Hey there, it’s me. This is just me sharing my opinion on the new special since it panders towards me in a sense.
I agree with every point the special is making; not every movie needs to be this big preach.
Like, as a gay person, I’m tired of Disney, HBO, Netflix, all these big companies that make a blank state out of great material.
Of course there is great gay shows - (The Owl House, Atypical mm.) but those have something else to keep you watching where the gay is front and centre.
Let me use The Owl House as an example. A teenage girl is thrown into a world of demons and must traverse her way back to the human realm.
Cool plot point, right? However by Season 1 episode 16 “Enchanting Grom Fright” it’s made clear that there is going to be a lesbian relationship between the human girl and a demon girl name Amity.
However, they address this in Season 2, Episode 8 “Knock knock knockin on hooty’s door” where Amity and the human girl -Luz get together.
And that’s the last time that it was brought up and the show continued like normal, just with them being in a relationship
I’m getting sidetracked, my point is - there can be homosexuality and social issues in a show with out it “pandering”.
And it also feels like by Disney that they’re trying to “make up” for past homophobia so now they’re really just pushing gayness on to everything they can and use it as a sort of shield, if that makes sense.
Anyway, this is just one gay person’s opinion, feel free to comment your own - straight or not. If you read all this - thank you.
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.