“Disidentification scrambles and reconstructs the encoded message of a cultural text in a fashion that both exposes the encoded message’s universalizing and exclusionary machinations and recircuits its workings to account for, include, and empower minority identities and identifications” – José Esteban Muñoz

        Top Gun never intended to be a queer classic– upon release, it was a military ad overstuffed with sunsets and sleek jets. It hoped to snag the hyper-masculine crowd who would walk out of the theater and sign their name away for the chance to live a Hollywood fantasy. While it did garner this crowd– enlistment numbers spiked in the years following the film– it also picked up a smattering of queer fans. Rather than be mesmerized by the fighter jets, queer audiences watched the slicked-up shimmering bodies and tense locker room arguments with fascination. Like a game of telephone, people whispered their hypotheses on Top Gun’s true intent, and soon it became a cultural phenomenon to call Top Gun a gay movie. 

       Over time, addressing its queerness has become a joke– as a non-binary lesbian and Top Gun connoisseur, I must state with the utmost seriousness that it is not a joke, nor should it be a joke. There is power in disidentifying with works like Top Gun– a queer reading allows us to reclaim stories within American society, solidifying our right to inhabit these spaces. Since the earliest days when our country was still taking its first unsure steps, people have engaged in queer relationships. The cowboys on the frontier were entangled, the bachelorettes in the antebellum period, and the soldiers of World War I. We have hidden in plain sight, using terms such as “bosom buddies” and “romantic friends” to avoid the scrutinizing gaze of judges. In the 1980s, when Top Gun was released, queer people were still struggling with secrecy and ignorance. Queer people were kicked out of their homes for their identity, murdered with no justice, and ignored when suffering from AIDs. A decade after Top Gun, the Clinton administration would put into effect Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, an order regarding the presence of non-heterosexuals in the military. 

       Queer people of the past and present spend their entire lives fighting for recognition under the banner of the United States, spilling their blood on the stars and hoping it will sink into the fabric. The country throws that flag into the washer, observing as the machine soaks up our sacrifice. The rejection stings– that is why it is so satisfying to take something they claim as theirs and make it our own. Top Gun is their beacon of American exceptionalism for all the same reasons it is our beacon of American survival. For them, the bond between Maverick and Goose is a product of military closeness. For us, their fondness is a tradition of queer found-families, the process of seeking each other out despite not having anything. For them, Maverick is the stand-in for America– a rule breaker in cowboy boots who risks it all to win. For us, he is one of the rejects– the military stalks his vulnerable form, waiting for his past and imperfections to become too much. When they do, they will tear into his jugular and remove him from service, casting off his attempt to prove himself. For them, Iceman is another representative of the United States– a stoic figure with an insatiable need for competition. For us (and Val Kilmer, who said he played Ice as a perfectionist with a bad father), he is repressed and burdened by the expectations of men before him. The restructuring of these characters and themes makes Top Gun a story about survival and acceptance. The most complicated dogfight is not in the sky– it is on the ground, where we must discover on our terms what it means to be American. 

        Top Gun’s status as a queer classic emphasizes how integral audience reaction is. Our ability to restructure art allows us to break down pieces encoded in hurtful institutions and make them more complex. I believe it is vital that we continue to do this– there is no such thing as inferring too much into the subtext. We should all hope to question what we consume and to make it better. Once art is in our hands, we give it a new life– we are the directors of its legacy.