Furries, gay parents, and LSD trips: Disney animation's most subversive movies

Accompanying every recent article about increased diversity and sexual representation in films and television aimed at children will inevitably be a litany of shrieks about "gay propaganda", or that immortal, unintentionally Mae West-style line that practically invented the social media freak-out: "Stop shoving it down our throats!"

But as much as people will insist that headline-grabbing news like Beauty and the Beast's openly gay character is the sign of Disney finally coming around to other forms of representation, the Mouse House has long been adding subversive elements to its output. Whether it's a cross-dressing heroine or a nightmare-inducing LSD trip, Walt Disney is a surprisingly common home for envelope-pushing plot twists. Whether they're overt and open or buried in the subtext, here are eight of Disney's most notable boundary-breaking moments...

1. Star vs. the Forces of Evil's unambiguous gay kiss

In the same week that Disney announced the not-so-subtle queerness of LeFou, it also broadcast the company's first ever gay kiss in an episode of the Disney Channel animated series Star vs. the Forces of Evil. During a One Direction-esque concert, princess Star Butterfly's friendship with a male character suddenly takes a turn for the unexpectedly romantic as she finds herself surrounded by kissing couples... including several gay and lesbian ones.

What makes this scene particularly striking is its incredible lack of ambiguity. Unlike potential gay couples in recent Disney films, where the debates over whether they actually exist at all existed far longer than said character's actual screentime, the gay representation here is remarkably lacking in mystery. Rather it's the rare inclusion of same-sex relationships as just another everyday aspect of life, treated with a distinct lack of specialness that feels new and welcome.

2. Mulan's cross-dressing

There's an undeniable homoeroticism to the 1998 classic, with young warrior Mulan rejecting many of the feminine traditions her family insists she partake in, and instead cross-dressing as a man in order to join the Chinese army. There she banters with and ultimately falls for another warrior, Li Shang, who also begins to share an easy quasi-romantic chemistry with her (though he believes her to be a man).

Once Mulan's gender deception is revealed, she still winds up married to Shang, but there is an undeniably subversive frisson to their early coupling. Mulan's somewhat ambiguous sexuality is popular in fandom circles, who barely raised an eyebrow when the fairy tale series Once Upon a Time introduced Mulan into their show... and quickly decided to have her fall in love with Sleeping Beauty.

3. Finding Dory's (maybe) gay couple

This... was a bit of a stretch. But the internet got significant mileage last year out of speculation that the Pixar sequel Finding Dory was to feature Disney's first lesbian couple. Fans first got their wildly presumptuous peek at said "couple" during teaser trailers for the film, which depicted two women standing next to one another for a split second. Despite pleas from joyous fans, the "couple" didn't appear for much longer in the film itself.

Ellen DeGeneres, who voices Dory, was quick to deny that the two women standing next to each other were meant to be an item. "It's really amazing because it's two women pushing a stroller, which I didn't even notice, and one of them has short hair, and apparently if you have short hair you're a lesbian," she told Entertainment Tonight. "I did not know that was the rule. So, no, there is no lesbian couple. I don't think that's the case."

4. Frozen's gay parents

Amid all the hubbub over the potential gay couple in Finding Dory, mainstream audiences seemed to have missed the less hotly-contested gay couple that briefly appeared in Frozen. During a scene in the 2013 modern classic, young princess Anna gets lost in the snow and seeks help and supplies from the Wandering Oaken's shop, which is presided over by a burly Scandinavian-accented trader named Oaken. In an aside, Oaken passes a glance to his "family" sitting in the nearby sauna... which sure looks like another man and four of their children.

Co-director Jennifer Lee would neither confirm nor deny that Frozen is responsible for Disney's first gay character, and gay parent, telling The Big Issue: "We know what we made. But at the same time I feel like once we hand the film over it belongs to the world so I don't like to say anything, and let the fans talk. I think it's up to them."

5. Zootopia's furry appeal

The advance buzz about last year's Zootopia (or Zootropolis as it was known in the UK) was particularly loud within the 'furry' community. For the uninformed, furries are a subculture made up of individuals who enjoy dressing up as anthropomorphic animal characters, because there's generally something for everyone. While most furries use their anthropomorphic costumes to merely connect with others in the fandom (and occasionally play), it is known to be a kink for some within the community.

But its interest in Zootopia made a certain kind of sense when trailers dropped that teased a world comprising of animals with particularly human attributes, whether they were working human jobs or wearing human clothes. It subsequently lead some furries to ask whether Zootopia was intentionally made for them.

It was a conspiracy that ran deeper when Buzzfeed unearthed emails sent from a marketing agency affiliated with Disney to a furry meet-up group. In return for Zootopia swag, furries were asked to upload photographs of themselves in animal garb using a #Zootopia hashtag. Neither Disney nor the marketing agency would comment on the story at the time.

6. Pinocchio's purple haze

There's an incredibly odd scene in 1940's Pinocchio in which the titular puppet is given a cigar by delinquent young boy Lampwick, which he proceeds to inhale a little too much like it's a blunt, before appearing to get... somewhat high. He becomes drowsy and lethargic, struggles to move, his eyes roll around like golf balls, while his face repeatedly changes colour as he starts to hallucinate.

Now we're not saying that Walt Disney intended to throw in an elaborate drug scene for one of his most beloved characters, but it sure does come off that way.

7. Dumbo's LSD nightmare

More evidence for classic Disney's fixation on drugs and alcohol appears in Dumbo, in which the floppy-eared elephant swallows water laced with champagne, leading him on a trippy vision quest. It's a scene that was likely burned in memories of many a terrified child, as Dumbo encounters pink elephants with scary eyes, which subsequently morph into pyramids, snakes, dancing girls and eyeballs.

While LSD wasn't a major presence in America until after Dumbo was first released, many have argued that the scenes depicted in Dumbo's vision were an allegory for America's alcohol dependency at the time.

8. Alice's wild drug trip

But the grand dame of Disney subversion occurs in Alice in Wonderland -- quite naturally, considering how the film and Lewis Carroll's original source material have been synonymous with acid trips and drug-taking since the counter-cultural Sixties. While Carroll himself reportedly only ever indulged in the occasional sherry in real life, it's difficult not to spot the underlying drug allegories in the Disney adaptation.

Alice's curiosity gets the better of her early on in the film, tumbling down the rabbit hole where she is attacked by weeds, has her body affected by strange objects labelled 'DRINK ME' and 'EAT ME', indulges in mushrooms, and encounters both a hookah-smoking caterpillar and a cat covered in psychedelic colours who floats in the air and can disappear and reappear at will. How this all got past the censors we'll never know.