EP23: Subtext and Stereotype: Queer Coding, Representation, & Villainy, Pt.2

Discover the colors of the rainbow hidden within the monochrome palette of media representation; our latest episode is a journey through the evolving portrayal of the LGBTQ community in film and television, with an acute focus on Disney's tentative dance with queer visibility. We unpack the subtleties of queer coding, tracing its roots from the nefarious villains of the silver screen to the present-day hesitation that shrouds films like "Strange World." It's a conversation that not only critiques Disney's half-hearted LGBTQ character inclusions but also calls into question the larger landscape of mainstream media's commitment to meaningful representation.

The silver screen once whispered secrets of queerness through the allegories of the Cowardly Lion and Dracula's Daughter, and we continue to uncover these hidden messages, celebrating their clever defiance of past censorship. Our narrative then leads to the hopeful anticipation of tales yet to be told, like the upcoming Disney film featuring a gay prince, and the necessity for more non-binary characters. With a nod to bravery and the act of 'doing it scared,' our discussion pays tribute to the pioneers who have paved the way, from Queen Latifah's Mama in "Chicago" to those who stood up during the Cooper Donuts riot of 1959, a lesser-known yet pivotal moment in LGBTQ history.

As the curtains close on our introspective session, we reflect on how far we've come, yet how much ground there is still to cover. The portrayal of LGBTQ characters has evolved from the sinister to the celebrated, but stereotypes and tokenism still lurk in the shadows. With a respectful salute to the artists and activists who've fought for visibility and equality, this episode is a mosaic of past struggles and future aspirations, an ode to the enduring spirit of the LGBTQ community and its unwavering quest for authentic representation in media. Join us as we honor these milestones and muse on the transformative power of storytelling to write the next chapter in the narrative of LGBTQ+ rights.

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Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:24

I want a gay prince. Yeah, wizard of Oz was a wild filming process. You ever want to see something that'll blow your mind? Look into that Along the lines of queer coding. Again, queerness in general in religion, in media, in society has kind of often been linked to immorality or even illness sickness, and a lot of the times you will see that in these villains, in these characters, they'll be yearning for something you know greater than what they are, or they'll be seeking a cure for something or another. That usually isn't explicitly queerness, but if you read between the lines you can pretty much tell. Okay, I know what they're talking about here. This isn't specifically a Disney problem, but they definitely are, I would say, the loudest offender, just because they're the multi-billion dollar conglomerate that owns, like seven other companies at this point Loudest and most frequent offender.

Speaker 2: 1:21

Yeah, and again, once you become that big, I feel like it's hard not to become the loudest and most frequent offender because, like girl, they're huge, they own everything.

Speaker 1: 1:30

It's interesting, though, coming from a company that has Gay Day and says that they support LGBTQ people, they have tons of LGBTQ employees. It's just so strange.

Speaker 2: 1:41

Yeah, and even again, they started doing those gay nights. And at the same time that they unveiled doing gay nights, they released the movie Strange World, which was their first movie with an openly gay protagonist. And then they didn't advertise it, just like they didn't advertise for Treasure Planet in the hopes that it would fail, Like they were hoping this movie wouldn't do good. So then they could say, see, people don't actually want a queer protagonist, they just think they do. And then they don't have to ever do it again.

Speaker 1: 2:10

Well, that's what we were talking about earlier, about how you can skew the research to fit your agenda. But honestly, they have a really great platform, one of the biggest in the world. I think that they can use to start shifting the representation and be a leader in that. Set the example, start shifting your language, change your behavior.

Speaker 2: 2:29

Yeah, but instead we got two girls kissing in the background of Light Year and a random alien lesbian in another movie. And then Strange World, which was so good. It was a fantastic movie but no one's heard of it. It was literally their animated release the year before last year. It was their December animated release and no one had heard of it because they didn't bother to advertise it a single at any time, barely on TV. I think I saw one TV ad for it and then I saw a couple TikTok ads. The only reason I even found out it had a queer protagonist was because two of my friends had seen it and they were like dude, have you heard of this movie? Disney did it. I was like what? But Disney did it and then made sure no one saw it so that it could bomb at the box office, like it inevitably did bomb at the box office. And now they can say see, you guys don't actually want that, we're not going to give it to you.

Speaker 1: 3:23

Yeah, I'm still stuck on lesbians or aliens, because that's the messaging right.

Speaker 2: 3:27

Yeah, yeah, no, they literally have a random character. Yeah, it was like one of their first, like hey look, we have a gay character and it's like she's a purple alien. Thanks.

Speaker 1: 3:36

Yeah, thanks for the representation. Thank you, disney. Like, what exactly is the messaging here? It's kind of mixed. It's almost like a mixed signal. You know Mix messaging. Yeah, what exactly do you want people to get from this?

Speaker 2: 3:48

Exactly, that's the point. No, absolutely. But yeah, I am here for when Disney finally does a gay prince. That's what I'll be excited for. A Disney movie again, that's what I'll be like yes, let's go.

Speaker 1: 4:01

I want more non-binary representation.

Speaker 2: 4:03

Yes agree, yeah, I was literally talking about that today with my mom. That's so funny.

Speaker 1: 4:08

I mean there's nowadays you have some gay men, you have lesbian females, but it's, you know, they're of the binary and while that's cool, I'm not saying I'm ungrateful, but it would just be nice to see a little bit more of the gender-bending stuff, which is stuff I really like.

Speaker 2: 4:23

Absolutely. It's one of those things. Even I think it was the president of GLAAD who was doing an acceptance speech at a word show where she was saying we need trans stories, we need trans voices and trans stories and we need a lot of them, because that's the first step to fighting against bigotry and stigma and stereotype. Is learning is reading fiction, non-fiction, the whole gambit of books with characters and storylines that talk about people that are different from you. That's the first stepping stone.

Speaker 1: 4:57

Yeah, I think that's the next step in the evolution. Now.

Speaker 2: 5:00

Absolutely. I definitely think that that's a really necessary thing. So if anyone has a story idea involving a queer person, fucking do it, I'm scared. I'm right in my book Do it, do it, scared.

Speaker 1: 5:10

I mean there is fear with coming forward and just living into your truth.

Speaker 2: 5:15

Yeah, no, the most incredible thing that I saw was it was a Tumblr post from God forever ago. It's actually going around TikTok again now, which is so funny to say, but it was this person being like holding my own face in my hands, screaming at myself you have to have an open heart. If you want a connection, you have to be brave, you have to things like that. And then someone commented on it what if I'm scared? And the original poster said do it scared? Flawed me the first time I saw it. The idea of just do it scared has changed me. Do it scared, it's okay.

Speaker 1: 5:48

Yeah, because if you do it scared, you end up evolving into a new you, like a more evolved you, and you gain confidence along the way.

Speaker 2: 5:56

Yeah, even if you get through it and you're like, oh God, I barely got anything from that, you got to the end you got to say that you did that. You now get to say that you did it scared. That's awesome. I love that. Bravery isn't a lack of fear. Bravery is acting despite fear.

Speaker 1: 6:13

Mm-hmm, we need more of that. Do it scared. So let's jump back to some queer coding. Yes, pulled from some of the major cultural classics.

Speaker 2: 6:21

Yes, so these are films from major US-filmed wow or history that have queer-coded characters, specifically during the Haze Code era where characters couldn't be outwardly queer.

Speaker 1: 6:35

So we have the effeminate, cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz. I love him, and that was actor Burt Lair.

Speaker 2: 6:41

Burt Lair actually based his portrayal of the Cowardly Lion on gay stagehands that he would work with on previous projects, and he would describe these gay stagehands as sissies or pansies, and that's how he chose to play the Cowardly Lion as one of these real-life human beings that he interacted with. He's OK, I forgive him. He suffered playing the Cowardly Lion. He was like boiling in that suit. He literally almost died of heat stroke.

Speaker 1: 7:11

They all suffered for that movie. It was a brilliant character, but that's fucked up, correct.

Speaker 2: 7:17

Yeah, they all. If you ever want to hear something lately, if you ever want to read one of the most fucked up film history things, look into the filming of the Wizard of Oz. They all suffered brutally lifelong complications from that movie, really Literally. The actress who played the Wicked Witch it's believed that her Alzheimer's came from the copper paint that they used to paint her skin green.

Speaker 1: 7:37

Oh my god.

Speaker 2: 7:38

She got actual third degree burns from a stunt they did where she disappears in the fire. Yeah, at one point when they were filming that she caught fire. The copper paint on her skin caught fire.

Speaker 1: 7:51

That does not surprise me yeah.

Speaker 2: 7:53

Also the snow. The snow in the poppy field was just asbestos.

Speaker 1: 7:57

Wow. Well, clearly they've done some work since then, because Wicked on Broadway is absolutely stunning. It's one of the best shows I've seen on Broadway.

Speaker 2: 8:04

No one's died of poisoning yet guys.

Speaker 1: 8:06

Yeah, and then we have next one, countess Zaleska, which is Dracula's daughter and that is a direct sequel of the original Dracula, and her queer coding is shown in the film through her character, how she tries to desperately cure her vampirism, even seeking psychotherapy for it. It's wild.

Speaker 2: 8:22

She winds up giving into these urges and pursues both men and women. Once she, you know like, really goes full vampire In one moment. She even uses the pretext of painting a portrait to lure a woman into removing her clothes, which definitely feeds into some very harmful stereotypes about women who like women, women who love women. But for its time again a direct sequel to Dracula this is fucking forever ago. It definitely did its best to have a character show the queer experience to a certain extent.

Speaker 1: 8:53

For just old generational stories where somebody was queer and they wanted to send them to a psych ward to go pray the gay away or beat the gay out of them.

Speaker 2: 9:01

Or conversion therapy, in which people would usually be drugged or shocked and things like that, and be shown very fluid images of both men and women and if they reacted wrongly, you know conversion therapy. Back then it was horrific. It was horrific.

Speaker 1: 9:16

And you know what queer people go through on the inside, thinking that how they feel and who they are isn't OK, and so they do their best not to act on it or fear of going to hell or burning in the pits of hell, only to give into their desires later Like it's just. It's crazy. How long can you submit? How long can you?

Speaker 2: 9:33

fight off the urge. I think at the end of the day, the entire idea of vampirism is a queer coded idea, even like some of the first vampires were women, who Carmella Carmella was the first vampire. She was a woman who specifically went after other women. Vampirism I feel like very much, and again, I might be very off base here. It's not like I've studied the history of how vampirism came to be in the public conscience and media and whatever but I definitely feel like it would not at all be surprising if it turns out that the entire thing is just like queer panic hysteria, you know, like using vampir. You know that I wouldn't be surprised. I would be surprised if the whole idea is queer coded. Yeah, it's a good theory, a game theory. Sorry, I had to do it. That's just a theory, A game theory.

Speaker 2: 10:28

Anyway, next up we have one that this one got me. This one got me because I've never seen this movie but I've heard of this movie so many times. Same Joel Caro from the Maltese Falcon. So apparently the Maltese Falcon was originally a play and the creator of the play was a gay man. So it was kind of one of those things where, like, he fully intended to have Joel Caro be a gay character because of that. But once the movie was, once the play was being adapted into a film, I thought it was a book. It was either a book or a play. I may be mistaken and it may have been a book, but when it was being turned into a film it was during the time of the Hays Code. So because of that, the director was directly warned before finishing the screenplay Don't try to get a Nancy quality into him. Specifically the character of Joel Caro, like he was this man's, was warned not to show Joel's sexuality as how it's depicted in the book.

Speaker 1: 11:26

That's crazy.

Speaker 2: 11:27

So director John Huston seemed to have taken that solely as a challenge and said challenge accepted. So he did as much as possible to stuff as many queer codes into this character as he physically and humanly could. He gave him fancy gloves with a pinky ring, a cane cleverly used to symbolize a phallic object and gardenia scented calling cards which were going to be lavender scented. But he was told no, and I would literally kill. I would kill for them to be lavender scented. I would go back in time with my little, my little bicycle time machine and kill for that to happen because, oh my God, lavender scented calling cards. Shut the fuck up. I don't want to do that. I want lavender scented calling cards.

Speaker 1: 12:18

Yeah, but denied by the haze.

Speaker 2: 12:20

Yeah, unfortunately the haze code said no, but the music would also totally shift whenever Joel Caro like walked into the room. It would take on this really high, effeminate, whimsical quality, specifically when he walks into the detective's office at the beginning of the movie, to kind of like set the plot into motion, which also huge spoiler alert, because I don't think you're supposed to know the villain of the Maltese Falcon when you first watch it. But oops, spoiled it for all of us. It's fine.

Speaker 1: 12:50

The next one is Callum, from Calamity Jane, who preferred to go by Callum, and the film is based on gender bending. She's a Frontiers woman, martha Jane Canary, and she spends a lot of her time with the men and I think she's sort of like I mean, I would look at her sort of even non binary maybe, or androgynous.

Speaker 2: 13:10

Absolutely. I definitely feel like, especially since she is loosely based on a real life person, like she's loosely based on that Frontiers woman. So because of that, I definitely feel like a lot of those historical figures nowadays with the terminology would be like oh yeah, that's more accurate than me saying I'm a woman, yeah.

Speaker 1: 13:28

Yeah, but she was always hanging out with the guys and the film basically focuses in on her interest, or her relationship or her connection, rather, to another woman who supposedly has the same interest in a man.

Speaker 2: 13:42

Yeah, so supposedly it's like this little bit. The way that the movie scapegoats any ideas of it being, you know, too queer, for the Hayes code is that they're both interested in the same man. But most of the movie really does focus on Callum's relationship to their roommate, who is a very, very hyper feminine person. She, you know, she does her hair all the time she's. She's the direct opposite of the coin of what Callum would be as a quote unquote womanly person.

Speaker 1: 14:11

Right.

Speaker 2: 14:11

Or feminine person, yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:13

And it's interesting how Callum is more of a more I would say, more masculine name, mm, hmm, and she's attracted to a more feminine woman.

Speaker 2: 14:20

Yeah, very cute. We love our mask thems Very cool. Me too, I love it. And then we have a Gillian Holaroid from Bell Book and Candle. So the whole idea behind Bell Book and Candle is kind of very LGBTQ coded.

Speaker 2: 14:36

It's about a community of witches and warlocks that live in Greenwich Village, new York. They have their own hidden, private little clubs where they're able to go to and be fully, authentically themselves. They can be the witches and warlocks that they were born to be and they keep those secret lives and identities hidden from the rest of the world, from those who are in witches or warlocks, because they couldn't understand or they don't understand and they refuse to understand. The story follows one specific witch named Gillian, who falls in love with a human man and must choose between keeping her mystical powers that she was born with, the identity that she was born with, or releasing her powers and being a regular person. So the whole idea is very like.

Speaker 2: 15:23

So next is Joe and Jerry from Some Like it Hot. What's pretty cool about this one is this is one of the first films to really make it big that wasn't approved by the Hays Code, so that's pretty fascinating. Joe and Jerry spend most of the film in drag. At one point one of them falls in love with a very wealthy man, probably because he's wealthy and considers marrying him. Another character pretends to be gay to shoot his shot with Marilyn Monroe. So you know there's a lot of fun elements of that one.

Speaker 1: 15:52

So the film was too gay for them to approve, but it was released anyway. Yeah right, Pretty cool. So tell us about Beneath the Younger from Arraison in the Sun.

Speaker 2: 16:01

Yes, Arraison in the Sun is actually just in and of itself a very fascinating film.

Speaker 2: 16:05

It's one of the first movies produced by Hollywood to address racial segregation, so that's a very pivotal moment to Hollywood history, absolutely. It was written by Lorraine Hansberry, who wrote the original play as well, and while working on the play she ended up joining the Daughters of Vilitas, which was a lesbian organization, and she began writing for their magazine, the Lacker. So because of this she really started exploring herself, her own sexuality, her own identity, and wrote a lot of that self-exploration into the character of Bethena Younger. The character is very interested in self-discovery, she's a fierce feminist, she has little to no interest in the men she dates and she has outwardly proclaimed that she has no intention of getting married, which for women at the time was extraordinarily rare. And then we've got Roberta from now and then, which was the first hit from Pretty Little Liars producer I, Marine King, which is fascinating.

Speaker 2: 17:01

It follows the story of four women reminiscing on their childhood, their childhoods in the summer of 1970. The specific character of Roberta her young version, is played by Christina Ricci and as she grows up she's played by Rosie O'Donnell and she was 100% originally written to be a lesbian.

Speaker 1: 17:16

I was going to say no subtleties there.

Speaker 2: 17:18

Yeah, king has confirmed that since, but unfortunately Studio said no. So she was basically as heavily queer coded as physically and humanly possible. She would bind her breast. When she was younger she hung out with all the neighborhood boys. She was always fighting with her brothers in very rough and tumble kind of ways, in very quote unquote tomboy kind of ways. Her queerness a lot of the times evades straight audiences, but those who know definitely know and, like I said since it has 100% been confirmed that she was written to be a lesbian.

Speaker 1: 17:51

And then we have this.

Speaker 2: 17:52

Oh, I love this movie. Sorry, you can go ahead, I just love this movie.

Speaker 1: 17:56

No, you can go. No, you do it. I love her.

Speaker 2: 17:59

The fifth element. The fifth element who? My biggest compliment my boyfriend's ever given me was when he said one time when I had an orange hair that I looked like the girl from that movie. And I was like heck, yeah, so very, very pretty that day. You're like go on, go on. Right, but Ruby Rod is 100% a queer coded character. They are extraordinarily effeminate and they they're definitely one of those queer coded characters who, as an effeminate male, is meant to be a foil, if you will, a counterbalance to the hyper masculine lead. It's meant to amplify their masculinity which, considering the lead in the fifth element, is Bruce Willis. Is that even necessary?

Speaker 1: 18:41

Seriously.

Speaker 2: 18:42

Is Bruce Willis Hard, hard Doing, but Ruby is fantastic and I wouldn't want them any other way. Chris Tucker plays them phenomenally Like oh my God, so so good. They're a high fashion, futuristic, gender nonconforming talk show host, and what's fascinating about this character is not only are they not a villain, they are an intrinsic part to the story. They help the heroes save the day and they are universally beloved by the community that they exist within. Ruby is a talk show host and is extremely famous and very well known and very well loved, which is not something that you usually find in your queer coded characters, so gotta give a little shout out to him.

Speaker 1: 19:27

Yeah, I love how Ruby identifies as both miss and mister.

Speaker 2: 19:31

So good, I love them.

Speaker 1: 19:33

Yeah, and that's an appreciation for both the male and female form, which I love again, loving that non-binary.

Speaker 2: 19:40

Definitely has a great aspect. If you haven't seen Fifth Elephant, I do recommend. It's really good. And then next up we have Lee Shang from Mulan. So this is one of the Disney examples that I actually feel is really holds up pretty decent, even to this day. You know is Mulan in general, and I mean everyone knows the queer coding around Mulan, you know. I mean she joins the military dressed as a man. Her femininity is exposed, literally. The climax of the movie has about 70% of the people in it dressed in drag.

Speaker 1: 20:10

I was going to say it's like a drag musical.

Speaker 2: 20:11

Yeah, exactly that last scene perfection. But another thing that I found really interesting was the fact that Lee Shang is also, in and of himself, a very queer coded character. This is a direct quote from a W Magazine article. The queer coding of Lee Shang comes through in the form of subtext. The connection he builds with Ping on their journey leads to the betrayal of discovering Mulan's identity. He has really only known her as his male companion, ping, and seeks a romantic connection with her at the end of the film, despite not actually knowing Mulan as a woman, it seems as though he has fallen in love with Ping and is getting to know Mulan as her true self. Disney may have accidentally created their first bisexual character here, even if that aspect sits beneath the surface. Wow, so bisexual icon.

Speaker 1: 21:05

That's amazing. I love the possibility that they did that on accident. I hate it. Yes.

Speaker 2: 21:09

It was 100% that would happen on accident. Like straight people wouldn't even think along those lines usually, you know, especially back then, like I know, we got Matron, mama Morton, from Chicago, chicago, yes. So for those of you who've seen Chicago, either on play or the film, you'll notice that the portrayal of Mama is very different depending on the version you see her in. And the reason for that is because the gay director of Chicago did not want to perpetuate the stereotype of the butch lesbian prison warden preying on the female inmates, which is very much who Mama was as a character in the original and even in, you know, the film of Chicago. She still kind of has that, but she has a much more likable quality to her. She's a little softer about certain things, so you know, she's not quite so obvious with her intentions and things of that nature.

Speaker 1: 22:05

So yeah, as soon as you said that, I thought of Orange as the new black. And then what was the other Australian sort of equivalent to that series? Do you remember that? What that is off the top of your head?

Speaker 2: 22:15

God, I don't, I do know.

Speaker 1: 22:18

I have heard of you. You've seen Orange as the new black, though, right, yes, I haven't seen the whole thing. Mind you, that's the first thing that came to mind when you were like, yes, stereotypical butch in the prison, you know, taking advantage of inmates.

Speaker 2: 22:29

No, fair, yeah, because it's kind of one of those things like that, that is, that is a trope that is literally from the thirties the female warden who is visibly queer coded to be a butch lesbian preying on the inmates Like that. Chicago is not the first to do that. So because of that it definitely it makes sense why the director chose to go the way he did and I appreciate that he did, especially considering that Queen Latifa was the one playing mama and it absolutely makes her a much more likeable character.

Speaker 1: 22:59

So yeah, agreed.

Speaker 2: 23:01

I really like.

Speaker 1: 23:01

Chicago, me too.

Speaker 2: 23:04

In 1959, one night in May 1959, in the neighborhood of Skid Row in Los Angeles, a small riot broke out when two cops attempted to raid and arrest some transgender folks at Cooper Donuts. The store was located between two gay bars, making it a prime spot to catch transgender or cross-dressing people hanging out. When the two cops couldn't fit all the people they wanted to arrest in the back of the car, people started throwing coffee and trash at the police, driving them away. Once they were gone, people began rioting in the streets and more police came. Several arrests were made. It said that the incident helped launch the beginning of the gay rights movement and of course it did. Any queer person fighting against the homophobic establishment, no matter how small the situation is, taking a step toward becoming visible in a world that has tried so hard to categorize the LGBTQ community as invalid.