- 6/13/2025
From Classic Hollywood to Disney animations and horror films, we explore how cinema has historically portrayed villains with subtle queer characteristics. Join us as we examine the problematic history of queer-coding in antagonists, analyzing how these portrayals have shaped societal perceptions and reinforced harmful stereotypes.
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00:00Oh, yeah.
00:03Welcome to Ms. Mojo, and today we're shining light on Hollywood's grim history of queer-coding villains.
00:09It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.
00:14From Hays Code-era scoundrels to Disney's gender-bending baddies,
00:18audiences have long been bombarded with the message that queerness is equated with, or even a cause for villainy.
00:25Marvelous, isn't it?
00:27These evil characters' sexualities are never outright confirmed,
00:31but the subtext crafted by filmmakers implies that there's something off about them.
00:35More than idle, curiosity prompted my question.
00:38So why this obsession with devilish wrongdoers who seem to defy heteronormativity?
00:43Here's everything you need to know about queer-coded villains on screen,
00:46and the disturbing reasons why we're meant to be afraid of them.
00:49Why are you looking at me that way?
00:52Won't I do?
00:54Yes, you'll do very well indeed.
00:57Classic Hollywood.
01:00The 1900s were not kind to queer people, who had to fight for their rights and equal treatment.
01:06And so, society's historic prejudice against same-sex attraction cropped up in filmmaking time and time again.
01:13Adopted in the 30s, the Hays Code established guidelines for what could and could not be shown on screen.
01:18Of course, this meant that any depiction of gayness, or as the code called it, sex perversion, was strictly forbidden.
01:25The code sets up high standards of performance for motion picture producers.
01:31It states the considerations which good taste and community value make necessary in this universal form of entertainment.
01:39In order to get past censors, directors had to be incredibly careful about how they profiled queer characters.
01:46Hence, the term queer-coding.
01:48When these characters did appear in film, they were often morally bankrupt bad guys who had to be punished for their sins by the end of the story.
02:15Another requirement of the code.
02:17In a sense, filmmakers were condemning these antagonists for everything they stood for.
02:22Their subtle queerness wrapped up in all the terrible things wrong with them.
02:26For all its efforts, the production code didn't erase homosexuals from the screen.
02:30It just made them harder to find.
02:32And now they had a new identity.
02:35As cold-blooded villains.
02:36In 1941's The Maltese Falcon, we are first made aware of the villain's presence via a pungent perfume.
02:43Gardenia.
02:44Quick, darling, in with him.
02:46In the novel the noir is based on, criminal Joel Cairo is outwardly referred to as a, quote,
02:51queer fairy.
02:53However, in the film, this characterization had to be hidden in his eccentricities.
02:57You stupid fathead!
02:59Actor Peter Lorre played Cairo with effeminate mannerisms, constantly gnawing at his phallic cane.
03:12I shouldn't think it would be necessary to remind you, Mr. Spade, that you may have the falcon, but we certainly have you.
03:17Just a year prior, Hitchcock's Rebecca released with not one, but two queer-coded villains.
03:23The iconic Mrs. Danvers is fueled by a complex for the late aristocrat she once waited on.
03:28I keep her underwear on this side.
03:30Dandy secondary antagonist Jack Favelle is presented as hyper, manipulative, and afflicted with incestuous cravings.
03:37I wish I had a young bride of three months waiting for me at home.
03:41I'm just a lonely old bachelor.
03:44Given that homosexuality was once considered a perversion,
03:47it's no coincidence that he's written to participate in deviant desires.
03:52I am Rebecca's favorite cousin.
03:56Toodaloo.
03:56Hitchcock clearly had a penchant for the queer-coded villain,
04:00because he based the antagonists of his 1948 film Rope on lovers-slash-killers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb.
04:07I don't remember feeling very much of anything.
04:12Until his body went limp.
04:16And I knew it was over.
04:18And then?
04:19Then I felt tremendously exhilarated.
04:24In the actual 1924 trial, the two men were described by prosecutors as, quote,
04:29cowardly perverts, whose sexualities actually spurred their vile actions.
04:34By today's standards, this idea that same-sex attraction engenders violent crime is obviously ludicrous.
04:40And of course, Rope is, in many ways, a product of its time.
04:44But this highlights precisely how dangerous real-world stereotypes bleed into film,
04:48and reaffirm negative beliefs about queer people.
04:51We knew that they were gay, yeah, sure.
04:55I mean, nobody said anything about it.
04:58This was 1947.
05:00Let's not forget that.
05:02But that was one of the points of the film, in a way.
05:07Plenty of female queer-coded villains have received similar historic treatments as well.
05:11Like with most vampire flicks, the hedonistic subtext is palpable in the 1936 film, Dracula's Daughter.
05:18The female gaze is weaponized here,
05:20as reluctant monster Maria undresses and feasts upon women in her Chelsea apartment.
05:25I suppose you want these pulled down, won't you?
05:28Yes.
05:32Plenty of dialogue points to Maria's wish to escape this lifestyle and live a normal life.
05:36The spell is broken.
05:39I can live a normal life now.
05:40Think normal things.
05:42Caged, a 1950 noir set in a female prison,
05:45depicts the ways in which women behind bars must lean on one another in more ways than one.
05:50Filmmakers hardly hid the fact that Big Bad Elvira is a lesbian.
05:54She's a cute trick.
05:56In the end, protagonist Marie abandons her morals and her femininity
06:00to join the ranks of Elvira's gang.
06:03There's supposed to be a social message to all this.
06:05Isn't it terrible to go to prison?
06:07Isn't it terrible to lose your femininity?
06:09Isn't it terrible for a woman to go hard?
06:12In both Dracula's Daughter and Caged,
06:14the femme fatale is older,
06:16and her maternal seduction is decidedly poisonous.
06:19These wicked women are shown to lead younger girls astray,
06:22which was a common fear about lesbians at the time.
06:25There's also a masculine edge to their composition,
06:28as if they're filling in for an enigmatic man
06:30who commands and exploits attention from women.
06:33What's your name?
06:35How'd you hurt your hand?
06:39I'm a big girl, and this isn't my first year away from home.
06:43Her name is Marie Allen.
06:44This trick of toying with gender roles and expression
06:47is commonly used when Hollywood queer codes villains.
06:50It's even occurred in some incredibly unexpected places.
06:54Disney Films
06:55Children's programming has regularly followed this formula,
06:59most notably Walt Disney Studios.
07:01Though many of the films we're about to discuss
07:04were created well after the Hays Code was abandoned in 1968,
07:07the seeds continued to germinate through decades of repetitive tropes in filmmaking.
07:11Peter Pan will be blasted out of Neverland forever.
07:18Quick disclaimer,
07:20we're not here to argue that the Disney villains were specifically designed to be queer,
07:25or to signal to kids that being queer is terribly wicked.
07:28Suffice it to say,
07:29the stain of Hays-era crooks seeped into the behaviors,
07:32quirks, and dark desires audiences came to expect from antagonists.
07:36I'll lock you in my fungin'.
07:39So, when put into context, a compelling case can be made.
07:43That's the most important piece of evidence we've heard yet.
07:47Right the stone!
07:49Disney villains are treated like outcasts.
07:51They've been relegated to the sidelines by a society
07:54that doesn't wish to participate in their fancies.
07:57Sound familiar?
07:58Life's not fair, is it?
08:00Avid Disney fans have long pointed out the ways
08:03in which they encapsulate elements of the queer experience.
08:05And, their treacherous schemes are supplemented with designs
08:09that present them in a peculiar light,
08:11subconsciously echoing their earlier counterparts.
08:14You will remember to smile for the camera, won't you?
08:19Hmm?
08:20Say cheese.
08:23Many of the queer-coded male Disney villains are fitted with feminine features.
08:28Take Ratcliffe's magenta wardrobe and hair bows, for instance.
08:31Think how they squirm and they see how I glitter.
08:34The men often have dark shadows around their eyes, too,
08:37which resembles makeup.
08:39Looking at you, Jafar.
08:40King John, the sissy lion in Robin Hood,
08:43has mommy issues and routinely sucks on his thumb.
08:46Oh, mommy!
08:49Hey, I've got a dirty thumb.
08:53King Candy of Wreck-It Ralph lives in a pink princess castle he stole from a little girl.
08:58Hello, my loyal subjects!
09:01Ha ha!
09:03Have some candy!
09:06Thank you for that stirring introduction, Powerbill!
09:09On the other hand, queer-coded female villains are turned into masculine tyrants.
09:15Their hair is short, they take up space, and their voices are deep.
09:19Search for a maid of 16 with hair of sunshine gold and lips red as the rose.
09:26Cruella de Vil, who's based on a queer actress,
09:29can be read as a cautionary tale for the rotten result of a woman exchanging marriage
09:33and motherly duties for self-serving whimsies.
09:36Oh, I'd like a nice fur, but there are so many other things.
09:39Sweet, simple, Anita.
09:42I know.
09:44I know.
09:45This horrid little house is your dream castle.
09:48Ha ha ha ha!
09:50Meanwhile, the sharp-jawed evil queen spends most of the film obsessing over her stepdaughter's beauty.
09:56She is more fair than thee.
09:59A lash for her.
10:01One of the clearest examples of a queer-coded Disney villain is the Lion King's scar.
10:06Oh, I shall practice my curtsy.
10:09He's meek compared to Mufasa,
10:11and has been overlooked by a natural order that values hyper-masculinity.
10:15I'm afraid I'm at the shallow end of the gene pool.
10:19His effeminate features are not unlike drag costuming,
10:22and Jeremy Irons delivers a deliciously campy performance.
10:26I'm surrounded by idiots.
10:29Scar's tempered, calculated approach to usurping the throne
10:32harkens back to the mincing queer-coded villains before him.
10:36Is that a challenge?
10:39Temper, temper.
10:40I wouldn't dream of challenging you.
10:43So while there's obviously no canon where Scar is secretly pining after other male lions,
10:49his construction is still blatantly on the nose
10:51when contrasted with Hollywood queer-coding that demonizes perceived homosexual traits.
10:56Ursula is an over-the-top example, too,
10:58especially given that she isn't just inspired by the loose idea of a queer person,
11:03rather explicitly drawing from drag artist Divine.
11:06Could you give us some of your political beliefs?
11:08Kill everyone now!
11:10Condone first-degree murder!
11:12The Little Mermaid is steeped in queer history,
11:15and Ursula is no exception.
11:17She speaks to the importance of body language,
11:20delivering a powerful ballad to celebrate her conniving trickery.
11:23In modern terms, Ursula boots the house down.
11:26Go ahead and sign the scroll!
11:28Got some Jetson, now I've got her boys!
11:30The boss is on a roll!
11:33When it comes to Beauty and the Beast,
11:35it's worth mentioning how batty underling LeFou crushes hard on his superior Gaston.
11:40Well, there's no man in town half as manly!
11:44Perfect the pure paragon!
11:47In the live-action remake,
11:49audiences were promised explicit confirmation regarding his formerly hushed sexuality.
11:54What we got instead was about three seconds of him dancing with another man.
11:57Beauty and the Beast!
12:01So, while Disney tends to play it safe when it comes to true queer representation,
12:05one can always look to the villains for all of their codified, norm-shattering sinfulness.
12:09For years, that insufferable pipsqueak has interfered with my plans.
12:16I haven't had a moment's peace of mind.
12:19Slashers
12:20No conversation on queer-coded villains is complete without discussing the most egregious offender out there,
12:27the cross-dressing killer.
12:28We have the same color eyes.
12:31No.
12:33Dad.
12:35No.
12:35No.
12:36Most prominent in smutty horror films of the 80s and 90s,
12:40this character type actually has roots in iconic 1960 slasher Psycho.
12:44Unsurprisingly directed by Alfred Hitchcock,
12:46the story follows madman Norman Bates,
12:49who gets his kicks by dressing as his mother while he commits a string of murders.
12:52The success of this film spawned decades of menacing sociopaths on screen
13:03who don women's clothing to signal to audiences that there's something deeply unwell within them.
13:08Real-life serial killer Ed Gein was the inspiration for Bates,
13:11and a number of others after.
13:13One copycat, Leatherface, is portrayed as a thick brute,
13:17but he inexplicably starts dressing as a woman in one of the sequels
13:20for no other reason than to prey on viewers' unease about seeing a man in drag.
13:25The only reason for any of this is that he's a psycho and he gets off on his look.
13:31Another Gein-inspired villain is Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs.
13:35He's making himself a woman's suit, Mr. Crawford, out of real women.
13:38In a famous scene, Bill records himself as he applies makeup and tucks his genitals.
13:44The way he plays with gender is presented as a mental impairment, a sign of psychosis.
13:49After all, his crimes are depraved beyond what investigators have ever seen before.
13:54Billy hates his own identity, you see, and he thinks that makes him a transsexual.
14:00But his pathology is a thousand times more savage and more terrifying.
14:05A common thread that unites these cross-dressing killers is a complicated relationship with their mothers.
14:11Whether hyper-sexualizing her or secretly wanting to be her,
14:14this link compounds the twisted nature of their erotically demented minds.
14:18He dressed up, even to a cheap wick he bought.
14:22He'd walk about the house, sit in her chair, speak in her voice.
14:26He tried to be his mother.
14:28It also aims to rationalize the desire to cross-dress,
14:31inaccurately watering down this queer experience into something born out of paraphilia.
14:36What needs does he serve by killing?
14:40Anger.
14:41Um, social acceptance and, uh, sexual frustration.
14:47These depictions reinforce negative stereotypes that anyone who cross-dresses,
14:51or may actually be transgender, is, quote,
14:53Rather than codifying queerness, it's made explicit in Dressed to Kill,
14:58where the murderer's gender dysphoria is described as multiple personality disorder.
15:02Bobby came to me to get psychiatric approval for a sex reassignment operation.
15:08I thought he was unstable, and Elliot confirmed my diagnosis.
15:11Opposite sexes, inhabiting the same body.
15:14The sex change operation was to resolve the conflict.
15:17But as much as Bobby tried to get it, Elliot blocked it.
15:22This appears again in Split,
15:24where James McAvoy plays a psychopath with several personas,
15:28one of which, Patricia, requires him to wear female clothing.
15:31Don't worry.
15:35I'll talk to him.
15:38He listens to me.
15:40These gross plot points are a dark evolution of the queer-coded villain,
15:44where the vaguely misrepresented idea of being transgender
15:47can be the creepy compulsion that makes a killer tick.
15:50This is even played as a twist ending,
15:53when it's revealed that the killer was parading as the opposite sex all along in Sleepaway Camp.
15:58God, she's a boy.
16:03Like most slashers of this era,
16:13a moral code is slipped into the subtext by filmmakers.
16:16Don't do drugs,
16:18don't have sex,
16:19and don't be gay.
16:21People were plotting the death of the villain,
16:23but they were also plotting the death of a homosexual.
16:27Before we continue,
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16:44Looking back at the history of queer-coded villains is a tragically bleak exercise.
16:51What's lost by only affording these characters the nuances of queerness
16:54is the opportunity to properly flesh out a villainous queer person.
16:58On the flip side,
16:59what's gained is the subliminal reinforcement of biases against the LGBTQIA plus community.
17:05At the end of the day, representation is important,
17:07and there's no reason why queer people shouldn't be occasionally presented as duplicitous monsters,
17:13as long as it isn't shrewdly correlated to their sexuality.
17:16What's wrong with that guy, anyway?
17:18He was a transsexual.
17:20Cinema subtly informs so much of our worldview,
17:23especially about people we may not often come into contact with.
17:27So, queer characters on screen should reflect reality,
17:30sometimes sweet,
17:32sometimes messy,
17:33sometimes flawed,
17:34and yes,
17:34sometimes villainous.
17:36I need you to know.
17:37That I'm not a bad person.
17:44I need to hear you say.
17:50You're not a bad person.
17:52But filmmakers need to do this with care.
17:55One of the most offensive aspects of the queer-coded villain trope
17:58is how it so fundamentally misunderstands human nature.
18:02So, next time you sit down to watch a movie,
18:04look closely at what drives the villain.
18:06Can you identify any suspicious queer coding still at play?
18:10Share your thoughts on this complex issue in the comments below.
18:12We'll see you next time.
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18:21Transcription by CastingWords
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