Disney has always had a complicated history with the LGTBQ+ community. It’s hit a boiling point

Going back to the days of Walt Disney, the company has portrayed few prominent queer characters. Instead, LGBTQ+ audiences have adopted various evil queens and villains as their own, said Sean Griffin, author of “Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company from the Inside Out.”

With the arrival of Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg in 1984, the studio adjusted its strategy to make gestures towards the LGBTQ+ consumer — but not in a way that might “aggravate the core straight family conservative value audience they also wanted to hang onto,” Griffin argued.

The result is “a strategy of trying to appeal to both sides and not alienate or insult either side,” Griffin said.

Critics say Disney hasn’t done enough in its representation. Disney has received a “failing” or “poor” grade from GLAAD each year since 2014 in the media monitoring organization’s report on LGBTQ+ inclusion.

Griffin, who is also a professor of film and media arts at Southern Methodist University, added that Disney has recently received a lot of publicity about various Disney films with openly gay characters. However, those moments tend to be of the “blink and you’ll miss it” variety.