Camera as Narrator—How Disney’s 2015-17 “Queer Representation” Perpetuated Shame

If I suddenly disappear next to a trail of mouse prints… you know what happened

Proof that I'm somewhat of a Disney princess myself

Film school taught me a lot of rules. The 180-degree rule, 30-degree rule, rule of thirds, etc. But the one that stuck with me the most was ‘camera as narrator’.

Essentially, it describes how when watching a movie, the audience is always watching from the camera’s POV, the camera’s bias. The camera is our narrator, it tells the story—so what we point the camera at, how it sees the scene in front of it, and how/when/why it moves all goes into influencing how the audience sees the story/characters/events. From the moment you turn on a show or sit down for a movie you’re being manipulated—but in a good way, in a ‘this movie is really meaningful and enjoyable’ way instead of thinking ‘actually that was rather flat and boring and frankly a little confusing.’

Storytellers are responsible for wielding a perspective. We have the power to influence how people think, and that’s not a power anyone should ever take lightly.

And given I know that lesson, you can imagine how surprised I was when I went to see the live-action Beauty and the Beast movie in 2017, and Star Wars Episode: the first one that Rey is in, both carrying promises from Disney to include their “first ever queer representation!” like we’re some sort of novelty at the zoo, only to find the camera implicitly expressing shame.

Let me explain. To get to the supposed queer representation, one has to watch all the way to the end of the movie, where two background characters embrace and—cut. If you didn’t blink and miss it, you probably felt at least a little cheated. You might have even had an inkling that 0.5 seconds of representation isn’t really representation. You’re right. But there’s another issue with this quick cut.

To hurriedly cut away from a queer embrace, the camera is telling you to “quick, look away!” It’s like when you were a kid and your parent covered your eyes from something that came on, on the TV. Whatever was just on screen, it was too shameful to watch for more than a glimpse. Even if you don’t think that, the camera made it very clear that that’s what you should be thinking.

Was this intentional? Do I really think the director and producers and editor sat down and said to each other, “let’s have a gay couple but let’s make every gay person in the theatre feel alienated and validate the discomfort some straight people may be feeling”? No, probably not. But it’s their responsibility as storytellers to consider how the narrator is telling the audience to feel. They forced us to look away; someone should have realized the implication of that.

So here’s the grand lesson: work will always be political. Your narrator will always be political, because they tell us the objective truth about the world—it’s your responsibility to know what truth you’re telling. And if you can do that, you're already ahead of one of the most powerful mega-corporations in the world. Go figure.