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It doesn’t make us want to be less queer but want something better for our queer characters instead. The bad queer representation they manufacture usually just backfires. It just made us figure out our orientation early on, before we could even name it, but we still felt that inexplicable pull, drawn to these characters time and time again. My fellow elder millennials often talk about how all the queercoded villains from Disney and animated shows we grew up on ( Editor’s Note: Hi, that’s me), many of whom were designed with the intent to equate queerness with villainy, didn’t go as planned by their creators.
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What they might pen as a cruel joke about the “predatory gay” trope can be picked up on by queer readers as a villain unhealthily obsessed with his target for reasons beyond power struggles over Gotham City. It’s simply to make the men on the receiving end uncomfortable, they say.Īnd the thing is, sometimes these characters are being written by straight men who do see it that way, who are afraid to go all in and confirm the queerness, but at the end of the day, I don’t know that their intent really matters. It takes some serious mental gymnastics, but they’re always up to the task. Hell, I’ve even seen straight guys bend over backwards to say Graham and Lecter were “just pals” in Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal adaptation. Straight people love to take characters like Deadpool and Joker and say that the flirting they dole out to their adversaries (or reluctant cohorts as the case may be for Deadpool and his beloved baby boy Spidey-he canon calls him that, don’t give me that look. With a character that’s been around for this long, it’s hard to know where to start and what to include (truth be told, I could probably make this article the length of War and Peace if I wanted a truly exhaustive list of all the queercoded instances), but I want to talk about some of my favorite moments, the comic panels that first pop into my head when I think about Joker. That said, I think there’s been an inordinate tilt toward talking about the Joker in terms of his screen (both large and small) incarnations, which, with maybe the exception of Cesar Romero’s portrayal, haven’t leaned into the queer subtext in nearly the same extent as the comics.
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Every time a new film iteration of him crops up, even though I know it won’t be what I want, I heave a little dismayed sigh at the dashed hope and saddle up to fork over the money for a movie ticket. Perhaps that’s why the Joker’s impression on me as a character whose queerness is often erased has been indelible. Firsts are a powerful thing: they make big stamped impressions in the libraries of our memories. My first real foray into fandom was communing with fellow queer folks whose eyebrows had raised when they read the very same comic panels I had, assuring each other that the evidence wasn’t something we’d made up. Maybe it’s because he’s the first queercoded villain in comics that I ever really saw. This queercoded psychotic clown has been on my mind for far too long, and he won’t leave me be.
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This is how I’ll forever feel about the Joker, and while it feels dangerous to even attempt to rebel against the tide here, I just can’t help it.
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There’s always more to glean from art than what the loudest fans say there is and, even more than what the author tells you you’re allowed to see. And really, in a post “death of the author” era where the internet can connect marginalized groups, I don’t see why we should let anyone have final say on the interpretation of any media we love. Have I mentioned I really hate this phenomenon? Never mind that I’ve spent many an episode crying and shuddering at how all too real the depiction of narcissistic parentage and its consequences is and how rarely that issue is reflected in media. I’m a Rick and Morty fan, and somehow maladjusted dudes who misinterpret Rick’s worst behavior as something the show is actually advocating have come to be synonymous with what the show means. I’m no stranger to toxic male fans drowning me out theirs become the only voices anyone hears until they control the narrative on a character. Joker’s queerness has been expressed in many different ways over the years of endless musical chairs of comic writers and artists, but it’s being usually swallowed by a tide of angry male voices for whom the character is about something else entirely.