Still Figuring All This Out

Do you think Columbo is/was queer-coded? I do, and I will not elaborate.

lucky for you, i will!

let me preface this post with this: from what i've gathered, there's a pretty widespread notion today that columbo is some flavor of on-the-spectrum.

i doubt much of it was intentional, if at all. lots of old-timer fans will scowl at you if you suggest this sort of thing, but his hyperfixation, distractibility, various sensitivities, etc. all sort of compound in the eyes of today's sensibilities.

the science behind mental health is still very young and ever-changing. today, we call a presentation like this neurodivergence. tomorrow, perhaps something else.

but yesterday, very few people called it much of anything. at the risk of armchairing and perhaps pathologizing, i'll just say that some of what writers decades ago thought were quirks, some of what peter falk may have thought were just his own idiosyncrasies ("there's always a part of me that's on the moon"), could now be considered hallmarks of ADHD and autism spectrum behaviors. i've written a bit about that here. incidentally, while ADHD and ASD manifest in countless different ways and in different capacities, a large corpus of study is beginning to compound showing the high comorbidity of the two.

well, that's all well and good ms. columboscreens, but surely you've belabored a moot point. we get it, columbo's Weird. what's that got to do with him flirting with the murderer? a lot, apparently. shocker: research suggests that individuals on the spectrum are nearly 1.5x as likely to be queer.

now we've touched on an area of pertinence: if columbo is in fact neurodivergent, specifically on the spectrum, then he is statistically more likely to not be completely straight. i've talked about his gender expression here, the summation of which is that he's a masculine man who loves sports, beer, cars, women, and spaghetti westerns. he is confident, capable, protective, carries a knife, and embodies the highest virtues of stoicism--a traditional pillar of western masculinity. yet he's also very gentle, nurturing, empathetic, and intuitive. he loves children, flowers, cooking, fashion, and shopping. he is mind and heart wed, recognizing that neither logic nor emotion is more important than the other, and that both together are greater than the sum of their parts.

so for a man old enough to have perhaps gotten a WWII draft slip, he is very well-adjusted and in touch with himself. there is no doubt that he benefits from being a man, but defines that manlihood for himself, and he has very little of the pretensions typical of his generation. he transcends traditional gender roles, skillfully defuses conflict with black and queer people who anticipate brutality from him as a police officer, and takes a chivalrous yet distcintly egalitarian approach to the opposite sex.

it's important to note that when handling women, there are times when columbo will overstep his chivalry and act with benevolent sexism, most commonly by playing into notions of female vanity, emotionality, or fragility. however, keep in mind that these behaviors are almost always solely for the benefit of lulling his female suspects into a false sense of security--he never for a second considers them lesser or incapable, on the contrary. for an excellent breakdown of columbo's treatment of women (amongst other things!), see berzsenyi's columbo: a rhetorical inquiry with resistant responders.

point being, columbo is anomalous and anachronistic in so many ways that it's hard for me to not think of him as perhaps at least a little bit fruity.

now, people who don't even watch the show know that columbo loves his wife. he's obviously fond of women; it's well-known that peter falk loved practically every woman on this planet to a very real fault. and since falk and columbo are such intertwined entities, it's not an unreasonable assumption to make that columbo likes the ladies.

despite that, he has no problem getting handsy with men; he hugs, kisses, touches, cuddles with them. of course, male affection shouldn't be read as inherently homoerotic, and when this closeness isn't part of his plan to make the suspect uncomfortable, it simply demonstrates how self-assured columbo is.

in reality, most sensual of all is oddly enough the chase itself. i think there is really something to be said for the eye contact, the touch, the way columbo toys with his suspective men--particularly the ones with whom he builds a close rapport. it's not overtly romantic, but it is tangibly unique, suggestive, wrapped up in the games he plays. there is Subtext. the gotchas especially are often full of this sort of tension that seems to, at times, veer into this vaguely sexual realm. it's essentially a courtship, except instead of getting married at the end, he gets down on one knee and arrests you.

tl;dr columbo as a middle-aged straight cis man is somehow better queer neurodivergent representation than what they churn out today. go figure