Once again, the assumption that an audience is male and heterosexual is challenged and overturned.
In a medium characterised by the male gaze, it is implicitly radical to include a lingering closeup of a man’s pert behind, especially when that shot isn’t giving straight male viewers the get-out clause of replicating a woman’s point-of-view: everyone, male or female, is simply being invited to enjoy the image on its own merits.Ī similar subversion of male identification occurs later in the film, during one of Deadpool’s fourth-wall-breaking bits of narration, when he addresses those audience members who have been dragged to see this superhero movie by their boyfriends. The film’s reluctance to make good on its hero’s pansexuality should not overshadow the little moments of daring, the subtle advancements, that have survived to the screen. “However, that would imply that I enjoy having a particular sort of fun, which I don’t.” Actions speak louder than words and there is nothing in the movie to prove that Deadpool would be any more willing than Williams to put his body where his mouth is and sample that particular sort of fun. “I am 49% homosexual and sometimes as far as 50%,” Williams said in 2013. Or, like Robbie Williams, maybe he wants to evoke the sassy, risque side of gayness without going the whole hog. On the evidence of the film, he seems (to adapt the infamous quote by Brett Anderson of Suede) to be a pansexual who has never had a non-heterosexual experience. In its entire 107-minute running time, it finds room for only one male-on-male kiss, and this takes the form of Deadpool giving a peck on the cheek to a man whom he has just threatened to rape. But how serious is he about his predilections? Without sending him into the arms or beds of other men, the movie leaves that point moot. In the arena of outwardly straight men preoccupied with other men’s bodies, Deadpool is eclipsed only by the Jackass team.
He calls a male cab driver “pretty damn cute” and lands crotch-first on an adversary’s face with the unconventional warcry: “Teabagged!” He speculates on the relationship between other superheroes (“I’m pretty sure Robin loves Batman”) and says, in response to the question of whether he has an on-switch: “It’s right next to the prostate. He asks a male bartender for a blowjob, but that turns out to be the name of a cocktail in which cream is the predominant ingredient. Photograph: Moviestore/Rex/Shutterstockįrom the moment Deadpool asks us to speculate on whose balls he had to fondle to get his own movie (the answer is Wolverine’s, who has, we are informed, “a nice pair of smooth criminals down under”), his conversation is littered with homoerotic references. Reynolds with Morena Baccarin in Deadpool. It’s true that their antics are not exactly vanilla – he wears plastic vampire teeth to administer oral sex on Halloween and allows Vanessa to proceed beyond the point on his body where Kanye West would draw the line. But it might help his cause if he were shown having sex with someone other than his girlfriend, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). His libido is indiscriminate every adult is fair game. In all other respects, this is a Deadpool who meets in word but not deed the requirements of pansexuality. Orthodox definitions of pansexuality exclude socially unacceptable manifestations of desire (necrophilia, paedophilia) the jury will have to be out for now on the question of whether cartoon sex with a mythical creature qualifies as bestiality. The sole instance of interspecies intimacy in the film is confined to its animated closing credits, during which Deadpool is shown rubbing a unicorn’s horn until it ejaculates rainbows. The truth is both less sensational and more interesting. Pansexual Deadpool.” Ryan Reynolds, who plays Deadpool, tweeted last year that the movie would receive an R-rating (15 or higher in the UK) for scenes of “ graphic, expertly lit French unicorn sex”. He would, said the director, Tim Miller, be “pansexual. ALL ARE VALID.” Much has been heard in the runup to the film’s release about its fidelity to this aspect of the character. He is yours and everyone else’s.” Nicieza called him “the epitome of inclusive” and insisted: “He can be gay one minute, hetero the next, etc. “ I’ve been dogged with the DP sexuality questions for YEARS,” he tweeted.
In popular culture, this is an area almost without precedent, so we shouldn’t be too hard on those Deadpool fans who have demanded a more precise definition from Fabian Nicieza, one of the comic’s creators.