Negative man doom patrol6/22/2023 ![]() ![]() This is an imagined moment, a wished-for reality that Larry doesn’t quite have the courage to seize. It is a fabulous moment, one where we see Larry breaking out of his internalized homophobia and embracing himself.īut, it’s not real. Larry is asked to sing, climbs to the stage, and belts out Kelly Clarkson’s “People Like Us.” The audience and stage erupt into a dance party of free queer people singing about their freedom. Larry decides to leave Danny and his Dannyzens, the people who come to live on and with Danny, but finds himself sitting in Danny’s central building, Peeping Tom’s Perpetual Cabaret. This revelation terrifies Larry and the Negative Spirit who know the Bureau all too well, having been tortured by them after the crash. ![]() While visiting Danny, a genderqueer and mystical living street, Larry and Victor learn that Danny is being chased by the Bureau of Normalcy, a covert government organization dedicated to the capture, weaponization, or elimination of those deemed deviant and abnormal. In the series, other characters call the Negative Spirit “it” and “he,” but it’s unclear what pronouns they would choose, so I’m using the humanizing, yet gender-inclusive “them.” Larry has tried ignoring and controlling the Negative Spirit and neither works. While there are several turning points that help Larry learn to accept and embrace both the Negative Spirit and his queerness - Jane’s insight about respecting her personalities, as well as the moving reconciliation between Larry and his ex-lover - the most compelling and stark example takes place when Larry meets Danny the Street.īefore their meeting, Larry has an ambivalent and often antagonistic relationship with the Negative Spirit, who renders Larry unconscious whenever they leave his body. These negative beliefs can lead to depression and anxiety, anger and frustration at the “wrong” kind of queer people, and other self-destructive behaviors.ĭoom Patrol excels in using the existing relationship between Larry and the Negative Spirit, which is present in the comics, to explicitly explore how Larry feels about himself and his queerness, unabashedly revealing the negative effects of internalized queerphobia on both individuals and their relationships with others. Internalized queerphobia describes the phenomenon whereby queer people believe negative things about themselves due to their sexuality. Sometimes the series gets heavy-as when Jane confronts memories of her abusive childhood-but by and large, that heaviness is balanced with sardonic humor and unflinching insight into the despicability and honorability of humanity and human impulse.įor Larry, much of his development has to do with his identity as a queer person and how he has internalized the queerphobia leveraged against him by our society. Nobody knows just how to manipulate the team into doing exactly what he wants.ĭespite purportedly being a superhero adaptation, Doom Patrol spends the bulk of the 15 episodes of Season 1 exploring the trauma and recovery (and relapse) of each of the main characters. (He got kicked out for being basic.) And, Mr. Nobody, a seemingly all-powerful baddie and former member of the Brotherhood of Evil. Together, this team of nobodies faces Mr. Niles Caulder include: Cliff Steele, a race car driver who is now a brain in a robotic body Jane, a person with 64 personalities (each with their own super-power) Rita Farr, a Hollywood star turned hyper-malleable stress-case and Victor Stone, better known as Cyborg. In addition to Larry, the superpowered misfits taken in by Dr. The TV adaptation of Doom Patrol is about a bunch of losers who wouldn’t even call themselves superheroes. Instead, it's the internalized queerphobia that also resides within. Over the decades they are stuck together, Larry first hates and resents the Negative Spirit, furious at him for neither being able to leave Larry nor communicating with him - but what Larry finds is that it isn’t the Negative Spirit that is hurting him. Inside him resides the Negative Spirit, a being made of an energy type unknown to humanity. Larry emerges from the fiery wreckage, burned head to toe, but walking, talking, miraculously alive. Larry’s wife and children watch as his plane crashes to the ground in the distance-and the man we will come to know is Larry’s lover rushes to the crash site. Except, when Larry reaches the mesosphere, he is confronted by a wave of energy that debilitates him and causes his rocket to freefall from space. The year is 1961 and Larry is about to test an experimental rocket plane that will pave the way for space travel. Nobody provides an unrivaled introduction to one of our merry band of heroes, Larry struts confidently toward a large plane. Nobody, the narrator (and villain) of Doom Patrol’s Season 1. Short-listed for the Mercury Space program. ![]()
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