#it's almost like queer disney villainy in that 'badness' is associated with 'queerness' | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

oliviathomasba2b · 5 years

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Research - Notes and Tables: Queer Coding

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I think it's intended to add "uneasiness" into the audience. Alfred Hitchcock did this with movies like "Rope" or "Strangers on a Train", because he felt that adding queer subtext to the films would make the audience feel uneasy and edgy, which was his intended reaction from these thriller movies. Now it's almost second nature for storytellers, especially in children's media, to add "queerness" in order to make the character easily identified as a villain or to strike that same unease into the audience. People associate queerness with comfortableness because it can be considered odd and not ‘normal’ to the majority of audiences.

Stereotypes used in male queer coding might include being flamboyant, feminine, talking with a lisp, being prim, vain or wanton.

When used unconsciously a writer sees these collections of traits or behaviours without realising they’re linked to queer men, but still understands that they are used symbolically as a sign of immorality

The sissy villain is a long-standing trope that is often associated with the hays code – a code in the 1940s in Hollywood which meant that you couldn’t have portrayals of LGBT people on screen that were positive in any way. The rooting of this trope is entirely grounded within the demonization of femininity, especially amongst men and outright homophobia

It’s not about a character actually being gay, but using negative stereotypes around gay and queer people

Examples:

Jafar – wears makeup and talks with languid sensuality

Ursula – based on the famous drag queen Divine, she is vain and sexual with a husky voice and exaggerated makeup

Hades – exaggerates hand gestures and sass

Ratcliffe- vain, wears bows in his hair, obsessed with gold and glitter. He hates masculine physical labour and dotes on his tiny prim dog

King candy – Flamboyant, pronounce lisp, bright pink décor in the castle and is labelled by our hero as ‘nelly wafer’ which employs a gay slur

The focus on Disney due to its ‘world of didactic storytelling and morality shaping through fiction. Children’s media, stories and fairy tales are how children learn about themselves and the world around them about morality – what is good and what is bad to be and do.

Obvious vices are often the main drive or plot are not to be mean greedy or violent for example – but other traits seep in especially if they’re repeated. – From a very early age, we’re conflating queerness and gender expression outside of the binary with evil and villainy, especially with no counterpoints due to the total lack of positive and canonical queerness in children’s media.

This can mirror a lack or representation or effeminate men or butch women for that matter in anything other than a sidekick, comic relief or secondary role.

Due to a lack of queer heroes and protagonists, especially that straight outside of gender binary – look at why this is.

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The Queer Power of Witches

I believe they [witches] share a magic unspoken bond with queer people even though they’re always cast as the villains; secretly they’re everything we wish we could be.

Within Matt Baume’s podcast series ‘the sewers of Paris’ he spoke various gay men and discussed the entertainment that changed their lives. Baume recons that if you were to ask a gay man who their favourite witch is they’ll have an answer.

He believes that the reason for this is due to witches being powerful women who step outside their gender roles to wield incredible control.

Ordinary people don’t understand them [witches] they fear them and when they’re found out they’re thrown out of town, sent into exile and if they’re unlucky burned

No wonder queer people love witches – they’re outcasts punished for being different. They know our pain. Like us witches often pass as mundane humans they slip into disguise, painfully cloaking their true forms in dreary camouflage

Witches are eternal outsiders and so they have to learn to be fearless and brave on their own. Being rejected teaches them strength and they become self-made, self-reliant and self-confident

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The Evolution Of Queerbaiting: From Queercoding to Queercatching

They way that mental health is portrayed on film Is not just a reflection of the way society thinks about mental health, but in fact, the way it’s presented on film actually informs the way that people think about mental health itself.

Hays code – Hollywood had to follow. – the code lasted up until basically the 1960s, but the legacy of it and the effects of it lasted way past that – there’s a kind of proxy ban on showing healthy and happy queer people in relationships kept going. It wasn’t until the 1970s where a more mainstream vaguely positive portrayal of a gay man was shown on US screens (the teleplay ‘That Certain Summer’. Waited another decade in the UK to see a man kiss another man in soap Eastenders 1987 (even then it was only on the forehead and there were many complaints)

There’s a period where we have the development of an extremely influential art form, film, with a very narrow idea about whose stories got to be told, both through the code itself, but also more general social ideas at the time.

Taking something that is associated with queerness, even stereotypically, especially if it somehow threatens the status quo of cis normativity or heteronormativity and gender essentialism.

Essentially one effect of this is that we associate the attributes that we associate with queerness as something that is inherently negative, not just queerness itself so we can give a character those attributes and we automatically think of them in a negative way.

Use of queercoding in characters at the beginning of the film was a way of getting queerness past censors or it’s a very quick-hand way to show something that is perverse or some kind of villainy

It serves as a very easy opposition to a hyper-masculine hero – something that is very celebrated. Using these outdated gender ideals it makes the hero seem even better than the villain is the opposite

By contrasting the villain with the hero it has this dual purpose of making the hero seem even better in comparison, but then also damming the attributes that the villain has to villainy because they aren’t shared with the hero

Queer people may feel a kind of affinity to queercoded villains – for them there is a kind of subversive power of existing outside of the gender binary, outside of this ideal of heteronormativity and heteronormative romance

The language of cinema created through the Hay’s code endured for a long time. It taught new generations of filmmakers what queer characters should look like how they should act, how they should be treated onscreen, and what a villain should look like even if they didn’t realise the homophobic origins and implications of using those tropes

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Why Are There No Gay Characters in Kid's Films? || Visual Essay

Research by William T.L Cox at the university of Wisconsin – Madison shows that negative stereotyping and prejudiced mind-sets in media contribute significantly to bullying, harassment, depression and suicide.

LGBT youth even from ages as young as 10 are at higher risk of suicide than their straight and cis peers – being 4 times as likely to attempt to take their own life and 6 times more likely to self-harm

An example of the sexuality of a character being revealed as the punch line of a joke is the character of Mitch in Paranorman who is revealed to have a boyfriend at the very end of the movie. This ‘twist’ ending relies on both the absence of gay characters from kids media and the stereotype that gay men are not the athletic jock types, to create an unexpected payoff.

Steven Universe – in 2016 the UK aired an episode of the show where same-sex romance had been censored. The romantic dance between Pearl and Rose Quartz instead featured close-ups of completely different characters. Many people say it’s actually the overseas markets in Asia and China specifically which causes shows to downplay LGBT characters but the fact the UK changed the original US show for a British audience suggests its more complex than that. In a statement Cartoon Network UK said:

“In the UK we have to ensure everything on air is suitable for kids of any age at any time. We do feel that the slightly edited version is more comfortable for local kids and their parents. Research shows that UK kids often watch with younger siblings without parental supervision. Be assured that as a channel and network we celebrate diversity – evident across many of our shows and characters”

However, this isn’t actually true. The description of the British U rating the lowest age rating that we have in this country and the one which cartoon network aims for, say “Character may be seen kissing or cuddling and there may be a reference to sexual behaviour”. This cute romantic scene [from Steven universe] was clearly seen as too sexual.

Important to note that these videos may be more opinion based than factual - therefore a bias or unbiased view may be given. Information may be very relevant, just important to note that the sources may not be reliable and should be used with caution.

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