LGBTQ themes in Western animation
Early examples included Bugs Bunny in drag, wearing a wig and a dress, as a form of comedy,[1][2] or episodes of Tom & Jerry,[3] under restrictive moral guidelines like the Hays Code[4] with some arguing that animation has "always had a history of queerness.
"[19] Even so, the Hays Code was still enforced in the United States, which banned curse words, forbid depiction of interracial relationships, and had a "puritanical view of sex," and was replaced by a film rating system in 1968, with many of its "arbitrary moral guidelines" persisting for decades.
[3] Despite the queer coding in "Bugs Bunny" and "Tom & Jerry" cartoons, as scholars Deborah A. Fisher, Douglas L. Hill, Joel W. Grube, and Enid L. Gruber noted, before 1970, almost no gay characters were on television, and they remained relatively absent "until the 1990s.
The other director of Moana (and a co-director of The Little Mermaid), Ron Clements, stated that it "just fit the character," while Musker called Ursula a "little mix of Divine and Joan Collins"[29] and Jeffrey Schwarz described the film as "pretty queer".
[30] Ashman was also, reportedly, a "big fan" of John Waters, and after the film, he got sick, as he was HIV positive, and he died from AIDS before he could accept the Academy Award for the music selection of Beauty and the Beast.
[32] Akash Nikolas, a former editor for Zap2It, wrote, in a piece for The Atlantic, pointed to queer subtext and themes in The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Pocahontas, Dumbo, Pinocchio, Aladdin, and Mulan, described Disney films as "both traditional and subversive," echoed by Hugh Ryan in Vice.
[37] The 2000s brought with it Queer Duck, the first animated TV series on U.S. television which featured homosexuality as a major theme,[38] an alien named Roger in American Dad who had an ambiguous sexuality,[39] and an assortment of other shows.
[73] In August 2021, Insider found that in their analysis of 259 LGBTQ cartoon characters, stretching back to the 1980s, that "only 10 out of just 70 identified people of color...had leading roles" and a significant proportion lacked "explicit racial specificity.
[77] This included comments on Steven Universe by Cartoon Network Standards and Practices Department which informed Rebecca Sugar that Ruby and Sapphire, who fused together as Garnet, could not "kiss on the mouth" and she often had to defend the show's stories and "audience of queer youth.
"[90] In another example, in June 2021, it was reported that when the studio producing Mysticons changed the series to center on four teenage girls, Jara brought in more women and queer writers to the show's writing team, who were "responsible for building out an arc between lesbian characters Zarya Moonwolf and Kitty Boon."
The report also noted that while he received support from Nickelodeon, and fellow producers, a partner was concerned that the storyline was not "age-appropriate" for young viewers, resulting in the kiss scene being cut, but he fought for their romance to remain included.
[77] On the other hand, when Doc McStuffins, featured a lesbian (and interracial) married couple in August 2017, Jeremy Blacklow, GLAAD director of entertainment media, argued that this episode would be a turning point for executives who fear boycotts from conservative groups and called it a "major win for both Disney and preschool series.
The shorts are intended to satirize suggestions that early Batman comics implied a homosexual relationship between the eponymous title character and his field partner and protégé Robin, a charge most infamously leveled by Fredric Wertham in his 1954 book, Seduction of the Innocent,[127] the research methodology for which was later discredited.
The show introduced viewers to two queer characters: Marceline the Vampire Queen and Princess Bubblegum, with Rebecca Sugar trying to foster the relationship between these two characters through her work on the show,[214] Sugar would face pushback for years from the Cartoon Network Studio for having Marceline the Vampire Queen and Princess Bubblegum in Adventure Time together, as the studio was concerned about "distribution in countries where being gay or lesbian was censored in media and considered a crime.
Some critics, such as Laura Prudom for Pride.com, described Bonnie and Marcy living a "happy, gay life together" which they always deserved, and predicted that the series would be full of "action, brand new songs, and classic Adventure Time weirdness and heart".
[221] Rebecca Long wrote, for Polygon, that the episode gives fans the "emotional payoff and answers" they have been yearning for and that the special uses the plot to explore Marceline's childhood trauma, her romantic history with Bubblegum, how the two are interconnected, and fills in gaps about her past.
[225][226][227][228] At the 2019 Creative Arts Emmy Awards, the episode was nominated for Outstanding Short-Format Animated Program,[229] In December 2019, the limited epilogue series, Steven Universe Future began airing on Cartoon Network.
[243] Lena Dean of Bitch described the episode "a romantic ending for...a canon couple made up of two bisexual women": Korra and Asami, but criticized that while a kiss was implied, it was "not allowed on screen by Nickelodeon.
For instance, Hollyhock, a female teenage horse and Bojack's sister, has eight adoptive fathers (Dashawn Manheim, Steve Mannheim, Jose Guerrero, Cupe Robinson III, Otto Zilberschlag, Arturo "Ice Man" Fonzerelli, Gregory Hsung, and Quackers McQuack) in a polyamorous gay relationship.
Club, criticized Ali's character as an oversimplification of the "relationship between private parts and gender identity," even as her existence was praised as putting the show ahead of "most television representations of sexual expression".
"[283] The New York Times also did a profile on Goodman, noting that he voices a "queer lovebug" named Walter in the series, and quoted him as saying that wanted the chance to "play with all the colors in the crayon box of humanity instead of being sidelined as a trope.
[290] Another reviewer, Sophie Perry, writing for a lesbian lifestyle magazine, Curve, noted how that She-Ra and the Princesses of Power and Harley Quinn both had same-sex kisses, happening within stories which could have turned out to be "typical queerbaiting" but did not.
"[339] Previously, creator Sara Eissa talked about a pitch for her show, Astur's Rebellion, an action-adventure, claiming it was rejected "due to bias against elements of diversity such as POC and LGBTQ+ main characters."
Laura Zornosa of Time noted that the series, and Wendell & Wild, both featured the use of animation to reclaim horror genre for trans and queer people, noting that in Dead End, the Paranormal Park is the safe haven for the protagonist, Barney, ad that he meets many other odd characters at the park, including Logan "Logs" Nguyen, who has a mutual crush on him, with most of the characters "either overtly queer or queer-coded," with many trans people, such as story revisionist Ash Wu, working on the series to ensure it portrays their stories accurately.
It would be praised by Erik Piepenburg of the Los Angeles Times for having a show universe that is "brazenly colorful, queer-inclusive and fast-paced mishmash",[375] and multiple female and queer leads by Petrana Radulovic of Polygon.
[381] Even so, some reviewers, like Cynthia Vinney of CBR, called the interactions between Honghui and Mulan "more homoerotic" than Li Shang's in the animated version and "can be read as bisexual" while Lauren Puckett of Harper's Bazaar criticized Reed's reasoning as incorrect.
"[388] In an interview with the Butler and co-director Sam Fell, they talked about the importance of telling a story about intolerance, bullying, and making family entertainment while "push[ing] the boundaries," with a gay protagonist.
"[403] Brandon Tensley of Pacific Standard argued that the film "installs gay love in the canon of romances that established these clichés in the first place," and called it, in its own way, a "masterful piece of subversive storytelling.
"[400] Jack Shepard of the same publication described the animated short as done in the Pixar style, and received a "hugely positive reaction" including from groups such as the Human Rights Campaign, and from others, who drew fan art of the characters.
Javier Ocaña of El País, while criticizing the film in some ways, still noted that although the characters do not kiss onscreen, their relationship is shown naturally, and is a "historic gesture" from Disney, creating a world that is "LGBT+ friendly and villain-less.
