Via a Vanity Fair interview
I definitely see them in that context. KMT is a treasure. Disneyfy me if old.
Tran told Vanity Fair that when recording her role for the animated film she decided there were "some romantic feelings going on there" between Raya and Namaari. But though Raya, like Moana and Elsa before her, is a Disney princess who isn't saddled with a male love interest in the film, Raya and the Last Dragon is the latest Disney offering to stop short of presenting a major character as explicitly queer. But for the company that started touting its "exclusively gay moments" a few years back, and whose characters have long been embraced by queer communities, Raya has felt for many like one step closer to the surface.
"I think if you're a person watching this movie and you see representation in a way that feels really real and authentic to you, then it is real and authentic," Tran says. "I think it might get me in trouble for saying that, but whatever."
For decades queer readers and audience members have had to rely on this kind of subtle nod to find themselves in stories. "As an animation fan, I grew up saturated with queer-coded villains, and when I had no canonically queer or gender expansive characters to enjoy I found myself relating to aliens, shapeshifters and mutants," [Rebecca] Sugar (of Adventure Time) says. "My love for queer-coded villains and monsters is bittersweet and complex. And I love to see LGBTQIA+ artists express and navigate their relationship to these tropes in their art."
This practice of queer-baiting, seen most recently and publicly in the end of the long-running TV series Supernatural or the hubbub around Finn and Poe in The Rise of Skywalker, has become increasingly intolerable among queer audiences who finally have other stories that will offer representation without the bait and switch.
For the queer princess diehards, though, Kelly Marie Tran is in their corner. "I want to live in a world where every single type of person can see themselves in a movie like this," she says. "There's a lot of work to be done in that respect. I'd love to see a Disney warrior who—I don't know, can I say this without getting in trouble? I don't care—is openly in the LGBTQ community. I would love to see representation in terms of someone who maybe isn't able-bodied. And I'm hopeful. We'll see."
I definitely see them in that context. KMT is a treasure. Disneyfy me if old.
