Opinions do not necessarily represent CUIndependent.com or any of its sponsors.
Earlier this month, the creators of the new live-action version of Beauty and the Beast announced that the film will feature Disney’s first openly gay character. I’ve never been a huge fan of Disney movies so I hadn’t been paying much attention to the film beforehand, but the announcement blew up on my social media feeds — so I decided to take a look.
At first I was pleasantly surprised. Disney has generally been quite conservative in terms of the characters featured in their movies, in fear of alienating their viewers. Having a character explicitly acknowledged as gay would be a first. However, once I actually read more about the announcement, I grew apprehensive.
The gay character in question is LeFou, the sidekick to the villain Gaston. Beauty and the Beast director Bill Condon described him this way:
“LeFou is somebody who on one day wants to be Gaston and on another day wants to kiss Gaston … he’s confused about what he wants. It’s somebody who’s just realizing that he has these feelings. And [Josh Gad, the actor who plays LeFou] makes something really subtle and delicious out of it. And that’s what has its payoff at the end, which I don’t want to give away. But it is a nice, exclusively gay moment in a Disney movie.”
This statement doesn’t give me a hope. LeFou sounds a comic relief more than anything, which doesn’t set up the framework for his sexuality being handled in a sensitive manner. I don’t want to watch a movie where a man’s “confused” romantic feelings for the male antagonist are played for laughs, and I think we can all agree that it doesn’t provide positive portrayal of gay sexuality.
There are plenty of Beauty and the Beast characters that could be reimagined as gay, and if the creators wanted to create a well-rounded, empathetic LGBT character I don’t think a bit-part antagonist was the way to go. Movie villains have a long history of being coded as gay, and making that link explicit doesn’t do much to improve upon the stereotype. I’d much rather Disney’s first openly gay character be a protagonist, with their own storyline and fully fleshed-out personality.
Ultimately, what Disney ends up doing with Beauty and the Beast doesn’t make a big difference to me. I’m not a big Disney buff, and I’m confident in my identity regardless of how it’s portrayed on the big screen. But Disney movies are some of the most watched among young children, and it would be nice for LGBT kids to be able to see that being gay is normal from a young age. For many of us in this community, we didn’t realize our identities until our teenage years or later, because as children we were never shown that we could be anything but straight. Gay movie characters won’t “turn kids gay,” but for those who are LGBT is might help them realize that who they are is ok, at a far younger age. My concern is that this movie will instead tell them that being gay is abnormal and humorous, not a real possibility.
I’ll save my final judgement for after the actual movie comes out — it’s possible LeFou’s storyline will be treated with more respect than I’m presuming. But my confidence is low, and I think it’s safe to say that this isn’t the “watershed moment” for LGBT representation many outlets have been declaring it to be.
Contact CU Independent Copy Editor Carina Julig at Carina.Julig@colorado.edu.
