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It’s no secret that I was a huge fan of Heated Rivalry. I mean, it’s an MM romance, it has jocks, and it had all the sex and yearning and feelings you could possibly want out of a romantic story. In the months since it wrapped its first season its two stars, Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, have become true pop culture icons. This isn’t idle puffery, either. These two actors have become genuine stars, not just because they’re famous and everyone knows their names–though that’s obviously true–but because they’ve become objects of affection and desire for audiences, because they represent something larger than themselves, and because all of these factors will influence how they and their future roles are read and understood.

Today I want to focus in particular on Storrie, not because I don’t also admire Williams, but merely because he’s been the one who’s been in the public eye the most recently (thanks to his performance on Saturday Night Live and his recent fashion coverage). With his angelic looks, his infectious smile, and his undeniable charm, Storrie is the kind of star that Hollywood once produced by the pound. These days, though, male stars that are this beautiful and this talented are increasingly rare, and those that don’t take themselves too seriously are even rarer (yes, I’m looking at you, Mr. Chalamet).

Indeed, that’s what’s so refreshing about a star like Storrie. You can tell just from the way he moves through the world how much he’s enjoying this, and one also gets the sense–though it’s always hard to tell with stars–that he’s grateful to have been given this tremendous opportunity. After all, it’s not everyday that you become a household name for playing a bisexual Russian hockey player, is it? One could hardly blame him if he became an arrogant prick like so many other stars with meteoric rises. Instead, every time I see him I’m amazed anew at how genuine and humble he really seems to be.

Much of this came home to me while I was watching Storrie’s stint on Saturday Night Live. Storrie moved with a grace that was undeniable, and from the moment he stepped onto that stage to deliver his monologue it was clear just how skilled he is at delivering comedy. That skill was in ample evidence throughout the rest of the night, as he shone in every single sketch, even the ones that were otherwise unremarkable or just plain weird. He really shone, though, in the stripper sketch, where he went to great lengths to get the laugh. Indeed, I don’t think anyone since Tim Conway has made such effective, and committed, use of his body to get the comedy just right. The fact that he rendered his beautiful body into a figure of fun, and that he had a key part in writing the sketch itself, just shows how gifted Storrie is when it comes to comedy.

It was more than just his comedic talent, prodigious though that was. There’s a joy that seems to radiate from Storrie any time he’s on the screen, and while that was certainly the case at times in Heated Rivalry, you notice it even more in those moments when he’s not inhabiting a character. It’s there when he flashes that megawatt smile on the stage of Saturday Night Live, and it’s there anytime you see him on the red carpet or at an awards show. It’s in these less guarded moments that the magic of Storrie as an actor shines through. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has found himself falling in love with him, not just because he’s beautiful, but because he seems so kind and gentle and genuine. (That these are traits we’ve been trained to see as antithetical to masculinity says a lot about how we’ve failed our men).

Indeed, the consequences for this type of stardom go far beyond the impotence of Ilya Rozanov and bisexual representation, important though that is. I would argue that Storrie is an important cultural figure because he represents what masculinity–particularly Gen Z masculinity–might look like. By this time it’s no secret that our young men are very troubled, indeed. Among other things, far too many of them seem to have fallen under the sway of toxic influencers who are happy to exploit a generation of disaffected men and turn them into culture warriors in a futile and misguided crusade against “wokeness.” The fact that Storrie exhibits so many of the traits that we associate with traditional masculinity while also being unafraid to show feelings holds out, I hope, a different model, one that might lead our young men in a more productive and emotionally healthy direction.

It’s not every day that you can be present at the beginning of a star text’s creation, but I’d argue that’s just what’s happening with Storrie. We’re seeing the ways in which his various roles are starting to congeal into a coherent star text, and there’s no doubt that his radiant smile, his curly blonde locks, and his incandescent charm have opened up more doors. When you’re beautiful and charismatic and you have such megawatt talent, there’s truly no limit to what you can do. I daresay that, at an acting level, we’re going to see Storrie get the chance to show just how versatile he is, and thank goodness for it.

Are some of these attributes–the humility, the joy, the genuineness–themselves creations of an industry desperate to create the next hot commodity? Almost certainly some of them are. At the same time, it’s important to remember that Heated Rivalry, though distributed in the US by HBO Max, is a Canadian production, and I honestly think that its enormous popularity, and that of its stars, came as a surprise to everyone, including its stars. It’s for this reason that I find Storrie–and Hudson–so very fascinating and, honestly, so encouraging. Storrie’s rise gives me hope that there’s still some magic in the entertainment world, that there’s still a reason to cling to the joys that stars and the fictions they create can bring us.

Connor Storrie is a star, and I’m so glad to see his rise.

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To say that I’ve been looking forward to Manuel Betancourt’s Hello Stranger: Musings on Modern Intimacy, would be a bit of an understatement. I was, quite simply, blown away by The Male Gazed, his most recent book, and this one is, if anything, more raw, more intimate, and more searingly insightful than his previous effort. I emerged from it with a renewed appreciation not just for Betancourt’s prose and cultural knowledge but also with a richer, deeper sense of just how limited our understandings of intimacy are, thanks to the ideology of coupledom that suffuses almost every aspect of our culture.

In prose that’s as lyrical as it is honest, Betancourt asks us to re-examine and rethink all of the assumptions our popular culture has taught us to have about how we share ourselves with others. From the glances we might share with a stranger across a crowded bar to the deeper, richer, and more vexing understandings that we share with those we invite into our bedrooms, intimacy structures so much of who we are and how we relate to others. It’s just a shame that so many of us limit ourselves to what culture has told us to expect from our pairings with others. As this book demonstrates, popular culture is filled with alternatives, however, texts that invite us–seduce us, perhaps–into seeing and feeling things differently.

I admire writers who, like Betancourt, are able to wear their learning lightly, who are able to dance between literature, film, theater, and autobiography with ease. Betancourt weaves a number of important texts into his essays, including books like Detransition, Baby, films like Closer and Titanic, and plays like Company and Into the Woods. He dips in and out of such works, but he’s never a dilettante. Instead, he shows how such cultural texts are inevitably part of our individual toolboxes, the way we make sense of ourselves, our relationships with others, and our place in the world.

Indeed, as Betancourt reminds us again and again, it’s precisely these cultural narratives and texts that can be both liberating and imprisoning when it comes to the myriad potentialities of desire. On the one hand, genres like the romantic comedy typically encourage us to believe that we’re all just one meet-cute away from meeting that one person we’re meant to spend the rest of our lives with, even if doing so necessarily forecloses on all of the other kinds of relationships, both sexual and otherwise, we might be able to encounter if we weren’t so conditioned to limit ourselves. It’s thus all the more powerful when, like Betancourt, we seek out those texts–whether on the page, on the screen, or on the stage–that might provide a different way to engage with the other, one predicated on radical openness and ephemerality rather than the assumption of permanence.

Indeed, I admire Betancourt for his willingness to be so frank and honest about his own relationships, about how his own infidelity and the subsequent breakdown of his marriage led him to rethink some of his own assumptions about what kind of relationship he was supposed to want and how this paved the way for what was to come. Some, I’m sure, might dismiss all of this as mere self-justification, but that’s to drastically undersell and misunderstand just what it is that Betancourt is doing here. By opening his soul up to us, by being so honest–when it would be so much easier to either exclude the personal from his narrative altogether or else simply lie about the circumstances–he’s showing, in a way relatively few authors are able or willing to do, how he came to his own important conclusions regarding intimacy and its discontents.

This isn’t to say that Betancourt is pollyannish about the new pathways that such intimacy can take. In both his own personal account and in his examination of popular culture, he demonstrates the extent to which the path outside of monogamy is a thorny one, even if it is also quite rewarding. When it comes to matters of the heart, with great risk comes great reward, if you’re willing and able to take the risk in the first place. Queer history, this book demonstrates, is filled with examples of those who took this path, and their words are often as ambivalent as they are celebratory, and one of the great strengths of the book is that it doesn’t attempt to resolve it all into a neat little package. Love and lust and desire are inherently messy, and Betancourt forces us to confront them as such.

Aside from the argument, Hello Stranger is, quite frankly, beautifully written. This will come as no surprise, of course, to anyone who read The Male Gazed, but Betancourt’s prose has a lyrical quality that slowly enfolds you in its luscious folds. To be sure, some of it is erotic, as when he relates his encounter with a flight attendant in a hotel bar while working on the very book we hold in their hands. The whole sequence unfolds like something of an erotic novel, and it’s moments like these that really help to anchor what could otherwise become a very academic and distant discussion of modern queer intimacy.

Hello Stranger is, then, one of those books that really does force you to think anew about the way that we think about and experience intimacy, how we engage with others, whether we meet them on the street or embrace them in the bedroom or whether, like Betancourt, we find ourselves in a throuple (or threelationship, as he humorously calls it). Writing, as any writer will tell you, is as much a process of self-exploration, self-realization, and self-actualization as it is storytelling. This book gives us important insight into a queer thinker who grapples and struggles with who he is, what he wants, and what his future might look like. It’s a book that will no doubt get under some people’s skin, and I think that Betancourt would have it no other way. If we’re ever to rethink or think outside of ourselves–if, in other words, we’re ever to fully connect with others–perhaps it’s time we free ourselves of the tyranny of monogamy and imagine a whole panoply of intimacies.

What a world that would be!

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These days I’m always on the hunt or books about queer history, and I’ve been particularly hungry for queer histories that don’t just focus on the pain, exclusion, and cruelty that queer folks across the spectrum have endured over the centuries. Instead, I’ve been far more interested in books that show us the extent to which queer folks have found means of surviving and even thriving in otherwise deeply hostile cultures. After all, if there’s one thing we queers are good at it’s surviving, even when a lot of people would wish that it were otherwise.

One such book is Dr. Anthony Delaney’s Queer Enlightenments: A Hidden History of Lovers, Lawbreakers, and Homemakers, which I was very fortunate to get a review copy of from NetGalley. In a series of evocatively written and deeply-researched portraits, Delaney draws our attention to a number of important figures from the long 18th century who consistently challenged the heteroregulation that was the norm (Delaney uses the term “heteroregulation” to describe the regime by which genders and sexualities were policed and enforced by the various institutions of state and society).

What’s particularly remarkable about this book is just how diverse it is in terms of the kinds of queer folks it examines. There are queers here from almost every walk of life, from the working-class Mollies whose arrest and subsequent execution occupies the first several chapters to members of the gentry like Anne Lister to even members of the nobility like William Courtenay, the 9th Earl of Devon, whose scandalous affair with another man led to his fleeing from England to take up a sort of exile in New York City. Delaney skillfully paints their lives in all of their joy and their tragedy, showing both sides of the equation. While there’s no doubt that the organs of the state–particularly the legal system–were heavily tilted against those who were queer, those very queers were often remarkably adept at either surviving or finding ways of eluding the oppression that was often very common.Thanks to Delaney’s deep dive into various archives, however, their stories are finally being brought to life.

The archive, as Delaney shows us, is also often a tricky thing. There are times when figures just…disappear, and we have no way of knowing what happened to them after those moments when they briefly emerged into the light of day. This is frustrating, but it does at the very least open up the possibility that they were able to live their lives without further intrusion. Delaney is takes great pains to remind us that, because so much of the archive is from those hostile to queer folks of all stripes–newspapers, to take just one example, were often quite willing to mock those who dared to transgress gender boundaries–what they say and how they describe their subjects has to be often read against the grain.

Delaney is one of those historians who has the rare gift of being both meticulous and rigorous in his scholarship while also never losing sight of the power of a good story. Even for a history nerd like me this book was something special, holding me rapt as I read about the many ways in which queers of the past managed to survive and sometimes even thrive, despite the heteroregulatory regimes that were consistently used against them. There are times when you almost feel as if you are right there with him, bearing witness to these extraordinary queer ancestors.

Take, for example, Peter Sewally/Mary Jones, who repeatedly transgressed the boundaries between male and female while also pursuing the dangerous life of a Black sex worker in New York. It’s perhaps fitting that she is one of the last figures that he examines, since she found herself repeatedly in trouble with the law for various reasons and yet refused to ever change the way that they moved through the world. Hers is a story of perseverance in the face of remarkable social and legal pressure to conform, and you can’t help but admire her, as well as the other queer folks that stride across these pages.

Delaney doesn’t shy away from the less palatable aspects of our collective queer history, either. In his chapter on Anne Lister, for example, he pulls away the veneer of queer hagiography that has attached to this remarkable 19th century figure, much of which can be attributed to the HBO series Gentleman Jack, showing instead a person who was really quite cynical and manipulative in their dealings with their wife. Delaney reminds us that queer people have always been as complicated as their straight and cisgender counterparts and that we do ourselves a disservice if we refuse to see them in all of their complexity and sometimes even their ugliness. We queer folk have to embrace both the sinners and the saints in our history.

Throughout Queer Enlightenments, Delaney draws our attention to four key areas that hold his investigation together: home, marriage, community, and the law. Though this was particularly true for those queer folks who lived in the long 18th century, it doesn’t take a hard stare to see the ways in which these four institutions still structure so much of queer life, for better and for worse. Indeed, for all that some argue that homosexuality as such didn’t exist before the term was coined in the 19th century, historians like Delaney show us that our collective genealogy is actually much deeper than that. One feels a queer kinship with those folks of the past, and that’s what gives this book its remarkable power.

There’s no doubt that we’re living in some very dark and troubled times, and I suspect it’s only a matter of time before Trump and his ghoulish attendants turn their complete ire on queer history. They’ve already shown signs of doing this by having transgender folks stripped out of various national memorials–including at the Stonewall, of all places!--and we know that they are feeling especially emboldened these days. Given that unfortunate and terrifying fact, books like this one are all the more necessary.

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Welcome to “Sinful Sundays,” where I explore and analyze some of the most notorious queer villains of film and TV (and sometimes literature, depending on my mood). These are the characters that entrance and entertain and revolt us, sometimes all three at the same time. As these queer villains show, very often it’s sweetly good to be bitterly bad.

I can honestly say that I’ve never seen a film quite like Stranger by the Lake. Written and directed by Alain Guiraudie, it focuses on Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps), a young gay man who develops a friendship with an older straight man, Henri (Patrick d'Assumçao) while at a nude beach that is also a favored cruising spot for other gay men. Things take an alluring, if also more dangerous, turn once Franck meets handsome and mustachioed Michel (Christophe Paou). Once he witnesses the other man drowning a lover, however, Franck has to decide whether his desire for the other man outweighs his own self-preservation.

This is one of those films that is spare, haunting, evocative, and deeply sexual and erotic, often all at the same time. As Michał Oleszczyk put it at the time of the film’s release, the film unfolds something like a dream (or perhaps a nightmare), possessing “a mixture of allure and menace that’s quite intoxicating.” This an Eden of sorts, one in which human delights and desires are given free rein, at least if you’re one of the beautiful. For those who don’t fit into the mold of sculpted male beauty–such as Henri, or the peeping tom who is repeatedly rebuffed by the men that he tries to watch copulating in the woods–the alternative is just to hover dejectedly on the margins.

Yet, as with the Garden of Eden, there is also a menace here, too, and the film skillfully weaves together the deadly and the delicious in this queer Arcadia. From the moment they meet it’s clear that there’s something between Franck and Michel, and it’s easy to see why. The latter is a paragon of 1980s-style male beauty, and the sexual chemistry between the two of them is nothing short of electric, pulsing in the very body of the film. One can’t resist the allure of seeing these two beautiful men engage in explicit on-screen sex–director Guiraudie leaves almost nothing to the imagination–even as one also can’t shake a sense of unease that, when it comes right down to it, Franck knows almost nothing about Michel (or, for that matter, any of his other hookups). Indeed, the only person whom he seems to really bond with is Henri, though theirs is a platonic more than an erotic relationship.

Yet Michel, for all of his beauty, is also decidedly deadly, as Franck discovers one fateful night when, crouched in the bushes, he watches powerlessly as Michel drowns the man with whom he has been hooking up. There’s something haunting, beautiful, and deeply upsetting about the way this all unfolds, as what appears at first to be just a bit of harmless playing soon becomes something far more serious. To begin with, there’s the fact that it all takes place in a continuous shot, which enhances our sense of being uneasy witnesses of this horrible act of violence and death. Like Franck, we can’t do anything to stop what is unfolding right in front of our eyes. All we can do is sit, transfixed, as death plays out at a far distance.

Even more disturbing, in its way, is the fact that Michel comes ashore, dries off, and gets dressed, all so nonchalantly that you’d never guess that he’s just killed a man in cold blood. And yet, despite (or perhaps because) of the fact that Franck knows what Michel is capable of, he finds himself irresistibly drawn to the other man. The more that Michel pushes aside his efforts to take their relationship–such as it is–to the next level, the more that the other man pulls away. His reasons for doing so, just like his reasons for drowning his other lover, are never explained and, if anything, this lack of knowledge, this lacunae in understanding, is just one more reason for Franck to continue to be drawn to him.

What makes Michel so irresistibly compelling–to both us and to Franck–is not just the fact that he is beautiful and one hell of a lover (though that’s certainly part of it), but also that we never learn exactly why he did what he did. Was his other lover, like Franck, asking for more, perhaps threatening to expose Michel to a wife or other partner? Is Michel just a sociopath? Is there some other reason that we don’t learn? The film withholds this crucial information, and in doing so turns Michel into a deadly enigma, a fire toward which Franck cannot help but be drawn, even though he has to know, at some level, that his dalliance might lead to his own demise.

But then, who among us hasn’t felt the delicious, siren call of the alluring devil? Who among us hasn’t dallied with someone, even though we know that they might destroy us? True, most of us would at least have the good sense to pull back before we take the plunge. Most of us, I’m sure, would know that there comes a point when all of the red flags can no longer be ignored but, at the same time, it’s impossible to deny that the beautiful and the deadly sometimes exert a call that no one can really deny or elude.

In the end, of course, Michel reveals his true colors. He not only slits poor Henri’s throat in the woods; he also stabs a nosy police inspector and clearly intends to do the same to Franck. After all, as he has made abundantly clear, he’s not the type of person to leave anything to chance. He surely knows that the anonymity that is such a key part of what draws gay men to the lake in the first place, which is precisely why it has been so hard for the inspector to figure out who was responsible. Michel is, in many ways, a perpetual enigma. We know no more about him and his origins and his life outside of the cruising spot than we did at the beginning. Stranger by the Lake knows, though, that in mystery there is often allure…and pleasure.

In the end, of course, Franck cannot resist Michel’s siren song which is why, as darkness falls, he comes out of his hiding place and begins to call his lover’s name. It’s in this moment, right before the film ends, that we are fully immersed in the sinister and black primordial world of death and desire intertwined.

Stranger by the Lake takes its place among the great queer erotic thrillers–like, for example, Cruising, which is also shrouded in ambiguity and ambivalence–and, like them, it disquiets us so much because of the way that it forces us to experience, along with its characters, the intertwined nature of death and desire and death-in-desire. Michel, as the film’s villain and its erotic object is the embodiment of these contradictory and complementary desires. When the film is over, we can’t ever be quite sure that we, like Franck, wouldn’t also walk into the jaws of our own delicious demise.

Hello, dear reader! Do you like what you read here at Omnivorous? Do you like reading fun but insightful takes on all things pop culture? Do you like supporting indie writers? If so, then please consider becoming a subscriber and get the newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. There are a number of paid options, but you can also sign up for free! Every little bit helps. Thanks for reading and now, on with the show!

Just a reminder that I’m running a special promotion here at Omnivorous for the whole month of May. If you join as a paid subscriber, you’ll be entered into a raffle to win a gift card to The Buzzed Word, a great indie bookshop in Ocean City, MD. Check out this post for the full details!

As I’ve mentioned a couple of times now, I’m in the midst of a bit of a personal spiritual awakening. Having spent most of my life running as far away from Christianity as I could, I’ve now started to find my way back. It’s not been a straight (ha) road by any means, and there’s still a long way to go before I feel like I’ve become fully reconciled with a faith that I’ve associated with queerphobia, but I do feel as if I’m closer to God and to the faith of my childhood than I have been…perhaps ever.

It thus makes a certain kind of sense that I’d be drawn to the historical works of John Boswell, the late historian whose books–written between the 1980s and 1994, when he sadly died of AIDS-related complications–did so much to remind us that Christian intolerance has always been a matter of social and cultural norms than anything based in true religious doctrine. His book Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality looms large in the field and is a source of hope and inspiration, even if some of its claims have come in for some scrutiny and adjustment in subsequent decades.

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Hello, dear reader! Do you like what you read here at Omnivorous? Do you like reading fun but insightful takes on all things pop culture? Do you like supporting indie writers? If so, then please consider becoming a subscriber and get the newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. There are a number of paid options, but you can also sign up for free! Every little bit helps. Thanks for reading and now, on with the show!

As an added bonus, every month I’ll be running a promotion where everyone who signs up for a paid subscription will be entered into a contest to win TWO of the books I review during a given month. For April, this will include all books reviewed during March and April. Be sure to spread the word!

Warning: Full spoilers for the episode, and for the Wheel of Time book series, follow.

Few TV tropes are more irritating and more pernicious than “bury your gays.” It’s one of those writing decisions that has long been the scourge of television and film before it. It often betrays a lack of imagination or, even more perniciously, a desire to teach the general public about how dangerous and deadly queer desire can be. Increasingly, however, television–and, to a lesser extent, film–has begun to expand on the types of stories that can be told, detaching queer death (and queer tragedy more generally) from its former trappings. Now, a queer character can die on-screen without it partaking in nothing more than a lazy storytelling trope.

Which brings us to the finale of the third season of The Wheel of Time. By the time the episode has come to a close, we have had to say farewell to Siuan Sanche, played with such scene-stealing charisma and power by Sophie Okonedo. Having been deposed by her nemesis Elaida do Avriny a'Roihan, portrayed by the one and only Shohreh Shohreh Aghdashloo, she is subsequently executed by beheading. This is a death that makes both emotional and narrative sense, for in addition to devastating Moiraine and changing her trajectory, it also sets the stage (I suspect) for Elaida’s eventual downfall.

For those who haven’t been paying attention, one of the most important relationships in the show is that between Moiraine Damodred and Siuan Sanche who, though from very different worlds before their time in the White Tower, nevertheless managed to forge a romance for the Ages. The brief glimpses we get of their past–as well as their interactions in the present–make it clear that they are one another’s guiding lights and lodestars. As the seasons have gone by, however, the two have gone on very different tracks. While Moiraine has gone out into the world to try to find the Dragon Reborn and ensure that he is adequately trained and guided so that he is ready to fight the Dark One in the Last Battle, Siuan has had the less enviable task of navigating the fraught politics of the White Tower. Love, as so often, has been sacrificed on the altar of duty. Though the third season reveals that they can never regain what they’ve lost, it also makes clear that they will find one another again in Ages to come.

In addition to clarifying the state of Moiraine and Siuan’s relationship, the third season has also shown us how deeply-rooted the conflict between Siuan and Elaida has been ever since the former beat the latter in the pursuit of the Amyrlin Seat. For a while it seemed as if the two might find some form of rapprochement, but it was also clear that Elaida was too ruthless, and too convinced of her own rightness, to ever let Siuan off the hook that easily. And then, as the finale gears up, the inevitable confrontation between Elaida and Siuan comes to pass, and it is nothing short of explosive. Elaida, having managed to manipulate just enough members of the Hall to secure a vote against her nemesis, manages to not only depose her but also have her executed as a Darkfriend. This is quite a coup on Elaida’s part, and it reveals just how duplicitous she is and will remain.

For her to order Siuan’s death seems extreme, until one remembers that this was a woman who was willing to kill Darkfriends in cold blood in order to get the information that she wants. Given that, are we really surprised that she would be willing to do the same to Siuan, whom she has come to regard as a threat to the White Tower and all it represents? For all that Elaida seems to be at the apex of her power, however, it seems to me that Siuan’s death is a harbinger of things to come. Elaida, I propose, is about to find out that sacrificing her enemy on the altar of her own overweening ambition and moral certitude will be what destroys her, whether because Moiraine and Egwene and the others strike back at her or because her overwhelming victory will allow her to indulge her hubris to such an extent that she makes some other fatal mistake.

Just as importantly Siuan’s death also marks a significant emotional turning point for Moiraine, just as it also shows just how much Moiraine’s love has been the central guiding force of Siuan’s life, despite all that now stands between them. Indeed, even when she’s standing before Elaida and her minions in the Tower, it’s her love of another woman that Siuan chooses to pronounce and to defend. This makes sense, though, given the extent to which Elaida–never one to pass up an opportunity to deliver a withering criticism of her enemy–has already scathingly remarked on Siuan’s devotion to Moiraine when they were both students at the Tower. This moment, then, represents the former Amrylin’s last chance to assert her own identity, to claim for herself that which Elaida has attempted to take. Siuan might have been stilled, and she might be facing death, but nothing is going to stand in the way of her declaring her undying loyalty to Moiraine, Elaida’s contempt be damned.

To be sure, it is quite devastating and wrenching to say farewell to a character we’ve come to love as much as we have Siuan. Watching Moiraine grapple with the reality that her beloved has died is heartbreaking in itself, and both Okonedo and Rosamund Pike wring every moment of pathos out of Siuan’s last moments in this Age. As a result, Siuan’s death feels earned rather than trite. She has given up everything she has for both her goal of guiding the dragon and for her love of Moiraine and, though she has lost, she still gets to die with her honor and her dignity intact.

This, then, is the thing. There is a difference between killing a queer character in the genuine service of storytelling and doing it because it’s easy or because it sends a message about the fact that queer characters are ultimately expendable. And there’s even bigger difference between giving a character a wrenchingly and heartbreakingly tragic narrative arc because it makes for compelling and captivating drama and doing so in order to prove a point about the wages of such “sinful” behavior (see also: the majority of queer characters in Hollywood cinema up until relatively recently). Obviously I would have liked to have been able to spend more time with Siuan, even if, as seemed quite likely, she was never going to be able to have the reunion with Moiraine that we all wanted for them. If that wasn’t possible, then at the very least she deserved a noble send-off, which is exactly what she got and I, for one, will always be grateful to Rafe and his team for their decision.

It’s also worth pointing out that, in many ways, Siuan’s story in the books is quite anticlimactic and even misogynist. Personally, I would prefer that she gets a climax that is true to her character and that allows her to go out on her own terms rather than the rather milquetoast narrative that is her fate in Jordan’s novels. (If you don’t know, she ends up falling in love with the exiled Andoran General Gareth Bryne, who essentially makes her do his laundry and spanks her, and then they both end up dying during the Last Battle). Not everyone will agree with me, and that’s fine, but I continue to insist that this is one of the better changes the series has made to Jordan’s work.

There’s no doubt that The Wheel of Time is one of the queerest fantasy epics that we’ve seen reach the small screen. It has, time and again, shown us how possible it is to find new ways of bringing quer people into the fantasy fold. Part of that is giving queer characters storylines that end in sadness and death. Rather than hampering the series or damaging its legacy, however, I would like to suggest that Siuan’s death will instead ensure that it earns a reputation for being brave and willing to take big risks with its queer storytelling.

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Welcome to “Sinful Sundays,” where I explore and analyze some of the most notorious queer villains of film and TV (and sometimes literature, depending on my mood). These are the characters that entrance and entertain and revolt us, sometimes all three at the same time. As these queer villains show, very often it’s sweetly good to be bitterly bad.

Magazine Dreams is, I think it’s safe to say, one of the strangest and most viscerally disturbing films of 2025 (yes, I know the year is young, but if you’ve seen the film you’ll know that I’m not exaggerating). In part, this stems from the fact that its story–about an amateur bodybuilder who becomes so enmeshed in his desire to create the perfect body that he turns increasingly to violence–has so many chilling similarities to the real-life behavior of its star, Jonathan Majors. In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of years, the once promising star was accused of assaulting his girlfriend and was ultimately found guilty of misdemeanor assault and harassment. It’s one of those strange confluences in which a star’s life comes to strangely mirror that of the films in which they appear.

Majors stars as Killian Maddox who, though a grocery store worker, yearns more than anything else to be the best bodybuilder in the world. To this end he repeatedly subjects his body to the rigors of training and steroids, even as doing so leads to increasingly erratic and dangerous behavior. At the same time as he lashes out at everyone–with the exception of his grandfather, with whom he lives, and a coworker on whom he harbors a rather awkward crush–he also writes impassioned and obsessive letters to world-renowned bodybuilder Brad Vanderhorn (Mike O’Hearn). Though the two end up meeting and sharing a strangely intimate moment (more on that in a moment), in the end Killian ends up giving up his dreams, though it remains unclear whether his unsettled psyche will ever really return to a state of equilibrium, if indeed it ever existed in such a state.

As a lot of other critics have noted, Magazine Dreams borrows pretty liberally from Martin Scorsese in both subject matter and approach and, as this is sometimes to its detriment. There's a lot of Richard Wright’s Native Son here, too, particularly in the way that Killian’s actions are in many ways foreclosed by the deeply racist society in which he lives. These elements don’t always sit neatly alongside one another, mostly because it’s kind of a slog of a film, repeatedly subjecting its hero to new and increasingly gruesome forms of violence. To his credit, Majors gives a haunting and fully embodied performance, if an uncomfortable one, even as director Elijah Byum seems to delight in the inherent grotesquerie of both the product of bodybuilding–which often pushes the male form into an exaggeration of its essential form–and also the steps that men take in order to build themselves to such a hyperbolic degree.

The longer I’ve sat with the film, the more I’ve come to appreciate the way that it plays with and teases us with the specter of queer desire, allowing us as viewers to see how yearning for the male form–either to be it or to possess it or some toxic combination of the two–can drive a man to become a monster. Killian is the type of character who is fascinating because he is so fundamentally, one might say queerly, unknowable. Just as queer desire always lurks beneath the surface of the film, never quite daring to say its name, so does Killian’s subjectivity never really gel into coherence.

Though he never quite puts it this way to himself, it’s clear that desire for the male form motivates much of Killian’s bodybuilding obsession. His walls are filled with posters of men flexing and posing, all of them paragons of masculinity, the male essence distilled into its most bulging, well-sculpted form. He spends most of his time watching old videos of bodybuilding competitions, his gaze riveted on the screen, drinking in the sight of muscled and well-oiled bodies. As other critics have noted, there’s something particularly suggestive, if vulgarly so, about the way that his energy drinks dribble out of his mouth as he gazes with such rapture at the bulging male bodies on screen. Like so many other men, Killian (and the film itself) can’t seem to decide whether he wants to have sex with the men on the screen or to be them.

And it’s not as if his relations with women are particularly good. The two times that he actually manages to have a connection with someone of the opposite sex things quickly go off of the rails. During a date with a coworker he flippantly informs her that his father killed his mother before killing himself, an admission that precedes his ordering a little of almost everything on the menu (all protein, of course). Small wonder that the woman, clearly disturbed by all of this, flees without telling him that she’s leaving. Equally awkward is his encounter with a sex worker, which ends up satisfying neither of them when he recoils from her touching him. Clearly Killian is as alienated from his own body–and arguably from his own mind, since he hasn’t really processed the trauma of watching his father kill his mother and then himself–as he is from that of others.

Then there’s the moment when Killian, having finally managed to connect with his idol Brad Vanderhorn, ends up going to bed with him, or so we’re led to assume, given that they wake up naked in the same bed the next morning. The film is frustratingly and provocatively coy about just what it is that transpired between the two men, but it’s an intimate moment that was dubious in terms of consent, as Killian himself makes clear in his later (unanswered) correspondence with his idol. For a man like Killian even sexual intimacy is bound up with notions of power and control–or the lack thereof–and he ends up as thwarted and unfulfilled by this encounter with the man he has idolized, fetishized, and stalked for most of the film.

Though it stumbles at times–and though it can never quite escape its indebtedness to other, better films–there’s still something strangely and hauntingly poignant about Magazine Dream’s portrait of broken masculinity. Killian, like so many other young men today, labors under the delusion that sculpting his body into a fortress of muscle will render him invulnerable, that becoming a muscle god will give him some form of power or social capital. When his attempts to become a champion bodybuilder don’t work out as quickly as he’d like, he tries uploading amateur videos to YouTube. Unfortunately, as he learns too quickly, attempting to find validation from the internet is a loser’s game. His attempt to gain internet fame ends in humiliation when his posing soliloquies are met with nothing but scorn and contempt from the cruel voices that make the internet their favorite haunt.

Given all of this, it’s no wonder that Killian descends ever further into violent derangement, leading to a particularly horrifying moment in which he almost kills a judge who critiqued his deltoids, an insult that clearly wormed its way into his consciousness. After forcing the man to strip and coming perilously close to shooting him, however, he ultimately decides not to do so, just as he decides not to go through with an assassination of Vanderhorn, despite the fact that doing so would perhaps mark a moment of reclamation for him. These are but two of many moments in which violence, desire, and twisted self-image combine in this film, though it’s worth noting that Killian manages to escape from the consequences of his actions remarkably adeptly. (Though it’s also worth noting that an X-Ray shows a brain that is quite damaged, with bits of metal visible. Perhaps we can think of Killian as a type of cyborg, particularly once you take his repeated injections of steroids into account).

By the time that the film reaches its conclusion, Killian has come to an important understanding. Nothing he does, whether it’s violence, sculpting his body into a tank, or lashing out at those who offend him or challenge him, is going to ever quite fill up the emptiness and the darkness inside of him. There is, I think, a measure of peace in the ending, which sees him throw out all of the accoutrements of his bodybuilding adventure and simply pose in his garage. It’s a somber yet peaceful ending to a violent and terrifying film.

Is Magazine Dreams a brilliant, or even a particularly good, film? I honestly don’t think so. It cribs too much from its sources to ever really stand on its own, and it seems to mistake its own blunt approach–and its star’s disturbingly visceral and embodied performance–for powerful cinema. Even so, I remain fascinated by the way that it plays with queer desire, exposing (unintentionally, perhaps) the way that this specter continues to haunt the male imagination.

Hello, dear reader! Do you like what you read here at Omnivorous? Do you like reading fun but insightful takes on all things pop culture? Do you like supporting indie writers? If so, then please consider becoming a subscriber and get the newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. There are a number of paid options, but you can also sign up for free! Every little bit helps. Thanks for reading and now, on with the show!

Welcome to “Sinful Sundays,” where I explore and analyze some of the most notorious queer villains of film and TV (and sometimes literature, depending on my mood). These are the characters that entrance and entertain and revolt us, sometimes all three at the same time. As these queer villains show, very often it’s sweetly good to be bitterly bad.

The story of Mary, Queen of Scots is one with which most people are passingly familiar. Known for her headstrong demeanor, she was one of the most extraordinary women of the 16th century, a period known for its many reigning queens. Most people also know that she was ultimately brought down by her poor choice in men, particularly her second and third husbands, Henry Darnley and James Bothwell, the former of whom was a drunkard and a weakling and the latter of whom was a lout who most likely raped her and forced her to marry him. Many of the most important events of her life are chronicled in the (highly underrated) 2018 film Mary Queen of Scots.

Though not particularly beloved by critics, this film is quite entertaining, even if it does take some rather egregious liberties with historical fact. In fact, it’s often surprising just how adept it is at exploring the fraught and tempestuous relationship between Mary (played with remarkable depth by Saoirse Ronan) and her first cousin once removed, Elizabeth I (played by Margot Robbie). As two women reigning as queens regnant on the same island, theirs was always going to be a difficult relationship, and as the film shows it wasn’t helped by the fact that they were both headstrong women and that Mary refused to relinquish her claim to her cousin’s throne. Her clutching at it would eventually result in her execution.

While Mary’s fraught relationship with her sister monarch is the film’s emotional heart, Mary also has important bonds with others, including her husband, Darnley (Jack Lowden), whom she marries out of passion, once again allowing her heart to rule her head rather than the other way around. It’s a relationship that carries within it the seeds of Mary’s own demise, for he isn’t nearly as strong or as his wife and, to make matters worse, he’s also far more interested in men than he is in women. It’s precisely this volatile mix of thwarted queer desire, political intrigue, and innate personal weakness that will make Darnley down a very dark road.

When we first meet Darnley he is little more than a hanger-on at the court of Queen Elizabeth, where he lurks with his father. It’s clear that neither of them have achieved much of note in the English queen’s court, despite the fact that the younger Lennox, at least, is her cousin (they shared an ancestor in Henry VII, who was Elizabeth’s grandfather and Darnley’s great-grandfather). Indeed, it’s the younger Lennox’s claim to the throne that makes him so appealing to the young Scottish queen. Well, that and the fact that he is quite dashing and handsome, if a bit squishy. From the moment they meet there are sparks, but it’s just as clear that, for Darnley at least, their marriage is one that will elevate his status and allow him to reclaim some measure of his fraught masculinity.

Even though Darnley proposes to Mary against the beautiful backdrop of the Scottish countryside, there’s something more than a little ominous about the fact that he wants to assert his dominance and mastery of her. Indeed, as their marriage will prove, Mary is not the kind of woman to just bow down and accept the rule of a man, even if that man happens to be her husband and even if doing so is technically her duty as a woman. For Darnley, desperate to prove himself a man–despite his predilections for members of his own sex–this is simply something that cannot be borne. For the rest of their time as a couple it’s this that will continue to come between them, as his resentment continues to grow.

Almost as soon as the marriage begins it starts to fall apart, in no small part because Darnley decides that he would rather spend time in David Rizzio’s (Ismael Cruz Córdova) bed than Mary’s. Mary, for all that she has (rather anachronistically) accepted Rizzio for who he is, still balks at the idea that her husband would cheat on her with another man for the entire court to see. The fact that he is her secretary, and thus beneath both Mary and Darnley, just makes the affair all that much more humiliating. At the same time, there’s no doubting the chemistry that crackles between Rizzio and Darnley.

Of course, Darnley is not the type of person to ever be loyal to anyone except himself and, as the various Scottish lords decide to destroy the Catholic Rizzio–who they believe is a malign influence–it becomes clear that they are going to force Darnley to go along with their plot. In one of the film’s most visually striking and haunting moments, a drunk Darnley is surrounded by the other lords, including his abusive and brutal father, who go so far as to threaten him with exposure if he doesn’t sign his name to their covenant. It’s clear that this costs him a great deal, presumably because he really does have feelings for the Italian, but he nevertheless signs it. In doing so, he sets in motion his own doom.

In a scene drawn from the blood-soaked pages of history, Darnley and the other lords storm into Mary’s apartments, wrest Rizzio from her arms, and brutally stab him to death. Darnley, drunk as always, is forced to deliver the killing blow, with his father literally forcing his hands. It’s this moment, more than any other, that seems to break the dissolute lord. Not only does it shatter his heart to kill the man he loved; he also can’t help but realize that there but for the grace of God, and the lords who still need him, goeth he.

Mary, fortunately, is much savvier than her husband, and she rightly sees that she can draw him back to her own side if she plays her cards right. Though they make a temporary alliance to escape from the lords, she ultimately banishes him to the tiny little house of Kirk o’Field outside of Edinburgh, where he takes up with yet another man, at least until a blast nearly brings the house down around them. Though Darnley manages to escape the explosion, he is strangled to death by faceless assailants (later revealed to be agents of James Bothwell). It’s a sad end for a man who has been a villain, but a rather tragic one.

While the question of whether Darnley slept with men or not is something of an open question, what’s not in dispute is that, as the film demonstrates, he really was a weak and debauched man, someone who clung so desperately to his desire for the Crown Matrimonial–which would essentially make him equal with Mary–that he was willing to sign on with those who didn’t have his best interests at heart. Again and again the film highlights his fundamentally weak character. His tragic arc is that he wants power so desperately but is one of those who simply cannot and should not be trusted with it.

Yet there’s complexity to him too, at least from the film’s perspective. One gets the sense that Darnley is who he is because of the restrictive gender norms of his time and because of a domineering and cruel tyrant of a father who refuses to see his son as who he is and instead tries to break him. Given this, is it any surprise that Darnley has turned inward, becoming a sad and cruel and ineffectual little tyrant? The fact that he is so utterly ineffectual when trying to get Mary to bend to his will makes him even more pitiable. He’s a queer man born into a patriarchal culture where he is expected to lead and this ends up being the one thing that he really can’t or won’t be allowed to do.

Darnley emerges from Mary Queen of Scots as a young man far out of his depth who is ultimately doomed by both his own weaknesses and by the turbulent and deeply misogynist world in which he was born and raised. Though he does at least manage to produce an heir with Mary, he doesn’t get to enjoy him very long before their estrangement ends up denying him any access to his child. Like Mary, he won’t be able to see his son grow up to unite their claims to the English throne, though perhaps he could take some comfort from knowing that James would go on to have more than a few affairs of his own with the rougher sex.

Thus, for all that this film may take many liberties with the established record–including the fiction that Elizabeth and Mary met face-to-face–I do think it gets to something authentic about the tortured existence that so many queer people experienced at the time. For men like Darnley, their birth gave them privilege, but nothing could really give them the love and acceptance that, on some level, they probably craved. As such, Darnley, and Rizzio, are reminders of how much has changed and how much so many of us take for granted.

Hello, dear reader! Do you like what you read here at Omnivorous? Do you like reading fun but insightful takes on all things pop culture? Do you like supporting indie writers? If so, then please consider becoming a subscriber and get the newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. There are a number of paid options, but you can also sign up for free! Every little bit helps. Thanks for reading and now, on with the show!

Welcome to “Sinful Sundays,” where I explore and analyze some of the most notorious queer villains of film and TV (and sometimes literature, depending on my mood). These are the characters that entrance and entertain and revolt us, sometimes all three at the same time. As these queer villains show, very often it’s sweetly good to be bitterly bad.

It definitely seems like Leo Woodall is having a moment. After his memorable–and oddly poignant–appearance in the second season of The White Lotus, his star has only continued to climb. It’s not every young star, after all, who would be tapped to appear in the fourth installment in the Bridget Jones franchise (stay tuned for my review of Mad About the Boy very soon).

And, of course, he’s starring in his own Apple TV+ series, Prime Target.

In this series, he portrays Edward Brooks, a math prodigy studying at Cambridge who is absolutely invested (one might even say obsessed) with prime numbers and their potential to unlock the secrets of the universe. Unfortunately for him, his nascent discoveries are threatening to a number of global interests, many of which decide that he either has to be brought under control or killed. Along with Taylah Sanders (Quintessa Swindell), he globetrots to get to the center of some vaguely-defined mysteries, all while trying to stay alive. As if all of that weren’t enough, he also has a romance with a smoldering bartender, Fra Fee’s Adam Mellor.

If this all sounds quite bizarre and nearly batshit, that’s because it is. What the series lacks in any sense of narrative coherence, however, it makes up for in its compelling queer antihero, a young man who is so wrapped up in his pursuit of prime numbers that he has trouble seeing outside of himself. Woodall is at his sullen best in the role, and I think it’s safe to say that he’s going to become a beloved curmudgeon for many. I mean, who doesn’t love a sadboy math genius with puppy-dog eyes and a nice body?

However, lest you think that Edward is just your run-of-the-mill nerd, it’s worth pointing out that there’s depth to him. As he did in his characterization of Jack The White Lotus, Woodall allows us a peek into what makes Edward tick. Yes, he can be a bit of an asshole, and yes, he can sometimes get a bit prickly, particularly when someone invades his personal space (as Adam finds out when he looks through his formulas without asking). But, as we also find out, he has a troubled family history, with a mother who died when he was young and a father who has already started a new family and doesn’t seem to have much of an investment in his older son. This, in combination with the fact that his interests are constantly stymied by the powers-that-be at Cambridge give him good reason to be a bit of a frustrated jackass.

Things really start to change for Edward once he crosses paths with the (smoking hot) bartender Adam Mellor. Though the relationship is a bit touch-and-go at first–mostly due to Edward’s lack of trust in others and general dislike of people–it’s clear that the cheeky bartender brings out a softer side that Edward has so far successfully hidden from the rest of the world. The moments that the two of them share together are some of the most poignant and sweetly touching that the series have produced by far, since they give us a chance to see Edward when he’s not wrapped up in his own head. I really do hope that we get to see more of them together, both because it’s nice seeing queer male intimacy in this age of increasing sex-negativity but also, in a much more shallow vein, because they’re both very hot and look great shirtless in their underwear.

Say what you will about the illogical nature of the series’ plot, but it’s a heck of a lot of fun, and I find it refreshing to get to see a queer antihero like Edward. It remains to be seen whether his little romance with Adam is going to work out or whether his tendency to be a bit of a jerk will doom their romance (or, for that matter, whether one of the many groups after Edward decide to use Adam for some kind of sinister leverage). I do hope, though, that the series doesn’t go the lazy route and give us yet another “bury your gays” series. That whole thing has been done to death by this point and, while I’m not averse to queer characters dying if it’s in the service of the story as a whole, such a development would be particularly vexing in the current climate, in which we LGBTQ+ folks have once again become a scapegoat for society at large.

In any case, Prime Target is yet another show that deserves recognition for being willing to showcase less-than-pristine queer characters within the context of a thriller. Black Doves, the new Netflix series, did something similar with Ben Whishaw, who gave a remarkably soulful and haunted performance of a gun for hire who has to try to rebuild a life while never quite able to escape the pull of the dark world in which he has lived. Edward, of course, hasn’t gone quite this far down the road to perdition but, given the high stakes of his research and how dangerous it has already become, it’s probably safe to say that he’s going to have to make some tough choices going forward. And, given the fact that he doesn’t always know how to balance emotion with logic, and that he’s already proven to be a bit selfish, it’s entirely possible that he might face his own turn to the dark side.

It’s worth remembering that we queer folk are just as complicated as our straight counterparts, and it’s true that some of us are even unsocial jerks. Thankfully the series, so far at least, has done a good job of balancing his less likely qualities with a softer, gentler side of him, showing us just how many shades there are to his personality. Edward is like a breath of fresh air, and I can’t wait to see what more this season has in store for him.

Hello, dear reader! Do you like what you read here at Omnivorous? Do you like reading fun but insightful takes on all things pop culture? Do you like supporting indie writers? If so, then please consider becoming a subscriber and get the newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. There are a number of paid options, but you can also sign up for free! Every little bit helps. Thanks for reading and now, on with the show!

Welcome to “Sinful Sundays,” where I explore and analyze some of the most notorious queer villains of film and TV (and sometimes literature, depending on my mood). These are the characters that entrance and entertain and revolt us, sometimes all three at the same time. As these queer villains show, very often it’s sweetly good to be bitterly bad.

As an elder millennial, I was fortunate enough to grow up in the golden age of Sega, and one of my favorite games was Sonic the Hedgehog. I’m a little ashamed to admit just how much time I spent playing the various iterations of this game in my preteen years, and when I watched the first two films in the new franchise, I have to admit that I enjoyed them far more than I thought I would. The characters were a trifle irritating, but I’ve come to expect that from films like this. Nostalgia makes you capable of overlooking quite a lot of flaws.

It’s not just the nostalgia that has motivated my enjoyment of these new movies, however. It’s also the presence of Jim Carrey as Sonic’s arch-nemesis, Dr. Robotnik. Robotnik might not be Carrey’s most deliciously unhinged performance, but it’s definitely in the top ten. The first two films made it clear just how much he was relishing the chance to play this villain to the hilt, and he’s managed to make the role all his own, using his uniquely manic mode of acting to turn Robotnik into a buffoonish, but still very menacing, supervillain.

The last time we saw the good doctor, he had seemingly met his end, his plot to take over the world foiled by the unlikely alliance of Sonic and Knuckles. In Sonic 3, however, it’s revealed that he’s alive, though not well. He’s become so despondent at his failure that he’s sunk into a cycle of eating garbage food and watching telenovelas. Gratuitous fat jokes aside, it’s still a pleasure to see Carrey’s Robotnik again, and it’s even more fun to see the extent to which he has clearly forged a sort of odd couple dynamic with the ever-loyal Agent Stone, who actually enlists the aid of Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails to find out who’s been using Robotnik’s own technology.

The plot thickens when Robotnik finds that the perpetrator is his long-lost grandfather (also played by Carrey), and the two form a fast bond, leaving poor Agent Stone out in the rain. It’s undeniably silly, but it’s also a bit sadly poignant to see the extent to which Stone is clearly hurt by the fact that Robotnik has cast him aside for a grandfather that he’s never met. Moreover, it’s Stone who sees the ugly truth about the senior Robotnik’s sinister plan: that he wants to destroy the entire world rather than just a part of it. He’s become so consumed with nihilistic grief and rage that he would rather see the entire world burn than do even the barest thing to save it from utter oblivion.

For some time now, it’s been clear to anyone with eyes that there’s a bit more to Robotnik/Stone dynamic than the usual supervillain/simpering sidekick so common in video games and pop culture more generally. After all, Stone seems to know the ins and outs of Robotnik’s desires, right down to how he prefers his coffee, and it’s also clear that he’s the one who’s been taking care of Robotnik in the aftermath of his catastrophic defeat. As one very funny headline recently put it, “Doctor Eggman and Agent Stone Need to Hurry Up and Kiss Already.”

While this doesn’t happen in the third movie, there are enough hints that the bond between supervillain and henchman is slowly deepening into something more. A recurring theme throughout this movie is that Robotnik has lived his entire life thinking that he’s unloved, all while completely oblivious to the fact that he’s had love all along. This, of course, is one of the most common tropes in romantic comedy and, while it might be pushing the narrative a bit to suggest that this is the film’s wry way of suggesting that Robotnik and Stone have been pining for one another all along, that’s the way that I choose to read it.

There’s also something quite touching about the fact that Robotnik, faced with his own imminent demise, chooses to reach out to the one person in the world that he sees understood and cared about him. Again, this is a trope within more tragic romances, in which the hero recognizes how much he loves a person only when faced with his own imminent demise and they share a tearful farewell. It’s certainly clear that Robotnik’s demise is a heartbreaking event for Agent Stone, but I also think that Robotnik’s choice to reach out to him at the very end suggests his own feelings for his henchman might be a bit more than platonic.

It’s not that I actually expected a film like Sonic to push the envelope when it comes to the Dr. Robotnik/Agent Stone relationship–particularly not in this increasingly conservative political climate in which even the suggestion that characters might be queer is enough to send the MAGA masses into a frothing furor–it still would have been nice to finally see their relationship confirmed in some explicit way. At the same time, there is something at least a little powerful about the idea of a quasi-queer villain getting his own chance and redemption and sacrificing himself to save the entire world. The film might not be willing to take the plunge and make this explicit, but those of us in the know can see this for the gay relationship that it’s been all along.

So what lies in store for these two? If the film is to be believed, this is the definitive end to Robotnik, but color me skeptical. Carrey has already gone on record stating that he would be happy to return for another installment of the series if he got a script that interested him enough. Perhaps the next script could actually allow Robotnik and Agent Stone to be open and honest about their feelings and get the villainous romance they deserve. Maybe that would be just the thing to lure Carrey back to the franchise.

Hollywood, are you listening?

Hello, dear reader! Do you like what you read here at Omnivorous? Do you like reading fun but insightful takes on all things pop culture? Do you like supporting indie writers? If so, then please consider becoming a subscriber and get the newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. There are a number of paid options, but you can also sign up for free! Every little bit helps. Thanks for reading and now, on with the show!

Welcome to “Sinful Sundays,” where I explore and analyze some of the most notorious queer villains of film and TV (and sometimes literature, depending on my mood). These are the characters that entrance and entertain and revolt us, sometimes all three at the same time. As these queer villains show, very often it’s sweetly good to be bitterly bad.

I watched A Very English Scandal–the Russell T. Davies’-penned and Stephen Frears-directed series about the salacious affair between MP Jeremy Thorpe and stable boy Norman Josiffe–a few years ago, and I remember quite enjoying it. I particularly loved the way that Hugh Grant feasted on his role as Thorpe, a man who is as villainous as they come, even if there are depths to him that one might not see right away. The more I thought about it, the more I came to think that Thorpe would actually make a great focus for a Sinful Sunday column, and as I started to rewatch it, I became absolutely convinced that this was the case.

So, here we are, digging into what is, I think it’s safe to say, one of the meatiest, juiciest, and most rewarding roles of Grant’s storied career.

Indeed, I can think of no one better poised to play an unctuous and oily politician than Hugh Grant, who has lost none of his charisma. From the moment that Thorpe appears it’s clear that he’s the kind of man who knows that he’s handsome and charming and witty and, likewise, knows that it’s a weapon and a skill that can be used to marvelous effect. He uses it to dazzle and seduce friends and foes, men and women, wives and lovers. It’s there when he chats with Alex Jennings’ equally smarmy Peter Bessell, and it’s there when he encounters and seduces Ben Whisaw’s waifish stable lad Norman Josiffe.

Yet beneath all of that charm and smarm there lurks something darker and more sinister. From the moment we meet him we see the lascivious way in which Thorpe gazes at any young man who crosses his path. The lower they are on the social scale, the more he seems to desire them, most likely because he can use his higher position to influence and impress them. When he encounters Josiffe, it’s clear that his desires are running rampant, which is precisely why he takes the young man under his wing. There’s something almost predatory about the way that Thorpe ogles Josiffe as the latter goes about his stable duties, watching his every move and relishing his delivery of several sexual puns.

More disturbing is his first sexual encounter with Josiffe. He starts by essentially assuming that the younger man is going to repay his largesse–he’s offered to let him stay with his mother–with sexual favors, dialing up the creep factor by calling him “Bunny.” Though Thorpe doesn’t know it, this little appellation will come back to haunt him once their relationship, and his attempt to have the younger man murdered, become public tabloid fodder. The look of profound discomfort on Josiffe’s face is enough to make you squirm even if, as Thorpe goes on to assert, they went on to have a passionate physical affair (then again, since this is all mediated through his recollection, it’s hard to tell whether this is a true accounting of what happened or whether he’s just trying to make it seem as if it was all consensual). This is hardly an auspicious beginning to their affair, and it shows the extent to which darkness and desire are firmly intertwined in Thorpe’s sense of self.

The darkness inside of Thorpe becomes ever more prominent after their affair ends and Josiffe makes a nuisance of himself, even going so far as to send a longer letter to Thorpe’s mother elaborating on what they did together. Thorpe, no stranger to heightened feelings himself, becomes convinced that the only way to rid himself of the scourge of Josiffe is by having him killed. There’s something simultaneously hilarious and disturbing about the flippant way in which he announces his intention to murder his former lover. This is Hugh Grant at his best: compelling, charismatic, ruthless. Underneath it all, one gets the sense that he’s just as obsessed with Josiffe as Josiffe is with him; they’re locked together in a downward spiral that will ultimately see them both destroyed.

At the same time, the series also demonstrates the ubiquity of homophobia in 1960s British life. It’s there in the way that everyone–even those advocating for the decriminalization of sodomy–treat gay men with both contempt and disgust. It’s a sensibility that even Thorpe, for all that he dallies with men repeatedly and consistently, has internalized. In a particularly revealing exchange with Bessell, in which the latter asks Thorpe whether he ever loved Josiffe, Thorpe dismisses the very idea. For a man like Thorpe, being homosexual means by definition that he can never know love, or at least that’s what he tells himself. This sequence finds its echo later, during the trial, when his lawyer asks him what was so special about Josiffe. As Thorpe looks sadly into the distance and a montage of violent encounters he had with other rough trade types flashes before our eyes, he says, “Given those men, maybe, I suppose one could imagine, that Norman Scott was the best.” It’s a haunting line, and it’s a final potent reminder that there was more to their relationship than the attempted murder and the trial would suggest.

In the end, Thorpe is exonerated, but as his mother bitingly remarks to him as he celebrates, the whole experience has ruined his career. Having ascended to the dangerous heights of political power and infamy, he has now, like Icarus, had his wings burnt and been sent crashing to the earth. For all of his chameleonic talents–he even marries two women in the hopes of carrying on the masquerade that he’s straight–even he can’t outrun the consequences of his own actions and his own bitterness.

And what of Josiffe himself? In some ways he is the victim of this whole sad story but, in his own way, he’s not exactly innocent. For all that Ben Whishaw plays him with a certain wistful waifishness–a characterization at which Whishaw, with his sad eyes and his mop of hair excels–there’s also a darker side to him, too. He’s prone to self-aggrandizement, and he can be remarkably selfish and thoughtless. At the same time, you can’t help but admire the fact that, unlike Thorpe, he does seem to have a sense of self-respect. Far from being beaten down by his culture’s stifling homophobia, he instead seems to find strength in it, and his rousing speech in the courtroom is one of the best in the series. He may not always be the most likable, but damn if he doesn’t make the case that even queer people deserve to be heard rather than kicked and beaten into the shadows.

Undergirding the entire series is a sensibility that puts its toe squarely on the line between camp and seriousness. There are moments when a scene will be undergirded by a rather obtrusive and insistent score, one that is so overwrought that you can’t help but be reminded of the melodramas of yore. Yet there are also very real stakes to this story. The show as a whole is another timely reminder that legalized homophobia is a very recent phenomenon, particularly in the UK.

Ultimately the saga of Jeremy Thorpe and Norman Josiffe is the stuff of high tragedy, and no one emerges unscathed. In fact, there’s something almost wistful about the final shots, which juxtapose Thorpe’s celebration of his exoneration and Josiffe’s lonely bus ride. They may not be together, they may even hate one another, but their lives and their legacies will always and forever be intertwined.

Hello, dear reader! Do you like what you read here at Omnivorous? Do you like reading fun but insightful takes on all things pop culture? Do you like supporting indie writers? If so, then please consider becoming a subscriber and get the newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. There are a number of paid options, but you can also sign up for free! Every little bit helps. Thanks for reading and now, on with the show!

Welcome to “Sinful Sundays,” where I explore and analyze some of the most notorious queer villains of film and TV (and sometimes literature, depending on my mood). These are the characters that entrance and entertain and revolt us, sometimes all three at the same time. As these queer villains show, very often it’s sweetly good to be bitterly bad.

It’s taken me a while, but I’ve finally made it to the point where I’m ready to talk about Ursula, arguably the very queerest of all of the queer Disney villains. From the moment that I saw this character when I was a kid, I knew that I was looking at the type of villain who was going to be one of my mainstays (even as I child I was always drawn to the bad guys, not just in Disney but in pretty much any piece of fiction). To this day I can remember the many times when I would re-enact scene from The Little Mermaid with my friends and I, of course, would choose to be Ursula each and every time. Like so many other little queer boys who grew up in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Ursula called to me with her siren song, and I answered.

By this point Ursula’s queer credentials are well-established. Most people know, for example, that her appearance was modeled after the drag queen Divine, arguably one of the unruliest figures in 20th century film and public life. There’s the fact that her signature song, “Poor Unfortunate Souls” was written by Howard Ashman who, apparently, also acted it out so Pat Carroll could get a better idea of how he envisioned it playing out on the screen.

It’s more than that, though. Queerness just seems to ooze out of Ursula’s pores. It’s there in the way that she moves through screen space with her bulk and her tentacles, the way that she savors her manipulation of Ariel and her (temporary) victory over her nemesis, King Triton. There’s even something a little queer in the fact that her visual palette–all shades of purple and black and lavender–evokes and echoes that of another sinister and deliciously queer villain: Maleficent of Sleeping Beauty. Her chromatic lusciousness manages to capture both royalty and corruption at the same time. Talk about a queen!

Also like Maleficent, Ursula plays a major narrative role in not only attempting to seize the kingdom from King Triton but also as a disrupting agent to the heterosexual pairing of Ariel and Eric (don’t get me started on how handsome he is; he was my first Disney crush). Given that she’s a sea witch, Ursula has the ability to transform herself, which she does once she realizes that Ariel might actually succeed in getting Eric to fall in love with her. Her Vanessa form looks more than a little like Ariel herself–thanks in no small part to the fact that Ursula uses the mermaid’s purloined voice to craft her persona–but a gaze in the mirror shows that it’s surface-level at best. It’s almost as if not even Ursula’s formidable powers as a sorceress and shapeshifter can ever quite overcome the fact that she is an imperfect copy of a purer original. In typical queer fashion (or queers as they are imagined in American popular culture, anyway), Ursula can only ever be a flawed vessel, an imitation of traditional female beauty rather than the real thing.

To put it another way, Ursula’s adoption of Vanessa’s identity–predicated as it is on artifice and even a bit of mockery of Ariel’s too-perfect virginal beauty-is a form of camp. Time and again throughout the film, she calls attention to just how constructed the entire notion of womanhood really is and, alone among the characters, she seems to have a clear-eyed view of just how simple-minded men are when it comes right down to it (she has a point that men, as a rule, find women who talk exhausting, much preferring the power of body language). Say what you will about the sea witch, but she has her pulse on the realities of gendered life both above and under the sea.

There’s also something a little queer about Ursula’s backstory or, to be more precise, lack of one. One of the things that I’ve always enjoyed about Ursula is just how little we, as viewers, know about her and her history. There are indications here and there that she was once a resident of Atlantica and, just as importantly, she once had power, but that’s about all that we’re given. Ursula becomes, then, a sort of tabula rasa upon which we as queer viewers can project all our desires and hopes and fears for who she was and who she might have been, had she not been destroyed by Eric and his (very phallic) ship.

Then there’s Ursula’s voice. I wrote some time ago about the queerness of Pat Carroll, and I think a lot of the character’s queerness stems from the actress’ rough, gravelly tenor voice, one that straddles the line between recognizably male and female. This is even more pronounced in her performance of “Poor Unfortunate Souls” which, as my partner reminded me, is suffused by gender ambiguity. You can almost feel Carroll savoring Ursula’s intonations, from the moment that she coos “Come in, come in, my child” to her wild cackles as she takes Ariel’s voice or crows that it’s too late for her to escape the clutches of her spell.

The movie’s narrative, of course, can’t allow Ursula to live. Her femininity is too unruly, her challenge to the patriarchal order is too obvious–and, it’s worth pointing out, too successful–for her to be able to survive this story intact. However, one has to give her credit for at least going out with a bang. And, for all that the narrative tries to punish her and banish her from its safely heterosexual, patriarchal world, it’s the sea witch that people often remember the most, and she comes very close to achieving her ambition of ruling over all of the oceans.

Fortunately, Ursula has had a very long afterlife in Disney. Carroll once again provided her voice in the sequel, in which she portrayed Ursula’s “crazy sister” Morgana, though the character was a poorly-written copy of the original. And, of course, she was also a key character in the live-action remake, in which she was portrayed by Melissa McCarthy. Much as I love McCarthy as an actress, I’m afraid she just can’t ever quite measure up to the high-water mark established by Pat Carroll and the original animated villain.

Hello, dear reader! Do you like what you read here at Omnivorous? Do you like reading fun but insightful takes on all things pop culture? Do you like supporting indie writers? If so, then please consider becoming a subscriber and get the newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. There are a number of paid options, but you can also sign up for free! Every little bit helps. Thanks for reading and now, on with the show!

Welcome to “Sinful Sundays,” where I explore and analyze some of the most notorious queer villains of film and TV (and sometimes literature, depending on my mood). These are the characters that entrance and entertain and revolt us, sometimes all three at the same time. As these queer villains show, very often it’s sweetly good to be bitterly bad.

I remember watching the 1997 film Wilde over a decade ago and being struck by Stephen Fry’s remarkable and haunting performance as the title character. Here, I thought, was the perfect meeting of role and actor. Just as striking, however, was Jude Law’s interpretation of Bosie (Lord Alfred Douglas), Wilde’s beloved and, eventually, the source of his downfall. It’s the kind of role that Law was seemingly born to play: privileged, patrician, petulant and, obviously, devastatingly beautiful.

There’s something perilous and patrician about Jude Law’s physical beauty–with his blonde hair, his pitless blue eyes, and the lips that are just this side of pouty–and it’s clear that there’s crackling chemistry between him and Stephen Fry. Of course, this is hardly surprising, since Law has always been sex on legs. And yet, at the same time, there’s always been something a little menacing about him too, a sense that there are claws beneath his silky exterior, just waiting for the chance to rake your flesh and your soul (be brings some of this to bear in The Talented Mr. Ripley, too). This volatile mixture matches perfectly with the dangerous desire that flares between Oscar and Bosie from the moment their eyes meet across a crowded room. It’s not a meet-cute, exactly, but it’s nevertheless a striking cinematic moment, as the very screen seems to crackle and seethe with queer desire.

At first it seems as if the two have really managed to find their other halves. As Robbie Ross–played by a sensitive and soulful Michael Sheen–says to one of Wilde’s other cast-offs, Wilde has been smitten with several young men, but he’s never really been in love until now. Their every scene together, whether it’s the halls of Oxford or in bed, is charged with sexual energy. When you watch Bosie gazing at Oscar across a flat filled with his fellow Oxford students while he sings a song of longing, you can positively feel the spell he’s slowly weaving, around both Oscar and, perhaps despite his own intentions, himself. For all of its flaws and all of the tragedy that is soon to overcome the two of them, it’s impossible not to feel that here, indeed, is one of the great love stories of the ages.

One can hardly blame Oscar, then, for falling head over heels with this brat prince, even as we (and, I think, he) are aware that he’s playing a very dangerous game. I think it’s safe to say that there’s something broken inside this young nobleman, some pit of spite that he can never outrun, no matter how hard he tries. Perhaps it’s the consequence of being a queer man in a deeply homophobic world, or perhaps it’s the fact that his father, played by a sneering and blustering Tom Wilkinson, is so transparently violent or abusive. Whatever the case, he’s a vindictive little shit at times, and Law plays him to the hilt.

Indeed, as the film goes Oscar’s love for Bosie proves to be something of a poisoned chalice. Boise is the quintessential spoiled aristocrat, prone to tantrums and to whining when he doesn’t get what he wants. He also possesses a subtle and remarkably effective cruelty, and he takes an especial delight in mocking Oscar’s middle-class position, so sharply at odds with the refined attitude that he takes in both his plays and his everyday life. Like so many of his class, Bosie wants all of the things that money–particularly Oscar’s–can bring him, without really thinking about where such money is to come from or how it is to be made. One also gets the sense that the allure of Oscar Wilde is precisely that he is beneath Bosie’s only social class. If there’s one thing that the younger man seems to enjoy it’s power, and he wields it an often malicious intent.

Boise is, in other words, the ultimate queer narcissist. Everything and everyone is viewed through how they can be of use to him, whether that be his friends and lovers that he wines and dines on Oscar’s dime or Oscar himself. He is so absorbed by his own desires and yearnings that there’s no chance that anyone, even the great Oscar Wilde could ever break through and produce anything even remotely resembling genuine human love or affection.

Even after Oscar has been imprisoned and sentenced to hard labor, Bosie finds it impossible to ever think outside of himself, his interests, and his ongoing yearning to rebel against his tyrannical father. Not even Wilde’s pale features from inside the prison are capable of breaking Bosie out of his self-indulgent attitude, and he is ultimately more upset that he isn’t going to be allowed to testify than he is at the fact that his beloved is going to be sentenced to a prison term that could spell the end of his life. It’s a tragic irony that the one person who seems to bring Oscar so much joy is also the person who is responsible for his downfall and the prison sentence that will weaken him so thoroughly that he dies at the young age of 46.

In a final conversation with Sheen’s Robbie Ross, Bosie makes it clear that he is going to seek out Oscar after his liberation. However, while he might say that he loves Oscar, one gets the distinct impression that it’s more accurate that he loves what Oscar represents: a certain sophistication and sly intelligence that he notably lacks in himself; the opportunity to strike back at his father and the tyrannical and homophobic society he represents; perhaps even a goodness and generosity of spirit that is at odds with his own inner darkness. For all that Wilde positions itself as a hybrid of biopic and romance–and, as a result, encourages us to want to see these two men end up together in the end–one also can’t help but wonder whether that’s such a good thing. And, as it turns out, even their reunion is doomed to be temporary; while it ends with them reuniting in Italy, the note afterward points out that they parted ways shortly thereafter.

So much for happy endings.

What, in the final analysis, are we to make of Bosie? I think the brilliance of Wilde lies not only in its ability to shed such fascinating light on Oscar Wilde but also on the man who was his downfall. The brilliance of Jude Law’s performance lies at least in part in his ability to make Bosie into something more than just a caricature or a melodramatic villain. For all of his caprice and his cruelty, there’s still a soul in there, and one can’t help but feel at least a bit of pity for him, particularly when one sees what kind of parents raised him (Gemma Jones is suitably icy as his mother). Though he might have been cushioned by some of the world’s ills because of his social class, there’s no way he could escape the corrosive and toxic impact of a world that saw homosexuality as at worst a grave sin and at best an illness.

Bosie is a haunting specter. Unlike Oscar, he has become the epitome of the spoiled queer (he even gets his own chapter in a book called Bad Gays!) Even so, he is still a fascinating figure in his own right, and he is a disturbing reminder of how homophobia can twist and distort a person until, in the end, they become the sort of queer monster everyone expects them to be.

Hello, dear reader! Do you like what you read here at Omnivorous? Do you like reading fun but insightful takes on all things pop culture? Do you like supporting indie writers? If so, then please consider becoming a subscriber and get the newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. There are a number of paid options, but you can also sign up for free! Every little bit helps. Thanks for reading and now, on with the show!

Welcome to “Sinful Sundays,” where I explore and analyze some of the most notorious queer villains of film and TV (and sometimes literature, depending on my mood). These are the characters that entrance and entertain and revolt us, sometimes all three at the same time. As these queer villains show, very often it’s sweetly good to be bitterly bad.

There’s a very good reason that Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island is widely regarded as one of the best films to star the titular Great Dane and his human companions. In this case, the monsters–the zombies of the title–are actually real and, while this wasn’t the first time that had been the case in the Scoobyverse, the film was notable for its darker tone and quasi-realistic aesthetics. Once you’ve seen these zombies, you’re not likely to forget them.

While the zombies might at first seem to be the antagonists, it eventually becomes clear that they are actually the good guys or, at the very least, that they’re trying to warn Scooby and company away from Moonscar Island so as to avoid what happened to them. For, you see, they all had their life forces drained by Lena and Simone, the two caretakers of the island, the former a dark-haired seductress and the latter a domineering woman with a seductive (though dubious) French accent, both of whom transform into malicious cat creatures during the Harvest Moon. To me, these characters are two of the most compelling, and queerest, baddies Scooby and the gang have ever faced.

At first glance, it might seem like a bit of a stretch to claim that Lena Simone are predatory lesbians. However, the more one thinks about it, and the closer one looks at the way in which these characters are portrayed, it’s easy to see how they fit very nicely into the long history of such characters. They may not necessarily be lovers, but in all of the ways that matter they are nevertheless very queer cats indeed, and this makes them even more fascinating and terrifying than your standard Scooby villain. (Though I do think it’s worth pointing out that they are very much a butch/femme type couple, with some intergenerational mixing thrown in there for good measure).

To begin with, there’s the fact that the film takes place in the sinister swamps of Louisiana. Indeed, of all of the various productions involving Scooby-Doo, this is the one that has the closest and deepest engagement with the conventions of the Southern Gothic tradition which, in turn, has always been quite queer in its own right. As Tyler Christensen puts it, “Countless signposts of Gothic Literature are in lock-step with the queer experience, making the metaphors both simple and poignant,” from the “murky waters” of the swamp to sprawling antebellum mansions, with all of their associations of ghosts and hauntings and unrequited, seething desires. Zombie Island puts all of these to good use, immersing the viewer and the gang in a sinister world filled with pirate histories, bloodshed, and curses.

And then there’s the cat connection.

By now we all know that there seems to be a strong bond between unruly femininity and felines (witness J.D. Vance’s much-maligned comments about how the Democratic Party is comprised of a bunch of childless cat ladies). This much is clear from the moment that Scooby and the gang arrive on Moonscar Island, where they’re greeted by the seductive, deep voiced Simone (voiced by the inimitable Adrienne Barbeau, who is clearly having the time of her life). In addition to having a house full of cats, she expresses profound and venomous contempt for Scooby–a recurring joke is that he doesn’t seem to realize that he’s a dog–and, as will soon be revealed, she has a similar disgust for Daphne and for the trappings of the modern world.

If Simone’s relentless bitchery and contempt for the hoi polloi don’t qualify her for Motherhood and gay iconicity, then I don’t know what could. Lena may not be quite as compelling a presence as Simone, but there’s also something a little queer about the way that she acts as bait for Freddie and the rest of the gang. Tara Carendoff imbues the character with a sinister and slightly-too-intense sort of sweetness, suggesting the true rottenness beneath.

Zombie Island takes the dangerous cat lady convention to its furthest extreme by having these two women be the last survivors of a group of colonists who worshiped their cat god in some nebulously-defined period of the past, before they were all slaughtered by the pirate Morgan Moonscar and his minions. Simone and Lena survived while their friends and family were chased into the swamp to be devoured by alligators and, after calling down a curse from their cat god, they become werecats that require draining life from others in order to survive. (I’ve always wondered just where these people came from, since it’s pretty clear that they’re not ancient Egyptians, but this is just one of those things that you have to be willing to go along with when it comes to movies like this one).

As the film reaches its climax it becomes clear that Lena and Simone–and the ferryman Jacques, who joined their ranks because he yearned for immortality–have lost anything even remotely resembling their former innocence and humanity. What began as a pursuit for justice has instead become a never ending search for nourishment, one that seems to contain more than a little malice (witness Simone’s taunting Daphne for being pretty smart, “for a television reporter.”) Then again, who amongst us wouldn’t bear a grudge against the world if we were cursed to be cat creatures for all of eternity, all because a bunch of pirates decided to slaughter a group of colonists?

This all reaches its apotheosis when Lena and Simone begin their grisly transformation into their true forms, first by adopting features that are distinctly feline and then going full-on cat monster. Just as there has long been an association between unruly femininity and felines, so there is also a connection between were-creatures and queerness. It’s there in films like the original Cat People, and it’s also there in the many ways that transformation narratives often resonate with queer viewers, many of whom have often felt as if there were a part of them that was yearning for release, even if that happened to mean that they would also be monstrous.

To add to the queerness of it all, these cat creatures are, like many other monsters, beasts of relentless appetite, dependent on their consumption of the souls of others in order to continue living. Lena and Simone–and, to a lesser extent, the ferryman Jacques–are childless, destructive beings of embodied appetite, just as so many other queer monsters have been throughout history. Small wonder that we queers can’t help but be drawn to and repelled by them at the same time; there but for the grace of God, as the saying goes. At the same time, there is also something inescapably tragic about Lena and Simone. For all that we might find their actions and in fact their very existence repugnant, it’s not as if they asked for their lives to be disrupted and turned upside down. Moonscar had it coming, even if their other victims didn’t.

Of course, this is Scooby-Doo that we’re talking about here, so it’s not as if these villains are going to escape the punishment that’s always meted out to those who cause so much damage. They end up being the victim of their own hubris, their soul-sucking ceremony disrupted to such a degree that the hour passes, and they turn to dust, consigned to the oblivion they have so long sought to avoid.

Even though they perish, however, Lena and Simone set up a standard that has never quite been met by any of the villains that followed in their footsteps. The closest would probably be Sarah Ravencroft, the malicious witch from Scooby-Doo and the Witch’s Ghost, but even she lacks the queer bite of her predecessors. In the end, Lena and Simone are, like so many other Southern Gothic figures, reminders of a grim and terrible past risen up to haunt the present. They might be gone, but they are certainly never forgotten.

Hello, dear reader! Do you like what you read here at Omnivorous? Do you like reading fun but insightful takes on all things pop culture? Do you like supporting indie writers? If so, then please consider becoming a subscriber and get the newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. There are a number of paid options, but you can also sign up for free! Every little bit helps. Thanks for reading and now, on with the show!

Welcome to “Sinful Sundays,” where I explore and analyze some of the most notorious queer villains of film and TV (and sometimes literature, depending on my mood). These are the characters that entrance and entertain and revolt us, sometimes all three at the same time. As these queer villains show, very often it’s sweetly good to be bitterly bad.

There are many sins that can be laid at the feet of the live-action remakes that Disney seems intent on forcing upon us every year, but arguably the worst, in my mind at least, is the systematic de-queering of so many of the classic villains. Gone are all of the things that made these characters so eternally delightfull: the color and movement are subdued; the songs are rendered into vignettes as bland as the movies that surround them; the savage glee they take in their torment of the protagonists sanded away. It’s a travesty and, in the mind of this queer critic, a grievous betrayal of everything Disney once stood for.

As I wrote some time ago about the de-queering of Dune’s Baron Harkonnen in the Denis Villeneuve adaptation, it’s not just that we’re losing what makes these characters fun to watch. We’re also losing the very thing that makes them subversive, that gives them that extra little bit of edge that gives queer viewers–particularly younger ones–the chance to feel, at least for a while, that they do have power, even if it must exist outside of the confines of heterosexual closure. Each live-action remake has gone further to neuter and mitigate the queerness of its villains, turning them into the same banal slop as the rest of the films in which they find themselves.

Take, for example, Scar from The Lion King. If there’s one villain that epitomizes queer cunning and queer savagery, it’s Scar. This is a character, after all, who not only murders his own brother in cold blood but seems to delight in doing so and, not content with this, also gaslights his own nephew into believing that he was the one who was responsible for his father’s death. Scar clings to this lie almost to the bitter end, until his hubris gets the better of him and he tells the truth to Simba, only for the young lion to finally find his inner strength and defeat his uncle, leading to the latter’s being devoured by his former hyena allies.

In preparation for this piece I decided to rewatch the 2019 live-action film, in the hopes that I might be able to uncover some residue of the queer malice that made the original character such an inspiration (if I can dare to use that word) for me as a young queer kid constantly existing on the outskirts of heterosexual society. Unfortunately, if unsurprisingly, there was none of that to be found in this new rendition. This film’s Scar, like Jafar and all of the others, has been leached of anything even remotely resembling queerness.

We all know by now that this film lacks almost any semblance of the beauty and the majesty that characterized its animated predecessor. Jon Favreau is many things, but the man is not a particularly inventive visual stylist, and the “live-action” Scar is as washed-out and pale as the rest of the film. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to even find the scar that gives him his name.

Now, it has to be said that Chiwetel Ejiofor does a very fine vocal performance as Scar. While he may lack Jeremy Irons’ flair for the dramatic and the campy, he does deliver his lines in a suitably stentorian and Shakespearean tone. However, there’s only so much even the most talented actor can do with a script this limp, and to add insult to injury “Be Prepared”--one of the great Disney villain songs of the Renaissance–is bastardized and rendered into a much briefer and less impactful number. Irons may not have been a stellar vocalist, but he was hella campy in his rendition of the song, making the most out of its cutesy rhymes and celebration of ambition and evil.

But let’s pause for a moment on that question of camp, since this seems to be the thing that many commentators have focused on when they discuss the shift from Renaissance Disney to…whatever Disney is these days. Obviously camp means different things to different people, but it is fundamentally about artifice and subversion and, when it comes to gender and queerness, it’s about pointing out how the supposedly fixed nature of such things is itself a fiction. Straightness and normative gender roles are as subject to ridicule and mockery as anything else.

That being the case, it’s easy to see how queer villains should serve as points of opposition and subversion within the rigid binaries set up by so many Disney films. Scar–and Ursula, and Jafar, and Gaston, and all of the others–are compelling and fascinating not because they might sleep with others of the same sex but, instead, because their very existence calls into question the heterosexist and deeply patriarchal logic that so often undergirds the Disney animated features canon. This obviously has a lot of appeal for queer folks, both old and young alike, but I daresay that it’s also refreshing for even straight audiences to have an outlet for some of their latent queer yearnings, to say nothing of their desire to escape the straitjacket of heterosexuality.

Thus, it’s not just that the new Scar is more boring and less camp than his animated predecessor. It’s also that he lacks the bite that made this swishy lion with the dark mane and the limp wrist–er, paw–so fascinating and fun and, more to the point, troubling to watch. As viewers we find ourselves compelled by Scar even as we’re also revolted by his actions, particularly the joy he takes in murdering Mufasa (Irons’ whisper of “long live the king” is something that will live in my mind forever).

In the new version of The Lion King, by contrast, the photorealism of the animation and the much “straighter” vocal performance renders Scar into a much more straightforward representation of evil. It’s easier to put him away, to forego any sense of identification with or enjoyment of his presence. Even his murder of Mufasa is a much more muted affair than in the 1994 version, and the new Scar seems to be going through the motions of usurpation rather than, say, actually savoring his triumph. That’s not very queer, is it?

If, like me, you had any hope that the new film Mufasa would work to restore at least a scintilla of the queerness that we once associated with this beloved queer villain, I’m sorry to disappoint you. In fact, this new film goes out of its way to remove even the barest traces of queerness from Scar’s diegetic persona. Most importantly, he falls in love with Sarabi, despite the fact that she doesn’t seem inclined to give him the time of day. This entire subplot is drawn from the 2019 The Lion King, in which Scar is particularly insistent that the widowed queen join him, despite her giving absolutely no indication that she wishes to do so. It’s all a bit heavy-handed and unconvincing, and it’s doubly so in Mufasa. In fact, if there’s one character in the latter film that has anything remotely resembling the queer affect of Scar it would be Kiros, voiced with sinister charm by Mads Mikkelsen (no stranger himself to playing queer villains).

In the end, I found myself both deeply frustrated and very disappointed with how badly these new iterations of Scar failed to live up to even the barest of expectations. As one author put it, Scar should really be gayer, and we’re all the poorer for it when he isn’t. The queer Disney villain appears to be a thing of the past but, so long as those old films exist, they will too, a fascinating and alluring reminder of the pleasures of queer evil.

Hello, dear reader! Do you like what you read here at Omnivorous? Do you like reading fun but insightful takes on all things pop culture? Do you like supporting indie writers? If so, then please consider becoming a subscriber and get the newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. There are a number of paid options, but you can also sign up for free! Every little bit helps. Thanks for reading and now, on with the show!

Welcome to “Sinful Sundays,” where I explore and analyze some of the most notorious queer villains of film and TV (and sometimes literature, depending on my mood). These are the characters that entrance and entertain and revolt us, sometimes all three at the same time. As these queer villains show, very often it’s sweetly good to be bitterly bad.

The Lion in Winter, the 1968 film based on the play of the same name by James Goldman (who also wrote the screenplay), is the kind of movie that is essentially tailor-made for me. As many of you no doubt know, I am an Anglophile at heart, with a particular fascination with the British monarchy, and I am a sucker for any sort of costume drama. I remember loving the play when I saw a production of it in undergrad, and when I finally got around to seeing the film several years later I was even more fascinated. I mean, how can you not love a movie that stars the likes of Peter O’Toole, Katharine Hepburn, Timothy Dalton, and Anthony Hopkins?

Furthermore, as you may or may not know, both film and play have a very prominent queer subplot focused on the fraught (to put it mildly) relationship between Prince Richard (the future Richard the Lionheart) and King Philip of France. The exact nature of their relationship remains ambiguous, thanks in no small part to the fact that the French monarch is something of a chameleon, shifting and changing depending on the political needs of the moment. Nevertheless it is there, and it ends up playing a key role in Philip’s attempts to subvert Henry’s succession plans and his dominion over his French territories.

When the film begins, Henry II of England (Peter O’Toole) has summoned his estranged wife Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katharine Hepburn), as well as his surviving three sons Richard (Anthony Hopkins), Geoffrey (John Castle), and John (Nigel Terry), where they are joined by the French king, Philip (Timothy Dalton) and his half-sister, Alais (Jane Merrow). As the film unfolds, the various fractures and fissures within the English royal family are exposed in all of their ugliness and savagery. Henry’s three sons constantly plot against and with one another, against their father, and against their mother (who also uses them, particularly Richard, against her husband). It’s a delicious soap opera of royal proportions.

Even as Henry is consumed with his sons, his wife, and their various conflicts, the French king, Philip, slinks through the background, always looking for an opportunity to manipulate matters to his advantage. Beautifully, and at times hauntingly, portrayed by Timothy Dalton in his big-screen debut, from the moment we see him making his way across the courtyard of Chinon–calm and dignified, as opposed to Henry’s bluster and boisterousness–it’s clear that there’s a great deal going on behind those cold eyes. This is a man who knows the importance of appearances, and while Henry may be content to stride across the stage of history trying to blow everyone over with his tempestuous personality, Philip is a far subtler manipulator, which makes him all the more dangerous.

It’s hard to overstate just how beautiful Dalton is in this role, and there’s something almost-but-not-quite feminine about his good looks. His face almost appears as if it has been chiseled out of ice, and his eyes give almost nothing away. At the same time, they also flicker with a deep-seated anger, one might even say a passion, and this will only become more evident as the film goes on and the depth and complexity of his many schemes are finally brought fully to light.

We as viewers, like Henry, never quite know where we stand with him, thanks to the extent to which he excels at keeping so much of himself behind a veil of absolute control. We do learn, however, that he carries a chip on his shoulder when it comes to Henry, who he resents for his shaming of his father Louis (among other things, Henry’s wife Eleanor left the old French king for the young Angevin duke). He therefore has a burning passion to destroy everything that Henry has worked so hard to build over the course of his eventful life and career, up to and including his family. He will do whatever he has to do to accomplish this role even if, as the film subtly suggests, that means lacerating his own heart.

Philip has a keen understanding of human emotion and, as a result, is quite adept at pulling strings and getting the various members of the English royal family to do exactly what he wants. It’s for this reason that he seizes the opportunity to bend first Geoffrey and John to his will and then, not content with that, winds Richard up in his own unique form of emotional blackmail. We’ve known since almost the beginning that there's a deep and troubled history between the prince and the king, evident by every exchange of looks that they share. This reaches its climax in the moment when Philip invites Richard to his room and comes perilously close to physically consummating their relationship again, only to reveal that this, too, has been part of a larger plan, as he has essentially led Richard into admitting he’s a sodomite in front of his two brothers (who are hiding, Hamlet-like, behind a curtain) and his own father. It’s a brilliantly-executed plan, and one that leaves the already-fragile and overwrought Richard quite devastated.

Looming over this whole exchange is Philip’s accusation that Richard essentially assaulted him when he was barely more than an adolescent. If we take the French king at his word, then this means that Richard the Lionhearted is, as one author recently put it, sexually disordered in every way, his desires so twisted and so perverse that he will go to any lengths to see them fulfilled. Even more disturbing is the possibility that he might not entirely be in control of himself.

If, on the other hand, this entire story is a fabrication–and there are good reasons to believe that this is the case–then it reveals the extent to which Philip is ready and willing to use any weapon at his disposal in order to bring the entire English royal family to its knees. Throughout the film he’s shown that he knows quite well that Henry’s sons are his weak point; no matter how strong he is, no matter how much political power he has managed to accumulate, the truth is that he can never rely on his progeny’s loyalty.

And as for Philip? It remains deliciously ambiguous as to whether he’s actually queer or just relentlessly ambitious and desirous of power. Nevertheless, given the feyness of Dalton’s delivery–a faint twist of the wrist there, a hooded and knowing look there–it’s clear to my eye at least that we in the audience are supposed to read him through the lens of queer villainy. And, as we all know, there’s nothing quite so delectable as a queer villain in a costume drama.

What’s particularly striking about Philip is the extent to which he becomes such a prominent part of the film even though, on the whole, he’s a rather shadowy and brief presence, particularly when compared to the various members of the English royal family. Ultimately, he is one of those ephemeral queer characters who leaves an impression that stays long after the final frame has flickered past. In the end, he’s caused more than a little chaos and destruction within Henry’s family, having wounded Henry’s pride and his belief in the loyalty of any of his sons. While one of Henry’s sons may yet take the throne and rule over his French territories, they all know that they are going to have to contend with an ever avaricious Philip, who will never miss an opportunity to destroy his enemies.

Just as any queer villain should.

Hello, dear reader! Do you like what you read here at Omnivorous? Do you like reading fun but insightful takes on all things pop culture? Do you like supporting indie writers? If so, then please consider becoming a subscriber and get the newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. There are a number of paid options, but you can also sign up for free! Every little bit helps. Thanks for reading and now, on with the show!

Welcome to “Sinful Sundays,” where I explore and analyze some of the most notorious queer villains of film and TV (and sometimes literature, depending on my mood). These are the characters that entrance and entertain and revolt us, sometimes all three at the same time. As these queer villains show, very often it’s sweetly good to be bitterly bad.

Last week I wrote about how Wicked’s Glinda can be understood as her own strange sort of queer villain. This week, I want to flip the lens so that we can take a look at the real main character of the film, Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba. After all, she’s the subject of both the book and the play, and Erivo brilliantly mines her for some remarkable character work, giving us a flawed hero whose yearning for approval from others–her father, the Wizard, Madame Morrible–slowly transforms into a radical form of self-acceptance and a similarly radical desire to remake Oz so that it is a more just and peaceful place for everyone, whether they walk on two or legs or four, whether they fly or crawl.

Given all of this, it’s easy to see why Elphaba has been a figure of identification for queer audiences since the play premiered way back in 2003. For that matter, the figure of the Wicked Witch has long been layered with queer overtones (for an excellent discussion of this subject, I recommend the late Alexander Doty’s book Flaming Classics). The figure of the Wicked Witch of the West flouts expectations of gender and sexuality in her various forms, always holding out the promise and the peril of such transgressions.

In Wicked, Elphaba makes clear from the very beginning that she is not like others and that, moreover, she is quite capable of fighting back against those who make assumptions about her appearance. Both when she meets Glinda and when she meets Fiyero she is quick to dispel the myths that surround her green hue even as, at the same time, her own body is a source of shame and ambivalence, as she shows both in her desire to be rid of her verdigris (in the song “The Wizard and I”) and in her persistent guilt over being indirectly responsible for Nessarose’s own disability. Her body, like that of so many queer folks–particularly trans, genderqueer, nonbinary, and intersex folk–also becomes a battleground late in the film, when Morrible makes the claim that her external appearance, different as it is, is a marker of her interior corruption.

Elphaba, however, isn’t afraid to stand up for herself and, time and again throughout Wicked, she asserts the power of language, the power of speaking her truth. For a woman who has had to exist on the outside of society for her entire life–reviled by her father, a source of embarrassment for her sister, and the subject of scorn for her fellow children in Munchkinland–speech is the one way that she has to define herself for herself. It’s for this reason that her decision to advocate on the behalf of Animals is so powerful, and why the scenes involving the Wizard’s increasingly authoritarian actions against them strike so much more deeply than they ever have before.

This whole plot has, of course, been a part of Wicked since the beginning, but something about the evocation of the drought and the subsequent scapegoating of the Animals of Oz seemed to match up almost too neatly with the way that many Republican state governments–particularly those in Florida–really do seem to want to push queer people out of the public square altogether. Republicans have also rendered trans people the Other upon which the general populace can project their fears, hatreds, and anxieties (hence all of the “Democrats care more about they/them than they do for you” rhetoric that the Trump campaign used with such apparent effectiveness). I remember sitting in the theater and being struck by Doctor Dillamond’s evocation of the Great Drought and its impact on the citizens of Oz, just as I was pierced by the graffiti on his board that announces that Animals should be seen and not heard and horrified by the use of the cage to ensure that Animals are rendered incapable of speech. “Wow. I thought. This is hitting even closer to home than usual.”

Fortunately for the Animals, Elphaba is not one to just sit by and let this happen. When it comes right down to it, she is a fierce voice for them, and she is even willing to sacrifice her friendship–or is it a romance?--with Glinda who, for her part, is more than happy to buy into the horrors of the Wizard’s regime. I don’t think it’s going too far to say that Elphaba is in many ways a queer(ish) tribune of the Animals. She of all people understands the pain of being different and an Other, and not even the blandishments of Morrible and the Wizard and their attempts to manipulate her into taking power for herself is enough to make her betray them.

It’s for all of these reasons that the film version of “Defying Gravity” is, I think, even more powerful and overwhelmingly emotional than its stage counterpart (which, don’t get me wrong, is still one of the most badass fight songs in the history of the Broadway theater). By this point Elphaba has realized that there is nothing for her in the world that the Wizard and Morrible are trying to create, particularly since they immediately start to try to destroy her in the minds of Oz’a citizens. Given that, the only thing left for her to do is strike out on her own, but not before making sure that she shows all of them, including Glinda, just how much power she now has: so much power, indeed, that she essentially blows out the electrical grid of the entire Emerald City.

As Elphaba proves time and again in “Defying Gravity,” she is going to fight against this fascist regime with every fiber of her being: her body, her magic and, of course, her voice. When she launches into this radical song of defiance, it sweeps us up with its power and its bombast, its fierce declaration of no longer letting anyone else determine one’s fate. There’s something even more uplifting about the moment when Elphaba sings the word “Unlimited” with increasing intensity before she utters her final act of defiance. This is a minor but significant departure from its orchestration in the stage musical, and it reminds us of Elphaba's metamorphosis at this key moment, from someone yearning for approval and aware of her limitations to someone who is no longer fettered by the past.

It’s impossible to overstate how empowering this is for queer folks in 2024. It would be easier for all of us to simply roll over and accept the fate that has been decreed for us by the GOP and its ugly allies, all of whom have made a point of ginning up fear of trans people in order to get people to vote for them. Elphaba’s war cry of resistance, however, is a reminder that it doesn’t have to be this way, that all of us have a choice when it comes to fighting back against tyranny. Wicked is one of those musicals that, at least in its first part, shows the unique power of escapism, in the sense that it allows us to lose ourselves in a world where it is possible to seize power for oneself, even (especially!) if one has been painted as a villain.

When it comes down to it, who among us hasn’t felt the desire to strike back at those who want to oppress us, who want to use what we look like on the outside to turn the masses against us, to make us into an object that can be feared, controlled, destroyed? “Defying Gravity,” and Elphaba’s story arc as a whole, allows us to do just this. The fact that she also manages to seduce Jonathan Bailey’s Fiyero and indulge in a bit of a sapphic dalliance with someone as hot as Glinda makes all a bit jealous. As so often in the history of queer villains in Hollywood, it really is good to be bad.

Hello, dear reader! Do you like what you read here at Omnivorous? Do you like reading fun but insightful takes on all things pop culture? Do you like supporting indie writers? If so, then please consider becoming a subscriber and get the newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. There are a number of paid options, but you can also sign up for free! Every little bit helps. Thanks for reading and now, on with the show!

Welcome to “Sinful Sundays,” where I explore and analyze some of the most notorious queer villains of film and TV (and sometimes literature, depending on my mood). These are the characters that entrance and entertain and revolt us, sometimes all three at the same time. As these queer villains show, very often it’s sweetly good to be bitterly bad.

Like many of you out there in the world, I was utterly enchanted by Jon M. Chu’s big-screen adaptation of Wicked. As I wrote in my review, it manages to flesh out the stage play in myriad ways while staying true to its source material, and there’s no denying that it is particularly adept at tapping into the queer appeal that has always been central to the Wicked phenomenon (both the book and the musical). If anything, the movie makes the ever-present queerness of the play even more explicit and, given that we live in an increasingly queer-hostile world, that’s a very powerful thing.

What I find particularly striking about the film, however, is its engagement with the fraught issue of queer villainy (or, to use the film’s own parlance, wickedness). Perhaps Glinda says it best when, during her introductory number, she asks the question: are people born wicked, or do they have wickedness thrust upon them? It’s a query that applies as much to this “good” witch as it does to her antithesis and supposed foe, Elphaba, whose alleged death sets the entire plot in motion. As time will tell, the question of who is the villain of this film is not an easy question to answer, not least because the implicit romance between Glinda and Elphaba, and the undeniable screen appeal of Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, disrupts our normal ways of making sense of who is and isn’t the bad guy.

I found Grande’s version of this character surprising in a whole host of ways, not least because I honestly had no idea that Grande was such a powerful actress. From the moment we meet here it’s clear that, however much she might be participating in the Munchkins’ celebration of Elphaba’s demise, the truth is that she bears a tremendous emotional burden. It’s there in the haunted expression on her face as she gazes up at the effigy, and it’s even more noticeable once she begins to relate the troubled nature of Elphaba’s birth and upbringing. And, once they meet at Shiz and begin their relationship in earnest, it’s clear that Glinda is as fascinated by her new roommate as she is supposedly repelled.

Everything about Wicked draws attention to the remarkable attraction these two fledgling witches feel for one another. From the moment they meet and Glinda expresses incredulity that Elphaba is green, you can tell that she’s got it bad. This being Wicked, though, the course of true love doesn’t run particularly smooth; it takes a while for each of them to get over their initial feelings of “loathing”--which, to be fair, always feel very performative, and I continue to believe “What is This Feeling?” is one of the great love songs of the musical theater. Once they do, though, it’s clear that, for Glinda, at least, the feelings are more than just platonic (there’s just too much joy in her performance of “Popular" for me to believe they’re just friends).

And then there’s the fact that they’re both enmeshed in a love triangle with Jonathan Bailey’s Fiyero. Of course, one can hardly blame the two women for finding themselves so smitten, considering the fact that the man is literally sex on legs. It’s actually quite fascinating to see the extent to which this little menage is actually an inversion of the homosocial triangle, in that it’s two women working out their feelings for each other over and through the body of a man (who, it’s worth pointing out, also gives off major bisexual vibes). It’s all just one big sexy mess, and if that doesn’t scream queer, then what does?

It’s actually been rather refreshing to see the extent to which both Granda and Erivo have been open about the potential romantic attraction between their two characters. Yes, they can certainly be read as merely platonic–and there’s an argument to be made about the need for on-screen depictions of deep friendships between people of the same sex–but I do think that Grande’s textured and nuanced performance as Glinda lends ballast to the idea that, on Glinda’s side at least, things have gone a bit further. I dare you to look at the way she looks at Elphaba with longing in her eyes and not recognize the pang of queer longing.

By the time that Elphaba has her fateful confrontation with the Wizard and Morrible, we’ve been primed to see these two as a fledgling couple, which makes Glinda’s eventual capitulation to the regime in Emerald City all the more heartbreaking. Indeed, this is the point at which her layered queer villainy finally comes into play. On the one hand, we can’t help but be furious and disappointed in her that she would be willing to go along with these two autocrats, no matter how much doing so seems like a strategy for survival at the moment. On the other hand, it’s hard not to wonder whether each of us, when faced with the same choice, can honestly say that we would have done differently.

The brilliance of Wicked’s take on queer villainy lies in its refusal to resolve this tension in one direction or the other, allowing–forcing, even–the viewer to rest in the uncomfortable space of sympathy with someone who might just have been the villain all along. Yes, it’s clear that Glinda has betrayed the woman that she loves (either platonically or romantically or perhaps both) for what the phantasm of political power in the Wizard’s regime. And yes, it’s clear that this is the morally wrong thing to do, since she refuses to believe that there can be any kind of effective resistance against those with power, while Elphaba decides to take the harder, more morally defensible route and raise the flag of rebellion.

At the same time, the film does at least allow us to have some measure of sympathy for Glinda. From the moment that she descends in her little pink bubble to sing to the folks of Munchinland, it’s clear that she carries a heavy burden, that while she has emerged from this whole conflict alive and politically unscathed–unlike Elphaba, who is presumed to have been melted by Dorothy, Morrible, who has been arrested on Glinda’s order; and the Wizard who has been banished–she has lost both of the people that she loved the most in all the world.

It’s also worth considering the fact that the entirety of Wicked is, at least in my eyes, a flashback of Glinda’s. Seen in this light, it’s easier to notice those moments when her inner vulnerability sneaks through, and it becomes abundantly clear that the thing she has wanted all along is some sense of external validation. Her embrace of Morrible while in the Wizard’s throne room is a capitulation, yes, but it’s also the culmination of her desperate desire for approval that has been apparent all along. Maybe it’s just because I’m also a people-pleaser, but this made her much more explicable to me and, while I never lose sight of her moral shortcomings and failings, I can’t bring myself to hate her.

Those of us who know how the play ends are already dreading the full extent of the tragedy about to unfold. By the time the play comes to an end Glinda ends up with neither Fiyero nor Elphaba, left behind to sing of her longing and her grief. Now, one can endlessly debate whether Glinda knows of their survival, but either with her or awareness or without it, the truth is that she is now alone. She has had to reap that she sowed and, like wicked queer villains everywhere, accept that there’s no one to mourn with her, for no one can ever know the truth: about her relationship with Elphaba; about Elphaba’s survivor; and, ultimately, about herself.

Hello, dear reader! Do you like what you read here at Omnivorous? Do you like reading fun but insightful takes on all things pop culture? Do you like supporting indie writers? If so, then please consider becoming a subscriber and get the newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. There are a number of paid options, but you can also sign up for free! Every little bit helps. Thanks for reading and now, on with the show!

Welcome to “Sinful Sundays,” where I explore and analyze some of the most notorious queer villains of film and TV (and sometimes literature, depending on my mood). These are the characters that entrance and entertain and revolt us, sometimes all three at the same time. As these queer villains show, very often it’s sweetly good to be bitterly bad.

When it comes to queer villains, Disney really does seem to have cornered the market. I’ve already written here at Omnivorous about some of my faves–Prince John, Jafar, etc.--and there’s a veritable cottage industry of online commentary centered on drawing out the complexities of the studio’s long list of queer baddies. By this point, I’ve actually lost count of the number of think pieces that have been published grappling with just this subject, but the preponderance of hot takes on the subject suggests that there are a lot of people out there who have a significant investment in Disney’s queer villains.

Today I’m going way back in the history of the studio to take a look at three powerful queer villainesses who, though not explicitly queer in the text (or even really coded as such) have nevertheless exerted a strong fascination on queer babies everywhere. I refer, of course, to the unholy trio of evil queens and stepmothers from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty. The Evil Queen, Lady Tremaine, and Maleficent set a very high bar for subsequent Disney villains in terms of both their queer appeal and their general bitchery and, though they’ve certainly been matched, they’ve never been exceeded.

Let’s start with the Evil Queen of Snow White. It’s quite easy to see why she would become so beloved of subsequent generations of queer audiences, with her rich voice with its hint of menace, her killer wardrobe, and her utter determination to destroy the young woman who has robbed her of the crown of being the fairest of them all. Is she petty? Yes, absolutely, but that’s part of what gives her character its queer bite, for what homo amongst us hasn’t wanted, at some point or another, to lash out against the pretty straight girl who seems to get everything handed to her on a silver platter? She’s also a mistress of disguise, and you have to give her props for being willing to totally give up her beauty in order to masquerade as an evil hag with a batch of poisoned apples on her arm.

The Evil Queen set the stage for many villainesses to follow, including Lady Tremaine, the threat who looms over all of Cinderella. Now, I’ve never been the biggest fan of this particular Disney feature, but I have to admit that Lady Tremaine is a highlight. She’s cold and imperious and utterly ruthless when it comes to making sure that her unruly (and not terribly bright) daughters get the best care that they can, for all that they are far more uncouth and unpleasant than their younger stepsister, Cinderella. As the kids say, she’s always serving c**t, whether it’s lying in bed with her cat Lucifer on her lap or simply sneering in contempt. Unlike the Evil Queen, there is at least some motivation for Lady Tremaine’s horrible behavior toward her stepdaughter. When it comes right down to it, she really does seem to want what’s best for Drizella and Anastasia (though it probably goes without saying that they absolutely do not deserve this).

And then there’s Maleficent.

For many reasons I’ve always found myself drawn to this badass sorceress with the horned headdress. Part of my attraction, to be sure, stems from the fact that she is voiced by Eleanor Audley, whose patrician tones were seemingly designed to play iconic Disney villainesses (including, it’s worth noting, Lady Tremaine). Like her predecessors, she also has a sense of style, with her flowing robes of black and purple and this, combined with her formidable power of sorcery, makes her one of the baddest bitches to have appeared in a Disney movie. As with the Evil Queen, there’s also something more than a little queer about her shapeshifting abilities, whether it’s transforming herself into a small ball of light to lure Aurora to her doom or metamorphosing into a giant dragon that comes perilously close to snuffing out the film’s hero, Prince Phillip.

Of the three big baddies of Disney’s Golden Age, Maleficent’s ire is arguably the hardest to pin down. Is she really that pissed off about not being invited to the birth of a princess that she would curse said royal to perish by pricking her finger on a spinning wheel? As I’ve written so often here before, though, there’s a certain pleasure that queer audiences can take in a ruthless woman behaving badly just because they can. And I’m sure I’m not the only baby queer who felt more than a little thrill when she managed to tie up Prince Phillip, arguably one of the hunkiest of the early Disney princes.

All three of these figures have had remarkable queer afterlives. Obviously drag culture has been quite explicit in its reliance on these badasses, which is entirely understandable. They’re beautiful, obviously, but they’re also in some ways exaggerations of traditional female beauty. In other words, they lend themselves to camp, and this is as true in more traditional drama as it is in drag. Lana Parrilla, for example, takes a bite out of her role of Regina/The Evil Queen in Once Upon a Time, and Cate Blanchett does something similar in her turn as Lady Tremaine in the remake of Cinderella. The new live-action Snow White certainly looks like it’s going to mark a nadir for the studio in terms of the quality of its remakes, but if nothing else Gal Gadot’s performance (assuming it’s as wooden in the actual movie as it is in the trailer) will lend itself to all sorts of camp appropriation.

Of the three, Maleficent has arguably had the most enduring queer afterlife, getting not one but two feature films of her own, both of which are, I think it’s safe to say, very queer in orientation and sensibility. To begin with there’s the fact that she’s played by none other than Angelina Jolie, one of the most noted queer icons of her generation. For another, there’s also the fact that this iteration of the character ends up forging a rather touching bond with the young Aurora. Whatever its other failings–and there are a lot, as I’m sure I’ll write about at some point here at Omnivorous–the Maleficent films at least deserve credit for being willing to give this character some development and a backstory that feels resonant and authentic.

I could go on and on about how much I absolutely adore these queer villains and how I pretended to be at least one of them numerous times during my childhood. Suffice it to say that I spent many yours as a child pretending to be the Evil Queen, Lady Tremaine, or Maleficent, flouncing around as if I had my own draperies flowing behind me. Imagining myself in their shoes was a way of escaping my humdrum everyday life, to be sure, but it was also something deeper and more empowering, an embrace of that which was disruptive and sometimes destructive. Even though I wouldn’t recognize it for what it was for years to come, inhabiting these female icons of villainy was a way for me to explore my nascent queerness. As such, they hold a very special place in my heart. As Disney drifts further and further away from its roots and robs its villains of their subversive queerness, I’ll keep returning to these badass bitches, reminders of a time when the studio wasn’t afraid to take risks and when it was capable of giving us villains who stayed with us long past the moment when the film ended.

So, here’s badass bitches of early Disney. Long may they reign.

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Welcome to “Sinful Sundays,” where I explore and analyze some of the most notorious queer villains of film and TV (and sometimes literature, depending on my mood). These are the characters that entrance and entertain and revolt us, sometimes all three at the same time. As these queer villains show, very often it’s sweetly good to be bitterly bad.

As I wrote last week, I was sadly a little disappointed by Gladiator II which, for all that it has much of the sound and fury of its predecessor, still falls rather flat, particularly with its very sloppy story and inconsistent plot. Even so, I was compelled enough by its queer villains–particularly Denzel Washington’s Macrinus–to give them some more sustained attention. After all, even a lackluster film can often be saved, or at least made more interesting, by a really great queer villain. Whatever its other shortcomings, there’s no doubt that Gladiator II is quite stuffed with queer villainy, even if it doesn’t always know what to do with it.

We’ll start with Geta and Caracalla, mostly because they are far less interesting than their common-born counterpart, for all that they are supposedly the two most powerful men in 2nd century Rome. I knew from the minute that we first started getting stills from the film that these two characters were going to fit neatly into the established convention of epic cinema, in which Roman emperors are portrayed as effete and often ridiculous, desiccated exemplars of anti-masculinity who can’t be trusted with the burdens of rule. With their pancake makeup and blush, their gaudy costumes, and their unhinged antics, both Joseph Quinn’s Geta and Fred Hechinger’s Caracalla more than fit the bill.

To a degree, their actions do seem to match their appearance. Neither brother is particularly interested or adept at the actual logistics of ruling or even of warfare, which is why they depend on someone like Pedro Pascal’s Acacius to actually do the grunt work. Moreover, neither brother is particularly grateful for the services he provides, which is why they’re more than happy to throw him to the lions (metaphorically) when he is revealed to have been plotting against him. In their distorted perspective they are the state and are thus a synecdoche for the Roman state even if, on the flip side of that, they are also a symbol of everything wrong and rotten about the world over which they rule.

Strangely enough, though, they ended up not being nearly as fascinating as I thought they would be. They lack the intense and searing cruelty of, say, Domitian in the recent TV series Those About to Die (which I found to be, on the whole, more entertaining than Gladiator II, precisely because of Domitian), and they’re not even as debauched as Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus in the original Gladiator. Commodus’ death at Maximus’ hands in the film’s conclusion feels cathartic, because it marks the moment at which the former general has not only overcome the emperor’s duplicity but also avenged his wife, child, and surrogate father Marcus Aurelius. The deaths of Geta and Caracalla, on the other hand, may be brutal–both of them end up being hacked to death by Macrinus–but they don’t make much of an impact. If anything, I was rather glad they’d been shuffled off the stage so that their usurper could have his time in the limelight.

Indeed, if there is an actually interesting queer villain in this film it isn’t the effete and ultimately rather useless emperors but, instead, Macrinus, who flirts with men and, by his own admission, isn’t above sharing one’s bed every now and again. From the moment we meet him it’s clear that Macrinus is one of the few men in Rome who actually has a clear-eyed appreciation for how power works and is more than willing to do whatever it takes to get it, whether that means sacrificing Marcus Aurelius’ daughter or honing Paul Mescal’s Lucius into a weapon he can thrust into the heart of the imperial project.

One of the more striking things about the publicity surrounding the film is how much emphasis was actually placed on the diegetic revelation that Macrinus is supposed to be viewed as bisexual. Among other things, there were all of the rumors that Denzel Washington supposedly filmed a cut scene in which he kissed another man (even though Ridley Scott vociferously denied this and Washington ended up walking back his claims). While there are still hints of this explicit bisexuality in the completed film, it’s far more a matter of inference than outright declaration. It’s clear, though, that Washington at least is feasting on this role and that, when it comes down to it, Macrinus is far less interested in the sex of the person he’s fucking than he is in how he can use them for his own advantage. There’s more than a little eroticism in his encounters with the foolish and wispy Senator Thraex, and he seems to take especial delight in bending the silly politician to his whims.

And then there are his costumes.

If the clothes make the man–and costuming certainly plays an outsize role in an epic film like Gladiator II–then what do Macrinus’ clothes say about him? For one thing, they are remarkably ornate, and as such they are sartorial signifiers of his class-based ambitions. With his keen intellect and shrewd understanding of the nature of Roman society, he wisely knows that one has to look the part of someone in power in order to be convincing. It’s not just about having enough money to blackmail senators into giving up their houses but about appearing as if one belongs among the elite.

And, say what one will about his motives or his actions, but the truth is that Macrinus comes very close to seeing his ambitions realized. When he sees an opportunity to destroy those who stand in his way he seizes it with both hands, whether that’s ruthlessly slaughtering Geta (using Caracalla’s hand, of course), plunging a concealed blade into Caracalla’s neck while he’s deliriously enjoying the slaughter and chaos of Lucius’ uprising, or shooting Lucilla with an arrow while she is held helpless in the Colosseum, Macrinus repeatedly demonstrates that he is no shrinking violet. This is a man who clawed his way out of slavery, and he’s not going to let anyone–particularly no patrician blueblood–stand in the way of the power he feels is due.

However, one must always remember that this is an ancient world epic, and in that tradition it is a foregone conclusion that all queer villains perish, lest their corrupting influence retain its hold over the onward flow of historical time. It’s also ideal for such a villain to meet his doom at the hands of someone capable of performing his masculinity appropriately and thus demonstrate to the audience the wages of queerness. So it is that Macrinus finally has his epic showdown with Lucius who, after cutting off his hand, puts an end to him altogether before claiming the throne and supposedly beginning yet another new era for Rome.

As I wrote in my review of the film, I can’t help but read this through the lens of the present (as is almost always the case with Scott’s films, particularly those set in the ancient world). Yes, the film does seem to be interrogating the myth of Marcus Aurelius since, as it’s revealed near the end of the film, Macrinus was actually owned by the dead emperor himself before getting his freedom and clawing his way to the top. However, no matter how compelling and captivating Denzel Washington might be in the role of Macrinus, the fact remains that in the imagination of a film like Gladiator someone like Macrinus–Black, queer, utterly ruthless and cunning and cruel–can’t be allowed to survive a confrontation with the paragon of epic masculinity, let alone rule. Even though he, like Lucius, imagines a different sort of Rome, one that can perhaps have more avenues of ascent for folks like him, that’s a trajectory the film cannot allow itself to entertain. While it may be pushing the metaphor just a bit far, it’s hard not to find in this film an uncanny and disturbing echo of Trump’s victory emerging out of the shadow of Obama’s presidency which, we now know, was something of a primal scream from a White America terrified at the idea that it might be supplanted. Gladiator II, whether intentionally or not, gives voice to a similar outcry.

In a different film than this one–one, perhaps, that a braver and more iconoclastic Ridley Scott might have made–it would be Macrinus, the bisexual, slightly foppish yet ruthlessly cunning political mastermind who would be able to climb to the apex of power and reshape Rome in his own image. Yet for all that it seeks to interrogate the trappings of power and the dangers of autocracy, Gladiator II can’t quite let go of the idea that only those with the proper genealogical bona fides can ever be entrusted with control of the sprawling Roman Empire. Part of this has to do with the limits of historical reality–not that Scott has ever let that stand in the way of a good yarn–but, I would argue, it also stems from the innate conservatism of the epic form, in which certain kinds of male authority must always triumph while others are doomed to fail. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the new emperor-to-be is handsome, White, and rigorously heterosexual (despite the fact that Mescal is arguably most famous at the moment for his haunting role in the queer romance All of Us Strangers).

Despite all of this, I think that it will be Macrinus who remains one of my favorite things about this film. However much Gladiator II might want us to believe that this is Lucius’ film, the truth is that it belongs very much to Washington and his scenery-chewing performance. His Macrinus is the type of character that you don’t soon forget and, while he may end up dead outside of the city he sought to rule, he will surely come to occupy a special place in the pantheon of epic film characters.