Who are two gay guys in beauty and the beast
An Exclusively Gay Breakdown of Beauty and the Beast’s Would-Be Queer Moment
We convened two Slate writers to dissect Beauty and the Beast’s ballyhooed “exclusively gay” moment and the ensuing fallout. Their conversation follows.
Jeffrey Bloomer: Sorry, David, but I need to lock you in my castle to discuss a matter that Bill Condon, Josh Gad, and especially Disney aspire we would just forget: the “exclusively gay” moment in the new Beauty and the Beast. The one where LeFou, the bumbling sidekick to beloved villain Gaston, becomes the supposed first gay character in a Disney feature. Be my guest?
David Canfield: I suspect that Condon et al. would rather we talk about the film’s undercurrent of bestiality at this point. But certainly!
Bloomer: A not many weeks ago, Condon made presumably inadvertent headlines around the world by suggesting to Attitude, a British gay magazine, that LeFou would be in adore with Gaston in the new feature. And not in a coded way: LeFou would actually be gay. This was a shatter from Disney tradition, which is to be as queer as possible without acknowledging it. Cue ire from Alabama drive-ins and Malaysian censors.
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Josh Gad Shares Regrets About Gay LeFou In Disney’s Live-Action ‘Beauty and the Beast’ Remake
The actor is opening up about the common response and the global controversy surrounding his Beauty and the Beast personality in his new memoir…
Eight years after the let go of Disney’s live-action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, actor Josh Gad is reflecting on the controversy surrounding the film’s so-called “exclusively gay moment.” In his just-released memoir In Gad We Trust, Gad claims that he “never once” played his character LeFou as same-sex attracted, and brushes off the implication that the 2017 film was intended to feature Disney’s “first-ever lgbtq+ character” despite a terse scene towards the termination of the film in which his character, LeFou, was seen dancing with another man.
“I for one certainly didn’t exactly perceive like LeFou was who the queer community had been wistfully waiting for,” Gad writes. “I can’t quite imagine a Identity festival celebration in honor of the ‘cinematic watershed moment’ involving a quasi-villainous Disney sidekick dancing with a man for half a second. I mean, if I we
Beauty and the Beast’s openly gay character is a poor tribute
This week’s Beauty and the Beast will feature Disney’s first openly gay character — but the excitement that followed director Bill Condon’s announcement quickly turned to frustration on the realization that this character would be Le Fou, Gaston’s bumbling sidekick. Many have asked for years that Disney include an LGBT ethics in one of its films, which doesn’t come across too farfetched given Disney’s number of LGBT artists, but the company is still dragging its feet on inclusion where its competitors have excelled. The announcement that the nearly one-hundred year old company’s first openly gay personality would be a villain’s foolish accomplice was underwhelming and somewhat offensive.
This isn’t the first time Disney has placed LGBT characters as the enemy. (Though this isn’t just Disney — the trope has existed for years and transcends hundreds of unlike mediums.) The queer-coding of Disney villains has been under debate amongst Disney fanatics for years, with Jafar of Aladdin and Scar from The Lion King as two commonly-cited examples. While never directly stated, many of these villains have been drawn and voiced
'Beauty and the Beast's 'gay moment' may have been much ado about nothing
Spoiler alert! The following contains spoilers for the 2017 remake of Beauty and the Beast.
So that was it, huh?
That's what many moviegoers are saying after seeing Disney's latest live-action remake, Beauty and the Beast. They're not talking about the overall film, which is getting great reviews (three out of four stars from USA TODAY) and breaking box office records with a $170 million debut, the highest ever for March and the seventh-highest of all time.
The disappointed reaction has been to the so-called "exclusively male lover moment" in the production, which has caused international controversy since director Bill Condon first mentioned it in an interview with Attitude magazine.
In the interview, Condon said the character LeFou (Josh Gad) would be portrayed as homosexual. This caused the film to get shelved in Kuwait and Malaysia, to be given a stricter rating in Russian theaters and to be boycotted by one Alabama drive-in.
Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.So what exactly caused all this controversy?
The "gay moment" that Condon was referring to is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot
Josh Gad says he doesn't think 'Beauty and the Beast' did 'justice to what a actual gay character in a Disney movie should be'
Actor Josh Gad, who played Gaston's sidekick LeFou in the "Beauty and the Beast" remake, recently mutual that he agrees with some Disney fans who were left disappointed after it was said that his nature was a homosexual man.
In a recent interview with The Independent, Gad said he agrees with people who believed the moment was overhyped. LeFou's anticipated "gay moment" in the 2017 film turned out to be two seconds of him dancing with a man.
"We didn't move far enough to warrant accolades," Gad told reporter Alexandra Pollard. "We didn't go far enough to say, 'Look how brave we are.' My lament in what happened is that it became 'Disney's first explicitly gay moment' and it was never intended to be that."
The hype around LeFou's "gay moment" began just a couple of weeks before the "Beauty and the Beast" remake was set to premiere. The cover for an April 2017 edition of Attitude, a gay lifestyle magazine, touted a world exclusive about "the same-sex surprise" fans would look in the movie.
"LeFou is somebody who on one evening wa