Director Bill Condon looks back on the much-talked-about press and later criticism of 2017’s remake of Beauty and the Beast‘s “exclusively gay moment”. Released at the apex of Disney’s box office dominance, Beauty and the Beast saw Bill Condon, an openly gay filmmaker, remake the beloved 1991 animated film. One of the most enduring and infamous moments in the film was what was described as “an exclusively gay” moment that turned out to be LeFou (Josh Gad) dancing with a man at the end of the film. The much-hyped scene has been criticized by many people as being a few seconds, which was the bare minimum of what Disney could do in terms of representation.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter for his upcoming film, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Condon revisited the much-talked-about “exclusively gay moment” quote. Condon joked about the moment being so brief, saying, “I never claimed it was more. (Laughs.)” He later elaborated how the comment, which originated in Altitude, was blown out of proportion and that he was never trying to claim he was doing something transgressive, even though the movie was banned in a few countries. Condon said:
“That was such a debacle because it was an offhanded comment in an interview with a gay magazine in London. It was always meant to be a grace note, but suddenly it sounded as if I was pretending to be breaking barriers, and it wasn’t. It was never intended that way. I love the fact that there were countries — I think Russia was one of them — that wouldn’t show the movie because of that. And Disney, to their credit, didn’t cut it anywhere. So that part was good. I just didn’t like the fact that it had been inaccurately presented as some kind of groundbreaking moment, which then disappointed me because it was never intended that way.
It was just the great inclusivity of a wonderful musical. [In the animated film,] LeFou is a punching bag, he’s not a character, so you turn them into people. And this is like, “Oh, he’s got a kind of masochistic attraction to Gaston. He’s the one Gaston should marry. It’s clear no one else is into him, but he loves him.” So it was there. And it was there because Howard Ashman wrote the original score, and there was a gay sensibility going on there. It was just the completion of a story that started with LeFou pulling Gaston into a hug and saying, “Too much?” and Gaston looking around nervously and saying, “Yeah.”
Disney’s “Exclusively Gay Moments” Explained
Condon’s phrase “exclusively gay moment” has now become a shorthand criticism of major franchises that hype a piece of LGBTQ+ inclusion only for it to be a minor blink-and-miss moment, particularly among Disney. The biggest was director Joe Russo playing ‘the first gay character in the MCU’, and it was a nameless character in a support group at the beginning of the movie. In 2022, Out Magazine even published a list titled A Brief Timeline of Disney’s 17 ‘First Gay Characters.’
Disney has taken a somewhat frustrating stance over the past few years regarding its support for LGBTQ+ rights. To their credit, they did not edit Beauty and the Beast or Eternals, which featured a gay superhero in Phastos, making the movies unavailable in many countries. Strange World did feature a gay character in the form of Ethan Clade, who openly has a crush on a fellow male character. However, that has felt like the bare minimum for some time. In recent years, they have taken a troubling stance to push aside their LGBTQ+ fans and stories in favor of catering to conservative groups.
The brief kiss between two women in 2022’s Lightyear still manages to gain news as Snoop Dogg criticized the inclusion of a gay kiss. Lightyear‘s box office performance and conservative outlets making a big news story out of a two-second moment had Disney ensuring that Pixar downplayed any potential queer-coded attraction from Riley in Inside Out 2. Following Donald Trump’s win in the 2024 election, Disney pulled episodes of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur and Pixar’s Disney+ series Win or Lose due to them centering on transgender athletes. Where in 2017 the idea of “an exclusively gay moment” felt a little performative but on the right track, eight years later, even something as small as LeFou dancing with a man feels out of reach for Disney.
- Release Date
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March 17, 2017
- Runtime
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129 minutes
- Director
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Bill Condon
- Writers
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Evan Spiliotopoulos, Stephen Chbosky, Linda Woolverton, Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont
- Producers
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David Hoberman