As you may have noticed there has been a lot of press attention lately, both good and bad, directed towards the notion that the new live action Beauty and the Beast film has a LGBT character. Although this might be the first time Disney are explicitly stating that a character in one of their feature films is gay, there has certainly been a few times in the past that have left us wondering if the prince is really after the princess after all! I was having a Disney marathon at the weekend so I thought I’d do a rundown of a few characters that even as a kid you knew probably weren’t as straight as an arrow.
The dude rocks up with bows in his hair and spends a lot of time with his very camp man servant Wiggins. He loves his pampered pooch and is as foppish as they come. If you want further proof there are whole essays floating around on the internet about the relationship between Wiggins and Governor Ratcliffe.
Of course these aren’t all of the examples, Scar in The Lion King is another character who has reams of essays written about his queerness, and we didn’t even get onto the women. Is it good that Disney are openly claiming that a character is gay? Sure it’s a step forward, but as long as we are falling back on stereotypes and not seeing LGBT characters used more complexly we still have a long way to go.
Agree or disagree with me? Comment or tweet me so we can have a chat 🙂
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