Normative Narratives of Queer ‘Success’: The Sacrifice of the Queer in *Dumbo* and *The Imitation Game*
type: CreativeWork
description: Many seemingly progressive tales of marginalised characters becoming heroes focus on the heteronormative and capitalist usefulness of that which renders them Other. Using queer theory, with a broad understanding of queer as anything that deviates from hegemonic conceptions of the cultural normal, I argue that such narratives of queer success are ultimately conservative as they are invested in heteronormative discourses of futurity that preserve social and economic hierarchies and privileges, narrowly defining success as being of use to the survival of the dominant social order. Far from valuing queerness, this deficit-oriented approach makes inclusion conditional on a sizeable contribution to the reproduction of the status quo, thus upholding the notion that difference of any kind is a detriment that has to be compensated for. *Dumbo* (1941) and *The Imitation Game* (2014), though superficially very dissimilar, serve as examples of such stories of queer success as they uphold the same discourses of queer usefulness. *Dumbo* constructs its protagonist’s Otherness as both a threat and an economic resource that can be transformed from the former into the latter through the (hetero)normative social order’s mechanisms of normalisation: punishment, suffering, and exploitation. *The Imitation Game* presents as a progressive uncovering of silenced queer history but simultaneously constructs a web of secrets and absences that confine the protagonist within the intersection of the marked poles of several binaries, e.g. straight/gay, human/machine, to eventually redeem this ultimate Other through sacrifice, which reconstructs and appropriates queer suffering as success in affirmation of heteronormativity.
abstract: Many seemingly progressive tales of marginalised characters becoming heroes focus on the heteronormative and capitalist usefulness of that which renders them Other. Using queer theory, with a broad understanding of queer as anything that deviates from hegemonic conceptions of the cultural normal, I argue that such narratives of queer success are ultimately conservative as they are invested in heteronormative discourses of futurity that preserve social and economic hierarchies and privileges, narrowly defining success as being of use to the survival of the dominant social order. Far from valuing queerness, this deficit-oriented approach makes inclusion conditional on a sizeable contribution to the reproduction of the status quo, thus upholding the notion that difference of any kind is a detriment that has to be compensated for. *Dumbo* (1941) and *The Imitation Game* (2014), though superficially very dissimilar, serve as examples of such stories of queer success as they uphold the same discourses of queer usefulness. *Dumbo* constructs its protagonist’s Otherness as both a threat and an economic resource that can be transformed from the former into the latter through the (hetero)normative social order’s mechanisms of normalisation: punishment, suffering, and exploitation. *The Imitation Game* presents as a progressive uncovering of silenced queer history but simultaneously constructs a web of secrets and absences that confine the protagonist within the intersection of the marked poles of several binaries, e.g. straight/gay, human/machine, to eventually redeem this ultimate Other through sacrifice, which reconstructs and appropriates queer suffering as success in affirmation of heteronormativity.
author: Irrgang, Jennifer
date modified: 2026-07-27T18:50:09Z
provider: Universität Bielefeld
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Universität Bielefeld