Tag Archives: Power Rangers

Don’t Be Fooled By Hollywood’s Shiny New Queerbait

Good news: Hollywood is finally embracing queer people.

Bad news: By embracing, I mean “keeping at arm’s length.”

Hollywood keeps proclaiming its “good news.”

In recent weeks, Hollywood has announced some exciting developments, such as the gay character LeFou in Beauty and the Beast that had queer Disney fans tearing apart the internet to figure out what the “exclusively gay moment” was.

Power Rangers also recently announced that the Yellow Ranger would be queer.

Has Hollywood really had a change of heart regarding gay characters? No. Hollywood is just realizing that mediocre children’s movies can break even by fishing for the $917 billion dollar gay economy.

Here’s why the “queer moments” don’t mean anything.

When Beauty and the Beast announced Disney’s first gay character, fans were excited at the possibilities – after all, the lyrics of Beauty and the Beast were written by an openly gay man who viewed the movie as a metaphor for his excruciating demise from AIDS.

But then Disney announced that the character was LeFou. And lesbians around the world wondered, “Le Who?”

“LeFou” is literally French for “the fool.” In the new Beauty and the Beast , he is a buffoon, the henchmen of the villain who is so overcome by his homosexual passions that he cannot think for himself.

And LeFou doesn’t get a happy ending. No, he gets an “exclusively gay moment” that is nothing more than a few seconds of him dancing with another man at a ball. In case you missed it, that is Disney’s big gay moment. That is the big gay moment that made headlines around the world.

Instead of actually fleshing out one of the main characters with sexual fluidity or even giving LeFou some emotional depth, Disney made being gay the punchline. Again.

Power Rangers isn’t much better. It has a history of homophobia – David Yost left the show in the 90s after being harassed for being gay – so fans were excited about a new queer ranger. Perhaps we expected too much.

Here is the extent of the Yellow Ranger’s queerness:

Her fellow Ranger Billy asks, “Boyfriend problems?” She pouts slightly harder than usual and Billy re-guesses: “Girlfriend problems?” She pouts slightly less signaling agreement. She puts her identity into explicit words, really, but she goes on to bemoan her family’s normalcy and their belief in labels. “I don’t know how to tell them what’s really going on with me,” she says, adding that she’s never admitted any of this stuff out loud before. And that’s basically that.

So what do we do?

It’s natural to be excited about gay (or at least gay-ish) characters in your favorite films, but don’t take the bait. If you weren’t excited about a movie before you found out that one of the characters was a 2 on the Kinsey scale, then don’t purchase a ticket afterward.

If you’re looking for good queer cinema, don’t neglect indie films. Here are seven to get you started.

Russia Gives ‘Power Rangers’ 18+ Audience Restriction For Queer Character

The new Power Rangers movie just received a rating of 18+ in Russia.

Officials are attributing the change to the presence of the LGBTQ character, calling it “gay propaganda.”

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Legislator Vitaly Milonov said,

If fascist ideology is banned in our country, then [movies by] the likes of [Power Rangers director] Israelite should be banned first thing,”

He went on to compare the movie to bombs planted by terrorists inside children’s toys.

Russian legislator Alexei Zhuravlev had an issue with the film even being allowed in the country at all:

Some officials don’t want to observe laws adopted by the State Duma, specifically the law banning gay propaganda among minors,”

This is not first instance of Russia adding an age restriction, because a movie depicting a LGBTQ character has been placed on it.

Legislators also considered banning Beauty and the Beast when it was announced that LeFou was gay.

Power Rangers Will Feature First Openly Queer Big-Screen Superhero

[Warning: This story contains minor spoilers for the Power Rangers movie]

Power Rangers is breaking down a barrier no superhero movie has before. In the reboot of the 90s TV show and film series, we will see one of the five main characters struggle with her relationship with another girl in the film’s second act.

During Power Rangers’ second act, there’s a scene in which the titular heroes learn that the Yellow Ranger Trini (Becky G) is coming to terms with her sexual orientation, with one character assuming she’s having “boyfriend problems,” and soon realizing that perhaps she’s actually having “girlfriend problems.” It’s a small moment, but one director Dean Israelite calls “pivotal” for the entire film.

Speaking to ScreenRan ahead of the film’s release at the end of this week, Becky G who plays Trini, the Yellow Ranger, said:

Power Rangers has always represented diversity and they’re always been ahead of the curve on a lot of things and although it may be a touchy subject for some people, I think it’s done in a very classy way, and not only that, in a way that’s really real, because you don’t know, Trini doesn’t know herself, and it’s that moment where she says out loud, ‘I’ve never said any of this out loud’ and that line, where, you know, Zordon says ‘You must shed your masks to wear this armor.’ It’s true. People should accept themselves for who they really are and be proud of that and take ownership of that first and learn that self-love to really be happy; and I think that’s why Trini never found her purpose just yet, until she met them and that’s why she never really learned to love herself, because she didn’t accept who she really is just yet.”

Director Dean Israelite added that she’ll eventually comes to terms with her sexual orientation and is accepted by all the other characters.

For Trini, really she’s questioning a lot about who she is. She hasn’t fully figured it out yet. I think what’s great about that scene and what that scene propels for the rest of the movie is, ‘That’s OK.’ The movie is saying, ‘That’s OK,’ and all of the kids have to own who they are and find their tribe.”

LGBT representation in superhero films has trailed that of comic books, where heroes and villains such as DC’s Wonder Woman, Catwoman, Batwoman and Harley Quinn, as well as Marvel’s Ice Man, are among high-profile examples of LGBT characters.

But so far, when these characters have been translated to the big screen, they have been portrayed as straight. X-Men‘s Northstar, the first openly gay character from either DC or Marvel, was introduced in the comics in 1992.

The TV side has been more progressive, with The CW’s Supergirl featuring a prominent lesbian storyline this season. Supergirl, which is from openly gay producer Greg Berlanti, joins fellow Berlanti CW shows Legends of Tomorrow and Arrow in featuring LGBT characters.

Power Rangers comes on the heels of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast live-action remake, in which Josh Gad plays Disney’s first-ever gay character, LeFou.

In the sci-fi movie world, last year’s Star Trek Beyond revealed that Sulu (played by John Cho in the rebooted Star Trek movie universe), was gay. The original version of the character, played by George Takei, was straight.