Queer-coding in The Family Game

Queer-coding, as the name suggests, is the practice of coding characters as queer. The most widely known example of this in cinema is Disney villains, who have been queer-coded to various degrees of subtlety, from the drag-inspired Ursula to the slightly effeminate Scar. Some problematic aspects that instantly emerge from this are assuming certain stereotypes of queerness, using those stereotypes to code queerness, frequently attributing them to villains, and remaining at this superficial depiction of queerness. In The Family Game (1983, dir. Yoshimitsu Morita), the queer subject is quite obviously Yoshimoto the tutor, and the characterization of him fits most of the patterns I set up above.

The very first question to ask is: is Yoshimoto queer? There are many possible answers to this question. He is initially presented as 1. gay. Near the beginning of the film, his acts of intimacy with the same sex are presented with neither fanfare nor obscuration, which can be a good thing. He shows signs of internalized homophobia. But the film isn’t interested in developing his gay side. Instead, those acts remain surface-level behavior just to give him a mysterious aura, as an exoticization of homoeroticism. 2. He might be bisexual. Though he gets uncomfortably close to Shigeyuki, he does admit interest in women, which opens us up to 3., that he is straight. Under both of these possibilities, it’s hard to tell whether his bizarre scene with a woman is honest or not. What’s easy to tell is that his interest in men seems like a tactic to get closer to and take advantage of his employers. Either way, we have a gay or bisexual man weaponizing his sexuality, or a straight man appropriating queerness as a tool. That leads us to the 4th possibility of asexuality. There is a skeptical air in all his scenes involving intimacy. Again, it’s because of how he uses sexuality to manipulate people. It seems quite possible to me that he has no sexual interest in anyone, and is merely using sexuality to play his game. That would fit quite well into The Family Game’s postmodern world of fragmented, impersonal miscommunication (Gerow 240). And finally, there is the definition of queer as a lifestyle or culture, a sensibility, “a state of being ... something that’s eternally the alternative” (Grosz). Then the alien intruder Yoshimoto is definitely queer. But that otherness is tied to his social awkwardness and indecipherableness, not to mention his downright criminal behavior.

What I’m trying to get at is that under all 5 of these possibilities, queerness is still depicted negatively. If he is gay, then he is the stereotypical monstrous gay. If he is straight/bi and his relationship with his girlfriend real, then he is the unreliable, promiscuous queer who can’t keep his pants zipped. Or he is a Machiavellian asexual, or a negatively otherized queer. We don’t know. What I do know is that it’s irresponsible to remain ambiguous and float possibilities of sexuality around to make your film more provocative.

We’ve established the multiple possibilities of Yoshimoto being queer, and even if he isn’t, we can’t remove his queer behavior from the text. My second question: is he a villain? In the world of The Family Game, there are no saints nor sinners; everyone is at least somewhat sketchy. But there are some things he does that are unforgivable, regardless of whether the film condemns them or not. I am of course referring to his boundary-disrespecting predatory behavior and eventual physical abuse of Shigeyuki. It feels like a sadly classic device of throwing pedophilia and violence onto expressions of queerness. And eventually, his “villainy” extends towards the whole family; as he destroys the family dinner table at the end, the “queer homewrecker” archetype is unmissable. He has destroyed the nuclear family.

Space invasion.

But the movie is a satire of the nuclear family. By rupturing and eventually destroying the ostensible harmony of the Numatas, Yoshimoto actually becomes the hero of the film! However, the film has squandered its potential with queerness in this theme. In Yoshimoto’s riot, there is class revolt. There is an upheaval of the order of social status. Then there is also his insertion of queerness into a seemingly heteronormative family. For that, let’s take a little detour and look at my .gif, and for a moment, try our best to forget about the age gap. The cornered queer is actively invading the heteronormative space (Shigeyuki’s standing in for the entire family; his queerness is irrelevant). It’s uncomfortable because Yoshimoto’s crossing a line – not just the invisible line at the center of the frame, but also a line of heteronormativity. And the film is eager to focus on this invasion, instead of the larger and closer representative of the status quo. But we can’t divorce the pedophilia from this shot, can we? Now going back to the dinner, all the aforementioned potentially good concepts could’ve been equated with one another. But because the depiction of queerness has been so irreparably tainted and coded with pedophilia and other transgressions, it becomes impossible to see the queerness as good. If anything, all I see is the perpetuation of queerness as reckless, dangerous, and illogical.

Looking more closely at Yoshimoto’s two family dinner scenes, we see a clear difference in shot length. At the first dinner, the five diners are barely fitting within the academy frame. Yoshimoto’s presence has crowded the frame uncomfortably and separated the family members. At this point, he has only shown affection towards men, and there is literally no room for him. When we return to the same scenario at the end, the shot is even wider, with everyone fitting in comfortably. At this point, we know of Yoshimoto’s interest in women, and his queerness has almost been dropped from the story. Morita has repressed Yoshimoto’s gay side and embraced his straight side (whether the audience forgets his queerness or not is a different matter). Simultaneously, Yoshimoto far more easily assimilates into the nuclear family. It is at this position where he unleashes his destruction of the family. Once again, are his assimilation and destruction correlated? Is the assimilation the cause that triggers his destruction? Is the destruction actually a rebellion against the heteronormative family code, a liberation of one’s queerness? (Does he have to pay any price for it?) These potentially positive ideas are suggested, but again I can’t shake off his repugnancy from his queerness.

Ultimately, Yoshimoto remains an enigma, and queerness is used to build on that enigma, if not to serve as its foundation. There is potential for good in the film’s exploration of queerness, but the film limits itself from it.

Works Cited

The Family Game. Directed by Yoshimitsu Morita, Circle Films, 1984.

Gerow, Aaron. “Playing with Postmodernism: Morita Yoshimitsu’s The Family Game (1983).” Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts. Routledge, 2008, pp. 240-252.

Grosz, Elizabeth. “Experimental Desire: Rethinking Queer Subjectivity.” The Routledge Queer Studies Reader. Routledge, 2013, pp. 194-211.