Reading this queercoded gem.
I was thinking of recording audiobooks and doing all the voices, I have already recorded the first few chapters.
Let me know if you would listen to me read queer fiction aloud?
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Now lets play a game, where we identify if a 80/90/00s shows/movies cast a woman on purpose or they had to cast a woman to avoid homoerotic themes or gay plot.
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We were both victims of societally induced queer coded masked autism.
She studied Classics at ALevels ffs 😂
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Queer Coded or Femmephobia - Are Disney villains actually Queer Coded?
Theorists online claim that many classic villains are “Queer Coded”. In this essay I will explore the correlation between femininity, queer codedness and villainy in media- like what it actually means for a character to be “Queer Coded” and why villains often are. There are many different explanations for why they could be: some think it’s intentional, some don’t, and some think it’s a remnant of 1980s homophobia. Some think people are looking into it too much. I will examine these perspectives. Regardless of the origin it’s arguably there. Concrete evidence such as positive queer portrayal being forbidden may help explain why male Villains are more feminine. Writers could only include them implicitly and they had to be evil/antagonistic. This however indirectly implies that feminine men are morally corrupt. Perhaps this shows how society feels about those who break hegemonic gender norms and the status quo.
I would argue societal Gender Roles are the reason why there’s a social stigma against feminine men and masculine women. Male gender roles include: stoicism, having muscle, having a deep voice, dominance, being a breadwinner and avoiding traits and things associated with Femininity. This is hegemonic Masculinity- society’s ideal form of masculinity that men are “socialised” (taught) to take part in. The media reinforces this and portrays it as a goal. Feminine Gender Roles include: being motherly/nurturing (caring and gentle), having home skills, being emotional, expressive, weak, submissive and caring about their appearance. Women are socialised into this hegemonic Femininity.
Men and women who do not fit their respective gender roles are seen as “other” or “strange”. A boy who likes the spa will be made fun of, and so would a girl who likes to do rough sports. Gender Roles were rigid, but in the modern era they are starting to change and become more egalitarian and liberal (due to Feminist movements and social change). Despite this though, things associated with femininity/women are still ridiculed or seen as lesser due to misogyny. “Girly” things such as pop music and romance genre are seen as lesser compared to male dominated interests such as the action genre or sports. They will get disproportionate hate or mockery (e.g girls who liked Justin Bieber compared to guys who liked Arsenal). A woman wearing trousers is now socially acceptable (when it used to be seen as rebelling against gender norms) but a man wearing a skirt is still outrageous. There are historical reasons for this- when women were joining the workforce they were forced to assume more masculine behaviours to be taken seriously. Men however never had a “reason” to take femininity seriously though. This is why men who exhibit femininity are still seen as “other” or “weird”. This is “femmephobia”. Taylor et al (2023) found even amongst gay men femmephobia exists and Buijs et al (2011) found feminine men reported more violence against them when they presented feminine.
Male Villains in media have a pattern of exhibiting femininity. I would argue repeatedly portraying characters who do not fit their gender roles in a negative light is problematic, especially to children. Gender roles are awkward for those that do not fit the mould- it causes a lot of bullying, teasing and peer pressure- and yet media has disproportionately villainised people who don’t fit the mould.
Feminine men are also associated with queerness due to stereotypes. For this reason the term “Queer Coded” was created in the context of analysing media. A “queercoded” character is one who exhibits many stereotypical queer traits but is not explicitly shown to be queer. Since their beginning movies and cartoons- Disney especially- often had these “Queer Coded” villains. TV Tropes defines this as the “Sissy Villain” trope and claims they’re often “camp”- Effeminate, have no muscle, are vain and wimpy. All of these diverge from hegemonic masculinity. Disney isn’t the only company to do this- many other movie shows portray this (e.g HIM from Powerpuff Girls and James from Pokemon). However I’m going to focus on Disney as it is usually the first movies we watch as children, and media we watch as children can shape our beliefs about the world.
Figure 1, 2 and 3
Scar has “feminine” gestures and is single. Ursula’s design was directly inspired by the drag queen “Divine” (Harris Glenn Milstead). She is vain, sensual, has a husky voice and very exaggerated makeup. Pocahontas’ villain, Governor Ratcliffe, is wearing a pink frilly outfit with two bows in his hair, bows commonly associated with femininity and little girls. He also has flashy flamboyant outfits for his song number. The pattern of portraying villains as feminine is there and it could be considered a femmephobic one. Further evidence for it being intentional is The Hays Code (1930-1968). This industry guideline, written by a priest, acted like a law and stated displaying homosexuality could get your film banned. The guideline dealt with films depicted sex, morality, crime and profanity- any film with these needed a seal of approval. Even though The Hays Code had ended by Disney’s Renaissance it seems it still had an effect on the film industry for decades .
TvTropes noted that when villains have flamboyant costumes and effeminate gestures/speech patterns the heroes are often hegemonically masculine to contrast- e.g Scar and Mufasa, Jafar and Aladdin. It could be malicious or perhaps this contrast is just to make the heroes seem more masculine even if they are boyish.
It being intentional/malicious is definitely conceivable. Social attitudes towards homosexuality was extremely hateful pre 2000s- and homosexual activity was illegal in America till 2003 (and 2015 for gay marriage). During the Disney Renaissance the Aids crisis was fully in effect in America- Queer people were essentially treated like Lepers and the media certainly wasn’t going to try to sympathise with them- rather the opposite. Some films that released during the Disney Renaissance might have some remnants of this: The Little Mermaid (1989), Aladdin (1992), The Lion King (1994), Pocahontas (1995), Hercules (1997) and Mulan (1998).
Figure 4, 5 and 6
The fact that villains are often the ones breaking gender roles is interesting and should be studied. Perhaps it’s because a lot of kids’ fiction assumes the status quo is righteous- Villains are often agents of chaos who break those norms, including gender ones. Intentional or not, this can affect viewer’s thinking after repeated exposure, Semiotics Theory suggested it can “naturalise” the connotation between two variables.
ARGUMENT AGAINST THE IDEA THEY’RE QUEER CODED:
Because Queer Coding is based on assumptions and stereotypes and not explicit queer representation there is a lot of contention whether a character is queercoded or not- some arguing that Disney Villains are not queercoded but merely slightly feminine/thin/conniving. Jafar’s eyeliner for example is only feminine in a western cultural context- in the middle east “Kohl” eyeliner is socially acceptable for men as it protects their eyes from the sun. Every culture has their own version and ideals for hegemonic masculinity. Governor Ratcliffe might also not be feminine- bows and frills were common amongst 16th century noblemen- his design perhaps just trying to be more accurate to the time period. Using stereotypes to label characters as queer might also be problematic- making it counter productive to progressive people. For these reasons labelling a character as Queer Coded is incredibly subjective - one must be very familiar with queer stereotypes to even spot a “queer coded” character, let alone “prove” they are.
Because film studios export their films globally they must market their films towards foreign countries too (if they want to maximise profit). Many countries cannot explicitly show queer characters (e.g China, countries in the middle east) so queer characters must be subtly queer to remain palatable- thus theories of Queer Codedness will remain relevant.
Figure 7, 8 and 9
Another reason Disney Villains are Queer Coded could be because Disney’s animators were queer. During the Disney Renaissance Andreas Deja (a gay man) animated almost every villain- such as Jafar and Scar. Perhaps he wanted to represent himself. Maybe Queer Coding was intentional but not necessarily malicious. An argument against this though is the fact that multiple studios portray this trope- meaning the trope is likely not the result of one gay Disney animator.
Disney did occasionally stray away from the “Camp Guy” trope and when they did they often went for a hypermasculine guy- seen in Tarzan, Atlantis and Beauty and the Beast. Tumblr user “FandomsAndFeminism” notes that our brawny antagonists are contrasted with protagonists that don’t exhibit exaggerated masculinity. However they (Tarzan, Milo and The Beast) are still “not ‘girly’, suggesting that a feminine man is seen as “too far” against the status quo.
Figure 10, 11 and 12
In conclusion I do think there’s an interesting pattern amongst classic disney villains. They appear to break a few gender norms, but not all. Male Heroes (unless young) do tend to be masculine. Labelling modern characters as queer coded seems to be a bit reductive since there are actual modern queer confirmed characters- but in the context of old disney movies where being queer was against guidelines I think it’s plausible that some of these characters are unintentionally or intentionally queer coded. It is likely these portrayals stem from femmephobia and gender norms.
Application to my own work: This study has made me more conscious about how I represent Queer or gender norm breaking characters in my own work. One can’t stop others from speculating if a character is Queer coded so the next best thing I can do is I avoid shallow stereotypes about queer people. Having a few characters be confirmed queer means people generally feel less need to speculate about unconfirmed characters- thus I’d like to represent queer people without any ambiguity, especially to make up for the lack of Queer characters during the Hays Code . I’d also love to have my hero fight gender norms rather than my villain for a nice change- like a feminine male protagonist being represented positively- a bit like Aang from Avatar:The Last Airbender.
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Bibliography:
- Why Are Disney Villains Gay / Queer?
- Queer Coding in Disney’s Pocahontas – rae’s media notebook
- Sissy Villain - TV Tropes
- could you talk more about the male disney villains being queer coded with stereotypes? – @not-the-very-button on Tumblr
- Buijs, L., Hekma, G., & Duyvendak, J. W. (2011). ‘As long as they keep away from me’: The paradox of antigay violence in a gay-friendly country. Sexualities, 14(6), 632–652. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460711422304
- Taylor, A., & Hoskin, R. A. (2023). Fat femininities: On the convergence of fat studies and critical femininities. Fat Studies, 12(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/21604851.2021.1985813
Image References:
- https://villainstournament.fandom.com/wiki/Dr._Facilier
- Queer Coding in Disney’s Pocahontas – rae’s media notebook
- https://cinema-villains-wikia.fandom.com/wiki/Clayton
- https://feminisminindia.com/2020/09/21/problematic-representation-queer-masculinity-disney-films/
- Disney Characters Halloween Candy Picks & Party Guest Wish List Costumes Movies Songs Parade Treats
- https://anidentitycrisis.medium.com/disneys-long-history-of-queer-coded-villains-d243b9c02937
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“The gays are being Faggoty in the queer club of homosexuality”
-My inner thoughts
(asked my IRL friends if I should post this and they said I’d lose all my followers lol)
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Boogiepop is my favorite queer icon, it has nothing to do with gay people but for some reason this show helped me understand my gender fluidity.
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Did yall ever notice there’s a surprisingly high amount of white haired anime characters with queer undertones/just are gay.
Sakura from danganronpa
Killua from Hunter x Hunter
Gojo from jujitsu Kaisen
Aru from future diary
Nagito from danganronpa 2
and Kaworu from Evangelion.
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Reading Changeling the Lost, Second Edition. Was thinking “wow this is kinda trans coded in a way that’s hard to describe but I relate to.”… then I read the intro story.
Yeah.
Lol
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genuinely almost gave myself a migraine trying to think of a btvs character who isn’t queer/queercoded and it’s probably joyce summers but that sounds wrong
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Queer-coded pocket with origami cranes.
(I folded a lot of origami as a child; I’m queer, and the fabric is from my aunt’s 50-year-old skirt, which I shortened - The whole idea came because those were the colors on her skirt.)
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Yes, Silent Hill f could be about what gender roles do to women (and, lesser focus, to men). I think the game mostly intended that and this game belongs to anyone who that resonates with.
That being said…
The way Hinako describes her body stealing who she is from her, her ever-evolving rage towards it, and the way the world unfolds as a gruesome womb, flowers blooming, dying, and killing in a world of endometrium, the way she’s torn to pieces by her male and female friends, her disdain for her father’s violence and her mother’s submission, even as she starts to mirror them both, finding the mutilation of her form both empowering and horrifying, the exaggerated depiction of pregnancy as a monstrous feminine on the back of a less defined form, her female friends wanting her DEAD when she betrays the feminine laws that are so obvious to them…
Not to mention Rinko seeing her as a competitor because she connects to masculinity in a way Rinko doesn’t and Sakuko essentially making vows with her, arguably positioning Hinako as a replacement for traditional romance…
That’s she/they, they/them, nonbinary anguish to me, baby!
