#closeted subtext

[imsonormalipromise]

Mike hiding El in his closet

I saw this post about Mike and closets by @sara-yuna and it got me thinking about and remembering other moments where Mike has closeted subtext, particularly the entire scene where Mike hides El in his closet. I know some people have talked about this before (like in this post by @wheelercurse) but I haven't seen a more detailed analysis (it doesn't help that Tumblr's search function isn't top notch) so I thought I'd give it a shot.

Obviously, on the surface, Mike is hiding El because his mother came home and doesn't know about El. But because he hides her in his closet (and as well as other things I'll be mentioning below), it really points to the idea that Mike is closeted and has been ever since season 1 (whether he was consciously aware of it at the time or not).

(I am not trying to take anything away from El's trauma or disregard it, this is just an added layer to the scene).

What I find backs this up is that the outfit El wears when she's hiding in the closet is almost exactly the same outfit Mike wore the day Will went missing:

They are both wearing grey sweatpants and a dark blue jumper. I believe it's the same jumper, it's just that in some shots the way it's fitted on her looks like it has more of a V-neck shape, but the colour and style is definitely the same.

Obviously El had to borrow some clothes because she didn't have others with her, so it's not simply the fact she's wearing Mike's clothes that's damning. It's the choice to have her wear an outfit we've seen Mike wearing before...especially one that can be associated with Will...

So this means that, to some extent, El resembles Mike whilst hiding in his closet. I mean, come on...that has to point to Mike being closeted!! In addition, whilst El is hiding in Mike's closet (looking like Mike), Mike and his mother have a queer coded conversation at the same time: "Michael. ["Yeah?"] I'm not mad at you. ["No?"] No, of course not. All this that's been going on, with Will. I can't imagine what it's been like for you. I just, I want you to feel like you can talk to me. I never want you to feel like you have to hide something from me. I'm here for you, okay?"

Karen believes Mike is hiding or keeping something from her regarding Will. She would understand Mike feeling lost or scared or sad because his best friend just went missing. But from her wording, it seems that there's something more to it that he's not sharing, and that she's open to listening to and understanding whatever it is. She may be aware of or have suspicions about Mike's sexuality, and if so, it points to her being inevitably accepting.

This conversation is recontextualised in season 4 as it is quite similar to the one Will and Jonathan have, where Jonathan expresses his wish for Will to talk to him more ("I miss talking to you. I, like, really miss it. And I think, right now, we need to talk more than ever") and where he expresses that he'll always be there for Will ("I just, I don't want you to forget that I'm here. And I'll always be here. No matter what"). It's quite obvious that Jonathan was making reference to Will's sexuality here, so it's not a stretch to believe the same could be true for Karen and Mike.

So, to reiterate my point: El is hiding in the closet, wearing the same outfit Mike did prior. And at the same time, Karen and Mike have a queer coded conversation about his feelings concerning Will. Thus, El could represent Mike being closeted.

It's significant that this is from season 1, too, because many people argue that "Mike isn't gay/queer" or that if he was, it "would have come out of nowhere", but this is one of the many hints that it was written into his character from the very beginning. Him being queer and reciprocating Will's feelings would not be because of "fan-service" or for the "woke audience", it would be good writing planned from the beginning! (or, because of the uncertainty of the show's reception and of how many seasons there'd be, at the very least there would've been "seeds planted" about Mike's sexuality so that the idea could be developed in later seasons).

[sunderwight]

It's actually kind of hilarious to contemplate the prospect that the genre shift in SV means that Luo Binghe's harem go the queer route as well and start largely pairing off into lesbian ships with one another.

Mostly because of the sheer scale of Bingge's harem, and the fact that a lot of it was comprised of the members of politically influential families.

Can you imagine the freak-outs that various lords and kings are probably having over the fact that their daughters keep eloping with one another? The practical ones are probably going to be like, well, a political alliance is an alliance, welcome to the family Random Demon Princess! But a lot of them are probably going to be pissed that their bloodline's liable to die out, and that the perfectly suitable match (read: asshole cannon fodder Bingge did away with in PIDW) they arranged for their daughter got interrupted by some lady cultivator kidnapping her from her wedding instead. Imagining several prominent nobles in various realms furrowing their brows together and just being like, is it something in the water? Did some plant do this? Is it like it a cultural ripple effect, the Demon King is gay so now all the youngsters are too?

[ingravinoveritas]

Shot, followed by chaser...

| The Good Fight cast interviews, 2018 vs. SuperGood Live, 2020.

[aflawedfashion]

Elsbeth Tascioni | Elsbeth 1x02 / 1x03

[theninaproject]

glass closet symbolism if i’ve ever seen it

[gayofthefae]

Thinking about the airport scene more as a fully scripted interaction that Mike prepared on the way over that everyone else did not fulfill their roles in.

Script: El will probably kiss him, kiss back. Give her her flowers. "I picked these for you in Hawkins". "Oh! Hey! How you doin'?" to Will: spontaneous, casual. Shoulder punch: platonic. Leave the airport.

Execution: got nervous about saying hi to Will and rambled about flower ratios. Jumped the gun on the Will script and had to start again. Failed the shoulder punch, now it seems like a hug rejection. Forgot to prep for (to convince) anyone but El and Will so when Jonathan greeted him, just said "hey! how you doin'?" in the exact same rehearsed Will inflection. Awkward silence from the failed shoulder punch, impulsively filled it by asking about the painting (instant regret, no follow-ups). Awkwardly looked around for an escape. Argyle? Just say "Oh, hey" again, stay on script from here on out. Weird Argyle hug. Just stay silent if you don't have a "normie" line for this one. Wait for somebody else to leave first.

So...poorly. It went poorly. I can see what he was going for though, the real classic "romantic gesture: flowers, platonic gesture: shoulder punch".

And with this interpretation, it makes more sense why he thought Will was ignoring him and for unrelated or exaggerated reasons. To him, he was just a little awkward and clumsy on accident. (not realizing even had he succeeded, it would have still been a weirdly sudden change)

[waxtrailsonmyshoulders]

My boyfriend (a straight, cis man) just told me that he watched Glass Onion yesterday after I recommended it to him, and then had the AUDACITY to ask me how I know that Benoit Blanc is gay and Hugh Grant is his live-in boyfriend?

Like???? The sky is blue, babe, just gotta open your eyes!!!

For the record, Benoit Blanc: 1. Wears those funky little suits with stripes and patterns and the little scarves. Have you ever seen straight men wear anything that fun and fruity? Or accessorize said no-fun outfits? No, you haven't. 2. Avoids Birdie, a conventionally attractive woman, heavily flirting with him, like the effing Bubonic Plague. 3. Takes long baths in the tub with cute little rubber duckies and soap. FRUITY. 4. Has NO REACTION other than a polite little cough to getting liquid shot down his throat!!!!! 5. HUGH GRANT IS IN HIS HOUSE COVERED IN FLOUR! JFC THEY'RE NOT JUST ROOMMATES!!!

[albertserra]

Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the horror film by Harry M. Benshoff

[rainbowresurrection]

Kinda got a love/hate relationship with the history of K/S because it's like. Can I please have a queer discussion about this 1960s television show without it being reduced to "shipper discourse". I thought Spock and Kirk were homo long before I knew that their characters spawned a fanfiction counterculture. The bisexual dude who wrote the episode that really kick-started the movement didn't know it was going to coalesce into the fan phenomenon that it did, he was just writing what he knew how to write best: the repression of burning male desire, and two dudes doing homoerotic shit. Can I just talk about the repressed burning male desire please, and the implications of a gay angle to Kirk and Spock's story, without it being referred to as shipper discourse. Can I do that. Does this make sense

[markiafc]

in the celluloid closet 1995, when richard dyer talks about the indirect expression of queerness found in films w/ queer subtext. the multiple layers behind this approach: the characters are keeping a secret, the film is keeping a secret, and the audience who knows this unspoken secret is keeping it too. everyone is in the closet together. it's a quote from the documentary i think about forever and ever, various reasons and through various angles. the repressed and silenced audience can connect, can relate, can identify themselves in a repressed and silent picture.

[thedanceronthestreets]

Whenever i hear "tommy wasn't even gay before s7" i genuinely wonder if we watch the same show

[wheelercurse]

Mike Wheeler + Closets

or a brief guide to Mike's queercoding.

Using a closet is the most basic and overused way to queercode a character. This is one of the classic symbolism. Of course, not every time a character is framed next to a closet means that they're queer-coded, it depends on the context, but Mike has this motif when the scene is related to his relationship with El or Will.

The closet is used as a metaphor to represent an LGBT person hiding or repressing his true identity because they conform to society's expectations. Mike's arc has been about accepting his true self and stopping conforming.

Here are some examples of when they used the closet motif to queercode Mike (and Will too):

1.

This is the loudest one of them. El told him she loved him too, and Mike couldn't say it or kiss her back. And that scene happens when Mike is perfectly framed in an open closet. They're telling you what's the reason he couldn't say it.

In the last shot, he's literally left confused, and the closet illustrates his inner conflict: the tension between embracing his true self or conforming.

This scene is after his heartfelt moment with Will, which works as the resolution to their conflict in this season. They promised to keep playing d&d.

During the rain fight, Mike revealed his mindset. He believed that growing up meant stopping playing games and starting dating girls. He clearly was conforming.

2.

The first shot of Mike this season is him reading El's letter while next to an open closet. And then they gave us a shot with a big "one way" sign pointing at his closet. The same way they introduced Will painting his gift to present his subplot this season. Mike's first scene showed his inner conflict this season: embracing his true self or keep conforming.

Then we saw him putting on his Hellfire Club shirt. It seems like he was accepting himself and embracing who he is. That he keeps wanting to play d&d.

But then, he arrives in California dressed as how he thought Californians wear and start acting weird with Will, and he can't even write "love" to El.

3. In the closet (at Rink O' Mania)

I can't believe they got away with this one. The track that plays during their fight at Rink O Mania is called that, and it starts playing when Mike is in the frame.

Yes, it's also called that because El was in the employees-only room hiding, and it's like a closet. But again, who was the one perfectly framed in front of it while arguing with Will that they were only friends? Mike.

Of course, the song is also to queercode Will, who is also in the closet, because this season, his whole arc is about hiding his true feelings for a boy.

Fun fact: This melody is a variant of another called Tribulations, which means troubles and events that cause suffering. It's like they're suffering because they're in the closet.

4. Will's room.

The closet is present when Mike apologizes for his fight at Rink O Mania. You can see Mike sitting in front of the open closet. Again, it’s a symbol for both of them. Mike is opening up more about his feelings, but they still hide their true romantic feelings.

At the end of this scene, Will takes his painting. They’re a step closer to being honest with each other. I talk more about the painting subplot here if you’re interested in reading it.

5.

What if I told you Mike’s queercoding has been there since season one?

This scene alone doesn't give us queercoded vibes because, yes, Mike was hiding El from his mom to protect her. But then... we have this conversation with Karen and Mike.

Karen brought up Will in the conversation and said she didn't want Mike to feel like he had to hide something from her. And Mike was hiding a girl (his future girlfriend) in his closet. It's self-explanatory.

And it's more incriminating that Jonathan and Will's scene, when he's clearly talking about Will's sexuality, it's worded similarly.

Both invited them to talk and assured them they would always be there.

Conclusion: Mike is also queercoded, and saying he's written as straight, it's just plain wrong.

[ingravinoveritas]

David being sold to Michael Sheen on The Last Leg tonight.

[daisyachain]

Restorative or Transformative?: Homoerotic Subtext, The Closet, and Ciphers in Pop Culture. The nature of commercial art is that it’s sometimes bad and inconsistent. Notably it’s also misogynistic. One way in which audiences try to reconcile massive plot holes or gaps in character motivation is by reading secrets or hidden information into a plot.

Commonly, male characters are interpreted as closeted gay or bisexual to reconcile the absence of women from commercial narratives with the generally stunted and poorly-written male characters that form the focus on said texts. This reading has become especially common among a non-heterosexual milieu. Rather than transforming the original text into some radically different new form, this closeted interpretation seeks to make the original text stand on its own as a story rather than a Swiss cheese of dumb writing decisions.

This interpretation only works for a specific type of pop, usually genre fiction. Any story in which tortured male leads eschew women in favour of male-male bonds (because female characters are constantly killed off, written sparsely, or written out, because the production team keeps casting their male buddies, because actors demand to keep having scenes with their bros, whatever) can become a sounder structure if you put one of them in a closet.

The gay interpretation is the natural consequence of shoddy misogynistic writing from ventures like Supernatural, Naruto, all the biggest hits. It’s also the natural consequence of more benignly misogynistic writing like The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes or The Lord of the Rings, where women aren’t necessarily rejected but are simply absent from the worlds of the protagonists. When the emotional crux of the story falls on male-male interactions, this reads as romantic because society at large priorities (definitively heterosexual) romance as the pinnacle of human connection. Two forces are in conflict, the primacy of heterosexuality (read as: romance) and the primacy of men.

Anyway. All that is to say that the typical gay or bisexual reading of male characters in pop fiction comes from a very real place. But, in some places, that’s the default interpretation. Angst, insecurity, secrets, double lives, fatigue, disappointment, restrained passion, stunted personal growth, anyone living in the closet can tell you that it impacts and defines your whole life to know that you live in a way fundamentally incompatible with The Proper Way that life is structured around down to tax law and superstore prices (which assume a heterosexual nuclear family unit). Characters in fiction also tend to have personal problems because that makes them interesting and tasty.

If you’ve grown up on stories with the specific type of misogyny that can be papered over with a closeted interpretation of the male leads, carrying this interpretation over to any male character will make sense more often than not. Even a bit of angst or insecurity? Well of course that makes sense if a character is closeted.

Except that’s hurt a normal part of fiction, and sometimes the closeted interpretation takes away from the point of a character. If a male character is on another axis of marginalization, the closeted interpretation imposed by the slash reading community downplays or trivializes the effects of that marginalization in the plot by overwriting it with another type of marginalization. Alternately, sometimes a character’s heterosexuality is a part of the story. There are some sorts of critiques or investigations of misogyny or masculinity that don’t work if the character has an ‘opt out’ of the cisheteropatriarchal perspective. Not that gay/bisexual men aren’t except from misogyny, but misogyny masculinity and heterosexuality are so tightly linked that it sort of defeats the point if you interpret that character outside of heterosexuality.

All that is to say—the closet interpretation is a quick and easy spice to apply to the weaker parts of action-adventure genre fiction to make it taste better. It draws from a large enough sample of art that it’s pretty widely applicable. Because of that, it’s part of some people’s [my] default interpretation package just because the semi-dull macho show at least gets less dull if you imagine there’s a reason for there to be no girls besides simple hatred. That then forms its own problem where the interpretation that works with your average genre work gets then blanket-applied to all genre works and obscures the places where the closet interpretation doesn’t fix the work, and actually makes it less interesting.

[mourningmaybells]

people putting keith voltron in their media history queerbait analysis video... there is no hope for you guys

[ace-of-d1am0nds]

people on tik tok saying regina george wasn’t gay bc she wasn’t seen on screen kissing a girl

let me be so fucking honest right now that was the gayest fucking shit i’ve ever seen