It’s understandable why everyone is so upset with Disney these days. One moment they are banning gay characters from films to appease China and Russia. The next moment they are protesting the “don’t say gay” bill in Florida because they “care” about LGBTQ rights. Seems a little hypocritical, doesn’t it?
Now Disney is doing what they do best once again: flip-flopping on their decisions the second they draw controversy. After a large number of LGBTQ activists started calling them out for not supporting gay rights globally, they decided to add a gay kiss scene back into one of their iconic films.
The gay kiss occurs between the character Alisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba) and her lover in the child space film.
Disney has faced plenty of internal pressure for their anti-gay censorship from their very own employees at Pixar for their pattern of behavior.
The letter states, “We at Pixar have personally witnessed beautiful stories, full of diverse characters, come back from Disney corporate reviews shaved down to crumbs of what they once were. Even if creating LGBTQIA+ content was the answer to fixing the discriminatory legislation in the world, we are being barred from creating it.”
One of the most glaring examples of their censorship comes from the movie Onward. In this film, a lesbian cyclops character implies her sexuality for a split moment when she says, “It’s not easy being a new parent – my girlfriend’s daughter got me pulling my hair out, okay?” The film was banned for this minor scene in Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia and in the version released in Russia they changed “girlfriend” to “partner”.
The letter also damages the reputation of legendary Disney CEO Bob Iger, who oversaw the company at the time of these bans while portraying himself as an LGBTQ ally. Iger has been floated recently as a possible replacement for current CEO Chapek.
As part of their knee jerk reaction, Disney began openly protesting Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Republicans in the Florida legislature for their parental rights bill. This triggered a series of events which culminated in DeSantis removing Disney’s right to self-govern Disney World as a privately owned city in Florida.
Now Disney has to consider a new home state while also trying to figure out how to clean up all the glaring anti-LGBTQ allegations against their leadership. Between this and Disney’s history of pushing racism and sexual propaganda on children through films, do you think they will finally go down or will they push through it and continue to thrive?
