So Disney has never had a mainstream openly gay, lesbian, bisexual or trans character. That might all change when Frozen 2 is released, but did Frozen already have a gay character in it?
So, there are no mainstream gay characters in Disney films but that doesn’t mean that there hasn’t been any representation at all.
In the 2013 hit Frozen, the film-makers managed to sneak in a nod to gay families by making Oaken, the mountainside store owner, gay.
There’s a quick scene where he introduces his partner, another man, seemingly surrounding by their children, blink and you’ll almost miss it, but it proved to be a powerful commitment to added a more diverse set of characters for Disney.
The Big Issue asked Jennifer Lee, the film’s writer and co-director, if Oaken was gay and whether the image of another man surrounded by children was an acknowledgement of LGBT families.
She told them,
“We know what we made,
“But at the same time I feel like once we hand the film over, it belongs to the world. So I don’t like to say anything, and just let the fans talk. I think it’s up to them.”
There’s been some suggestion and in fact, a Twitter trend demanding that Frozen 2 introduce the first ever gay character in the form of Elsa. The film company has kept tight-lipped on whether there is validity to the claim that Elsa could, in fact, be lesbian or bisexual.
In the first film, the film-makers shunned the normal heteronormative narrative for the character of Elsa and she managed to get through the entire film without falling in love with someone of the opposite sex, something that was widely lauded as a positive.
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