Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has announced his candidacy for the presidency, but so far, he’s way behind Trump, and he’s not going to win the presidency by going after abortion, history lessons, Disney, or with legislation that goes after gay and trans kids. Sure, that could work in the GOP primaries but not in the general election.
Florida’s Department of Education is investigating a teacher who showed her class the Disney film “Strange World” that features a gay character. In florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis has gone after Disney, would there be an investigation if it wasn’t a Disney movie? Who knows. Maybe.
The teacher showed it to her fifth grade class and a parent lodged a complaint. The teacher says this movie focuses on humans’ relationship to the environment, which was why she chose to show it to her class after a section on ecosystems, plants and animals. She said a subplot about a boy having a crush on another boy never crossed her mind before screening the film.
She’s right.” Strange World” is about the environment as well as the family structure, specifically from son to father to grandfather, what they have in common and their differences which doesn’t even involve the gay thing. The son appears to be more like his grandfather which his father has issues with but they all learn to accept each other’s differences and yadda yadda yadda, it’s a Disney film and there’s a lesson in it and everybody grows.
The part about the kid being gay is a subplot and isn’t a factor in the main story. If his crush was swapped from a guy to a girl, it wouldn’t have changed anything. But, it shouldn’t have to be swapped out because a Florida mom gets her bloomers in a twist. By the way, the gay kid’s parents are also a mixed-race couple and that has nothing to do with the plot either. There’s no consternation in the film about race or being gay. The greatest dilema in the film is about saving an environment over one’s own legacy and fame while repairing relationships.
Strange World is a wholesome movie but it has a lot that Republicans hate. It’s environmental, there’s a mixed-race family, there’s a gay kid and all that’s missing are abortions, immigrants, and a war on Christmas.
It’s the kind of movie that the new board of DeSantis-picked goons that’s to control Disney’s special district wouldn’t approve of. DeSantis said he hopes his board will influence Disney’s content to be more wholesome for families as he sees it. He would probably hate “Strange World” if he saw it. But Strange World is a family movie. It’s all about the family. The problem DeSantis would have with “Strange World” is that it doesn’t teach hate, which is what he and the Republican Party are all about.
If DeSantis was to personally pick a movie to show to fifth graders, like he picked the board of goons, he’d probably pick “The Birth of a Nation, “ a 1912 film that gave rebirth to the Ku Klux Klan. But, would The Birth of a Nation violate any state laws?
History.com writes, “There is no doubt that Birth of a Nation played no small part in winning wide public acceptance” for the KKK, and that throughout the film “African Americans are portrayed as brutish, lazy, morally degenerate, and dangerous.”
But, there are no gays in it and it doens’t promote Whites poorly in history. DeSantis and Republicans in Florida would find more to be angry about in “Strange World” than in “The Birth of a Nation”. And this is where we are today.
We are in a strange world, indeed.