#queerbaiting at its finest truly

[shieldmaiden19]

Did Marvel execs seriously think we would watch a movie with a running theme of who Steve would get together with, a movie that includes the line, “It’s not like there’s someone out there with similar life experience,” and NOT go absolutely feral for Steve/Bucky? Did they seriously?

[sabugabr]

How "Loki" managed to make Loki's "outed" version also be their most heteronormative one

Well hello again!! This one's gonna be a single post, and relatively shorter than my previous ones (God I hope). I just want to get into one little detail that bothered me while watching Loki — the blatant heteronormativity of all that.

I'm not even talking about plot, the well is deeper ( that's a Brazilian saying, I don't know if it exists in English. Oh well)

SO KKKKKKKKKKK LOKI HUH. Unless you've been hibernating for the last few months, you probably know that some time ago, Disney+ debuted its third series on the platform, Loki, AND TUMBLR WAS ON FIRE. And there's already been a lot of discussion regarding some aspects of the series, some plot choices, well, all sort of things. However, I won't get into all the issues regarding his bissexual representation, or the gender fluidity issue, or even anything regarding Sylvie or Mobius. If you want to know more about it, you can have quick walk around tumblr, or even just go and see what Russell T. Davies has to say about it. It was a crazy ride, this series.

But I know there are a lot of different takes on this matters, and there're many ways in which you can relate to a media or story, and it's not my place here to meddle. If you liked the series, if the queer representation of this series was something that resonated with you, was something meaningful to you, that's genuinely great. So I'll abstain myself to my area of study, Visual Culture, and therefore what I want to talk about here is costume design. More specifically, Loki's.

(just a disclaimer, I'll be refering to Loki using he/him pronoums, since in the series is clear that he identifies himself as male. Also, I won't cover any aspects of Loki in the comics — or even Norse mithology or other medias —and their portrail there, because otherwise this would be WAY longer, so I'll just stick to the MCU)

So let's talk about queer coding, shall we?

1. QUEER CODING

Ok so, let's say you walk into a room full of queer people and ask anyone who loved Disney villains as a kid to raise their hand.

There'd probably be a very fair share of hands up, right? I mean, I know mine would. The relationship between Disney and queer kids has always been an interesting one, to say the least. And it's very common for many of us to feel especially drawn to the villains, and one of the possible reasons for it is the fact that most of the previous Disney villains (and some movie villains in general) are queercoded.

(and Kuzco. Interestingly, I never saw Kuzco being mentioned in these Disney queercoding discussions. Maybe The Emperor's New Groove is just more popular in South America...? Or maybe because it's like a positive representation, so it doesn't count? He's great tho, this movie is wonderful it's truly Disney's finest work I should make a whole post just extolling it just watch me BUT ANYWAY BACK ON TRACK)

If you google it, you'll see that queer coding is

"the subtextual coding of a character in media as queer. Though such a character's sexual identity may not be explicitly confirmed within their respective work, a character might be coded as queer through the use of traits and stereotypes recognisable to the audience. Such traits are greatly varied, but traits of exaggerated masculinity and femininity, vanity, and hypersexuality are frequent." [source: Wikipedia]

In the context of those movies, this was often made purposefully, blatantly, and in a very hurtful way, with very damaging implications, to associate (in a pejorative and stereotyped way) queer = evil. If you want to know more about it, and I highly recommend you do, there are two videos on YouTube by Rowan Ellis that explain these issues in a very complete, didactic way, and much better than I ever could. One's all about Disney villains, and the other is about the historical and social panoramas from queercoding to queerbaiting. I linked them both right there.

But the thing is, even though these are very problematic issues, what ended up happening is that many of us reclaimed those Disney villains. We felt attracted, drawn, captivated by a lot of them (not the Pocahontas one, that one is just bad). To the point where they might be our favorite characters in the movies. And why does it have to do with Loki?

Well, because, let's face it, Loki looks like a Disney villain.

the attitude. LOOK AT HIM

And that was one of the things that amused me the most when I'd go see a Thor or an Avengers movie, because not only would Tom Hiddleston's impeccable acting make the character completely captivating to me, but his outstanding looks always caught my eye.

In my humble opinion, in all the movies he's been in Loki has the most interesting costumes. They are always not only incredibly beautiful but also richly detailed, always following the color palette of Green, Black and Gold, even when he's wearing casual style. I also love how the gold is always used in adornments, and how well-fit his clothes always look. He looks like he'd only wear Asgardian haute couture.

I mean, look at the patterned scarf (which looks enormously like a leopard print to me) with green accents, stylishly matching his black vest and longcoat. THE CANE.

Of course the other costumes are also ok (Thor's armor for example has shades of blue, silver and red, all opposite to Loki's colors - although unlike Loki he almost never changes his outfits, which is a bit disappointing to me). But look at how Thor's outfit is made to make him look big, strong, MASCULINE and caricatured, while Loki's is simply elegant and slim.

His shoulder pads resonate the same shape as Thor's, but are narrower, making him look smaller in comparison. And I find it interesting how (unlike Thor who has an outfit pretty much the same as his comics counterpart) they stripped the more rustic fur trim from Loki's comics design, but kept the characteristic (and more elegant) square shoulder armor/pads.

In short, it's like his whole visual concept is to look dark, slim, fit and elegant.

And oh my, the sass

And Loki's costume designs actually have very beautiful meanings? As you can see in this Buzzfeed interview with Co-Founder and former Co-Head of Visual Development at Marvel Studios Charlie Wen and Marvel Studios Senior Visual Development Artist Anthony Francisco, when designing the character's casual Asgardian clothes, they made the clothe's lines

"more angular, almost architectural in its repeating angles. The purpose was to contrast the soft interior greens (Loki’s primary color) with the rigid blocky exterior (symbolizing Loki trapped inside the rigid walls of Asgard)."

The green color represents his soft interior. In a similar association, his characteristic collar was inspired by the flower faux calla lily, symbolizing "sacrifice and a resurrection motif". It's all very poetic. They deepened this concept in Loki's clothing in Ragnarok, where the replacement of green for blue in his clothes was meant to represent grief and sadness, and his personal growth.

"It's kind of like a nice arc for him. In the beginning of the movie he's green, then he's blue, then he's green again...by the end of the movie, he finds who he is," they said

But with the blue outfit, they added a yellow cape to represent that things would be all right at the end. Yellow and blue also make green. So like, colors mean something here. And they also wanted the blue to evoke a peacock, since Loki was showing himself off to the Grandmaster. A 10/10 outfit. Because you see, asides being elegant and dark and all that, the thing is Loki is flashy, both in his style as in his body language.

And of course none of this necessarily means anything. Things like physical appearance, fashion choices and personality traits have absolutely nothing to do with a person's sexual orientation or gender identity. But just as in the case of the Disney villains, there are certain characteristics and representations tendencies that due to both social constructions and pre-established media codes (such as the ones influenced by the Hays Code, and others), when watching, we feel more inclined to perceive as being queer. And while this usually has a pretty negative connotation (since these evocative traits are usually based on harmful stereotypes), with Loki this wasn't necessarily the case.

Even though he was introduced as a villain from the beginning, Loki has always been decently built, deepened and humanized throughout the films. Even though he was queercoded, he was never defined by grimaces, clothes or stereotypes, nor were these ever necessarily the target of bigoted jokes.

And on top of that, his personal narrative revolved precisely around the sense of feeling like an outsider within your own family. Of feeling less loved, less valued, "trapped", because of a trait he desperately has to keep secret. In this case, it was being blue. But you can change blue for queer that still works fine. It was a very familiar narrative to many queer people watching. So in a way, I think we ended up reclaiming him as well.

And I genuinely think that might have been one of the reasons this character became so loved by the LGBTQIA+ and tumblr communities. He was fabulous, and his presentation and personality reflected that perfectly.

And where did it all end? In Loki.

2. HETERONORMATIVITY

Because you see, in Loki, the only scenes where he actively wears his usual clothes are at the beginning of the series, and then never again. For the rest of the series, he wears the TVA brown coat and later a plain white shirt with a tie.

And while he was on TVA, ok, perfect, they required him to wear these clothes, fine. But after he runs off with Sylvie, he finds himself in SEVERAL situations where he might as well change his clothes. As is constantly explained to us, he can alter his appearance as he pleases and magically create fabrics and clothes at his own pleasure.

But in the one situation where he actively does this (in the train), he chooses to continue with the clothes he got from TVA (and Mobius, which is a cute point of view, but not the point here)

SO JOYFULL!!!

And for the rest of the series, he apparently forgets about his clothes and sticks to that. In that same train, is also revealed to us as an audience that Loki is indeed queer. In a intimate conversation with Sylvie, he is said to like both men and women, and the director reffered to him as bisexual.

And from there he develops a deep affective relationship with Sylvie, a woman (as we were emphatically told in that slightly misogeneous scene between the Lokis where they debate the mere existence of a "female Loki"), which regarding his queerness would be perfectly fine, if it weren't for the change in Loki's presentation from then on.

BECAUSE YOU SEE one of the major point of the Loki series is the development of the title character. Especially, his development in becoming "a better person". He starts off being a so-called pompous narcissist (much like Kuzco if you think about it), meets people who change his perception of himself and the world, and then he starts trying to improve, and redeem himself. In short, becoming a hero (again, just like Kuzco, only The Emperor's New Groove does it better).

And one of the most important things about character design is that a character's costume essentially reflects who that character is, much more than their lines or actions. Just by looking at a character's costume (if it's a good costume) you can basically know everything the movie or series or play wants you to know. And especially if you're telling a story where a character goes through internal changes, the exterior (ie, their costume) should reflect that as well.

So, Loki goes through his great journey, changes, evolves as a person, becomes a hero, and how does his presentation reflects that?

I could laugh but then my laughter would turn into tears

No, really, please. I'm not talking about Sylvie please don't think I'm in any way attacking Sylvie here, just look at him. The kinda grimy white tight shirt, enhancing his chest? The rolled up sleeves??? The leather straps holding his weapon and once again enhancing his chest? The creases in his pants evidencing his pelvis? HIS POSE????? This is a CLASSIC cis straight heroic white male lead pose. This is the kind of aesthetics I'd expect from Chris Pratt in a Jurassic World movie, and I know that you can see it too.

At no point in any movie has Loki ever presented that kind of body posture, that kind of body language. It's as if the show was saying "See? He's tough now"

And there is none of the elements that Wen and Francisco had so beautifully enshrined in Loki's costume composition, in the visual narrative that his clothes would tell. No color scheme, no green, no lily, nor nothing reminiscent of the characteristic curved necklace centerpiece he always wore (which according to Wen and Francisco, is an element that symbolizes Loki's mother, Frigga, like a "mother's crest". Interestingly, notice tho how Sylvie's costume has it, and I don't know if I find it endearing or disturbing)

So, since there's no reference to anything previously used by Loki in the first Thor and Avengers, the only symbology I can attribute to this costume choice is to show how Loki now doesn't care about things like looks anymore. His clothes are dirty, he didn't even bother to change them at all, he's not the same man who started this journey, he dropped Gucci. (They even made a joke about how he magically summoned an ugly blanket to cover him and Sylvie) And consciously or not, I genuinely think it's possible they wanted to make him more "hero-looking", "good-guy-looking". And apparently that meant making him less queer-looking.

And of course there's no way I'm saying queercoding is a good thing But why couldn't he save the world with his fabulous looks? Why couldn't he be the good guy and be flashy? Why couldn't he go through the arc of discovering emotional vulnerability and being able to open up to other people and still enjoy nice clothes and gold? Why couldn't he kiss the girl and have, idk, black painted nails? To me this has the same bitter taste as the recent Disney movie Jungle Cruise, in which the queer character proves his worth when he "man-ups". (And besides, this film is very derogatory in the portrait of South America??? But anyway)

And again, of course none of this necessarily means anything. Your choice of fashion has no direct bearing on how queer you are or not. People express themselves in different ways, but we're not talking about real people. Loki is not a real person, but a character whose wardrobe and gestures and lines were all decided and thought out by an external group of people, with goals and direct consequences in our perception.

And this is even more evident and difficult to ignore for me by how much the series itself shows. In the scene where he meets the other Loki variants, if you notice, everyone is dressed in very elaborate costumes. Honestly, President Loki is MAGNIFICENT with that green vest, the one sided shoulder pad detail, and the textured tie evoking something reptilian (I also loved how they adapted the characteristic gold necklace into a tie pin). But the thing is, he is represented as being, in a way, evil.

They all are. They are shown to be, you know, "the older Loki" versions, those who haven't evolved as much, you know. They're still treacherous, and liars, and slippery, and cowards, and suspicious, and back-stabbers, and narcissists, and bla bla bla. "Our" Loki even calls them "monsters". And since he stands out so much from them all, with his simple, modest, heteronormative clothes, it's very easy for our brain to make an association between "dressing" and "acting." And suddenly Loki's old flashness turns into a harmful stereotype.

Because now the way he dressed is a possible implication of when he was a "bad person". From when he had all the characteristics I mentioned above (all commonly associated with queer people in a pejorative way). And that's so disappointing to me, because in my opinion they missed a great opportunity to get the exact opposite message across. In a social context where the media still villainizes queer traits SO MUCH, where works like Rock Horror Picture Show are still seen as grotesque and villainous by so many people, they could have made a fabulous hero. A queer hero, with characteristics reclaimed by us as a community, portrayed in a beautiful and positive way, just as we see them.

So, this was all only the point of view that I took from the costumes. But the point is that costumes tell a story. They deliver a message. So in Loki's case, what message is this?

Think about it.

Anyway, thank you so much for reading!!!

[posi-pan]

the thing that annoys me the most about fandom culture is how whenever a character shows interests for more than one gender everyone's just like OMG BI without ever considering that they may id as literally anything else and like ofc you can headcanon characters as bi but if you ONLY hc characters as bi then idk what to say. It kinda hurts tbh. And I'm also annoyed that ppl often take queerbaiting/ambiguous characters/characters who have only used queer as CANONICALLY bi. ???

this was sent before the messages I just responded to, but it actually goes quite well with it.

I have many posts about this topic. it does hurt. “bi until stated otherwise” is a hurtful, garbage mindset that a lot of people seem to have. especially when it comes to characters. it’s like we don’t exist and our identity isn’t even a thought or option in their minds. I think this every time I see queer headcanon threads that have like 0-3 pan headcanons and dozens and dozens of other queer headcanons. it just makes you think, like you’re headcanoning THAT MANY characters and not one is pan? and if there are barely any pan headcanons, don’t hold your breath for aspec headcanons or intersex headcanons or non-binary headcanons. it’s always, always lgbt. if the t is even lucky to truly be included.

and the last part about queerbaiting and unlabeled or queer identified characters being called canonically bi…ME AS FUCK. lily aldrin is one that REALLY pisses me off. her “attraction” to robin is running gag. she is not a canonically queer character, let alone canonically bi. the show treats women being attracted to women as a joke or fantasy. but people think lily’s “girlcrush” on robin, which is PLAYED FOR LAUGHS, is legitimate queer rep? PLEASE. it’s queerbaiting at its finest.

anyways I’m gonna stop before I rant even more lmao