Girl in Costume: So… who says only guys can be heroes?
[Flash of Padmé with a blaster, exclaiming “Get to your ships!”]
Girl in Costume: My goofy older brother, that’s who! I say, what about Florence Nightingale? Or that Queen Elizabeth person we read about in class? They were heroes, just like Queen Amidala.
[Girl descends stairs in full costume.]
Goofy Brother + Friends: Here she comes. She’s gonna get a lot of candy this year. Let’s follow her!
–
I nearly didn’t watch this, but I’m glad I did. In part because I’m just weirdly obsessed with this era of SW marketing and products. But also because it goes to show the similarity in marketing for Padme and Rey, both overtly labeled as heroes and suggested as models for real world change in gender norms.
One of the things that makes me happy about Brooklyn 99 is the frequency and normalcy with which they refer to Holt’s husband. “What sort of cute names do you call your husband?” “My husband’s dog” “He’s worried we’re going to embarrass him in front of his husband.”
Idk I just really like how comfortable everyone is with it, not in a ‘not making a big deal of it’ way I mean like…making enough of a deal of it. They’re married. They’re married. And that’s something that’s been denied to gay people for so long, and something that’s still denied to gay people in my country, and it just makes me really happy in a warm&fuzzy kinda way to see them normalising that at the same time as celebrating it.
please stop with the “Making an IDIOT Disney’s first gay character is SO OFFENSIVE!” It’s obviously not being said in relation to the character being a (minor) villain but in relation to him being of perceived low intelligence, and – having a low IQ isn’t a bad thing, guys, you know this.
They are not saying this about a character with low intelligence, they are saying this about a character that is called The Fool who is designed for the audience to look down on for his complete lack of dignity. Their choice of words may be ableist, but you must appreciate this is an archetype in storytelling.
I know that/this post sounds like I’m being terribly holier-than-thou, but – considering the archetypal idea of the fool is also rooted in ableism (hell, in a way, a grown person behaving with a lack of dignity and this being bad, even that has roots in ableism I think…)
…..people could probably have handled it better. Just that aspect of it. They were awfully quick to bring up the word ‘idiot’ and…. there’s just this feeling I get, people are so keen to denounce the concept of intelligence and how it’s presented, yet when a wider issue of representation comes up it’s always the first thing to be used as a battering ram. How dare you associate X with a lack of intelligence? You know…. ? It seems to happen so much these days.
please stop with the “Making an IDIOT Disney’s first gay character is SO OFFENSIVE!” It’s obviously not being said in relation to the character being a (minor) villain but in relation to him being of perceived low intelligence, and – having a low IQ isn’t a bad thing, guys, you know this.
I think I’m gonna remain optimistic about the Beauty and the Beast LeFou thing until the movie comes out. I’m hoping the storyline will actually be him ditching Gaston and heading off with a man who treats him better, one of the human servant characters I guess? I don’t know. My expectations are low but my hopes are high.
(Side note: I actually do like LeFou, if only because as the comic relief character he was naturally my favourite next to Belle when I was 4. Being so young neither me nor my siblings could pronounce his name, so we just called him “little baddie”.)
