I really have had no idea what coding was since I first saw the word. Can you explain it a bit? From what I understand, it’s mostly a way to bait people into being satisfied without getting representation unless it’s with an alien or robot or something to be symbolic. But still, that’s something that happened a long time ago when it was not acceptable in order to do a foot-in-the-door phenomenon to get it more acceptable. Now whenever I see the words coding it’s really just baiting or offensive.
Sorry it took so long to get to this, but I'm here now and I'm ready to dive in.
I'm going to assume this ask is based upon this post that I made a few months ago. In it, I did use a really good example of coding from the anime Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, in case you (or anyone reading this) needed something for context. Most of what I'll talk about here is attempts by loud fandoms to make their favorites more sympathetic by coding them as some oppressed minority.
Coding, in the simplest terms, is an attempt to draw parallels between a fictional character and a real world demographic.
After typing that, I realized I didn't use simple terms, but my point stands.
We've had many examples of coding through the years, especially in the early days of Hollywood, all the way up until the present. Its happened in the old school black & white movies all the way up to the Disney classics that people love so much. Actually, Disney is one of the most prevalent examples of queer coding in cinema.
What I mean by that is, Disney animators either couldn't, or wouldn't, put LGBT characters in their movies. So what they did instead was coded characters as such. Pretty much every Disney villain is queer coded, from Ursula (based on the fabulous Divine) to Jafar (effeminate and dramatic) and even to Scar (his differentness, being the black sheep of the family and living outside of the norm for the pride, along with the fact that he wasn't "strong enough" to take it over).
And that wasn't an exaggeration. Almost every villain in any animated movie (and even some live action)by Disney is coded as gay...
Ratcliffe from Pocahontas
Gaston from Beauty and the Beast
Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty
Prince Whatsisnuts from Frozen
Captain Barbosa from Pirates of the Caribbean.
The Shadow Man from The Princess and the Frog.
There are others, as well, but some of them aren't as obvious and it would seem like reaching if I tried to explain it.
And make no mistake, all of this was deliberate. They didn't accidentally chose to make all their villains seem gay, that was an attempt to make children (target audience) recognize homosexuality and otherness with being bad. It's also the reason that so many LGBT people identify with the villains of movies, because they were the characters we could relate to. We knew that we didn't resemble the heroes and heroines of the story.
This doesn't occur as much anymore because minorities are pushing for more and more representation, so there is no more having to settle for veiled references that only we would get or understand. Things that we can look at and go, "hmmm, this character is supposed to represent me". We still have a long way to go, but at least we're making progress.
Now, onto my other point.
What I, and others, are complaining about when we talk about those in fandom spaces coding characters for the "uwu" factor, are those examples I talked about in my linked post.
These are the people who stan (much different from a fan) white, male, heterosexual characters who are usually pretty well off financially.
Typically, the stans take those characters and reach to extreme lengths to try and make that character seem oppressed in some way, usually in a feeble attempt to make them sympathetic so they can justify loving this character when so many of their flaws are apparent to, and often pointed out by, everyone else.
Examples include, but are not limited to...
Kylo Ren being "female coded" because he has long hair and emotional outbursts.
Tony Stark being "queer coded" because he's promiscuous (despite being the toxic stereotype that bisexual people have been trying to throw off forever).
Tony Stark being "female coded" because RDJ is only 5'8" where his male costars are all six foot plus.
Severus Snape being "jewish coded" because he had a large nose (actual example I saw)
Stiles Stilinski is "queer coded" because he's awkward and doesn't have a girlfriend for the first few seasons (this one draws my particular ire, because the fans love to scream queerbaiting, despite the fact that there were actual gay characters on the show).
Damon Salvatore being "queer coded" because he's so sassy and such a good dresser.
And there are many more examples. If I were to list every one, this post would be gargantuan. And you'll notice, that the one most often used, is Queer Coded, and that usually has to do with the fact that (aside from the woobifying factor) a lot of these fans are women who get off on two male characters being together much in the same way that straight men get off to lesbian porn. There is a pattern there, but the fetishization of m|m relationships is a topic for another post.
But the one thing all the attempts at coding unsympathetic characters by the fandom has in common is that they're all white, heterosexual men. Given that we're in a time where men are less and less allowed to get away with the shit they've gotten away with for way too long, and given that we have the internet where communities form that point out that bullshit, people feel the need to justify liking these characters by oppressing them in some way.
Angst is a very big thing in fandom, and since most, if not all, of the examples of coding characters revolve around them having problems that they couldn't have by just being themselves, this phenomenon becomes more and more prevalent.
But the most important part of coding a character stems from one thing and one thing only: does that thing exist in the narrative? If you have women in a story, you can't claim a guy is "female coded". If you have gay characters in a story, you can't claim a heterosexual character is "queer coded". Do you have black characters? No, that white person isn't "black coded".
And that right there is what is the most infuriating about this whole situation, the whole reason I made that original post I linked back in the beginning of this one. We have reached a point where oppressed groups are no longer in the shadows. Yes, studios have a long way to go before they have my respect, but we have books and shows and movies and comics out there where the hero is a gay man, where the hero is a woman, where the hero is black, etc.
This willful ignorance in regards to that, all in an attempt to justify characters that they only like because the find the actor or portrayal attractive has got to stop.
