Pixar director Enri Casarosa drew heavily om faiar g-out stori and other "gay narrative" trop for his animated movie Lu. (It’s all there, om nversn therapy to passg privilege.) But he’s still nyg any gay ntent, shuttg down queer viewers who see themselv the film. The bate mirrors other s, om Star Wars’ Le Skywalker to Anthony Mackie’s ments on The Faln and the Wter Soldier, where LBGTQ+ viewers terpret stori through their own lens, and the creators try to ny them. Here’s why eedom of terpretatn matters.
Contents:
- IS LU PIXAR’S FIRST GAY MOVIE? MAYBE
- HOW GAY IS PIXAR’S LU?
- DO DISNEY’S ‘LU’ HAVE A GAY CHARACTER?
- SORRY, FOLKS, PIXAR’S LU ISN’T GAY
- I'M SORRY, BUT "LU" IS TOTALLY A GAY MOVIE, AND THE 18 TWEETS PROVE IT
- I'M SORRY, BUT "LU" IS TOTALLY A GAY MOVIE, AND THE 18 TWEETS PROVE IT
- LU MAY NOT BE A GAY NARRATIVE, BUT ’S ABSOLUTELY A QUEER ONE
- WA A SEC — ARE THE MA CHARACTERS PIXAR’S ‘LU’ GAY?
- 'LU' DIRECTOR ADMS THEY 'TALKED ABOUT' MAKG THE LEADS GAY BUT CID TO FOC ON A 'PRE-ROMANCE' IENDSHIP
- IS LU A GAY METAPHOR?
- LU DIRECTOR SAYS DISNEY FILM NEARLY FEATURED GAY ROMANCE BETWEEN MA CHARACTERS: ‘WE TALKED ABOUT ’
- LU FANS ARE NVCED 'S A GAY LOVE STORY AND THE MEM ARE INIC
- PIXAR REPORTEDLY SCRAPPED GAY ‘LU’ STORYLE: ‘HOW DO WE DO THIS WHOUT A LOVE INTERT?’
- LU DIRECTOR SAYS DISNEY FILM NEARLY FEATURED GAY ROMANCE BETWEEN MA CHARACTERS: ‘WE TALKED ABOUT ’
IS LU PIXAR’S FIRST GAY MOVIE? MAYBE
* luca is gay movie *
That outle holds an obv potential for queer allegory, and ed many Pixar fans trackg the film’s velopment quickly labeled Lu as the stud’s “gay movie”—a g-out story to be placed on Pixar’s mantle alongsi s medatns on grief, artistic exprsn, lonels, Ayn Rand-ian objectivism, and parentg.
HOW GAY IS PIXAR’S LU?
Dpe the queer them fans are seeg, the director behd Disney/Pixar's latt animated film tells Out this isn't a buddg gay romance. * luca is gay movie *
” That suggts a limed unrstandg of gay growg up, particularly of when our feelgs of affectn and special closens and difference n first velop.
That character, played tartly but briefly by John McCrea, is slightly ls of a scrap than the embarrassgly ballyhooed “exclively gay moment” 2017’s Bety and the Beast—but Artie still barely registered amid Cella’s cynil clamor. Last year, Disney punted Love, Victor—a seri spoff of the feature film Love, Simon, the first stud film about a gay kid g out—om Disney+ to Hulu, clarg the young adult show a better f for that more grownup streamg service.
Greg Gayne/HuluThe first season of Love, Victor very much felt like a show tend for Disney+ that somehow wound up alongsi Handmaid’s Tale.
DO DISNEY’S ‘LU’ HAVE A GAY CHARACTER?
Pixar’s newt film, ‘Lu,’ featur two sea creatur hidg their te inty orr to blend , and some people thk ’s about beg gay. * luca is gay movie *
Love, Victor season two admirably exam life post-g out, as Victor (Michael Cimo) navigat his nascent relatnship wh barista Benji (Gee Sear) and tri to get his mother, Isabel (Ana Ortiz, queen of playg TV moms of gay kids), to fully accept his inty. Victor and Benji grapple wh tra-gay nflicts jt as much as they do wh the wary nsiratns of the straight world. When director Enri Casarosa says he didn’t tend to make Lu a gay romance, I believe him.
OK, but isn’t still a ltle b gay? Still, there have been so many siar discsns about queer inty Disney movi that you n almost predict the disurse ahead of time: “They’re gay!
” “But why do they have to be gay?
SORRY, FOLKS, PIXAR’S LU ISN’T GAY
” “But why n’t they be gay?
For both live-actn and animated movi, the stud has overhyped what have bee known as “exclively gay moments, ” ty morsels of reprentatn that are eher so subtle you hardly notice them (a kiss between two women the background of a Star Wars movie) or so plot-irrelevant that they n be easily chopped or overlooked by ternatnal censors (here’s lookg at you, Endgame’s unnamed Grievg Man). Meanwhile, while Disney has ngratulated self and claimed to blaze new trails, plenty of other animatn studs have been ahead of them: Laika’s ParaNorman, for example, featured an openly gay character way back 2012.
Ironilly, the Disney movie that gave the term “exclively gay moment” the first place took a different tack: The live-actn Bety and the Beast’s LeFou is more the spir of the stud’s long-standg tradn of strongly queer-d, if not explicly gay, villas. Fans have sce picked up on homoerotic unrton Raya and the Last Dragon and the live-actn Mulan, but the movi rema rabow Rorschach tts, wh dienc havg to read between the l or project their own meangs to fd queer reprentatn.
I'M SORRY, BUT "LU" IS TOTALLY A GAY MOVIE, AND THE 18 TWEETS PROVE IT
How gay is ?
I'M SORRY, BUT "LU" IS TOTALLY A GAY MOVIE, AND THE 18 TWEETS PROVE IT
Whatever the director’s stated tent, the answer seems to be: as gay as you want to be. Jt a ltle over halfway through Pri Month, we are seeg people flock to Twter to prent their theori on why and how the lead duo Disney and Pixar’s latt g-of-age animated feature film, Lu, is, fact, gay.
So do Lu have a gay character after all, or is this jt a se of fans creatg a headnon that’s gag tractn and onle clout? Do Lu have a gay character?
LU MAY NOT BE A GAY NARRATIVE, BUT ’S ABSOLUTELY A QUEER ONE
While Disney has not e on the rerd sayg that Lu and Alberto are gay, we (and many a Twter er! ) believe that the great mds at Pixar may have meant for the movie’s plot to be an overall metaphor for gayns and acceptance.
WA A SEC — ARE THE MA CHARACTERS PIXAR’S ‘LU’ GAY?
I KNOW #Lu isn’t an explicly gay movie. So while no character Lu has been intified by Disney outright as gay, we n very well read the subtext, metaphors, and straight-up visual evince (all of those nocent touch! When Pixar first revealed the plot synopsis of s upg movie Lu — a tale of two sea-monster boys named Lu and Alberto, and an “unfettable” summer on the Italian Rivera — many people quickly pared to Call Me By Your Name, the 2017 gay romance that also took place durg an unfettable summer Italy.
'LU' DIRECTOR ADMS THEY 'TALKED ABOUT' MAKG THE LEADS GAY BUT CID TO FOC ON A 'PRE-ROMANCE' IENDSHIP
But 2020, Pixar released “Out” through s SparkShorts program, which centered around a gay uple. Eager for reprentatn, many fans have clung to the possibily that Lu might give them openly gay ma characters, and not jt one-note si characters.
IS LU A GAY METAPHOR?
Lu is a gay movie. This movie is 1, 000% a metaphor for the growg up gay experience. I'm jt stg here after watchg #Lu unable to stop thkg about how was a metaphor for beg gay.
Jt saw Lu, & I don’t re what anyone else says, ’s the first gay animated film by Disney/Pixar.
Watchg lu and giulia sayg all three of them "drs weird" when they llectively look like a gay iend group 2021................
LU DIRECTOR SAYS DISNEY FILM NEARLY FEATURED GAY ROMANCE BETWEEN MA CHARACTERS: ‘WE TALKED ABOUT ’
Also me, watchg Lu: gay? Cryg joyful gay tears for all the nfed LGBTQ+ kids who will watch Pixar's LUCA and have their ner world validated. I feel like Lu will make a lastg imprsn on the LGBTQ muny bee even though the characters weren’t stated gay clearly draws on many experienc that gays face adolcence and even after speakg as a 19-year-old out guy I uld relate to #Lu #PixarLu.
Alberto and lu not beg able to let go of each others hands is the most heart breakg thg omfg i love gays. In rponse to viewers who reacted to trailers by hopg the film might be a childhood gay romance, Lu director Enri Casarosa rapidly shut the notn down, sayg “I was really keen to talk about a iendship before girliends and boyiends e to plite thgs. The Deep is portrayed as horrible place of self-nial, but they’re willg to make him suffer to keep him away om what they see as immoral, a clear parallel to the nversn therapy or wilrns therapy that so many young LGBTQ+ people are subjected to by homophobic muni.
LU FANS ARE NVCED 'S A GAY LOVE STORY AND THE MEM ARE INIC
His rponse was simple: “I’d say is meant to be terpreted by the viewer […] If you thk Le is gay, of urse he is. ” Hal regnized that some people benefted om readg the character as gay, and acknowledged that there isn’t a sgle rrect terpretatn of Le.
The film's director said 's about iendships, but many viewers observed a strong gay subtext. Alberto and Lu's relatnship is laced wh gay subtextLu is immediately taken by the ee-spired Alberto when he meets a fellow sea monster off the ast of 're sually physil wh each other, sleepg si by si unr a star-filled sky, wrappg their arms around each other's waists, and watchg the sunset together.
PIXAR REPORTEDLY SCRAPPED GAY ‘LU’ STORYLE: ‘HOW DO WE DO THIS WHOUT A LOVE INTERT?’
"This might seem rehg to some, to see a Disney movie explore iendships as opposed to a fairy-tale love story, but s a shame that this cisn has e when a gay romance uld have so easily and naturally be Lu and Alberto explicly gay or queer wouldn't have felt ntrived.
It would have been a meangful nfirmatn of what is already a story rich gay subtext. "Bety and the Beast" and "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" both featured blk-and-you'll-miss- "gay moments:" a dance between two men and a kiss between two women.
Queer kids will still feel forted by this story bee the scene plays out like an allegory for g out and beg gay, even if Casarosa said isn't.
LU DIRECTOR SAYS DISNEY FILM NEARLY FEATURED GAY ROMANCE BETWEEN MA CHARACTERS: ‘WE TALKED ABOUT ’
—ClassicMovieGay (@jblikmovi) June 19, 2021What would have ma even more powerful, though, is if the movie explicly embraced the unniable queer subtext through dialogue.
Instead, Disney seems happy to let dienc terpret the movie their own way — (almost) satisfyg LGBTQ dienc wh a movie that feels gay but actually isn't, whout beg brave enough to prent an openly queer story. \u201cCryg joyful gay tears for all the nfed LGBTQ+ kids who will watch Pixar's LUCA and have their ner world validated.