Have Dis­ney movies always had poor LGBTQ+ representation?

In a world where peo­ple are still per­se­cut­ed for who they fall in love with, Dis­ney nar­ra­tives can act as a bea­con. Indeed, remov­ing gen­dered pro­nouns from tales of head­strong young pro­tag­o­nists who are labelled ​“odd” sim­ply because they are dif­fer­ent opens up the tra­di­tion­al Dis­ney fairy tale to pret­ty much any LGBTQ+ sub­text. The idea of break­ing free from society’s restraints, and being accept­ed for who you are, is some­thing the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty sees reflect­ed in their every­day strug­gle for acceptance.

Of course, Dis­ney films are gen­dered, and up until very recent­ly they have nev­er strayed from het­ero­nor­ma­tiv­i­ty. Which is why direc­tor Bill Condon’s remarks about an ​“exclu­sive­ly gay moment” in Beau­ty and the Beast have caused such a stir. Although this ges­ture of inclu­siv­i­ty is a cause for cel­e­bra­tion for many (at least out­side of ultra con­ser­v­a­tive cir­cles), it serves to high­light the absence of open­ly gay char­ac­ters in the studio’s back catalogue.

Condon’s com­ments relate specif­i­cal­ly to LeFou, Gaston’s schlub­by side­kick. Except it has always been pos­si­ble to inter­pret the char­ac­ter as gay, because when Disney’s ani­ma­tors orig­i­nal­ly brought him to life back in 1991 they did so using ​“queer cod­ing”, which refers to the process of attach­ing stereo­typ­i­cal­ly gay char­ac­ter­is­tics to cer­tain char­ac­ters with­out explic­it­ly stat­ing their sexuality.

LeFou con­stant­ly fawns over Gas­ton. When he sings ​“no one’s got a swell cleft in his chin like Gas­ton,” we can read this as his way of attempt­ing to pick up a lover who is ​“down in the dumps”. And he’s not the only Dis­ney side­kick who is cod­ed as gay: Wig­gins, Gov­er­nor Radcliffe’s ser­vant in Poc­a­hon­tas, skips every­where, makes gift bas­kets and even rou­tine­ly dress­es his mas­ter. Radcliffe’s obe­si­ty and dra­mat­ic demeanour jux­ta­pos­es the hero­ic John Smith’s phys­i­cal prowess and brood­ing personality.

Var­i­ous Dis­ney vil­lains can be read­i­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the studio’s use of queer cod­ing. They are often sassy, with lithe bod­ies and sharp cheek­bones. If James Woods’ Hades wasn’t busy tak­ing over the world, he’d be the gay best friend in a roman­tic com­e­dy. He drinks Cos­mopoli­tans and reminds Meg that Her­cules will leave her because ​“he’s a guy!” Even Scar, a male lion, prac­tices his curt­sy and exists on the pride’s fringes because he lacks the alpha attrib­ut­es of Mufasa.

It’s the same for female vil­lains, too. In Snow White and the Sev­en Dwarfs, the Evil Queen preys on the epony­mous heroine’s beau­ty so that she can become ​“the fairest of them all”. She fits the cru­el and erro­neous stereo­type that les­bians love oth­er women out of jeal­ousy or because men reject­ed them. This kind of queer cod­ing is not acci­den­tal. As Eliz­a­beth Bell reveals in her sem­i­nal essay ​‘Soma­texts at the Dis­ney Shop: Con­struct­ing the Pen­ti­men­tos of Women’s Ani­mat­ed Bod­ies’, the process of ani­ma­tion – of lay­er­ing mul­ti­ple images over one anoth­er – doesn’t allow for coincidences.

Cou­pled with the studio’s devo­tion to het­ero­nor­ma­tive rela­tion­ships, the queer cod­ing of Dis­ney vil­lains reveals that there may in fact be a trou­bling agen­da at play. Hap­pi­ly Ever After only seems to apply to straight cou­ples. In Dis­ney movies, it is implic­it that het­ero­sex­u­al­i­ty is right and homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is wrong because it is the vil­lains who attempt to pre­vent the prince and princess from being together.

Ursu­la in The Lit­tle Mer­maid is Disney’s ulti­mate queer vil­lain and an LGBTQ+ icon. The ani­ma­tors based her design on the renowned drag artist and some­time John Waters muse, Divine. She fur­thers her own agen­da by schem­ing against Ariel’s rela­tion­ship with Eric, even manip­u­lat­ing her phys­i­cal appear­ance towards the end. As Lau­ra Sells notes in ​‘Where Do Mer­maids Stand? Voice and Body in The Lit­tle Mer­maid’, the film is obsessed with body image and the impact it can have on how you are viewed by the rest of soci­ety. Ursu­la is com­fort­able with her large frame and is sex­u­al­ly sug­ges­tive, encour­ag­ing Ariel to try seduc­ing Eric with her ​“body lan­guage”. How­ev­er, Ursula’s size is a source of com­e­dy, and her sex-pos­i­tive out­look is viewed as perverse.

Then there’s Gas­ton, Belle’s brutish wannabe suit­or in Beau­ty and the Beast, who embod­ies tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty while sub­vert­ing the idea of the homo­sex­u­al vil­lain. He blames Belle for reject­ing him, blind to his brutish per­son­al­i­ty. Unable to see why any woman would not want to be with him, he attempts to have Belle’s father sec­tioned in a wicked plot to emo­tion­al­ly black­mail her. He is the polar oppo­site of the Beast, the pret­ty boy with a twist­ed soul.

Gaston’s hyper-mas­culin­i­ty is one rea­son why Beau­ty and the Beast has been labelled a fem­i­nist fairy tale. Belle is book­ish and inde­pen­dent. She self­less­ly demands to replace her father as the Beast’s pris­on­er, and repeat­ed­ly spurns Gaston’s advances. But she is still rou­tine­ly saved by the male char­ac­ters (includ­ing, at one point, a tea cup), and ulti­mate­ly is only able to escape her qui­et provin­cial life by mar­ry­ing a hand­some prince.

Equal­ly telling is the fact that Gas­ton is suc­ceed­ed by three queer-cod­ed vil­lains: Jafar, Scar and Hades. That Dis­ney opt­ed to revert back to the sta­tus quo with effem­i­nate vil­lains encap­su­lates the studio’s trou­bled his­to­ry with exter­nal protest move­ments. Each ​“era” of Dis­ney ani­ma­tion – The Gold­en Age (1937−1970), The Dis­ney Renais­sance (1989−1999) and the Revival (2009-present) – has its own sociopo­lit­i­cal con­text. So, after sec­ond-wave feminism’s pop­u­lar­i­ty in the 1980s, the Renais­sance Princess­es’ had more inde­pen­dence and agency. But these inclu­sions were often flir­ta­tions designed to qualm fears that Dis­ney wasn’t pay­ing atten­tion. They rarely went all the way.

Yet the Revival peri­od seems to be active­ly pay­ing atten­tion to LGBTQ+ move­ments. Even though no post-Tan­gled film has fea­tured an open­ly gay main char­ac­ter (Oak­en in Frozen doesn’t count), Dis­ney is grad­u­al­ly becom­ing more pro­gres­sive in its char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion. In fact, Frozen and Moana​’s pro­gres­sive­ness is stitched right into their narratives.

Princess Elsa’s sto­ry is a potent dra­mat­ic metaphor for com­ing out. At first, she doesn’t under­stand and is told to ​“con­ceal, don’t feel”. When she unshack­les her­self from her secret, Elsa dis­cov­ers her worth and embraces her iden­ti­ty. It is a strong moral les­son and a guide for any con­fused child in the audi­ence. No won­der ​‘Let It Go’ became a cul­tur­al anthem: it sym­bol­is­es a moment where thou­sands of peo­ple realised it was okay to be who they are.

While it’s pos­si­ble to argue that this mes­sage was dilut­ed by the rela­tion­ship between Princess Anna and Kristof, Moana is immune from such crit­i­cism because direc­tors Jon Musker and Ron Clements removed the love inter­est from the sto­ry entire­ly. This makes Moana arguably the first tru­ly inde­pen­dent princess. Her jour­ney and idea of suc­cess is teth­ered to her find­ing her­self. She doesn’t need male approval, and while Dwayne Johnson’s Maui reluc­tant­ly helps her on her quest, he remains a sup­port­ing player.

It is Moana’s jour­ney, and her film is Dis­ney final­ly deliv­er­ing on the promise its nar­ra­tive gives the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty. It is a Dis­ney film whole­heart­ed­ly about find­ing out who you are.