First off, I loved your ask post about erasure, Scrooge, and representation. Anon, if youâre reading this, youâre a legend. Second, I havenât read A Christmas Carol in a while, and I was curious how Scrooge is coded. In what ways do you see him as aro-ace? Thanks bunches!
First, Iâm going to @ mention @thatmrgold, because I think theyâre also a fan of Scrooge, additional to the original asking anon (or at least Iâve seen a reblog on one of my posts that suggests thisâmany apologies if Iâm mistaken). I have read A Christmas Carol several times, but itâs many years ago nowâmy most recent engagement with the story is The Muppet Christmas Carol adaptation, seen last year! For this reason, I encourage anyone more familiar with the source material to expand upon my answer. I donât have the detailed familiarity with the canon to answer save in broader strokes.
The main points where I think thatEbenezer Scrooge can be coded or seen as coded involve a previous failed romance (itâs depicted that he comes to love money more than hisfiancĂŠe, for which she leaves him), his long-running single-man-in-the-world status (he lives on his own, no partner, which is meant to indicate his hatefulness) and his isolation/disconnection from the world around him (demonstrated in a lack of compassion for his tenants, a refusal to allow his workers their Christmas, etc).
Iâm going to explain why these points are effective coding, because written in a paragraph like that, they donât seem like much. Thing is, they donât have to be!
Iâll stress that much of this ties into long-running antagonistic aro-ace (and often autistic*) coding shared with other characters. A lot of a-spec coding is less about certain qualities suggesting a characterâs being a-spec and more about those qualities being part of a broader literary canon of similarly-viewed characters. In other words, characters where people read those qualities together as having associations with a-spec identities, not because those character qualities are always inherently associated with being aro-ace or a-spec. In this sense, Scrooge is a-spec coded because Sherlock Holmes is a-spec coded and Clariel is specifically aro-ace and early The Big Bang Theoryâs Sheldon Cooper is aro-ace coded, and all these characters have commonalities in how they see the world, how they connect to the world and, most particularly, how the rest of the world views them. Viewed in isolation, Scrooge isnât necessarily aro-ace-coded. Viewed in a social and historical context of other characters interpreted as aro-ace, on the other hand, he is.
Iâm going to use The Big Bang Theory to explain my point, because I think Sheldon Cooper is the most recognizable character, and despite not liking the source material, Iâm quite familiar with it. The Big Bang Theory doesnât properly describe early-seasons Sheldon as aro-ace; it compares him to aliens, to plants and the scientific understanding of asexual reproduction. I think it does once or twice use âasexualâ but itâs never in the current understanding of âlacking sexual attractionâ and more like âa being without sexâ. Heâs constantly dehumanised for the aro-ace qualities the show wonât name. He talks, though, in ways that clearly demonstrate a lack of sexual and romantic attraction, and because of amatonormativity, they later give him a slow-growing romantic relationship as part of character âprogressionâ. (Which is handled so disrespectfully and antagonistically, but thatâs another post.) When people first hear the words aro-ace, theyâll commonly think of early-seasons Sheldon, because thatâs the undercurrent of his character compared to characters like Scrooge or Sherlock. Even people whoâve never heard words like asexual or aromantic have an idea of what they think it is on first listen, because theyâve been exposed to so much unlabelled coding: in a world lacking intentional and meaningful representation to properly educate audiences on lived experiences, coding instead forms the basis of understanding.
(And itâs unexplored amatonormativity and aro/ace antagonism, of course, for why negative character traits are so often a-spec coding.)
This is why we end up with a character being aro-ace coded for things like not having a relationship and not connecting with people. These things do not inherently mean anything about the aro-ace experience, but theyâre part of a social context where qualities indicate identities. Only the people who have a true need to understandâeither as allies working with us or because theyâre a-specâgo to a-spec communities to learn the diversity of experiences associated with our words, to look beyond the clumsy outline of coding.
(In fact, they have no concept of coding as distinct from representation.)
Additionally, especially because we a-specs are raised in a world where we are not seen or understood, we ourselves often come to relate to those qualities, however negative the coding and context, too. Not having a relationship says nothing about oneâs lack of attraction, but many a-specs struggle to have a successful relationship, are pressured into ones we donât want or are non-amorous. In a world where so few characters are depicted as long-term single in late adulthood, weâll take that character for our own. Not connecting with societyâwell, I suspect the majority of aro-specs respect the need for Christians to celebrate their cultural and religious holidays, but when being a-spec is always a wall between us and the rest of the world, we feel and relate to that distance, that disconnect. When Christmas means people pestering us about our relationship status or lack of attraction, donât we feel a bit like saying âBah, humbugâ? A romance failed by not loving someone else enoughânot loving enough has been or will be levelled at many aro-specs, and I know that Iâve felt that because of my lack of romantic attraction, I must have loved something else over the âproperâ romantic love for another person. It fits close enough to the amatonormativity we experience.
(Thereâs a reason why LGBTQIA+ and queer people so commonly relate to antagonistic characters, as their experiences of disconnection and alienation are as close as many of us get to our lived experiences. Only recently has there been, for some identities, anything close to representation, including representation that positively explores our alienation, enough that we might first see ourselves in anything other than antagonist characters.)
Lack of mainstream/broadly recognised representation, too, drives us to forge more intense connections with flimsier points of similarity than would be reasonable for a white, abled heterosexual cis woman connecting with white, abled, female cishet characters. She can be choosy about personality and character type in the characters she deems to be like her; we have the unconscious-but-constant knowledge that thereâs few others like us and connect, in relief, just to have someone vaguely like us in the story, even if theyâre clearly an antagonist.
On their own, these things are flimsy pieces of connection, but in a social context of coding and lack of representation, they become so much larger.
Does this make sense? A lot of what I see as aro-ace in Scrooge is less about descriptions of lack of attraction as it is broader brush-stroke images that correspond to lived experience or negative coding. Folks more familiar with the source material may be able to offer you more detailed examples, but for me itâs about the type of character Scrooge is in the social context of similar characters seen a particular way by a-specs and allosexual-and-alloromantic folks alike.
* Explanation of why I mention autistic coding under the cut for those whoâd rather ignore the tangential murmuring:
