Queer Coding, Explained | Hidden in Plain Sight

hey that is a great blouse backing up the wrong tree pal an elusive figure stalks film and tv history with an ambiguous sexuality that's only hinted at enter the queer-coded character why can't a woman be more like a man for many years when queerness couldn't be spelled out on screen recognizable signifiers tropes and stock character types like the maiden and or the confirmed bachelor sent a message to in the know audiences the classic queer-coded male character takes great pride in his appearance no one appreciates clothes here barbie good taste is almost more important to him than being a good person now is your chance to exit from the audition gracefully hanging your heads like dogs he's emotional with a flare for the dramatic you dirty look what you've done to my face and he's the last person you want on your side in a fight the person you do want on your side is the classic female queer-coded character you tried to gut me wandy you did the same to me if you'd had the chance let's have another go at it see you lance on top she prefers to keep her feelings inside absolutely hates dresses surely i cannot be expected to bear these fashions the entire day and prefers a suit or a well-worn flannel shirt you guys i've never had straight friends before some queer-coded characters have been written for a queer audience when explicitly queer characters haven't been allowed in stories like in movies under the haze code from the 1930s into the 60s or in children's stories today creators can hide clues about a character's sexuality to include queerness in the story you guys have to create a diversion what do you want me to do dress and drag and do the hula you can be a big other queer-coded characters exist for the homophobic audience hints of queerness serve as a shorthand for villainy call it my woman's intuition or easy laughs passengers certain to die airline negligence there's a sale at pennies reinforcing assumptions that anyone who deviates from gender norms must be wicked even today queer coding continues in the form of queerbaiting this is your soulmate tahani which panders to a queer audience through teasing romance but never delivers for fear of offending any homophobic viewers here's our take on the history of queer coding and why for the love of sappho it needs to stop are you sitting on the soap i was wondering what that was [Music] if you're new here be sure to subscribe and click the bell to get notified about all our new videos the official history of the world says that men like us have always been hidden away in secret but then there's the real world where we've been living together for all this time for this video we're defining queer coding as using lgbtqia tropes and stereotypes to allude to a character's sexuality without explicitly confirming it in the text oh about such a morning in the high court i could stamp my little feet the way those qcs carry on don't i know it though in cinema starting in the 30s the haze code made it strictly forbidden to depict quote sex perversion which was understood to include homosexuality thus as vito russo's the celluloid closet explores hollywood writers and directors used queer coding to subvert and evade the studio system's rules you know the guys who ran that code weren't rocket scientists they missed a lot of stuff and if a director was subtle enough and clever enough they got around it this led to an array of recognizable queer-coded stock characters starting with the [ __ ] here clarence put that in the trunk and don't wear them selfish queer images a history of gay and lesbian film in america calls the [ __ ] a flowery fussy effeminate soul given to limp wrists and mincing steps one of the most iconic sissies is peter laurie's joel cairo in the maltese falcon you may have to falcon but we certainly have you he fusses over the treasured falcon his business card is scented and he has a complicated relationship with his very phallic walking stick see mr speed i'm trying to recover ornament that shall we see has been mislaid many of the [ __ ] signifiers live on in much later explicitly gay characters like the stereotypical gay best friend type why are you talking like that um talking like what like in a fancy version of a gay guy this girl thing bouffant please so the [ __ ] is the classic example of how queer coding started in order to include queerness in a space that excluded it but eventually became limiting as over time stories kept reducing gayness to the same tired cliches that guy's not gay you know how you can tell the muscles good point dad second tip off no poodle next the artiste so much nicer here just three apartments hours the kaufman's upstairs and then those two guys in the top floor and tear decorators or something this character seems to represent the dangers of getting seduced by either the arts or the queer community with its bohemian depravity on the margins of society then there's the sycophantic servant the baddie underling who is a little too into their superior for there's no man in town half as many perfect a pure fairy gun in recent years fans have increasingly expressed love for versions of this type like mrs danvers and rebecca whose villainy from the protagonist's perspective can if we shift our point of view be interpreted as touching romantic devotion to the elegant and gorgeous rebecca even in death this wasn't a job for me rebecca was my life and there's the truly villainous sadist an evil character whose cruelty carries hints of gayness or a psychosexual feel his body went limp and i knew it was over and then then i felt tremendously exhilarated this character might be shown to get pleasure out of torturing people of their gender violence can be used to code sublimated sexual desire like when a bond villain takes glee in torturing double07 see what she's done to you well she never tied me to a chair her loss we can either eat each other or eat everyone else this kind of coded portrayal is damaging because it encourages us to vaguely link signifiers of queerness since you and me get acquainted honey you may be a number to the others but not to me with being a terrible person break them in two if they talk out of turn anyone who doesn't tow the marxists in solitary for one month and to this day we can spot characters who play into this general association between queerness and villainy you want to steal them no we want to change their location for a while for a safe keeping see what happens characters or performers who seem obviously queer to modernize flew under the radar pre-stonewall yeah and i can't believe liberace was gay i mean women loved him i didn't see that one coming no but the growing influence of the gay rights movement didn't end the stereotypes if anything hollywood doubled down on these types by the 90s because it became easier for the average viewer to recognize the signs we continued to see the modern [ __ ] the artiste the sadist and the sycophantic servant the main difference is that queer-coded characters in this period and later were sometimes allowed to come out yet if a character still plays into a negative stock type making their queerness explicit isn't necessarily a good thing billy is not a real transsexual but he thinks he is he tries to be ever since 1960 psycho filmmakers have been making their killers cross-dressers or transgender to add a little freudian spice and doing plenty of damage in the process he's making himself a woman's suit mr crawford out of real women meanwhile queerness still needed to be hidden in children's media it's one thing to make a serial killer explicitly gay but a disney princess unthinkable starting in the late 80s broadway lyricist howard ashman an out gay man intentionally started queering the disney canon through the three films he worked on before dying of aids the little mermaid beauty and the beast and aladdin he suggested ursula the sea witch be modeled after the drag queen divine but queer coding really sings out in beauty and the beast belle is shunned by the town for not following gender norms look there she goes the girl is strange no question the villain of that story is the personification of toxic masculinity combining the looks of a fitness queen with the misogyny of a frat bro who does she think she is that girl has tangled with the wrong man no one says no to gaston lefou is a classic sycophantic servant that disney even made canonically gay in the live-action remake and many have read the song kill the beast as an allegory for homophobia and the aids panic he'll wreak havoc on our village if we let him wander free the mob song is a perfect manifestation of people identifying a villain and wanting to exterminate it these are examples of queer coding done by a gay man to serve a story about prejudice he didn't want to make political theater i think he wanted to present characters that cast some kind of light on certain topics they feel very different to later disney queer coding moments like in pocahontas where the entire native american genocide is blamed on one sissified villain and his little dog too we continue to see questionable queer coding in post 2000 disney films like treasure planet and wreck-it ralph which perpetuate the cliche of a [ __ ] man and a butch woman getting married to each other your face is still red you might want to hit it again with your hammer oh that's not blunt force trauma ma'am that's just the honey glow in my cheeks disney's history of queer coding illustrates what a mixed bag the process can be on the one hand it can be a form of representation or commentary on the other gestures at representation aren't actual representation when it comes to brute strength i'm afraid i'm at the shallow end of the dream cool and if your one lgbt character is a queer-coded villain that just reinforces the belief that being gay is evil i shall practice my curtsy and yet queer audiences have rallied around these characters the disney villains are gay icons and don't underestimate the importance of a body language frazier embodied the 90s sitcom attitude toward queer coding when he was 10 he forged letters from leonard bernstein then told everyone they were pen pals we were all a gog until mr bernstein wrote that his broadway debut was candide when everyone knows that it was on the town it challenged reductive portraits of queer or straight masculine identity as frasier and especially niles read as gay according to classic signifiers it never even occurred to me that you might be gay well it never even occurred to me that you might be straight while their dad marty's ideas of gay signifiers like when he pretends to be gay and makes niles play his boyfriend are funny because they're so cartoonish darling am i interrupting something oh not a thing honey just take off your court and stay it's never seen as insulting or scary to frasier when he's mistaken for gay he almost wishes he were i'm afraid i could never really be more than friends would three weeks on capri in bertolucci's villa change your mind it's worth a try at the same time the cast featured gay men both out and closeted playing straight characters while ellen was cancelled shortly after ellen degeneres came out i'm gay frasier enjoyed 11 seasons and the most emmys of any sitcom ever through dancing with acknowledging homosexuality usually without making anything explicit take a risk be a man the chardonnay rose hip salt globe it took shows like will and grace queer as folk and the l word to truly move beyond a coded approach to queerness on tv today the old school [ __ ] or butch signifiers of queer coding are noticeably outdated as gender norms continue to break down well that's just her gender performance it's different from her sexual orientation but there continue to be ever evolving signifiers within queer communities they might be things like enjoying an iced coffee honestly i don't really love this whole like gays only drink iced coffee stereotype i don't know anyway can't sit in a chair properly for queer women or walks faster than straight people for gay men move i'm gay in the workplace being gay just has its perks and as studios have learned that the slightest whiff of representation will bring a loyal queer audience this has led to a new problem so you also like boys absolutely do you we're defining queerbaiting as implying queer characters or hinting at a future queer romance in an attempt to secure a queer audience without ever delivering on anything explicit enough to alienate a homophobic audience i'm here because i want to be here i love you seaman [Music] i love you too gabrielle with queerbaiting the story will often romance code two characters of the same gender that's my jacket oh no no no keep it it suits you the bbc show sherlock loved to tease shippers you're a great boyfriend sherlock holmes is a very lucky man the creators of the show one of whom is gay went from hinting at queer subtext we're not a couple yes you are to making an entire episode mocking fans for their fan theories including the gay ones what are you out of your mind i don't see why not sometimes baiting is also fueled by the actors or marketing outside of the actual text we really appreciate it and we'll take more naps like these for you supernatural concluded its 15-year run with one of the weirdest resolutions to queerbaiting in tv history for years dean had been bi-coded he casually dropped the name of a florida gay bar i was in purgatory like the purgatory purgatory another one in miami and was flustered when he met a heartthrob on one of his favorite shows it's him it's dr sexy he and the angel castiel had been romance coded since cass's introduction in season four but the show ended with one of them confessing their feelings i love you they'll do this only to be sucked into what fans called super hell as a direct result it's the shortest amount of time between coming out and bury your gaze since scream four i'm gay if it helps disney has also seamlessly transitioned from queer coding to queer baiting like when the studio promised an exclusively gay moment in the live-action version of beauty and the beast this translated to lefou being a little swishier and slightly more sympathetic well i used to be on gaston's side but we are so in a bad place right now you're too good for him anyway and this allegedly groundbreaking moment of inclusion turned out to be two men briefly dancing and then there's frozen everything about elsa is queer coded her dad makes her hide what makes her special conceal it don't feel it if she ever lets her feelings slip for a second she is convinced it will destroy her life don't touch me please i don't want to hurt you her big moment of self-discovery comes with a new outfit her storyline does not revolve around finding prince charming rather she runs away to find herself it's time to see what i can do give elsa a girlfriend was trending on twitter before frozen 2's release elsa doesn't get a girlfriend in frozen 2 but she doesn't get a boyfriend either she gets pants i also doesn't focus on romantic love that's what we love about the entire franchise for those who can see it frozen 2 is gigantically flamboyantly doc martin's wearingly queer every lesbian can relate to following the voice of a strange woman as it leads you away from your family as vox critic emily vanderworth puts it frozen 2 doesn't tell us that elsa's gay but it all but begs writers like me to say things like elsa from frozen is queer and i can prove it i want to show you something may i [Music] frustrated queer shippers lately have really leaned into death of the author first devised by ron barth death of the author proposes that a creator's intent matters less than the audience's experience or interpretation of the final textual product rather than hoping against hope that their ship will be shown explicitly fans assert a new reality where their fan fiction is in many ways as valid as what the author intended we could hear his high heels clacking to us is voldemort a job queen viewers have long been queering the canon or as professor elise ray helford has done in writing for the take reading characters as queer not because they without a doubt are but because we can would you be wounded if i never sent you flowers why can't a woman be like you and today's viewers more proactively and decisively than ever claim characters as queer regardless of any counter arguments or lack of confirmation presented by the text gen z fans on tick tock have decided to treat luke skywalker's homosexuality as a fact not up for debate do i think luke is gay no honey i know luke is gay citing what they call his chanel boots in return of the jedi the fact that the only woman we've seen him kiss was his sister and the palpable sexual tension he has was c3po when mark hamill guested on the muppet show could luke be gay and i would say you know it's meant to be interpreted by you if you think he's gay of course he's gay of course bart wasn't living in a world where authors could tweet post scripts to their books blurring the line between the text and the authorial intent but the queer fanbase of harry potter for example is increasingly indifferent to the opinions of j.k rowling while she may have hastily married two queer-coded characters lupine and tonks before killing them off fans have imagined a boyhood romance between padfoot and mooney in their serious lupine slash pick well you'd know all about the madness within wouldn't you rumors actor david thulas said he played lupin as gay in the movies quote alfonzo carone in the rehearsals without jk rowling's knowledge told me that my character was in fact gay so i'd been playing a part like a gay man for quite a long time until it turned out that i indeed got married to tonks today lgbtqia plus fans have an increasing influence on creators and explicit representation has been increasing both on new tv shows and new interpretations of old material apple tv's dickinson reclaims emily dickinson whose sexuality has long been a matter of academic debate for the women who love women crowd what are they so afraid of maybe they're scared that if they teach us how the world works we'll figure out how to take over still there are shockingly few explicitly queer characters in mainstream movie franchises international markets now determine what big blockbusters get made and studios are hesitant to center explicitly queer characters to allegedly intolerant audiences while a number of mcu characters are queer and comics the closest a marvel movie has come is a deleted scene in thor ragnarok and one unnamed man in a support group i went on a date the other day i didn't even know what to talk about what did you talk about my job his job skittishness about international markets was also long the explanation for why black men couldn't be cast as heroic leads too until black panther disproved that myth as the voices for transparent representation grow stronger creators and studios need to decide which side of history they want to be on they can contribute to a history of hiding lgbtqia people behind jokes and metaphor or they can show the world as it really is super queer i'm bisexual and i don't care what you think about it this is the take on your favorite movie shows and culture thank you so much for watching and for supporting us please subscribe and never miss a take [Music] you

Channel: The Take

Views: 315,551

Rating: 4.8720651 out of 5

Keywords: the marvelous mrs. maisel, my fair lady, toy story 3, blazing saddles, buffy the vampire slayer, Xena: Warrior Princess, Thor: Ragnarok, bridgerton, clueless, the lion king, the little mermaid, pocahontas, queer coding, queer baiting, star wars, the maltese falcon, frasier, rebecca, beauty and the beast, rope, skyfall, the silence of the lambs, i care a lot, aladdin, the powerpuff girls, teen wolf, frozen, the force awakens, sherlock, supernatural, the rise of skywalker, harry potter

Id: K5-6UXGmeGA

Length: 21min 23sec (1283 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 15 2021