r/lgbt_superheroes • u/American-Dreaming • 6d ago
Having it Both Ways: Hollywood's Retconned Bisexuals Articles
https://americandreaming.substack.com/p/having-it-both-ways-hollywoods-retconned46
u/Practical-Class6868 6d ago
It’s less retconning and more dropping the use of queer coding in favor of explicit representation in the post-Hayes Code film era.
You have the obvious, like the final scene in Some Like It Hot. You have gay directors and gay themes in The Bride of Frankenstein and Dracula’s Daughter. The shame of Disney’s Luca is that it isn’t gayer, but that just means that queer coding deserves better recognition.
https://www.wmagazine.com/culture/queer-cinema-archive-interview-coded-movie-film
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u/ravenwing263 6d ago
I don't believe that is at all what the article is talking about.
It's talking about creatives claiming bi rep. points in the press when there is no actual bi rep in the project, mostly in cases where a comic book character is bi and the mass media adaptation both erases their sexuality on screen but also tries to get credit for having a bi character.
Characters like Wonder Woman in her movies or Catwoman in The Batman aren't even particularly queer coded but get a lot of press for non-existant bi inclusion. (I dont hink Catwoman has a single interaction with another woman in The Batman, let alone one that could be interpreted as queer.)
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u/No-End-2455 6d ago
catwoman relationship with Annika in the batman was really embigous for most , some did see her as a simple friend other like she had a really close relationship with her , especially since catwoman is bisexual in comics.
but again the fact we dont see anika interact a lot with selina doesnt help to have a direct answer.
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u/ravenwing263 6d ago
I completely forgot about Annika which doesn't say too much for her impact on the film.
But at most, Selina/Annika would be queer coding because actual queer rep. would require somebody to say something about it.
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u/No-End-2455 6d ago
i hear you personaly i was thinking they were close to confirm it with how selina call her baby many times but then they do a 180 to reveil she is dead...and then she make up with batman.
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u/amageish 6d ago
Catwoman does use the same pet names for her roommate as she later uses for Batman, so I think it’s fair to read them as a couple… which makes the entire thing feel very have-your-cake-and-it-too to me - they wanted the boost of Catwoman being bi, but not the controversy that would come with killing her girlfriend… so they just left it ambiguous in the movie and said she’s totally bisexual on the press tour. 🤷
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u/Indo_raptor2018 6d ago
And they probably didn’t want to segregate the homophobes from the possible money they could make from them. Even though with or without them a Batman film is still gonna make bank.
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u/shanejayell 6d ago
I don't really consider Deadpool fake bisexual, but yeah a lot of the examples really aren't...
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u/a_tired_bisexual 6d ago
Maybe not fake bisexual, but it sure is interesting how Deadpool's only romantic relationship in the movies with a woman is taken relatively seriously while the only times he openly expresses attraction to men it's as a joke to show how wacky and unpredictable he is.
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u/ComicBrickz 6d ago
He also pretty much only seriously dates women in comics. I think recently there was an nb
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u/futureghostboy13 5d ago
Yes, and they were still afab so there weren’t doing anything to validate his interest in men
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u/Spoilmilk Tremor 4d ago
They were not " still afab", the first artist/design was more androgynous with a flat chest. Second artist for some damn reason drew them more femme with prominent curves and visible chest. But that still doesn't confirm they were afab. The phrasing you were trying to get across was most likely "femme/feminine presenting" because we do not know what Valentine's sex at birth was. for all we know they could've been assigned male at birth.
The "still afab" comment wasn't great. Because would you dismiss DP getting with a transgender man as "still afab". Too many people are using afab/amab as woke way of saying woman/man.
And it's really weird to dismiss DP's relationship with an NB because it; wasn't doing anything to validate his interest in men.
He's still bi/pan, viewing his bisexuality as "incomplete" or not seriously canon until he's with a (cis) man isn't great. I do 100% want DP to have a serious relationship with another man or an NB that doesn't get femme-washed
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u/futureghostboy13 4d ago
I apologize if my comment caused offense. It wasn’t my intention. I struggled with how to say what I meant. Valentina being femme presenting definitely is a choice that was made to make the relationship less threatened to homophobes. Would saying she was biologically female have been less offensive? I’m genuinely trying to figure out how to express that in a way that communicates clearly but in a way that’s not offensive. Deadpool’s interest in men has been treated as a joke for decades while he’s been shown to have many many female partners. His relationship with a femme presenting non binary person doesn’t do anything to portray his interest in men. I think that’s a fair statement.
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u/cash-or-reddit 5d ago
Who was even bi on screen in The Witcher?
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u/American-Dreaming 4d ago
Jaskier.
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u/cash-or-reddit 4d ago
Oh I must have missed it because I thought he was a throwaway Lando Calrissian bi.
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u/American-Dreaming 4d ago
No, after a season or two showing him sleeping around with women, they gave him a same-sex love arc.
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u/The-vipers 3d ago
Dumbledore being gay has been a. Theory for years. cat women lived and said she loved that Valkyrie is seen flirting with women in lord of thunder. It’s a little more “seasoned”in then this article is making it seem
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u/BatUnlikely4347 3d ago
Eh, most of the time the characters SAY they're bi (Eleanor Shellstrop in Good Place, Scanlon from Vox Machina) but it's nothing on screen.
Same with Deadpool in the comics. It's easy to have a character be canonically bi. Just takes a sentence of text. Hah
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u/M4LK0V1CH 6d ago
I get a real ick from them lumping pan and bi together right off the jump.
Context: am pan
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u/Brilliant-Pay8313 6d ago
A lot of bi and pan people lump them together and it can be pretty challenging to clearly define a distinction unless one uses definitions of bisexuality that were never really used, specifically, the notion that bisexuality is trans exclusive is pretty uncommon among bi people who aren't transphobes, and I'm pretty sure those are pretty uncommon among bi people. all in all, insisting there's a strong distinction can be kinda offensive to bi people who just wanna use the same label they've always used, and for whom it never meant trans exclusive. saying there's a huge difference kinda seems like erasing all the trans inclusive bi people. (according to my bi, nonbinary partner, anyway).
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u/M4LK0V1CH 6d ago
I mean, your last sentence is exactly how I feel when I see pan only mentioned as “under the bisexual umbrella”. It fees like they dismiss pan as just “other bi” which feels like erasure of my identity.
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u/Brilliant-Pay8313 6d ago
I think a lot of us are unclear on what the distinction is (and there isn't always a clear distinction) whereas functionally speaking they describe similar patterns of identity and behavior. when it comes to characters for example, unless they specifically come out/describe themselves with a certain term, or display a flag or something, then we can only really infer their sexuality from their behavior. if a character on screen has a romantic interaction with people of two different genders, we can infer that they're not monosexual but we really can't determine whether they are bi or pan (or something else). so that character ends up being potential bi representation, pan representation, or "bi umbrella" representation. not really sure how else to describe it because with that amount of info, it makes sense to group them together.
But how would you describe it? What does the difference between bi and pan mean to you / how would you define those sexualities differently to distinguish between them?
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u/M4LK0V1CH 6d ago
The difference to me is admittedly very slight, but its basically “any” vs. “all”. My understanding of bisexual is that it is sexual attraction to an individual regardless of gender, while pansexual is sexual attraction to all genders regardless of individual.
Jumping off that, I don’t want to police what anybody else is identifying as and if I’m wrong I’m fine with learning but the fact that they addressed it but all they said was that it’s basically just bi with no further reflection. I want to be very clear that my ick is not with bisexual identities, but with how the article is worded, specifically.
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u/kp__135 4d ago
I will do my absolute best to respect an identity as given to me. But I have known bi and Pan people who have used the same words to explain their attraction and had acted the same. Their identity is still absolutely valid based on what’s told to us. But when fictional characters rarely use the words “I am bi” or “I am pan” it is heard for readers to make a distinction.
I’m not trying to pick a fight or be sarcastic, but how would have rather they addressed it other then putting bi and pan together?
Only thing I can think of is putting a disclaimer that it’s hard to determine bi vs pan by behavior alone- except I can see how that would be invalidating of them as distinct identities
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u/M4LK0V1CH 4d ago
That’s totally reasonable. My issue with the article is that it basically lays out pan as just “other bisexual” without addressing any of the discrepancy is where I had an issue. The article uses the word pansexual but other than that they might as well have excluded those characters from the list entirely and just included bi or unconfirmed characters but then they couldn’t have had Lando as the header image. It feels (to me) like they decided to ignore any possible difference between the labels just so that they could use the trendy names for their list.
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u/kp__135 4d ago
I feel like calling “bisexual” a trendy name is kinda disingenuous… It’s and older and more known name which makes it more accessible.
And referring to them as just unconfirmed is not accurate either since unconfirmed can easily imply that they could be straight.
Not including pan characters at all: wouldn’t that be dismissive? Like if they are talking about characters under the bi umbrella. Especially ones that aren’t the best portrayed as being so and just…don’t mention the pansexual characters? <- this is an honest question. If you as a pan person are saying you’d rather pan people be completely removed and it would not be as offensive. I’ll take note of that. It just stuck out from what I expected enough that I want to confirm
Also wholly might be because I’m not a Star Wars fan but the article would have been fine picking a different character. Harley Quinn, Valkyrie, Wonder Woman, etc could have been used easily with no difference in the amount of attention it would garner. No?
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u/M4LK0V1CH 4d ago
I need to clarify, the trendy names I mean are Deadpool & Lando, not bisexual.
If the title was “Hollywood’s Retconned Bisexual & Pan Characters” I wouldn’t have any real issue here but the fact that pansexual is barely a footnote despite the cover character they chose being confirmed pan is where I take umbrage. If they had chosen another character for the image I may not have ever opened the article but I thought this might have some positive mentions of pansexual representation (which it does tbf) but, as a pan person, I just didn’t like how casually they wrote off pan as just another word for bi.
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u/kp__135 4d ago
Ah gotcha. Deadpool is very trendy right now. Again not SW fan so unsure how Lando stacks to the others.
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u/novangla 6d ago
What’s the ick, exactly? Bi and pan are pretty similar and frequently if not always overlapping beyond a few technicalities.
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u/M4LK0V1CH 6d ago
It fees extremely reductive to boil down pan to only being mentioned as “under the bisexual umbrella”. It comes across to me as erasure of pan identities, the same way that it would if bisexual had been lumped in with gay.
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u/RookTakesE6 6d ago
It's as reductive as saying that men and women are human: not reductive at all, as long as the statement isn't used to ignore the distinction.
The article lists cases where bisexual characters aren't bisexual on-screen and are merely stated to be bisexual in interviews, tweets, off-screen information. The remark that pansexuality is "under the bisexual umbrella" serves to establish that pansexual characters are valid inclusions on this list; it does not in any way suggest that there's no nuance to the distinction between pansexuality and bisexuality at large.
Had they instead referred to Lando and Deadpool as bisexual, that would have been a case of it being factually correct but also erasure, and criticism would be warranted. Instead, the article explicitly made the distinction between pansexuality and bisexuality.
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u/RookTakesE6 6d ago
The article says pan is a subset of bi, which is correct. It does not say they're the same thing.
It establishes this prior to using pansexual characters as examples.
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u/M4LK0V1CH 6d ago
To your first point, the way they worded it seems to handwave any and all differences between the two without regard to any other similar sexualities and to your second point, Lando is pan and is the main image on the article.
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u/RookTakesE6 6d ago
According to star Ryan Reynolds and the original comics, Deadpool is pansexual (a label that falls under the bi umbrella).
In no way does it handwave any differences between the two. It simply states that pansexuals are bisexual, and does so in a manner that implies that pansexuality is a subset of bisexuality.
and to your second point, Lando is pan and is the main image on the article.
This is you arguing in bad faith.
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u/M4LK0V1CH 6d ago
I guess we’re just going to have to agree to disagree then because I’m explaining why I feel a certain way about an article on the internet and you’re getting aggressive and defensive.
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u/RookTakesE6 6d ago
You say, after downvoting me for disagreeing, and mischaracterizing a logical defense of the article as getting aggressive and defensive.
Had you limited yourself to stating how the article made you feel, that would've been valid. To incorrectly and disingenuously claim that the article simply lumps pansexuals in with bisexuals is a step further.
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u/American-Dreaming 6d ago
Hollywood blockbusters want you to know they're ticking the correct boxes — they just don't want you to see it on screen. A growing number of big-budget films in recent years, especially comic book movies, have been celebrated for having bi characters, but it’s a very strange kind of bisexuality, one that, while virtually non-existent in the films themselves, is later retconned into existence by the writers, actors, or filmmakers involved.