Sean Griffin is a critical queer film theory scholar and professor at the Meadows School of the Arts. [1] [2] [3] His work includes Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company from the Inside Out, which was adapted from his dissertation. [1] [4]
Tinker Belles and Evil Queens (2000) suggests that The Walt Disney Company, despite having a focus on heterocentric "family values" in its films, has long attracted gay audiences, particularly through queercoding and gay subtext of its films. [4] [5] [6] It was described by journalist Nico Lang of Harper's Bazaar as "the book on the gay history of Disney". [7] According to Jonathan Alexander, Griffin argues that Disney did this out of economic considerations of LGBT consumers paying for Disney products. [8]
In 2023, Hbomberguy accused James Somerton of plagiarising text from Griffin's Tinker Belles in one of his YouTube video essays. [9] [10]
"New queer cinema" is a term first coined by the academic B. Ruby Rich in Sight & Sound magazine in 1992 to define and describe a movement in queer-themed independent filmmaking in the early 1990s.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee are characters in an English nursery rhyme and in Lewis Carroll's 1871 book Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. Their names may have originally come from an epigram written by poet John Byrom. The nursery rhyme has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19800. The names have since become synonymous in western popular culture slang for any two people whose appearances and actions are identical.
Richard Lewis Deacon was an American television and motion picture actor, best known for playing supporting roles in television shows such as The Dick Van Dyke Show, Leave It to Beaver, and The Jack Benny Program, along with minor roles in films such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963).
A cigarette holder is a fashion accessory, a slender tube in which a cigarette is held for smoking. Most frequently made of silver, jade or bakelite, cigarette holders were considered an essential part of ladies' fashion from the early 1910s through early to the mid 1970s.
Disney Princess, also called the Princess Line, is a media franchise and toy line owned by the Walt Disney Company. Created by Disney Consumer Products chairman Andy Mooney, the franchise features a lineup of female protagonists who have appeared in various Disney franchises.
"Hellfire" is a song from Disney's 1996 animated feature The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The song is sung by the film's main antagonist, Judge Claude Frollo, who is voiced by Tony Jay.
The Reluctant Dragon is a 1941 American live-action/animated anthology comedy film produced by Walt Disney, directed by Alfred Werker, and released by RKO Radio Pictures on June 27, 1941. Essentially a tour of the then-new Walt Disney Studios facility in Burbank, California, the film stars Algonquin Round Table member, film actor, writer and comedian Robert Benchley and many Disney staffers such as Ward Kimball, Fred Moore, Norman Ferguson, Clarence Nash, and Walt Disney, all as themselves.
The Story of Menstruation is a 1946 American animated short film produced by Walt Disney Productions. It was commissioned by the International Cello-Cotton Company and was shown in a non-theatrical release to approximately 105 million American students in health education classes. In 2015, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry, finding it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Disney World Gay Days is a loosely organized event where lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals, their families, friends and supporters go to Walt Disney World on a week-long event each year. It is held on the first Saturday in June.
"The Bells of Notre Dame" is a song from the 1996 Disney film The Hunchback of Notre Dame, composed by Alan Menken, with lyrics by Stephen Schwartz. It is sung at the beginning of the film by the clown-like gypsy, Clopin. It is set mainly in the key of D minor. The lyrics of the song bear some similarity to the poem The Bells by Edgar Allan Poe, especially the repetition of the word "bells" during the crescendo. The song is reprised at the end of the film.
Historically, the portrayal of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people in media has been largely negative if not altogether absent, reflecting a general cultural intolerance of LGBTQ individuals; however, from the 1990s to present day, there has been an increase in the positive depictions of LGBTQ people, issues, and concerns within mainstream media in North America. The LGBTQ communities have taken an increasingly proactive stand in defining their own culture, with a primary goal of achieving an affirmative visibility in mainstream media. The positive portrayal or increased presence of the LGBTQ communities in media has served to increase acceptance and support for LGBT communities, establish LGBTQ communities as a norm, and provide information on the topic.
Since the transition into the modern-day gay rights movement, homosexuality has appeared more frequently in American film and cinema.
"Something There" is a song written by lyricist Howard Ashman and composer Alan Menken for Walt Disney Pictures animated film Beauty and the Beast (1991). Sung by the majority of the film's main cast, the song was recorded by American actors Paige O'Hara as Belle and Robby Benson as the Beast via voice over, featuring actors Jerry Orbach, Angela Lansbury and David Ogden Stiers as Lumiere, Mrs. Potts and Cogsworth, respectively. The only song performed by the Beast, "Something There" is heard midway through Beauty and the Beast during a scene in which Belle and the Beast finally begin to acknowledge their feelings for each other.
"The Mob Song" is a song from the 1991 Disney animated film Beauty and the Beast.
Harry Brewis, better known as Hbomberguy, is a British YouTuber and Twitch streamer. Brewis produces video essays on a variety of topics such as film, television, and video games; often combining them with arguments from left-wing political and economic positions. He has created videos aimed at debunking conspiracy theories and responding to right-wing and antifeminist arguments.
Queer coding is the attribution of stereotypically queer traits to fictional characters without explicitly stating their gender and sexual identity.
On August 5, 1969, the Atlanta Police Department led a police raid on a screening of the film Lonesome Cowboys at a movie theater in Atlanta, Georgia, United States.
This article features the history of the representation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) characters in animated productions under The Walt Disney Company, including films from the studios Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar, and programming from the Disney Branded Television channels as well as the streaming service Disney+. From 1983 onward, Disney struggled with LGBTQ representation in their animated series, and their content often included LGBTQ stereotypes or the content was censored in series which aired on Toon Disney such as Blazing Dragons. Some creators have also criticized Disney studio executives of cutting LGBTQ scenes from their shows in the past, or criticized that their shows were not seen as part of the "Disney brand", like The Owl House.
Harry M. Benshoff is an associate professor of TV, film and radio at the University of North Texas (UNT).
Over the years, many have been critical of Walt Disney Animation Studios for its ethnic and racial stereotyping, sexism, reported plagiarism in The Lion King, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and Frozen, limiting and stereotyping LGBT representation in certain films, and for other reasons.