La Ron S. Readus
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Why Gay Men Love WandaVision (VIDEO SCRIPT)
🕑 Added 2022-01-26 21:00:04 +0000 UTCReaders, there’s a reason why WandaVision was originally supposed to be the SECOND show from Marvel Studios to be released on Disney Plus instead of the first.
/Falcon and Winter Soldier was supposed to be intended as the setup for the MCU on television, reflecting a tradition of starting off the newest phase with a story that either Iron Man or Captain America can handle or are the main focus of./
By starting things off with something palatable that mimics the realism of modern day -- despite the use of advanced flying technology and super soldier serums -- it would only make sense for things to become more magical, fantastical and eventually multiversal from there.
/Instead, thanks to COVID delaying the original plans, WandaVision was released first, and the expectations for Marvel Studios projects on Disney Plus were unfairly set./
Because while Loki came pretty damn close, WandaVision for a lot of MCU fans was lightning in a bottle when it came to the studios’ first year of content strictly meant for television.
/While making it a necessary part of Wanda’s character, we were drawn in with the nostalgia bait that came with exploring damn near the history of American sitcoms. Disney Plus supplied a way for magic in the MCU to be better defined and step away from the pseudo-scientific explorations the Doctor Strange and Thor movies utilized to appease the Moms Against the War on Christmas crowd, or whatever they’re called./
The show resonated with a lot of people for multiple reasons outside of it being required watching in order to understand the direction the MCU was heading in post Infinity Saga. And, even to my surprise, gained a cult following within the LGBT community as well.
Every time I went online, I would hear house remixes of the WandaVision theme that were meant for queer ballroom culture.
I would see genderbent cosplay of Scarlet Witch and Agatha Harkness, both passive and provocative alike.
I’d see videos of drag queens performing to said remixes in getups resembling Wanda’s many iterations over the course of the show at queer brunch spots. And despite being queer myself, I also found out that there are queer brunch spots. (pauses) I’m a bit of a homebody; I don’t get out of the house that much...
T-the point I’m trying to make is that the queer following WandaVision gained over the course of the show’s initial release was incredibly strong.
/And with Wanda appearing in the upcoming movie Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, we now know that part of the reason why is due to the appeal of the titular character of WandaVision, Wanda Maximoff -- aka, the Scarlet Witch./
So for Today’s Lesson, I want to explore why Wanda, specifically MCU Wanda, has proven to be such a highlight for queer men and male presenting individuals in the LGBT community -- and the community overall -- to the point where they’re willing to root for her through her highs and lows, at her weakest and strongest displays, and her most healthy and most toxic displays.
But in order to do so, we have to explore her roots to the phenomenon of Diva Worship. Let’s begin.
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Hey, Readers. La’Ron here. Offering you analysis and perspective on your favorite bits of geek and pop culture media
If it wasn’t obvious from the intro, this video will in fact contain spoilers for Marvel Studios’ WandaVision. It’s currently available to stream on Disney Plus, so give it a watch before continuing here if you haven’t seen it yet and don’t want me to spoil pivotal points of it for you in this video.
Other than that, if you end up liking what I’m putting down after this video is done, there’s multiple ways you can show some love
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That’s the syllabus. Now onto the lesson.
So Here’s The Thing About Diva Worship.
It’s actually not as new of a concept as you’d imagine it to be, nor is it strictly or stereotypically associated with with the femme-associated members of the male and male-presenting demographic of queer individuals.
Some misinformed people would think that it started in the 60’s and 70s once the likes of Diana Ross, Donna Summer and Cher dominated disco, coinciding with the Stonewall riots bringing gay rights activism front and center to the public...
But the start of Diva Worship among queer men and non-binary individuals actually traces back to 1920’s Hollywood. And one of the most prominent figureheads of it was american actress Bette Davis.
/The roles Bette played in film were usually easy to dissociate from traditional roles for women in Hollywood films back then. The roles she played were that of quote-unquote “difficult women”; they didn’t sync with what was -- at the time -- traditionally associated with womanhood./
And thanks to the rules and regulations of film during that time prohibiting movies from glorifying or presenting healthy queer experiences in protagonists and main characters because homosexuality and the like was listed as a mental disorder until the late 60’s...
The only representation queer people had in media until that mandate was removed was either in the form of a villain trying to corrupt the protagonist with their own “perversion,” or a side character having queer feelings but choosing to do fatal harm to themselves instead of being allowed to process them in a healthy fashion.
Because of this, performances by Bette Davis -- and even Wizard of Oz’s Dorothy Gale herself Judy Garland -- became avatars of queer men, closeted or otherwise. Friend of Dorothy -- an old bit of gay slang that was used as a way of identifying other queer individuals to avoid hostility -- was crafted thanks to the Diva Worship of Judy Garland, after all.
Because they couldn’t see themselves on screen in a way that didn’t villainize or ostracize them, queer men looked to these characters and, as a result, the actresses that portrayed them, related to their experiences and the fame bestowed upon the performer respectively, due to the majority of the roles played by the women of this era basically being queer male stories but with a female lead instead.
And that’s partly due to the fact that a lot of the stories that featured the characters that these women brought to life were also written by queer men, allowing them the opportunity to tell their stories through women that -- thanks to their own real life struggles and experiences allowing the performances to further resonate -- cemented this foundation of Diva Worship that would be built and expanded upon as it evolved with every passing generation.
/After all, Daniel Harris suggests in his book “The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture,” that “at the very heart of gay diva worship is not the diva itself, but the almost universal homosexual experience of ostracism and insecurity.”/
It’s in that relation between queer men and male presenting individuals and the women they see on stage and on screen that either were chosen to be their avatars, presented femininity and sexuality in ways that they could relate to but the rest of the heteronormative world couldn’t, or both simultaneously, that caused Diva Worship to become so popular.
So much so, that Diva Worship began to expand WAY past that of the glitz and glam of Hollywood stardom and fame. As mentioned before, pop and disco singers like Cher, Donna Summers and post Supremes Diana Ross became subjects for diva worship by queer men and male-presenting individuals; the latter taking advantage of the attention by releasing the song “I’m Coming Out,” which easily became an LGBT anthem before Biggie Smalls decided to sample it for More Money More Problems.
Nowadays Diva Worship among queer men is a tried and true staple of queer culture, regardless of ethnicity. Most of the focus currently is on pop stars like Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Britney Spears and Ariana Grande -- Mariah Carey, Janet Jackson and the late great Whitney Houston being great examples for the previous generation -- with a few exceptions in the form of fictional characters in movies and television similar to how the characters of Bette and Judy started the craze, but now more reflective of the modern day.
Bonus points if the Diva in question is an active ally and advocate for the LGBT community, like The Nanny’s Fran Drescher or the main cast of The Golden Girls.
Even queer men in geek and nerd spaces have their own slice of the Diva Worship pie, even from the most simplest of shit.
/You have no idea how many queer men and male presenting peeps I know that resonate their queerness with the fact that all the Shiva summon from Final Fantasy X did was snap her fucking fingers./
/Hell, there’s a reason why David Koepp and Robert Zemeckis -- the straight male writer and director of the cult classic Death Becomes Her respectively -- couldn’t understand why the movie had such a queer male following, but the film’s star Meryl Streep was able to tell that there’d be a queer following after reading the first scene in the script./
While there’s still a demographic of queer men that resonate with the woman’s struggle to be accepted into society on their own terms, there’s also a factor of glitz, glamor, a reclamation of sexuality for ones self before that of the patriarchy, and fierceness in highlighting one’s own femininity that resonates in the practice as well.
So much so that upon first exploration, it wasn’t that presumptuous to assume that taking all the factors into consideration meant that there was a bit of covetousness in Diva Worship.
/Now while the closest thing I’ve come to participating in the phenomenon is being a fan of a non-binary shapeshifting deity that regularly channels David Bowie levels of androginy and needs their two pet dogs to break out of horny jail so that they can properly enter our dimension in order to destroy it, Diva Worship -- while definitely something I understand and respect for my fellow queer men and male presenting counterparts -- was never really something I found myself NEEDING to participate in./
And no, it’s not because I’m bisexual. No, it’s not because I present more masc which is a FUCKING lie.
But as I stated before, due to my lane of queer truth being in geek and nerd culture, fandom and storytelling while also actively exposing myself to history, theory, philosophy and analysis, I was able to easily find these aspects of queer culture take root in the soil that I’m mostly planted in.
And considering how quickly it was made known both over the course of the weekly episode releases and the overall reception of the show, I began to notice that part of the reason for the popularity of WandaVision was in part of its interchangeable black and queer followings; /the latter beginning to show signs of Diva Worship toward the shows protagonist (?) Wanda Maximoff, thanks to relatability and the need of making her an escapist character they can see themselves in./
However, in order for us to understand how members of said community can easily find themselves being fine with her holding an entire suburban town mentally hostage while receiving very little to no consequences to her actions, we have to ask:
What’s Up With Wanda?
As I stated before, Readers, while I don’t really participate in Diva Worship, I definitely respect those who do. Especially after both educating myself and seeing how far it expands outside of the fame associated with movie stardom and pop sensations.
Another medium Diva Worship entered was in the geek culture spectrum of comic books, specifically women presented in Marvel’s multiple X-Men series.
With them already created to be an allegory for oppressed African Americans during the civil rights movement, and easily adaptable for them to be the avatars for queer people for similar reasons, characters like Jean Grey, Dazzler and especially Storm easily made the roster.
Even some characters that I think are trash and that I’ll happily lose followers for stating are trash. Like Emma Frost. (Stares at camera with eyes full of unapologetic judgment)
Anyway, while Scarlet Witch in comic book form is definitely among that number of fictional divas worshipped by queer geeks, I can see how her MCU counterpart became worthy of the same admiration in WandaVision.
/Wanda’s relatability with a certain demographic of queer men and male presenting individuals is in her tragedy, her trauma and choosing to cope via dissociation. While the show has given us her association to American sitcoms as her mental retreat -- her internal safe space -- it comes at a point where she’s lost so much already; her home, her brother and now Vision himself./
And that’s not to mention the multiple experiments she and Pietro underwent with the mind stone that caused her to awaken her previously inert magical abilities.
/Or, if you’ve seen my theory video on the subject, awaken her previously inert X-Gene that grants her the mutant ability to connect to the Nexus in order to naturally wield Chaos Magic./
As we know, all of this previously mentioned inner grief and trauma compounded with finding out Vision’s hope for them to live a life together after his body was claimed by SWORD was pretty much the breaking point that caused Wanda to turn Westview into her personal mental retreat.
/Aspects about the things she cherished from childhood like her love of American sitcoms as an easy way to learn English ala the Dick Van Dyke Show, Bewitched, Growing Pains and others became the backdrop. An idealized version of Vision that was a hybrid of how he both was and how she projected him to be was created to help make the loss of the ACTUAL Vision hurt less, and the twins Billy and Tommy were manifested to represent the life she wished she was able to have. And unfortunately, the citizens of Westview -- with the exception of Agatha Harkness, of course -- had no choice but to play into the stereotypical roles of her wish fulfillment fantasy as she dealt with finding solace in the midst of and working through her psychotic break./
What’s interesting about that went down with Wanda during WandaVision, however, is that everything she previously internalized and made reality via the Hex is 100% relatable to a certain demographic of the queer men that possibly Diva Worship this version of her.
As I stated before, part of the appeal of gay Diva Worship is vicariously living the experiences of the character that the actress plays as if they were their own, because it can very EASILY be their own. And when it comes to Wanda, almost the entirety of her individual experience in Westview matches a lot of said wants and desires.
/Like Wanda going through the multiple generations of American sitcoms, we seek spaces and environments that give us a sense of comfort and safety, even if they’re a bit predictable. Like the Vision we received throughout the series, we tend to torture ourselves by whipping up the perfect and ideal romantic partners for ourselves in our heads, sometimes even projecting said ideals on those we WANT to be our partners or even our ACTUAL partners. And just like it would’ve been otherwise impossible for Billy and Tommy to have been born if not for Wanda’s Chaos magic, despite there being real-life -- albeit one-sided -- workarounds for this now, there is still a want within some of us to have children that are a 100% genetic result of both male presenting partners./
/Y’know, with the possible exception of Eternals’ Phastos, who probably invented something that allowed him to successfully combine he and his husbands genetic code so that their son is legit THEIR son./
And the way the situation surrounding Wanda’s experience in Westview after the hex was cast was so fast as well; as if she were making up for lost time.
/Marriage, reproduction, and parenthood all happened within the span of the first 3 consecutive episodes and from episode 5 onward, which is even MORE crazy when you remember that WandaVision takes place over the course of a week./
To a queer man watching Wanda quickly go through these different stages of marital life with her verison of Vision, already dealing with the wants and desires of a life that heteronormativity has placed upon western society and has successfully sold the suggestion that accomplishing all these feats within an appropriate timeframe is what it takes to live a “good” happy and/or successful life...
They feel validated in seeing a woman -- despite using magic to do so -- feeling compelled to rush to get to where society tells her she needs to be, in ways that technically meet her ideal situation and standard.
While it definitely depends on the current state of the queer man that relates to how quickly Wanda goes through the notions, the real life situations he wants that Wanda creates may already seem stacked against him.
He could feel like he’s losing the race because of his sexuality, limited dating pool, state legislations and bills that previously made it difficult for him to marry, and state legislations and bills that CURRENTLY make it difficult to both adopt and legitimze same-sex parenthood via artificial insemination.
/While the real life list goes on, Wanda doesn’t deal with that. She’s playing catch-up, sure. But to the queer man beginning to start his progression into Diva Worship, she’s capable of having her own kids with her ideal partner in her ideal space, who otherwise may not have been able to accomplish such a feat. To this queer man, WandaVision is wish fulfillment at its finest./
And while Wanda’s life in her hexxed Westview definitely represents all of this wish fulfillment within a certain demographic of queer men who are fans of WandaVision, the most obvious desire that’s coveted from Wanda in this regard is her sense of control over everything and everyONE throughout the majority of the show.
/It may have taken some people until the third episode to piece together that Wanda wasn’t trapped within the hex but was willingly responsible for the hex, but I knew that there would be a sense of relatability and desire from certain people in episode 2, when Wanda saw the transformed SWORD agent emerge from the manhole with the intention of interrupting her ideal reality, and simply said/ (“No.”)
/And despite her version of Vision becoming aware enough to know that something was wrong about Westview by the third episode, Wanda’s willingness to fix and remove things that may threaten her currently ideal life, despite its display being fantastical, can definitely be something that is realistically coveted by members of the LGBT community considering their situation./
The thing about that, however, is with the combination of seeing Wanda represent all of these individual desires and struggles that relate so well with this specific demographic of WandaVision’s fanbase, you can’t really talk about how Diva Worship has allowed queer men and male presenting individuals to view the MCU’s Scarlet Witch as a fictional Judy Garland for a whole generation of queer geeks, without mentioning how doing so has, as a result, turned this iteration of Wanda...
...into A Messy Queen
Now while its fair to say that all these aspects about the show can easily be relatable to more than just a certain demographic of LGBT individuals, and even MORE than just the LGBT community as a result...
It’s the fact that these comparisons in queer men’s lives and experiences being reflected -- albeit fantastically -- in visual media by that of a woman that makes Wanda in WandaVision such a clear target for gay Diva Worship.
/Even if they have no X-Men or Avengers comics under their belt before watching any MCU film with her in it, this demographic see themselves in what Wanda has been through, what she does, why she does it, and the extent she’s willing to go through in order to keep it, until it's time for her to learn her lesson and move on, which she does./
/The problem is that WHEN she does, despite the guilt she feels of exposing an unconsenting town of innocent suburbanites to her previous break, she receives no repercussions for doing so; she gets a pass./
/And not just from her colleagues (I’m not here about Westview), but from members of her queer fanbase as well./
However, the latter doesn’t do so because they think she can do no wrong or that she was deserving of facing no consequences for her actions.
It’s because in their experience in living vicariously through Wanda in WandaVision via Diva Worship, if they condemn Wanda for how she behaved and controlled Westview up until Agatha forced her to deal with her problems head-on, then that would mean they would have to condemn themselves for desiring Wanda’s problematic displays over the course of the series.
Even if the real-life situation one is projecting on to Wanda’s actions is significantly smaller, more innocent, and doesn’t affect as many people, if any at all.
So instead, it’s ENCOURAGED.
She -- ironically enough -- is used as an escape for those who realistically resonate with everything she’s gone through and how she handles things as a result.
/They know that how she’s dealing with things is unhealthy and how she exposes others to it without their consent is just as unhealthy. But because it's not them and instead this powerful mutant witch with reality warping Chaos Magic at her beck and call going through an exaggerated version of what THEY are going through, Wanda can easily take the burden of consequence instead, and be relieved when she canonically doesn’t./
She becomes not just an avatar for queer men who have had reasonable levels of wish fulfillment that mirrors what she exaggeratingly brought to life in the show, but also becomes a characterized embodiment of a swear jar for said demographic of queer men and male presenting individuals...
/Placing a quarter inside every time they see her both handle a situation that relates to their sense of queerness, and carry out a problematic and borderline toxic trait what they’re unwilling to do because of it, thanks to their sense of ethics and morality./
Conclusion
Now I want it to be absolutely clear that the point of this video is not me bashing Diva Worship, or saying that it's impossible not to partake based on its origins and how it's reflected in modern media.
While there isn’t as much as I would personally like, proper queer representation that provides both realism and escapism -- masc, femme, and a mixture of both alike -- has been making itself more available with every passing moment in every way imaginable.
However, just because such feats are being made, doesn’t mean that the old ways of seeking representation are dead and gone. Because as the popularity of Wanda Maximoff has shown since her debut in the MCU and with the success of WandaVision, old school is the best school for a reason, despite how desired the new courses are to certain individuals. IE, me.
And just how Agatha had to give Wanda a collision course in order to get her to realize what she was doing in order to heal, sometimes it helps to understand the whole picture, instead of focusing on just the one thing in the corner that makes you feel better about yourself.
/To quote a good friend of mine who DOES Diva Worship Wanda, “She's crazy as all hell, but I love that bitch.”/
But, I digress, Readers. Your homework assignment for the day:
Write in the comment section below what you thought of Marvel Studios’ WandaVision if you’ve seen it.
Or, if you feel like sharing with the rest of the class, if you ever found yourself at the receiving end of Diva Worship in the case of relatability or desire when it came to either a real life person or a fictional character.
Whichever you decide to answer, I’d love to know your thoughts.
/A HUGE shoutout to my Patrons both big and small for helping make this channel possible.
Make sure you check out the card at the end of the video to see if you want to join, or click the link to it or any of my affiliates in the description box below.
Until next time, this is Readus 101. Class dismissed./
