The gay allegories at the heart of Disney films
What is it about Disney’s new live-action film version of Beauty and the Beast that has been causing such consternation? Russia has rated it an adult-only 16+; a cinema in Alabama has banned it (“If I can’t sit through a movie with God or Jesus sitting by me,” the cinema’s owner explained, “then we have no business showing it”). They were appalled, said Stefan Kyriazis in the Sunday Express, by the way a minor character called Lefou is shown to have a homosexual crush on Beauty’s suitor, Gaston. As the film’s director, Bill Condon, told Attitude magazine: one day, Lefou wants “to be Gaston”; the next he wants to kiss him.
Don’t be misled into thinking this wacky character (his name means “The Madman”) is a sign of enlightened attitudes at Disney, said Ben Lawrence in The Daily Telegraph. He has probably been introduced as a “cynical” marketing ploy to attract gay viewers – though Disney’s animated films have always had a strong gay following. It’s not hard to see why, said Guy Lodge in The Guardian, given how many are stories of sweet-natured but “different” outsiders on a quest for “acceptance or transcendence”. Think of Pinocchio and his dream of being a “real boy”; think of Dumbo, who learns how to fly.
But most of all, think of the 1991 Disney cartoon of Beauty and the Beast, said Adam White in The Daily Telegraph. Its songs were written by Oscarwinning lyricist Howard Ashman, who was dying of an Aids-related illness at the time. He saw in his own plight a parallel with the Beast’s: a noble creature cursed with a physical transformation, doomed to waste away unless saved by a miracle. (“We don’t like what we don’t understand,” sing the hostile villagers as they advance on the Beast’s castle.) The songwriter’s “musical vision” influenced the entire film. Ashman, not Lefou, deserves to be remembered as Disney’s “first gay hero”.