You guys are still stuck on this and not learning how to do shit!!! That is the important thing people!!!

My opinion is that Disney half asses it in a corporate way. As in look a gay person we are so progressive!! edits it out in Asian and middle eastern countries

While we’re on the topic… how do you feel about Will and Grace? I’ve always wondered.

Very insightful perspective. Personally, I think another possible explanation for why Disney and all these other companies are pandering to so many minority groups is mainly because that’s where the money is. Yes, a lot of executives at Disney in particular may feel bad because of the companies bigoted past, but I don’t think they’d be pushing it quite so hard if that was the only reason. Especially since 2020, social progressivism has become really popular in pop culture, so there’s a big market incentive to peddle diversity and inclusion so much.

That’s not to say that diversity and inclusion are bad things. Of course it’s an amazing thing that we can have actors and characters with diverse backgrounds and whatnot. But I think people are starting to catch on that the “Panderverse” is, well, just that. Pandering in an inauthentic and potentially ill-intentioned manner.

you think you’re special bc you have a gay opinion? lame

Yet another gay man here. I liked the episode. And while I’m not always sure if the people using the “make it gay and lame” meme are laughing about the absurdity or laughing at gay people, I can’t control what they do. Ultimately, I was excited when Disney said we’d get some gay characters. It felt like a huge step, then we got an unnamed man (directors cameo) in Avengers: Endgame and two unnamed lesbians kissing in the background in Rise of Skywalker and honestly I became pretty frustrated. Eternals and Strange Worlds features a gay protagonist. And in both cases the gay character is in no way relatable to any gay person I know. Ultimately the queer representation feels like what straight people think gay people want. It isn’t authentic and I think in a lot of ways that’s what people are reacting to.

A gay character will always have their queerness be apart of their character. But it’s like Disney doesn’t know how to depict that without either making them the straightest couple in the movie (Eternals) or making their life so removed from the gay experience of being a youth (Strange Worlds) that they might as well not have even done it. I want gay characters who are complex and messy and all kinds of things. It’s one reason why South Park actually has solid queer representation. Tweak/Craig, Mr. Garrison, Mr. Slave, Big Gay Al. Most of those are wild stereotypes but they’re also their own characters some are just wholesome like Tweak and Craig some are sex weirdos and others are downright psychopaths (Garrison).

I saw someone say this in the box office subreddit but somewhere along the lines Disney decided they would make dour and depressing films for 20-30 year olds but kept the emotional maturity of their children’s films. Everything they make these days feels so grim, it lacks joy and they decide to use that to celebrate diversity? Wtf Disney.

Great comment. Thanks.

Does Disney even have alot of gay characters? I mean I don’t remember any ones from the MCU if there are they aren’t all preachy about it.

Same with Star Wars but I don’t much watch much of the Disney stuff…and Indiana Jones? I guess there was a female lead but she wasn’t gay

pushing gayness on to everything they can and use it as a sort of shield, if that makes sense.

that’s been my personal observation, but as a cis male I tend to keep my opinions to myself… the way they bring so much attention to the sexual orientation and/or race of a character seems to me like it’s counter productive (again, observation as an outsider so please feel free to tell me I’m wrong)… if a character is gay or a minority but you point it out and make it front and center it makes it seem (to me) like they are saying those things are not normal and should therefore be singled out to show how progressive they are for allowing such “not normal” things in our films (not sure if that makes any sense either)

unrelated but I think the series Foundation really was a good example of doing diversity right, characters were all sorts of races genders etc, and nobody pointed it out, it was never in your face, they were just the characters, just people that were part of a story

I agree about the lazy pandering, but there are so many people out there who really need to take Cartman’s words to heart – it’s just as lazy to hate everything woke on principle. It’s very frustrating that now, any time we do something gay with a character who wasn’t presented as unambiguously and explicitly flamingly homosexual in their first appearance, it’s going to be accused of pandering. Tim Drake (a.k.a. one of Batman’s “Robins”) is a sixteen year old boy who recently came out as bi. Lots of people don’t come out of the closet before age 16 – there’s nothing weird about a character coming out of the closet at any age, but there’s especially nothing weird about a character not coming out of the closet until their teen years. But nobody seems willing to accept that Tim likes dudes too. They have to scream and cry about how it’s “pandering.” Which is just silly. Tim is allowed to kiss boys.

I just finished watching She-Ra, and I loved the gay characters because being gay wasn’t their personality, but they were, in fact, complex, interesting characters that happened to be gay. Owl House is definitely on my list of shows to watch in the future.

PUT A CHICK IN IT AND MAKE HER GAY!

Jokes aside, I’m gay too. Personally, I love LGBT stories. I LOVED Rocketman, a whole damn movie about a gay musician.

When Hollywood, Disney, all of that put gay people in things for the sake of diversity points, and censor it for other countries that don’t accept it, it’s obnoxious. It’s fake representation. That’s the pandering. Real representation is what is important.

How awesome would it be if they had LGBTQ characters in media that were just normal people and it wasn’t their entire character arc that they’re gay. Like yeah, AL is gay, but he also runs a super cool animal sanctuary and he volunteers as a scout leader too. His gayness is secondary to all his other cool attributes. Wouldn’t it be cool if we had characters like that?

As a gay man, Agreed. You can have a gay couple in a show but you don’t have to make a big deal out of it. THATS where it becomes pandering.

I mean…look at how many “first gay characters” Disneys had in their movies in the last couple years: Onward (a cop who was in one scene, mentioned her wife), Lightyear (a lesbian couple with a kiss and then a few minutes later they’re both dead), Phastos from Eternals (a kiss with his husband and some sweet talk).

Disney made SUCH big deals out of these characters when really only Phastos was a big character. The other two were glorified cameo characters that frankly only seemed like Disney was box-checking.

I mean Alisha from Lightyear was black AND gay AND a woman, that’s almost all the boxes checked……then they immediately kill her AND her wife off. So a character that literally has no development, yet is so progressive.

That being said, they made a lot of comments about Indiana Jones…was Helena in the new one supposed to be a lesbian? I never picked up on that.

As A gay Fish …
I agree.