TL;DR
- Birdo appears in the new Super Mario Galaxy Movie but is silenced.
- Despite her history as a trans character, she has no speaking lines.
- Fans are disappointed with her limited role and lack of representation.
- Yoshi, a more popular character, gets to speak and sing.
- The film’s release coincided with Trans Day of Visibility.
It’s no surprise that Birdo would be featured in the second modern Mario film, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, which just hit theaters a week ago. Longtime admirers of the glamorous dinosaur will see this as a full-circle moment for a side character who has been waiting a long time for her close-up: her North American debut came in 1988’s Super Mario Bros. 2 — the gayest sequel, because you could play as Princess Peach — in which she shot eggs at the main character in the game’s inaugural boss battle. Birdo’s membership as a part of the Super Mario Squad has been a slow burn. Since her initial appearance, she has played a supporting role in several of the franchise’s games, including Super Mario RPG, Mario Tennis, several iterations of Mario Kart and Mario Party. When she popped up in the trailer for Super Mario Galaxy, shooting her signature eggs from her gaping mouth hole, I was downright giddy. I knew that despite never wanting to be in a movie theater with noisy kids, I had to make a pilgrimage to see my favorite pink reptile on the big screen.
For those who might be less familiar with Birdo, it’s important to know that, although Nintendo has never confirmed that she is transgender, she is widely considered one of the first trans characters in video game herstory due to language in the user manual that accompanied the original release of SMB2. The hyperfemme character is usually depicted with pink skin, a bright-red bow, long lashes, and a beat purple brow, as well as an engagement ring on her finger. Yoshi and Birdo are often paired up and have sometimes been shown to have romantic feelings. (But let’s remember, despite Yoshi’s presence, Birdo actually precedes him in Mario lore. Yoshi made his North American debut in 1990’s Super Mario Bros 3, two years after she first spat eggs across our screens.)
In the SMB2 manual, Birdo was introduced as a boy who “thinks he’s a girl” with a preference for the name “Birdetta.” And, according to the detailed history in the Mario wiki, Birdo was also referred to as “okama,” a Japanese term for a masculine man who puts on women’s clothes, but one often also used as a slur against gay men, femme guys, and trans women. The original voice actors for Birdo were also self-identified okama, per The Gamer. I knew it was a longshot that a movie marketed to children in the weirdly conservative 2020s would allow Birdo’s trans identity to shine, but for that day, hope was that thing with scales. And indeed, I’m disappointed to report, dear reader, that Birdo has been silenced.
Her cameo trailer is pretty much emblematic of her entire use in the film. Rather than getting her own storyline, she plays henchman — henchwoman? henchsaur? — to the film’s secondary antagonist, Wart, a crime boss and owner of Gateway Galaxy’s casino. A short, entirely unremarkable, battle accounts for all 30 seconds of her screentime. But worse than her being relegated to some C-tier status unbecoming of the Marioverses most fabulous dinosaur, Galaxy’s biggest crime is that Birdo does not utter a word. There’s textual evidence for her linguistic capacity. Birdo uttered words in a commercial for BS Super Mario USA, a direct sequel to Super Mario Bros 2 that was released in Japan. Through text cards in the game, it was also clear that Birdo had the capacity for language. And, as Yoshi does in other games, Birdo makes noises that would indicate speaking in games such as Mario Kart 8. She also has text lines in Super Mario Sluggers, in which players can gain access to her by winning a game of Piranha Panic and rescuing her across a rainbow bridge. But despite her proven capability for speech, Birdo does not speak in Super Mario Galaxy. The extent of her expression is a single, high-pitched exhalation made during the fewer-than-30 seconds she’s given on screen.
Now, of course, seeing Birdo sidelined like that would sting no matter what. But, to add insult to injury, Birdo’s fellow dinosaur Yoshi — who is, admittedly, a much more popular character — is capable of conversing with those around him. Though he speaks only his name, as a Pokémon might, Yoshi is clearly understood by those around him. The green dino (voiced by Donald Glover) even joins in with Luigi (Charlie Day) on a version of “That’s Amore!” sung to poke fun at the fact that Mario (Chris Pratt, ugh) has a crush on Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy). Nintendo fans have often used Birdo and Yoshi as yardsticks against which to measure one another. For instance, in a popular viral Reddit post about their anatomies, one user pointed out that Yoshi eats food — or bad guys — resulting in an egg popping out of his back hole, while Birdo shoots eggs out of her front hole. Much to consider here.
To my mind, the marked differences between Yoshi and Birdo, specifically in their speech, are reminiscent of the perennial differences between Disney’s flagship characters Goofy and Pluto, both of whom are dogs, but one of whom walks on all fours and converses, while the other is leashed, quadrupedal, and silent. This favoring of Goofy, and disenablement of Pluto, has always suggested that a hierarchy exists in the Disneyverse between animals who get to be anthropomorphic and those who are denied higher sentience. A similar dynamic seems to exist in Super Mario Galaxy between loveable dinosaurs who get to work with the hero and silent ones — a trans woman, nonetheless — who must not only play second banana, but do so in voicelessness.
It’s ironic, then, that Galaxy premiered one day following Trans Day of Visibility, on the same day that Ethel Cain seemed to sneer at notions of cis comfortability by baring her genitalia on Instagram. That all leads to me asking: Can the trans dino speak? We know she can! Though she may not speak in English, her expressions, as those of Yoshi, are utterances that are meant to convey ideas that we can readily understand. Why, in the Super Mario Galaxy Movie, has she been robbed of the gifts of communication and expression? Donald Glover’s casting as Yoshi made international headlines. Shouldn’t there have been an opportunity for a trans actress to do the same? Couldn’t Trace Lysette, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, Angelica Ross or, dare I say, Karla Sofía Gascón have answered the call? If we stopped focusing on Yoshi for a moment, and perked up our ears, we’d see that Birdo has more coming out of her mouth than pretty pink eggs. We only have to listen.