THE RELUCTANT DRAGON (1941)
The 1941 Disney animated short THE RELUCTANT DRAGON features a gay (technically queer-coded) dragon who is a reclusive pacifist living in the mountains, avoiding conflict by spending his time conducting songbirds and writing poetry.
THE RELUCTANT DRAGON
1941. USA.
Directors: Hamilton Luske, Jack Cutting, Ub Iwerks, and Jack Kinney
Screenplay: Erdman Penner and T. Hee
Based on: “The Reluctant Dragon” (1898) by Kenneth Grahame
Starring: Barnett Parker, Claud Allister & Billy Lee
Based on the 1898 story (of the same name) by Kenneth Grahame, “The Reluctant Dragon” follows a boy who meets a dragon and discovers that the ‘monster’ isn’t exactly what he had expected.
In the film the boy is shocked to discover that this isn’t the fearsome creature depicted in history books. The dragon is unconcerned with preconceived notions of how he is supposed to act and prefers to prance around in an exaggerated feminine manner while drinking tea and snacking on sandwiches at picnics. His only interest is art. Not fighting, nor attacking villages.
After his initial interaction with the dragon, the boy gets a similar shock when meeting a knight. Once the man’s armour is off, he is not the broad shouldered image of masculinity the boy remembers from his studies. The knight is actually a slender older gentleman who, much like the dragon, is a dandified bard that prefers poetry to punches.
After the knight meets the dragon, and the two bond over their mutual interests, a plan is devised to help integrate the dragon into society. Since the local villagers have never met a dragon, they’d never believe he is harmless. So, the knight and the dragon orchestrate a fake a battle. Afterwards everyone in the town now understands the dragon is friendly and so he is free to prance around as his merry ole self. He has changed for nobody, and the villagers have learned a lesson in making assumptions about people (or dragons) they don’t know.
As “The Reluctant Dragon” was released during the era of Hollywood’s Hays Code, which forbade any sort of onscreen queer representation, the dragon is technically coded as gay – though it’s surprisingly obvious for the time period. Disney even cast gay character actor Barnett Parker, who was well known for playing queer-coded “sissy” characters in early Hollywood films, to voice the dragon. If this character wasn’t animated he never would have made it to the silver screen. Additionally, because he’s not actually human, much like the Cowardly Lion in 1939’s “The Wizard of Oz”, the censorship board didn’t seem to notice or care.
Even after the casting, and the depiction of their wonderfully fey creature, Disney released an accompanying song that the dragon briefly sings in the film. The lyrics refer to him as a “queen” and use the pansy’s (a popular type of gay character in the early 1930s) signature “whoops!”
“Its just because I'm built that way
For I'm to be queen of May today
Whoops! I'm reluctant.”
Despite the stereotypes, “The Reluctant Dragon” was actually fairly progressive for Disney at the time as it is technically a rare coded tale of queer acceptance.
You can find “The Reluctant Dragon” streaming on Disney+ and YouTube.
Bibliography
Avelo. (2020, September 13). Disney’s most stereotypically queer film | DreamSounds [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMxinSXJ1l4
Barrios, Richard. Screened out: Playing Gay in Hollywood from Edison to Stonewall. Routledge, 2016.
Griffin, Sean P. Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company from the inside Out. NYU Press, 2011.
