We need to put sex back into children's entertainment
That got your attention. I welcome the pearl-clutching in the notes.
I'm serious, though. The movies we watched as kids had way more sex in them than you remember. Not explicitly, but they had no problem alluding to and implying sex. The Incredibles had a full-on sex montage and a suspected adultery subplot. The Road to El Dorado had a woman proposition a man for casual sex onscreen and fuck him just out of frame. Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas directly referenced prostitution. So did The Hunchback of Notre Dame on top of having a creepy sexual predator for a villain who unambiguously sings about his lust for the leading lady. We all knew Simba and Nala fucked at the end of that one song in The Lion King. Batman: The Animated Series had Harley Quinn dress in lingerie and beg the Joker for sex.
This was mainstream children's media by major studios. None of this was controversial or seen as "grooming." Sex was just a normal thing to tastefully imply because it's a normal part of life. Having two characters discretely fuck offscreen was no different from having a villain fall to his death so you can't see the gore. They obviously wouldn't show it in a children's movie, but everyone who knows what sex or violence is can infer what happened.
I think the fact that this even shocks us is very telling of how insanely prudish and reactionary we have become regarding anything remotely sexual coming anywhere near kids. It used to be perfectly acceptable to do this in children's media, but the current groomer panic has really set us back decades.
I can only think of a handful of recent exceptions to this. The She-Ra remake elegantly pulled off a running gag where a character fucks robots, and Kpop Demon Hunters did not shy away from depicting sexual desire through exaggerated cartoony visuals. Hopefully, the breakout success of the latter sets a precedent for future projects.
We need to get more normal about sex and that means, among other things, letting Disney characters fuck again.
