Episode 15: Gay People Exist! Put Us in Your Movies!: The Hay’s Code

CW: Homophobia, AIDS

This week the crew talk about the era of The Hay’s Code and how it messed up American cinema for several decades. Mostly, we’re talking about how The Code messed up queer representation in Hollywood and how people in Hollywood are still using the tropes and rules set up by the code today. Specifically, we want to talk about all those queer Disney villains. 

This list goes through ten of the best pre-Code movies you can watch with info about them and link where you can watch!

This link will take you to a video where you can do some additional learning about the history of the silent film era up to when we got sound. It’s really interesting!

This will take you to the full Hays Code document where you can read all the nonsense rules filmakers had to follow.

Here you can see a preview for the movie Wings from the 1920s which featured the first gay kiss. It also has a link where you can buy the movie or rent it.

This link is all about the queercoded Disney villain and then focuses in on Pocohontas.

This is further reading on Mulan. In this episode, we talk about how it isn’t the villain being queercoded, it’s the hero and the love interest, and that goes back to the original ballad. So here is The Ballad of Mulan. It’s much different than the Disney one, and a short read!

This is the article I’m referencing when talking about Maleficent during the show. It also talks about queerness in other Disney live-action movies.

This will take you to Howard Ashman’s website where you can read about his life and acomplishments.