Does ‘Finding Dory’ Show A Lesbian Couple? Filmmakers Say It’s Up To You!

Disney/Pixar’s new film Finding Dory is stirring up controversy in anticipation of the movie’s June 17 release date. Some have taken issue with what seems to clearly be a lesbian couple depicted briefly in the film’s trailer (above, 1:06 mark).

USA Today interviewed the filmmakers on the red carpet of Wednesday’s premiere event in front of Hollywood’s El Capitan Theater to ask them about the controversy.

“There’s been a lot of buzz on the internet with the two female characters we show in the trailer as to whether or not we’re showing a same-sex couple in a Pixar movie. Is that the case?” the reporter asks.

Producer Lindsay Collins cheekily replies, “We never asked them.”

“We never did,” director Andrew Stanton says with a smile, “So they can be whatever you want them to be.”

The reporter presses again: “So you’re keeping it vague. It wasn’t like ‘Let’s make a statement here’?”

Stanton pushes back, “We honestly have not asked any of the couples on any of our shots of any of our movies. So it’s whatever they want them to be,” adding, “There’s no right or wrong.”

Blah, blah, blah, the answer is yes.

When your cutesy answer to whether you wrote and then animated a fictional same-sex couple into your fictional movie is “we didn’t ask” the fictional characters we created if they are a same-sex couple, then you clearly did. But because it’s a children’s movie and you will lose a huge amount of revenue by alienating a large portion of your audience that doesn’t agree with your social liberal views, you have to be sly about it.

Click below for the red carpet interview…

USAToday notes that recent calls for openly gay characters, including in the massively popular Frozen and Star Wars franchises, have been building as of late:

“Watching the full Finding Dory movie will not fully answer the question, either. The blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene flies past during a key action moment and is only slightly longer than the snippet used in the trailer. There’s no conclusive evidence one way or another.

The call for Disney (which owns Pixar and Marvel) to include lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender characters has gathered momentum in recent months. With the announcement of Frozen 2, fans called for filmmakers to give Queen Elsa a partner with the hashtag #GiveElsaAGirlfriend. The hashtag #GiveCaptainAmericaABoyfriend is also popular on Twitter.

In March, Star Wars director J.J. Abrams said he was was asked if he could “imagine a homosexual character in Star Wars, and my immediate reaction was, ‘Of course.’ Star Wars is all about inclusivity.””

Exit thought from the new public service announcement logo…