Falcon and The Winter Soldier's Lack of Queer Representation Isn't On Anthony Mackie - Gizmodo

In doing so, many of Mackie’s points about both his aversion to discussing fandom topics like shipping as well as his commentary about the exploitation of queerness on a corporate level, were presented in isolation, leading to commentators picking choice excerpts from Mackie’s response to dunk on.

Audiences looking for more queer representation from Marvel’s cinematic and televisual output have more than a right to be annoyed at Mackie’s response, given the studio’s lackluster approach to including prominent LGBTQIA characters in over a decade of output so far.

It’s a point where, perhaps, actors—or more specifically their PR agents—should be aware that critics and journalists are going to want them to handle questions about representation, queer or otherwise, so they should be prepared formulate a response to those inquiries.

The real question is not whether we should hold these massive shows and movies to task for their occasional platitudes about diverse representation, queer or otherwise, but to aim those questions at the people who actually control the output of these studios: writers, directors, and producers.

After all, they’re not just the people who get to make creative decisions like whether or not to portray a previously ambiguously straight character as queer, or frame a moment between two characters with homoromantic undertones.

In Falcon’s case in particular, they’re the people who have a history of teasing the show’s chances of queer representation in the first place, and therefore are the people who should be held to task when that teasing turns out to be nothing more than just that.

The aforementioned Kevin Feige, who also has producer credits on Falcon as he does most on Marvel Studios output, has a history of offering lackluster answers to “wait and see” incidents of Marvel’s lack of diverse characters—like in the run up to Avengers: Endgame when he said that fans had a right to see themselves in Marvel’s movies, only to back track and say that he didn’t think it would be such a big deal that fans would be outraged that Endgame gave the MCU its first explicitly queer character in the form of a minor cameo by director Joe Russo.

It’s clear that, in spite of what feels like years of promises that change is coming on this front (the first on-screen queer relationship and kiss in a Marvel movie is set to come in Chloé Zhao’s The Eternals later this year, and Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie will be portrayed as a bisexual woman in Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder next year), a lack of queer representation is still an ongoing problem in Marvel Studios’ films and shows.

We’re talking about the architects of a system that has failed up to now in bringing queer characters to prominence, at studios like Disney, such as Spellman and Feige.

Perhaps especially so at a studio like Disney, which has a long history of struggling to present LGBTQIA+ characters at the forefront of its stories.