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Symbolism and Coding Devices in Disney Villains: Disney’s Use of Colour, Visual Appearance, and Queer Coding

At the heart of all Disney films is a general principle of a good versus evil. This dichotomy is, of course, explained and developed throughout the movie with dialogue and plot, typically with the antagonist directly impeding the progress of the protagonist’s journey in some way. However, Disney also employs many more subliminal techniques in their films to strengthen the audience’s awareness of the antagonist’s villainy. When developing characters, writers must flesh out designs and personality traits for every individual, essentially coding how these characters will look, walk, and talk in the film. While many choices made in this stage of development can seem trivial, there is often deeper meaning to be found in them. The characters’ colour, design, settings, and representations can be deliberately controlled to empower desired meanings and evoke certain psychological responses and attitudes towards characters, adding to their complexity (Artz, 2003). For one, likely the most noticeable use of symbolism in Disney movies is their expressive use of colour. Disney typically applies very different colour palettes to their heroes and heroines compared to their villains. The light and bright tints of Disney’s protagonists are juxtaposed by the dark and muted shades of their villains. As discussed by van Dam (2014), “evil counterparts tend to dress darkly with shock value”, creating a noticeable distinction between the two (p. 35). Likewise, the visual form of characters also contributes to furthering the differentiation between protagonist and antagonist. The features of Disney’s heroes are drawn in curves, smooth, rounded, and flattering; oppositely, the villains’ features are more jagged, extreme, and menacing (Artz, 2003). The last mode in which Disney distinguishes their heroes from villains is much more underlying than these first two. A trope that is commonly used by Disney, specifically for their villains, is the use of queer coding. To give context, this essentially means that while the villainous characters are not explicitly deemed queer, they are given traits that would typically be associated with the opposite gender or queer folk. By giving antagonists inverted gender behaviour, they are quickly but subtly distinguished as separate from the commonly very heteronormative protagonists and deemed villainous (Coca, 2013). As exemplars of these methods used by Disney, I will be discussing The Lion King, Aladdin, and The Little Mermaid. As shown in these movies, by utilizing colour, visual appearance, and queer coding as indirect methods of differentiation that extend past the narrative itself, Disney is able to quickly develop, strengthen, and sustain a sense of difference and otherness for their antagonists.

In The Lion King, Simba, along with his father Mufasa in the early scenes of the film, acts as the protagonist of the story, with Simba’s uncle Scar serving the role of antagonist. Mufasa and Simba are both brightly drawn, strong, and smoothly curved; meanwhile, Scar is drawn much more darkly, frail, and angular (Artz, 2003). In fact, Scar’s colouring is starkly different to any of the other lions in the film. With a much darker body and black mane, his colouring serves to contrast him from the others. Moreover, his piercing light green eyes and even his darker teeth add to his ominous vibe. Scar’s visual design is also much different than Simba and Mufasa’s. Scar is shown to have much sharper, more pointed claws and teeth than the other lions, and his claws are exposed more often as well. While Simba, Mufasa, and other lions in the film have very full, flowing manes, and appear generally well-groomed, Scar appears much more unkempt: his facial hair is scruffy and his mane is much less fantastic. On top of this, he is depicted to be much more frail, slender, and physically weaker compared to the other lions. Scar’s physical weakness is but one trait of his that also serves to queer code him. Paired with his thin build are his comparably more delicate voice and gait, as well as a vast amount of dialogue that serves to exemplify his difference. Many of Scar’s lines are littered with sass, and some even subtly feminize him directly, such as when he sarcastically announces that he’ll “practice his curtsy” rather than his bow for Simba, his future king (Hahn, 1994). Also, when referring to Scar, Zazu mentions that “[there is] one in every family”, a line that is often said about queer people (Hahn, 1994; Ourri, 2017). The summation of all these qualities reveals Scar as a character very separate from the others, and evidence of all these traits can be seen in the following clip from the film.

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(Hahn, 1994).

Similar to Scar, Jafar acts as the antagonist in Aladdin, with princess Jasmine and the titular character of Aladdin serving as protagonists. In the narrative, Jafar is described as “a dark man…with a dark purpose”, and is drawn darkly with extreme angles (Clements & Musker, 1992; Artz, 2003). Again, the difference in colour is blatant: Aladdin and Jasmine don predominantly light blues and neutrals, while Jafar is cloaked in dark reds and black. Also, Jafar’s teeth are a darker shade than his heroic counterparts, much the same as Scar. In Aladdin, the colour red plays a crucial role, as scenes involving Jafar and his villainy are doused in red hues. Further, Jasmine is dressed in a red version of her main outfit when enslaved by Jafar, strengthening the relationship between the colour and its representation of evil. Visual appearance continues to differentiate good and evil, becoming even more noticeable in this film. While Jasmine and Aladdin’s clothes are very loose and flowy, Jafar’s attire is much sleeker. His garment’s shoulders and the toes of his shoes curl sharply upwards, and the feather often present on his headdress is shaped much like a sword. The design of Jafar’s long dress-like robe and flowing cape is also rather effeminate, and he has a very thin build, implying physical weakness. Further feminizing Jafar is his penchant for sarcasm and the eyeliner and eyeshadow visible on his face. By subtly differentiating Jafar from Aladdin and the other male characters with makeup and costume, he is increasingly associated with femaleness (Putnam, 2013). Andreas Deja, the openly gay supervising animator for Jafar, has even gone so far as to admit that Jafar was conceived as a gay man in order to give him his theatrical quality and elegance, strengthening the idea that Jafar was queer coded (Ourri, 2017; Griffin, 2000). All these qualities, both visual and personality-based, assigned to Jafar’s character can be seen in the following clip from the movie, and serve to distinguish Jafar as different from the protagonists.

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(Clements & Musker, 1992).

To show that female antagonists exhibit the same villainous tropes used to differentiate from the heroes, Ursula from The Little Mermaid serves as a brilliant example. In a sea of light flesh-toned mermaids with bright, colourful tails, Ursula’s light purple skin tone is completely nonhuman, with deep purple and black tentacles. Regarding her shape, while other female characters are demure and petite, Ursula is a large character, both literally and figuratively. Her tentacles also differ her from the rest of the humanoid characters in the sea, who appear as mermaids and mermen. While these other sea-dwelling characters have long locks of hair that flow gracefully through the water, Ursula’s short, coiffed hair makes her even more noticeably unalike the others. Having been based on the real-life drag queen Divine, many of her features bear an uncanny resemblance to the late icon: her overwhelming size, extremely exaggerated eyebrows and makeup, bright red lips, sharp painted nails, and her monstrous toothy grin (Putnam, 2013).

(Galella, 1978).

In addition to her appearance, her often overtly sexualized performance and deepened voice are reminiscent of a drag queen on stage (Putnam, 2013). Her remarkable likeness to Divine also makes an incredibly compelling argument that Ursula was queer coded. A myriad of Ursula’s personality traits can also be attributed to being a result of queer coding, even separately from her visual similarity to Divine. Talking in her deep, husky voice, Ursula often exudes much more sexual and mature mannerisms that counter Ariel’s delicately feminine and gentle persona. A great example of Ursula’s character being deliberately separate from Ariel and the others comes from her performance of the fan-favourite song, “Poor Unfortunate Souls”, where the discussed qualities of Ursula culminate in a high camp number clearly inspired by Divine.

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(Musker & Ashman, 1989).

In each of these three films, it can be seen that Disney utilizes many techniques aside from plot and dialogue in order to create an immediate and lasting distinction between their heroes and villains. Disney’s use of colour, visual appearance, and queer coding on their villains can be noted in many other of their films as well: Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty has a distinctly dark colour palette and sinister form, while Hades from Hercules and Governor Ratcliffe from Pocahontas both carry clear traits of queer coding. While Disney’s use of colour and visual appearance can be written off as merely aesthetic choices, their interesting use of queer coding can begin to raise some questions. If Disney were using queer coding on all types of characters, this would be of little issue; however, Disney’s nearly exclusive use of queer coding towards villains could pose problematic. Despite how subtle these representations may be, it is worth considering how the repeated correlation between queerness and villainy will be interpreted by audiences. Especially when one considers that Disney has only begun showing very miniscule representations of LGBT characters rather recently, with the intended audiences of these films being quite young, is it detrimental to show children numerous examples of queerness being associated with villainy?

References

Artz, L. (2003). Animating hierarchy: Disney and the globalization of capitalism. Global Media Journal, 1(1), no page listing.

Clements, R. (Producer/Director), & Musker, J. (Producer/Director). (1992). Aladdin [Motion picture]. United States: Buena Vista Pictures.

Coca, A. (2013). A reflection on the development of gender construction in ‘classic’ Disney films. Amsterdam Social Science, 3(1), 7-20.

Galella, R. (Photographer). (1978, June 12). Divine 6702657 [digital image]. Retrieved from https://www.gettyimages.ca/license/77800917

Griffin, S. (2000). Tinker belles and evil queens: The Walt Disney Company from the inside out. NYU Press.

Hahn, D. (Producer), Allers, R. (Director), & Minkoff, R. (Director). (1994). The Lion King [Motion picture]. United States: Buena Vista Pictures.

Musker, J. (Producer/Director), Ashman, H. (Producer), & Clements, R. (Director). (1989). The Little Mermaid [Motion picture]. United States: Buena Vista Pictures.

Ourri, A. (2017). The construction of evil: The evolution of Disney villains from the Golden to the Revival era. Retrieved from https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/53698897/Report_8.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1520640626&Signature=7c0cUEdJO%2FoRb%2F2nvBScs0tndzc%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DThe_Construction_Of_Evil_-The_Evolution.pdf

Putnam, A. (2013). Mean ladies: Transgendered villains in Disney films. In J. Cheu (Ed.), Diversity in Disney Films: Critical Essays on Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Sexuality and Disability (147-). Jefferson, North Carolina, and London: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers.

van Dam, B. (2014). Disney’s fashionable girls: Signs and symbols in the costume dress of Disney’s female characters. (Dissertation). Retrieved from http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-105532

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