With the newest live-action remake from Disney comes the company's very first gay character. "Beauty and the Beast" has been hyped up for weeks as a nearly identical remake of the 1991 classic animated film with one difference: the character LeFou will be confirmed as gay. While this is a milestone for Disney (despite them being years behind other film companies when it comes to LGBTQ representation) it has been met with a lot of controversies. I'm not just talking about conservative parents not wanting to take their kids to see it, I'm talking about the problems it has among the LGBTQ community.
The controversy most people are talking about revolves around certain theaters banning the movie for the gay character and countries like Russia restricting the movie to adults. This has caused the director, Bill Condon, and Ewan McGregor (who plays Lumiere) to roll their eyes at this kind of reaction, saying that it's 2017, it's time for a gay character in a Disney film. While I appreciate them for defending the queer community, we have some thoughts of our own that no one is listening to.
The problem the queer community has is not that we're finally getting the representation in a Disney film we've been waiting for, it's the way in which it's portrayed. For those who haven't seen "Beauty and the Beast", LeFou is the sidekick of Gaston, the main villain of the story. Where Gaston is masculine and "all-man" LeFou is his less masculine, more bumbling and comedic "friend". Well, maybe 'friend' isn't the best word for the relationship. LeFou worships the ground Gaston walks on and Gaston takes advantage of LeFou's loyalty and treats him like garbage.
This means that the "amazing" gay representation in this movie centers around an insecure idiot who idolizes a straight, masculine man. This is toxic because young kids are going to be seeing this movie, and if they're exploring their sexuality then it's even more dangerous. These kids are going to see what kind of person represents them and that they'll be doomed to live a life of unrequited love for a straight and "perfect" person.
While we're happy that we're finally getting representation in a Disney movie, it's not exactly the kind of representation we want. I would rather have no gay characters than a gay character that represents negative stereotypes and toxic tropes of gay storylines. It's progress, but is it progress in the right direction?
I know there are people out there that will say, "Oh just shut up and be happy that you have something!" Just because I'm queer, a minority in terms of sexuality, why should I have to settle for any representation that I can get? When there is so little representation of us in the mainstream media, and especially when most of it is negative, people only see us in that negative light. So if a movie as huge as "Beauty and the Beast" is bound to be shows gay representation in a negative light then don't we have a right to be upset?
I hate that "Beauty and the Beast" has been banned at certain theaters and countries because of the gay character, but I'm also not ready to defend it. There are plenty of other characters that could've been gay (*cough* Lumiere and Cogsworth *cough*) and yet they went for the boisterous, clumsy and ridiculous evil sidekick. Thanks, Disney.
