WALSH: It Is Now Offensive For Actors To Act

For the first time ever, Disney will feature an openly gay character in a movie. The upcoming film, titled “The Jungle Cruise” and based on a theme park ride, is being billed as a “turning point” for the company.

Reportedly, this will be different from the relatively subtle homosexuality in the recent “Beauty and the Beast” remake. In that case, it was merely implied that a male character had an erotic obsession with another male character. In this case, it will be made explicitly clear that the “hugely effete” character “is not interested in women.” If that’s true, it will indeed be a turning point. “Hugely effete” homosexuals are common in film and television these days, but not in big budget, mainstream family movies. Disney is now crossing a threshold that, even 10 years ago, would have seemed unthinkable.

Naturally, the move is causing blowback. No, not from religious conservatives. Rather, the outrage is coming from the Left. It is apparently “problematic” that Jack Whitehall, the actor hired to play the gay man, is not himself a gay man. He’s not even slightly gay, which is bad because even a gay actor may not be gay enough to deserve the honor of portraying homosexuality on screen. The actress Ruby Rose was recently forced to leave Twitter to escape the criticism of her casting as a lesbian Batwoman. Rose is a lesbian, but not lesbian enough. The degree of her personal lesbianism does not sufficiently match the lesbianism of Batwoman, therefore outrage must ensue.

This is all quite insane. Never mind the glaring double standard of crying foul over something like this while celebrating when gays are cast in straight roles and women are cast in male roles and black people are cast in traditionally white roles. None of that should be a problem because acting, by definition, means pretending to be something that you are not. If an actor must now actually be whatever and whoever he is pretending to be, then no movie can ever be made again. At the very least, we would have to cease production on all sci-fi, fantasy, and historical films, and relegate ourselves to reenactments of the everyday lives of Hollywood actors. Perhaps George Clooney can make in a film about George Clooney sitting in his living room, and Tom Cruise can star in a blockbuster about Tom Cruise being Tom Cruise.

Of course, these points are somewhat beside the point anyway. The real point is that Leftists are once again dissatisfied with their own success. They have been handed another significant cultural victory — the injection of explicit homosexuality into a mainstream family film — and they still find some pedantic reason to turn up their noses. They are like a football team that wins 70-3 and then cries that the game was rigged against them because the other team was able to put up a field goal.

On the other hand, there has been little complaint from the Right about this move by Disney. Conservatives — even religious conservatives — have simply accepted that the Left’s sexual agenda will be infused into everything. Many of them will probably take their kids to watch the film, and then they’ll come home and resume their complaints about bias in the media. This is the crucial difference between the Right and the Left. One has basically surrendered the culture and willingly handed their children over to it, and the other is so used to their own domination that they cannot tolerate even the slightest perceived offense.