The new trailer for Disney Pixar’s long awaited Finding Dory has been released and is already producing massive online-debate. After its release last week on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, many avid viewers pointed out one key aspect of the trailer: possible lesbian parents.
You can see this rumoured scene take place a little after the minute mark of the trailer. Two women offer their help to a young girl who has been bumped by her octopus-hit stroller. Whether the two women are part of a LGBTQ family or if it is just a woman and a passer-by simply offering a lending hand, the clip is too short to truly gather a full understanding.
In the past few months, Disney has seen an increased interest in the portrayal of LGBTQ characters in their movies. Recent Twitter campaigns such as #giveCaptainAmericanABoyfriend and #giveElsaAGirlfriend have called on Disney, Marvel, and other movie studios to create more LGBTQ driven characters and storylines. In 2015 alone, none of the 11 movies Disney released included non-heterosexual characters. However, in 2013’s Frozen, a scene is shown in which the male kiosk owner, Oaken, points out his husband and four kids enjoying themselves in their sauna.
So could this speculated lesbian couple in the Finding Dory trailer just be a marketing ploy to get audiences to the cinema? Probably not. It doesn’t seem strange for Disney to include LGBTQ characters in their most anticipated movie of 2016. And let’s not forget that the voice of Dory, Ellen DeGeneres, is, and has been, an openly gay woman.
Words by Thomas DeVito