Lightyear Writer Comes Out Swinging in Support of LGBTQ+ Inclusion After Snoop Dogg Criticism

Snoop Dogg recently criticized Pixar’s “Lightyear,” detailing an experience he had showing the film, which briefly features a lesbian couple, to his grandchild. Now, a writer who contributed to “Lightyear” is defending LGBTQ+ inclusion, saying she stands by it to infinity and beyond.

via: Pink News

The 2022 film, which sees Chris Evans voice the titular Buzz Lightyear of Toy Story fame, features the character of Alisha Hawthorne, Buzz’s best friend, who marries a woman named Kiko.

During the film, the two female characters share a small on-screen kiss. The innocuous smooch caused the film to be banned in 14 countries.

This week, rapper Snoop Dogg, whose real name is Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr, complained about the LGBTQ+ inclusive content on a podcast saying it made him fearful to go to films and “it threw me for a loop”.

Speaking on the It’s Giving podcast, the rapper said he took his grandson to the film, who asked him: “Papa Snoop, how she have a baby with a woman? She’s a woman.”

“Aw s**t, I didn’t come for this s**t, I came here to watch the goddamn movie,” Snoop Dogg said. “Y’all throwing me in the middle of this s**t that I don’t have an answer for … it threw me for a loop.”

In response to his comments, screenwriter Lauren Gunderson – who worked on Lightyear and added the sapphic relationship to the film, took to Threads to defend the child-friendly queer content.

“So. I created the LIGHTYEAR lesbians,” Gunderson said in the post.

“In 2018, I was a writer at Pixar – such a cool place, grateful to work there, learned a ton from kind and impressive creatives. As we wrote early versions of what became LIGHTYEAR, a key character needed a partner, and it was so natural to write ‘she’ instead of ‘he.’

“As small as that detail is in the film, I knew the representational effect it could have.

“Small line, big deal. I was elated that they kept it.”

She added: “I’m proud of it.

“To infinity. Love is love.”

Gunderson was not the only person to defend the film, as its star Chris Evans called bigots who were reacting negatively to the film “idiots”.

“Every time there’s been social advancement as we wake up, the American story, the human story is one of constant social awakening and growth and that’s what makes us good,” Evans told the news agency,” he told Reuters 

“I think the goal is to pay them no mind, march forward and embrace the growth that makes us human.”

In a different interview with Variety, Evans also said his goal is that “we can get to a point where it is the norm, and that this doesn’t have to be some uncharted waters, that eventually this is just the way it is.”

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One thing I noticed reading the comments section on Lauren's IG page is that people understood the positive impact that showing a same sex couple in an animated film would bring, especially when there's barely any queer representation on the big screen, let alone in an animated film.

And don't get me started on some of the cartoons I watched growing up as a child of the 80's/90's having many sexual innuendos subtlely sprinkled throughout the episodes. And the Nickelodeon shows that, as I got older, learned from the Quiet On Set documentary were filled with sexual undertones, and had the young actors dealing with a toxic work environment.

Snoop choosing to be ignorant for virality is hilarious, especially when it wasn't that long ago that white people (and there are some that still are) don't want to have to explain to their kids why black people are on their TV screens.

I know homophobic black people despise this comparison (you can kindly get over it), but queer rights and civil rights go hand-in-hand. Lest we forget there were queer people (inlcuding activist and labor union organizer Bayard Rustin) who marched alongside Martin Luther King. Rustin even worked on MLK's campaigns when he went from being just a measly minister to a civil rights leader.

So the fact that we have a rapper -- who has made millions off of promoting the worst aspects of black culture (drugs, guns and pimpin') has a hard time explaining why Timmy has two mommies.

Will it be hard for you to explain to your grandson why Shaquanda has eight kids with four different men? Will it be hard to explain why some single black women are out here fighting to get child support for their raggedy kids because their absentee daddy hates their mother?

I also haven't forgotten that you have promoted same sex acts betwee women in the past. Walked women on leashes, and appeared on a episode of The L Word.

So while you continue to be uncomfortable having to explain to a child about them living in a world where people are different than them, all that does is make them even more curious to seek out the information you're afraid to provide them with.

No one said that you have to tell him how two women do the clam shuffle. Just say the child was adopted and leave it at that. Everything regarding homosexuality isn't rooted in sex. The sooner ignorant people learn that there is no gay agenda, and that queer people just want to live their lives, and also be seen in a positive light, the better off we'll all be. Representation matter, and love is love.