Courtesy of Pixar
Pixar’s latest animated film, “Onward,” came to theaters on Saturday, Feb. 29, hitting the media with a frenzy of praise. The film features Ian and Barley Lightfoot, voiced by Tom Holland and Chris Pratt, respectively, as elves left in a dull, mundane world of dead magic. The film plays on the classic archetype of the suburban family, but with a fantasy twist. Once a place of whimsy and wonder, their world was a place where people could conduct magic and harness its power. However, as development occurred, technology overcame magic’s usefulness and magic slowly died out with time. The “Onward” universe assumes a world very similar to ours, set in the lowly suburb of New Mushroomton.
The move opens on Ian’s sixteenth birthday. Ian is a meek and generally anxious kid, with no friends or notable qualities. Barley, the charismatic counterpart and brother to shy Ian, is obsessed with the once-alive world of fantasy magic. He channels his love for history through his favorite historically accurate card game. In the beginning of the film, Barley picks up Ian from school in his gaudy pegasus-painted van. Through his oblivious yelling and distasteful preference in van paint jobs, Barley embarrasses Ian in front of potential friends.
Barley and Ian’s dad died when they were young, leaving a lasting impact on both of their maturations. Ian never met him, and constantly dreams of what he was like. After returning from the embarrassing incident at school, the Lightfoot brothers are gifted a wizard’s wand from their deceased father. Ian discovers that he has a knack for magic and can bring back his father for a single day with a special spell. The rest of the movie displays Ian and Barley’s dynamic relationship in the quest for Ian to finally meet his father.
Beyond the charming plot and storyline of “Onward,” the movie created a press frenzy due to Specter, the first openly gay character in a Disney film. Voiced by Lena Waithe, Specter is a purple cyclopean policewoman. She has one indicatively queer line in the movie, “My girlfriend’s daughter got me pulling my hair out.” Despite having a notable voice actress, the character does not have any significant contributions to the plot or dialogue. Now a meme among gay circles on Twitter, the question of how to properly portray LGBTQ people in kids’ movies has arisen.
Had Specter been a human being, this would have been perfectly fine. Before ideals of equality, gay people in film were almost universally displayed in horror films, usually as inhuman or monstrous. This, of course, takes on a completely different connotation than an animated Disney film. However, inhuman queerness in television was designed to evoke fear. Characters like Freddie Kruger are meant to evoke a sense of insecurity, opposite of a policewoman. While Disney may not have misconstrued gay people as nightmare-dwelling serial killers, the decision that the first LGBTQ individual in its films should be a mystical creature is still a controversial one.
The trend among media within the past few years has been either gay tokenism or queerbaiting. Queerbaiting is the process in which content creators hint at gay romance or signals, essentially cheating the audience out of an outward gay romance. Exposure in cartoons is excellent for future generations, but Specter’s minor part in the entirety of “Onward” was not inclusion. Disregarding all inhuman aspects, this was still a small step forward from queerbaiting. It was a tool to claim wokeness. Perhaps in the future animators and filmmakers will realize that for impactful inclusion, gay people need to be introduced without preface and with their humanity emphasized.
