Director says that Falcon And The Winter Soldier scene wasn't meant to confirm that Bucky is bi
TV Features Falcon
Ever since Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson was introduced in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, it’s been a pretty universal fan-theory that at least someone in the Sam/Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers triangle is gay or bisexual, and there are thousands of YouTube videos or Tumblr posts directing curious fans to the exact line deliveries or meaningful-seeming glances that “prove” it, but—much like with the similar fan-theories with another Disney-owned property—Marvel has so far refused to openly embrace that interpretation of its characters.
Speaking with Variety recently, The Falcon And The Winter Soldier director Kari Skogland addressed a scene in the show’s premiere in which Sebastian Stan’s Bucky laments how out of his depth he is with modern dating apps, noting that a lot of people are posting “tiger photos” and that he doesn’t get it. This, for those of us who are also out of their depth with modern dating apps, is a reference to what is apparently a common trend now in which people (mostly men) make a point to include photos of themselves posing with or near a tiger on their dating profiles. Again, men are usually the ones doing this, so fans interpreted Bucky’s line as a reference to the fact that he’s seeing dating profiles from men, and (since he said this while on a date with a woman) that means he might be bisexual.
Not so fast, says Skogland, who said in her Variety interview that the line is just a joke about “an oddity of the times” and a reference to something that wouldn’t make any sense to Bucky. “Because don’t forget,” Sogland notes, “he’s 106 years old. So he’s just confused by the whole thing.” She says they never discussed whether it was supposed to mean anything about Bucky beyond that, but she also cautions against interpreting any kind of affection between two men as being romantic or sexual in nature. She says Bucky and Sam have grown to love each other by the end of the show, but “there’s no defined sexuality to any of it.”
So she’s not definitively saying that Bucky is not bisexual, which is good, but it does seem reminiscent of the way Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker made a point to give Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron a female love interest just so nobody would come out of that movie thinking he and Finn might end up together. The good news is that there’s going to be a Captain America 4 now, so maybe there’ll be an excuse to reference Bucky’s dating life again in that one.
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As an aside, places that let you take selfies next to a live tiger are sketchy zoos that inbreed and abuse said animals. Just stick to shitty Instagram or Snapchat filters that distort your face because you think that makes you look “quirky”.
Yeah…it’s a filter. That’s it.
I told you, I had no problem with your face. It was the “Nickelback superfan” part of your profile that made me block you.
There’s one not far from Carole Baskin that she must have had a hand in shutting down. It was sad how many people just didn’t question it
“But it does seem reminiscent of the way Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker made
a point to give Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron a female love interest just
so nobody would come out of that movie thinking he and Finn might end up
together” YES IT SURE DOES!
But might I just add that neither of those guys got together with their love interests which made the whole thing even weirder? Like, why do we feel the need to come out (no pun intended) and say “no homo” in 2021? What does it matter? Who cares what your audience’s head canon is? Who is hurt by this?
Also, as much as tumblr can be cringe sometimes, don’t be surprised about the wish for queer representation (and interpretation) within a universe that still mainly consists of men with underwritten female love interests. Things have just been starting to turn around in the MCU with WandaVision, Captain Marvel and appearantly The Eternals.
The lesbian couple’s 1/2 second kiss at the end of RoS was a better love story than any of the other characters got over the course of all three films.
Hell, it was better than the Anakin-Padme love story. Among the nine films, it comes in third behind Han/Leia and Owen/Beru, and one slot ahead of Cliegg/Shmi.
R2/C3P0 should be in the top spot.
Poe/BB-8 gotta be up there, too.
Cliegg and Shmi really felt like the only real married couple despite never being on screen together. I felt his pain during his eulogy for her. Han/Leia feel real, but very toxic. Which is why it fell apart.
Yeah, they also made such a big deal out of that one and I REALLY had to pay attention at the end not to miss it,lol
It does seem strange that they all had flimsy straight love interests rather than no interests at all. And Bucky was born in 1915 or something, so I can easily accept that he’s a little repressed and was checking both boxes on his Tinder signup with at least a little curiosity. What’s the harm in it?
I actually liked that he has no problem dating outside his race. You all saw how he was checking out Sam’s sister. Lol
But there aren’t really any love interests in any of those movies that I can think aside from the two obvious couples. So…?
Is it because of worldwide markets? That sucks but I bet it is.
Yes. It’s because of the worldwide markets, particularly China. And before someone comes at me, China does have very strict rules about portrayals of homosexuality and gender nonconformity in film.
Yes, Farewell My Concubine is a Chinese film but it was promptly banned by the Chinese government and only begrudgingly given a limited engagement after its win at Cannes brought the censorship international attention and threatened China’s bid at hosting the Olympics.
Yes. It’s because of the worldwide markets, particularly China. And before someone comes at me, China does have very strict rules about portrayals of homosexuality and gender nonconformity in film.They absolutely do, but I don’t believe that’s why Disney made that decision.Bohemian Rhapsody was released in China. They cut it to shit, but it was released and did well – even played for weeks after it stopped playing in US theatres. Same with a lot of other movies with queer characters. Time and again studios simply make the movie they want, then cut out the bits China’s censors find objectionable.I mean, we’re seeing entire TV series and movies editing around having to change entire plotlines in the wake of COVID, or removing entire characters due to them turning out to be a serial sex pest, and doing a good enough job for their home audience, let alone the foreign one. And that’s reacting after the fact. Disney clearly knows the international market demands well enough to make these Foreign Audience cuts a part of the production process, and make it absolutely seamless.Disney didn’t simply fail to make an easily edited-around queer love story – they actively added opposite-sex love interests to both character’s storylines to dispel the notion that they could be in love, then tried to mitigate by showing a two second lesbian kiss from Unnamed Extras #7 and #32 that could be cut out by an intern during their lunch break.They don’t get to use the “But China” excuse. They could have catered to both audiences seamlessly, and decided not to.
Is it because of worldwide markets? That sucks but I bet it is.Have you seen the reaction of star wars fans at the presence of a woman in the sequels ?
No, it’s not because of the foreign market.
It can be two things.
Yup, that monster is calling from inside the house.
For sure, don’t wanna piss off the CPC. That’s why the only queer representation in their movies has been completely unessential to the films and is easily cut for Chinese release.I’m curious what’s going to happen in Eternals, since there are actual main characters who are LGBT. They’ll have to either cut or film alternate scenes for them portraying them NOT as a couple, or I guess just not release it there (yeah right).
I think they’ll do what Birds of Prey did where they said that Renee’s ex was her superior in voiceover but the two characters never explicitly say what their relationship was diologue-wise.
I’m 80% sure that both of those “love interests” were actually added to seed Disney+ spin-off series if they had been better received. So, one cynical interpretation vs. another.
Who cares what your audience’s head canon is? Who is hurt by this?Exactly! These queer interpretations exist largely, if not entirely, because queer representation is still, especially in big-budget, popular franchises like Star Wars and the MCU, practically nowhere to be seen. So the least Disney can do is not go out of their way to rebuke those interpretations.The Poe-Finn ship hurts absolutely nobody. It isn’t incestual or otherwise abusive. It’s just two dudes. What people are hurt by is not seeing themselves, their families, their friends, their everyday represented in popular media. And, oh boy, this is usually where someone starts in with the gaslighting “ain’t it a shame close male friendships can’t exist without being read as queer” crap. Those close male friendships are still being read as straight and narrow by the overwhelming majority of the audience (and I’m including myself in this instance because the Poe-Finn thing never occured to me at the time and I still don’ t see it); so how about leaving the minority in peace. And besides, sometimes close male friendships are actually queer. So there.This just infuritates me. What a boon it would be to queer communities and to everyone else for Bucky Barnes to be a confirmed bisexual. The only people who’d object are those whose opinions aren’t worth repeating. Unleash the gay, Disney!Ffs.
I still remember Riann Johnson either liking or retweeting some cute, g-rated Finn-Poe fan art. I have no illusions that he had the power or could have made that a real ship, but he didn’t do anything to kill it either. I mean, I can get annoyed at the Tumblr set’s delusion that their slash ship MUST be canon or it’s homophobia, but I’m equally annoyed at transparent attempts to sink popular ships or attempts to gaslight fans into thinking they are seeing things. On the latter front, some creators and actors have totally admitted to playing up the homoeroticism knowing nothing will come of it only to have the officially position be “you’re seeing things, perv.”
I am unfamiliar with the Tumblr set’s attitudes and tactics, but I can’t say I disagree that fear of the queer is at play. Whether it’s the PTB’s or certain movie markets’ or both is moot. Creators torpedo conventional boy-girl ships all the time, and it’s usually solely a matter of “C’mon, folks, it’s too late in this film series to throw Kirk and Uhura together just because you still want to see Chris Pine and Zoey Saldana touch mouths.” But as for the likes of Poe and Finn, plot continuity or writer integrity or whatever ain’t why the people in charge flat refuse to make them canon. Like I said before, I’m just infuriated we’re still here. I don’t want to be dead and buried before, I don’t know, Wonder Woman or Captain Marvel or Black Widow get to make eyes at a lady, or shows like Superman and Lois premiere with one of the sons missing their boyfriend back in Metropolis or being enticed to stay in Smallville because the star linebacker smiled at them the one time.Bucky should be bi, is what I’m getting at. Just, ffs, let him be bi.
Around 2015 there was the holy trinity of queer baiting genre tv shows: Supernatural, Sherlock and Merlin and it was very Tumblr driven. All three were brimming with suggestive scenes, onscreen gags about two guys being into each other and some actors/creators basically admitting it was mostly intentional. Then, the producers/networks/higher ups would deny it. Hannibal was in there too, but it’s such a weird case in that the creator was aggressive about not straightening out the leads, even if he couldn’t make them gay. There were never any promises any of it would become canon onscreen but at least some of it was well-intentioned encouragement of queer fans’ imaginations. Unfortunately Tumblr had a culture of entitlement, tinhatting and a belief that if they insisted hard enough the show would start becoming their fan fiction. But even to this day any mainstream discussion of this also brings out straight fans who insist that the characters’ are just friends and anyone who thinks otherwise is seeing things. And the truth is from a business sense, straight male dollars are the most valued (not fair, not right but true) and networks were not going to fully go there. Thus, queer fans were left feeling baited, even the non-delusional ones. To this day there is a debate about whether the creators who admitted stuff were baiting fans or just telling fans they weren’t crazy for seeing stuff. In the end, Hannibal was canceled. Merlin ended. Sherlock crapped out. Supernatural continued on for so long they ended with one of the characters admitting he loved the other before being dragged to hell. But now that it is 2021, there’s no reason why they can’t make Bucky bi even if they aren’t going to turn the show into Schitt’s Creek with superpowers. Deadpool and John Constantine are hugely popular characters among the coveted straight male demo – so it really wouldn’t hurt the franchise. Just write it as a part of his character.
Thanks for the Tumblr insight! I watched most of Merlin (no way was I sticking around to watch Arthur snuff it; such was my love) and all of Sherlock, at some point becoming aware of their ships. Regarding the latter, I recall thinking the world would be better off if Sherlock and Watson got together, thereby subjecting only themselves to their combined assholery.Didn’t some interviewer ask Chrisopher Nolan about the Arthur-Eames ship years after Inception? I can’t find the interview now and I hope I’m not imagining things. But if I remember correctly, and I may not, Nolan’s response was something along the lines of, “No, that wasn’t the intention, but go for it, nerds.” Right on. Also, aren’t most of the dude-dude shippers the straightest of straight women? Again, I can’t cite that now, but I feel it so deeply in my bones that I’m sure at some point I’ve read scholarship on it and what motivates it. Kind of shines a new light on the Tumblr set’s (founded and/or unfounded) protests.
I didn’t know that about Inception, but I can imagine Nolan just saying “you do you,” especially since it’s a film with a closed narrative. Also, the end of Merlin: tears. The whole thing with straight women shipping male/male pairings is a lot to unpack and there has been scholarship about it. There’s a Japanese genre Yaoi that specifically serves this demographic and so they are now called Yaoi Fangirls even when its outside of anime. I’m not an expert – I write scholarship about queer imaging and metaphor so I come across it – but from what I understand it seems motivated by internalized misogyny, a desire to see two hot guys, attraction to men who display traditionally feminine sensitivity onscreen and possessiveness toward characters. If I can’t have him, I won’t tolerate him with another female. On top of that, many female characters in genre properties are incredibly underwritten and only there as a love interest. So, there is a case that there are many relationships between male characters onscreen that are just more interesting. That’s certainly one reason why people see things in Bucky and Steve.
I know so much about yaoi thanks to South Park
I don’t think it has to be assumed that yaoi fans are self-loathing misogynists. In fact, it feels kind of derogatory toward women if, when a woman says they like something that society says they ‘shouldn’t’ like, we immediately leap to telling her she doesn’t really like that, it’s only because of her false consciousness and profound psychological issues.
It doesn’t seem a great mystery to me. Lots of women like the idea of two men together, whether that’s sexually or romantically. And conversely, lots of men like the idea of two women together, whether sexually or romantically. Why must this be pathologised, and specifically in a way that demeans women and disregards their interests?[If explanations were needed, I’d suggest: same-sex pairings offer an escape from constrictive heteronormative relationship cliches; they make it easier for the viewer to not automatically project onto the character of their own sex, increasing the fluidity of identification while also rendering the fantasy ‘safer’, by not requiring the fantasiser to ‘commit’; same-sex fantasies often involve rebellion against social norms (which again is easier when the viewer can keep more psychological distance from the rebel); they’re still slightly (titillatingly) taboo for many people; and two hot people having sex is doubly hot.]
It’s entirely true that picking up on queer subtext, especially in narratives packed with queer baiting, and fantasizing about it is harmless for most straight girls and women. But the more obsessive manifestations are absolutely born of uglier things, as in most toxic behaviors. The entitlement and the refusal to accept alternative interpretations of text design to have multiple interpretations or even truth (like your favorite actor or boy band member is straight and has a girlfriend or wife) is born in part by self-hatred. There’s also the element of appropriation, where non queer people see themselves as victims of homophobia because canon reality won’t match their fantasy. There’s issues here. But I concede that there’s probably a group for which this is just harmless fantasy, and their voices get drowned by the more negative ones.
It’s true that there are some obsessive fans on the internet – although I’d say they’re a tiny minority of M/M fandom. [I happen to, by some weird chain of events, be GR fans with several people who write M/M fanfiction or in one case even published novels, and although their fetishism is a bit intense and weird – as fetishes are for those who don’t share them – I don’t find them or their friends/fans toxic at all. Slash is a huge community, and from what I can see only a small percentage of it is toxic about their fandom.]But I think that even in those cases, we don’t usually need to go as far as psychoanalysing them and diagnosing self-hatred. Unfortunately, both “obsessive interest in a pop culture item” and “refusing to accept reality when it disagrees with your preconceived notions” are so incredibly, ubiquitously widespread that they hardly seem in need of an explanation!
But there still remains the issue of appropriation. Queer narratives written by straight people becoming dominate over queer narratives written by queer people in number and influence should be at least discussed. Although, I also should point out that I was responding to someone asking about straight women yaoi fans. My understanding of the history is that OG slash fans were overwhelmingly queer women, which changes the conversation. I’ve not read any analysis of what their motivations were/are – conscious or unconscious. But your point is well taken in that it’s likely a misrepresentation to portray self-hatred as the dominant impulse for most straight female slash shippers. It’s a factor, too often, but probably not the dominate one.
“dominate”The word you are looking for is “dominant”. I’m really hoping that your job “writ[ing] scholarship about queer imaging” is in a language other than English.
*dominant
“from what I understand it seems motivated by internalized misogyny, a desire to see two hot guys, attraction to men who display traditionally feminine sensitivity onscreen and possessiveness toward characters. If I can’t have him, I won’t tolerate him with another female.”Oh man, I don’t even know WHERE to begin with this. Let me try anyway.“motivated by internalized misogyny”What. Enjoying male–male pairings or watching men fuck is misogynistic how? “a desire to see two hot guys”You actually got this right: hot people are hot. Watching them fuck, or imagining they might, is hot. Sex doesn’t matter.
“attraction to men who display traditionally feminine sensitivity”Again, WHAT. My personal preference for watching hard-bodied, masculine men fucking each other in very manly and equal ways aside, are you just making this up as you go? Part of this argument *might, maybe*, hold water for teenagers and people who like yaoi (as, if my memory serves, the characters in the genre are somewhat slim in build, and sometimes ambiguous in appearance)… But it’s a *very* weak argument and seems rooted in nothing.“possessiveness toward characters.” and “If I can’t have him, I won’t tolerate him with another female.”Again, watching, or imagining, sexy people get nekkid and do sexy things to each other is sexy. Possession might be nine tenths of the law, but it’s not relevant here.In summary: “I’m not an expert”That much is painfully obvious.
FWIW, the genre is not really called ‘yaoi’ in Japan. And while the patriarchy is at least a motivation for some female m/m shippers, the situation is a bit more complicated than that.
It’s impossible to know because fandom is pretty nebulous. In my experience, it’s full of lesbians. Like a woman going ‘omg i’m gonna write my new female friend m/m porn omg she’s so cool oh god it’s a crush oh god now we’re married’ is an actual cliché in many areas of fandom.
Isn’t it funny how Deadpool remains popular with straight guys even though the character is canonically pan-sexual? Hell, in Deadpool 2 it’s blatant about his interest in Colossus, and there are hints of his interest in Peter and/or Dopinder. NTW? They fight like only siblings or lovers in denial could. (Yeah yeah, I know that NTW is gay, not bi. But “pan-sexual” means “…not limited in sexual choice with regard to biological sex, gender, or gender identity.” We’re talking Deadpool here. It doesn’t have to make sense.)(Literally, I would not be surprised to see him wanking to a Lodge cast iron frying pan hanging on the wall.)(Did I just give away my kink?)
John Constantine, too. Ultimately, I think it’s cool that straight men embrace Deadpool, even if movie studio/tv studios are timid about portraying that in adaptations. But they are hyper-masculine characters and their sexuality is used as a signifier of rebellion. It has echoes of the way so many straight men idolize beatnik writers and many of them were bi or pansexual. I think the pan sexual joke was made in the first season of Schitt’s Creek. “Isn’t that a cookware fetish?” It’s all good.
I know little about Constantine, and nothing at all about Schitt’s Creek, but I’ll take your word for it. I don’t pretend to be the first to ever use that joke, but it seems the obvious one and I tried to phrase it cleverly.
While I agree about the films, the Superman & Lois link seems tenuous to me.
The lead characters of Batwoman and Legends of Tomorrow are both gay or bisexual women; on LoT, that character’s (reciprocated) love interest has also become a major protagonist. The lead character’s sister (who is also one of the core cast) on Supergirl is a gay woman (who has had a bunch of storylines about her love life). At least two major protagonists on Arrow were gay men. Legends of Tomorrow has a bisexual man as a major protagonist (and made his love for his ex-boyfriend central to the plot of one season), and has had other prominently- (if briefly-)featured gay male couples. The Flash has had gay male second-string characters. Black Lightning has a major protagonist who is a gay woman.
ALL of the CW DC shows UNTIL Superman & Lois had gay characters, and on all but The Flash they were prominent protagonists, including the leads of two of the shows. It would certainly be fair to complain that it probably wasn’t a coincidence that the three, maybe four (Sara, Kate, Alex; I’m not sure how you’d rank Ava vs Constantine) most prominent gay roles on these shows have all been super-hot lesbians (or bisexual women), and to ask where the line between ‘representation’ and ‘exploitation’ really is; but if Black Widow making eyes at a woman would be good enough, the CW shows are all way past that point!
Addendum: A better informed friend of mine told me that Finn and Poe were supposed to have a storyline together in The Last Jedi and Johnson was told to separate them. She didn’t know it it was ever confirmed that this was to discourage Finn-Poe shippers, and it apparently wasn’t Johnson’s idea. Although, if TIIC knew anything, they’d know that shippers love reunion scenes.
That reminds me of how Kelly Marie Tran’s been saying she ships Raya and Namaari in Raya and the Last Dragon. Cool, but it feels meaningless when it can’t really be said in the text of the movie.
Mark Hamill and Leonard Nimoy were always super gracious and said if you think Luke or Spock is queer, then he is queer. You have every right to interpret it that way. Back when they said it, it was a radical position. But now, not so much! I think Kelly Marie Tran probably means well and has little to no power, but yeah, it does feel empty.
Just imagine some poor disney employee having to go through tumblr and twitter hashtags to make absolutely sure no one is even THINKING gay stuff
Now imagine that employee is gay.
Honestly, the only people in that series who Boyega DIDN’T have explosive sexual chemistry with were Gwendolyn Christie and Kelly Marie Tran.
The sexual tension between him and BB-8 was off the charts!
Yup, that’s why my ship of choice is Finn/R2
All about Finn/Han, my dude!“Mr. Big Deal”
You know its odd. I hated the prequels but I still have watched them more then once and appreciate parts of them. I have never rewatched Rise of Skywalker. I really don’t understand how they could fuck up this bad. Considering how well they handled the Mandalorian and how consistent and fun the MCU continues to be. How did they fuck up Star Wars this bad.
It’s reminiscent of when the Sirius/Remus pairing was popular in Harry Potter fanfic, and suddenly the former’s childhood bedroom is decorated with posters of Muggle girls on motorcycles, and the latter saddled with a truly bizarre pregnancy and abandonment storyline with a much younger and ill-suited woman. It honestly made both Remus and Tonks’s scenes a slog to read. There were fan conspiracy theories, but Rowling wasn’t suspected of regressive views back then.
I have zero trouble believing that Sirius would cover his room with Muggle girls on motorcycles, haha.Lupin and Tonks, though. Yeesh.
Yuuuup. Its more family friendly to have a guy marry and impregnate a woman 13 years his junior and later abandoning them than having two men of the same age to be in love.
With RoS, Isaac just played poe as gay in the last film, he was pretty upfront about being more than happy to explore that with Boyega (I mean, who wouldn’t).
I think the answer is China. Everyone desperately wants a piece of that China market and an openly gay character isn’t making it past the government censors to even get a public screening.
They won’t let the characters be openly queer because they make bank on exporting these movies to more socially conservative parts of the world where that wouldn’t fly. That’s it. I guess that’s what we’ve got fanfic for
Yeah, I have mixed feelings on it where I want to see more Frodo/Sam relationships that show healthy friendlove between men and where it’s normalized that male friends can be that way without the gay jokes, but that’s also complicated by the complete lack of LGBT, especially bi representation.
The straights have a real fucking weird ideas of hetero-wash fanon queer characters, don’t they? Wonder Woman turns into a nun after banging one guy in WW1, then commits a sex crime with magic. Poe gets retconned into being a drug dealer with a girlfriend he abandoned.
They didn’t give either Poe Dameron a female love interest to stop people thinking he was gay. The character was never written gay. The audience can have any head canon they want but need not to be hurt by the fact that the character does not end up the way they imagined
“Scene that no reasonable person could conclude any sexuality from, was indeed not doing that”
It’s unreasonable to get the impression that a man who talks about things he sees in men’s dating app profiles might be interested in men?Makes perfect sense.
they’re just as likely to be competition as they are potential dates, so i agree that it’s not conclusive and could go either way. in other words, it’s reasonable to think of both possibilities, because it doesn’t really confirm anything at all. there’s not much reason behind deciding it can only mean one thing, with so few details.i’m certain that even in the MCU, if there are dating apps/sites, there are probably at least a few accompanying “how to get more matches! how to make an appealing profile!” articles or whatever that could easily mention a photo trend like that.
I’ve definitely seen plenty of women on dating apps posing for tiger photos.
“Marvel has so far refused to openly embrace that interpretation of its characters.”Why isn’t it the bi-obsessed viewers who “have refused to embrace” the actual characters as they appear on screen? Fans forcing the studio to accept their shitty interpretations sounds more like a DC thing anyway.
Weird Marvel fans have been shitting themselves ever since Idris Elba portrayed Heimdall a decade ago, and have found new and exciting things to get up in arms about ever since. It ain’t just “a DC thing.”
If they wanted to disabuse people of that premise they could have just said it— the way the director did. However, when the head writer is asked about it and his answer was “keep watching” rather than just shooting it down then it’s fair that audiences might have expected something.
The idea that anyone involved in this show has left any ambiguity about Bucky being bi is simply absurd.
Up until this series he’s been too preoccupied and too much of a side character to have anything approaching a romantic interior life. (I think he had arranged a double date with Steve in the first CA movie?) I think it’s fair enough that audiences could interpret a relationship strong enough to go against governments and close friends is more intimate than most friendships would be. In most other circumstances fans would be fans and and just extrapolate whatever they want from what’s on screen— or ignore it all for their own fanfic or whatever. I just think that early interview soured me. I never would have even dreamed they would have the gumption to make a such a major player of their narrative universe LGBT… had Spellman’s non answer given the illusion they might explicitly answer something— maybe even as an aside. https://www.nme.com/news/tv/the-falcon-and-the-winter-soldier-writer-addresses-bisexual-bucky-fan-theory-2908714“That’s not my focus with his story” or “who knows what others might intend down the line” or the director’s straight up “no” are all answers that help nip that in the bud instead of playing it coy with “keep watching and find out.”But when Disney keeps patting itself on the back with “representation matters” and they hype a bit player and a literal extra kissing in Star Wars, forced drag and a subsequent wink being an “exclusively gay moment” in a live action remake, or introducing two potentially major characters who are gay and bi but get magically written out before they go through puberty and their first crushes or whatever— then in the aggregate it’s kind of frustrating, like waiting for a gay tertiary lead in a movie that doesn’t have a trailer yet. (Or how they banished a teen coming of age show to Hulu for being too mature, but F&tWS has a surprising amount of murder committed by the good guys, constantly uses the one cuss word they’re allowed to use on the platform apparently, and has Captain America implicitly decapitate an innocent man— yet they’re convinced by the end all audience members loved him because he never went full MAGA.)Also that somewhat sets aside the fact that in a lot cases Marvel once forbade its authors from making non-straight orientations explicit, so subtext was often the only thing fans and creators had to go off of for decades before they were allowed to make things textual. The MCU adapts things on the fly enough and as best as I remember has never even tried a 1:1 adaptation of any stories or character back stories— so why not opportunistically have a character be bi?Especially when I think he’s only been around in his current form for about 15 years and I think the only character he’s kissed on panel is Black Widow? “Oh he’s bi” is drastically less bold a move than “oh he’s into necrophilia” (and in any case I don’t even remember the two exchanging speaking lines at any point in the movies).
“I think it’s fair enough that audiences could interpret a relationship strong enough to go against governments and close friends is more intimate than most friendships would be.”I don’t. This mindset eliminates the concept of “friendship” entirely and is ultimately selfish on the part of bi-shippers. There are plenty of societies today in which levels of male intimacy with each other are higher than those in America that have absolutely nothing to do with sex. I have friends for whom I would go to great lengths to support too, but that doesn’t mean I want to fuck them.Bucky dates women in the 40s. He reminisces about dating women during Civil War. He lets himself get set up on a date with a woman in this latest series. Sorry, jury’s out on this one. “Bucky is bi” is a complete ass-pull, just as much as it is for Steve Rogers who fell hard for Peggy Carter and carried her picture in his compass, and who was the first person he thought of when he woke up in the modern world, and who was the person he ultimately returned to at the end of his journey.Keep watching and find out”Yes, how dare the interconnected long-running multi-chapter MCU story tell people to keep watching. The nerve of those guys! /S
Again, it doesn’t have to be sexual or anything, but going off the death of the author or whatever and if people want to go off anything that isn’t canceled out by what the story explicitly stated— a man holding his relationship with someone he knew nearly 80 years ago over the desires of his friends and government matches any number of romances where the grand majestic gesture is holding a boom box and annoying her neighbors, holding cue cards so you can seduce your best friend’s wife, joining a rebellion primarily because your love interest supports it, or intimately smelling their clothes when they’ve been beaten to death for cruising.There are plenty of instances where people and/or characters have been uncomfortable with their orientation and either tried to live the life expected of them at the time and got beards. Or they only became comfortable with expressing a side of their lives after times changed or they moved to a place where they wouldn’t fear being judged as much.Anyway though, I haven’t found textual evidence of it yet but apparently there was a podcast appearance where Spellman did apologize for the choice of words with “keep watching [to find out]” since there were so many other ways of saying “I had no plans but who knows later or with someone else.” Of course I like these stories too much to just stop watching because a character wasn’t gay/bi, since they’ve gone 23 films and two TV shows that actually count without much by way of explicit LGBT representation. But it is a little annoying when they keep making promises or there is directorial or actor intent and they won’t even commit to it for American audiences (like they shot some scenes where it was slightly more explicit Valkyrie was in love with one of her fellow soldiers and they cut it for flow, or two of the Dora Milaje were meant to be in a relationship but at some point they backed off either from fear or to give Daniel Kaluuya a bigger role).They can promise all this increased representation down the line, but if they keep putting it off or making a bit deal out of inconsequential beats then it seems a little hollow. It will be 25 films an until an Asian person is the main lead (or even there are more than two Asian people with names who talk to each other about something) or I nearly thought that Danny sidekick is the closest they’re getting to a Latino superhero. However I guess The Eternals has a lot of heavy lifting where they will finally get a deaf character (Hawkeye is normally meant to be), Latina, more Asians, a gay tertiary hero, or non-evil Middle Easterner who isn’t Israeli.
There are plenty of instances where people and/or characters have been uncomfortable with their orientation and either tried to live the life expected of them at the time and got beards. Or they only became comfortable with expressing a side of their lives after times changed or they moved to a place where they wouldn’t fear being judged as much.
The sheer volume of evidence of Bucky’s heterosexuality that you’re demanding that everyone ignore is simply ridiculous at this point. Go ask Sarah Wilson how gay she thinks Bucky is when he’s flashing that smile at her on multiple occasions.
Let me just leave this here for you, because you’re reaching.
Up until this series he didn’t interact with ANYONE romantically. His one comic romance is now dead, and I hardly remember them even being in the same frame or talking to one another.Yes Stan has great chemistry with Sarah— but I thought he had great chemistry with the Japanese bartender woman or with his therapist too. Or basically everyone that Stan shares a bunch of screen time with. But none of that rules out that the character could have been interested in men as well and they had one line that apparently mistakenly opened that up as a possibility.
My main beef is that *I wouldn’t have even seriously dreamed* there would be a chance Marvel were that brave, if Spellman didn’t say “keep watching” for answer. I am fully aware that Marvel keeps promising future representation, but based on precedent I assume it will continue to be underwhelming on screen where the big money is. There have been teams like the Young Avengers where basically all but one of the cast members have been LGB, but I just would like to finally see any of these LGBT characters as close to the main protagonist of a story rather than 57th billed cast member who doesn’t have an actual name.
Bucky was shown on a double date in his first appearance in The First Avenger! Please, stop, you’re embarrassing yourself with this willful misreading of MCU events.
…I brought that up in the first place.
I agree, you did undermine your entire premise way back in your 2nd comment. That’s why I described your further ramblings as “embarrassing,” because even you know that you’re wrong.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/sebastian-stan-calls-falcon-winter-141600897.html
the thing is, good ol’ Mortimer Mouse owns the mcu now so… i’ve really made my peace with any main characters like sam or bucky getting to be anything but straight. they’re too concerned with ultimately playing to the conservative middle america that they perceive buttering their bread, and they’d always rather throw a ‘low cost’ character in to pretend they have diversity in that arena. the only way we got loki (potentially? i’m not sure if it got officially confirmed or not) as bi, is because he was already lgbt in the comics. same thing happened with star wars, poe’s a main character and they wanted something to point to, to show he’s So Straight Guys, so they tossed in keri russell in a face hiding helmet (yet another war crime for them to answer for) to show that he definitely, absolutely has sex with women guys, and then sprinkled in two barely named characters to kiss in the climax, so they could have someone or something to point to as ‘represensation’ when people asked.
I don’t know if you were going for “women guys” or “women, guys,” but I really enjoyed when I thought it was the former.
Two things:1) That helmet looked awesome, and Russell still managed to be sexy in it. But yeah, some actual shots of her face would be nice.2) I’m less angry about that sequence being used to no homo Poe than I am about it saying he used to be a drug dealer. Way to stereotype a Latin character in a whole other galaxy, Disney!
two things back- 1- fair, it did look cool but, with keri being such a phenomenal actress as well as beautiful, it feels like they actively handicapped themselves.2- oh trust me, i’m there with you about that too LOL, it was particularly galling for abrams to toss that into poe’s backstory (in my opinion out of sheer laziness, because he needed a route for the story to take the group to kijimi and that droid that can read sith or whatever) when he had an excellent extended canon backstory to be used?? his mom was literally leia’s personal pilot for god’s sake. i know extended canon from the tie-ins doesn’t always get looped in, but it’s just ridiculous that they went with making him a ‘spice’ runner when the work was done for them.
make him bi, who care. jerking off dudes with that big cyborg arm.
would it be cheating if he used an arm that wasn’t his on himself?
I’d use The Terminators as well if that’s what ur asking.
they are robisexuals.
Captain America and the Winter Stranger
But he’s righthanded. He really doesn’t think to jerk off guys with his robot arm.
Bucky Blowjob lips was his military nickname for a reason
Why would anyone ever wanna get jerked off with a super strong robot hand? That shit’s too dangerous, get a sextoy arm attachment like the MOTU Trapjaw figure.
I’m surprised he didn’t mention the plethora of dating app photos taken at Machu Picchu. Am I the only person who’s never been there?
I’ve been there… but with my wife. So, I need to photoshop her out for the dating apps.
“I need to photoshop her out for the dating apps.”If you need any tips on the best way to photoshop out a spouse, I am sure your wife would be happy to provide them.(You threw a big fat slow softball and I had to take a swing.)
… took me a second, but I got there.
“took me a second, but I got there.”That’s what she said
just like the expectation that Mephisto would show up in WandaVision, certain cohorts of fans are up in arms about the seeming non-confirmation that Mr. Barnes is bisexual. (and thus, a quiet rebuke to the notion that Steve Rogers might also be bi..)
I guess because I’m a little older, I haven’t engaged with fan-fiction regularly from a young age, in particular, the slash fiction that various folks come up with online over the past 20+ years; so the notion that Bucky is “probably” bi as a dramatic retcon (especially when juxtaposed to his Greatest Generation military member origins and all of the macho gender mores associated with the WWII time period) is a little above my head; that kind of casual fantasizing about the backgrounds of characters just never occurs to me. For some, the idea that Steve would go to obscene lengths (in Civil War) to protect his childhood buddy (and vice versa) is “absolute proof” of being on the LGBTQ+ spectrum. I disagree, but…
Every kind of fan service isn’t going to happen, and it sets of a kind-of dangerous dynamic. On one end of the spectrum we’ve seen the vicious reactions in ‘bro culture’ to the Captain Marvel film, Black Panther, and the recent Star Wars films. Just the same, all of the ‘ultra-easter-egg analysis’ that takes place with these TV shows and films now, it can get tedious, with people creating 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 minute Youtube videos leaning in on throwaway references like the color of a cup or some such. Sometimes it’s best to just try to enjoy the stories as-is and not getting worked into a self-created frenzy about an alleged revelation that doesn’t happen.
So many YouTube “analysis” videos amount to nothing more than “Look how much comic book lore I know! Revel in the greatness of my nerdhood!” It’s insufferable.
This is basically 99% of nerd culture: simply as a means to flex accumulated knowledge of shit, coupled with the foundational nerd cultural belief that “more=better” when it comes to writing. It’s not about the content; it’s about feeling more entitled than others to it, and making them “work” for their place by absorbing at least as much text as the author did.
The Game of Thrones ones are hilarious in how utterly wrong they were.
That isn’t really “kind-of dangerous” at all.
Haven’t you been crying about the Snyder Cut and calling it dangerous? LOL typical recognitions
…no? I don’t think I’ve said anything about it. The only danger it poses to me is whether the boredom over all the arguments about it causes me might ossify into ennui.
“he’s 106 years old. So he’s just confused by the whole thing”Pedantry alert:
When we say someone is X years old, there’s an implication that they’ve had X years of subjective life experience. There’s a distinction between “I was born X years ago” and “I have X years of life experience” that we can normally ignore because in the real world, people aren’t put into non-aging stasis for years at a time. (Obviously there’s a small number of people who are in comas for multiple years, but unlike Bucky, their bodies continue to age.)
Bucky was born 106 years ago, but he only has ~30 years of subjective life experience, and his body is presumably about 30 years old (not accounting for super soldier serum effects). He’s still pretty young, mentally, and adjusting to modern life would still be easier than for someone who actually had lived for 100 years before being thrown forward 70 years.
He’s still pretty young, mentally, and adjusting to modern life would still be easier than for someone who actually had lived for 100 years before being thrown forward 70 years.I half-agree with this. Only because the 1930’s and 40’s were so dramatically different from today that it’s impossible to really know for sure how someone would react.
I mean…26 years of that experience took place between 1917 and 1943, another 2 were in isolation in Wakanda, and the rest were as a brainwashed puppet…then he was wiped from existence for 5 years.Wouldn’t even say he’s at “Steve in Winter Soldier” levels of socialization, at this point.
Bucky was born 106 years ago, but he only has ~30 years of subjective life experience, and his body is presumably about 30 years old (not accounting for super soldier serum effects). He’s still pretty young, mentally, and adjusting to modern life would still be easier than for someone who actually had lived for 100 years before being thrown forward 70 years. I somewhat disagree.Yes, someone who has lived a long time becomes resistant to change, as changing habits and lifestyle is hard. And Bucky, who has only been an adult for 5-10 years, might have an easier time changing than someone who is twice his age and has 20 years of life experience doing things a certain way.But it’s not just the age of their brain that makes someone hesitant and resistant to change, it’s the amount of change. Older people are resistant to change because they didn’t keep up with the smaller incremental changes and now have to make a radical change. Someone who is ~30 years old and moves overseas from North America to a small African Village or from rural Alabama to Tokyo is going to have culture shock and a long adjustment period.
All I know id that Bucky is probably experiencing the worlds most intense culture shock going from one era to another to another. Then again that may make him more adaptable than most to new contexts. And then there is all the brainwashing and evil stuff.
What would Einstein say to this theory of yours? If you were shot into space such that a year passed for you but 1000 passed for civilization, how much older would you really be?
Einstein would probably agree that “older” is an ambiguous term in that context, and we need to distinguish between ages affected by various frames of reference. The only reason we can ignore the ambiguity is that there aren’t any people who spent time in a relativistic frame of reference.
If he were talking to me, Einstein would probably start with, “Stop asking me to do the tongue out pose for you! I’m not a performing monkey!”
I’m going to use your post to launch into a barely related tangent, because this is the internet and you can’t stop me.This idea of “amount of time you’ve physically been on the planet” and “how old you actually are, mentally and socially” occurred to me when I rewatched the ‘X-Files’ episode “Squeeze” a few years back. For those needing a refresher, the episode is about a monstrous serial killer, Eugene Victor Tooms, who needs to consume human livers to survive. Once he’s eaten enough, he enters a hibernating state for 30 years, after which he wakes up and repeats the cycle. (He can also stretch his body to inhuman lengths, but that’s not really relevant to this post.) And it made me think, what kind of life is that? He misses 30 years of socialisation and human development, and has to suddenly adjust to a totally new world, a task that only gets harder as the speed of societal progress rockets ahead. The fact that he’s able to integrate as well as he does (he has a job when Mulder and Scully encounter him) is kind of miraculous. It might also explain why he takes souvenirs from his victims, as an attempt to make some kind of connection with humanity. (I’d need a separate post to go into the fact that Mulder, for all his talk of wanting the truth, is much more interested in killing or imprisoning the anomalies he finds than understanding them.)This has been igotlickfootagain’s Unasked For X-Files Analysis Corner.
Boy, that’s eerie. I was just about to ask you to provide a detailed analysis of an X-Files episode.
(I’d need a separate post to go into the fact that Mulder, for all his talk of wanting the truth, is much more interested in killing or imprisoning the anomalies he finds than understanding them.)In complete fairness to him on that one, that’s usually because said anomalies frequently end up either trying to bite his face off or have spent most of the episode biting other people’s faces off. The man is still a criminal investigator, after all, and most of the things he investigates are still crimes; they just happen to be crimes involving supernatural entities.
That’s true, the dude is a cop after all. I just always find that Mulder’s interest in the supernatural fades as soon as he has an answer; then he starts shooting.
He’s young mentally but he also has a 106 year old worldview. So he might not understand the spectrum of sexuality, or it might make him very uncomfortable or flat out hostile. He was shown to date women in the 40’s too so he is at least used to presenting as heterosexual. They never explore his (or Steve’s) adjustment to modern society much, beyond movie references. Thank goodness there’re no awkward phrenology conversations. When I think of the random stuff my (would be) 114 year old grandmother would just say out of nowhere, without malice…
the way Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker made a point to give Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron a female love interest just so nobody would come out of that movie thinking he and Finn might end up together.Screw that decision forever. Poe and Finn had more sparks between them than anyone else in the trilogy.
I remember when they put Rose into the films, I love her but god them trying to make Rose/Finn happen was so awkwardly hamfisted into the films it was painful.
*Male protagonist exhibits behavior considered to be traditionally “manly” behavior and has a underdeveloped female love interest whose presence doesn’t contribute to the overall story.*Internet: Great, another story featuring toxic masculinity.*Male protagonist exhibits behavior that contains nuanced, sensitive emotions and has no clear love interest because their story arc doesn’t need one.*Internet: MUST BE SECRETLY BI OR GAY!I’m so tired of commentary like this. If we want to keep trying to (justifiably) change how masculinity can be portrayed in popular culture, which is without it’s traditional “toxic” elements, we also need to allow characters to have more nuanced characteristics without instantly accusing them of being closeted. Chances are if the character is queer and it’s not clearly stated within the context of the story, the showrunner/creator will let us know.
I’m sorry queer representation or lack of it is making your life so hard.
“But MUH HEADCANON!!”
Headcanon is fucking stupid, particularly when fans use it as a reason or standard to which they judge art and then get disappointed for not living up to it.
Headcanon is fucking stupid,
Counterpoint: head canon is play, and play is both a form of entertainment and methodology for learning. A lot of genre creators developed their skills head-canoning established characters and universes, and eventually found jobs where they get to play with both.Head canon is also a form of communication amongst fans, a way of celebrating what appeals to them that is overt or potential in a story. Of course it can be abused or taken too far.
That’s fine in a general sense absolutely. What I object to is fans who use it as a yard stick to measure the real-life product and then as a cudgel agains them for not measuring up to something they couldn’t possibly do. It’s like the Star Was fans who openly admit their biggest problems with the prequels was that they weren’t as cool as what they had imagined with their action figures as a kid. That the Clone Wars weren’t as excited as their imagined ideas. That the creators had let them down somehow as a result.
I think the issue you are describing is more an artifact of an overly proprietary and toxic fan culture, who can’t express their dissatisfaction in mature ways or can’t accept not everything in a franchise is made for them, rather than misguided head canon.That said its perfectly fine imo to have a critical opinion and state it, especially if you are examining a work on its own merits. I don’t, for example, see the prequels as successful: though I do appreciate the overarching themes and narrative, the execution is very flawed. Whereas The Clone Wars does fulfill its promises and live up to the expectations it set for itself. Clone Wars actually helped me appreciate the scaffolding created in the prequels, though I still can’t sit through them. Clone Wars is not the Star Wars I grew up with, but it’s a well crafted, thoughtful extension of that universe. That doesn’t mean Clone Wars always took a direction I liked, but if a show or film always slavishly gave me exactly what I expected and there are no surprises, what’s the point? Perhaps that’s where we are in sync. I didn’t want Rob Stark to be murdered at the Red Wedding. I didn’t want Ashoka to become an outcast. But I don’t creativity should be a rubber stamp, that’s what makes it exciting.
I feel this way, as well. Like, yes there should be gay and bi and trans characters, and it’s a reflection of the absolute desert of queerness in anything Disney (and in most media, really) that’s led to people speculating this.But also: it really sucks that any piece of fiction where two men show emotional intimacy has to be read as gay. Bucky and Steve (or Dean/Castiel or Sirius/Lupin, etc.) HAVE to be gay, and any suggestion otherwise is queerbaiting. It’d be great if they were gay. I’d love if Bucky was canonically bisexual. But as of yet, he isn’t…and all this speculation does is reinforce the idea that straight boys can’t have intimate feelings towards other boys UNLESS they are gay. It doesn’t make LGBT representation any more honest, but it does feed toxic masculinity.Also, FWIW, I’ve seen women on dating sites who have pictures at tiger sanctuaries and whatnot. Maybe it’s more significantly men who do this, but there are also women who do it. That line doesn’t mean anything.
I blame showrunners or producers who play along instead of just stating flat out (this seemed to happen with this show and it definitely happened with Supernatural), but I do think fans read way too much into what they can expect out of canonical material. I know the world has changed, but the fans who shipped Kirk and Spock and knew it would never be canonically romantic were probably happier getting to create their own worlds, complete with stories and fan art, compared to modern fans who thought that the color of the blinds in Heaven meant that Dean Winchester was going to come out as bi.
Queerbaiting, as it’s known, is definitely a real thing, and though I never watched ‘Supernatural’ beyond season one, I understand it’s considered one of the prime offenders.It’s also my understanding that in the early days of fan shipping and headcanons, people perfectly understood that the whole point was that you created your own little world to play in because you knew it would never happen in the true canon. Chances are, you didn’t really want it to. This idea that your headcanons should be adopted if they’re popular enough and you really, really want it is fairly recent and quite unhelpful.
I’m gay and my gay friends are always wishing something like this would happen, knowing that it never will. It’s a bit exhausting that they have to fill this sexual fantasy in their heads cuz the sex they have with their partners at home is non-existent. Maybe this is a healthy way for them to deal with their sexual frustrations…I don’t know.
Exactly this. I get that people are desperate for representation and so often have to resort to head-canon and Tumblr discussions to create it where there isn’t any, but strong, vulnerable, platonic love between two male friends is something that is also sorely lacking representation it desperately needs. If any time we see a deep, intimate friendship between two guys a certain subset of the internet screams “they’re totally gay! We’ve decided!” It’s telling another subset that that kind of friendship can’t exist.
In the immortal words of Dean Winchester – “They do know we’re brothers, right?”
I understand the desire for LGBT representation and I think there should be more of it in mainstream blockbuster. I would have no problem with Bucky being gay or bi if they want to go in that direction. However, I’ve seen movies from the Hays Code era that have had stronger hints that a character isn’t straight than anything I’ve seen with Bucky.
Chances are if the character is queer and it’s not clearly stated within the context of the story, the showrunner/creator will let us know.
ehhh… probably not unless they are an essential cog in the machine, or they don’t plan on working with Disney again.
Everyone Else: doesn’t give a shit either way.
I 100% agree with you – would I like to see more explicitly gay characters on show like this? Yeah it would be great.But I want to also see just as many male characters show and exhibit emotions with each other and show younger boys that there’s no shame in sharing your feelings with your friends and that it makes you stronger.That’s a message we need.
Nicely put.As important as inclusion is, isn’t it just as important to show that a healthy platonic love can exist between two men/two women/a man and a woman? Characters who love each other but aren’t *in* love with each other is always nice to see.
Yeah, that’s where I’m at, but I also get the desire for more representation. Straight men have a huge issue with deep emotional connections to anything which is reinforced by almost any show of emotion or affection being the subject of either homophobic jokes or speculation. While it shouldn’t even matter it does have a chilling effect on how men act. I’m also generally tired of forced romances anyway. ESPECIALLY in superhero films. Like how they shoehorned a romance between Cap and Sharon Carter that was super creepy
“*Male protagonist exhibits behavior considered to be traditionally “manly” behavior and has a underdeveloped female love interest whose presence doesn’t contribute to the overall story.*Internet: Great, another story featuring toxic masculinity.”That’s not what people refer to when they refer to toxic masculinity.
Ah queer baiting! Pack your genre property with veiled references to gay culture and suggestive scenes, encourage fan fic writers but never, ever be explicit enough that you can’t sell your property in countries where LGBTQ heroes are forbidden!It’s all business!
Its the Gamestop of queerbaiting; We fans throw hundreds of dollars at something, we get maybe 30 bucks in return.
Its the Gamestop of queerbaiting; We fans throw hundreds of dollars at something, we get maybe 30 bucks in return.
Was it tho? There seems to be no middle ground between “toxic masculinity” and “queerbaiting”.
It seems like people are so quick to scream queerbaiting because any sort of emotional relationship HAS to be gay.
I don’t think everything is queer baiting, and I absolutely agree that sometimes fans see things that aren’t there. That said, there is ample evidence to suggest that creators drop hints and encouragement to slash shippers then act like said slash shippers are seeing things when the chatter gets too loud. Do I know for a fact this was that? No, but there is a history of it and it could be that.
AN AV CLUB ARTICLE SIX MONTHS FROM NOW:But the director of Disney Plus’ new War Machine series insists that viewers are taking that scene out of context, and it’s not meant to indicate the character is anything but 100% straight.“Just because there’s a scene where James tells his close companion Kevin, ‘I’m gay and in love with you and I think we should date,’ that doesn’t automatically mean that he’s gay or in love with him or he thinks they should date,” said the director, while a Disney lawyer stood behind him holding a loaded shotgun. “And just because that scene is immediately followed by a montage of them holding hands and kissing and then James proposing to Kevin and the two of them getting married, doesn’t mean viewers should assume they are anything but close friends. It’s just bros hanging out together, that’s all.”
At this point the lawyer cocked the shotgun, which prompted the director to point out that viewers are also misinterpreting the sequence where James and Kevin are married for 50 years and raise three children together. “That’s just something dudes do with their pals,” he said, clearly terrified.
What the hell are you on about?
Endgame, 60 main characters. Let’s say 15% LGBT. That would be around ten of them being gay or bi. Which ones ?Hah. Kidding. Listen, we have several women, we even have multiple black people. We’re progressive. But we’re not, like, extremists or something. They’re supposed to be role models, ffs.Okay, you know what, we’ll make a theme park where workers are allowed tattoos, beards and socialist haircuts. We cool ?
They’re totally doing it in order to spot the potential union agitators
There are no heterosexuals in foxholes.
Who is the Falcon’s girlfriend, anyway?
Redwing.
Redwing only has eyes for White Vision.
“Hey, Sam, we just got a report – Jesus, what are you doing?”“Ah! Uh, I was just making some upgrades to Redwing, and my hand slipped, and he fell on to my crotch. And my belt, uh, broke at the same moment and my pants fell down. I was just trying to get myself, I mean him, off. Off of me. Off my crotch.”
Bucky can be bi and also not attracted to Sam. Bucky could be solely attracted to dudes and not be attracted to Sam (no offense to Sam, a very attractive man).The “Bucky is bi” theories started because 1. fans have been deprived of any LGBT representation in these blockbusters and 2. there seemed to be a lot of sexual tension in loaded looks between Bucky & Steve during Civil War, especially. That might just be an accident! Like Oscar Isaac and John Boyega who weren’t trying to play sexual tension in TFA, but Oscar has so much sexual tension with literally everyone and everything that it still read that way.But accidents allow for opportunities for new stories. Disney/Marvel makes a conscious choice with every heterosexual relationship it puts on screen, and it makes a conscious choice with every homosexual relationship it doesn’t.
I totally support Bucky as bi, but I really don’t see him as being into Sam. I think Steve is definitely someone he had some complicated feelings for (though if I ship Steve with anyone, it’s Sam). But basically, if Bucky’s gonna end up dating anyone, guy or gal or non-binary pal (thanks Kenji for that one), I think he’d want it to be a non-superhero. I think he needs a break from that world now and then.
I don’t think I’ll ever understand people who spending their time thinking about which fictional characters would be in relationships if we switched everyone’s established sexual orientation. But I’m glad you guys found something that makes you happy.
The difference with Isaac though is that he went with it for the next two movies.They are literally an old married couple by RoS.
If you want to see sexual tension between characters you will. I saw none in either films characters. It’s also ok for Bucky to not be bi or to even be asexual. I don’t get all this reaching from people. The closest thing we saw to either of their sexuality was Sam warning him away from his sister. I honestly don’t really see the need for any romance unless it serves the story, heterosexual or anything else
100%! I think a lot of directors/writers throw in some romance because they feel it’s an easy way to inject pathos into their movie, but actually a half-baked romance detracts from the rest of the movie.(Now, sex is different because I do find it hard to believe that all these incredibly attractive superheroes are running around in form-fitting clothes, doing highly physical activities, saving each other’s lives, adrenaline and serotonin pumping through their veins, and none of them want to hook up with any of the others? Avengers Tower probably looks like the Olympic Village.)I don’t mind at all if these movies rarely have romantic/sexual entanglements, but since they do, it would be great for them to have an explicitly LGBTQIA character
#ReleaseTheBiBuckyCut
#ReleaseTheBiBuckyButtholeCut
Pro: Why not? It’s time. Con: There needs to be more sincere hetero-male friendships in media. We just assume all the close ones that show any real emotional connection HAVE to be gay or bi somehow. The Hobbits, Kirk and Spock and McCoy, Bucky and Cap, Bucky and Sam, Bert and Ernie….
We don’t actually do that.
who thought it was?
Not that it’s a bad thing if he’s homosexual, but I do think there’s a toxic view of love as it manifests in male friendship. I don’t like the idea that if a man shows genuine love and affection toward anyone else, it means he wants to have a sexual relationship
Men are deprived of that, they also are deprived of platonic relationships with women. Even as little kids boys are teased that if they have a friend that’s a girl, she just has to be a crush.
My God, who cares about a fictional characters’ love interest. Get a life.
Completely off-topic, but while we’re talking about dating apps, why do so many women have pics in their profile sitting in a car?
Or in front of the Nashville whatliftsyou wings mural
Oh my God can we just stop issuing official responses to shipping wars? Like we got through decades of this shit being contained to forums but now every show has to have a writer or director or someone get on Twitter so we determine everyone’s canon sexuality, God forbid we have a little damn imagination for a change.
They’re not responding to the fics or the gifs, or fanart – those are fan things that mostly exist in fan spaces.They are responding to the accusations of queerbaiting – specifically the ‘accusation’ part, which is pushing back into the pop-culture mainstream. So we are seeing these official responses that are clarifying that they are not trying to hurt anyone, they are just trying to tell a story.
The moment Bucky was sent on a date (in episode ONE), I was like, “Oh right, because they have to affirm his heterosexuality as fast as possible because of all of that ‘give Captain America a boyfriend’ stuff.”This is also while all three seasons of Daredevil (and the Defenders) had Matt and Foggy having repeated conversations about how eager they were to insert their dicks in vaginas. Because they were pretty damn gay.
Bucky’s introductory scene in the MCU involved him telling Steve they were going on a double date. His next scene was on that date. His only other scene outside literal warzones in that movie involved an attempt to flirt with Peggy.I didn’t think the scene in episode one was about affirming his heterosexuality – I don’t watch the show through the lens where everything is a response to fandom debate. I thought the date was to establish that despite his Hydra trauma his pre-war personality was intact, because his whole arc in the show was about healing and rediscovering himself.
This is an interesting corner of fandom, because there’s a lot of legit takes to be had.
I don’t love the idea of eroticizing every single close male friendship (or male rivalry for that matter, as that’s probably even more common). Society would benefit from men in general being more free to express emotions that aren’t either anger or lust, and jumping to “those two guys are close so they must FUCK” isn’t going to help men who are already emotionally guarded open up with one another.
Then again, I’d totally believe Bucky’s bi. Why not?
Then again again, even if he was, that also doesn’t mean he had the hots for either Steve or Sam. Men who are attracted to men can also just be friends with other men, too.
Finally, I think a lot of people just keep the Steve/Bucky/Sam thing going because it’s fun. But it’s also no wonder people keep doing that when all three of their closest and most important relationships on-screen are with each other. (Setting aside Steve and Peggy, as for a long time it seemed they would be permanently star-crossed; Steve and Sharon’s scenes were definitely perfunctory and, in the worlds of Red Letter Media, seemed like he caught a case of the Not-Gays.)TL;DR: the surest way to avoid that is to introduce actual LGBTQ representation in media, so that people who want to see that representation don’t have to go digging for it. C’mon Marvel, give us Hercules already!
I feel this way about Bert and Ernie. Either one or both could be gay, but they also could be two gay friends who aren’t with each other due to their vastly diferent personalities, or one might be gay and the other isn’t. In the end, they’re fucking puppets. Both ways of interpreting that sentence are valid. But I’m also fine with not forcing romances into stories at all. Like the Star Trek that RLM was referencing or the shoehorned Cap/Sharon romance. Or shit, Thor and Jane.
One thing that might be worth keeping in mind is that even if Bucky is bi – an interpretation I’m very here for – he grew up in the 30s, where he’d have been taught that, in the words of Marge Simpson, “Boys kiss girls.” He’d have to be very self-possessed to embrace such a sexuality back then, and even now, he might not be ready to be open about who he is. Repression is a hell of an impediment.
‘it’s been a pretty universal fan-theory that at least someone in the Sam/Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers triangle is gay or bisexual’This reminds me of the drunk guy who only searches for his keys under the lamppost.The MCU is a massive fandom with diverse fanspaces. In some of those spaces, shipping dominates. But I was following this show across Tumblr, Reddit & TV-focused sites – sexuality isn’t a large part of the conversation in a lot of those places.And I am gonna challenge the idea that someone in that group is queer is a ‘theory’, it’s a whole bunch of different interpretations. That’s fine, but fandom hasn’t coalesced around a single theory (contrast Jon Snows parentage, fans had broad agreement on the parents and the supporting clues years before HBO optioned the books). And whilst every viewer is free to have their own interpretation, it’s also valid to interpret their love as platonic.
Weird. I’m not normally in tune with these things but it seemed very clear that he was at least a bit interested in dudes. And I thought it was very cool of them to just put it out there and not make it into anything else.I didn’t think there was a romantic relationship between Bucky and Sam because there was no indication of it (and so far as I know Sam hasn’t had his sexual preferences defined in the MCU).
On the one hand this feels a little bit like when folks were upset at the Mulan remake for “bi erasure.” (Male love interest being confused about his feelings for female love interest while she’s disguised as a man is a trope at least as old as Shakespeare, people.) But on the other hand if you had some real, substantial queer representation in your films maybe people wouldn’t overanalyze every glance and offhand comment. Okay, this is a Marvel property so everyone’s going to be doing that all the time anyway, but still.
I kinda agree with her tbh it annoys me when people focus SO MUCH on any close relationship between two men or two women and INSIST that they must be gay and then meanwhile like. Where’s all that attention and energy for couples in film that are actually canonically gay lmao ppl conflate closeness or emotional intimacy with queerness but then also seem to ignore actual queerness in film? Doesn’t make sense to me
I hate when people are either reaching or seeing something that isn’t there because it’s what they WANT to see or hope for. I have a gay friend who loves him some Sebastian Stan and was hoping him and Sam would have a make out session. (Like that would even happen). One thing for sure has made him happy…seeing Stan naked in his new movie ‘Monday.’
Disney/Marvel/Lucasfilms blind panic at the mere suggestion that any character within their universe/galaxy might anything other than straight suggests that they are being run by a 106 year old man.
I took it as a modern-reference tease rather than confirmation, but I’m not surprised that the writers didn’t think about it too much—that’s a common trait and also, I dunno, there’s a lot in the show that wasn’t thought through as much as it should’ve.I do want to add that Bucky’s absorption of modernity is feels too smooth. I guess he worked with a Japanese-American(or just ally? I don’t remember) in the commandos, but I personally thought that his friendship with the old dude was meant to signal is lack of period racism. His traumas stem from his years an assassin, but not general war ptsd.Also, one day, Kenneth Choi will be hired to by Marvel to be a person, maybe a Korean-descent person, instead of a Japanese-person like he was in Captain America and whichever Avengers had ninja Hawkeye.
Ah, fandom “theories”. Projection is a wonderfully dangerous thing, my little turqoise-coiffed fuckwits. Back to FandomWank with you!But seriously, I’ve always taken issue with the “Bucky is GAAAAY” crap. There’s no logic to it. There’s no corroborating evidence to say that he swings both ways. None. All this is is gushing from fans (predominantly female, I hasten to add and I’ll come back to this in a hot second – I’ve got twenty years of dealing with this sort of fuckwittery online – ergo the FandonWank reference) who demand “representation” – no, sweeties, you’re not demanding “representation”, you’re seeking confirmation of your own beliefs and validation of your own sexual fantasies but we won’t trip down that road just yet. Do we need an openly gay, lesbian, bisexual or trans character in the MCU? Yes, I’d say we do. It’d be nice, even if it’s just for a few seconds of screentime (has anyone told Chris Prat-the-Pratt Star-Lord’s pan, btw? *snigger*) but we can’t just go ahead and point at a character with a history in the comic books and say “You! You there! You like this gender now! Be Happy!” That’s not how it should work. There are LGBT characters in both Marvel and DC and I quite frankly would hope that we get to see them on-screen having a gay old time (you can all groan). No, I’m not going to uber-fashionable and quip “living their truth!” or “being true to their own selves” because, guess what, I’m not Oprah or Doctor Phil and neither are you. But I would say that there are more pressing and more urgent issues regarding representation that we need to address first. We cannot allow Black Panther to be the only Black-led property from Marvel. We cannot allow Sam Wilson to be the only Black superhero in the MCU with both films and a telly series (and frankly, I’d kill to see far more of Anthony Mackie). We need more Black and Latino characters in the MCU and we need far, far more representation from the “Asian” demographic – sorry, but I don’t like to label the peoples who make up 59.51% of the world’s entire population as “Asian”. Those countries have names. Fucking use them and do not homogenise them into a single monolithic entity, for fuck’s sake. We need Chinese, Korean, Indonesia, Indian, Sri Lankan, etc superheroes. It’s a big-arse world and we need them. Kids in those countries and from those backgrounds need to look at a screen or a comic and say “hey, that boy/girl looks just like me!” and feel as inspired as any number of white kids have felt over the decades. Now, for some shits and giggles about fandom.It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a book, film or comic in possession of a good fortune of being well-read or viewed, must be in want of a crazy fanbase. From the days of Star Trek and Ensign Mary-Sue (no, not Tilly from the Discovery car-crash), right through to Anne “I don’t need an editor” Rice, there have been countless crazy fucking fandoms. Sometimes, the fandoms write themselves – my personal favourite? Anne McCaffrey and her Tent-Peg Theory. I’m not going that damned rabbit-hole this morning (it’s literally seven am where I am and I’ve only had two coffees, damnit) but I’ll let you google it and stare in mute shock at the screen. Oh, and McCaffrey also came up with a really bullshit way to describe the sexuality of the dragonriders of Pern (colour-coded dragons were a real thing with her. Gold was for women as gold dragons were female and female dragons need female brains to feed, sorry, telepathically link to, but then she retconned things when she realised she gave the female green dragons male riders which would, in her “Logic” make the green dragonriders either gay or bisexual but what about the blue dragons which were all ridden by men did that make them bisexual because blue dragonriders often had wives and children and the bronze dragons were also men and they slept with both the gold dragons and the greens and so did the browns and how does this all compute in her head and aaaargh). Oh and you couldn’t roleplay in her sandbox as a female bluerider, by the way. Seemed that McCaffrey took a very Victorian view of female sexuality: straight or you don’t exist (her books are notoriously irritating in the way she treats women who are a damned sight more fun than the main female protagonist, believe me).Needless to say, the fandom attracted it’s own share of crazies. Same with Star Trek’s various incarnations – my personal favourite was the arsey roleplaying site where the rules were “because of Khan fucking around with the genetic code of humanity, homosexuality is no longer a thing so no playing a gay male or female character and don’t even think about being trans”. Quite. But there have always been people like me (feebly waves tiny pride flag) who don’t want tokenism, where a character is retconned into being gay or bisexual – I want a properly written and introduced character who is either gay or bisexual. The thing about Bucky suddenly being bisexual – and this is something that I learned, years ago from reading some notoriously awful Buffy fanfic over on FanFic.Net, is that predominantly female fans always want to make the tortured male character “secretly” gay or “secretly” bisexual to explain away all the trauma in their lives. No. No. That’s not how we work, my dears. Can I back that up? Shit, take a look at Youtube or Twatter some time and see the gushing theories spout forth. Look at the gender of that person making that argument. They’re predominantly female. To be really brutal, it’s falling into the same category of people straight-washing lesbian characters by giving them a male partner and making them realise that they were straight all along and that all they needed was a good hard dick. Yes, there are instances of that happening in the Buffy fandom (I’m thinking of a truly horrific story written by someone where Willow, mourning Tara, decides to boink Spike and suddenly is “cured” of her lesbian tendencies and no, I’m not shitting you around, that’s how it was described in the story. You can believe I left a scathing review of that work…). Straight or gay-washing characters is wrong. Before anyone snarks about Willow – I’ll point out that Willow is an exceptionally well-written character, whose development over the course of Buffy was well-handled. Come at Willow, you’ll have me to deal with (and a whole shedload of angry Gen Xers and early Millennials who adored Willow and Tara. And I know that Warren got himself a skinning – I’d rather his death had been slow, painful and consuming. Still – JUSTICE FOR TARA! )I’ll say this about Bucky: he’s a fascinating, fascinating character. He’s been put through the mill in his life. He’s done and seen some horrifying things and has had horrifying things done to him. You cannot explain that trauma away with “oh, he likes dick, and he grew up in a sexually-repressed time, so that explains it all”. Really? Look up LGBT history sometime and how life was for some people in the 1930s and 40s being gay or lesbian. It’ll surprise a fair few of you, believe me.Personally, I shipped Bucky and Sarah. I kept waiting for him to ask her out and for Sam in the background to be losing his cool and well-contained shit at the thought of his sister going out with a workmate he has a bit of a frosty on-off relationship with. I know that’s not the fashionable ship to follow, but, sweeties, it’s a lot more fucking realistic than Bucky suddenly springing forth from the closet shrieking “I’M HERE, BITCHES! H! E! R! E!” Now, if you want to really go down the Insane Rabbithole Of Fandom Theories And Fanwankery, look up “Harry Potter Assbaby”. That is what happens when you have teenage girls, sorry, tweenage girls writing stories about the forbidden love betwix Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy/Lucius Malfoy/Severus Snape/Hagrid (just chop and change between the character – the Ass Baby stories all end up the same way and no, it’s not with a prolapse from hell). It’ll make the Painted Dementor’s anti-trans bullshit look positively sane in comparison.
I knew of the tiger thing, but I’d always heard it was associated with “travel girls” not men. You know, the “not all who wander are lost!” type. The “hot girls posing with sedated tigers” is 100% a thing. I think this is you projecting your avenue of lived experience, as much as I am now, AV club.
I mean, the show makes no emotional sense unless Falco and Bucky are both his exes fighting over who he loved more but OK.
Maybe it’s my locale, but I see far more women posting photos with baby tigers from trips to Indonesia or Thailand.
I didn’t read sexuality into Barnes’ comment at all. Sebastian Stan is a beautiful man, so I’m sure he’d be successful with any gender on whichever dating app he chooses.
Gay men posing with tigers in their grindr profiles is just too common of an occurrence for Bucky to have seen this trend literally anywhere else.Someone in the writers room is clearly gay, and the director is clueless.