Sex and Queer-Coded Villainy
The Villain
Queer-coded villains have been a thing in movies for a long time, and as much as lots of us have embraced these depictions (we are, after all, starved for any sort of representation at all), let’s not forget that it’s not actually good representation when queer = evil. In the case of Ragnarok, since the villain is being played by such a charming and well-loved actor as Jeff Goldblum, it’s even more understandable that many fans are willing to just go along with the performance and not question it. But maybe it deserves a closer look.
This nigh-omnipotent ruler of Sakaar is without a doubt peak hedonist. Wearing bright colors and with effete, feminine mannerisms and no inclination toward more stereotypically masculine activities (like doing any of his own violent dirty work, reacting with unmanly revulsion when he does melt someone with his stick, because ew, it’s all over his shoes). He leads a life of parties and orgies and games and endless debauchery, with excessive and deviant sexuality (if we recall the tentacles of the deleted scene), and extreme vanity. To boot, to further emphasize the old trope, he surrounds himself with strong, masculine women (also thus queer-coded) who carry out his orders. In short, there is hardly a classic queer-coding box we haven’t checked for the Grandmaster.
Queer-coding in itself is not inherently bad or good; context matters. How the character is handled, and their place in the narrative, matter and affect the reading. And… the context here is that of a truly rather monstrous villain who can callously use his melting stick on a family member with no compunction, who runs a society built on slavery, whose greatest pleasures involve watching unwilling people murder unwilling victims. So, clearly, this is a pretty villainous queer-coded villain. He’s not portrayed as sympathetic, nor even as particularly frightening or compelling. He is largely a flat character, with few attractive qualities (aside from being Jeff Goldblum). He is “just like that,” no explanation needed.
It’s treated as light humor and is meant to make us laugh, and shake our head in contempt, and let it go, but so have so many other depictions of queer-coded villains in the hundred plus years since movies were invented, many of which now (justly) make us retch, because of the cruel stereotyping, othering, and implications they convey. These are the depictions of queer people that have helped shape our cultural and social views, which have caused, and still cause, many people a lot of pain, under which many still live (and because of which are literally killed) today. In short, there is nothing light or inconsequential about queer-coding villains, and using it as comic relief. On the contrary.
But it gets even worse than that, when Loki comes into the picture. Loki, too, is undeniably queer-coded, as a male magic user in a society where magic was largely women’s domain, as a trickster in a culture that celebrated warriors, and now as the anti-hero, who has sacrificed his principles (if we assume he ever had any) for safety and comfort when he comes under the villain’s control. So we have a queer-coded villain who is presented as hypersexual, and we have a queer-coded anti-hero who sells out by cooperating with him, and it is implied that the charms the anti-hero has so shamefully and unheroically used to survive… are sex.
So what we are seeing is an imbalance of power between two villainous figures in a place described as the fucking worst; to top it off, Loki can’t wait to rush to the dungeons to plot murder with Thor to overthrow the Grandmaster and get the hell out of there, so the situation is hardly to be read as that of two sociopaths in love. No. It’s the well-known, old-fashioned trope of the predatory figure using his position of power to have his sleazy way with the pretty boy who submits to it for gain. It’s old as balls and deeply offensive.
The hero’s body may be used for violence and bloodshed, even if that gives pleasure to the people who own him, whom he despises. And we suffer with him, and are outraged with him, and we want him to get away and get his revenge. But the anti-hero’s way of cooperating with the villain is shameful. It has to be read as shameful, or the narrative doesn’t work: if the anti-hero’s safer, easier, painless way is acceptable and without consequences, then the hero is resisting for nothing.
And in this narrative, that act of cooperation, and the resulting shame that follows, are inextricably tied up with the fact that Loki is (or is implied to be) consenting to gay sex.
Wow.
The gladiator hero is treated with dignity and compassion and will get redemption at the end, because when push comes to shove, it was about physical power and violence, and he didn’t enjoy it or consent to it anyway. The brutal slaver who drinks too much, and has thrived by capturing and selling slaves to the tyrant, is also treated with dignity and will get instant redemption just for lining up with the hero, because she didn’t sell herself. The space floozy, on the other hand, the only one who didn’t hurt anyone (but himself, depending on the interpretation) is doomed, because he did the one thing a man, a hero, would never do.