Targets of their ire included interracial couples, characters expressing disrespect for priests, and even (get ready to clutch your pearls here) suggestions of sexual perversion. It’s a complicated history, but here’s the short version: Around the late '20s and early '30s, American conservatives launched a moral panic over what they perceived as a lack of decency in films. First - the Disney villain was invented at the same time that movies were figuring out how to queer-code villains, immediately in the wake of the film industry’s first self-censorship program. I think this phenomenon can be attributed to four qualities that seem to be shared across a wide range of villains.
