New Wave Animation and the Future of Queer Media –Why Disney has Lost Touch with Animation and its Queer Audiences
Disney has a fundamental misunderstanding about their queer audiences, if not a malicious contempt towards them.
Now, that may seem harsh, but let's dive a little deeper. In Disney’s 100+ years of operation, there have been some “canonically” queer characters. In an infographic I created for an earlier project for this class, I went through ten of the queer characters Disney has touted as an incredible step forward for LGBTQA+ representation.
So, that solves it then? Disney supports queer people, right?
Well…
While there are multiple types of representation, and while I’m not trying to claim that one type is better than the other, or that representation can only be presented in one concrete way, I want to attempt to simplify it for the sake of this argument. There are two types of representation I’d like to discuss in this essay. One: Representation with a purpose, and Two: Representation for the sake of Representation, or as I like to describe it, "Disney Representation”.
“Disney Representation” is the phenomenon of a movie or show claiming to have either record-breaking representation (ie. “The first gay main character!”), when in reality there is perhaps a queer couple holding hands in the background of a shot for approximately 1 second of screen time, which somehow still gets flagged by extreme Christian groups for “corrupting the youth”.
Whether or not you agree with “Disney Representation” not being important or a genuine attempt to include their queer audiences into the films they love in a politically turbulent time, there is more that goes into it. And yes, I do mean politics.
In March 2022, the “Parental Rights in Education” bill was passed in Florida, colloquially known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Who was discovered to be a large donor to that bill? Disney. (1)
Disney is the largest media conglomerate in the world, they call their theme parks “The Happiest Place on Earth”, but they do not support their queer audiences. They will constantly create “queer” characters and undermine the actual representation being made in other animated titles, but they do not support queer people on a fundamental level. Using someone’s identity to push a false narrative of inclusion and generate revenue while supporting homophobic and transphobic legislation behind the scenes is not support – it's malicious.
Performative representation is just as dangerous as outward hatred or disapproval. Sure, being on the receiving end of a homophobic encounter is not fun. But I would argue that having someone flatter you and sell you an idea of who they are, or in Disney’s case, literally sell you something, then turn around and use that money to fund legislation that goes against the interest of the queer audiences they’re selling things to is worse.
As Judith Butler describes, performativity “is that discursive practice that enacts or produces that which it names” (2). What she is saying is that performativity is who you are. Disney claiming to be for queer rights while directly contributing to a harmful bill that hurts their queer audiences shows who Disney is.
So, where do we go from here? Despite my entire argument up to this point, I have no reason to believe that Disney will fall from grace, or suddenly become bankrupt overnight because they don’t actually care about the queer people they’re selling things to. However, there seems to be a shift in the world of animation – Disney is no longer the go-to for incredible animated stories, and it is certainly not the leader in queer representation.
When Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse was released in 2018, its bold, painterly, and unique animation style took the art world by storm. When I saw it in theaters, I didn’t even pay attention to the guy I was on a date with, I was so enamored by the movie. It was a style I had never seen before.
This brings back the topic of what representation is. Queer media does not need to simply revolve around being queer, as in showing queer characters or relationships. Queer animation can mean style, direction, and soul. Spider-Verse is queer not because of queer characters, it is queer through its art. (This is not referring to the second installment, where Gwen is theorized to be transgender, although that is important).
Spider-Verse created a feeling for young audiences that Disney hasn’t been able to capture since. The Disney style had been done to death at that point, other studios tried to emulate their take on their family-friendly, approachable designs, and while they hadn’t failed, the animated scene had fallen into complacency. Just the year prior, Disney had released their live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast (with another character they slapped the queer label on and claimed to be a first), and audiences were tired.
Spider-Verse created a new wave of animation, and Disney is still struggling to keep up.
Continuing with the universe of Miles Morales and the Spider-Verse, Spiderman: Across the Spider-Verse is arguably a more “canonical” queer story, though there is no actual confirmation of queerness in the movie.
But Brooke, I hear you saying, Gwen isn’t canonically transgender! How can that be better representation than Disney having confirmed queer characters?
It’s not about who Gwen is, it’s about what she goes through.
What Disney fundamentally misunderstands about telling a queer story is that being queer is not the end-all-be-all. Whether or not Gwen is actually transgender or not does not take away from the queerness of her story in Across the Spider-Verse.
Gwen’s story revolves heavily around the dilemma of coming out. Any queer person knows that coming out can be one of the hardest parts of being queer. Gwen’s story is representation not because she may or not be trans, but because she is relatable to queer people in a way that Disney has never recreated. Not to say that Gwen saying “Hey, I’m transgender!” in the film would take away from the impact of her story, but it's definitely the care and nuisance that it’s handled with that makes it so effective. In the article, Across the Spider-Verse Isn’t Gay, But It’s Definitely Queer (3), the author describes this by saying, “Gwen agonizes over her options; hiding her identity is straining her relationship with her father and, while she believes he loves her unconditionally, she is not confident that he loves her more than he hates Spider Woman,”.
This is fundamental to understanding the queer undertones in Gwen’s backstory. Her conflict with her Spider Woman hating father is an allegory for a queer child trying to debate whether or not they should come out to their homophobic parents. It is such a powerful, real queer story that goes miles beyond Disney’s performative representation, and makes the movie queer.
Reproductive Futurism is an “attitude that uses society’s fears around the corruption of children to justify anti-queer legislation and policies” (4).
Why do I bring this up? What does reproductive futurism have to do with queer animation?
Well, a whole lot.
Disney, ever the fighter for queer rights, pushes the concept of reproductive futurism into nearly all of their films. The young, beautiful protagonist chases after her true love, a young, handsome man, while fighting against the always seemingly queer-coded villain. The characteristics of queerness, whatever the public deems them to be at the time, are often represented in the villains in Disney movies. The winner is heterosexuality – the beautiful straight couple get married and live happily ever after.
Dreamworks founded their company almost solely out of spite for Disney, which makes it quite telling that they’d create a more fundamentally queer family movie than Disney ever has.
The Wild Robot, released this year, is a beautiful, heartwarming, and tragic film about love and family. So, how is it queer?
A defective robot gets lost in the woods and raises a gosling with her fox best friend. Read that again and tell me that’s not queer.
The Wild Robot follows the new wave of animation in its style, just like the two Spider-Verse movies, but that alone does not make it queer, as it does for the original Spider-Verse, because The Wild Robot did not start the trend as Sony did. However, it is definitely a contributing factor, in the way that the style breaks the traditional mold of cookie-cutter stylization in Disney films.
What truly makes The Wild Robot feel queer despite not openly or even intentionally trying to be, is the intricate and impactful story of ROZZUM Unit 7134, who feels that she does not belong in the wild, through a series of unfortunate incidents, becomes saddled with the responsibility of raising an orphaned gosling. Dreamworks does not baby their audience, or hold their hand while discussing difficult topics. They treat their audiences as adults while they tell an ultimately adult story of what a family is, or what it can be. This movie comes across as queer because “queer audiences will still find something relatable and profound: a representation of found family and what it feels like to try and exist together in a society that doesn’t know how to deal with a new ecological structure,” (5).
Found family is a very popular trope in media, and while it in itself is not inherently queer, it is heavily adopted by queer audiences because of the lack of a binary family unit for queer people. Some queer people lose their parents when they come out, some cut off their family members because they cannot safely come out to them at all. Queerness in families is something so complicated and so underrepresented in media, not just animation. The Wild Robot feels so refreshing to queer audiences because the family at the center of the story is not “normal”. It is not a strict father, beautiful daughter, and (usually) dead mother, as is so often depicted in Disney films.
Disney threw in their own attempt at new wave animation last year when they released their newest princess movie Wish. Everything about this movie illustrates why Disney has grown so disconnected from their audiences, queer and otherwise. Wish looks very different from Disney’s main catalog of 3D movies, but not in a good way. It mixes 2D and 3D animation with watercolor illustrations, which on a conceptual level, is not entirely different from the technology other successful “queer” animation styles use. However, Disney’s change of style feels less inspiring because it does not feel like the central part of the film, it is simply there to say “Hey, we can animate fun too!”, which makes it feel empty and soulless. It doesn’t help that the combination of styles makes the film look half-finished, and I’m not even going to discuss the lackluster plot and horrible songwriting.
Disney does not understand what makes new wave animation so appealing to queer audiences, even without touting the newest gay character. They do not have to claim representation, they are passion projects of queerness, in style and story.
Sources:
Disney just cant say gay, Matt Weaver, University of Portsmouth,
Judith Butler, Performativity, and Drag, Kevin Cooley
Across The Spider Verse Isn’t Gay, But It’s Definitely Queer | by JAW | Medium
Lee Edelman, Reproductive Futurism, and “The Child”, Kevin Cooley
'The Wild Robot' Is an Unexpected Depiction of Queer Found Family, Em Win
