The Disney Group is currently facing criticism from several quarters. The reason: The new Pixar series Win or Lose, which is scheduled to premiere on Disney+ on February 19, 2025. To Disappointment from members of the Pixar team and some fans A queer storyline was deleted from the format at short notice.
Disney deletes transgender story from new Pixar series We or Lose
Win or Lose by Carrie Hobson and Michael Yates is about a school softball team and features one of the team members per episode in the week leading up to the big game. One of the later episodes is about one Teenage girl named Kaiwho is a trans girl in the original version of the episode. According to the Hollywood Reporter, she was recast as a cisgender girl shortly before the series started. In such cases one speaks of queer erasure, the invisibility of non-heteronormative people in the media and society.
Disney’s statement says: “When it comes to animated content for younger audiences, we know that many parents would prefer to discuss certain topics with their children on their own terms and on their own schedule.”
It was already announced in the summer of this year that Disney had deleted hints of an LGBTQ+ storyline from Inside Out 2.
Censorship accusation: Pixar employees and fans react to the Disney decision
Shortly after the deleted trans story in Win or Lose became known, Kai voice actress Chanel Stewart spoke out (via Deadline). The role of Kai meant a lot to the 18-year-old, who is trans herself. The Voice actress was all the more disappointed by Disney’s decision:
I was very discouraged. From the moment I got the script, I was excited to share my journey to empower other trans youth. I knew this would be an extremely important conversation. Trans stories matter and deserve to be heard.
Pixar employee Jeff Pidgeon (Inside Out, Red) is hoping for at least a home theater release with both versions and wrote on Instagram: “Of course it would be best to release Win or Lose in its original form, and it is a terrible shamethat this will not be the case. […] People can’t make a choice if it’s taken away from them.”
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Storyboard artist Amber Vucinich (Rapunzel, Samurai Rabbit) wrote, to over 40,000 likes on social media: “At what point are trans people allowed to appear in the narrative? At what point are LGBT+ people allowed to tell their stories without worrying about censorship and removal?”
In November of this year, Disney Channel already had a full episode of the Marvel animated series Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur deleted because it included a trans character.
Podcast on the topic: How queer is the series world really?
We’re doing a reality check at Streamgegewer about how LGBTQ+ friendly series actually are in 2024:
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In 2024 it will still be necessary to check the queer-friendliness of the series landscape. Although the largest streaming provider Netflix has many queer characters and LGBTQ+ inclusive series available to stream, unfortunately this is not representative of the rest of the streaming world.