JT: Family relationships
One of the aspects we were drawn to in The Mitchells vs. the Machines’ was the family relationships. Immediately, there is discord between Katie and her dad because he is concerned about her future. Katie was accepted to film school and wanted to devote her life to making movies. Her dad fears that she will fail, and he doesn’t want to see her dreams fail. Rick doesn’t want to see her get hurt, so he encourages her to pursue backup plans. However, it seems he does not care about her interests. Katie then felt like a weird and left-out kid, even in the context of her own home. I think her queer status amplifies these feelings because she is already part of a marginalized group within her family. While her family is supportive, it cannot replace shared queer experiences. We know that being queer amplifies these weird feelings because JT went through something similar with their folks. Her experiences of not feeling accepted and feeling like the odd person out is not necessarily due to her queerness, but it has many similarities to the feelings that queer kids experience growing up. One of the reasons she is excited to go to art school is because she knows she will find more people similar to her. This sentiment again has parallels to the queer experience.
Despite struggling to communicate, she learns to love her family again by saving the world. While both Katie and Rick need help communicating with each other at first, they see the skills the other person brings to the table. Katie is thankful for her dad’s preparedness, while Rick learns to appreciate her planning and design skills. There is genuinely nothing that brings people together like a crisis. They eventually need each other’s skills to shut down the headquarters: Katie uses Rick’s driving, while Rick uses Kate’s videos to make the robots short circuit. In working together and improving communication, Katie found that “her people” were with her all along. This film highlights how critical it is for families to try to maintain open communication with their queer kids and create the necessary vocabulary to make that happen. Sometimes, family is their only support system, so the bonds must be strong.
Lupin: Internet corners
The Mitchells vs. the Machines’ portrayal of Katie Mitchell’s queerness is very rooted in the internet culture of the 2020s. Many queer people today do not face open bigotry on a regular basis, but still feel a sense of alienation from a society that does not fully accept them. Many young people gravitate towards online queer spaces because they may not know of any in-person queer spaces, but online, it is incredibly easy to find other queer people. As a result, a large part of this generation of queer people end up much like Katie: making weird art on the internet.
There are numerous internet spaces with large populations of queer female artists (Tumblr, DeviantArt, AO3) and Katie’s character design plays into queer styles of the 2020s with her graphic T-shirt, ripped jeans, hoodie, and of course, a rainbow pin. However, the parallels are not just surface level. Katie’s story as an artist is allegorical to the struggles of queer teens. Of course, Katie is a queer teen, but this is never presented as a source of conflict in the film. However, her relationship to her art and her family allow the authors to tell a story that is resonant with the struggles of many young queer people without directly including any homophobia. Katie’s art is a source of great joy for her, it is her passion, it is integral to who she is, but it also drives a wedge between her and her parents, particularly her father. Her brother understands her and enjoys her art, her mother, Linda, does not understand her art, but Linda accepts that this is something her daughter cares deeply about, and Rick does not understand her art, or even try to understand, and worries how that the world will be cruel to her. This perfectly parallels the experiences of many young queer people today. For many teens, queerness is not met with slurs and abuse, but with confusion, and this confusion can lead to queer people feeling alienated from their peers and family members. Katie’s relationship with Rick culminates in him finally watching one of her Dog Cop films. He still does not fully understand her art, but he understands that it is important to her, that there are people that love and appreciate her art, that he can be supportive of her even if her art does not resonate with him the same way it does with others, and that he can find things in her art to love. He accepts and loves the parts of her that make her weird and make her harder for him to understand her because they also make her who she is.
Darla: Robots
There are many stories in which robots can be read as queer. Sometimes it is because they connect to themes of otherness and alienation from society; sometimes it is because it is easier to explore queerness through sci-fi or fantasy because it separates it from reality. Another reason why robots can easily end up being queer coded is their relationship with gender. Robots have no biological sex, and are frequently androgynous. There are many cases of robots having no gender, and when they do, their gender must be based on factors other than biological sex; it is impossible for a robot’s gender to match a biological sex they do not have. While not always true, this can easily lead to trans people connecting to robots characters’ experiences with gender, and to the robots being read as queer.
Eric and Deborahbot 5000 from The Mitchells vs. the Machines fall into the category of being queer coded through their relationship with gender. The design of the robots in The Mitchells vs. the Machines is androgynous; they’re not even meant to look human, let alone to look like they conform to human gender. The only things about them which can be read as gendered are things they chose themselves: their faces, which they drew on, and their names. Eric has a simple smiley face, while Deborahbot 5000 has a face with eyelashes and lips. These are obviously not inherently gendered features, but they are ones which attention is frequently drawn to on women’s faces. To me, Deborahbot 5000’s face looks like a child’s drawing of a woman, with those features being there to differentiate. With regards to names Deborahbot 5000 once again has the more traditionally feminine one; Deborah at least is a traditionally feminine name. Yet Deborahbot 5000 clearly did not pick the name based on gender, as at first he also picked the name Eric, and only changed it so they would not have the same name. This shows Deborahbot 5000, and likely Eric too, does not have a strong connection to gender. They also both call each other brother, and are referred to by the mother, Linda, as “beautiful baby boys.” This use of masculine terms in combination with how they seem to play with gender makes them read as genderqueer, especially with Deborahbot 5000 and how he uses terms that initially seem incongruous with the few choices he makes about his gender presentation.
In addition to how they mess with gender, Eric and Deborahbot 5000’s arc culminates with them rejecting the role they were born (or rather programmed) into and “supposed” to follow, and choosing to change their programming to be their own individual selves. While there is less focus on their arc than on Katie’s, since they are not protagonists, there is something in their ending that can resonate with many queer people.
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