fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5148 ]

[ SECRET POST #5148 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5148 ⌋

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06. https://i.imgur.com/jvH6owg.jpg

I disagree

You an me, anon. We are of one mind in this.

I mean don't get me wrong, some times shit really is trying to push through a sneaky "Its necessary to hate X in real life and my book / manga / comics / game / movie is designed to promote my ideology" I'm fully aware of this. I've seen it happen on both sides... But most the time when people call out the "Anti-X messages imbedded in this fiction" it seems like it's always a reach.

It's the same as the "The writers want to tell us TRUE fans that they support our ship, thats why these two characters are wearing the same colour shoelaces" delusions. You're seeing shit that you WANT / Expect to see.

Edited 2021-02-08 23:18 (UTC)

My GF just put this perfectly: If people were more comfortable just saying "I don't like this thing, and that's ok, I will walk away and not be bothered that it exists for other people" then discussions around coding would be a VERY rare thing. This discussion comes predominantly from needing to feel their dislike is not just the uncomfortable fact that other people have differing tastes, but rather the result of some moral imperative they have to act on to prove their superiority.

An honest question from someone with little experience of these kinds of conversations -- does coding in fiction need to be intentional?

I would say so, generally. No absolutes but I pretty much hold that the intent counts for a lot. I think the prevailing opinion is different on this, but I worry the reason for this is that a lot of people seem interested in being able to attack people for their perceptions of their wrong doing, rather than any harm from those wrongdoings.

Like, a writer who creates an evil character and gives them a Russian accent might be falling into the trope of the stereotypical cold-war era villain.

But it's equally possible he's never watched a 60's James bond film in his life and is just writing about a guy he knows in real life who he hates and who has a Russian accent. In general, You have to know, or at least believe you know the intention before you can make the case that something is coded. And Intention, outside of the authors own statement, is pretty hard to know.

Now, if Orson Scott Card wrote a mincing lisping villain who is excessively interested in the hero being shirtless, I could entertain your read on the character as being a depraved homosexual stereotype... but it strikes me that in most cases there's a lot more of the readers perceptions at play when "Coding" is brought up.

Not at all. There are lots of fiction shorthands we're all familiar with. Two solid of examples of which are:

- stereotypical gay characteristics of villains
- women however strong will usually still need to be saved by the main guy

It's so ingrained, so familiar to us that we undoubtedly replicate those patterns over and over again. Stories may even seem unbalanced to us without them, because we're so used to stories and characters being a particular 'shape'.

SA Thought of some better examples.

So Scar from the Lion King and slipping on banana peels.

Way back when, banana peels were introduced as visual shorthand for slipping on horseshit in the street. I can't remember whether it was a censorship issue, studios not wanting literal shit in their films, or just an amusing idea someone dreamed up that was cleaner and therefore more convenient.

Well anyway, back then everyone knew exactly what it was alluding to, and that presumably played a part of any audience merriment. Now we know of that gag, but don't have any context for it in real life.

So same with Scar. He is very very camp, not physically astute and literally limp wristed. He is a homophobic charicture of a gay man. But those are common elements of Hollywood villains, and his characteris obviously constructed to be that kind of atypical villain. I love Scar, he is a fun character and neither kid or adult me never once for a second equated him with being gay in any way. And yet, deep in the annals of film, someone somewhere obviously set about deliberately using gay stereotypes as villains. And now we have Scar.

I absolutely don't think that it does

Of course it's a matter of interpretation, and there's not ever any hard and fast objective line one way or the other. But it does feel like, in a lot of cases, people practically demand that a writer has to hold up a flashing sign that says I AM TALKING ABOUT X before they will acknowledge it, and will refuse to exercise their own judgment and scrutiny even in situations where it's very obvious. People want to deny that things are problematic and extend the benefit of the doubt even when it's patently absurd to do so.

Yes, it does. Coding is specifically the deliberate use of tropes or stereotypes to imply that a character is part of a specific group without actually stating it, and is traditionally used to get around publishing restrictions or outright censorship.

It's certainly fair to say that a character reads like a stand-in for X group, and to discuss why, for example, certain stereotypical behaviors are used to show a character as poor, a criminal, Not From Here, etc. But if it's not deliberate, it's not coding. It's interpretation.

I don't think so.

I think a about Stephen King's IT in this case. That was the perfect example of a person writing what they saw, without actually understanding what they were seeing. He has more than one queer-coded character because he saw kids who acted a certain way and just mimed it. It was other LGBTQIA+ people who recognized those traits for what they could mean. And that was so powerful that it literally changed the canon. (Stephen King was happy to roll with Richie's character being explicitly gay.)

I think that's the perfect example of coding being unintentional but having dramatic effect. Writers write what they see. They aren't always going to understand what they're seeing and copying.

On one hand, I get that some stuff might seem like a bit of a stretch and that, regardless, pointing out things can get a bit performative woke and wanky. It gets even more complicated with stuff like fantasy species where their traits were based on even older fairy tales that had some pretty racist and antisemitic stuff - on one hand, it could easily not even be the intent of the creator of the modern work, but on the other hand there does need to be an understanding of where this stuff comes from imo.

On the other hand, there are cases where I see people pointing it out and I'm like oh. Oh shit. That's super valid and super sus. One example that gutpunched me a few months ago was a really great Tumblr post that pointed out how several female villains in Harry Potter are portrayed as performing excessive femininity (Umbridge's pink everything, Rita Skeeter's long, garish nails and tacky outfits) while having distinctly masculine physical features (Marge Dursley having a mustache, Rita Skeeter's "large, mannish" hands). Even if you argue that it wasn't on purpose, and honestly it could very well not be, it's still... idk, it indicates that the creator sees certain traits as worthy of being portrayed as villainous, and those certain traits align very closely with trans women. Even if you don't agree with the conclusions that people are drawing through it, I still think it's useful as media criticism to note when de facto othering or villainy aligns with actual, real life social justice issues.

Idk, just my two cents. I don't even know if I worded this all that great, but it's where I'm at with my opinion on this kind of media criticism atm.

Nah. That's way overthinking it. Trans people weren't even on the radar as an issue outside of, you know, actually being trans in the days JKR was writing HP. I doubt that occurred to her on any level.

That seems much more likely to be rooted in attitudes to cis women, both hers and that of society at large.

Nayrt but it seems pretty reasonable in the face of it to suggest that JKR's general attitudes towards women, femininity, masculinity, and coded behaviors might in some way be connected to her later bigoted stances towards trans people, even if that's not what she had in mind at that specific moment

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2021-02-09 07:19 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2021-02-09 02:27 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2021-02-09 07:18 (UTC) - Expand

Just out of SHEER curiosity, are you, OP, in the Dragon Age fandom?

Fisto

https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fisto

SA

(Anonymous) - 2021-02-09 06:11 (UTC) - Expand

Re: SA

thewakokid - 2021-02-09 08:47 (UTC) - Expand

Re: SA

(Anonymous) - 2021-02-09 09:38 (UTC) - Expand

Hard agree. Problematic things are problematic and should be talking about, but wtf, why are y'all only spewing such bs about series you don't personally like/know enough?

Honestly, I read similar stuff on jstor, lmao. Part of this is a function of character, plot, narrative, design, in that it's perfectly reasonable to talk about media as if its design is a) aware of other designs both in media and in real life to some extent and b) commenting on those other designs to some extent. Part of this is a function of audience in that part of getting across concepts is being aware of what your audience is aware of, so you can read into that. There's no good way to deal with the fact that creators are individuals and audiences are varied when talking about social design in media.

Anyway, I understand why this is annoying but this isn't really conspiracy theory stuff such much as academic critique, which is O F T E N out there, combined with woke social jockeying. Like I said, you can read academic feuds on whether some scholar was doing too much in this exact vein.

Hey OP, let me put it like this: there's a reason why a lot of queer kids relate to the villains. And it's because a lot of classical villains use queer coding, whether on purpose or on accident.

Let's look at Disney. Ursula is literally based off of a drag queen. Cruella DeVille is almost assuredly lesbian, given her hatred of men but her adoration of Anita to some degree. Hades has a lot of Jewish stereotypes (random Yiddish being a major thing) and he's presumably based on a Jewish higher up who left on bad terms to work at Dreamworks. Professor Ratigan has a lot of queer mannerisms and literally composes an entire song for Basil, even if it's for his death. Someone already brought up Scar.

And that's not even including the racial stuff. Maybe you think it's nothing, but to me growing up? I wondered why I always related to the bad guys in more sympathetic stories. Gee, it's like I was a lesbian and didn't fit the mold most of the protags fit into.

People say this so often that sometimes I think I'm not really queer because I never related to any villains.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2021-02-09 17:56 (UTC) - Expand

I don't think it's as prevalent in new media since everyone wants to triangulate as big as audience as you can get. But it's absolutely a thing in historic media. (And once you start seeing the coding in something like Lovecraft or golden era musicals, it's shit all the way down.)

I couldn't agree more.

Coding is a thing. It happens. The main issue is many authors may or may not be educated about where their coding came from. They don't study these things. They really don't know and may not actually care.

Big noses like Jafar's for example being a coding for being Jewish. (Disney has major issues with coding as has been pointed out by others.) Now, say JK Rowling who has a BA in Classics, doesn't have as many excuses. Especially if she ever touched on anything medieval. Since the Tales of Beedle the Bard are based on Canterbury Tales, then err.. -gestures at goblins- This is on top of her bad habit of uglifying her villain characters. Such as Pansy Parkinson being pug faced and Draco being "the ferret." Plus other examples already mentioned.

JK Rowling from a literary critique perspective has a lot if issues with women and honestly... being British.

Now, yes, I'm with you. It gets tiring to hear this discourse, especially if it is a stretch. B/C many authors, not all, but many, simply a) don't realize what they are doing due to social programming (see Disney) or b) didn't actually put it in there and didn't think of it at all when writing an alien or fantasy race. They didn't mean for it to be black, indigenous or anything else. They just happen to love fantasy race or their alien made up race and don't know/don't care it was based on bad stereotypes which they may or may not be perpetuating. They are simply trying to tell a story, hopefully a good one.

Unless the book is based on X culture deliberately as we've seen with the rise of the new Asian themed and African themed and some Native American themed fantasy and scifi, once again, they may not realize the coding is there. Hopefully, (I know not always, I know one popular one isn't. She's married to an Asian but not Asian herself,) these African/Asian/Native American etc coded books are written by POC authors who have the lived in experience or done the research to try and break/subvert stereotypes.

Hopefully, it will go away soon, b/c it means authors of all colors of brown become afraid to write POC or LGBTQA+ characters even as fantasy races or aliens. Since social media pile ons aren't fun for any author and are only fun for those doing the piling on. POC authors aren't immune to pile ons. So, this means less good things and diversity for everybody.

This is a great post.

Oh man. Lately I've been seeing a lot of "Umbrella Academy is Anti-Semitic!" and the evidence seems to always come back to "BECAUSE LIZARD PEOPLE."

Real talk: Lizard people are the funnest part of conspiracy, *by far.* It wasn't until very recently that people started saying "y'all know this is code for jewish people, right?" I feel pretty fucking confident that when Gerard Way wrote the comics, NO ONE knew that's what that was. It was just another doofy conspiracy thing that's fun to play around with.

And speaking super frankly, I had the same reaction to that as you're having OP. "Y'all look exactly like the conspiracy theorists, finding evidence in nothing :\"

And as a sidenote: I'm not disagreeing with lizard people being representation for jewish people. The older I get the more I realize *most* conspiracy shit always circles back to jewish people. I'm arguing that there are a lot of fringe people who just think conspiracy is funny (particularly lizard people) and didn't realize that's what it was about. And I'd bet my freakin' leg that's what happened with Umbrella Academy. Just seemed like they thought Super Conspiracies are fun to fuck around with, not realizing what they were miming.

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