The claim of censorship by Pixar employees is particularly damning for former CEO Robert Iger, who oversaw Disney’s purchase of Pixar in 2006 and just exited the company in December 2021. (The latest Pixar animated feature, “Turning Red,” debuts on Disney Plus on March 11.) The same year, Pixar released a short film, “Out,” on Disney Plus, about a gay man who struggles with coming out to his parents. The character’s sexuality is only acknowledged in passing, when Specter says, “It’s not easy being a new parent – my girlfriend’s daughter got me pulling my hair out, okay?” But the movie was still banned in Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia due to the scene, and in the version released in Russia, the word “girlfriend” was changed to “partner.” To date, Pixar has only included a tiny handful of LGBTQ characters in its feature films, most prominently in the 2020 fantasy film “Onward,” which features a cyclops police officer named Specter, voiced by Lena Waithe. “Even if creating LGBTQIA+ content was the answer to fixing the discriminatory legislation in the world, we are being barred from creating it.” “We at Pixar have personally witnessed beautiful stories, full of diverse characters, come back from Disney corporate reviews shaved down to crumbs of what they once were,” the letter states.
