Queercoded and Disabled Villains - a short extract
An essay extract on the effects of queercoding and portrayal of disabilities in fictional media.
Villains have a history of being queer-coded or disabled in some way, perpetuating the stereotype that LGBT+ people and people with disabilities are to be feared and/or hated. This is evident in Disney films; particularly The Lion King and Hercules where both Scar and Hades are much more effeminate and flamboyant than their hero counterparts, Simba and Hercules who are portrayed as hyper-masculine; the ‘ideal’ way to be for a man. This does not mean that the villains are, in fact, gay but it is a trope used to imply that these sorts of traits are inherently bad or wrong, automatically painting a target on LGBT+ people, who are more likely to be exhibiting these traits than heterosexual people are. Similarly, there are many disabled villains, such as Captain Hook in Peter Pan and countless villains in the James Bond franchise, many of whom have very obvious physical disfigurements, the most relevant to this point being Raoul Silva, the villain in Skyfall. The first explicitly queer villain, having “[graduated] from the implications that come with cat ownership” Silva actually makes a pass at Bond during the film which, coupled with his facial deformity put him in “a long line of Bond villains written with the mindset that inner wickedness can’t help but manifest physically”, emphasising the implication that disabled and/or LGBT+ people are inherently evil.[3]
This has proved detrimental to people with disabilities as the general public has absorbed this coding and subtext and it reveals itself in the staring and shying away from people who have an obvious physical or mental disability. Therefore, many authors have begun to write their protagonists and side characters as having disabilities, or being LGBT+ as a way to fight back against the idea that they are inherently evil. This representation matters, especially to children and younger generations who now have the chance to see people like themselves in mainstream media portrayed in a positive light rather than in a way that caused generations of people to internalise homophobia and ableist ideals. Fantasy is the ideal genre to do this in as, unlike the real world, fantastical worlds do not have the same restrictions regarding gender and ability, allowing authors to write characters that are LGBT+ or disabled with none of the stigma attached to them that would be present had they decided to set their story in the present day or in a historical setting. After all, you cannot have homophobia in a world that hasn’t been influenced by religion and other societal restrictions the way this one has.
[3] https://www.sissyscreens.com/double-coded-villains-queer-and-disability-representation-article/
