ʚ flurrelia ɞ “Maya”

There’s been a fair bit of controversy over Bill Condon’s live-action remake of Disney’s animated 1991 classic Beauty and the Beast, mostly centered over Condon’s proclamation that he’s given Disney its first canonically, openly gay character. In an interview with Attitude, Condon described that character, the villain’s sycophantic sidekick LeFou, as if his sexuality was a significant, foregrounded part of the plot, and as if it ultimately arrived at some major moment of truth: “He’s confused about what he wants. It’s somebody who’s just realising that he has these feelings. And [actor Josh Gad] makes something really subtle and delicious out of it. And that’s what has its payoff at the end, which I don’t want to give away. But it is a nice, exclusively gay moment in a Disney movie.” But when it arrives, that “nice, exclusively gay” moment is a one-second shot of LeFou in a fancy ballroom-dance finale, accidentally shoved into the arms of a nameless man who’s wearing drag because of an earlier sight gag. It isn’t an “exclusively gay moment,” it’s about a dozen vaguely campy frames. Much like Finding Dory’s controversial, much-ballyhooed “lesbian couple” — two women who appeared in a extremely brief, silent reaction shot in the film — LeFou is all PR blitz and no actual payoff. But the tepidness of this built-up moment hasn’t stopped the predictable backlash, from online complaints to an Alabama theater noisily pulling the film from its lineup (proving the bigoted old chestnut “why are they pushing their views on us” is still alive and well in the world) to Malaysia banning the film. To Disney’s credit, the company has refused to recut the film to appease Malaysian censors, which is an admirably principled stand to take over a single second of footage.