There’s a moment at the end of Disney’s live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast, out today, where the villain’s chubby sidekick LeFou starts dancing with a man in drag.

Though it lasts only a few seconds, it’s been called a watershed moment for the entertainment conglomerate, and LeFou has been dubbed “Disney’s first gay character.”

Just as swiftly, it was ruled “adults-only” material in Russia and an Alabama drive-in declared it wouldn’t screen the film.

But even non-homophobes don’t like it.

If LeFou’s errand is to be the champion of the “love is love” generation of marriage equality and LGBTQ rights, for many Disney watchers he has not only failed, but is proof gay characters still can’t crack the mainstream without a tired old stereotype being applied. For some, a bad representation is worse than no representation at all.

“It’s obviously Disney’s first time, which is objectively true,” says Jensine Jones, a Toronto podcaster who identifies as queer. “But at this point in 2017, praising a large corporation for doing the least possible in terms of including LGBTQ characters is a bit ridiculous.”







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The “least possible” is what the film’s openly gay director Bill Condon called “a nice, exclusively gay moment” in an interview with Attitude magazine. As characters gather for the obligatoryballroom celebration scene, LeFou begins dancing with a woman. Soon he transitions into the arms of a man named Stanley, who the audience met earlier in the film when Stanley and two other men are suddenly clothed in dresses and makeup by an enchanted wardrobe. The other men are aghast, but Stanley smiles, delighted with the cross-dressing.

In the ballroom, LeFou and Stanley don’t back away from each other, instead they continue to dance.

“It’s a little too late, and a little too little, but it’s better than nothing,” says Nicholas Sammond, an associate professor of cinema studies at the University of Toronto. Though the small moment has caused a “hullabaloo” online, it’s the hullabaloo that counts, he says.

“As with many things Disney, the conversation around it is probably as important as the event itself,” says Sammond. “Particularly as we enter the era of Trump, it’s good to have conversations about the degree to which representations of gay characters are positive and move us toward a more inclusive society.”

That was the discussion in 2009 surrounding Disney’s The Princess and the Frog, featuring the studio’s first black princess. Though some dubbed it “unforgivably late” and “one-dimensional,” others called the film “barrier-breaking,” much like the chatter surrounding LeFou.

“Even if it’s this small, tiny scene that recognizes a character like LeFou is gay or questioning, I think that is a step forward,” says Andrew Murphy, director of programming for Toronto’s queer film festival Inside Out. He acknowledges the history of feminized baddies in film from characters including Professor Ratigan in The Great Mouse Detective to Scar in The Lion King. “The Hollywood trope of the effeminate villain is a tale as old as time.”

Queer Toronto actor Emily Schooley isn’t sure she’ll pay the price of admission to find out if LeFou (translation: “the fool”) is portrayed in a better way than a “bumbling yes-man” yearning for Gaston, the film’s pompous heterosexual bad boy. She suspects it is simply more of the same “queer-baiting,” where a gay character is added to attract queer audiences, but is promptly killed off or pushed aside.

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Toronto filmmaker John Greyson notes some other brief queer moments in mainstream film: the “3.5 seconds of gay Sulu” in Star Trek Beyond, the “suddenly gay” Cary Grant in the 1938 comedy Bringing Up Baby.

There’s more in animated film: the buff character named Mitch in the 2012 Focus Features movie ParaNorman who casually mentions a boyfriend, and the two male antelopes that live together and quarrel like a couple in last year’s Zootopia.

“At this rate, we’ll have enough for a full-on feature in right about the time we’ve all moved to Mars,” jokes Greyson.

Some note the Beauty-LeFou hype “betrays a history of covert messages in (Disney’s) animated films,” as The Guardian film critic Guy Lodge wrote earlier this month. For some queer audiences, simply perceiving characters to be gay is enough, from Toy Story 3’s Ken doll to Frozen’s Elsa, the subject of a Twitter campaign to #GiveElsaAGirlfriend.

Some argue the LeFou storm is much ado about nothing and “it’s just Disney,” but for U of T’s Sammond, that position is weak.

“When people say ‘it’s just Disney’ they’re ignoring a history that, for anxious parents in particular, is really significant,” he says. “Disney has built its reputation as being good for children.”

When new movies come out, parents often ask, will this be better for children’s self-image? Will this improve their chance of being a good person and succeeding in the world?

Those questions aren’t easy to answer. The effect media has on children’s lives is “notoriously impossible to gauge,” says Sammond, but that doesn’t mean moments like LeFou’s gay dance should be brushed off.

“What matters more is that people believe it (affects their kids) and they bring that idea to their viewing of Disney films,” he says.

Toronto podcaster Jones believes LeFou’s errand is not enough for a starved queer audience.

“It’s important in kids’ movies to show happy and healthy (queer) relationships,” she says.

“‘It’s better than nothing’ is a pretty low bar.”