Buzz Lightyear won’t go “to infinity and beyond” to every movie theater on the planet. As revealed by Variety in an article spotted by TF1info on Monday June 13, the new opus of the famous Pixar cartoon, derived from the Toy Story universe, will not be released in cinemas in several countries due to a sequence linked to a lesbian kiss. Alisha, an African-American Space Ranger and friend of the superhero, kisses her partner on the mouth in a scene lasting only seconds.
In response, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Malaysia have already announced that they will not broadcast it on their territory, unlike France, where it will be released on June 22. According to our American colleagues, Malaysia refuses to broadcast scenes containing homosexual characters while the United Arab Emirates, which had initially validated its broadcast, retracted due to “a violation” of media policy from the country. In Saudi Arabia, homosexuality is still considered a crime by the kingdom.
Pixar expected this scene to be talked about. Indeed, she had originally been cut during editing, reports Variety. But faced with the outcry generated by “LGBTQIA employees of Pixar and their allies”, accusing Disney of “censoring every scene of openly gay affection”, the sequence was reintroduced.
This is not the first time that a superhero production has been censored in certain countries. Last spring, Disney refused to give in to demands from Saudi Arabia to cut a “barely 12-second” sequence from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which featured heroine America Chavez. with his two mothers.
At the end of last year, The Eternals, from the Marvel universe, was also censored in Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia because of the presence of an openly gay superhero. The character Phastos kisses her husband there and spends a few moments with their child.
