When Queer Characters are Evil (and Why that’s Okay)
Is having more morally-questionable queer people in fiction counter-intuitive to our fight against inequality?
What I enjoyed the most about watching the ultra-queer miniseries “Mary & George,” Julianne Moore and Nicholas Galitzine aside, was seeing queer characters committing some of the most morally deplorable acts.
Loosely based on the history of King James I’s reign (the same king who had a translated version of the Bible named after him, the Authorized King James version), the series revolves around queer mom and son Mary and George Villiers as they scheme to escape social and financial ruin by winning over an emotionally-unstable queer king who had a gay harem catering to his every whim.
Sure, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen morally-bankrupt rulers and queer gentry (“Game of Thrones,” “Young Royals,” BBC’s “Versailles,” and even Galitzine’s “Red, White, and Royal Blue”), but seeing Julianne tag-team with her lesbian prostitute lover to murder people as Nicholas’s George Villiers weaponized his youth and body for favors was wicked fun.
While having more morally-questionable queer people in shows and literary work might seem counter-intuitive to our fight against inequality, we could argue that it’s actually a sign that we’re moving beyond one-dimensional caricatures. There’s a tendency to portray people in the margins –– women, economically-disadvantaged people, indigenous folk, people from the Global South, and yes, us queers –– as perfect victims: a narrative that aims to gain the sympathy of the privileged. But a narrative like that only positions the privileged as saviors, and serves to prop up the existing power structure.
One’s queerness does not automatically make one the paragon of virtue; in fiction, even more so. But accepting that should not mean that queer people do not deserve equal rights. Being the perfect victim shouldn’t be a condition for gaining access to equal opportunities under the law.
Fiction should not always be a moral story –– even the Bible, claimed by Christians to be the foundation of our morality, presents a supposedly virtuous deity who nonetheless petulantly demands the sacrificial murder of children, permits raping and disregarding the bodily autonomy of women, and condones genocide against peoples who happen to be in the wrong faith. Films like Eduardo Roy Jr.’s “Quick Change” and Rodina Singh’s “Mamu: And a Mother Too,” which feature difficult leads who do not cleanly fit in the binary of good and evil, are far more interesting precisely because they allow us to explore both otherness and the commonality of what it means to be human. It would be simplistic to assume that works where characters like Dorina, Mamu, and Mary and George Villiers exist are meant to celebrate or approve of their lifestyle and decisions.
In Contrapoints’ Natalie Wynn’s latest video, “Twilight,” the trans video essayist and social commentator unpacks how erotica novels allow women to challenge patriarchal expectations without fully transgressing societal norms.
Commenting on the non-consent fantasy often called out as problematic, she says:
“So, the ravishment fantasy proved to be the most common fantasy. Why? Are these women all horribly traumatized? Is this internalized misogyny? Well, maybe, but there's other explanations to consider. Women are socialized not to display sexuality openly, not to initiate. Being a proper feminine woman is supposed to involve being passive and modest. Or else, women risk being recast from Madonna to whore, good girl to slut, and then being victimized and degraded as a result. So it makes sense that a lot of women might be very protective of their innocent, good-girl self-image, even in fantasy.
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[T]he non-consent fantasy is not wish-fulfillment in a literal sense, but in an emotional sense. Like if a teenage boy fantasizes about dying gloriously in battle, is that a masochistic fantasy about death, or is it an egotistical fantasy about glory? Probably the latter. Likewise, women who fantasize about being ‘ravished’ do not actually want to be assaulted. In a fantasy, which is a fictional scenario where you are in control, the non-consent situation satisfies your emotional needs to gratify desire, without the burden of shame and guilt and anxiety that comes with taking responsibility for your desire.
Another vampire novelist, Anne Rice, said of her own sadomasochistic erotica series, ‘The books aren't about literal cruelty, they're about surrender, the fun of imagining you have no choice but to enjoy sex.’
The essential point is this. Fantasies are not literal wishes. Fantasies construct situations where emotional needs are met, and inhibitions to pleasure are removed. So, for example, in a fantasy where the dangerous alpha male is the aggressor, the woman remains innocent. The bad boy is bad, so that the good girl gets to stay good. We can call this disavowal, the process of constructing fantasy situations where your desires are gratified, without having to assert or even having to acknowledge the desire. Non-consent fantasy are one ruse of disavowal, but fantasy is infinitely creative in constructing these devices.
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Fantasizing about sexy vampires doesn't make you a willing victim any more than fantasizing about torpedoing a car holding up traffic makes you a murderer. I fantasize about Mario-Kart-shelling bad drivers all the time, that doesn't mean I literally want bloodshed on the New Jersey Turnpike, unless they're asking for it.”
We could interpret the desire to see more queer characters who are not goody-two-shoes-everything-is-beautiful-and-positive-in-the-world as a fictional fulfillment of an inner desire: to triumph over the oppressive systems that continue to make our lives hell, even if winning means playing by the same duplicitous rules that the powerful often play without consequence and are even rewarded for it. In “Mary & George,” we see King James I overtly show his queerness without repercussions, his power shielding him from the judgment otherwise suffered by the peasants. If we want to force a takeaway lesson from the series, it’s not that evil is permissible, it’s that we should question why power often makes it so.
As for me, what I learned is that maybe we can give Julianne Moore and Nicholas Galitzine more queer roles to play. I still believe that queer people should be the priority for queer roles, but for them, I plead an exception.
- As an asexual/aromantic, Contrapoints' Twilight video revealed to me something I never understood: the appeal of romance novels. I never cared for them, and I still don't, but now I understand why people do.
- My favorite queer cinema and literature involve "problematic" queer characters. Maybe I'm not as queer on the spectrum, but at least I can relate to the falliability, the humanity, and that they exist (and so can I).