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.
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 agree that that’s probably a large part of it, especially in light of my experience of being called a racist for my criticisms of Ragnarok.
I think now is a good time to trot out a term I’ve been using in private to describe this aversion to criticizing any work of art made by a POC: benevolent racism. I coined it (or maybe reinvented it) modeled on the existing term benevolent sexism, which refers to the attitude that women are delicate and fragile and morally pure and must be protected. Benevolent sexism is what leads some academic advisors to go easy on female students and not push them to improve their work as much as they could, because they think they’re too fragile and can’t handle tough criticism (and maybe aren’t capable of getting their work as good as a man’s). Similarly, benevolent racism treats creators of color as something less than full agents who can take responsibility for their work and its flaws. (There’s a start to answering your question, @touterd, though there’s a lot more where that came from…)
I have stuff to say about the “fetishizing abuse” thing, but I have somewhere I need to be… I’ll get back to it later.
Hey, I’m back. As @fuckyeahrichardiii remarked on this post and I addressed here, I don’t think Ragnarok deserves a lot of credit for its portrayal of queer characters; it’s either swept under the rug, as you remarked in your reply, or it’s stereotypical “villainous queer-coding” and “dead lesbian” angst (fyriii’s words) + an exploitative relationship as the only overt representation of queerness.
Regarding the major POC characters, I have also made clear (maybe in other places) that in spite of my objections to Ragnarok’s treatment of the pre-existing heroes of the franchise (including the W3, who were unceremoniously slaughtered and never mentioned again), I really liked the roles played by Valkyrie and Heimdall. They are both badass and awesome (and hot), and I really do appreciate how Valkyrie is permitted to take on characteristics of male archetypes and hasn’t been slotted in as an unnecessary romantic subplot.
However, for those taken in by Tumblr identity politics, that will not matter because I am daring to pass overall negative judgment – however incomplete and qualified – on the first Marvel movie to be directed by someone other than a white man. They will also find it offensive that I am passing such judgment primarily based on what I see as the injustice to two white male characters: Thor and Loki. Well, here I stand. Thor and Loki are the reason we, the pre-Ragnarok fans of the Thor franchise, are invested in the films, and a great new character and good treatment of one secondary character aren’t enough to make up for the failure with the two central characters.
I had mixed feelings about Hela as the “female final boss” (LOL). To some extent her story was interesting: her feeling of betrayal at being being imprisoned by her own father and former accomplice, her sense of grievance at being denied her birthright (there’s a theme we’ve seen before!), and her exposure of Asgard’s shameful imperialist history – all that was very cool. On the other hand, some of her motivations were pretty hazy. Why does she want to conquer shit? I sort of got the sense that she just enjoys bloodshed… and maybe that makes sense for the Goddess of Death, but it’s a little unsatisfying to have the first female major villain be your standard “I want to take over the world!!” kind of cartoonish villain.
Hoo boy, I haven’t seen much of that thing about shipping Loki with anyone being abusive (though I have seen people saying that shipping him with a woman is problematic because he’s a misogynist, which I kind of see but think is debatable), but I know what you’re talking about. Yeah, Loki is pretty screwed up, but I think he’s been presented as redeemable, and it’s unfair to say that such people should be excluded from relationships. I also think people are capable of distinguishing fictional relationships they find narratively interesting or even just sexy from good models for real-life relationships (see this post, which I came across earlier today). I have no illusions about Thor/Loki being a healthy or pure relationship as the characters are presented in canon (though I also think that with a lot of work and maybe some therapy they could figure it out). Honestly, though, I’m not sure what to say to the charge of fetishization aimed at people who find abusive and/or power-imbalanced relationships interesting to write and read about because of the complicated interpersonal dynamics they present, or who find such relationships sexy to fantasize about. It’s a kink, it’s not everyone’s kink, and that’s fine; and I don’t think that kinks, if acknowledged as such and appropriately hedged about with warning tags and explicit consent, perpetuate abusive power relations in real life.
Loki is the Philosopher King 