Heteronormativity in Entertainment Is The Enemy of Progress
And since Disney is a growing monopoly, it’s up to them to start the trend.
Confession time: it wasn’t until last weekend, almost a month after the release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker that I finally worked up the courage to… ahem… find a recording of it online.
(In my defense, movie tickets aren’t cheap, and Disney isn’t going to miss the $10 I would’ve spent on a ticket. I’m not worried about the company’s financial stability.)
I am a big fan of Star Wars, but I just hadn’t gotten around to it. School kept me busy enough that I couldn’t drag myself to the theater to see it. Besides, I wasn’t too concerned with seeing it right away — there was nearly nothing J.J. Abrams could have done to the sequel trilogy that would have shocked me.
Well, there’s one thing.
It’s a thing fans had been begging for since the beginning of the new trilogy in 2015. A thing people had spent years waiting for. A thing that would represent that the new Star Wars movies were, in fact, in a new time. A new age of film. That what differentiated them from the old movies wasn’t just better special effects, but a change in the world’s mentality surrounding the LGBTQ+ community.
Yes, Star Wars fans, myself included, wanted gay representation in space. The world is ready to see LGBT romance depicted in every genre, not just segregated into its own measly section of “LGBTQ” movies on Netflix or “LGBTQ” books in libraries. It’s time that love is represented authentically in comedies, tragedies, satires, thrillers, and yes, sci-fi.
I was going to be genuinely thrilled if Disney diverted their attention from the (overused and boring) enemies-to-lovers trope that we all saw coming in favor of a tasteful, genuine pairing between two characters with countless commonalities and endless potential.
Of course, I am talking about Finn and Poe Dameron, two of the leading characters in the sequel trilogy. Finn, played by John Boyega, and Poe, played by the legendary Oscar Isaac, were a fan-favorite pairing from the start since the two actors had noticeable chemistry from their characters’ first interactions. Oscar Isaac singlehandedly adopted every hopeful Star Wars fan who was excitedly awaiting an LGBTQ romance in the sequel trilogy by assuring them that he was “playing romance” between Poe and Finn.
Unfortunately, hope died a little as the trilogy continued. Fans began to realize that screenwriters J.J. Abrams and Chris Terrio would never land on an LGBTQ storyline for any of the main characters. The deeper into the trilogy they got, the more Abrams and Terrio proved to be like most other white, hetero directors of action-adventure movies: painfully disinterested in providing realistic, positive representation for the sake of original fans who would riot if presented with such a narrative.
We’ve seen it before. Remember in Avengers: Endgame when one of the directors, Joe Russo, preached that “representation is very important” and played Marvel’s first gay “character” — a man in a support group that Steve Rogers attends for one scene — who speaks one line and casually mentions that he went on a date with another man. Great representation, Joe!
Directors and screenwriters justify their reasons for not writing LGBTQ stories into huge franchises by, generally, saying that it would lose them money. But how does change happen when no one is really even trying? There has been so much happening for the LGBTQ community in the past few decades — how is it that people still can’t walk into a superhero movie or Disney film and see characters of all sexualities and gender identities represented onscreen?
Small changes aren’t enough. And it becomes even more infuriating when representation is rejected even when it makes logical sense to the plot. Additionally, fans advocated for LGBTQ representation in Star Wars between Finn and Poe for half of a decade — what we got? A 3-second lesbian kiss that was cut in the foreign release.
Abrams really couldn’t seem to decide what to do with Finn’s love life in the sequels — so he wrote in three separate love interests for the character in each new film instead of giving the people what they wanted.
Even in shows and movies marketed towards younger audiences representation of gay couples is few and far between. Controversy about showing LGBTQ characters in children’s programs is simply based on homophobia. There is almost never a case of a child being confused or uncomfortable with same-sex pairings. Heteronormativity is taught, not only by parents but by the way media is presented to children. Some programs have begun to casually show LGBTQ storylines (such as a gay couple’s wedding in the children’s TV show Arthur, a source of controversy for, ironically, adults) but Disney’s LGBTQ representation is pretty much limited to the one character in Andi Mack who came out as gay and held hands with a boy in the series finale.
I truly want to respect Disney — but no company can earn my respect when it dismisses plot continuity to spit on minority groups that deserve representation in every genre.
Even in such a negative article, there is a silver lining. Though it is a secondary focus to the hetero-drama, there is LGBTQ+ representation in the Disney Plus series High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. Also, Disney Plus is set to release a series based on the 2018 movie Love, Simon which has an LGBTQ character as the lead and offers representation on their new platform.
I am still completely infuriated by Disney’s treatment of the LGBTQ+ community in their largest franchises. However, I am excited to see original stories featuring LGBT characters on Disney Plus in the future — hopefully, the corporation has realized their mistake in rejecting representation and will strive to make up for it in the future.
