I love animation. It’s a beautiful and creative medium that allows artists to build worlds and characters that just wouldn’t work in live action. Unfortunately, in the western world animation is mainly marketed to children. Even more unfortunately, animation targeted towards children doesn’t often explore queer topics, even when it might improve the story. This is a list of animated films I wish I could review, but probably won’t because they aren’t actually queer.
5. Luca
Many Pixar fans saw the marketing for this film and hoped that the studio would finally create a film exploring queer topics. The animation was incredible, and the story felt like it lent itself perfectly to the queer experience. Young fish people enter a world of humans, where they’re forced to hide their identity to survive. This can easily be interpreted as a trans or gay allegory. When the film finally came out, it was of course beautiful, but not queer. I personally love this film and I would love to review it, but it just isn’t about queerness, nor does it feature a queer character. It’s fun to interpret its themes as an exploration of the queer experience, though!
4. Mulan
Many animated Disney films have queer themes, but this one helped me explore my own identity. It’s not hard to see why the story of a woman who feels uncomfortable adhering to traditional gender roles dresses as a man to save her father and ends up expressing herself somewhere between these two identities appeals to so many trans and nonbinary people. Of course, this film was probably never intended to represent a trans experience, but if interpreting the film this way brings you comfort like it does for me, then keep making a man out of Mulan. Also, Shang is a bisexual. He loved Mulan equally as a man and as a woman.
3. My Little Pony: Equestria Girls
I don’t know what it is about fourth generation My Little Pony content, but all of it just reads as a little gay. This generation focuses pretty heavily on the power of friendship and some of the friendships in the main cast start to have romantic undertones. It never made cannon, but Equestria Girls director, Katrina Hadley, tweeted that interactions between Rarity and Applejack in the film’s follow up TV series were purposely framed as a lover’s quarrel. (https://twitter.com/isitlunchyet_t/status/1132381233244073987)
2. Monster High Electrified
The first monster high reboot was fairly unsuccessful compared to its original run. The first doll line spawned several seasons of online shorts and thirteen movies. The reboot doll line had two films before it was cancelled. Electrified was the sequel film. Overall, this movie is nothing to write home about, but the chemistry between Frankie Stein and Twyla is undeniable. This movie would definitely have been improved by a romantic subplot between these two. Luckily, Monster High has returned with a second reboot which kicked off with a live action film, followed by an animated TV series. This third generation has made the character of Frankie Stein nonbinary, so if you’re starved for queer Monster High content, hunger no more!
1. Barbie and the Diamond Castle
This animated Barbie film is pretty infamous in the wlw community. Many see the film as a story about two “cottage core lesbians” going on a musical adventure. Now the main characters are two women who live in a cottage and get magical dresses with lesbian and bisexual pride color schemes after they save each other with the power of love, but they also end up with male love interests at the end. The themes of the film would probably have been amplified by a romantic relationship between its leads, but I’m sure it sold the toys it need to, so I doubt Barbie cares.
Queer representation in western animation is severely lacking, but its definitely improving. Films like Lightyear and Wendell and Wild both feature LGBTQ characters and TV series like She-ra and the Princesses of Power and Adventure Time featured on screen lesbian kisses. LGBTQ representation in animation need a lot of improvement, but it seems were moving in the right direction, very, very slowly.
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