The studio's early positive representations of queerness fell by the wayside following increasing scrutiny under the Motion Picture Production Code. Behind the smoke screen, the supposed foes are not trying to kill each other they're dancing a tender waltz as the dragon pretends to scream for help. When the two emerge from their hiding place, they begin to charge at one another and-following their collision-are enveloped in a giant mushroom cloud of smoke. A sassy dragon will only agree to joust if he and the knight "fix" the contest: The men rush into a cave where they clang pots and pans to pretend they're fighting to the death while, in reality, they're just drinking tea. The Reluctant Dragon, a short produced in 1941, is extremely queer, even if it's not necessarily gay. It can be hard to define, but you know queerness when you see it. To be "queer" means to stand in for the Other, whether that's in terms of your sexual orientation or a performance of gender outside the norm. The word is used both as an umbrella term for the LGBT community and embodies a notion of difference.
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While "gay" refers to people who like members of their same sex, "queer" is a reclaimed term that sprang up in academic circles in the early 1990s. Le Fou might be the first character that Disney has openly recognized as being gay, but that doesn't mean LGBT people haven't been there all along.įor those unfamiliar, there's a subtle difference between those two phrases. "It's not necessarily gay, but it's definitely queer." "The bull is drawn with long eyelashes and lots of effeminate characteristics, but the cartoon doesn't really judge him as being scary," Griffin says. When the bull sees the bouquet of daisies the bullfighter is carrying, he becomes too enraptured with their scent to do battle. "He still liked to sit just quietly under the cork tree and smell the flowers." Ferdinand is eventually captured and forced to make his debut in the ring, but he refuses to fight. "All the other bulls wanted most of all to fight at the bullfights in Madrid, but not Ferdinand," the narrator explains. In 1939, Disney won the Oscar for Best Animated Short for " Ferdinand the Bull," an eight-minute film about a sleepy eyed bull who doesn't conform to expectations of masculinity. In Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company from the Inside Out, he argues that even from the studio's earliest days, queer narratives were there for audience members willing to read between the lines. Sean Griffin literally wrote the book on the gay history of Disney. Le Fou might be the first character that Disney has openly recognized as being gay, but that doesn't mean LGBT people haven't been there all along. But in truth, the Mouse House has a long and complicated relationship with queer representation. Although Disney is marketing Beauty and the Beast as a major step forward for the studio, Le Fou's blossoming sexuality only receives but passing acknowledgment-a blink-and-you'll-miss-it aside that's more of an Easter Egg for LGBT viewers than a full-on coming out. The backlash is overblown for a number of reasons.
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Russia further announced that Beauty and the Beast will be rated 16+ over concerns that the adaptation would violate the country's "gay propaganda" laws.
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"He's confused about what he wants."įollowing that announcement, evangelical preacher Franklin Graham warned that Disney is trying to "push the LGBT agenda into the hearts and minds of… children." A conservative mommy blogger cancelled her trip to Walt Disney World over the controversy, while an Alabama drive-in has declined to screen the film. "LeFou is somebody who on one day wants to be Gaston and on another day wants to kiss Gaston," Condon said. Director Bill Condon told the British gay magazine Attitude that Le Fou, the bumbling sidekick played by Josh Gad, would be portrayed as a gay man. Conservative groups have urged a boycott of Disney over news that the family-friendly studio would feature its first "exclusively gay moment" in the live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast.