Pixar Released An Actual Real Gay Short On Disney+ That Will Make You Cry

Disney and Pixar have teased us with out gay characters for over a decade, but with all the commotion - prior to the new short titled Out - we received a grand total of one bonafide out characters: Lena Waithe's female officer in Onward briefly mentions that she has a girlfriend. Obviously Price Eric from The Little Mermaid was gay for me, but it was a subtext far too obscure for the average audience.

The latest heartwarming tale from @Pixar’s #SparkShorts. Start streaming Out tomorrow on #DisneyPlus. pic.twitter.com/gRvBEdK1Iw

— Disney+ (@disneyplus) May 21, 2020

All of that changes with Pixar's first-ever actual real-life gay production, Out. And it is ADORABLE. Did I shed an actual tear at the end of the nine-minute short? Yes ma'am. We meet a gay couple on moving day as unbeknownst to them two magical animals emerge from a rainbow in a hill. One of the men, Greg, hasn't come out to his parents, but all of that changes when they make a surprise visit to help him move and he has a Freaky Friday switcharoo with his dog Jim, thanks to the intervention of the rainbow creatures. As a dog he's able to overhear his mother's conversation with herself, where she reveals that she knows her son is gay and just wants him to find someone who loves him as much as she does.

The short ends with Greg introducing his boyfriend Manuel to his parents, and the frame pans out as Greg's gruff dad brings Manuel in for a big bear hug - as the magical rainbow creatures from the beginning watch their handiwork from a distance. And yes, this is when I cried lol.

Out is the first production from Pixar's new SparkShorts series, which gives its animators creative freedom in bringing their ideas to life for Disney+. Openly gay animator Steven Clay Hunter directed Out, and he opened up to Entertainment Weekly about the emotions involved in drawing his first gay characters:

It's why, as he approached his 50s, he came to tears when drawing the first storyboards for Out: an image of Greg and Manuel holding each other and looking at a picture. 'I had never drawn that before in my entire career at Pixar. I'd never drawn two guys in love.'

And in looking towards the future of gay characters in Disney films, Hunter is optimistic:

Just wait for it. It's gonna happen, We're not going anywhere. It's not like suddenly every movie's gonna be queer, but we are here and we are a part of the world and so we need to see ourselves in it.

Queer queer. With all the gains in visibility gays have made over the past decade it's easy to forget that large swaths of the population still are not comfortable with LGBTQ folks. Here's just a small sampling of homophobic responses to Disney+'s tweet promoting Out:

Ya'll. People still hate us. If only they knew the truth about Prince Eric. Did you guys watch Out? Will you pretty pretty please watch it for me and let me know your thoughts in the comments? Thanks ☺️