[100% that witch]
Oct. 28th, 2024 10:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tellitslantMANNNN I just signed up to this show for the hot milf witches but there are some extremely nuanced takes on queerness and female power happening on Agatha All Along and I am quite delighted by it!
Going in, I knew the mysterious Teen character was going to be Billy Maximoff, which meant he was going to be Wiccan, and I very vaguely knew that meant he was queer. And then closer to the air date, I think there started to be some leaks that suggested Agatha was queer, which kind of blew me away. Granted this is a smaller Marvel tv show, but Marvel and Disney in general have been so vehemently... anti-queer is a strong way to phrase it, but it's not entirely inaccurate, either. The incredibly shit gestures at representation they'd made previously in franchises like Star Wars or even other Marvel properties were largely designed to be blink-and-you'll-miss-it at best and able to be edited out for specific markets at worst. Just last month I read an article about how they had people basically dedicated to making sure there was no queer subtext in Inside Out 2! So the idea that there might be more than one queer person in a Marvel TV show... one of whom was the lead... frankly was already blowing my mind and I did not fully believe it.
(I'm really getting tired of being so astonished every time there is unexpected queer rep in something i'm watching. It is, in fact, 2024, and basic inclusion should not be so surprising. But it still really is! I certainly seek it out in the indie film and tv I watch, but discovering it in the mainstream... I don't know if it's just me, if it's that I see how conservative the industry is, if it's my age, or if it's that I'm actually out of step with the zeitgeist, but whatever it is, it still takes me constantly by surprise. Still.)
Anyway, having Agatha actually canonically queer and having her ex be the main antagonist for the show was obviously a delight on several levels (she says, kicking this month's 15k of fic under the bed). But what I'm most thrilled by has been the way the show comments on and uses queerness. The cast and crew in interviews have been very clear in drawing the line between witchiness and queerness and othering, but to see that also explicitly on the screen has consistently surprised me, especially given the nuance with which it's being handled. Metaphorically speaking, queerness still so often functions as or signifies tragedy, hiding, negative shit like that. In this it is explicitly and subtextually celebrated.
I genuinely teared up at a moment in 1x06 where Agatha, having just discovered that Billy basically stole a dead body to reincarnate himself, gives him a rousing lecture about never feeling shame for the skills he has or the things he has done to survive. It's great because we've just been shown that she has been reviled literally from birth for the things she has been able to do to keep herself alive. But by having the speech come from a queer elder to a baby gay gives it so much resonance! And neither of them are questioning their identity, so it's not about that sort of acceptance - they're already past that. It was so touching.
It's also refreshing to see the queer sensibility allowed to permeate the show and then the brand. In 1x07, Agatha makes a terrible queer dad joke ("If you want straight answers, ask a straight lady" - which is going directly into my vocabulary) and then... the Marvel social accounts... posted the gif. As promo. BLOWS MY MIND. I mean, you know, the show and the accounts were review bombed before and during the start of the show, and there are a lot of people who are still following the Marvel accounts who will never watch Agatha. Who are the type of people who will sound off in the mentions of posts like that. But Marvel didn't just go, hey, the people who watch the show will watch the show and everyone else can steer clear; they actually made 'queer leading lady' part of their social media strategy. It shouldn't be unusual. But it is.
AND THEN the show set up 1x07 as though the main question was going to be about the life and identity of Billy, ie the young white dude... before turning it completely around and making the extremely salient point that what we need to pay more attention to are the life experiences of the wise old women whom we might unjustly write off. That was an exceptional episode of television and I expect Emmy nods for writing, direction, and Patti LuPone tbh.
The final two episodes air in two days omg and I am deeply unprepared for it to be over, but I am also so excited to see how the story concludes. I would very much like Agatha and Rio to kiss, but also, if they don't, I am so happy with the story as it exists now. It's so queer, damn it!
Going in, I knew the mysterious Teen character was going to be Billy Maximoff, which meant he was going to be Wiccan, and I very vaguely knew that meant he was queer. And then closer to the air date, I think there started to be some leaks that suggested Agatha was queer, which kind of blew me away. Granted this is a smaller Marvel tv show, but Marvel and Disney in general have been so vehemently... anti-queer is a strong way to phrase it, but it's not entirely inaccurate, either. The incredibly shit gestures at representation they'd made previously in franchises like Star Wars or even other Marvel properties were largely designed to be blink-and-you'll-miss-it at best and able to be edited out for specific markets at worst. Just last month I read an article about how they had people basically dedicated to making sure there was no queer subtext in Inside Out 2! So the idea that there might be more than one queer person in a Marvel TV show... one of whom was the lead... frankly was already blowing my mind and I did not fully believe it.
(I'm really getting tired of being so astonished every time there is unexpected queer rep in something i'm watching. It is, in fact, 2024, and basic inclusion should not be so surprising. But it still really is! I certainly seek it out in the indie film and tv I watch, but discovering it in the mainstream... I don't know if it's just me, if it's that I see how conservative the industry is, if it's my age, or if it's that I'm actually out of step with the zeitgeist, but whatever it is, it still takes me constantly by surprise. Still.)
Anyway, having Agatha actually canonically queer and having her ex be the main antagonist for the show was obviously a delight on several levels (she says, kicking this month's 15k of fic under the bed). But what I'm most thrilled by has been the way the show comments on and uses queerness. The cast and crew in interviews have been very clear in drawing the line between witchiness and queerness and othering, but to see that also explicitly on the screen has consistently surprised me, especially given the nuance with which it's being handled. Metaphorically speaking, queerness still so often functions as or signifies tragedy, hiding, negative shit like that. In this it is explicitly and subtextually celebrated.
I genuinely teared up at a moment in 1x06 where Agatha, having just discovered that Billy basically stole a dead body to reincarnate himself, gives him a rousing lecture about never feeling shame for the skills he has or the things he has done to survive. It's great because we've just been shown that she has been reviled literally from birth for the things she has been able to do to keep herself alive. But by having the speech come from a queer elder to a baby gay gives it so much resonance! And neither of them are questioning their identity, so it's not about that sort of acceptance - they're already past that. It was so touching.
It's also refreshing to see the queer sensibility allowed to permeate the show and then the brand. In 1x07, Agatha makes a terrible queer dad joke ("If you want straight answers, ask a straight lady" - which is going directly into my vocabulary) and then... the Marvel social accounts... posted the gif. As promo. BLOWS MY MIND. I mean, you know, the show and the accounts were review bombed before and during the start of the show, and there are a lot of people who are still following the Marvel accounts who will never watch Agatha. Who are the type of people who will sound off in the mentions of posts like that. But Marvel didn't just go, hey, the people who watch the show will watch the show and everyone else can steer clear; they actually made 'queer leading lady' part of their social media strategy. It shouldn't be unusual. But it is.
AND THEN the show set up 1x07 as though the main question was going to be about the life and identity of Billy, ie the young white dude... before turning it completely around and making the extremely salient point that what we need to pay more attention to are the life experiences of the wise old women whom we might unjustly write off. That was an exceptional episode of television and I expect Emmy nods for writing, direction, and Patti LuPone tbh.
The final two episodes air in two days omg and I am deeply unprepared for it to be over, but I am also so excited to see how the story concludes. I would very much like Agatha and Rio to kiss, but also, if they don't, I am so happy with the story as it exists now. It's so queer, damn it!
