In the latest of a long list of Florida vs. Disney stories, here’s a new one that’s unrelated to the Disney World drama. A fifth-grade teacher in Florida is now being investigated by the FL Department of Education for showing a Disney movie to her class.
The movie in question is “Strange World” – an animated film about a family of explorers and some friends working through some interpersonal issues that threaten to derail their latest adventure. The journey leads to lessons about the environment and the acceptance of others. Standard Disney stuff. But the film does feature a gay character – which, in Florida, is apparently much more problematic than school shootings.
It’s important to note that the film does not have the gay character bending another character over a rock. The film, in fact, doesn’t highlight the gay relationship at all. It’s not a plot point. It’s just part of the story and I’m confident that the 10-year-olds in the class didn’t give that aspect a second thought until some adult made it an issue.
One could certainly argue that showing a 1-hour and 42-minute movie to a classroom of kids is a tad lazy. The teacher claims the movie was shown as a “brain break” but it admittedly does scream: “Hey, I ran out of ideas.”
One could further argue that showing a bad movie was an even worse decision. “Strange World” lost $100M at the box office for good reason. It’s nowhere near Disney’s best work and only gets a rating of 5.6 out of 10 on IMDB. Ouch.
However, arguing that a teacher should be fired solely for showing a movie that happens to have a gay character seems to be massive overkill.
The school board member who initiated the investigation – and who has also been very active with book bans – said in a board meeting that such films “assist teachers in opening the door for conversations.” Well, we can’t have that! Conversations? In a classroom?
Does Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill really go this far? Is Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” now banned from Florida schools as well? It’s not a major plot point, but if you don’t think that Charlotte Lucas is a closet lesbian, I invite you to re-read the original work.
Today’s 10-year-olds are massively more aware of the world than I was at that age. I didn’t have the internet. I had three TV networks available until about 10pm on one family console TV and we made only rare family trips to the movie theater. Still, I wasn’t an idiot about how the world worked. My favorite cartoon at that age was “Roadrunner” and I enjoyed watching him consistently outsmart Wile E. Coyote – despite the latter’s extensive ability to have anything and everything immediately delivered to his cave by Acme. [Hey… shouldn’t Jeff Bezos be paying Warner Brothers a royalty for that idea?]
I laughed every single time that the coyote raised his tiny parasol to protect himself from a large falling boulder. While I always found the episodes to be very entertaining, I never once forgot – even before the age of 10 – that it was JUST A FUCKING CARTOON. Well, okay, that’s an adult’s interpretation of a child’s reaction – but you get the idea. I knew that no amount of boulders or explosives would kill the cartoon coyote and I didn’t think for a moment that the real world worked like that. I didn’t give a damn about the social implications of hunger nor about the predator vs. prey dynamic nor about the bending of the laws of physics nor about the sex lives of the characters nor about how the hell the coyote managed to pay for all the Acme stuff. It was just a cartoon.
Can we please just let kids be kids and, if they do have questions, try to give them reasonable answers that are appropriate for both their age and IQ?
I’m really tired of this crap.