When Villains Are “Too Fabulous”: The Legacy of Queer Coding in Media

The 61st episode of Creatinuum, “On the Practice of Queer Coding: Its Motivations and Effects in Popular Media,” breaks down the concept of queer coding—how it slips into characters, why it’s not always explicit, and what that says about the media we consume.

Photo by Francesco Ungaro from Pexels

From Flamboyant to Fringed: What Queer Coding Really Means

You know it when you see it. The villain with dramatic flair. The heroine with the shaved sidecut. The spy who’s too smooth, too clean, too collected to read straight. Queer coding happens when writers give character traits culturally linked to queerness without saying they’re queer. Sometimes it’s aesthetic—like a drag-inspired villain. Sometimes it’s in behavior—emotional sensitivity, precision, vanity, a taste for cats over dogs, or any clichés they can add without explicitly stating. Other times, it’s something quieter—a character who doesn’t fit, who feels “other,” who walks alone.

History Has Consequences: The Hays Code and Its Echo

Queer coding didn’t come out of nowhere. It was a workaround. Under the Hays Code in 1930s Hollywood, openly queer characters were banned, but stereotypes were allowed to slip through. A flamboyant voice, a strong woman in a suit, a man who was just too refined. The code didn’t stop queerness from appearing; it forced it to live in the margins.

But there was a catch: coded characters rarely got happy endings. If they were different, they had to be punished. Ursula? Dead. Jafar? Banished. Frankenfurter? Shot. The message was subtle but constant: being queer meant being doomed.

Between Villains and Subtext: What’s Changed?

Fast forward. Queer coding still exists, but it’s harder to pin down. Characters like Elsa or Raya don’t fit traditional gender roles, and their stories carry themes of isolation, self-acceptance, and not fitting in. Are they queer coded? Maybe. But the silence around it feels louder now. Like the stories are hinting without daring to commit.

Meanwhile, some creators flip the trope. The Twisted musical retells Aladdin from Jafar’s perspective, turning him from scheming creep to misunderstood civil servant. It’s sharp, funny, and tells us this: maybe the coded villain was never the bad guy. Maybe the story just needed to be told from another angle.

Queerness Now

The media machine has learned how to adapt. When audiences started calling out queer-coded villains, studios started offering “reformed” versions of origin stories, sympathetic edits, watered-down redemption arcs. But subtext only goes so far. At some point, representation needs to stop hiding behind eyeliner and double entendre. They need to be explicitly stated—old, not only shown. 

Still, queer coding isn’t inherently bad. It gave queer viewers breadcrumbs when nothing else did. It allowed identity to seep in through the cracks. The problem wasn’t the coding—it was the punishment that followed and the life that couldn’t be lived freely.

Listen in full to "On the Practice of Queer Coding: Its Motivations and Effects in Popular Media" available on Simplecast, Spotify, Apple, and other platforms.