Queer Coding and Representation: The Motion Picture Production Code and Its Impact on the LGBTQ Community

Author

Amber Leech, Ursinus CollegeFollow

Submission Date

7-19-2024

Document Type

Paper

Department

English

Faculty Mentor

Kara McShane

Comments

Presented during the 26th Annual Summer Fellows Symposium, July 19, 2024 at Ursinus College.

Project Description

The Motion Picture Production Code was a set of guidelines for films imposed between 1934 and 1968 that prevented them from depicting immoral themes such as profanity, blasphemy, and glorification of criminal activity. While homosexuality was never explicitly mentioned, it was banned in films through a rule prohibiting the depiction of sex perversion. This resulted in many films using a technique called queer coding in which they could imply that a character was queer without alerting the Production Code Administration. Because queer characters could not be depicted without glamorizing homosexuality, however, many of these characters were villains, died in the film, or both. I argue that these trends in queer representation carried long past the Motion Picture Production Code ended, appearing in movies with queer coded or explicitly homosexual characters throughout the 90s and 2000s. The way that these queer coded characters were depicted after the MPPC often implied that queer characters were master manipulators who only wanted power, and they often disrupted heterosexual relationships and families in their respective movies. As time passed, queer characters were no longer villains, but had high death rates in film, suggesting that members of the LGBT community are incapable of leading happy lives.

Recommended Citation

Leech, Amber, "Queer Coding and Representation: The Motion Picture Production Code and Its Impact on the LGBTQ Community" (2024). English Summer Fellows. 31.
https://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/english_sum/31