The kind of uproar a teeny kiss can generate in an animated film that, by the way, features no small amount of gun violence can be seen in the just-launched Disney/Pixar film Lightyear. This spin-off of Toy Story is primarily about astronaut Buzz Lightyear’s attempts to reach the speed of light in order to transport his crew, stranded on a planet, back to Earth.
However, his colleague Alisha Hawthorne steals the show with a tiny montage sequence: As Buzz literally races after his ego (and hardly ages), Alisha falls in love on the planetary ground station and starts a family – with a woman.
While this is only told in passing, Alisha’s kiss does mark a historic moment, as it is the first open affirmation of same-sex relationships in an animated Disney feature film. Reactions to it have highlighted how pervasive censoring queer content still is, despite “gay pride.” Bans have occurred not only in Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, the Arab Emirates, and Malaysia, but China, Europe, and the United States have also repeatedly cracked down on queer themes.
Hungary and Florida passed laws
The more so when the target audience is children, as seen last year in Hungary and this year in Florida. Both of these passed laws to “protect” minors from issues that deviate from the heterosexual norm.
Since March, in the “Sunshine State” of Florida, the so-called “Don’t say gay” law has banned discussions about gender and sexual orientation in classrooms. That earned a lot of criticism, which included from a board member of the Disney corporation, the state’s largest employer.
Subsequently, Florida Governor DeSantis, who has been touted as a new conservative presidential candidate, promptly suspended Disneyland’s tax breaks. Further, when right-wing conservative activist Christopher Rufo posted on Twitter a Zoom recording of a Disney executive speaking out in favor of more queer issues, Disney was accused of pursuing a “queer agenda.”
Open letter from staff
As parts of Pixar’s staff didn’t quite see it that way, they published a letter in which they accused their studio Disney of queer-washing and self-censorship – because as with many other productions, Lightyear’s kiss had already fallen victim to editing, but was then reintroduced due to the protest of Pixar’s staff and the uproar surrounding “Don’t say gay”. Disney’s relationship with queer culture is and has been an ambivalent one.
Although it is a popular fan sport to seek out queer characters in legendary Disney films, before Ice Princess Elsa from Frozen, among the characters that can be considered queer were almost exclusively villains: the devious lion Scar from The Lion King, the bloodthirsty Governor Ratcliffe from Pocahontas, the malevolent magician Jafar from Aladdin, and the drag queen-inspired sea witch Ursula from Ariel the Mermaid.
While these characters are unquestionably intriguing and even partly the work of openly gay cartoonist Andreas Deja and lyricist Howard Ashman, the link between queerness and malice is obvious.
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Reality worth living
While the creative sifting through films can be fun, the goal of representational politics is to visualize homosexuality and gender nonconformity as livable realities. It is precisely because this is quite simply not a reality in many places and members of the LGBTQI+ community must fear concrete reprisals that an innocent kiss in a Disney film hits like a bomb.
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