emperor kuzco was clearly gay
hes 19, with unlimited power, and he ain’t got a gf. the only time we see him interact with any women his own age is when he’s rejecting like 7 of them rapid fire. he pretends to date pacha in a gag that lasts like 10 solid minutes. listen to me god damnit
Okay, but just in case anyone is coming to tumblr dot com for my hot takes on 20+ year old kids’ movies: Kuzco super WAS gay (or at least coded as such) and of course, I didn’t get it until I watched it as a gay grownup.
He is played obviously camp and dramatic, for a start, and there is the aforementioned “hate your hair/not likely/yikes yikes yikes/let me guess you have a great personality” summary dismissal of all his potential brides. Then he spends dinner asking Yzma about Kronk (“so he seems nice? He’s what, in his late twenties?”) and otherwise being slightly obsessed with him.
Then there is the whole Adventure of Doom with Pacha, him being ever huffy about the Kiss of Life, and then the restaurant gag where Kuzco takes to playing Pacha’s fake wife and dressing up in ladies’ clothing with great gusto (reinforced by the waitress’ “bless you for coming out in public” remark when Pacha says they’re on their honeymoon). Then when he is finally de-llamafied, we don’t see him paired off with the obligatory girl from the lineup earlier, as might otherwise be expected in a Disney movie. Instead he is still single, but goes to found family it up with Pacha, Chica, Kronk, etc, which dare we remark is a very queer trope.
In short, I have no idea how a Disney movie with no white people (all the characters are Indigenous/people of color), a gay king, cross-dressing jokes, and the most offbeat plot of all time actually ever got made (can you imagine the Family Friendly Mouse doing that today? Let us also talk about Kronk because he is a brilliant deconstruction of both toxic masculinity and the musclebound henchman stereotype.) Other than that this was the Chaos Hour of animated movies in the late 90s/early 2000s, and yes.
So yes. There you have it. I will not be taking criticism at this time.
- Kuzco is, in all seriousness, a very solid example of a gay-coded character (remember that gay-coded means “the creators couldn’t get it past the censors, but it is heavily implied in the subtext, to the point informed audience members should be able to recognize it with analysis.” the analysis above is very good!)
- there’s that big tumblr post that theorized that disney’s “weird period” (that era where we got emperor’s new groove, lilo & stitch, treasure planet, and a bunch of other extremely weird and excellent films you wouldn’t expect to get greenlit) was the result of production being temporarily handed to their backup Florida studio, with presumably more control being given to creators & animators while the executives worked on transitioning the main studio to 3D.
- the executives also sabotaged most of these films at box office, to justify the hype about 3D, but that’s a whole other story. please enjoy this Deleted Yzma Villain Song that didn’t make it into the final cut
(yes she is planning to literally destroy the sun itself as revenge for the inevitability of human decay)
Oh no but this is so clever, Emperors new grove is set in the Incan empire, the Inca worshiped the sun as the God Init who is the source of life
they also believed the emperor family was directly related to Init, or more specifically the emperor is the brother of the sun
Yzma is singing about not only getting rid of the current emperor but all future one to come, to kill a god and take his place
Correction, the Sun God’d name is Inti, not Init.
And no, the Inca wasnt the brother of the Sun. The Inca was supposed to be a like the representative of the Sun, the chosen one. Yes, the Inca was considered like a deity for this but not explicit family label between the Sun and the Inca.
So Yzma wanting to kill the Sun and Kuzco it’s basically her wanting to kill God and Jesus.
(this is a personal interpretation but since she is the only white character, she can be a representation of the spanish colonialists that destroyed the Inca empire)
anoddreindeer