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Thread: Why Can't Captain Marvel Be Gay?

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    IMPress Polly's Avatar Senior Member
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    Why Can't Captain Marvel Be Gay?

    I don't mean to complain about movies that I actually kind of like all the time, but come on! This is 2019! It's been 50 years since Stonewall and 52 since the lifting of the Hays Code and still we're generally stuck at lesbian coding at most on the big screen? It's not that every movie needs to have gay characters or anything, but the creators of these major motion pictures pass up opportunities that seem obvious to me with such consistency that it seems intentional and unnatural, and this is especially true when it comes to female characters, who rarely get billed as the lead anyway (case in point: Captain Marvel is the 21st entry is the "Marvel Cinematic Universe", but only the first to clearly center a woman).

    What am I talking about, you ask? Well to highlight an obvious example, consider the Wonder Woman movie from a couple years back. In the comic books, Diana (a.k.a. Wonder Woman) is bisexual, which makes sense when you consider that the two women who inspired her original creation were bisexual themselves. It makes narrative sense in the film that she would have at least experimented with same-sex relationships as well. I mean, in the film, Diana was born and raised on an all-female island, secluded from the rest of the world, and has lived there, in that situation, for hundreds of years now, knowing no other experience. You see what I mean? And yet the filmmakers felt it necessary to include a scene (I'm referencing the boat scene, in case you're wondering) making it crystal clear that she remains a virgin despite these remarkable circumstances, whereupon she proceeds to fall in love with literally the very first man she sees. I mean come on! What are the odds? It's not that the relationship between Diana and Steve Trevor is poorly developed or anything (on the contrary, I found it cute and endearing), but I can't help but feel like here was a clear and obvious opportunity to validate lesbian sentiment in a way that would actually be visible, in a film that large numbers of people would actually see (i.e. wouldn't just be a niche indie), and yet...the filmmakers instead went out of their way make Diana strictly heterosexual for the movie franchise only because otherwise political conservatives would freak and the movie wouldn't do as well at the box office. Just as an example of my point.

    Similarly, in Captain Marvel, our protagonist just so haaaaaappens to find herself raising a child with another woman, neither of whom seems to have a man in their lives, just by pure coincidence. And yet they are narratively stuck in the friend zone. I mean that's what I do with my friends: we go adopt children together! My point being that the titular Captain Marvel is clearly lesbian-coded, but nonetheless cannot be shown, you know, dating or, heaven forbid, kissing another woman on the big screen because every theater in the state of Alabama would refuse to show the movie here in 2019. This is actually the most common trope that gets applied to lesbian representation in media in general: coding. Most often scenarios are presented that make it clear to lesbians that characters are supposed to be in a same-sex relationship, only to be disingenuously rendered "just good friends"...or even perhaps biologically related (like in the case of the 2015 Studio Ghibli anime picture When Marnie Was There, wherein the girl our female protagonist falls in love with, though visibly her same age, nonetheless turns out to be her grandmother; she's a ghost, it is revealed at the end of film ). The sheer dogged determination of major filmmakers not to validate same-sex relationships in any way even when narratively presented with crystal clear opportunities to do so kind of hurts after long enough.

    Conservatives tell me that Hollywood possesses a liberal bias. Perhaps in some respects it does, but here is an area in which clearly the opposite is the case.

    Whenever I point this out, conservative-minded people invariably respond with a cheap line like "Do movies/games/whatever have to be political statements?" It is, however, they in this pseudo-logic who are politicizing sexual orientation, not me. It is they who are insisting that only their sexual orientation be represented on the screen. Conservatives complain about "the gay agenda" all the time, yet don't at all mind politicizing their own sexual orientation in the way of insisting that it is the only valid one to have and to be depicted. Wouldn't simply including the occasional lesbian character in a major motion picture just reflect the way the world is rather than intrinsically constituting a political statement? "What about the children?!", a paranoid follow-up argument goes. Yes indeed, what about the children? What about the gay youth out there who hate themselves and perhaps even engage in self-harm because they feel like unnatural freaks; like they're not supposed to exist? What about those kids?

    Okay, I'm done. I just had to say that this morning.
    Last edited by IMPress Polly; 03-22-2019 at 06:33 AM.

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    stjames1_53's Avatar Senior Member
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    comic book heroes.........................make pretend......why is this garner such a high imperative?
    Everything that comes out of Hollywood is make pretend, even their "factual" non-fiction.
    Note: We should not gauge our lives by what Hollywood secretes out their deposit end.
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    Reality check: it's the top-grossing film genre, St. James. And it's not the only one I'm aiming to call out here. Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel were just examples.

    What does it matter to you anyway, frankly? It's not like you've seen either one or ever would.

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    Quote Originally Posted by IMPress Polly View Post
    Reality check: it's the top-grossing film genre, St. James. And it's not the only one I'm aiming to call out here. Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel were just examples.

    What does it matter to you anyway, frankly? It's not like you've seen either one or ever would.
    See, you're wrong about me, once again. I watch movies bearing reality in mind. I liked WW, but not because she was a woman. Its the action and graphics.
    Note: I wait for all movies to hit the DVD before I watch any of them. I do not support movie theaters.
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    Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum

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    I am not Catholic am Baptist. We don't believe the media that reprobates are good people no matter how they portray them in movies. 2019 or 2919 we don't change. The media has no influence on us

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    Quote Originally Posted by stjames1_53 View Post
    See, you're wrong about me, once again. I watch movies bearing reality in mind. I liked WW, but not because she was a woman. Its the action and graphics.
    Note: I wait for all movies to hit the DVD before I watch any of them. I do not support movie theaters.
    That surprises me, I have to admit, being as you're not exactly the target demographic for movies like Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel.

    Still, the fact is that you are not a woman, so of course the sex of these characters doesn't matter to you. Wonder Woman's sex mattered to many, many women though and it mattered to the story that the filmmakers told.

    I'm not saying that every film needs to be this way or that. I'm just saying that it would be nice if some major filmmakers could be brave enough to actually depict lesbian relationships (perhaps just casual signs of affection, such as a kiss here or there) once in a blue moon. It gets tiresome seeing lesbian relationships (poorly) depicted exclusively in contexts that are purely sexual in nature like pornography because its women.
    Last edited by IMPress Polly; 03-22-2019 at 07:17 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by IMPress Polly View Post
    That surprises me, I have to admit, being as you're not exactly the target demographic for movies like Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel.

    Still, the fact is that you are not a woman, so of course the sex of these characters doesn't matter to you. Wonder Woman's sex mattered to many, many women though and it mattered to the story that the filmmakers told.

    I'm not saying that every film needs to be this way or that. I'm just saying that it would be nice if some major filmmakers could be brave enough to actually depict lesbian relationships (perhaps just casual signs of affection, such as a kiss here or there) once in a blue moon. It gets tiresome seeing lesbian relationships (poorly) depicted exclusively in contexts that are purely sexual in nature like pornography because its women.
    Well, to be honest and frank, maybe some movies aren't about sexual relationships. They are meant be merely entertaining? IF they are designed with that in mind, I am the intended target.
    Do we really need to have action movies that are intended to be demographically sexual from Hollywood?
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    "The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."
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    Your point seems to boil down to you wish Captain Marvel was gay.

    Why?
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    Maybe I am missing the point. Captain Marvel is a fictional character. As a fictional character he can be what ever the creator wanted him to be. Making him/her/it/they/ur or whatever gay is nothing more than further deterioration of our society's moral and cultural base.

    Insanity is insanity. Labeling it normal does not make it so.

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    Capt Marvel is a nothing, WonderWoman is a nothing, Superman is a nothing, Superwoman, Green Lantern, is a nothing, they are fabrications of someones mind. The obsession with cartoon characters being anything is absurd.

    How about they create a " Super Homo" and insist on making him or her Heterosexual, yanno a kiss with the opposite sex a hug
    LETS GO BRANDON
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