Animal Kingdom Serves Us a Masculine Gay Man

If you haven’t seen Animal Kingdom on TNT, then you’re missing out on some underrated prestige television. Animal Kingdom tells the story of the Cody family. They live in southern California, and they are professional thieves that launder their money through various front businesses. Season 4 just ended this past summer. I’m going to avoid spoilers in this because I want to talk about one particular character. In the family, there is “Smurf” played by Ellen Barkin, who is the mother of a group of 5 unruly boys (Craig, Deran, Pope, Joshua, and Baz) she’s had by various men (except for Baz, he’s adopted of sorts) she’s met over the years. These guys are the tall, strong, silent types. They wear the typical southern California uniform. Lots of plaids, jeans, Dickeys, and shoulder-length hair. Button-ups in the winter (and by winter, I mean 45 degrees) that are buttoned up to the neck. 

I want to focus particularly on the blonde guy, Deran. Deran Cody is a brave character because it expresses something often not seen in media: a masculine gay man. Several years ago I wrote a big article about how gay men are presented in media. There are three basic types:

• The effeminate one 
• The straight acting one 
• The secret one 

We’ve seen all of these in media in various forms. Deran sort of falls in number three, but the show handles it very differently than most other shows. It is not often that gay men get to be men. Most portrayals of gay men out them in completely emasculating situations and often make them not even worth romantic interest, and many of them don’t have any romantic interests. Shows like Modern Family began to make some prime time changes to these categories by presenting a happily married couple in the show. 

Animal Kingdom took this one step further by giving us a gay male character that is traditionally masculine. Struggling with his sexuality and while making that apart of his storyline not making it his only storyline and not making him suicidal about it. Deran gets actual character development and his on again off again boyfriend actually joins the main plot and serves an important role. Deran is a surfer (a world that can be homophobic) and drives a truck and works on cars. He’s a man in all ways. This is a huge breakthrough for TV. 

Deran Cody isn’t sassy, he isn’t fashionable and while he starts the series in the closet and still has sex with women, as the series goes on he settles in with another man who is a normal gay man you’d meet in the street. There’s no big coming out as of season 4, his family just sort of goes with his homosexuality. They just quietly accept that the secondary character Adrian is his boyfriend.  They have normal relationship ups and downs. They are typical gay men. They are normal. Yes, they do drugs together but that isn’t a driving force. Deran is hiding his sexuality but as the series goes on he hides it less and less.

I can’t understate how huge this is. 

Many gay characters in shows are damaged goods at best. Gay men have been shown in every way other than normal ordinary humans with problems determined by the plot of the show but in this not terribly popular show, Deran Cody gets to exist as a normal character who is also gay at the same time. He runs with the boys, drinks beers with the boys, parties hearty, and has his respect as a man in the group. Most gay men would pay money for that kind of respect in a group of men.

The Cody boys are a fierce bunch. They will beg, borrow, steal, and murder to keep their family safe. They will do whatever it takes to secure their future. They are just as soon to beat your head or shoot you as hug you. That’s the appeal of the show. While they are doing these masculine and violent acts, Deran goes to bed with his beautiful boyfriend, played by Spencer Trent Clark. Deran is a normal gay man in a normal relationship. They don’t use his sexuality as his only character development. His coming out isn’t a big moment, and it isn’t even a big part of his storyline. Instead, it’s an aspect of his character as he goes through the overall story of Animal Kingdom. I hope that other TV writers and showrunners see this example and follow suit with more normal gay men in normal relationships. This is how we normalize homosexuality, and this is how we win.