12 Coding, Baiting, and Fishing: A Tale of Queerness in Pixar’s Luca
12 Coding, Baiting, and Fishing: A Tale of Queerness in Pixar’s Luca
"In a world where queer coded cinema is swimming in stereotypes and queer baiting is all about reeling in the cash, Pixar's Luca is the catch of the day when it comes to outlining what these trends actually look like."
Ginger White
“In a world where queer coded cinema is swimming in stereotypes and queer baiting is all about reeling in the cash, Pixar’s Luca is the catch of the day when it comes to outlining what these trends actually look like.”
Introduction
Cinema runs on stereotypes. Whether that means breaking them or buying into them, this is simply a fact. They make for a more easily translatable story, and save valuable screen time and dialogue that would normally be wasted with exposition or explanation. There really aren’t many exceptions to this rule, either, even when it comes to the portrayal of the gay community. There’s also a lot of easily recognizable experiences and stereotypes to pick from, too. From conversion camps and homophobia, to oversexualization and dehumanization. From the gay best friend to the queer coded animated villain. These tropes and short-hands in media- specifically cinema, have become so easily recognizable that they can even be identified in stories that are not outwardly queer.
These two trends are extremely apparent when it comes to Disney-Pixar’s most recently released animated movie- Luca. This movie as a whole can be identified as an allegory for the queer experience because of the notoriety of these tropes, which makes it the perfect case study to help break them down with. The creative team at Luca has denied any intentional queer coding or overt queerness but examining these indicators not only examines how media treats queerness but explains why so many people believed this to be queer.
So what does queer coding and queer baiting mean in media and how is Pixar’s Luca the ideal example to discuss these topics? Let’s dive in.
Queer-coding: What is it?
Before delving into the specific example of Luca, however, one must examine the history of queer coding and what part it plays in our media today. Luckily, there have been many conversations on this topic. One of which is had and transcribed on the podcast Your Queer Story, which feels like an appropriate venue for such a topic. The episode, aptly named Queer Coding in Film, kicks of with a handy definition of the term queer coding. It is classified by this particular source as
“The sub-textual portrayal of a queer character in the media whose identity is not explicitly confirmed within canon. This concept refers to a character that encapsulates what might be considered “queer traits” that are recognizable to the audience, but are never labeled or claimed by the content creator.” (Your Queer Story) The podcast continues, explaining that these tropes come not only from stereotypes, but from real experiences in the LGBTQ+ community. Queer coding was originally introduced as a way to work