In a week where Loki came out as bisexual on his epynomous series on Disney+, Pixar released the most beautiful allegory for at the very least actualization of romantic leanings between two boys in Luca.

From Topps Cards Luca edition.

But Disney vehemently denies Luca is gay.

And I can’t help but wonder why?

if Luca is not or does not have any “gay overtones” as Disney/Pixar keep saying, then what the fuck is it?

so I watched luca yesterday pic.twitter.com/WaJ4qPzfKw

— your fave is mlm! (@faveisgay) June 20, 2021

Luca is in fact one of the most beautiful stories about two boys in love masterfully wrought to capture adolescent non-sexual romance that I’ve ever seen.

Young gay people often feel very different from others before such feelings develop, which can occur squarely in the age bracket the story places Luca and Alberto. And the two boys/sea monsters go through a lot together, mirroring the finding of family that often occurs in the lives of young LGBTQ+ people. As Luca’s Grandma says, “Some people, they’ll never accept him. But some will. And he seems to know how to find the good ones.” And they’re not the only potential queer characters in the movie – the two inseparable elderly women at the beginning of the story also come out as sea monsters in the climactic scene after the race. Not to mention Giulia’s position as an ally and defender of the boys at several points in the film.

Vanity Fair: Is Luca Pixar’s First Gay Movie? Maybe A summery coming-of-age fable might be laden with allegory, or not? In a dazzling Italy some decades ago, two young men meet and experience a sweeping, happy-sad summer of self-realization together. That may sound roughly like the plot of Luca Guadagnino’s 2017 film Call Me By Your Name, but it is also the story of the perhaps coincidentally named Luca, the latest bittersweet animated film from Disney and Pixar (on Disney+ June 18).

The film is about two kids, Luca (Jacob Tremblay) and Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer), who spend most of their time as gilled and finned creatures living under the sparklingly wine-dark Ligurian Sea. If they make their way onto land, they magically transform—in appearance, at least—into humans, free to interact with the landlubbers of a small fishing town populated with whimsical characters. Luca and Alberto share an intense, defining, and world-cracking-open bond, but must hide who they really are in the presence of judgmental, fearful others.

That outline holds an obvious potential for queer allegory, and indeed many Pixar fans tracking the film’s development quickly labeled Luca as the studio’s “gay movie”—a coming-out story to be placed on Pixar’s mantle alongside its meditations on grief, artistic expression, loneliness, Ayn Rand-ian objectivism, and parenting. Finally, Disney might actually venture into queer storytelling, a vast landscape of human experience that the studio has only meekly (and smugly) gestured toward in recent years.

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There is enough there to graft a queer reading onto—Luca’s doting parents (voiced by Maya Rudolph and Jim Gaffigan) are scared about how Luca’s identity may be greeted by those who don’t understand him, for instance—but the film could just as easily be seen as an allegory for other sorts of difference. The boys’ washing ashore brings to mind the recent immigration and refugee crisis gripping Europe, as people fleeing war-torn lands are met with hostility and shunned by governments as they simply try to survive. Or the film could more broadly just be about a particular time in early adolescence, when kids tend to leapfrog over one another on their way to young adulthood, sometimes leaving each other behind as they grow into their true selves and race down newly open paths.

Writer/director Enrico Casarosa has explicitly said that the film is not a queer story, that it is all “platonic” and determinedly “pre-pubescent.” That suggests a limited understanding of gay growing up, particularly of when our feelings of affection and special closeness and difference can first develop. It would seem, as it so often does, that in Casarosa’s (and perhaps Disney’s) view, queerness must specifically involve sex to be queerness at all. And, of course, Pixar is never going to make a movie, ostensibly for kids, that even hints at sex.

By the way Casarosa also explained the last thing Alberto says to Luca at the end, which many thought was perhaps some code switching: “Piacere, Girolamo Trombetta,” Alberto says as he shakes Luca’s hand.

The boy laughs as he asks, “Seriously, what does that mean?”

Aside from who it may or may not represent, the film is a nice introduction to summer in its intoxicating wash of blues and greens and oranges, the way it conjures up the heady momentum of youth, the thrilling rush of life’s pages turning. Luca does well in that regard, though perhaps it may be more memorable for what it might have been than for what it actually is.

Upon re-watching Luca knowing all this I still feel like it’s so good and I’m like why not just say it… in a month where nearly all of corporate America went gay-for-pay or at the very least “wokewashing/pinkwashing-whatever-the-phrase” of the moment it is— in this case, this is a movie that Pixar, Disney and anyone involved in its creation, can be proud of.

So why aren’t they?

Writer/director Dekker Dreyer says, “There’s this whole idea they’re riding about them being too young to have sexual feelings… look, here’s the thing… kids shouldn’t be having sex, but that doesn’t change the fact that kids as young as preschool have romantic interests and inclinations.”

A quick anecdotal (and slightly tongue-in-cheek) check list of gay signal virtue-ing in Luca: the scene where they meet, the secret of their solidarity in identity, Alberto against eating carbs (the part where the pasta eating part of the Vespa competition is explained), when Alberto is outed, when Luca betrays Alberto when he’s outed… the list goes on.

@pixarslucaDo you like Luca ##Lucaedit ##luca ##pixarsluca##Disnyluca ##viral ##???? ##LucaDanielaPaguro ##fyp ????????????♬ original sound – pixarluca