*This essay is a part of my 'Tolkien and Gender' series. You must read my Intro before reading this essay.*
Queer Coding. For those who don't know, queer coding is giving a character traits commonly associated with queer people, without explicitly stating that they are queer. Now, are any traits inherently queer? No. Our end goal is getting rid of labeling and classifying personality traits. However, we are no where near that point yet. Not only do we still code specific traits and behaviors as queer, most of the time they are talked about negatively – there is a long history of queer coding villains. Positive examples are usually (but not always) lumped in with and called 'queer subtext'. However, my issue with that is the fact that queer subtext goes far beyond a character's characterization (rightly so; and a queer coded character can certainly be part of a larger queer subtext). For this essay, I'm going to be using the term queer coding.
I came across a post recently that went along the usual lines of 'Thranduil is queer coded, Thranduil is a villain, this is bad'.
Thranduil is definitely queer coded; but he is not a villain, and this is not bad. That post also ignored the fact that Legolas and Tauriel are also queer coded (since I will be referring to parts of their aesthetics, see here if you want my full analysis of them).
We're going to go back in time to when the FotR film came out. Both Legolas and Orlando Bloom exploded overnight, gaining a star power far beyond the other cast members:
Last month (December 2001) I wrote about the movie starring Orlando Bloom. I forget who else appeared in that flick, but in case you missed it, he played an elf named Legolas. Okay, I know who else appeared in the movie. Orlando had a supporting cast and all, but it was his movie. I know this because starting somewhere around December 20, 2001, my email began to explode with anxious queries from young ladies about that gorgeous elf in the movie.
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What, exactly, is it about Legolas which sparked such intense interest? I’ve thought about starting a poll, but I’m not sure the server has been built which could handle the traffic. Xenite.Org’s traffic tripled in December. I have no idea of where the bandwidth will stop flowing for January, but my Web-hosting ISP has already informed me that I won’t be renewing on my current contract when it runs out in February.
And I don’t even have much Legolas content. I’ve thought about creating some. But I’m not sure I could afford the hosting fees if I did that. Legolas is an incredible phenomenon. If you visit ourLord of the Rings movie news site, you’ll see in the left-hand margin a box with images of posters from the movie.
These images are randomly rotated. Fortunately for me, they are also served by AllPosters. That means they have to pay for the bandwidth the images use. Now, in about two weeks (after the movie started), we generated over 5,000 click-throughs on those banner images. If you know anything about Internet advertising, then you know those 5,000+ click-throughs were just a tiny fraction of the traffic we got on those LoTR pages. Nonetheless, 40% of them were for one poster: Legolas.
If AllPosters could have kept Legolas in stock, I could have set up a dedicated server on January 1 just for Legolas. Regrettably, the poster kept selling out. It continues to sell out. I suspect it sells out faster than anything else in their inventory, or close to that. I finally told AllPosters to just order a truckload of the posters — I’ll find a way to sell them.
While I was soothing adolescent nerves and pleading with AllPosters to restock Legolas so we could all make millions of dollars, the two people who oversee Xenite.Org’s forums (which are now SF-FANDOM) politely informed the Xenite.Org administrators list that, oh yes, we now have an Orlando Bloom forum. It seems the young ladies had hijacked our Lord of the Rings movie forumand were squeezing out all the other discussion.
And that’s a pretty active forum even without Orly threads.
The Orlando Bloom movie, “The Fellowship of the Ring”, is a classic example of the “If we had only known” kind of marketing disaster that companies dread. No one, and I mean no one, had any idea of how popular this character would become. I’m not sure we’ll have any clear idea for several months. Is it just Orlando-as-Legolas or will “Black Hawk Down” sell out week-after-week simply because Elf-boy is in it?
I mean no disrespect to either Orlando or his multitudes of fans. I wish I could satisfy all the requests for more information about both Legolas and Orlando Bloom. (source)
Ah, teenage girls. No other gender/age group is reviled like teenage girls, thanks to the combination of sexism, femmesexism, and adultism:
I have had little regard for teenagers. Teenagers are silly and loud and don’t know shit about shit. Teenagers project their insecurity on other people. Teenagers are stupid and inexperienced.
I found myself adding to the conventional wisdom about teenagers - teenage girls in particular. That they are silly and shallow and not worth listening to. That they try too hard, particularly for male attention. That they have nothing of worth to contribute.
I wrote women and girls, female people, off because of their age. I didn’t pay attention to them when they spoke on important topics. I mocked their interests and fads (Twilight) not just because of their problematic content, but because teenage girls liked them. I laughed at jokes in South Park that compared the object of mockery to teenage girls to prove their lack of worth. And I’m not the only one: even in feminist spaces, younger people are often decided to be a lesser concern. (source)
This is because few other gender/age groups can scare the Kyriarchy like teenage girls:
Elvis Presley's early career is a textbook example of the phenomenon of screaming teenage girls that still seems to perplex adults and critics. Reporter Mac Reynolds in the Vancouver Sun on August 31, 1957, said about Presley's show:
It is a frightening thing for a man to watch his women debase themselves... [girls who] screamed, and quivered, and shut their eyes and reached out their hands to him as for salvation ...It's hardly original, but if any daughter of mine broke out of the woodshed tonight to see Elvis Presley in Empire Stadium, I'd kick her teeth in.
Herb Rowe wrote in the Miami Daily News on August 4, 1956, that “Elvis can't sing, can't play the guitar, and can't dance. Yet two thousand idiots per show yelp every time he opens his mouth, plucks a guitar string, or shakes his pelvis like any striptease babe in town. What's happening that makes these girls scream, faint, pay lavish devotion for these musicians?”
I asked myself the same question when I was an undergrad. Elvis didn't do it for me — I was an NSYNC girl with a B2K exception — but I remembered staring at a poster of NSYNC holding books(my two favorite things) every night before I went to bed, willing them to jump out of the poster. I remembered the elaborate fantasies my friends and I would create about our future lives as Mrs.TimberBassPatrickChasezFatone, and listening to their albums over and over and over again.
I remember being devoted, but I didn't remember why. What was that even about? During the height of Bieber Fever, I recognized myself in Justin Bieber's fans, and I wanted to know why this pattern kept and why were we always so surprised when it did. Every 10 years or so, another young man (or group of men) would pop up, and the young girls and women of the time would scream and scream, and the grown-ups would wring their hands.
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You need to understand when and how the teenage girl was created. Societal expectations for women and girls in the early 20thcentury were conservative; girls were expected to remain chaste until they were married, and then have and raise a family. There were no real alternate paths, at least not for good girls, and none were publicized or shown in a way that allowed girls to see them as viable futures for themselves. Even nurses and teachers, it was assumed, would eventually marry and retreat into domesticity.
High school enrollment increased over the early 20thcentury, which created a social space where young people could gather and afforded them more leisure time. From there, "youth culture" — the set of norms, language, interests, and dress that is exclusive to adolescents and young adults — slowly emerged. Popular Science Monthly has been credited with the first use of the word "teenager," in 1941.
An increase of adolescent workers due to World War II (the number of adolescent workers rose 300 percent between 1940 and 1943) and the absence of a generation of young men created a predominately young female populace.
As these young women acquired more leisure time and income, they began creating identities that had more to do with the things they and their peer groups liked; they were distinct from the interests of children and weren't just mimicking adults. Music and music fandom in particular became an escape, a way to subvert and push against the restrictive social order of the day.
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Seventeen magazine launched in 1944 and told its readers, "You are the bosses of the business," a clear sign that tastemakers and advertisers recognized this new, powerful class of consumers and their desire to belong. But what they didn't understand was that this fixation on fitting in with their friends was more important than conforming to adults' societal expectations of their behavior.
As these young women struggled to create distinct identities and groups for themselves, fantasizing about idols and the life they led was a way to create a specific group identity, an opportunity to explore options that were closed to them, and an outlet for pent-up desires to do and be something else, desires they may not have been conscious of.
However, this idea of the teenage girl was racial. The United States was segregated in the '40s, and black Americans did not experience the same scale of financial improvement as white Americans.
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Sinatra's time as a teen idol passed, and he transformed into the 20th-century icon we remember, but the era of the teen idol wasn't over. Teens were now an established demographic; music was being marketed directly to them, and record companies presented manufactured idols.
Still, the next big one to hit went against all expectations. In 1956 Elvis Presley rocketed into the American consciousness, and he hasn't left since. Where Sinatra's sex appeal was in his projected vulnerability and frailty, Elvis's sex appeal, was, well sex. But underneath that swagger lay a vulnerable soul that could sing wrenching ballads.
A fan, Georgene Knecht of Los Alamos, New Mexico, explained his draw to her in Erika Doss's Elvis Culture: Fans, Faith, & Image: “He was innocent looking but also sexy. His eyes and voice just thrilled to the bone. When he sang it would almost seem directly to me.”
Presley's body and what it represented is what was appealing, and concerning, to Americans in the '50s. It wasn't just his face that was screaming sex to his fans; it was how he moved onstage. Part of what made him such a controversial figure was that his physicality and blatant eroticism were beamed directly into American living rooms all over the country.
When "Elvis the Pelvis" made his first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, 54 million people tuned in to watch — 82 percent of the American viewing public at the time, a record only to be broken by the Beatles in 1964. This was the show that truly made him a household name, and his rapid rise to the heights of stardom can be attributed to his television appearances.
Presley's physicality was so compelling to his teen fans that he didn't even need to be in the same room, or filmed from the waist down, to inspire such visceral reactions. His face made the girls scream, his emotional singing style made them stay, but his physical and musical sexuality is what frightened American adults.
His hair was long and slicked back, and it frequently fell into his face when he performed. He lined his eyes in makeup, which made them seem bluer and deeper, and he was dressed in high fashion courtesy of the Lansky Brothers on Beale Street, who dressed the black blues musicians of Memphis.
Elvis's look plus his gyrations and dancing made him nothing at all like the clean-cut, fairly sexless, nice American boy teenage girls were supposed to long for. He looked dangerous, not like someone who should be invited into your living room by Ed Sullivan.
His appearance in the pop culture landscape rocked American society, and he went from nobody to a household name in about nine months, altering the musical landscape in a way Sinatra hadn't.
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The fan spaces provided by teen idols allowed their fans areas in which they could safely sublimate their sexual and romantic desires for their objects of affection who weren't the American ideal in look, dress, and demeanor.
This speaks to the prevailing idea of what teen girls “should like” not matching their actual desires, as well as to the thrill of wanting something you shouldn't want.
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Whether aggressively masculine in Elvis's case or treading the line of femininity and androgyny like Sinatra and the Beatles, none of these stars were examples of the all-American boy that girls were supposed to be looking for in boyfriends and husbands, which was a large part of their appeal.
With safety in numbers (and no real way to meet their idols), girls were free to fantasize about these visibly lower-class stars without having to worry about the repercussions of actually dating or marrying them.
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In the early days of these artists' careers, media attention focused more heavily on fans than on the performers themselves. A common criticism of all three acts was that the music couldn't be heard over the screams. In this way, the fans became the performers and the show. Being a bobby-soxer, a jive-bomber, a Beatlemaniac meant that you were part of something bigger than yourself; as a member of the group, you were as famous as the idol you cherished.
Eventually, the loosening of societal expectations led girls from simply idolizing male stars to emulating them, in both sexual behavior and performing onstage. The fantasy of dating and marrying your favorite rock star became commonplace and expected, as did living their “madcap” life. The Beatles' non-macho appearance (at the time, their long hair and the falsetto in their songs made them seem womanly) directly led to the frank bisexuality and anti-masculine dress, though hypermasculine behavior, of rock musicians in the '80s.
Modern pop stars — the NSYNCS, the Biebers, the One Directions — have thousands of screaming girls crowd their every appearance and follow their every move, just like teen girls of decades past. We are more desensitized to the idea of young men shaking their hips onstage for screaming girls, so outrage has shifted into a more general cynicism about the pop music industry.
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Listening to your really little sister or overhearing the young girls you see in your neighborhood talk about how cute their favorite idol is isn't remotely shocking. What was once a source of outrage is now commonplace; teenage girls scream and shout and obsess over their favorite male musicians, and water is wet.
However, the outright sexual repression of the past has evolved into a more nuanced form of control; slut shaming and rape culture still create a system that views positive expressions of female sexuality, outside of the male gaze, as bad or dangerous, and obsession over musicians is still seen as something shameful if you are no longer a young girl. We live in a more sexually open society, but these artists still allow girls an outlet to explore their sexual desires without negative repercussions.
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Historically, women and girls have been associated with consumption, the idea that they are constantly shopping and that female "success" is dependent on products they need to buy, more so than with resistance to consumption. But their desire for these objects — which can be consumed through media appearances, merchandise, album sales, and collector's items — is a type of resistance and, certainly during much of the 20thcentury, one of the few "safe" paths of resistance offered to them.
Young women and girls who buy their favorite boy band's CDs, put pictures of the current teen heartthrob all over their bedroom walls, and then stand and scream while watching them perform onstage, are continuing in a long line of female resistance to societal standards of what "good" female behavior should be, while also happily engaging in an incredibly powerful and lucrative industry. They are buying what society is selling them but using it in ways it is not.
The interests of teen girls have always been maligned. The early confusion over their wants and needs was laced with distaste, and today they still experience taste discrimination. Things that are appealing to and popular with young girls are still coded as bad and insignificant, regardless of whether they actually are.
I remember my mom allowing me to listen to maybe two minutes of pop radio before turning it off, because "no one could sing" and they "all sounded the same," which was untrue; plus, the latter could apply to her music tastes as well.
When the Lord of the Rings films came out, as a baby Tolkien nerd I was over the moon, but in cafeterias I was told (by boys who hadn't read the books) that I only liked them because of Orlando Bloom's face and that Legolas was stupid anyway (false). The Lord of the Rings wasn't marketed toward girls, but the specter of their regard could poison parts of it.
I loved the Teen Titans animated series, and recently a story has gone viral suggesting that even with its high ratings it was canceled because too many of those viewers were girls and it was meant to be a boys' program.
The decades-long association of consumption and marketed goods with teenage girls, and the anti-materialist ideas of the counterculture that arose in the '60s, has created an overall negative association toward the things teenage girls consume. Things that girls like are bad things, and if they like something not meant for them, it must be bad as well.
The automatic assumption that anything of interest to teenage girls is not important or of worth delegitimizes their experiences, and reinforces a culture that sees the feminine as lesser than the masculine and values the contributions of men more than women.
What's interesting about this whole phenomenon is who's excluded. I'm black, and as I was researching and reading about “teen girls this” and “teen girls that,” I felt like my existence would slip into and out of the category of “teen girl,” which seemed increasingly like coded language for “white teen girls.” The all-black boy band New Edition was huge — their self-titled second album went double platinum in 1984, selling 2 million copies — but it's often passed over when talking about the huge male pop groups of the past. B2K, another all-black group that peaked in the early 2000s, felt huge and important to me, but they didn't make the same cultural impression as some of their peers.
Though this isn't an essay about interests falling along racial categories, when I think about the supposedly white things I liked growing up, I can recall that gendered taste discrimination — but when I think of the black things, it's different. I must like NSYNC because I'm a girl, but I wanted to marry Lil' Romeo because I was black. I was supposed to feel dumb about the former, but talking about Lil' Bow Wow, Sammy, or Omarion was never met with the same condescension.
The only black entertainer I can think of who causes the same kind of hysteria as white male entertainers is Drake. A lot of his criticism, positive and negative, focuses on the perception of him as “soft” and emotional and just making music for women. The New York Times review of “Take Care” says: “Surrounded by peers who own diamonds but not mirrors, Drake is eager to dismantle himself, to show off his corroded insides. ... He raps about soft things, sings about hard things. ... No rapper has been as woman focused as Drake since LL Cool J.”
In 2009, MTV opened an interview with Drake by informing readers that “ladies love him, girls adore him.” In the same interview, about the video for “Best I Ever Had,” Drake admits, “The biggest thing about that song is that a lot of women come up to me and say, 'That's my song, because it really makes me feel special.”
Pitchfork reviewed his 2010 album Thank Me Later: “Whereas the unofficial mainstream hip-hop LP rulebook previously demanded a couple 'ladies' night' tracks that were often pandering, insulting, or both, Drake lives for such softness.” But rapper Kendrick Lamar, in a cypher on BET in 2013, took a shot at Drake, rapping, “Nothing's been the same since they dropped ‘Control' / And they tucked a sensitive rapper back in his pajama clothes.” In rapper Common's diss track “Stay Schemin,” his biggest criticism of Drake is that he's soft and makes “ho music.”
Drake's sensitivity and popularity with women put him in line as a descendant of the teen idol of the past, and undoubtedly a number of his fans are teenage girls who scream at his concerts — but we don't hear reports of them causing riots in the street or handwringing about why his fans are so obsessed.
I think it's due to the fact that he isn't popular solely with women and girls. And though his music has crossed over into Top 40 radio from the rap, hip-hop, and R&B charts, he's still seen as a hip-hop artist, not a pop star, and there is no tradition of rioting and hysteria in that genre. These waves are following a set pattern, and without that mold or precedent, I don't think we'll see this type of reaction over a rap artist.
I watched a lot of early Elvis videos for research, and while I enjoy his music, he still didn't do it for me. Sixty years of history and change in regards to music, sex, and the lives of teen girls makes the original appeal hard for me to see.
But whenever the camera panned to his fans, screaming, crying, shaking, and dancing, I felt it. It starts somewhere low in your gut and reaches up to clutch your heart. Your toes curl, your hands shake, you can feel the energy of everyone around you, even when you're alone in your room. The song starts, and it's your song. Everything else falls away, and it's just you, the music, and the man onstage.
You can't speak, tell them what the music means to you, how it gets you through long, hard days, makes you feel less alone, like you are deserving of love of happiness, that you are good. You can't speak, so you scream. (source)
Legolas is more feminine than masculine, and was immediately popular with teenage girls. They sent Orlando Bloom into mega-stardom. How did everyone else react?
An article from 2009:
The man has a record six movies that have grossed $300 million+ in the US, plus another two $100 million+ earners. His popularity was actually a factor in the success of several of those pictures. He has worked with such directors as Ridley Scott (twice), Cameron Crowe, Peter Jackson (thrice), Wolfgang Petersen, and Gore Verbinski (thrice). Counting all of his pictures, his eleven films have grossed an average of $207 million (he’s averaged $253 million if you only count the mainstream studio pictures). His average opening weekend for said wide releases is $61 million. From 2002 until 2007, he was a big-league heartthrob whose poster adorned the walls of many a teenage girl. He was one of People’s ‘Sexiest Men Alive’ in 2006. Yet Orlando Bloom is nowhere to be seen in today’s filmmaking landscape.
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Nor is it Orlando Bloom’s fault that nearly every critic went into Kingdom of Heaven expecting a sequel to Gladiator. Countless reviews complained that Balin de Ibelin, the thoughtful, war-wary blacksmith, was not the brooding, muscle-bound, vengeful Maximus Decimus Meridius and that Orlando Bloom was not Russell Crowe. Whether or not Kingdom of Heaven is a better movie than Gladiator (I think it so, no matter which cut you’re watching) is irrelevant. What was troubling was how few critics (and audience members, few that there were) could comprehend that it was a different movie from Gladiator. If Ridley Scott wanted a Russell Crowe-type character in Kingdom of Heaven, don’t you think he would have gone ahead and just cast Russell Crowe again? They’ve worked together on four occasions (Gladiator, A Good Year, American Gangster, and Body Of Lies), it’s obvious that they get along.
This also ties into the other problem that Bloom has faced... being critically torn apart not because of his acting, but because of the content of the character he was playing. In summer 2004, Orlando Bloom took the supporting role of Paris in Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy. Once again, would you turn down a major role in a big-budget sword-and-sandals epic that allowed you to cross swords with Brad Pitt, have sex with Diane Kruger, and share scenes with onscreen father Peter O’Toole? Yet, whatever issues the film does have, I cannot count the number of reviews that criticized Bloom not specifically for his acting, but for his portrayal of Paris as a spineless, selfish, cowardly idiot, a boy who started an epic war because he couldn’t keep his pecker in his pants. But guess what people? THAT’s the character of Paris. Rather than try to make Paris into a more heroic and sympathetic character, Bloom played him as exactly the sniveling loser that he was.
Bloom’s tragic need to actually do his job haunted him even in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. What so many critics and audience members failed to understand is that it was Orlando Bloom’s straight-man performance that allowed Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow to exist in the narrative in the first place. Yes, compared with Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow, Orlando Bloom looked pretty dull. But that is the burden of the straight man. A lesser actor would have demanded that he be allowed to be larger-than-life and crowd-pleasingly comedic as well, but Bloom knew that it was his job to counter-balance the off-the-wall antics of Johnny Depp. Because Bloom’s Will Turner fulfilled the genre requirement of having a straight-arrow heroic figure, and his relationship with somewhat more-complicated Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) fulfilled the demand for sea-faring romance, Johnny Depp was free to run wild and do whatever he damn-well felt like. (source)
Will Turner is almost as responsible as Legolas for Orlando Bloom's stardom. Again, because of teenage girls. But as we just went over, being feminine and appealing to teenage girls gets you reviled.
Another article says:
Despite the question marks that remain over Orlando Bloom's durability as a film star,[1] the British actor's rapid rise to fame already carries with it academic interest due to the way in which debates surrounding masculinity have coalesced around his ascent. The star's success has been notable for the extent to which it has been read within the British and American media as representative of a shift toward a new model of masculinity in contemporary Hollywood and wider society.
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The promotion for Kingdom of Heaven (KofH) was marked by a certain amount of anxiety surrounding Bloom's masculinity and, consequently, his status as a star. This was manifested by the stress upon the transformation of Bloom's status as both a man and a star through the film. The magazine Film Review, for example, declared that the star “comes of age” in the film, “a movie which shows he has muscle and true grit as well as strikingly handsome looks” (Millar, 2005: 19). The film is said to lay to rest “any lingering doubts that the star is just a pretty face […] who lacked the right stuff to take the lead and dominate a movie in his own right” (Brett, 2005: 7), whilst Bloom's co-star Eva Green adds that, as the central character Balian, “he's turning from […] boy to man” (in Haynes, 2005: 53). Here, then, the star's “pretty face” and “handsome looks” are equated with boyishness and positioned in opposition to those qualities of “muscle”, “grit”, and the “right stuff” that enable a star to “take the lead”, to “dominate a movie” and thus be a man.[2] Such an equation seems rooted in the idea that Bloom is emasculated by his status as a pin-up, upon which his reputation as “a pretty face” is built. Richard Dyer notes how the passivity and powerlessness associated with being looked at conflicts with the notions of power and activity believed to be embodied within masculinity (1982: 66). In addition, Melanie Nash and Martii Lahti highlight the "proximity to both feminized iconography and to female consumers” embodied with the figure of the male pin-up, and the potentially “degrading connotations for male stars" that result from this (1999: 71). Indeed, in a glossy double-page spread, packed full of pictures of Bloom, the girls' magazine Tiger Beat offers a dissection of Bloom's "unique sense of style", picking over his appearance in ways that he is powerless to resist and codifying the star through the terms of fashion in such a way as to produce parallels with the treatment of female stars: “His awesome hair makes you want to run your fingers through it, and the fuller, undone style complements his strong features” (Haver, 2005).
The potential emasculation and feminization of the star embodied within Bloom's status as a pin-up are further compounded by his representation within his films. As the elf Legolas in The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) trilogy, Bloom is characterized by long, flowing blond hair, and the star is often bathed in bright light and backlit, making his hair glow, and accentuating his smooth white skin. Such techniques are employed within the film to stress the spirituality and agelessness of the elves, but have commonly been employed to present female stars (Dyer, 1997: 122-125). Indeed, the trilogy's main female stars, Liv Tyler and Cate Blanchett, also play elves and are represented via a similar range of techniques. Despite the star's feminine appearance, Legolas' actions can be seen as more stereotypically masculine, fulfilling the role of the man of “few words but mighty deeds” (Donald, 1992: 130), expressing himself largely through his bow and arrow.
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Thus, despite Bloom's action heroics in LOTR and, indeed, as the swashbuckling blacksmith Will Turner in the first Pirates of The Caribbean film, the promotion for KofH appeared to pivot on the conflict between Bloom's somewhat emasculated and feminized persona and the kind of masculinity felt to be embodied by leading men in historical epics.
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The star's status as a nurturant male, “emotionally literate, sensitive and in touch with his gentler, 'feminine side'” (Beynon, 2002: 121), is also evident, to a point, within his films and, to a greater extent, in his extra-textual representations as a celebrity. Whilst the character of Legolas in the LOTR trilogy remains a somewhat enigmatic figure, Paris' exchanges with Helen in Troy are marked by their emotional honesty and sensitivity. In his bid to persuade Helen to leave Sparta with him, Paris declares that “If you come, we'll never be safe, men will hunt us, the gods will curse us, but I'll love you, till the day they burn my body, I will love you.” Later, responding to Helen's surprise that he would also leave his palace in Troy to protect them, he adds that “You left your home for me.” Bloom's interviews are marked to an even greater extent by emotional expressivity and allusions to his inner sensitivity. On being asked about how he felt when the filming of theLOTR trilogy ended, the star replied that he felt “Very emotional […] It really brought me close to tears […] I was just reminded of how special the relationships on this film were” (Empire supplement, 2003: 18). The star also explains that he is:
[Q]uite sensitive to women. I saw how my sister got treated by boyfriends. I read this thing that said when you are in a relationship with a woman, imagine how you would feel if you were her father. That's been my approach, for the most part. (in Glock, 2004)
The degree to which Bloom's sensitivity in this instance is shown to be born out of his close relationship to his sister, and "agony-aunt" relationship advice, only accentuates his closeness to a stereotypically feminine sphere, and thus his “new man” status.
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Potential comparisons between Bloom's soya latte puppy and the rugged Crowe were further exacerbated by the fact KofHwas directed by Ridley Scott, the director of Crowe in Gladiator. Indeed, this fact was much trumpeted in the promotion for the film, in a bid to underline Scott's success in this genre.[5] As a result, the publicity for the film stressed the transformation of Bloom's masculinity, with particular focus on the star's physical appearance. For example, attention was drawn to the weight and muscle the star gained for the film. The magazine Film Review mentions that Ridley Scott "knew that Orlando would have to get buffed up to be completely convincing as a knight of the Crusades" (Millar, 2005:19), and we are told by Bloom himself that he put on fifteen to twenty pounds to take the role "into the realm of being more of a man" (in Topel, 2005). Attention was also drawn to Bloom's bearded, more roughed-up look, echoing the representational strategies evident within Troy, in which hirsuteness comes to define male authority, authenticity and strength.
Bloom mentions that, along with the help of his make-up artist, he went for "different levels on the beard at different times to create that masculine, real man of that period" (in Topel, 2005), and Film Review cites images of the bearded star as evidence that Bloom “has successfully thrown off his teen pin-up persona to embody the look of his role” (Anon, 2005: 59). In addition, publicity for the film also played up the more “manly” aspects of Bloom's actions during the making of the film, telling us that the star handled the ancient weapons of combat and the horseriding with “remarkable ease”, and that the star was a "real trooper" (Millar, 2005: 19).
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“Balian doesn't have the capacity for war in the way we might think about it,” Bloom told Empire magazine, “he starts to rake the lands and make them better by building constructions like water wheels” (Anon, 2004: 10). Elaborating on Balian's nature, and his own, Bloom is asked what would prompt his own hypothetical “crusade”. He answers:
Happiness, humanity. I would go on a crusade for humanity. If life isn't about human beings and living in harmony, then I don't know what it's about. And I think as Balian does: He fights for the people, he fights to protect the people and it doesn't matter what color you are. It doesn't matter what religion you are, it doesn't matter what your beliefs are, what sex you are, what sexuality you are. We're all equal in the eyes of god, whoever that may be. (in Topel, 2005)
Here, Bloom's stress on his heightened sensitivity is self-evident. (source)
Hello toxic masculinity, it's been a few seconds since we last talked. It's never been understood that Orlando Bloom's appeal was always in his femininity and open-mindedness.
All of this is crucial to understanding Legolas as a queer coded character, even though being feminine isn't the same as being queer; all elves are feminine because the elven race is fundamentally feminine. Elrond, for example, is feminine but not coded queer. However, Legolas and Thranduil's queer coding extends from their femininity.
Legolas's queerness is subtle in the films. It is shown through his eyeliner in The Hobbit(he is the only only male elf in all six films to wear eyeliner) and his sass. However, his queerness is made explicit in the fandom – the GIFs for sassy Legolas and diva Legolas are endless.
Thranduil, however, is explicitly queer coded in the films (and I have seen a lot of post saying 'bye Legolas, hello Thranduil!' because of it).
Jessica Place explains:
There is one thing The Hobbit movies have uniquely contributed to my life. And that is… Thranduil.
When I first saw him on screen, I involuntarily became possessed by the spirit of RuPaul and audibly declared in the theatre, “Get it, girl!!” It was instantly clear to me that this is his world and that everyone else only lives in it.
The screen representation of Thranduil is like a glorious hybrid of Pepper LaBeija and Cersei Lannister, or in other words, my cup of tea. The high camp stylization of Thranduil has not gone unnoticed by the geek community; just search #thranduil on Tumblr.
The celebration of his fabulousness is not an anomaly. Camp has always been present and adored by many in the world of sci-fi and fantasy. (source)
It's the camp and stylization of Thranduil that makes him queer. How?
RuPaul has brought this particular part of queer culture to mainstream attention, but it goes back much further than him. 'Yas', 'yas queen', 'queen', 'fabulous', etc all originate from Ball Culture, which goes back to 1869 (read first, second, third, fourth, and fifth).
The BTS Thranduil's Wardrobe captures a fair amount of this spirit, but the fandom holds the crown. Fabulous Thranduil (here and here) is infinite, and sassy Thranduil is also extremely popular.
Now, Thranduil as a villain. He's not. Is he the antagonist in several plot points? Yes, but an antagonist isn't the same thing as a villain. The films actually go to great lengths to show that Thranduil has valid reasons for his actions, and in many scenes is actually the morally better one (see here). But Thorin and the other dwarves are the protagonists, so many fans are blinded to their faults and incorrectly cast Thranduil as the villain. In reality, all the character's have flaws; and the only true villains are Smaug, Azog, Bolg, and Sauron.
Now, Tauriel! Her queer coding is slightly different. While the Woodland Realm in general has edgier designs than Rivendell or Lothlórien, Tauriel has the edgiest clothing (especially her hunter's outfit). Even Thranduil's aesthetics aren't as edgy (though they are by far the fanciest), and the only remotely edgy part of Legolas's is his leafmaille. Tauriel also wears much brighter colors than either Thranduil or Legolas. She is the only female elf in all six films to wear eyeliner.
However, the big giveaway with Tauriel is the combination of edgy designs and her three corsets. Other warriors have varying types of chest protection, but not like Tauriel. She goes above and beyond the standard warrior fare with her corsets; one of her three isn't even for conflict.
You may not know that corsets are one of the biggest staples of BDSM fashion. Also, kink and queer have a long and complicated history together:
It does, however, raise a question that is often discussed in sexual subcultures but rarely mentioned in the mainstream: Is kink a sexual orientation? I think it is—and if I’m right, the pearl-clutching mobs’ concern that fictional depictions of BDSM will lure sexually normative people into our lifestyle are as absurd as the fear that Brokeback Mountain would tempt straight people into the subversive fringe lifestyle it portrays. (Shepherding, of course. What did you think I meant?)
Many people, including Dan Savage—who, to be clear, is a vocal and consistent source of advice, support, and advocacy for kinky people—have questioned whether kink qualifies as an orientation.
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Kink can be such an orienting force that, for many of us, it even overpowers gender. One survey from the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom found that 35 percent of BDSM practitioners identify as bisexual—a rate that is much higher than the 1.8 to 2.8 percent rate reported overall.
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For years, I identified as bisexual because I’m sexually attracted to both men and women and have acted on that attraction. But in recent years, as I explored my own sexuality more, I’ve realized that’s not quite accurate. I’m not attracted to men or women as a group—I’m attracted to “tops,” or sexually dominant people, as a group; their gender is irrelevant. Many kinky people describe similar feelings.
This orientation doesn’t only, at times, overcome gender; it also overcomes the strong evolutionary human impulse to avoid pain. Perhaps this should go without saying, but kink hurts. It’s physically painful. (Sometimes extremely so.) Anything that can swim upstream of such a forceful tide must be rooted in something more fundamental and legitimate than merely what’s trendy.
The question of whether kink qualifies as a sexual orientation has been a source of friction between the BDSM and LGBTQ communities for a while. A few months ago, rage erupted when a party promoter scheduled a prison-themed event at a local kinky dungeon during San Francisco’s Pride weekend. Although it wasn’t an official Pride event, some said it was disrespectful to the trauma experienced by LGBTQ inmates in the U.S. prison system. The subcultural infighting sparked by that event echoed debates that have simmered for years.
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I have no interest in playing Oppression Olympics with the LGBTQ community. To be clear: LGBTQ people face far more institutionalized oppression than kinky people do. It’s always tricky to compare groups. My point is not that our experiences are the same, because they’re not. My point is that some shared truths about the experience of sexual and romantic marginalization can be illustrated by acknowledging the places where our paths cross.
Both LGBTQ and kinky people have been irrationally and unfairly accused of preying on children. We’ve both been told to keep our romantic lives private and to not “shove things in people’s faces.” We’ve both been told that our expressions of love, which feel so natural and necessary to us, are damaged, broken, unholy, or less valuable than vanilla, heterosexual, cisgender love. Kinky people, like LGBTQ people (although with less frequency), have also been fired, physically attacked, arrested, or had parenting rights revoked because of our orientations. (One study found that roughly 30 percent of BDSM practitioners reported violence, harassment, or job discrimination because of their sexualities.) Both communities have been told our sexual identities are mental illness.
And both groups have been marginalized or belittled by people who could have been natural allies: Some men and women who marched for interracial marriage rights have mocked the LGBTQ equality movement, just as some people who fought for the LGBTQ community have dismissed kinky people as having, at most, a sexual hobby.
We don’t choose kink. Yes, there are vanilla people who, inspired by popular books or movies, choose to experiment with BDSM. (There are also straight people who choose to experiment with same-sex attraction, as anyone who went to college on a coast can attest.) And some people find BDSM later in life, don’t feel that it’s an orientation they were born with, and yet are full and equal members of the BDSM community (to the extent that such a thing even exists) in every way. But that doesn’t minimize the fact that, for a huge portion of kinky people, BDSM is not a choice, a hobby, or a phase. Kink is often so fundamental to our sexual identities that it has to be, at least in some cases, an orientation. (source)
And:
In the age of sexual liberation, LGBTQ people still fight for acceptance. But even within the community, there is a repressed subculture: queer kinksters. Practitioners of bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism (BDSM) are criticized from all sides. Some queer kinksters seek to remove the stigma and affirm that their sexuality, though alternative, is no more bizarre than “vanilla” or non-kinky sex.
BDSM includes so many kinks that it would take a full-length book to explain them all. But at the core of the debate is the question: is kink “normal” and “natural” in the same sense as other “alternative” sexualities?
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Despite what Garcia calls the “old-guard” values of the local kink scene, many LGBTQ people have found their places in BDSM practice. The National Coalition for Sexual Freedom’s survey found that 35 percent of kinksters identify as bisexual compared to the 1.8 to 2.8 percent rate in the overall population.
The stigma around kink in the LGBTQ community is as common as homophobic statements by straight people. In a post for Out & About Nashville, River Johnson points out that the fight for LGBTQ equality often rests on the need to be accepted as normal. As a result, “any activities that would make us seem more ‘deviant’ is one more thing we’d rather keep in the closet.”
Zannah Breunig agrees, but points out that the presence of LGBTQ people in the kinky world is undeniable.
“Maybe more queer people end up being involved because they’re already assumed to have a non-normative sexuality,” Breunig postulated. “There’s going to be pockets where there’s resistance because in a lot of ways there’s this…gay and lesbian desire to establish themselves as normative. In that regard, there could be a lot of distancing from ‘the perverts,’ the more queer expressions of sexuality.”
However much kink is tied to sex, there are those who don’t see BDSM as a sexual activity. The common misconception about kink is that it’s an “extreme” form of sexual pleasure, when those involved say that this is only sometimes the case.
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Breunig points out that not all kinksters even want to have sex in the traditional sense. For these practitioners, BDSM is a vehicle for intimacy and building relationships that don’t center around what they call “the P and V.”
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This self-exploration can be the ultimate reward of kink. Practitioners emphasize that BDSM is about more than the surface-level qualities.
“We need to stop assuming that everything in the BDSM community is geared towards pain, sex or control,” wrote Johnson. “It absolutely can be oriented toward those things, but it is also an outlet for self-expression, a community, a form of spiritualism, a hobby and enables a variety of relationships.”
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Breunig, too, acknowledges that some in the kink scene hold too tightly to traditional gender roles. But this flaw isn’t exclusive to BDSM, they point out — it’s a reflection of the world at large.
“Any subculture or community is going to be in some regards a microcosm of the larger society,” Breunig said. “There’s places where you can play with those gender roles, like maybe somebody who’s a regular businessman and comes in to wear fishnets and heels and kind of explore things that would disrupt the patriarchy, but then there’s also situations where you get these really butch Dom men who just want to be men.”
Whatever the flaws on the scene, it seems clear that many LGBTQ people find BDSM one more avenue to explore their identities. Whether it’s private play or a public event, kink is here to stay. Garcia says that repressing kinky tendencies leads nowhere, especially for those in the LGBTQ community who may already struggle with embracing themselves.
“Bottling that up and making it feel like you’re two different people is the worst,” she said. “You already have aspects of alternative sexuality. Don’t be afraid to try it out sometime. Recognize that when you say, ‘oh that’s kind of weird,’ you have to have a moment when you look back and say ‘some people think I’m kind of weird, so maybe I shouldn’t be a dick.’” (source)While Tauriel has the edgiest designs and is thus the most masculine elf, she still has a lot of femininity and does not fit traditional or toxic masculinity (which is shown by the dwarven race). This, combined with her kink coding, makes her queer.
Thranduil, Legolas, and Tauriel are all slightly different but very positive examples of queer coding, and it's made even better by the fact that they are greatly loved characters with huge fanbases. So as we go forward let's celebrate them and their fabulousness!
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