Pride without Prejudice: Queer Animation of the 2020s
The Seeds of 2020s Cinema
Fig. 1 - The boom in queer animated media in recent years.
Just a little over three and a half years into the 2020s, the seeds of the tropes and trends that future generations shall refer to as “2020's cinema” began to sprout. Be it the new string of self-aware whodunits following the success of Knives Out (Rian Johnson, 2019), such as Bodies, Bodies, Bodies and See How They Run (both released in 2022), or the slow resurgence of slashers with Scream sequels, X and Freaky (starting a new chapter for the genre after its self-referential era post-Scream and ‘neo-slasher’ period in the 2000’s), an exciting foundation for this new decade’s cinema has been set. Amongst these lies a particularly interesting new batch of films and television shows, that of queer animation, which indicate a fresh direction for queer filmmaking, a section of cinema that has primarily focused on the hardships and isolation that the community faces. This new range of media instead celebrates the queer experience, giving creators the almost magical opportunity to make content that they wish they’d grown up with. From the handling of gender in Steven Universe (Rebecca Sugar, 2013 - 2019) and She-Ra (ND Stevenson, 2018 - 2020) to the raunchy Helluva Boss (Vivienne Madrano, 2020 - ), these films and television programmes have been propelled into the mainstream to widespread acclaim, both due to and furthering the steady increase in visibility of the LGBTQ+ community (Fig. 1).
Three projects stand out proudly from the pack, namely Disney’s The Owl House (Dana Terrace, 2020-2023), Sony Animation’s The Mitchells vs. The Machines (Mike Rianda, 2021), and Blue Sky Studios’ final film, Nimona (Nick Bruno, 2023). In this blog post, I shall explore what makes these three releases stand out, from their protagonists to their handling of queer issues. Characterised by their light-hearted tones, boundary-pushing animation (thank you, Spider-Verse), and oddball protagonists, these 3 projects largely deal with fantastical worlds, whether it's a modernised land of mythical creatures or a stylized version of our world under a machine apocalypse. These environments set the stage for our characters to explore this swarming landscape and, in doing so, discover themselves. All three feature extremely bashful, fun-loving, yet mostly misunderstood girls as their leads, who either search for acceptance in this new world they find themselves in or from within the world they were already in under the new circumstances. This idea of individuality and a strong sense of longing to fit in somewhere is something that resonates strongly with nearly everyone, especially the youth, and these films spin their larger-than-life tales to arrive at a simple destination: Be you. You'll be fine.
Fig. 2 - Katie Mitchell, demonstrating 'Katie Vision'
These stories handle the queer identities of their protagonists in ways to highlight the experiences of their creators, with Dana Terrace claiming to have taken a lot of inspiration for Luz from her own life, and the gender fluid and trans sensibilities of the eponymous character in Nimona acting as a reflection of the author ND Stevenson's experience as a trans man. Queer creators are essential in this process, creating leads in these fantasy worlds as simple people facing the same issues of isolation and not being understood as they did in their youth. The only one of the three whose creator isn't queer, Mitchells, has Katie Mitchell be unambiguously queer, with consultation with queer members of the crew to create a very real depiction free of the outdated stereotypes that have plagued so many of these characters in the past (Fig. 2).
A Land Without Prejudice?
Fig. 3 - Luz, Amity, Camila and Gus in The Owl House's only coming out scene.
Another much-appreciated detail in these films is the utter lack of homophobia. The separation these characters face from the larger world is never because of their sexualities, and functions solely as subtext, like how Luz and Nimona face severe stigma due to their identities as a human and a monster, respectively. There is never a moment, for instance, when someone calls out a WLW or an MLM relationship as anything out of the ordinary. Katie and Luz both feel distant from their parents, but this is never because of their identities, as their parents are always shown as supportive, with Camila even wearing a rainbow heart on her clothes for all of The Owl House’s final season. This extremely welcome exclusion of homophobia further enchants the fantasy and sidesteps the tired old themes of the “queer community’s reaction to the isolation during the nineties” (Burns 2023). We see it enough in our own lives; we do not need to have it all over our escapism too. And doing so sets the precedent for this ideal world that most of us long to live in by essentially normalising our differences and hopefully moulding a generation that will be a lot more welcoming of the unconventional and what is ‘not normal’ (Fig. 3).
A New Direction for the Art
The animation styles of these three examples also skew away from the hyper-realist standard set by the Pixar and Disney studios for what contemporary animation should look like. The Owl House takes visual inspiration from the “fantasy/nightmare” works of Hieronymus Bosch and Remedios Varo, with Terrace saying she wanted the world to feel “literally alive, which is why we have bits of flesh in the background, bones, the trees are red.” Nimona and Mitchells follow the new wave of stylized animation (see left) that many commentators have argued was inaugurated by the release of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey & Rodney Rothman, 2018). Moving away from the photo-realistic backdrops and fine detailing that have dominated popular Hollywood animation for the past two decades, these films delve further into the art form’s cartoonish origins, with exaggerated body shapes and vibrant colours. Katie Mitchell’s scenes are often paired with little floating drawings and shapes to highlight her mood, something that the animators have dubbed ‘Katie Vision’. This, alongside the strange world they now inhabit, taps into the seemingly limitless potential that animation can provide, offering artists what Lilly Husbands terms “the virtually infinite potential for the manifestation of desire, fantasy, interiority and intimacy” (2021), mixing science fiction with mediaeval fantasy, realistic with exaggerated, and the unconventional with what is ‘normal’ (Fig. 4).
Fig. 4 - The eponymous protagonist of Nimona.
The Rocky Road Here
Bringing these stories to the small screen has, however, been far from easy. Disney cancelled The Owl House after its second season, stating that the show did not ‘fit the Disney brand', allowing Terrace to return for a 3-episode final season to close off the story, and scrapped Nimona after acquiring Blue Sky Studios from the Fox takeover in 2019, leaving the film 75% complete as the team shopped it around to other studios. One might look at this and jump to the easy conclusion: ‘Disney execs are homophobic!’ Their history of shoehorning queer ideas into tiny sections of the film to allow easy censorship for countries like China, and their restrictions on Alex Hirsch against showing gay affection in his Gravity Falls (2012-2016) to name just a few, do not paint them in a very good light on these matters. Some different outlooks can be seen on these cancellations, beyond the House of Mouse not seeing these topics as worthy inclusions to their library. The scrapping of Nimona could have been partly due to the financial fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, as studios could no longer afford to finance large productions and make little-to-no returns, but reports of Disney being hesitant to show a same-sex kiss do not help their case. And Terrace claims their comment about the ‘Disney brand’ supposedly speaks more to the audience skewing towards adults than children (Cartoon Network cancelled Infinity Train [Owen Dennis, 2019 - 2021] in 2021 for similar reasons), and that the show would have lived on longer if Disney had “different people in charge.”
Fig. 5 - A totally normal Mitchell family dinner.
Happily Ever After
All three shows have been released to universal acclaim for their writing, animation, and of course, their queer themes. Their success among audiences, children and adults refutes the idea that animation is only for kids and highlights the importance that these tales hold for people of all ages. Hollywood and other countries’ film studios remains largely conservative, as seen by the controversies surrounding Lightyear (Angus MacLane, 2022) and Thor: Love & Thunder (Taika Waititi, 2022) just last year, and these stories have had to live solely in subtext up until very recently (see Mittermeier 2021). Netflix picking up Nimona and giving it a pretty major release, and the sheer popularity of these projects can slowly usher us into a new age of animation, one where our stories continue to be told, in a medium that was almost tailor-made for it (Fig. 5).
**Article published: November 10, 2023**
References
Burns, Nathan. 2023. ““It Means Possibility": Manifestations of Isolation in New Queer Cinema.” Lateral, Spring 2023. https://csalateral.org/issue/12-1/it-means-possibility-manifestations-isolation-new-queer-cinema-burns/.
Husbands, Lilly. 2021. “A Queer Thing, Indeed: Queering Experimental Animation.” Fantasy/Animation (February 19, 2021). https://www.fantasy-animation.org/current-posts/a-queer-thing-indeed-queering-experimental-animation
Mittermeier, Sabrina. 2021. “Disney’s Queer Queen – Frozen’s Elsa and Queer Representation.” Fantasy/Animation (February 5, 2021). https://www.fantasy-animation.org/current-posts/disneys-queer-queen-frozens-elsa-and-queer-representation
Biography
Anant Nambiar is an Indian student, currently studying for his B.E. in Mechanical Engineering at BITS Pilani, Hyderabad. Having written for his college's Movie Club and headed their review section, Anant hopes to continue exploring writing about film and art.