Disney’s rainbow-washing agenda
A leaked Baymax clip prmoting the transgender flag. (Photo from Twitter/realchrisrufo)
Menstruation and trans representation is a non-issue
On Tuesday, Chris Rufo, a conservative writer and activist tweeted that he had obtained a leaked video clip from Baymax, Disney’s upcoming show. In the 27-second video, the beloved robot from Disney’s film Big Hero 6 asks a woman to recommend menstrual products. She notes the tampons she always uses, which opens the floodgates for everyone in that aisle to give Baymax their recommendations. That includes several other women, a father, and one character who appears to be a trans man wearing a trans flag tank top, who says, “I always get the ones with wings.” Needless to say, conservative outrage ensued over these five seconds.
Rufo claimed that the clip was “part of Disney's plan to re-engineer the discourse around kids and sexuality,” linking a “report” he wrote about Disney’s supposed radical pro-critcial race theory, pro-queer agenda. As if fear-mongering about queer sexuality has anything to do with natural bodily functions. If anything, the leaked clip is hinged on raising awareness for young children and men (or a healthcare robot) buying feminine products.
This incident follows Disney’s recent decision to include a same-sex kiss in Lightyear, the Buzz Lightyear origin story that hit theatres earlier this month. The conservative ire from the two incidents is a barometer of the current backlash against LGBTQ+ rights.
Track record of the mousetrap
Keeping track of Disney’s actual stance on trans and queer depictions can be convoluting. The House of Mouse routinely faces scrutiny from progressives and conservatives alike for censoring queer content and displaying the queer agenda in front of their young audience.
Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill— which bans sexuality and gender discussions in primary grade levels—was signed into law in March.
While Disney CEO Bob Chapek positions Disney as maintaining public neutrality on the law, money talks. And in the last two years, Disney has donated $249,126 to members of the Florida legislature that voted for the "Don't Say Gay" legislation and $50,000 to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Disney now says it will reassess political donations.
Disney has faced criticism for its feeble impartiality–with the company claiming it was because its job was to tell stories about LGBTQ+ people, not to be advocates. Done with covering for corporate homophobia, hundreds of employees walked out of the company’s headquarters and took to publicly expressing their outrage.
In a statement attributed to “the LGBTQIA+ employees of Pixar, and their allies” obtained by Variety, employees of the animation studio allege that Disney corporate executives have demanded cuts from “nearly every moment of overtly gay affection.”
“We at Pixar have personally witnessed beautiful stories, full of diverse characters, come back from Disney corporate reviews shaved down to crumbs of what they once were,” the letter states. “Even if creating LGBTQIA+ content was the answer to fixing the discriminatory legislation in the world, we are being barred from creating it.”
Dana Terrace, the creator of "The Owl House,” a Disney show of historic bisexual representation, denounced Chapek's response, saying the memo "contained nothing of worth, just a pile of hollow assurances and defensive finger pointing to their 'inspiring content.’”
Simply put, Disney is yet another company that commercializes the LGBTQ+ pride movement into a product, pretending to represent queer people to appeal to them as customers.
The fields of animation are filled with wonderful people doing their best to tell inclusive queer stories, but compromised to satiate a mainstream audience. Corporations can’t be trusted to further queer storytelling if representation (or what it really is, queer-baiting at best) is abandoned the moment it is deemed a detriment to profit.
