Gays and Minorities as villians in fictional media... Good? Bad?

[Darken12]

To me, having a flaming homo stereotype as a protagonist/antagonist in a work of art is offensive, but so is having a protagonist/antagonist who is in every way indistinguishable from a straight person but arbitrarily labeled gay once or twice in the screenplay for added "diversity" points. LGBT people are not all flamboyant queens, but they are also not exactly the same as straight people. In our admirable rush to fight stereotypes, can't go too far in the other direction and pretend that there is no unique LGBT experience that influences sexual minorities; at that point, you go from offensive caricature to erasure, and both are shitty. We need to have LGBT characters who are developed enough as human beings that their sexuality is a meaningful element of their personality without letting them cross over into parody.

tl;dr gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender men and women have unique experiences and outlooks based on their sexuality and pretending that those things don't exist by writing characters as straight and awkwardly dropping "but he's gay!" every few pages in the script is no more respectful than having them all be flaming fags.

As a member of the LGBT+ community, I don't find the "acts exactly like a straight person" thing offensive at all. In fact, I will always disagree with feminists who say that women who act like men with breasts are somehow inherently bad and should be avoided (though I understand their criticism that it implies women are only "worthy" when they have embraced traditionally male values), or other depictions of minorities behaving exactly like privileged groups.

Assigning traits to groups is a bad thing. It's inherently limiting, divisive and Othering. This is why gender roles and gender constructs are a bad thing, because they constrain men and women into rigid categories which are punished for diverting from, draws a divisive line between the genders, and keeps certain traits away from them. I am all for the destruction of stereotypes and constructs and the homogenisation of culture. I am all for women acting like men with breasts, and for men acting like women with dicks. I am all for the systematic deconstruction of manhood and womanhood, of race, ethnicity, gender identity and sexuality. People of all genders, sexualities, races, classes, ages and so on, have the right to look and act outside the way society expects them to look and act like.

Having LGBT+ characters who act just like their cis and straight counterparts is an inherently good thing in my book. Of course, having cis straight characters who act in ways traditionally ascribed to the LGBT+ community is also an inherently good thing for me. I would love to see a campy straight guy or butch straight woman for every traditionally feminine lesbian and traditionally masculine gay guy.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Elements of foppishness or flamboyance to underline a vain and/or megalomaniacal personality?

You seem to have ignored the line you actually quoted of mine where I pointed out that it's nothing to do with making characters who the audience will read as gay. I mean, Scar, sure.. the subtext there may as well have been as blunt as the head of a spade, but you can still pretend he's not gay if you want. I mean, it's kid's film, right? They wouldn't put gay stuff in a kids film. The fact that he's as camp as Albert Campion drinking Campari on an all night camping trip is just meant to illustrate that he's.. well.. a bad person.

Because all behavior that marks you as abnormally masculine or feminine makes you a bad person. How else are we going to tell who is evil?

 

[Piorn]

This topic reminds me of the Discworld novel "Jingo".
Sometimes, we spend too much time respecting different people or cultures, and forget that everyone can be a criminal, regardless where they come from (or what gender they are/do).

 

[Batou667]

You seem to have ignored the line you actually quoted of mine where I pointed out that it's nothing to do with making characters who the audience will read as gay. I mean, Scar, sure.. the subtext there may as well have been as blunt as the head of a spade, but you can still pretend he's not gay if you want. I mean, it's kid's film, right? They wouldn't put gay stuff in a kids film. The fact that he's as camp as Albert Campion drinking Campari on an all night camping trip is just meant to illustrate that he's.. well.. a bad person.

Because all behavior that marks you as abnormally masculine or feminine makes you a bad person. How else are we going to tell who is evil?

Well, I agree that villains often exhibit "abnormal" traits - certainly anti-heroic traits, all the better to contrast with the protagonist - but what I was taking issue with was the assumption that anything other than the most earnest and hackneyed heroics can be called "gay coding". Sure, many Disney villains are a little effete, but I assumed that was to soften their evil side and make them figures of fun, not just plain scary. Scar without his childish indulgences (like getting Rowan Atkinson to serenade him with I've Got A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts - the man has taste) would basically be Hitler. King John would be a monstrous tryant if not for his immature tantrums. And so on. The villain being a source of comic relief is standard fare, surely?

(Also, how is Scar gay? He doesn't have sex with anyone in the film, so how can we know his sexuality? Surely the best we can say is that he exhibits some traits that aren't traditionally heterosexual, but could he not just be a camp straight guy? Or is my gaydar really that bad?)

 

[TheScientificIssole]

You mean like in Skyfall?

He means like in Transformers and He-Man, I think.
OT: Who's corresponding acts of evil to sexuality? Idiots, that's who. We don't listen to them, so it doesn't matter.

 

[Ryotknife]

Actually, now that i think about it, how often do you actually KNOW the villians orientation? Typically you know the protagonists as there is usually a love interest involved somehow, but villians? I think we mostly just assume they are straight even though there is usually no evidence to support that.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Actually, now that i think about it, how often do you actually KNOW the villians orientation? Typically you know the protagonists as there is usually a love interest involved somehow, but villians? I think we mostly just assume they are straight even though there is usually no evidence to support that.

There's an assumption that they are straight unless told otherwise (which is why some characters can't go 5 minutes without reminding us).

If you have a long running movie franchise in which the main character is a man with no hint of sexuality, or maybe even doesn't see another person, if they find a woman and get married, nobody would mind. If he marries another man, there will be a terrible shitstorm, because you've changed the character and betrayed the fans.

If Rowling had made an announcement that Dumbledore was straight (or, for that matter, any character not specified to have a love interest...the Weasley guy who worked with dragons, for example, or one of the Creevey brothers), nobody would bat an eyelid. The reverse is very much not true.

Of course, that really sucks, you end up with characters who have to announce their gayness if you want to avoid this.

 

[Brad Shepard]

Who cares if the villain is gay or a minorities, if you care about it and blow it out of proportion, its only hurting everything. Let the person be the villain so everything can be equal, because that seems to be what everyone wants.