By Caroline Connick | Staff Writer
The highly-anticipated live-action remake of Disney classic Beauty and the Beast that has stirred up massive controversy finally hit theaters on Friday, March 17.
Recently, we’ve been seeing quite an impressive series of new live-action remakes of classic Disney movies from our childhood. With stunning HD quality, animation, and graphics, these films have proven quite successful, especially with young adults who are happy to see their beloved childhood stories growing up with them.
Many of these films take a new spin on the story and experiment with different perspectives and darker themes to appeal to an older audience. As more details about the latest remake trickled out leading up to the premiere date, fans learned that this movie would be pushing the Disney envelope in an unprecedented manner.
Long before the movie’s release date, fans learned that Emma Watson, best-known for her role as Hermione Granger in the wildly popular Harry Potter series, refused to wear a corset for her new role as Belle. This stirred up a major conversation on social media about the roles of women in film and body image.
But perhaps the most heated controversy was when news got out that the Gaston’s sidekick, LeFou, would be Disney’s very first openly-gay character. Some people were very pleased to see Disney embracing today’s social climate by adding this kind of diversity into their films, while others were concerned about how appropriate the introduction of homosexuality in a Disney movie might be for younger audiences. Ed Mazza of The Huffington Post reports that this controversy started when director Bill Condon stated during an interview with British magazine Attitude that LeFou would have an “exclusively gay moment” in the movie. Mazza also reports that there is a theater in Alabama that has gone so far as banning the film.
I was definitely curious about how Disney handled the representation of LeFou when I went to see the film on its opening day. I personally found that Beauty and the Beast was quite successful with their portrayal of a gay LeFou. Plus, in order to pick up the fact that LeFou had a crush on Gaston, you really had to be looking for it as you watched the film.
In regards to other audiences, I think that a young child would just perceive most of LeFou’s interaction as comic relief, like in the original cartoon, while older people are more likely to pick up the hints of homosexuality. The only time that you see any kind of even remotely apparent homosexual interaction is at the very end of the movie when LeFou dances with a male partner at the ball, which is only shown very briefly. Again, it wasn’t graphic or inappropriate, and little kids would probably just find it funny if they saw it. Overall, the artistic quality of this film rises high above all of the controversy surrounding it.
