Luca, Disney and queerbaiting in animation
The latest Disney-Pixar film has been seen as containing queer themes, but what is the animation studio trying to achieve?
theconversation.com
Back in June, Disney released Pixar's latest feature film, Luca. Set in the fictional seaside town of Portorosso, Luca is a story of adventure, escape, difference and found family. It's also, according to many, a narrative about a gay relationship – even if the film itself stops short of confirming that.
The themes explored in Luca have since led to accusations of "queerbaiting" - a phenomenon in which LGBTQIA+ relationships are hinted at, but never clearly expressed. As a queer animation researcher, I know first hand how pronounced that problem is in film and TV.
The issue with Luca comes down to the difference between queerbaiting and queer coding. Queer coding is when LGBTQIA+ creatives insert queer themes, characters and relationships into content without making them explicitly so, in order to fly under the radar of conservative censors and critics. Queerbaiting is when creators hint that characters might be queer in order to attract progressive audience but without providing any real queer representation that could risk losing conservative audiences.
So is Luca an example of queer-baiting?
We first meet the titular character, adolescent sea monster Luca Paguro, as he tends to the family's goatfish. He stumbles on a human artefact, awakening a keen desire to leave his everyday life behind in search of adventure above the waves. This adventure arrives in the form of Alberto Scarfano, a fellow sea monster who lives on the surface. The two boys quickly form a passionate friendship, building a makeshift Vespa and dreaming of travelling the world together.
The film can easily be read as queer. Not only do Luca and Alberto form a close achillean relationship (a masculine attraction that may or may not include romantic or sexual feelings), the themes and story beats also touch on common LGBTQIA+ experiences. Because the sea monsters of Portorosso's waters fear humans and forbid their children from entering the human realm, Luca must hide his excursions to the surface and, by extension, his relationship with Alberto.
Luca's parents discover their son's secret and try to send him to live with his uncle in the ocean's depths, but the pair escape to Portorosso. Above the water, Luca and Alberto pass as human. Yet, like closeted members of the LGBTQIA+ community, they fear the day that their secret will be discovered. In a touching celebration of queerness and found family, the townspeople actually welcome Luca and Alberto with love and acceptance when they are outed as sea monsters, enough so that other long-closeted sea monsters feel safe enough to reveal themselves.
Yet despite these queer allusions, the film quietly reasserts the heteronormativity ingrained in Disney's traditional storytelling. Instead of remaining together, Luca and Alberto are split when a third character, Guilia, entices Luca to follow her to school in Genoa in what is implied to be a far more mature and productive pairing. Luca, therefore, walks a very fine line between queer-coding and queer-baiting.
