The films of Pixar and the Walt Disney Company are universally seen as made for children, with some content that’s mature enough to entertain adults as well. It has been a formula for staggering success.
So why are Disney’s filmmakers so obsessed with putting overtly sexual content in front of young viewers?
On March 9 some employees at Pixar Animation Studios complained in a joint statement to Disney leadership that the company was censoring “overtly gay affection” that the studio was inserting into feature films. The allegation came alongside a more general protest of the company’s silence over Florida’s new legislation to keep homosexual proselytizing out of kindergarten-to-third-grade classrooms, dubbed by gays and their media allies as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
The forces of Gay appear to have prevailed in one matter: A lesbian kiss that Disney brass took out of Pixar’s next feature film, Lightyear, has reportedly been reinserted in the film after the Pixar employees protested. All that remains to be seen is how the moviegoing (and child-raising) public reacts to homosexual themes in children’s entertainment.
In Pixar’s 27-year history the company has managed to slip in some LGBTQ characters. In 2020’s Onward, a one-eyed police officer (Lena Waithe), who appears in a few scenes, mentions her girlfriend. In 2019’s Toy Story 4, two moms hug their child goodbye at kindergarten. And 2016’s Finding Dory features a brief shot of what appears to be a lesbian couple. The most overtly LGBTQ project in Pixar’s canon is a 2020 short film, Out, about a gay man coming out to his parents.
According to a number of former Pixar employees who spoke with Variety on the condition of anonymity, artists at the studio have tried for years to incorporate homosexuality into the storytelling but have been consistently thwarted.
