#queer-coded villains

Anyways go watch Cinema Therapy guys! 💖

Because if we just take SJ/Max, it appears before the medicalization/pathologization of homosexuality: in Nodier (1831), Duval (1841-1843), and Lamartine (1848). Yes they wrote memoirs and histories but they're first and foremost novelists/poets.

I'd have to check again if there's queer-coding in the actual novel La Comtesse de Charny (1852-1853), but what strikes me is how similar the "homoerotic homophobia" translated in the 1989 adaptation is to the one exhibited in the 1991 Tsar Ivan the Terrible.

Now that's a rabbit hole I went down into a few months ago because someone (hi, if you're still around) who liked/reblogged one of my posts and made me discover all of that, but to make things short, Ivan the Terrible *might* have been bisexual, and this is how his boytoy lover is presented in the aforementioned 1991 movie:

See anything familiar? Sighs.

(There's also a 1944 movie in which he dresses like a woman and dances, which just reminds me of a line from L'archange et le procureur, a 2008 novel by Christophe Bigot, in which he writes that SJ might as well try to do Salome's dance to Robespierre in order to get Desmoulins' head. Double sighs.)

Now what's interesting is that, as far as I'm aware (and after consulting a very few Slavic academics), the only source on Fyodor Basmanov's homosexuality is from Tolstoy's novel Prince Serebriany (1862). I read the parts he's mentioned. And oh dear gods it's Lamartine's SJ mixed with later tropes of evil gay SJ up to 11.

Or maybe it's all a big coincidence based in the evolution of homophobia in 19thc literature (which I'd like to study).

But back to the 1990s.

This scene:

The actor's performance is uncannily similar to that of the effeminate prince and his lover in Braveheart (before the latter gets thrown out the window and gruesomely murdered by the king), which came out 4 years later in 1995.

Want a depressing piece of historical trivia? That's the year HIV-related mortality rates peaked in the US.

So... Yeah... Don't forget that all of these "great" examples of "homoerotic homophobia" and uh, "gay representation", including our wonderful Danton 1983, happen at the same time gay men are massively dying IRL of an epidemic most people don't care about because they believe they deserve it/it's a righteous punishment sent by God/Nature.

It's really fucking sad how much they hate us, isn't it?

I mean I knew Barbarella had a reputation for a reason. It’s not like I went in blind. But still, holy tube sock on a lamp post. Whoever wrote and visualised this pulled out all of the stops in order to properly commit to their sexual acid space fantasy. I mean I’d like to believe I have a pretty good imagination, but even I clung to the comforting familiarity of nipples during the first bedazzling fifteen minutes before I got with the groove of the movie and its story. I’m not kidding, and without spoiling too much, it does take some getting used to it all, from the interior of the space ship (covered in what looks like a flayed wookie, or five), the soundtrack (yeah I just don’t know) to the fact that the computer AI is a deadringer for a sarcastic Vincent Price. And that’s me rather politely not commenting on the costumes which are all created by someone who seem to have an almost religious appreciation of the female nipple. Or touching the plot, because I...yeah...

The rest of it though, yes it is what people say it is, sexual escapades in space. But in between that I am actually sort of impressed. Because this is mad. It’s gloriously off beat and epic and camp. Set pieces, costumes and creatures - seem to have been dipped in “crank that shit to 150%”. Like a lot of 60s science fiction it seems entirely drug induced, there is a scene with dolls and children that is an acid trip gone bad if I ever saw one. Ultimately it’s fun though. A lot thanks to what a superb comedic actress Jane Fonda is. I mean it’s not why she landed this role, but even in this, playing peak-a-boo between the gratuitous nipple shots is a comedic timing that pretty much flawless. Which sort of makes the movie land in a tone that is a tad more sympathetic than it probably should be. 

Then as an added bonus there is the queer coded villainess. The Evil Tyrant who lets her subjects get off on smoking “essence of man” and who makes her first appearance by stabbing lecherous men to their death and follows it up with making an incredibly unsubtle move on Barbarella. Something that continues in each of their encounters, each time accompanied by those looks. I know I should intellectually despise them, but I love these type of characters. I grew up on them. I never wanted to be Cyclops, I wanted to be Magneto. I know they’re meant to make me feel ashamed and unnatural, but honestly, for the most part they just make me want to get minions and a machete.