Disney is Finally Setting an Example | Opinion
newsweek.comDisney loves nothing better than a story where the odd-one-out finds a happy ending.But such positivity and inclusion at a time of raging culture wars makes Disney a prime target.
The equivalent of Bambi in front of a hunting party. Why? Because the Magic Kingdom is making a real push for diversity—both by acknowledging its problematic past by adding warnings against some of their most beloved but racially stereotypical earlier films, and by including characters who represent (arguably) their biggest fan-base—the LGBT+ community.Which has got The Right apoplectic.In a scene from Baymax!, a spin-off series from the Disney movie Big Hero 6, Baymax goes into a grocery store to get sanitary products to help a teenage girl who's having her first period.
Baymax gets lots of personal recommendations from other shoppers in the aisle—one of whom is a trans man.The scene in question was highlighted by conservative author and activist Christopher Rufo and it has since been viewed over six million times on Twitter.
He has accused Disney of trying to "re-engineer the discourse around kids and sexuality, while equally right-wing commentator Michael Cernovich called it "dystopian."Rufo—who appears convinced Disney's marketing plan is to make everyone gay and looks a bit like Syndrome from The Incredibles—wrote: "I've obtained leaked video from Disney's upcoming show 'Baymax', which promotes the transgender flag, and the idea men can have periods to children as young as two years old."He makes it sound all very James Bond, as if someone slipped him a microfilm while passing in the park, when the "leaked" video was actually widely released by Disney's marketing team.A couple of things here.
