Disney drops planned transgender storyline from cartoon series

[Hairyesterdaygonetoday]

Leading movie news source The Hollywood Reporter yesterday (17 December) revealed that the Disney company Pixar is dropping a transgender storyline from its Win or Lose series.

The animated series, to be shown next year, follows a middle-school softball team in the week leading up to their championship game. Each episode focuses on one character and shown from their point of view. A character who was intended to be transgender will remain, but a few lines of dialogue revealing that they identify as trans have been removed.

The Hollywood Reporter says: "A spokesperson for Disney confirmed that the story arc was removed and provided the following statement to THR: “When it comes to animated content for a younger audience, we recognize that many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline."

Last month, says The Hollywood Reporter, "Disney Channel’s animated series ^Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur^ made headlines after some who worked on the show took to social media to say Disney banned the release of an episode focused on a recurring transgender character. The company denied that the episode was “banned” and said the decision to hold on releasing the episode was made more than a year ago and was not because of the transgender character inclusion."

This isn't about homophobia. Though gay and lesbian themes also arouse controversy in the United States, Disney has ignored homophobic opposition and presented gay storylines and characters in recent years.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/disney-pulls-transgender-storyline-win-or-lose-1236088172/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR1YLZm-yWJ3MBIRsv3V0bPKxoYPwbFhT4Dj7M1kJjuFhHNsEviKBoDJfug_aem_g5cU3YZzNrj9S0nel0B4AA

I found this link at
https://www.facebook.com/groups/683564403501236/?multi_permalinks=1088509139673425

via a page called 'Kick-ass women who take no sh!t from Left or Right'.

I don't think it's JKRowling who is obsessed with the story about the football coach.

How many times have you raised it now?!

It's a typical story. Man constantly harasses a woman, woman finally responds and she's the one in the wrong. I bet he loved that JKR mentioned him and that's what he wanted all along. No surprise that Chris has fixated on it, he loves any excuse to say that a man is better than a woman

Livestream with some UK and US internet media critics discussing this Disney story:

Christinapple · Yesterday 16:41

The football manager is trans, exists and is living a happy life. So Rowling posted about her to her 14M followers (and the daily mail reader-base too, since they post an article about almost everything she tweets) to further incite hatred against her.

That's a complete distortion of reality. He spent ages shit posting about her and she responded eventually. Twitter users saw his vile, misogynistic slanders and lies and took him to task, which he richly deserved.

It's apparent that you're not part of the reality based community, just look at all the erroneous things you posted about Moira Deeming, absolutely none of it was correct, not least that she was going to lose, big style..

I liked The Acolyte, it was a solid bit of young adult fiction and easily superior to much of the tedious nerd-centric rubbish most of current Star Wars is. The only "progressive" bits I remember were its having several non-white people in and an implicit allusion to lesbianism, which seems like odd things for people to be getting angry about on a feminism board.

Is anyone angry about The Acolyte on here? We're looking at why Disney is rowing back on 'social justice' storylines. The feedback from Star Wars fans was that it shoehorned 'diversity' driven plotlines and characters into the Star Wars mythology and that wasn't popular with the fans. Disney is reacting to that criticism which has hit it in the pocket.

Reddit thread discussion
www.reddit.com/r/CriticalDrinker/comments/1ewzfuy/was_the_acolyte_actually_woke/

Apparently we're angry about non-white people on this thread.

That's a bit DARVO-ish, because it's actually Disney who will act in seemingly racist ways if they see profit in it:

variety.com/2015/film/news/star-wars-china-poster-controversy-john-boyega-1201653494/

I was amused when this clip from Deadpool and Wolverine came up on YouTube. Really funny. The 'Nicepool' character takes the piss out of 'Woke'. (Warning great swearing too).

Ironically I’m getting ads for Moana 2 whilst viewing this thread. Which has broken box office records. So diversity does sell, so long as you don’t crowbar every woke talking point into it.

I love that username @NonCrimeHakeIncident

Thank you <bows>

Moana is comparable to any other Disney film - a princess character surving a challenge. I found it dull it's not aimed at 40yr olds but nothing is offensive as Moanna wasn't about fakery or body damaging behaviour. No one pretended Moana was a boy who wanted to be a girl and the other characters had to watch their pronouns, be kind, while Moana had time off dilating.
I still say, let children be children!

Jeremiah, you can of cource enjoy anything that appeals to you. No-one is saying that everyone hated The Acolyte, when it clearly had its fans.

"... it was a solid bit of young adult fiction..."

Your bar is far too low. Young adults deserve far better than this.

"... easily superior to much of the tedious nerd-centric rubbish most of current Star Wars is."

All of Disney Star Wars has been a massive downgrade once you look past the modern special effects. The best was 'Rogue One' IMO, but even that has some obvious issues that anyone with half a brain could have foreseen and avoided.

"The only "progressive" bits I remember were its having several non-white people in and an implicit allusion to lesbianism, which seems like odd things for people to be getting angry about on a feminism board."

From this, I can see that you don't undertand in any way, shape or form what the people on this board didn't like about it.

I've not seen this film yet. Is it okay that I've took against Nicepool?

That's an interesting question. I think it's clear that he's a patronising arse in this clip but his wiki just says he's nice. However, I'm sure some viewers will get that people who seem 'nice' are sometimes just virtue signalling. I've only seen trailers - this one just came up on YouTube - maybe because I was watching Mr Menno 😁 Apparently Deadpool is 'pansexual' in the comic strip. So I really don't think audiences are against particular 'progressive' characters. They just don't like dreary shoehorning preachy plots and characters into popular film franchises.

I thought the thread might find this video by Nerdrotic (US online media critic & very snarky chap) released today interesting. It's discussing some recent headlines in US &UK newspapers opining that woke and DEI are on a downward trajectory in entertainment media after the US election result and audience reactions/apathy towards 2024 output.

I like the fact that Nicepool in this clip has a stronger Canadian accent than Deadpool - I dunno if that's intentional and if it says anything about Canada in the last decade, or not, but I think it's my new head canon that Nicepool does in fact take the mickey out of Canadian-style #BeKind

I liked the acolyte and was a bit disappointed that it tanked. A young black woman playing two lead characters, they also had lesbian witch mums. That seemed to annoy some people, it didn't really register with me. Other than that it seemed quite standard space wizard drama. Pacing was a bit off at times, but the finale paid everything off and I didn't have any complaints overall.

I think that the idea of The Acolyte was interesting but the actual plot and execution weren't good.

From my perspective, Amandla Stenberg didn't do a great job of the two lead roles but I did enjoy most of the rest of the cast - the various shots of her with the exact same facial expression in so many different scenes were not far off the mark for how monotonous her performance was. Manny Jacinto put in some particularly good performances as two takes on the same character. Lee Jung-Jae was great as Master Sol. Carrie-Anne Moss as Master Indara wasn't in the show for very long so I didn't get much of a sense of her as a character which is a pity.

The witch coven didn't bother me that much apart from not making a lot of sense in terms of Star Wars lore around Anakin Skywalker being the first vergence in the Force.

I think Leslye Headland trying to write the Jedi as evil in comparison to the Sith is where it fell down for me. She had to write the Jedi as particularly stupid to get them into a situation where they set one of the twins off on a life of Sith evil. And the dialogue, production values and direction was subpar in a lot of the show.

Headland's direction to the majority of the cast seemed to be "act as though you have stick up your bum" to try and get Jedi-like performances with gravitas. But to be fair, the directors of Rings of Power have been doing that with the characters playing elves so it's not just Headland who's guilty of this.

The light sabre fights looked pretty but very choreographed so not very naturalistic. Basil the Surprise Badger (not sure what his race was supposed to be) didn't make any sense to me other than as a plot contrivance.

I think if someone else had written and directed the show The Acolyte could have been really good and an interesting examination of the Sith.

It does suck when something you're enjoying gets taken off the air though - as a sci-fi fan who's had that happen too many times over the years, you have my sympathy. (I'll never forgive Fox for killing Space Above and Beyond and Dark Angel 🤬).

All good points @UtopiaPlanitia

I fully agree the concept had a lot of potential and I really wish it had been better. Fingers are crossed for Ahsoka s2!

I'm still sad about Firefly. 😭

I though Reddux was all about No Debate and Be Kind or else . . .

When did that change?

Maybe the mods on that Critical Drinker sub forum are less ideologically driven?

I thought Reddux was all about No Debate and Be Kind or else . . .

Do you mean Reddit? It's never been particularly "kind" to women.

https://open.substack.com/pub/suedonym/p/the-unspeakable-evil-of-rdykeconversion?r=7vhv8&utm_medium=ios

My quest for screenshots was somewhat obscured by the fact that the many of posts on that subreddit are particularly vile pornography, abused women used in depictions of abusing women.

Ah I do. Which means I've never knowingly heard of Reddux. Have I missed anything vital?