, Winick said the image of Shepard in the media and the story about how he was killed resonated with him.
"I think it's the simple, elegant brutality of what happened. If Matthew had been randomly beaten to death because he mouthed off to someone we wouldn't have heard about him, but he was killed because he was gay. ... And [part of what struck people was] the way he died. I think it was sort of a perfect storm that affected a great many people in a great many ways," said Winick.

Giuliano said much of the credit for the impact Shepard's death had on the culture should go to his mother, Judy Shepard, who for the last ten years has been a vocal advocate against hate crimes as head of the Matthew Shepard Foundation, doing speaking events, filming public service announcements, and advocating for hate crimes legislation. Thus far Congress has failed to pass a hate crimes bill, which in recent years has been rechristened the Matthew Shepard Act, but Giuliano said Judy Shepard's efforts have helped raise awareness throughout the country about anti-LGBT violence.

"I would say without question it's because Judy took up the challenge of ensuring that America would always hear about hate crimes, and so Judy Shepard took on that responsibility and never let the voice get lowered. It's a very hard thing, none of us can imagine what it must be like to lose a child that way and get up every day for the next decade and work to eradicate hate crimes against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people," said Giuliano.

He said Elke Kennedy, the mother of Sean Kennedy, a 20-year-old South Carolina gay man who was attacked and killed by a gay-basher while leaving a bar last year, has also done heroic work recently to raise awareness about hate crimes, starting an advocacy organization called Sean's Last Wish, to advocate against homophobia.

"It takes those kinds of voices, it takes those people standing up and sharing their voices as loud as they can. Or we will move on to the more high profile financial crisis or political issue of the day," said Giuliano.

As for whether any other hate crime victim attracts enough media attention to create the same reaction in popular culture and the arts, so far that hasn't happened. Sexton said as relatable as Shepard seemed in the media coverage of his death, her "more cynical response" is that he also received a fair amount of media coverage because he was young and attractive. It's worth noting that many of the victims who followed Shepard but failed to garner major media coverage were people of color, and many were transgender or gender variant. But Hartinger said the growth of LGBT media through the Internet has made the community less dependant on the mainstream press to report on the stories of LGBT hate crimes. When Newsweek published an article about the February murder of Lawrence King that many readers felt blamed King for bringing the attack on himself by wearing women's clothes, there was a strong backlash against the story in the LGBT blogosphere.

"It was not okay. It was absolutely beyond the pale. And it seemed like this time gay people were able to speak up and speak back and maybe have our voice heard more than we would have been heard in the era of Matthew Shepard. We're contributing to the debate in a way we never have before," said Hartinger.