Fnord,
You may be interested to learn about the 'bury your gays' trope as this touches upon what you have mentioned.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ ... ryYourGays
Queerbaiting is when a character is hinted to be LGBT for marketability, but it is never delivered upon. It is a type of tokenism in a sense, where a studio wants praise and viewership for providing representation but doesn't want to risk a decline in fans who would actively turn away because of the character. So, as a solution, they hype up a character, have the character show up for five seconds and then promptly kill them off. Well, not always, sometimes they're in the background standing next to each other and / or kissing in a scene that can easily be cut for release in countries where that won't fly. It's an incredibly lazy form of representation but it's the type that earns the most money. Especially since there's going to be a crowd who complains, which will encourage audiences to go watch the film to see what all the fuss is about, even when it's just a three second glance shared between characters that might suggest an off-screen romance.
Disney is a bit more relaxed with their shows. They have shows where a main character isn't straight, but such shows tend to be short-lived. I know there was a little bit of controversy with The Owl House being cut short, however the network claims that the decision was based on a move away from serialised stories and towards more episodic adventures, rather than a decision based on the LGBT content. Episodic cartoons tend to do better in re-runs.
It is somewhat amusing to me to know that censors around the world changed a romantic scene into an overly dramatic "Will you dress up and travel with me?" despite heavy blushing, awkward laughter and tears. So now it looks like they're both bizarrely emotional over planning a day out together.
Films such as
Isn't it romantic? and G.B.F. (Gay Best Friend) poke fun at tokenisation of gay characters. Of course, there is plenty of good representation out there...but you're not going to find it in a Disney movie. We do seem to be constantly repeating "Disney introduces its first gay character!" (it's done that already) "The character appears for a second and then leaves!" Wow, ground-breaking, same time next year then?
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