The upcoming Disney-Pixar feature Lightyear will not be released in the United Arab Emirates due to a “violation of the country’s media content standards,” according to the country’s media authority. This film is a Toy Story spin-off that features a kiss between two characters of the same gender. The executive director of the UAE media regulatory authority, Rashid Khalfan Al Nuaimi, has now said that the violation is due to the film’s homosexual characters.
After the film was banned in the United Arab Emirates, Taika Waititi, the director of Thor: Love and Thunder, talked out about the value of Lightyear’s LGBT love story.
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Taika Waititi supports the LGBT love story in Lightyear
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Lightyear sees an older Alisha sharing a kiss with Kiko while celebrating their son’s graduation. This very romance is the reason why Lightyear has been banned in the UAE. At the Lightyear Red Carpet, Thor: Love and Thunder director Taika Waititi discussed with Metro.co.uk this same-sex love story.
“I think it’s so awesome. It would be wonderful to one day get to a place where it doesn’t have to be a talking point. The idea that to go and watch a movie and that’s your big problem? That’s crazy.”
Waititi puts forth how people never discuss two people of opposite gender making love but as soon as it is two people of the same sex, it becomes a heated topic of discussion. Only if we could let this pass by and accept this as a form of love, we will move ahead to a ‘good space.’
“You never hear people going, “Oh, did you see that movie where that man and that woman kissed?!” If we can just let that go, love is love, if we can normalize it, then we’re moving towards a good space. And when studios make these tiny little steps towards that, just like having a same-sex relationship, it’s just steps towards normalizing it and I think you can’t ask for more than that.”
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