![]() ![]() “The profuse pleasures of Boyhood spring not from amazement but from recognition-from saying, Yes, that’s true, and that feels right, or that’s how it was for me, too,” wrote the New Yorker’s Anthony Lane. When Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood” debuted to deafening acclaim last year (it’s the only movie to score a perfect 100 on Metacritic), critics noted that its universality was part of its power, the fact that Mason’s white, middle-class upbringing is allowed to stand in for all of ours. There’s a reason for that: In media, straight white men are always treated as the automatic default. It’s one of the many double standards of heteronormativity.” Thus, television and film characters-from Jack Bauer (“24”) to Stringer Bell (“The Wire”)-are generally regarded as straight until proven homosexual. In The Mary Sue, Carolyn Cox (who praises Hamill’s remarks) writes : “If a character is straight, that’s almost always made explicit, but LGBTQ+ fans hoping to see themselves in media are asked to be happy with representation that isn’t even subtext. Thus, Depp’s Everyqueer argument doesn’t quite work. ![]() (I could also interpret them as a giant chicken wearing a human costume.) When your character’s sexuality has to be implied through vague subtext, it serves to make queer visibility all but invisible. Thompson and John Dillinger, that’s kind of dubious), but I could just as easily interpret them as straight. Sure, Johnny Depp might intend his characters in “The Rum Diary” and “Public Enemies” to be gay (given the fact that they’re Hunter S. You can argue that all of these characters are bisexual or queer or pansexual or anything you like, and that’s precisely the problem: By leaving it open to interpretation, we’re allowed to read them as anything we want. In “The Corpse Bride,” the fact that his stop-motion-animated character isn’t gay is even in the title. His “Transcendence” character, Will Caster, is married to a woman (played by the luminous Rebecca Hall, no less). In “Black Mass”-the movie Depp was promoting when he made those comments-he plays the Boston gangster Whitey Bulger, who was married to Lindsey Cyr for 12 years. That’s also the case with Johnny Depp, who told the Guardian last November that “all of his characters are gay.” In an earlier interview with U.K.’s Metro, the actor explained, “I’m very happy to explore all possibilities of a character and really, you know, dive into the role.” For starters, that statement raises a red flag because it’s empirically not true. While fans had long speculated about his sexuality, you could read all six of the novels Dumbledore is featured in without even the faintest inkling that he’s anything but heterosexual. But despite outing Dumbledore during her book tour, there was nary a mention of it in print. ![]() Rowling-who announced that Albus Dumbledore, the wise headmaster from the “Harry Potter” book series, was gay while promoting “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” According to Rowling, Dumbledore had fallen for a rival wizard, Gellert Grindelwald, although the romance wasn’t meant to be. At its worst, this argument serves as a way to not do the real work of inclusion (e.g., creating characters that are overtly queer) by claiming your work was always diverse. In general, I have a huge problem with this gentle retconning of iconic characters-with stars and creators suggesting that they were either gay the whole time (à la “The Sixth Sense”) or that our faves are as LGBT as we want them to be. Hamill’s take has been warmly received on the Internet, and while I appreciate his openness to a queer reading of the character, I don’t think arguing Luke Skywalker can stand in for all identities and sexualities is as progressive as it sounds. This is especially true when Skywalker himself is presented as something of an Everyman, a character who offers a mirror in which viewers can see themselves reflected. These interpretations show that, to a certain extent, Hamill has a point-characters like Luke Skywalker belong to the fans, who can shape them into their own fantasies for the character. As Slate’s David Plotz wrote back in 2000, Luke Skywalker’s sexuality has been a staple of fan-fiction for decades, which even imagines a romance between the young Jedi and Han Solo. This is far from the first time that someone has suggested the protagonist of the original “Star Wars” trilogy might not be straight. “Luke is whatever the audience wants him to be, so you can decide for yourself.” “His sexuality is never addressed in the films,” the 64-year-old actor wrote. On Twitter, Hamill responded to a fan’s inquiry about Skywalker’s sexuality. ![]() Could Luke Skywalker be bisexual? According to actor Mark Hamill, the character’s queerness is in the eye of the beholder. ![]()
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