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We’ve come a long way since Disney’s first “exclusively gay moment” when the studio made a big deal about LeFou in its live action. Beauty and the beast—mainly in a depressingly large circle, we are now back to the Mouse House removing LGBTQ+ stories from their media to appeal back to conservative parents. But now, almost eight years later, the star at the center of that back-slapping furor is talking about how shocked he was to see Disney go overboard with it.
“For my part, I certainly didn’t exactly feel like LeFou was the one the queer community had been longing for,” Josh Gad said of his role as LeFou in the film, writing in his new memoir. In Gad we trust (through Entertainment Weekly). “I can’t imagine a Pride celebration honoring the ‘cinematic defining moment’ involving a quasi-Disney villain dancing with a man for half a second. I mean, if I was gay, I’m sure I’d be angry.”
And yet, that’s essentially what Disney tried to do in 2017, when Beauty and the beastDirector Bill Condon mocked the moment, in which LeFou dances with a male partner during the film’s climactic celebration sequence, as an important step for Disney’s on-screen LGBTQ+ efforts, describing it (now infamously) as a ” exclusively gay moment”. in an interview with Attitude. But according to Gad, the moment had barely been discussed on set as an explicitly deliberate moment and was never intended to be seen as more than a silent nod.
“As he was a secondary character, I didn’t want to suddenly throw the weight of sexuality on this character who in no way drove the film,” Gad writes. “But the moment (as it was described to me) seemed harmless enough: a funny little blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment.”
Instead, the way Condon framed the moment turned it into a media storm, with fans furious at the idea of two men dancing together (something that had certainly never happened in a Disney film before) and the studio itself enthusiastically taking advantage. the chance to have a small speck of queer representation on the big screen. It wouldn’t be the first time in the next few years, either, as Disney seemingly managed to regurgitate that it was making its “first openly gay character” over multiple press cycles, even as the studio and its major subsidiaries barely made any strides toward queerness. characters and their presence beyond these disposable recognitions.
“If the public had defined it as a sweet, exclusively gay moment, I would have loved it,” Gad concludes, “but the moment we point it out and seemingly congratulate each other, we invite hell and fury.”
The more things change, the more they stay the same, although now Disney is causing hell and fury for its own cowardice more than anything else.
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