This video presentation by Khushi Jain delves into a complex exploration of queer coding in the portrayal of villains by the Walt Disney Company. Khushi explores the different ways in which Disney participates in queer coding and how this phenomenon can have lasting negative impacts on Queer communities.
Disney’s Heteronormative Propaganda in Queer Coding of Villains
Note to Viewer:
Incorporating creative ways to promote a concept ensures the development of an innovative perspective and a better understanding among the audience. An industry that heavily relies on creativity to relay information to its audience is the media. Media utilizes various forms of creative methods to communicate ideas, such as advertisements, movies, and social media. Among these, movies have the widest scope as they are easily accessible by various age groups and populations in the world. One of the most well-known film production houses is the Walt Disney Company. Movies produced by Disney play a significant role in shaping people’s opinions by utilizing various creative conventions, including animated visuals and captivating music, to provide entertainment and gain their audience’s attention. Disney movies are especially favoured among both the young and the older audience for the inclusion of valuable lessons about family, love, and morality. However, these movies often integrate implicit messages of appropriate gender behaviour and thus, influence the process of socialization in children. This objective is often carried out by Disney, through queer coded villains, to promote the notion of heteronormativity as villains are those who deviate from what society deems appropriate and normal.
The popularity of Disney films rose in the 20th century and the early 2000s with the creation of the eleven Disney Princesses, including Snow White, Cinderella, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, and Pocahontas (Garlen & Sandlin, 2017). This finding gave me a detailed understanding of Disney’s history and set up the background for my project topic. Also, it depicted how Disney protagonists act as educative tools to shape the beliefs and attitudes of its audience towards appropriate gender roles while showcasing the antagonists as those who are punished for their deviant behaviour. According to Kim (2017), queer coding refers to the representation of characters as displaying “stereotypical behaviours and traits consistent with those of Queer communities” though they are “not explicitly stated as homosexual” (p. 156). It first emerged due to the implementation of the “Hays Code” in 1934, which banned the explicit depiction of homosexual content from Hollywood cinema (Kim, 2017, p. 158). Therefore, the historical knowledge about queer coding provided me with additional insight into the objective behind this practice and helped me explore heteronormative propaganda as one of its main causes.
Moreover, Gunn (2009) defines heteronormativity as the alienation of “other sexualities by promoting heterosexuality as the one and only ‘natural’ sexual orientation” (as cited in Fan, 2019, p. 124) thus, legitimating homophobia as “the irrational fear of gay and lesbian people” (Robinson, 2016, p. 1). Thus, Disney’s intention to promote heteronormativity by encouraging negative views about the Queer community is considered a form of propaganda. Propaganda is defined as “the expression of opinions or actions carried out deliberately by individuals or groups with a view to influenc[e] the opinions or actions of other individuals or groups for predetermined ends and through psychological manipulations” (Ellul, 1965, as cited in Viorel, 2017, p.114). These three articles by Fan (2019), Robinson (2016), and Viorel (2017) form some of the main terminologies of my topic as well as my rationale. Therefore, through this presentation, I hoped to critically analyze the widespread discrimination experienced by the Queer community and how Disney movies, in particular, encourage this discrimination.
Additionally, research revealed that Disney animated movies are favoured by parents because it assists their children in the process of socialization, especially in the development of gender, by affirming their views about gender roles so that they can accurately perform them as they mature (Dundes et al., 2019; Golden & Jacoby, 2017; Letts, 2016;). This observation developed my explanation about Disney’s participation in the process of socialization as well as encouraged me to focus on the young adults between ages 18 to 25 as my primary audience. I believe that this project is highly appropriate for this audience because, in today’s world, young adults are the most curious and socially active about the latest happenings in the LGBTQ+ community, which is emerging as a topic of high interest in academic institutions, interpersonal discourses, and in popular media, like social networking apps. Also, it appeals to them on a personal level because this is the age period when these individuals go through the process of discovering their gender and sexual identities, and can thus, empathize with the issues faced by the LGBTQ+ community. Also, this observation framed my understanding of a secondary audience as those who display conservative views about the newly emerging topics of gender and sexuality because they consider the social structures of heteronormativity and heteropatriarchy to be natural and those which ensure the reproduction of the next generation.
Subsequently, research also revealed that Disney consistently showcases its queer–coded villains as evil who dare to deviate from the traditional heterosexual norms and thus, associate their villainy with their sexuality (Brown, 2021; Helmsing, 2016; Kim, 2017; McLeod, 2016). This finding structured the evidence for my presentation as well as the critical reasoning I provide to support it by analyzing the queer coded physical and personality characteristics of some of Disney’s most popular villains, including Captain Hook from Peter Pan, Governor Radcliff from Pocahontas, Jafar from Aladdin and Ursula from The Little Mermaid. Further, this finding motivated me to explore my artistic creativity by developing sketches for each of the four villains mentioned, and I drew inspiration for these sketches from their portrayal in Disney animated movies. Sketching their figures proved to be a challenging task for me as each villain possessed specific details in their attires, make–up, physical features, and also, their overall vibrancy, which are difficult to draw and colour on paper. This challenge helped me realize the significance of incorporating graphics in establishing an improved learning environment where the audience can easily make associations between various pieces of information to develop a better understanding of the topic as a whole. Therefore, I use several other graphics in my PowerPoint slides, such as images and animation along with my inspired sketches, to provide a holistic knowledge of my topic.
To conclude, it is important to recognize queer coding, not only in Disney movies both also in other forms of media, so as to raise awareness and challenge the negative stereotypes about the Queer community. Further, it is crucial to understand how this negative portrayal of gender and sexuality in mainstream media influences the beliefs of people in various age groups, especially the younger population. Hence, this will increase our knowledge about Queer identities and establish an inclusive environment where people of different gender and sexual identities can get the respect they deserve.
References
Brown, A. (2021). Hook, Ursula, and Elsa: Disney and Queer–coding from the 1950s to the 2010s. Johns Hopkins University, 2(1), 27887.
Dundes, L., Buitelaar, M. S., & Streiff, Z. (2019). Bad witches: Gender and the downfall of Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos and Disney’s Maleficent. Social Sciences (Basel), 8(6), 175. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci8060175
Fan, J. (2019). Queering Disney animated films using a critical literacy lens. Journal of LGBT Youth, 16(2), 119–133. https://doi.org/10.1080/19361653.2018.1537871
Garlen, J. C., & Sandlin, J. A. (2017). Happily (n)ever after: The cruel optimism of Disney’s romantic ideal. Feminist Media Studies, 17(6), 957–971. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2017.1338305
Golden, J. C., & Jacoby, J. W. (2017). Playing princess: Preschool girls’ interpretations of gender stereotypes in Disney princess media. Sex Roles, 79(5–6), 299–313. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199–017–0773–8
Helmsing, M. (2016). “This Is No Ordinary Apple!”: Learning to Fail Spectacularly from the Queer Pedagogies of Disney’s Diva Villains. In Disney, Culture, and Curriculum (pp. 89–102). Routledge.
Kim, K. (2017). Queer–coded Villains (And Why You Should Care). Dialogues@ RU, 156–165.
Letts, W. (2016). Camp Disney: Consuming queer subjectivities, commodifying the normative. In Disney, culture, and curriculum (pp. 148–160). Routledge.
McLeod, D. S. (2016). Unmasking the Quillain: queerness and villainy in animated Disney films.
Robinson, B. A. (2016). Heteronormativity and homonormativity. The Wiley Blackwell encyclopedia of gender and sexuality studies, 1–3.
Viorel, T. (2017). Some reflections concerning the problem of defining propaganda. Argumentum (Iași, Romania), 15(2), 110–125.