Lightyear writer comes out swinging in support of LGBTQ+ inclusion after Snoop Dogg criticism
A lesbian couple are featured in Lightyear. (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
A lesbian couple are featured in Lightyear. (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
The writer of Pixar’s Lightyear has defended the film’s LGBTQ+ inclusion after rapper Snoop Dogg took issue with the fact it featured a lesbian couple.
The 2022 film, which sees Chris Evans voice the titular Buzz Lightyear of Toy Story fame, features the character of Alisha Hawthorne, Buzz’s best friend, who marries a woman named Kiko.
During the film, the two female characters share a small on-screen kiss. The innocuous smooch caused the film to be banned in 14 countries.
This week, rapper Snoop Dogg, whose real name is Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr, complained about the LGBTQ+ inclusive content on a podcast saying it made him fearful to go to films and “it threw me for a loop”.
Speaking on the It’s Giving podcast, the rapper said he took his grandson to the film, who asked him: “Papa Snoop, how she have a baby with a woman? She’s a woman.”
“Aw s**t, I didn’t come for this s**t, I came here to watch the goddamn movie,” Snoop Dogg said. “Y’all throwing me in the middle of this s**t that I don’t have an answer for … it threw me for a loop.”
In response to his comments, screenwriter Lauren Gunderson – who worked on Lightyear and added the sapphic relationship to the film, took to Threads to defend the child-friendly queer content.
“So. I created the LIGHTYEAR lesbians,” Gunderson said in the post.
“In 2018, I was a writer at Pixar – such a cool place, grateful to work there, learned a ton from kind and impressive creatives. As we wrote early versions of what became LIGHTYEAR, a key character needed a partner, and it was so natural to write ‘she’ instead of ‘he.’
“As small as that detail is in the film, I knew the representational effect it could have.
“Small line, big deal. I was elated that they kept it.”
She added: “I’m proud of it.
“To infinity. Love is love.”
Gunderson was not the only person to defend the film, as its star Chris Evans called bigots who were reacting negatively to the film “idiots”.
“Every time there’s been social advancement as we wake up, the American story, the human story is one of constant social awakening and growth and that’s what makes us good,” Evans told the news agency,” he told Reuters
“I think the goal is to pay them no mind, march forward and embrace the growth that makes us human.”
In a different interview with Variety, Evans also said his goal is that “we can get to a point where it is the norm, and that this doesn’t have to be some uncharted waters, that eventually this is just the way it is.”
