things that always make me happy: serial commenters. there are three types
1) reading a longfic chapter by chapter, leaving an increasingly emotional comment on every chapter, descends into keysmashes near the end: outstanding
2) read one fic by accident, clicked the author name, now working steadily through the backlog and commenting on everything, I wake up to an AO3 inbox full of enthusiasm: precious beyond words
3) the longterm serial commenter whose comment begins with I don’t even know this fandom but because they have followed me from somewhere else: stunning. humbling. magical.
Many male Disney villains are what we would call “camp.” Effeminate, vain, “wimpy” and portrayed as laughable and unlikable. Calling upon common negative stereotypes about gay men, these villains are characterized as villainous by embodying these tropes and traits.
Think about it: Often Thin/un-muscled figure, heavily inked and shadowed eyes (giving the impression of eyeliner and eye shadow?), stereotypically “sassy” and/or manipulative, often ends up being cowardly once on the defensive, many have comedic male sidekicks (such as Wiggins, Smee, Iago, the…snake that isn’t Kaa)
Other examples:
since i was talking about one of the disney man villains who doesn’t fit this stereotype yesterday…
Gaston.
my bf was listening to that song about him yesterday
and i mentioned that he is literally the most terrifying disney villain
why?
because his type of evil is banal and commonplace
there are white men walking around who are exactly like him
men who think that women are prizes they deserve
men who will not listen or pay attention to a rejection
men who will go out of their way, if rejected, to ruin a woman’s life
ppl often seem to miss this when discussion beauty and the beast since the stockholm syndrom ‘romance’ is also a giant icky thing
the terrifying thing about gaston is that he is supposed to be (as all disney villains) a hyperbolic cartoon
but he is the absolutely truest and most real villain
because he exists in the real world
we all know men like him
Also, if we’re talking about queer coded characters the MOST important of all the characters is Ursula who was bad off of a drag Queen (Divine) and has a whole host of negative stereotypes.
She’s also my favorite.
This post is sorely missing some seriously important historical context. The term for this as film history goes is the sissy, and as a stock character the sissy is probably one of the oldest archetypes in Hollywood, going back to the silent film era. Some of the most enduring stereotypes of male queerness—the limp wrist, swishing, etc—can actually be traced to the exaggerated movements of cinematic sissies in silent films. And it’s important to note sissies were portrayed in a range of ways, though they were generally used to comedic effect; queerness was considered a joke, and the modern notion of the “sassy gay friend” in films can probably be traced back to this bullshit too. It wasn’t until the Hays Code was adopted in the ’30s that sissies almost uniformly started being portrayed as villains. Homosexuality was specifically targeted under the euphemism of “sexual perversion”, and the only way it could fly under the radar in films under the strict censorship of the code was by coding villains that way in contrast to the morally upright hetero heroes. Peter Lorre’s character in The Maltese Falcon is one off the top of my head, but there are a slew of them from the ’30s onward, and this trope didn’t go away after the Code ended either. More modern examples in live action films are Prince Edward in Braveheart, Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs, and Xerxes in 300.
So Disney just provides some of the most egregious modern examples of the sissy villain, but this is a really old and really gross trope that goes back years and years in Western film. There’s a fantastic book and accompanying documentary about the history of homosexuality in film by Vito Russo called The Celluloid Closet that gets into a lot of this.
It’s incredibly refreshing to see a response to a post like this that starts with “This post is sorely missing some seriously important historical context.” and then goes on to provide important historical context that adds information to the point being made. I was seriously wincing and bracing myself for “You guys, you don’t understand. It was different back then.”
(Of course, I wouldn’t have been worried if the name of the last poster hadn’t scrolled off the top of my screen by the time I got to it.)
There are some things that bother me about the first image being regarded as queer coded: 1) pink was considered masculine up until the early 1900’s (roughly pre- ww1), and was continued to be worn by guys thru the 1980’s.
As for the hair bow aspect, those were period correct as well.
Google, my friends. I agree with the rest of them, but…that first? He’s not queer coded. He’s just upper society jerk
Do you really think Pocahontas is a period accurate movie in any aspect?
The story we know of Pocahontas–or at least the one portrayed by the Disney film–is one told by John Smith himself. So, the reliability of a story that involves a woman being head over heels in love with the person telling you the story is questionable at the least.
Jumping in to add to the laundry list another (technically) Disney stereotypical queer-coded villain:
Though the GM’s queerness was not really coded, I still think it’s important to point out the enactment of the exact same features of the above-mentioned villains. It’s still frankly shocking to me that tumblr hasn’t dragged this movie for its regressive stereotypes. It was a huge step back for Disney/Marvel’s potential for respectful LGBTQ+ representation.
I think the lack of queer representation in MCU is the reason TR is regarded as a supportive movie for LGBTQ+ community, just because it has some queer characters that their coding is less implicit. But context is also important and some people fail to see that there is nothing progressive about it regarding the queer coded characters.
GM is a crazy and cruel tyrant whose entertainment is watching slaves kill each other. He is later taken down by the revolution started by Thor, the cis hetero hero.
Loki is shown as a vain, irresponsible, egotistic character. Unlike his portrayal in previous movies, his intelligence is downplayed to the point that his decisions seems stupid. It’s heavily implied that betrayal and untrustworthiness is in his nature. In the end Thor, the cis hetero man, inspires him to change to the good side.
Valkyrie(who is never given a name btw) captures and sells people as slaves. She is shown as an alcoholic who leads a pointless life. She finds herslef again because of Thor, the cis hetero hero.
Kevin Feige:“The scene with Loki in chains being led towards Odin at the beginning of the movie was one of the additional photography scenes, and it actually came about for a couple of reasons. I was reading the tie-in comic and they had that scene in it. I get all the comics when they’re published – I flip through some of them, and I was flipping through that one and I went, ‘Holy crap – this has got to be in the movie!’ It’s slightly different in the comic than it is in the movie, but I thought this has to be in the movie. So I called Tom [Hiddleston] and we talked about his availability, and we said we were gonna do this scene. So he goes, ‘Remember, I pitched you that scene. Months ago!’ Well, I did not remember, but I believed him, and I’m happy for him to take credit for it because he does an amazing job in the movie.” [x]
Tom always ahead of them lol
Yes! Proof that he is smarter and more talented than them and has the perfect understanding of his character and Marvel didn’t deserve him.
Proof both that TH knows his character better than anyone else and that Marvel doesn’t give a shit and never had. They HAD a perfect villain, who was perfect precisely because he wasn’t a villain and because he was relatable and complex and people loved him. But they decided that since maybe Loki had a bit too many female fans and looked a little bit effeminate and wasn’t much of a heavy muscly hitter and used brains instead of force… That maybe he had cooties, you know, so better let him go or Marvel’s masculinity would be questioned or something. So they squandered a perfectly rich and nuanced character in favor of a muscly, gigantic and overpowered New Awesome Villain ™ with the most laughable and forced Moral Dilemma ™ ever that would totally appeal to the target adolescent male audience and pushed him down everybody’s throats.
Thanks for nothing, Feige. Your intelligence is on the same level as that of the adolescents you’re trying to woo, except they’ll grow and wise up and you… Well… won’t.
when cats r really excited to see you and they come trotting as fast as their lil leggys can carry them and go ‘prrrt!’ the whole time reblog if you agree?