Why Can't Captain Marvel Be Gay?

[Cotton1]

It means people don't mind that. They reject lesbian scenes. Figure it out.

If its two pretty women, count me in. If its two disgusting gender confused bull dykes, count me out.

[Mister D]

If its two pretty women, count me in. If its two disgusting gender confused bull dykes, count me out.

They're only hot in porn films. In real life they look like Pete Rose.

[Cotton1]

They're only hot in porn films. In real life they look like Pete Rose.

[Peter1469]

They're only hot in porn films. In real life they look like Pete Rose.

Or Bruce Jenner.

[Standing Wolf]

Captain Marvel was originally a male character. Political correctness and a desire to placate a very small minority part of the population neutered him and and caused him to be recreated as a female. He is not the first character who has been completely remade with a gender change and I am sure won't be the last.

People need to stop bowing before the altar of political correctness and threats.

The first Captain Marvel was a Fawcett Comics creation and appeared in comics from 1939 to 1953. He was the first superhero to have a movie made about him. He had both a boy and a girl sidekick. My mother used to tell me that she read Mary Marvel comics when she was a little girl in the '40s.



Marvel comics acquired the rights to the "Marvel family" characters in the early '70s and used the "Captain Marvel" name for an alien named Mar-vell.



D.C. acquired the rights to the character and image of the original Captain Marvel in, I think, the '90s. (Ironic, since the original Captain Marvel comics ceased publication in part because of a long-running lawsuit by D.C. to the effect that The Big Red Cheese - Marvel's nickname - was just a knock-off of Superman. DC made minimal use of the character, and - because Marvel Comics still owned and was using the "Captain Marvel" name, they rechristened him "Shazam".

There was also a Black female Captain Marvel for awhile, though I'm not sure about the timing and details of that incarnation.

[Chris]

[Hal Jordan]

Captain Marvel was originally a male character. Political correctness and a desire to placate a very small minority part of the population neutered him and and caused him to be recreated as a female. He is not the first character who has been completely remade with a gender change and I am sure won't be the last.

People need to stop bowing before the altar of political correctness and threats.

No. No. No. No.

That anyone thinks that is the case in this particular situation shows that I was correct. It is time for class.


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Originally, a company called Fawcett Comics created a character called Captain Marvel. This character was similar to Superman, so DC sued them. The cost of the lawsuit caused them to run out of money to make comics.

Marvel Comics saw an opportunity. While there was no Captain Marvel comic books being published, they could create their own. Carol Danvers was created in his second appearance. This was in 1968. This right here goes against the theory you put forth that she is him remade with a gender change. Carol Danvers gained powers in 1977, but did not become the second Captain Marvel, oh no. She became Ms. Marvel, and got her own comic in 1977. He was never a popular character, and they really only kept his comic going to keep control of the trademark.

In 1981, we find a character that owes a lot to Carol Danvers, Rogue.

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Rogue has been one of the most popular of the X-Men since the 1980s. People mostly remember her as the fiery-personalitied, southern mutant that has now been a major part of the team. Most remember her powers as flight, super-strength, and power/memory absorption. She only had one of those powers in her first appearance. The other two she gained from being forced to be in contact with Ms. Marvel for too long. She gained those powers and memories permanently. Carol did regain powers (but not as she originally had them at first) eventually. She renamed herself Binary, as her powers now had to do with a binary star.
Now we get to 1982, where the original (Marvel) Captain Marvel has not been helping sell comics. Jim Starlin, who had revived other characters into powerhouses, could not save this one. They created his last tale, The Death of Captain Marvel. It was his greatest story.

Marvel still wanted to keep that sweet, sweet trademark, though. They continued to publish a Captain Marvel series every few years so the trademark would not lapse. Some just reprinted adventures, but when they killed the original character, they knew they would have to give the name to someone else. This is far from unheard of. Tony Stark has not been the only Iron Man, and Steve Rogers has not been the only Captain America, for example. They decided that they would go a different direction here. This time, let's make Captain Marvel be a woman! This was a different idea at the time, and not done for placation or anything like that. Better yet, let's make her a black woman! This was in 1982.

Their replacement was a woman from New Orleans named Monica Rambeau. Her powers were energy based, including turning her body into energy.

Carol Danvers did not receive the Captain as part of her name, even though she had the most right to, until 2012. As you should be able to clearly see, the explanation that you gave does not apply in this case. I will admit that it does happen in other cases, but those are different discussions.

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[Hal Jordan]

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.

Polly,

Let me preface this by saying that I have not been able to see the movie yet, though I do fully intend to. I'm especially excited to see a flerken cat (if Chewie and Rocket don't interact before his time in the MCU is done, I will be very upset).

I also want to say the the idea of comics not making political statements is ridiculous. They have done so since their very beginning. Disney has only put political messages in their movies since they existed, so new idea there too.

Now, if you hadn't read my previous post, please do, as it does have ties to this one.

Okay, I think that (remember, this is not seen yet speculation) it's more likely that the filmmakers wanted to give a stronger tie to Danvers and Monica (a reason for her to eventually take the name, etc). They did this by forming a strong attachment to the mother and having Carol be involved in raising her. Odd choice, but so would taking a character with no homosexual or bisexual tendencies in the source material and adding that in there. That would actually cause quite a bit of uproar. "But she was in a relationship with War Machine, until she accidentally killed him!" Blah blah blah. Really, I find it hard to believe that they actually intended it to be that way.

Once I am finally able to see it, I will gladly discuss details. Until then, there is one comic book movie project in the works that I think you would be interested in. It's based on a comic that won a few awards over the years (first issue in 1993), Strangers in Paradise.

[Hal Jordan]

Yup, they also added one of their lesbian superheroes to the Arrowverse in the Elseworlds crossover, Batwoman.

[Chris]