Towleroad.com presents an interesting question about a new villain in ‘The Walking Dead’ #100 comic. A new villain is introduced, one so vile and terrifying that the author of the post (Andrew Belonsky) considers him much worse than The Governor or any other villain we’ve come across so far in TWD:
Without giving away too much (though there are perhaps a few minor spoilers here), I will say that Negan’s villainy is more gruesome and startling than past foes like The Governor because of both Negan’s rabid following and for the fact that he’s clearly a homophobic sociopath. At one point Negan tells protagonist Rick he’s going to make him into the proverbial “gay bitch,” the quintessential, submissive “weakling,” and thereby win his group’s respect – or at least their cooperation.
It’s an interesting sort of indication of where we are as a society that one way we let the audience know how terrible a character is is by making them homophobic or racist.
Cruise over to Towleroad for a little peek at Rick and Nagen in the 100th issue.
What do you think? Is Kirkman using homophobia as a means of letting us know how sociopathic Nagen is, or is the concept of making a powerful man into a “gay bitch” something so deep in society’s subconscious understanding of power dynamics that it doesn’t really register with us as “evil” for any reason other than the average person’s fear of being violated?
I’m not familiar with TWD (the t.v. show or the comic book), but in general I think how this reads will depend on the rest of what is said. Is Negan’s homophobia going to actually work as a way to bend people to his will? If so, that would speak to the larger underlying homophobia in our society. But even then, that could become a commentary on how horrible the underlying homophobia in our society is, or it could end up treating it as somehow the “normal” reaction. A story like this is difficult. Like, when Negan threatens Rick with… Read more »
Yeah, it’s both. Both the threat of violation, and the threat of emasculation. It’s reflective of our society that said abuse would show weakness that any other sort of violence would not. Not even torture.
TWD is great at raising questions like this. This sort of power play has always existed.
Now our society is just closer to being able to really examine them.
I have serious doubts that you actually read The Walking Dead if you think Kirkman is promoting homophobia. Aaron and Eric are gay and they are respected members of Rick’s group. I’ve read through this issue a few times and I honestly get the feeling that it’s more of a dominance thing. Homosexuality has been covered in TWD a before and it has never been anything close to homophobic.
Ok…this is getting frakking fraking frakitty frakty ridiculous. Gay characters mean you aren’t homophobic as a writer, and blah…blah..blah…I’ve had it.
Maybe the zombies deserve to be the ones who finally win…..and turn the lights out….