Like many other millennials and older members of gen-z, I grew up watching a lot of cartoons and Disney movies. I think that one of my favorite shows was “The Powerpuff Girls,” and my favorite character from that show was HIM. If you have never seen HIM (featured in this blog’s cover photo), he is a tall, slender red figure with claws, blush, and a frilly pink outfit. Even though he is identified as male several times through the series as male, his effeminate nature and villainy are at the crux of his characterization. This one example is a sign of a larger trend of queercoding villains in media.
Queercoding, as defined by the author of the blog Feminist Disney, may be defined as a ” character that is given certain characteristics that are likely to reference “queerness” in the audience’s subconscious.”. While this definition may feel simplistic, it is deceptively so. Many of these said characteristics are often harmful stereotypes that will change with cultural context and time. For example, our current media’s most common trope is ” the twink” or “femme gay man.” This usually depicts a white, loud, feminine, gay man who is overly proud of their gayness. This stereotype is portrayed as non-threatening through the adoption of a female entourage and traditional female hobbies like fashion and shopping. They are seen as “one of the girls” rather than as a man.
This is in direct contrast to the traditional strong, usually white, heterosexual man who has hobbies like fighting evil and chasing after unwilling women. While both of these character stereotypes are usually men, the heroes are shown to be the embodiment of 50s straight masculinity. At the same time, the villains embody feminity- and even womanhood to some extent. Again, since constructs of gender change over time, how their characters are depicted will change, but, for a few examples, some queer coded villains may have accents, lisps, wear fashionable clothing, have dramatic or exaggerated characteristic, vain, be shown as sexually predatory, or goes out of their way to show themselves as especially feminine or self-centered. Notice how all their characteristics are portrayed or seen as negative. Disney is an especially egregious offender of this practice. Please consider Scar, Jaffar, Ursula (who looks like Divine), Hades, Cruella de Ville Captin Hook, maybe Gaston, and the colonizers in Pocahontas. (Some examples outside of Disney include: Team Rocket, HIM, Orochimaru, and The Joker.
Queercoding villain is a massive trend in the media; it is so ingrained in the public consciousness and perception of film that people are only recently starting to talk about it. The next logical question could be ‘how did this happen’ and ‘what now.’ All of this can be traced back to a lovely Hollywood guideline called “The Hays Code.” Formally known as “The Motion Picture Production Code,” this piece of ‘legislation’ was written by a Jesuit priest and Catholic publisher named Will B. Hays. This code was a way for the U.S. film industry to censor itself from 1934 to 1968. Author Peter Lev writes in his book “Censorship and Self-Regulation” (page 88) that the Hays “code {regulates} the moral content of feature films, designed so that Hollywood could police itself and thus avoid or minimize outside censorship… {It began as} advisory at first, but quickly became more obligatory thanks to outside pressures … taken by MPPDA Chairman Will Hays.”
And while many things may summarize the code, you should just read the first tenants.
- No picture shall be produced, which will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence, the audience’s sympathy shall never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil, or sin.
- Correct standards of life, subject only to drama and entertainment requirements, shall be presented.
- Law-divine, natural, or human-shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.
The presence of the LGBT community has always been intertwined with the media and entertainment industries. There have always been queer actors, writers, and directors and, they too wanted to be represented in film. Being queer when the Hays code was active was considered highly illegal and would frequently force people underground or a mental institution’s life sentence. As such, queer people were seen to have “lower moral standards,” not living in “correct standards of life,” or “law-divine Queer people could not be explicitly portrayed in the film as “good people”- of a writer wanted their character to be queer, it couldn’t be explicit in their medium, and the character was not allowed to “win” in the end. This code’s backbone enforced the idea that good things happen to good people (the heteronormative straits), and since queer people are inherently evil, they cannot have happy outcomes.
So while this code was officially abolished in 1968 after international films’ influence, the harm it has done remains. Queercoding villains are still very common in media and, what is even more disturbing, is the consequences in real life. Not only do queercoding villains villainize the existence of an already marginalized group (queer people). It enforced sexist commentaries about embodying feminity, strict gender binaries, all while influencing another generation to think that queer people are bad or that being queer is wrong. Queercoding villains are so dangerous BECAUSE it is already institutionalized in the media we have consumed for an entire lifetime; sometimes it is so subtle that it is hard to recognize. And when that subliminal messaging is repeated repeatedly, some people may start to believe it and act upon it.
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