- Hello.
My lawyer has informed me that before the start
of this video, I must read the following statement.
For legal reasons, and so Mickey Mouse doesn't shoot off
my kneecaps as I sleep tonight, this video is a joke.
Buongiorno, everyone.
You may remember me from such classics
as that chaotic Captain Marvel video
and the one with the gay meerkats.
Today, as you can by my incredible outfit
and also the title of this video,
I will be talking about the new Disney movie, "Luca,"
and how absolutely gay it was.
So here's the thing.
When the trailer for this movie came out,
I made a TikTok about how gay it was.
And I feel extremely vindicated
because I literally have finished
watching this movie about 10 minutes ago,
and all I've done since is sent out some text messages
to friends being like, I really want,
just wanna make a chaotic video about this.
Should I do that?
To give them time to tell me no, Rowan.
You're meant to be on holiday.
This isn't your house. You're in an Airbnb.
You're meant to be relaxing.
None of them have replied yet.
So I've started recording, we're making the video.
Now I already know they are gonna be people
who've clicked on this video specifically to hate on it,
who've seen the title and are like,
you shouldn't have gay people in children's media.
That's wrong!
Get outta here. This video isn't for you.
You can watch one of my other videos,
justifying how that's like an incorrect opinion to hold,
which I can't be bothered with this video
trying to justify it.
We're just gonna go for it.
Okay. So here's the thing.
Start off with, I'm like in this wheelie chair.
It's very chaotic.
I feel like this is the energy this video is going to have.
I also know that some people are going to be like,
uh, actually the writers and directors of this movie
have come out to say that it specifically isn't meant
to be a queer story.
I have a secret for you.
If you are a writer or a director of a film,
and so many people have commented on the apparent
queer subtext of your movie
that you have to come out and make a statement saying,
actually isn't gay, it means it's gay.
Like this isn't even a point that I have on my list.
But like, I'm not being funny.
It's about mermaids, dude.
I know they're not technically mermaids.
I see monsters, but like whatever.
You cannot be making a movie
about some like gay little mermaid boys who live
on the Italian Riviera, right, and not expect,
and make them gay and not expect people to like notice it.
You just can't.
Also, here's another secret.
It doesn't matter what the writers say.
It doesn't matter what the director says
because the author's dead, baby.
Right? We make the rules.
If we see it and we can justify it, it's there.
Welcome to English Lit 101, gang.
Also, please appreciate, I added lots of blush
across my nose and cheeks,
because I'm getting into character.
Ah! So here's the thing.
This movie explored queerness
in three different ways, right?
So the first way was self discovery.
The second way is the relationship
with queer people and their families,
and the third way is the relationship
between queer people and society.
And you might be like, Rowan,
you're meant to be doing a slightly unhinged video.
Why are you suddenly breaking it into different sections?
It's because I've never been relaxed for a day in my life,
and as I was watching, I was making notes.
So number one, let's talk about self discovery, right?
So this element is basically Luca is the one
who is kind of discovering himself, okay?
And what happens is he comes out of the ocean.
He becomes a little human boy
and he makes friends with Alberto, right?
His self discovery is very much
through the lens of this boy, Alberto,
who is more confident than him.
He's really cool. He's really like knowledgeable.
And Luca has a crush, basically.
You know what? You know what?
Let's talk about, Silencio, Bruno!
See, I'm sorry, it's the only time I'm gonna do an accent
in this whole video, I apologise.
Because that whole thing, it's like, hey,
if you have a little voice in your head,
that's telling you, no,
that's telling you not to try things,
that's telling you to like be safe in your little bubble
that you've been growing up in, just say "Silence, Bruno."
Just say, no, we're gonna try new things.
We're going to put ourselves out there, okay?
So Bruno in this situation, right,
is like a manifestation of heteronormativity.
It's a manifestation of like the ways
in which as a young queer person,
you were told how to act, how to be,
and that there is a pressure inside you, right,
an internalised homophobia that tells you
you cannot do that, you cannot be that.
And by saying like, silence, Bruno,
you allow yourself to experience these things.
You allow yourself to try to put yourself
into situations that traditionally,
you're told you're not allowed to be in.
Oftentimes, in media, queer young people are described
as like being the outsider, stuff like that,
like in kind of coy terms.
In this movie, they used the term underdogs
because I'm also fully, this isn't the point of this video,
but I'm also fully aware of the fact
that Julia is a lesbian, like.
Okay, so I've just realised that beeping
is the fire alarm in this Airbnb whose batteries
have run out, so the fire alarm is also
gonna be adding to the chaos.
We're just gonna have to deal with it.
Okay. I'm feeling the need to pace.
Basically, the relationship between Luca and Alberto
is the centre point of his self-discovery, okay?
So he's having this crush for the first time, clearly.
The relationship between them is really
very clearly kind of like cute,
innocent childhood crush romance coded, right?
So let's talk about some elements of it, okay?
First of all, let's talk about Alberto's jealousy
for a second because oh my God.
He is so obviously jealous of of Luca's friendship
with this girl, right.
He's constantly kind of like annoyed and frustrated
and has that anger that like kids have
when they are jealous, but they don't really understand
why they're feeling that way.
Like it was so obviously, to me,
the idea of like a boy who has a crush
and is annoyed at his crush hanging out
and seeming to like, maybe be interested in someone else,
but he can't really necessarily articulate that
which goes like double, triple for queer people
who like aren't meant to be feeling
those feelings anyway as well.
The whole storyline between these two boys
is that they wanna buy a Vespa and run away together.
They wanna run away into the Italian countryside together
on the back of their one Vespa.
They're not even springing for two Vespas.
They're not going one each.
They wanna go on one Vespa.
With Alberto, right, we also have this whole thing
where he has been abandoned by his father, okay?
Like he is a functionally the role of like,
the queer character who has been rejected by his family,
and it's trying to keep it from everyone.
He's been on his own for so long, this actual child,
that he has given up doing the tallies on the wall.
Right, he's just kind of marking off the days.
But he's saying he's not even counting anymore
because that's how long it's been
since he's seen his family.
And the idea of like his family thinking
they'll be better off without him is fucking heartbreaking.
And he says to Luca, this is exactly what he says to Luca.
He says, "You're not like me, you're the good kid.
"I'm the one that ruins everything," right?
And this is a point at which Luca is still kind of denying
his sea monsterness to everyone else,
AKA denying his queerness to everyone else,
whereas Alberto has like come out,
outed himself as a sea monster.
And so, just, like are you picking up
what I'm putting down here?
There are also so many moments that are like so cute
and kind of romance coded in the way that you would do them
in like films where you're explicitly trying
to show a romantic relationship.
The bit at the end with the sort of big gesture,
where Alberto comes with the umbrella, and says, again,
I'm reading from my notes here, 'cause I wanna
get the quote exactly right.
"Stay right there.
"I'm coming for you."
Like the big hero saves the day moment. Adorable.
And then, finally, we have their goodbye scene
at the train station at the end of the movie.
Are you kidding me?
Luca had been sad to see his friend go to school.
But like he wasn't weeping and sobbing about it, right?
And then, him and Alberto have this conversation
in which it becomes clear him and Alberto
are gonna be separated, and suddenly, that boy is a mess.
Like this clearly is a different kind of a level
of friendship than what he has with this girl.
They're saying shit to each other, like,
"I can't do this without you, you're never without me."
Like, are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?
This is adorable.
These two boys holding hands until the last second
and like running off to the train and crying
as soon as they're out of eyeshot of each other,
are you serious?
Okay, and here's something else.
Here's something else that I think
is so interesting about this, right?
So you have Luca and Luca's storyline
is all about like coming to terms with his identity,
with being himself, all this kind of stuff,
with his queerness and then Alberto's storyline
is all about feeling abandoned
by your actual biological family
and having to find another kind of family.
And so his ending, it totally makes sense
that he doesn't go to school with the others, right,
that the ending isn't them like getting together
or kissing or whatever.
One, because obviously Disney is homophobic,
sorry, Mickey, and, and they wouldn't let it happen.
But two, because actually, Alberto's storyline,
the conclusion of his storyline,
it makes total sense for it to be
that he's gonna stay with Massimo, right?
That he has been adopted, that he has been like,
supported and accepted by this father figure,
the one who is missing from his life, right?
Okay, so that's the first thing,
your sense of self discovery.
Now we're gonna talk about the second thing,
which is the acceptance from society, right?
So society in this case is the town, right,
the port town with all of the people.
So in this port town, sea monsters are evil.
They are feared. They are hated, okay?
Metaphorically, we're talking about homophobia, right?
We literally have the main bully saying like,
you two don't belong here, get out of my town.
And like, he's saying stuff like this
before they've ever even come out to him.
It's kind of this angle of before they've even
come out to themselves, they are being bullied
for being gay, right?
Before someone even knows that they're gay,
they somehow know that they're gay,
and they get bullied for it.
Like, I feel like I'm not the only one
that had that experience in school.
The bully guy literally says this line, okay?
"We're afraid of you.
"Everyone is horrified and disgusted by you
"because you are monsters."
That, there was a part of me that was like,
ouch, fucking ouch.
Like this is really like, this is not a movie that,
as a queer kid, I'm gonna go to escape.
This is a movie where I'm like, wow,
why don't you just make me sad, okay?
Because that's what that's doing to me.
There is no escapism here. It's just my reality.
My favourite bit of this whole thing is that the,
like the townspeople who hate to see monsters before,
they just stopped hating sea monsters,
not when they prove themselves to be
like not monsters at all, but when they win a race.
It's like, Hey, wouldn't it be a good world
of homophobia could be cured by like,
I just had to win a race that was sponsored
by a pasta company and then it would be gone.
Wouldn't it be great?
Also, that there are these two sea monster ladies,
AKA, two elderly lesbians that out themselves,
like they come out as sea monsters tat the end,
once they see the young people being accepted.
And I'm like, that feels very queer to me too.
It doesn't take a genius to look at this story
and be like, oh yeah, there's a town full of people
who hate this secret thing that you are,
like hiding about yourself as a young person.
It's not rocket science, people, okay?
It's gay science.
Also the big, like climactic moment of the entire movie
is Luca doing a slow motion rescue scene
of this boy he has a crush on
and like outing himself at the same time, right?
We have this whole story, I'm gonna talk
about the outing thing in a second.
But we have this basically whole story
and that we see all of the time in queer media
of like gay person who is in the closet
is put in a position where they have the choice
whether they want to come out or not, and they don't.
But then not only that, they double down on like,
a kind of homophobia to protect themselves, right?
So it's like, no one could suspect I'm gay
if I'm homophobic at the same time.
And oftentimes, they'll do it by betraying someone
who trusted them, who has like been outed
or comes out as gay first.
And instead of like following suit and supporting them,
actively becomes like even more homophobic to cover it up.
And this is no exception, except apparently,
they're not gay, they're just sea monsters.
Mm-hmm.
We've heard that before, Mickey.
Let's talk about the outing scene, shall we?
I say outing scene, it's not really an outing.
I was convinced that Alberto was gonna out Luca
in that scene, and I was getting really worried,
but he doesn't, he ends up outing himself.
Here's the thing, ooh, Jesus Christ.
Every line in this movie, that's about sea monsters,
you literally could just change it to being queer
and it would make complete and total sense.
So there's this line where he says,
"I doubt your school would even accept sea monsters," right?
The idea of like, oh, are people like us
welcome at your school?
They probably wouldn't want us there.
We probably wouldn't be safe there,
like all of these implications.
And then he swims into the sea and outs himself.
And then Luca, instead of,
not even outing himself as a sea monster,
but even outing himself with like a sea monster supporter,
even see monster agnostic,
someone with no opinions of sea monsters,
instead, he's like, ah, a sea monster!
Like he's actively scared, right,
as a defence mechanism.
And you're like, this is so sad, but also so relatable.
It completely makes sense as a dark moment
for that character, making this big mistake
and like betraying his own sense of self
that he's trying to develop
through this whole movie, right?
He's not ready to come out yet,
but he's also overcompensates by being gay fish homophobic.
There are so many chairs in this living room.
Hang on.
Let's do that.
Oh, there's a piano stool.
I'll sit on the piano stool for this third one.
(grunts) Oh my God! This is so much heavier than I thought.
Jesus Christ.
Okay, so this third way that there's like
a queer reading, this is where it gets complicated, right?
So like it's not a one-on-one queer metaphor
in a lot of ways, because if the thing that makes you queer,
right, is being a sea monster,
then why are all of his family sea monsters?
Like that doesn't quite work.
So it kind of, like you have to treat it
as three separate things, right?
You have to treat the self identity thing as separate
from the townsfolk and the society as separate
from the family reaction to him, right?
His parents not understanding him, it's like huge.
That's a big theme in any coming of age type movie, right?
Your parents don't understand you.
Par for the course, that's kind of how it works.
Either that or your parents are dead, right?
Because otherwise, they wouldn't let you go off
and be the chosen one.
They'd be like, do your homework, be inside by 9:00
I cannot stress enough how his parents
are going to send him away, right?
That is the whole thing.
His parents are gonna send him away to live
with his see-through uncle in like
a remote part of the ocean.
If that doesn't scream conversion therapy to you,
I don't know what will.
Like the parents are feeling disconnected from him,
right, and that scares them.
So like, I think the mum literally says,
"It's like I don't even know who he is," right,
this idea of there's something different about him,
and I don't know what it is,
and I don't know what he is,
and that is very scary for parents, right?
But it's also scary for parents to see their kids
going into a situation that they feel
like could be dangerous, right?
Which I think is a very interesting
and nuanced portrayal of parents of queer kids, right?
That there is something in between.
I support you fully, everything's great.
And I hate you, I'm homophobic, get out my house
and there's this middle ground of like,
hey, I love you, you're amazing.
But I'm still very scared for you.
I'm still really worried.
Potentially that might come out as being controlling,
wanting, you know, saying you want the best for them
and not letting them have queer friends,
all that kind of jazz, right?
And we can see that happening here, right?
We can see the metaphors, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
Again, it's a very mixed metaphor situation
because the whole like sea monster thing
is going on at the same time.
But you can see where I'm going with this, right?
There's this exchange between the two of them at the end
where one of them is like,
"We can't let him stay in this world, can we?"
And the other one replies with,
"Some people they'll never accept him, but some will."
And it's like, hey, I am allowing my child to go out
into the world as a queer person,
or as someone who is different, as someone who,
some people may still hate, but other people will accept
and now I've seen that acceptance,
I feel more comfortable letting him go.
I don't need to send him to conversion therapy
with like see-through Uncle Jeff anymore.
Can we see how these three different kinds
of storyline, right, are telling these three elements
of the queer experience?
It's such an interesting way, even if they didn't mean to.
I dare you, I dare you to watch this movie, right,
and just open yourself up to the possibility, okay?
Just in your head, just watch it with the idea
of like, they were trying to make this a gay metaphor.
Just watch it like that, and you will,
you will see everything I have seen
with these two eyes, okay?
You will see it.
And what is so frustrating to me
is the fact that it's not real, right, okay?
I made this video and I've said, it's real,
and I've said they're queer,
and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And like, here's the thing.
If there was any justice in the world, they would be,
but there isn't any justice in the world, so they're not.
There was the perfect opportunity.
This was such a brilliant storyline
that absolutely could have had queerness in there.
It would've have taken almost nothing at all
for them to have confirmed these two boys
had a crush on each other whatsoever.
It just would have worked, okay?
You know what? I hate to bring it back to,
I don't hate to bring it back to,
I love to bring it back to Captain Marvel
but it's exactly the same as that, that video, right?
I said, in that video, it would have actually
not taken anything away from the storyline
for them to have had Maria and Carol be a couple.
It would've added to the storyline,
and I think that you cannot deny that it would've added
to this story to have had these two boys
explicitly have a crush on each other, right?
Can you just think about the emotional impact
and pathos of the idea of this,
like Alberto being abandoned?
Like we never get an explanation
as to why he's been abandoned by his father, right?
We never get an explanation in this movie,
but it's so implied with this queer subtext what it is,
but we never allow it to be explored, okay?
What's going on there?
Can you think about the impact on like young queer people
to see a Disney movie with these queer young people
protagonists, right?
Not some random fucking police officer, like side character
somewhere in a movie, right,
but an actual child who they feel connected to, okay,
like a character that they can relate to
and that you allow that character
to have a crush and it's totally okay,
to have parents who are accepting,
they're just a bit protective.
Okay, to have another character,
to have multiple queer characters in one, incredible,
to have another one who is learning, actually,
you don't necessarily have to have acceptance
from your biological family, but having it from this kind
of found family instead is just as valuable.
Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?
I am sweating.
I'm sweating, I'm so worked up about this.
Also, I'm recording this on my phone.
I can see people who have been messaging me.
You know, I said that I messaged people earlier?
They have been replying what I've been filming
and they are all in support, they all agree with me.
In the comments, please tell me
that we are not alone, right,
that other people have seen this.
Okay, please, because this is just, how?
How did this happen, in the year of our Lord 2021
and not only was nothing made explicit in the movie,
but they are actively shutting down the idea
that it can be read like this, right?
There are statements from the writers/directors,
I can't remember which, about the fact
that it is like, definitely not a gay movie.
How, in 2021, is this happening?
Disney, what are you doing?
If I've said it once, I've said it 1,000 times,
and I will say again.
I'm looking you directly in the the eyes, okay?
This is a message.
It was a message for Marvel last time.
It is a message for Disney this time, okay?
Mr. Mouse, I don't care if you're gonna shoot
my kneecaps off in my sleep as I was warned
by my extremely real lawyer earlier on today,
make it gay, you goddamn cowards!
Thank you very much for watching.
I'd love to give a special thank you for my Patrons
on Patreon for making videos like this possible.
I was not planning on doing this video, obviously.
I'm just so hyped up on gay ire right now.
It just was flowing through, the spirit of queer media
was flowing through me today.
I hope you enjoyed this absolute piece of nonsense
that I've just created.
I'm sure some people are gonna be doing
extremely well-informed and beautiful
analyses of this movie.
This was just utter nonsense and chaos,
but I stand by every word of it.