By now, you’ve probably heard the news that the live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast, set to hit cinemas this month, will feature Disney’s first “exclusively gay moment”, and when I first saw the headline, I was pretty thrilled.
Disney films are notoriously lacking when it comes to LGBTQ+ representation. There’s the supposed “lesbian couple” who can be seen for about 0.2 seconds in Finding Dory. There’s Oaken, a background character in Frozen, whose partner is suggested to be male. And then there are the queer coded villains, like Ursula from The Little Mermaid, a character based on the drag queen Divine, or Jafar from Aladdin, who essentially convey the message that gay people are all evil.
And that’s pretty much it. There are no queer heroes or heroines. There are no same sex relationships portrayed positively on screen. The world presented by Disney films essentially says that if you’re anything but cisgender and heterosexual, you can hide in the background and never talk about your sexuality. Or you can be evil.
Just a tiny bit problematic.
A study conducted by GLAAD found that, of 102 major film releases in 2013, only seventeen of these films contained identifiable LGBT characters, and only seven of these passed the Russo test – to pass, a film must have characters who are identifiably LGBTQ+, but who aren’t defined by their queerness, and whose removal from a film would affect the plot. Disney including a token same sex couple in the background of the film, a gay coded villain, or a character who’s queerness is only hinted at, isn’t representation.
More than half of LGBTQ+ students experience bullying at school because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, and the negative stereotyping of queer people on screen perpetuates this. By failing to include noticeable, positive portrayals of queer people in children’s films, we’re failing to provide children with a positive context that they can put the queer people in their life in. We’re failing to show children that their LGBTQ+ identifying peers, siblings, teachers, parents, aunts and uncles are normal. We’re failing to show LGBTQ+ children that they are valid and normal and that their stories are worth telling as much as their straight friends’ are.
So, Disney stepping up to the plate and bringing in a canonically queer character seemed, initially, to be something incredibly positive.
And then, I thought about it. And then I changed my mind.
Because, of all the characters in Beauty and the Beast, why is it that Disney decided to make LeFou the canonically queer character?
For those of you unfamiliar with the plot of the 1991 version, LeFou is the dim-witted, subservient sidekick of Gaston, who is the primary antagonist of the film and potentially the biggest asshole in Disney villain history. Gaston’s masculinity is so damn fragile, he has LeFou follow him around everywhere, persistently reminding him that he’s the hottest man alive. There’s literally an entire song about it.
LeFou is not a positive portrayal of the LGBTQ+ community. To start with, he exists, in the cartoon version anyway, purely for comic relief – his name literally means “The Fool” in French – and his funniness is primarily based around his obsession with Gaston. Even if the relationship between Gaston and LeFou in the cartoon is a straight up (pun intended) bro-ship, LeFou really enjoys praising Gaston’s biceps and muscles. He’s simpering and snivelling, fawning over this horrible man, pirouetting around the room while he sings his praises. He essentially plays into the negative stereotype of the comic, camp sidekick, implicitly suggesting that gayness is something to be laughed at.
And let’s not forget the fact that LeFou is a freaking villain. As I said before, Disney villains have a track record for being queer coded. There’s Ursula and Jafar, but also Scar from The Lion King and Ratcliffe from Pocahontas, to name a few. Their non-conformity makes them dangrous and villainous, and sends the implicit message to the people watching that anyone who isn’t explicitly heterosexual is probably going to try to murder you.
How is it progressive to make the first canonically gay Disney character a villain? How is this going to send any messages about the LGBT community to children other than “gayness = evilness”? Admittedly, it’s pretty likely that LeFou will have some kind of redemption arc throughout the plot of the movie, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s inherently associated with Gaston, who is basically meninism personified. Even if the film ends with LeFou fully over his crush on Gaston, having decided to join the “good” side, Disney could have provided a much more positive portrayal of LGBTQ+ people by just making a “good” character gay.
Could’ve made Lumiere and Cogsworth get married. I’m just saying.
It might be 2017, but we’re somehow still not at the point where the protagonist, or even slightly central character in a children’s film could be LGBTQ+. Everyone – including children – knows that the LGBTQ+ community exists, and yet queer people, when they aren’t evil, only get their stories told in the background or on the sidelines.
On the one hand, the inclusion of a queer character in a Disney film is a step forward, and the importance of that can’t be overlooked. It’s definitely positive that Disney have given the character of LeFou the opportunity to be explicitly queer, rather than just have his sexuality heavily hinted at. But equally, it isn’t groundbreaking or revolutionary for Disney to take a character that is already steeped in negative stereotypes, and make him canonically gay. LeFou’s “exclusively gay moment” isn’t the representation that we want, or that we need. Disney refuses to make any of their “good”, heroic characters queer, and the message that this sends is that queer people don’t get to be “good” or heroic. Until this changes, Disney shouldn’t be getting any pats on the back for good representation.