Is Disney Making a Gay Prince Story? No, But It Should!
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Is Disney Making a Gay Prince Story? No, But It Should!
Last week a story circulated that Disney was about to commence work on a new film about two princes who meet and fall in love. There’s just one problem, though: the story was a fake.
Entertainment site Amplifying Glass is the culprit for this “news.” The site, which carries a disclaimer saying that its stories probably shouldn’t be taken seriously, recently published the following:
Disney has announced that it will be producing its first animated feature film with two openly gay lead characters who will fall in love and, by the end of the film, even find happiness in a fairytale, same-sex wedding. The film, titled Princes, will be released to theaters in the fall of 2015.
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Emile Montgomery, a spokesperson for Disney, says that the story has universal appeal with both younger and older audiences across most of the company’s target demographics. “Children will love this movie,” he said. “It shows that love and family are universal, regardless of gender. The Modern American Family is diverse and most US states have gay marriage and it is time that our films embraced these new realities. Hopefully we can help to educate the next generation about diversity, lessening or eliminating homophobia in the future.”
The site also “quoted” a very true-to-life religious conservative group who were said to be opposed to the move, again making the story sound more credible. It also doesn’t help that the story the film was supposedly based on is real. “The Princes and the Treasure” is by Jeffrey A Miles and tells the story of two princes who, out to save a princess, end up falling in love with each other instead.
The main problem with the Amplifying Glass article, and the reason why it seems to have been taken as real, is because this sounds like something that Disney could really be close to doing.
In recent years we’ve seen a departure from the traditional “heterosexual love saves all” storyline that has been strong in so many Disney stories, including The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast to name but a few, to something slightly broader and more interesting.
Disney’s recent smash-hit Frozen made a point of rejecting the notion of a prince saving the damsel in distress with his magic lips, by instead making Anna’s love for her sister, the iconic snow queen Elsa, the thing that would save Anna from a wayward icy curse that would otherwise have meant spending eternity as an ice statue. This neatly uncoupled Ana’s fate from being dependent on the male hero but, more than that, it also suggested that Disney was at last able to recognize that love can mean many different things, but be no less “true” for it.
In addition to this, Elsa’s (albeit technically false) self-empowerment song, the unforgettable “Let it Go,” is very clearly — and perhaps intentionally — an easy one to pin as a coming out anthem:
It’s funny how some distance makes everything seem small. And the fears the once controlled me can’t get to me at all. It’s time to see what I can do, to test the limits and break through, no right, no wrong, no rules for me. I’m free! Let it go… .
Frozen did also showcase Disney’s first same-sex parent family with the Wandering Oaken’s Trading Post and Sauna scene, where it is clearly implied that shop owner Oaken has a husband and children, though there’s just enough ambiguity that Disney has managed to dodge specifically confirming this fact. Yet, to date, Disney has not ever had an openly LGBT character as a lead. What’s interesting about this, though, is that the struggles of the LGBT community actually fit the Disney model quite well.
As an example: A prince who is really a trans girl waiting to show the world who she really is, and a family so steeped in duty and tradition that they cannot see her talent, her gifts and the fact that she would be an amazing queen, all because they are so focused on raising the prince they expected her to be. Some complication could arise that puts daughter and father on a journey toward personal empowerment and self-discovery, probably with a bit of magic and a few animal companions thrown in, that ends with the princess emerging comfortable in who she is and accepted by not just her kingdom, but her parents too.
I’m not particularly enamored with the notion that most of Disney’s leads have to be royalty, or at least become royalty, but that’s still part of the Disney brand and the point remains: the themes inherent in the coming out experience, the self-discovery, self-acceptance and then, hopefully, the wider acceptance, feel almost ideally suited to the Disney format. In fact, as above, we could argue that nearly every Disney story is a coming out of sorts.
Meanwhile, campaigns like this one from Care2 member Keston Ott-dahl are calling for greater representation of other groups, for instance children with Down’s Syndrome. Keston started a Care2 petition that has generated more than 70,000 signatures all calling on Disney to represent children with this condition and therein make them feel included in what are inspirational and affirming stories.
This shows that Disney’s films still remain important to us today and why, if Disney wants to keep its revived franchise of fairytales alive, it will have to become more overtly inclusive and share that Disney magic around. Fortunately, as Frozen’s success and, indeed, as this story about a new Polynesian Disney princess-in-the-making suggests, maybe that message is getting through.