"Disney's Gay Cultural Appropriation" Transcript
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Aug 31, 2021
First published.
Dec 07, 2023
Privated post-callout.
May 8, 2024Channel deleted
Whenever I think I’ve dropped the mic on
Disney, something like the summer of 2021 happens. Where do we start? With the gay fishboys who are definately not
gay? The bisexual Loki who avoids all same-gender
companionship like the plague? Or the genderfluid Loki who is only ever referred
to as a man? Raya, and her life-long frenemie, though they
might have come a little bit earlier in the summer, in late spring, they were both swathed in a consistent lesbian mood? The close. Friendship. Between Sam and Bucky? Or just… this shot of Prada Bucky alone? But you know, we can’t talk about Falcon
and the Winter Soldier being gay because Anthony Mackey, who plays the titular Falcon, and
then the second iteration of Captain America, said in an interview himself that the characters
are not gay. “So many things are twisted and convoluted. There’s so many things that people latch
on to with their own devices to make themselves relevant and rational. The idea of two guys being friends and loving
each other in 2021 is a problem because of the exploitation of homosexuality. It used to be guys can be friends, we can
hang out, and it was cool. You would always meet your friends at the
bar, you know. You can’t do that anymore, because something
as pure and beautiful as homosexuality has been exploited by people who are trying to
rationalize themselves. So something that’s always been very important
to me is showing a sensitive masculine figure. There’s nothing more masculine than being
a superhero and flying around and beating people up. But there’s nothing more sensitive than
having emotional conversations and a kindred spirit friendship with someone that you care
about and love.” Imagine that. Something as beautiful as homosexuals being
exploited by… Homosexuals. Okay I’m not really sure what he thinks
is going on here. Is he just under the impression that there’s this horde of straight people who are clamoring for gays on-screen? I mean… there are. It’s called shipping and it’s valid. (Please ship responsibly.) But a majority of the people reading into
the relationship between Sam and Bucky were gay people. And regardless of whether you’re gay or
straight, if you’re shipping characters it’s probably because you feel a little
starved for seeing actual on-screen representation. Or because you recognize natural romantic
chemistry between two characters that you’re not quite sure how the creators missed. Either way this seems like a weird place to set up my soap box and address a topic that apparently nobody thought was much of an issue. And if Mackey wanted to speak to something
that actually is an issue, he could have acknowledged the fact that Marvel films, in spite of evergreen
popularity and being the most expansive franchise in history, does not see fit to include something
as… beautiful as homosexuality in their movies. Mackey could have also acknowledged that yes, he did in fact, see the sheer amount of gay-baiting in FatWS. Intentional or not. But then I thought… Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m the problem. Maybe it isn’t that obvious… Like yes I know I get flamed for reading queerness into things (even when it’s entirely appropriate). But come on… Sam and Bucky is kind of obvious, right? So no, I’m not the problem. Are the producers really that oblivious? They must have seen it when they watched it. Because it’s hard to watch some parts and
take a straight reading away from it. Nevermind that if either of them was a woman, they would go out of their way to point out the romantic tension. We see that. Queer-people, that is. We see the tension. We see the looks, the touching, the closeness,
the rivals-to-lovers trope playing out in full force. I mean, how can a straight person look at
some of these plot elements, character beats, and coded language and say: “Oh yeah. Bucky going into a complete tailspin over
the loss of his perfectly platonic friend to whom he had become emotionally dependent
upon in order to navigate shared trauma was absolutely a straight mood.” My first question was: is there a point of
queer baiting where gays are sensitive enough to pick up on the coded language, but straights
can’t see it? Is gaydar actually a thing? The answer to that apparently is: ‘yeah
probably.’ And if there is such a sweet spot, Disney
is getting very adept at hitting it. In a way where moreso than any other American
studio, they love to plant their queer representation in that sweet spot of the gays weeping at
their feet in gratitide for shreds of acknowledgement, while the straights are, largely, too oblivious
to notice. Which is a whole issue on it’s own. Whereas other studios and networks seem to
either avoid gay topics altogether, or they dive right in like Netflix. The only other major form of media which seems to like playing in this kind of representation titillation game is anime. Which I will get to. But my follow up to that question about the
oversenstive queer rep-detection was: ‘When we flock to twitter to talk about how this
coded media represents us… why are straight people so willing to sitck up their noses and tell us that we’re obviously mistaken.’ Representation gaslighting? We literally lived these experiences. Why are we being told that we’re mistaken when we acknowledge our own lived experiences being depicted either literally, or allegorically. No wonder the gays all have anxiety disorders. Look at all the overanalyzing we’re forced
to do! Out of all the coded and baited content we’ve
been given over the years… have we reached a point where straight people also have started
reading into it? And now we’re at a point where, somehow, the straights think that these queer expiriences are actually part of the straight expirience? There must be some kind of explanation for
this willful blindness. So going over the previously mentioned example. I’m assuming this is something that’s
ubiquitous enough that everybody has some kind of opinion on it. A discussion of the many ways in which Falcon
and the Winter Solider is stuffed full of coded queer messaging has been done to death
by now. But it’s worth revisiting it to sort of…
confront the perspective that this is somehow straight. Falcon and the Winter Soldier follows the
first adventure of Sam Wilson and James “Bucky” Barns following the disappearance of Captain
America after the events of Endgame, Thanos’ invasion of Earth, and the reappearance of
everybody who had been ‘snapped’ by Thanos. Sam and Bucky being among them. Together, they have to combat a terrorist
group who is... Fighting to assure that everyone is treated
with dignity, fairness, and afforded the appropriate human rights. So the ‘bad guys’ are a multinational
team headed by a mixed-race woman of colour who are fighting for the people who didn’t
get snapped. See. Following the snap, or the blip, as it’s
called, half of the population disappeared. Urban centres became virtual ghost towns and
rural areas became desolate. There was a mass migration from impoverished
or rural nations towards the urban centres of wealthy ones. After a five-year span of everyone finally
starting to get a handle on things… Bam! Everyone comes back. Global organizations began scrambling to organize
a smooth transition for ‘blipped’ people to return to their homes and lives, as if
nothing had happened. Unfortunately, this meant forcing former migrants
out of the places that had become their homes. Leading to mass deportations and an even more
significant refugee crisis. As organizers seemed to offer more resources
to people who had been blipped, the people who had been there all along are forced into
refugee camps, shanty towns, and trapped in a cycle of bureaucratic impoverishment. The ‘Flag Smashers’ are an organization
which arose to steal resources to help these people, and demand appropriate action from
world powers who simply labeled them as terrorists. And they… were the bad guys? Yeah it’s not a great look for a guy spangled
in the american flag to be fighting against the impoverished of the world who are just
trying to organize and be heard by the global powers. Especially when one of the last shots in the
show was a bunch of people of colour being murdered by a white guy with absolutely no
repercussions. This doesn’t necessarily pertain to gay
themes. Except for the fact that the Flag Smashers
fight for people who are shoved around, pushed aside, and altogether are forgotten and ignored
by their leaders. This is a very similar situation to how the
queer and gay communities have been treated by our governments for a SIGNIFICANT portion
of history. But throughout this adventure is a running plot of Sam and Bucky… not really liking each other for some reason. And it’s never really explained why? So, when Mackey responds to the persistently
observed romantic chemistry between his own captain america and Bucky, he seems very critical
of fans for engaging in his franchise in a way he doesn’t like. Especially when he himself is dismissing these
observations as predatorial — somehow — while claiming to be protecting something as beautiful
as homosexuality from people who want to see heroic homosexuals and homosexuals themselves
on screen. While seemingly ignoring the substantial ways
in which he and Sebastian Stan were written and directed to be romantic. You’ve got the rolling-in-the-grass scene which… is a staple of romantic action movies for decades. A literal couples’ therapy session. There are the looks, the touching, and all
the other normal rivals-to-lovers character beats. Bucky’s reference to his dating life where
everyone had tiger pictures in their profile. Which… is a very vague reference to a brief
trend on Tindr where guys would post pictures where they were petting tigers. So you know which gender he’s looking up
on Tindr. Which, YES these are very specific, vague,
uses of film language that can be very easily passed-over. But for the last… what? 100 years of cinema, this was the only way
that we were ever represented so we’re very used to reading into these cues. I’m sorry that some writer thought it would
be funny to put it there. And it’s not like Mackey bears the sole
responsibility for the queer denial of obvious queer coding. Director Kari Skogland spoke specifically
to the Tiger Pictures throwaway reference saying: ““I think we just thought of it as an
oddity of the times, because he’s so confused by it,” I mean, I’m 32. And I’m confused by the need to post a picture
of yourself with a tiger in a dating profile. Apparently straight guys are big on posting
pictures of them with fish? Anyway that’s an incredibly specific reference,
relating to an incredibly specific social phenomenon just to get dismissed away with
a shallow explanation like that. And because we’re gay, we read into these
things. Is this a secret covert gay coup that the
showrunners are planning? To subvbert Disney’s heterosexual agenda
by sneaking in gay stuff and then publicly denying it? Because this is so obvious, there’s no way
that the writers just thoughtlessly threw in a line that's specifically tied to a singular,
temporary event in recent history that neither really fits nor does it really enrich the
story. Given the way Disney’s writer assembly line
churns out these scripts so meticulously, it seems weird that it would just be there
for no reason. Then again this is the same show which has
Sam saving the day by giving a speech to a bunch of politicians which convinces them
to pursue the best interests of the people. “Sure, Jan.” You’ve got a show about a genetically-altered
super soldier, a World War 2 soldier who was brainwashed into being a Soviet assassin,
and a pilot with wings becoming a symbol of American idealism. And somehow politicians bending to the benefit
of the populace at large is the most unbelievable thing. I mean there’s a whole discourse around
how fiction establishes fantasy worlds which exist under a certain set of rules, but still require a certain element of social connectivity to our reality. But that’s not this video. And honestly videos about literary theory like that are probably not in the works. Unless you’d like to see that. If so, leave a comment below. Engagement! So what concerns me most about the Sam and
Bucky ship-slash-non-ship is that it was so clear and obvious without being explicitly
stated. So no, I don’t believe that the writers
were oblivious and no, I don’t believe they’re secretly trying to hustle some sweet-sweet
gay superhero action into the show. Keep in mind the popularity of Stucky. It was so prevalent, that one might hazard
a guess that the ongoing popularity of Chris Evans’ Captain America was owed to the fan
fervour for the meta-fictitious romance with Stan’s Bucky. Also keep in mind that romantic tension between
Steve and Bucky was never explicitly written or directed into the story. Instead, it just naturally grew out of the
performances of these two actors. Contrast that against Falcon and the Winter
Soldier — where it was so brazen it almost hurt to watch. So my worry is that these NEW gay references
with plausible dieniability came directly from the executives. As a way to kinda… fan the flames for Stucky
and fast-track whatever ship name Sam and Bucky have. Sucky? Sacky? Sake? Bam??? The ongoing gay-baity rumours certainly helped
the show cycle around gay media, and earn a lot of shares and engagement on gay social
media. Is this a very calculated move designed to
get some extra engagement for these characters by making it so oblivious to us, the gays,
while even the actors and directors are prone to write it off as ‘just normal straight
boys’? Us gays are pretty good at getting things
to trend on Twitter, after all. Sure, at first there’s the initial annoyance
of Gay-baiting. And then I just get a little… uncomfortable? That very clear gay expiriences are being
lifted from gay stories (where they belong) and then thrown into a piece of media that
everyone — okay a lot of people — come away with the belief that these are perfectly
straight expiriences. Like. On one hand, yes, dismantling toxic masculinity means making it acceptable for two straight men to be emotionally intimate with each other. But on the other hand, there is a bi-or-homophobic
reading of that where a dude’s masculinity is tough enough to be emotional with bros, but still fragile enough not to bite the bullet and just… You know? Instead it just goes like: “HEY GUYS. IT’S OKAY. I’M NOT ACTUALLY GAY. I’M JUST EMOTIONAL WITH MY BROS. I’M NOT GAY.” That statement, while seeming to fight against
patriarchal values of masculinity, actually re-enforces an existing hierarchy where straight is closer to masculinity than gay is. It’s like the woke-man’s way to say no-homo. So. Why is Mr. Mackey, so quick to deffend homosexuality,
while at the same time doing everything he can to affirm Sam Wilson’s heterosexuality? Instead of saying that art is in the eye of
the beholder, and that whether the character is straight or gay would not detract from
his accomplishments and interpersonal relationships? The real kick in the proverbial balls was
that these comments dropped in Pride month. And — unfortunately, Anthony Mackey’s no-homo comments set a precedent for Disney all month long. Gonna be upfront. I loved Loki. I would have actually got to love it a whole bunch more if social media wasn’t swarmed with bi/pan Loki celebrations and debates. Oh god this is gonna be a mess. I’m gonna get cancelled. But in the case of Loki… I’m just not sure if it qualifies as representation. I realize the point about me being an exclusively
gay man is that I don’t need to feel represented by Loki. But just in a matter of tallying the sum of
the show’s part’s I’m not wholly sure how anyone could. In the words of Russell T. Davies, the creator
of Queer As Folk, he said this about Loki: “Loki makes one reference to being bisexual
once, and everyone’s like, ‘Oh my god, it’s like a pansexual show.’ It’s like one word. He said the word ‘prince,’ and we’re
meant to go, ‘Thank you, Disney! Aren’t you marvelous?’ It’s pathetic.” This is a queer creator who, in the 1990s and Early 2000s, ran a show about open and explicitly gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters. And in this formula, Queer as Folk was so
popular on Showtime that it’s runtime had to get extended by an extra 15 minutes because
the network was selling more adspace than would fit in just an hour-long timeslot. And if that aired in the early 2000s — entering into Bush-era america — why does our bisexual Loki only get a one-line vaguary about princes? And no. Nobody’s asking for Tom Hiddleston to have
a full-contact sex scene. Loki is neither the place for that, nor would
any marvel movie benefit from a sex scene. And sure. We can still have the Loki-Sylvi love plot
but like… some more significant references to bisexuality would be more appreciated. Film and television are visual mediums, and
if there is a component of your story that is not represented visually, then it has failed
in a significant way. Also because, if necessary, that little ‘prince
and or princess’ exchange between Sylvie and Loki can be removed and it wouldn’t
change the story. According to rumours, when Mobius imprisons
Loki in a time loop, it was initially going to be Loki getting kneed in the balls by a
jilted lover — a man. Which would have been a great way to call
attention to the bisexuality of his character, because it references a former MLM trist without
obstructing the developing romance between Loki and Sylvie. For what it is. But a problem with bisexual representation
is two things. First, that Bisexual characters are usually
depicted as villains. It’s a way to paint villains as being deviant,
by saying they’re excessively horny perverts who want men and women. An additional problem with Loki verbally confirming
bisexuality is that Loki’s, in the MCU and the source material, are very well known for
being liars. Especially while he’s in a situation where
he’s trying to manipulate Sylvie, there’s greater textual evidence to suggest that he’s trying to relate to her by earning her trust. Can we really take that as substantial evidence? But the second problem is that Bisexualiuty
has, in many instances in film and television, been used as a ‘cop-out’ for self-congratulatory
queer representation. And then sitcking the bisexual character in
excsluvely heterosexual romances. Which is annoying, and maybe even a contributing
factor to some of the animosity towards bisexual identity in queer circles. And no, bisexuals don't owe anyone ‘proof’ of anything. Especially because identity is internal. However fiction has different rules. All we can verify of a given character is
what, we, the audience sees on screen. Any verbal references and assumptions can
be dismissed. There’s actually a rule in TV and film that
unless you see a character die — there is no proof that they are dead. And that normally holds up.They can pop back
up at any time. So Loki can talk about his past all he wants,
but unless we have flashbacks or other indications — we, as an audience, can’t truly accept
what is said. Which is… exactly what Disney wants. They want to say they have diversity without
doing anything to commit to it. It’s one thing to be struggling to force
our own presence into media, but now we’re just asking to be represented in media that
is controlled by straight people. Which means our representation is essentially
‘gifted’ to us, and that we ought to be grateful no matter how it comes out. Which inevitably sets a precedence for straight
creators deciding what is and is not acceptable queer representation. Which is limited to what they’re comfortable
depicting, and to experiences they are aware of. You’d think Loki wouldn’t have this problem
given that the head showrunner was, herself, bisexual. However, her willingness to depict honest
bisexual expiriences were prevented by executives and producers. So her creative vision was limited by what the producers were comfortable with. And their agendas remain ambiguous, Suffice to say. After all the effort to slip that one line
of bisexuality into the show, guess who didnt get invited back for the second season of
Loki? … ...Her. Everyone else is coming back. Not her. But forget about even bisexuality, because
apparently the straights can’t wrap their head around that for some reason — Loki tried to go a step further and serve some nonbinary representation as well. And… well… It was an attempt. In the first episode of the show, we see an
identification card that depicts Loki’s ‘sex’ as ‘fluid.’ To a lot of the uninformed, this is great
nonbinary representation. To the young queers who still have a twinkle
of optimism in their eye, this is a great first step. To those of us who have nonbinary friends
who are old enough to become cynical about it. This is annoying. I feel like they wanted to drop in a queer nod, but didn’t really feel it was important to switch up their gritty, 70s bureau aesthetic. Or that the ‘fluidity’ was referencing
Loki’s shapeshifting abilities which… I’m not sure if he’s even shape-shifted
into a woman in the MCU. But either way, Loki’s abilities in the films are focused around creating illusions which distract from the reality. Not actually changing his chromosomes. He does in the comics! But not in the movies. Also damning is how, in spite of the TVA’s
‘wokeness’ around including ‘fluid’ on the intake form, literally everyone in
the show’s early episodes makes an explicit point of referring to Loki as a man. Again, which is reprised when Hiddletson’s
Loki asks the other Lokis if they’ve ever met a woman loki to which they shudder and
say ‘no.’ Sexism lite, okay… But if Loki is ‘sex-fluid’ why would a
qualification about man and woman even matter? The inability of the showrunners to distinguish a difference between sex and gender is not a trait that they want to share with TERFs. And this is, I think we will find going forward,
a problem that will become more and more prevalent in media. Because it seems to me that media in which we are explicitly represented is the least likely to contain any kind of queer expiriences. Other than maybe coming out. And yet, we find a myriad of our experiences
in stories where we are not explicitly represented. Which then annoys us to no end because we
have to submit a formal research thesis when we try and convince people that these are,
in fact, our experiences. Which… this has happened a lot this year
at Disney… There wasn’t really any early indication
that Raya and the Last Dragon was going to be gay but. Here we are. When the movie hit Disney+, there was A swarm
of lesbians fans who picked up on all the innuendos that were too subtle for most of
the straights to see. Whereas my discussion for Falcon and the Winter
Solider was focused around how gay-coded expiriences are being co-opted into normative masculinity,
and how Loki was about the erasure of bisexuality and nonbinary expiriences in lieu of vague
self-identification which does not necessarily match the characters’ portrayal, Raya speaks
to a phenomenon that has already happened. Gal pals. On a first watch of Raya, I saw some cute
chemistry between Raya and the antagonist, Namaari. I thought, sure it’s there if you want to
see it but it could just be an instance of girls being friends. And then I listened to exactly what had just
come out of my mouth. Because in spite of the aggressive gay flirting
in Raya and the Last dragon (not to mention the pet name which roughly translates to ‘Strangely Beutiful’) I had been conditioned by society to just write it off as just girl things. The permissibility of girls to be emotional,
and thus, emotionally and physically close with each other has made it difficult for
lesbians to exist in visible ways. Not that girls shouldn’t be emotional, but
there must be some lingering homophobia around to look at two girls holding hands and say:
“BFFs” before girlfriends. We really ought to look at lesbian erasure
and get concerned for the future of queer representation. That one day, maybe one day soon, our stories
and expressions are going to be swallowed into an amoebous heap of “HEY IT’S ACTUALLY
STRAIGHT AFTER ALL” media. Where the identities that queer people have
struggled and endured to live and validate will be depicted through straight characters
who have not had any suffering associated with their straightness. Not that Raya herself had many elements of
her story as being coded queer. Her suffering is more related to a literal
apocalypse than alienation, social ridicule, or willful parental abandonment. But the ways in which she expresses a very tumultuous physical attraction to a rival really should not require a heterosexual explination. And yet when people try to argue in favour
Raya’s gay leanings, they are met with corrections specifying that these are, in fact, straight
things. And that lesbians are just reading too much
into it. And even though the voice of Raya, Kelly Marie
Tran, confirmed in interviews that her portrayal of Raya was intendedly gay, there is still
a persistent wall of denial. Well. If Raya was too subtle, Disney was going to double-down on squashing rumours of gays in their studio. In Pride month, of all times. Pixar’s Luca was set to come out in– Well, he wasn’t going to come out, but the
movie WAS gonna get released in June of 2021. And from the first trailer, the word on gay
Twitter was “Calamari by Your Name”. Actually, it was all of Twitter. Film YouTube was abuz about how Disney had
finally made a gay animated movie. Straight guys were excited to see Disney’s
version of Call me By Your Name meets The Shape of Water. By the time the movie hit Disney+, I was half-convinced
they were actually gonna do it. But no. They’re just. Very good friends. Just a… question for all the affirmed straight
men watching this right now, all two of you. Is it gay to— Okay. So the movie was unabashedly blunt in its
depiction of literally every gay man’s gay expirience growing up gay. And yet, director, Enrico Casarosa, was absolutely
ardent in his denial that the film was gay in anyway. Thanks Mickey! Yeah they’re gonna slap our community-generated
flags on Mickey Mouse ears and sell our identity back to us at a mark-up sure. But they’re also going to — ONCE AGAIN
— make it very clear that there are no gay characters in Disney Movies. And when there ARE gay characters… are they REALLY? Thank god for the Eternals… Unless they kill the husband. Please don’t kill the husband. But Luca is… of course, an instance of a
very clear-as-day gay expirience whose literal climatic sequence was about showing your true
colours— That once again meets a wall of straight people
who say: “Yes. This is an absolutely heterosexual thing to
exprience. Yes. Getting disowned. Having your family threaten to send you away because you’re ‘curious.’ Found family of misfits. Et cetera. Et cetera.” Apparently that’s all straight now. “Some people… they'll never accept him. But some will. And he seems to know how to find the good
ones.” Certainly not the first time Disney made an
animated movie about fish people with heavy gay undertones. I don’t even understand why this is a debate
— Hans Christen Anderson invented ‘fish people as a literary genre’ and he himself
was quoted saying: “Yeah. Fish are pretty gay.” Actually with Luca there wasn’t as much
of that as I was worried about. The director notwithstanding. And Disney actually got their voice actors
to shut up about gay readings this time. Until Jack Dylan Grazer, voice of Alberto,
came out as bisexual soon after its release. Glub-glub hun-ty. But still. A lot of straight people I saw even heaped
on the pile of gay fish boys. ...I’m... sure there was a better way to
phrase that but I’m not sure that I should… Anyway, the coding in Luca was so obvious
that even straight people looked at it and said yep they pretty gay.’ In fact, recently director Enrico Casarosa
gave comments where he admitted how there could be a gay reading of his film. You know… because apparently he finally
decided to watch it. But even among straight people who agreed
that the fish boys were pretty gay, they gave Disney a pass because ‘they were just kids’
and apparently kids aren’t allowed to be gay. Which… I have more than a few words to say about
that. But as Disney is a media producer that specifically
develops media for children, isn’t that always going to be the defence? That having gays in their media is too mature
for children. Which I’d like to ask what these straight
people think needs to be depicted in order for it to be gay. Because that is, and continues to be the rallying
cry for Disney’s systemic removal of queer content which neither codes nor brushes off
these identities. Casualties of this include Love, Victor being
shafted to Hulu, and The Owl House having its final season cut short once it moved to
Disney+. There, I mentioned Owl House. Are You happy now? It’s not just the fact that I’m annoyed
at the ongoing queer coding. Because I am annoyed, and I’m very willing
to continue making videos about how annoyed I am. But it’s particularly annoying here because
we’re seeing in real time our identities being removed from our range of experiences. And then an errant denial that these were
ever our experiences to begin with. And it’s this denial that Disney is fostering. That the stories that queer creators have been waitng generations to depict in their unabridged forms, are actually straight stories. And that they have been all along. And if these stories are straight stories, than what’s the point in having queer people tell these stories? Or be depicted in these stories? Instead, the role of queer characters is simply
to self-declare and move on to the next scene. If we’re in it at all. We’re not going to reach public acceptance if we allow the people who don’t want us around to dictate the terms of our existence. WE’RE HERE. WE’RE QUEER. (Except if we’re causing a fuss, we don’t
want to upset anyone.) Because committing to visual depictions of
homosexuality or bisexuality — just a lil’ smootch, or even holding hands, or some romantic
dialogue — would be confronting a group of people who ‘just don’t think homosexual
content should be directed at children.’ Nevermind that out of anyone, it is queer
children who need this media the most. Queer children are coming into a world where
they may not have real-life role models or family who are like them. Feeling that alone and isolated is a huge
contributing factor for anxiety and depression among queer youth, and adults too. Having media to supplement what is missing
in real life is the best way for people to see shared experiences. But those messages aren’t going to come
across the way they need to if these experiences are removed from identifiable queer characters,
and then appropreated into media depicting straight people. And when it comes to separating our identities
from our experiences, that isn’t even the only problem. Namely, that people are more likely to take
fiction as reality. And by trusting fiction, and what the creators say about their fiction, we are letting that mould and shape our cultural idea of reality. And if queer people are not in that reality
that’s bad. If media establishes expectations about queerness
that are not true, that’s going to be bad for queer people who are trying to figure
out how to fit into the world. And it’s bad for straight and cis people
who are trying to relate to us, and becoming frustrated that we aren’t like how we are
in the media they watch. Somehow, we went from fighting to tell our stories, to setting up media producers as the gatekeepers of what is or is not a valid. And I can’t quite say why we are so complicit. But somehow, Disney especially, established itself as the cultural touchstone of identity. Disney doesn’t decide what matters. We do. And yet there’s this precedence that when
Disney makes a movie about you — you’ve made it. Once you get your Black Panther, or your Moana,
or your Raya, Mulan, your Coco… you’ve been accepted into the Disney dictated world of legitimacy. It makes people feel seen. It makes people feel included. Especially for kids. But gay kids don’t get that. There’s no gay superhero or Disney princess
or prince for them to look to. And you might say, there’s a historical
figure for them to look up to. Sure. But media matter. And as far as media, especially Disney, gay
kids don’t exist. So maybe we should explain that, actually,
do they.
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