@canadian-riddler I hope this is interesting and is not meant as critical to your tags! The thing is queer scholars aren’t looking at step five when we’re on step three because we’ve had examples of this kind of representation since 2006. The major examples i’ve read analysis on so far are Torchwood and True Blood (which agreed aren’t children’s shows but are still worth mentioning). Theres a nuance to queer studies that gets overlooked online and its really hard to articulate all of this because the queer community isn’t one large single entity but is made up of millions of individuals who will all have differing perspectives. My dissertation is still not Fully finalised on its topic, I’m hoping to discuss queer coding vs “the queer code” which is a bit about queer representation through narritive but also through fashion - particularly historically. I’ve also considered discussing the sanitation of queer comicbook characters for film and tv if I’m asked to narrow down my frankly gargantuan topic. The theory I mentioned before is a fairly modern one but if you ask me is pretty solid. It demands elevation above homosocial interaction (This is social interaction between same sex people that could be read as queer but could also easily be marketed as platonic or even familial. An example of this would be Frodo and Sam in lord of the rings, or even how the new Lefou acts in the live action beauty and the beast) but refuses to subscribe to the heterosexual matrix by making queer people more palatable; be that through neatly defining their sexuality for the heterosexual audience, never making their queerness too distasteful and only ever acting as a pure representative of their community. This also crosses into the desexualisation of queer characters by marketing them as “the asexual gay best friend” - which in turn makes actual asexuality harder to define on screen. This isn’t about making queer relationships MORE explicit but about refusing to meet a heterosexual standard of purity or assimilate into a heterosexual culture. You see this being confused a lot online, this is the whole “looks like they top” thing - that subscribes to heterosexual standards and is exacerbated by the types of queer character media is allowed to show currently. The point of all of this being that this theory of queer representation denies companies like Disney (or franchises like harry potter) what they’ve been doing so far: - Using word of god to define a character as queer (Dumbledore), Or having the character self identify with a throw away line when nothing is shown. Technically Stark Treks handling of making Sulu gay subscribes better to this theory with a simple kiss and an arm around the waist.













