Disney and The AIDS Crisis
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ก.ย. 2024
- Let's talk about Howard Ashman, Beauty and the Beast, the AIDS epidemic, and the Disney Renaissance...
Drag and Disney Video: • Disney and Drag (feat....
Patreon: / rowanellis
Huge thanks to Josh for collaborating on this - you can find the Dreamsounds channel here: / dreamsoundsvideo
Spotify link: open.spotify.c...
Documentaries: Fire in the Blood, How To Survive A Plague, and We Were Here
The Interactive AIDS Memorial Quilt: www.aidsmemori...
Twitter: / heyrowanellis
Instagram: / heyrowanellis
So fair warning - I cried while researching, scripting, AND recording this video...
Understandable.
I’m gonna start crying to.
Thinking about Howard Ashman, what he gave us and what he couldn't give us, always makes me tear up, too.
Ian McKellen plays Cogsworth in the remake right? So Disney did something right and consistant having a gay actor play a gay character. When the curse lifts and his wife finds him, he keeps saying “turn back into a clock” I read that as he is gay and clearly he and Lumière are in a relationship. Also they act as an old married couple throughout the film and they almost died together.
I cried watching it. multiple times.
My aunt worked as a nurse during the aids epidemic, she described how heartbreaking it was that many of their families refused to come see them and they died alone in the hospital
My mom did visiting nursing from the 90's until a few years ago. There were HIV+ clients that other nurses were scared of that she volunteered to take care of because she knew she'd be fine. It's always amazing how shitty and biased people can be even with scientific knowledge. She always said that they should know better and if you take proper precautions safety is not an issue.
My college exhibited several panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt. I volunteered as a guide/table-er, & it was incredibly powerful to walk around the panels. It was treated as a memorial, quiet & solemn; that experience will always stay with me...
that's amazing - thank you so much for sharing
:,)
I'm a simple gay: I see Howard Ashman, I click (and cry)
Same
The fact that the proud boys got their name from a beautiful song of his will forever upset me greatly
Trust me, if they knew(which they don't) they would change their name faster than they can say "No Homo"
If this ain’t me...
I'm almost 50, so I grew into teenhood during the AIDS crisis. It was a confusing and terrifying time to grow up. I must say, oddly enough, the current pandemic has brought some of those feelings back up. Mass death events are hard to process. This video was so well done. Thanks for all your hard work
I am German, so my experience was a little bit differently...basically I knew how to use a condom before I even know how sex worked, due to the campaign our government started to inform people.
Hi, I know it's been a month since you posted this comment but I hope you're doing alright and you and your loved ones are staying safe.
Knowing you were a teenager during the crisis really puts into perspective how bad things were not very long ago. When I think of the aids crisis, I imagine that it was way further in the past and that now we live in an astronomically more accepting and tolerant world, even though where I live is pretty bad.
Soooo the guy who said Ashman wasn't political thought Little Shop of Horrors was actually about a plant eating humans and killing everything and not an allegory for capitalism? Huh...
Yeah... I don’t think he gets it. His opinion is void 😑
I have never seen that but hell yeah fuck capitalism
I sometimes lie awake thinking of what could have been of this world if we hadn't lost Ashman and so, so many more people due to the neglect, hate, ignorance and fear of the rest of the world.
Thank you Ashman for everything you did, even in the little time you had to do it.
related quote from author and wit, Fran Lebowitz:
If you removed all of the homosexuals and homosexual influence from what is generally regarded as American culture, you would pretty much be left with Let's Make a Deal.
Watching people die due to Covid reminds me very strongly of the HIV times - so much denial, the gov't dropping the ball (gleefully, let's be honest), and so so so much loss of potential.
When I learned about Ashman from Dreamsounds, he kind of became one of my new heroes. Beauty and the Beast has always been one of my favorite Disney movies, probably my most favorite, and to find out that someone who had a big part in making it so special was gay just like me... I have a hard time putting into words how that felt. It is heartbreaking that so many members of our community died, were demonized, were left behind by our government and healthcare system. And it makes me really angry that that’s all still happening now! We’ll never know what Howard Ashman (or any other person who died of AIDS) would have created had they lived. But I’m still here. I can still write and create. Maybe one day I’ll make something they would have been proud of.
I had been a massive fan of "Little Shop" and "Mermaid;" when I learned Howard died from AIDS I went through a phase of cursing Ronald Reagan, specifically and solely, for that death. (The President who wouldn't even TALK about thousands of people dying!)
When Reagan died, people across America were mourning his passing. I was furious. This was the president who tried to get school lunch programs to say ketchup was a vegetable. Arms race, anyone?
They died in the wrong order!
@@auldthymer I feel this strongly. You know what they say - Reagan’s grave is a gender neutral bathroom.
@@acehealer4212 Oh shit I get the joke now. Beautiful. Watch out for the golden rain, Ronnie boy.
@@arigadatred5395 that made me laugh, thank you lmao
I had no idea about howard ashmans existence or his impact on disney, your videos are always inspiring and educative!!!
I highly recommend watched the documentary Howard on Disney +. It’s phenomenal. Howard was so instrumental in creating our favorite characters. He’s a personal hero of mine.
“To Howard, who gave a mermaid her voice and a beast his soul.”
Being trans, I have had an undeniable, intense connection to Ariel since I saw the movie in theatres at the age of 4. Howard is a hero to me.
I’m just hoping that the Owl House is a start of a new era of Disney working with lgbt creators to create lgbt characters, Dana Terrace getting them to let her put not one but two main lgbt characters in a kids show? Icon. Not to mention willow’s dads (who I hope we meet properly 🥰)
Yes! That show gives me hope about LGBTQ+ representation in Disney shows
From what Dana has said, Luz is intended to be bi and Amity a lesbian
@@shockingheaven I just assumed amity was bi too because she drew herself with a male character from the Azura books
@@Kat13196 Yeah, I had some doubts until Dana tweeted about it
@Kathryn Leslie Which series is that?
I would love to see your take on LGBT representation in TV animation (specifically she ra, kipo, the owl house adventure time, steven universe, etc). I think the rep in these cartoons is so far ahead of the rep in mainstream animated movies and it would be really interesting to hear what you think of these shows!
+
Yessss
can someone add more cartoons to that list? i already watched all of them
There's the dragon prince. There's not a lot of gay in there but it's a really good show. Also yuri on ice.
I actually have heard of howard. Its...idk crazy how the heads at disney seemed to squash any lbgtq representation in disney and how the artist (like howard) tried to sneak in those lbgtq representation. Howards partner receiving his academy award on his behalf was certainly a slap in the face to disney. I always think what disney could have build upon there already golden era if they allowed free reign of these artist.
Did you use the B before the G on purpose? genuinely just wondering if the acronym is changing
@@cecilia5093 its not, it was probably a typo
@@cecilia5093 oh no sorry typo. lgbtq. I typed that on my phone and I hate autocorrect 😅.
@@cecilia5093 lmao, i thought it could hint to bg as in background. 👀
For some reason my original comment disappeared, so here we go again with the TLDR version.
Its definitely possible and totally valid to both love something and to be aware and frustrated with the problematic elements as well. I think its kind of a magical thing in and of itself to see people carve a place for themselves and take a stand in a world that didn't want them and refused to recognize them.
In response to your comment about Elsa being predicted to be gay, I read her as being ace. Also probably not intentional on Disney's part, but I do still kinda feel represented by her.
From someone who's also ace, I did as well. She seem more ace than gay. I would love to see Disney make her ace and be in a gay relationship.
I’ve been saying this to my friends! I see her being ace rather than being gay.
Yes!! Please let us ACEs have Elsa!! I definitely read her as ACE. “Show Yourself” from Frozen 2 makes me cry…
♠️💜👍🏼
Ace lesbian Ace lesbian Ace lesbian
that would be nice if she were aro-ace. but from what I assume, "that demographic can wait, 10 year old WLW girls need representation" I guess aroaces have to think they are broken for 30 years to learn "this is a thing"
I grew up in the 80s, but I was too young to be really aware of the AIDS pandemic. Yet, when the news about Freddie Mercury's death came around, I remember crying. So many amazing talents and good people were lost to AIDS.
I watch the film Normal Heart every now and then, and every time it makes me cry. And now I'm going to try to find these documentaries you recommended.
Howard wrote a beautiful song Proud Of Your Boy for Aladdin but they cut it, Alan Menken played it at the end of his D23 concert as a tribute and it was used in the recent stage version 😭😭😭😍
Damn onions getting cut in my room.
i remember that from seeing it on broadway
That’s beautiful 😢❤ I love Alan and Howard
I consider Part of your World THE best Disney song ever. Can you imagine scraping out of the film?
i don't really mind the little mermaid that much, but when i learned about howard i have cried to that song NUMEROUS times
@@lunalu2174 That's a song that resonates with a lot of people, for a lot of reasons.
both documentaries rowan mentioned feature a segment where Jeffrey Katzenberg wanted to cut it out and I'm just like. why did anyone trust this utter buffoon with creative decisions after that.
@@TalysAlankil I dont understand how katzenberg keeps failing up
Howard wrote a beautiful song Proud Of Your Boy for Aladdin but they cut it, Alan Menken played it at the end of his D23 concert as a tribute and it was used in the recent stage version 😭😭😭😍
I cried during the small snippet of that song Ashman wrote about AIDS
I found the documentary on his life as beautiful as it was frustrating. It fails to make the connection between who he was and what he made, a connection that's so obvious and so generally accepted for straight creatives. But God forbid we suggest that someone being gay was the reason they were able to create something in a specific way that no one else could.
AND YET... even if the film itself doesn't do what it should have done, his words are there, sometimes he's even singing them! It's impossible not to connect the dots yourself. His artistry makes it impossible.
there's a beautiful, gut-wrenching quote from the film version of Larry Kramer's "The Normal Heart" that touches on the creative loss born of the AIDS crisis. it comes during a funeral for a character who died of AIDS-related illness and the speaker at the funeral says "We're losing an entire generation. Young men, at the beginning, just gone. Choreographers, playwrights, dancers, actors. All those plays that won't get written now, all those dances never to be danced." I think about that quote a lot...
I'm just hoping that The Owl House and its main character (Luz) being Bi and the girl who's in love with her (Amity) being a Lesbian, have started a new trend at Disney for LGBT representation... Not only in their animated shows but films as well.
Now they are together!
They shortened the show
YASSS I saw “Waking Sleeping Beauty” in college and I was so shocked about how Howard was the mastermind behind my favorite films.
Well I saw myself in li Shang the absolute bi king
Haha, yes! Bi King! Love it.
aw I feel so bad! rip to our lost ancestors
I was born in '87. according to my mom The Little Mermaid was the first movie I've ever watched in the theater, even though I have no recollection of it. I do remember watching Beauty and The Beast in theaters, as well as Alladin and the Lion King, and also getting the VHS of the little mermaid as a christmas gift. Even as a very small kid, I had the distinct feeling that Cogsworth, Scar and Jafar were gay. A little bit older, I would comment that with my friends and their eyes would bulge out of their skulls: "I never thought about it, but it makes so much sense!". My gaydar was top notch, I guess. Funnily enough, I never connect to Mulan, and I still think its a pretty subpar film of the era.
Howard's impact on the Disney renaissance reminds me of a quote from Roald Dahl:
"My candle burns at both ends it will not last the night but ah my friends and oh my foes it gives a lovely light."
i can just FEEL the emotion coming off of this video. thank you for making this, rowan, it's so wonderful to see.
So moving and interesting... thank you so much for this! I’ve always had a complicated relationship with Disney as a queer woman and it’s so heartbreaking to consider how the company might have changed if things had been different. There’s so much to explore and consider when looking at children’s media and queer storylines, and I can’t articulate how wonderful it is to watch you really dive into these discussions head on. Fantastic video.
If you add "Somewhere That's Green" from Little Shop Of Horrors to your playlist, you will discover a poorly kept secret. "Part of Your World" from Little Mermaid is exactly the same tune!!!
Thank you for making this. I lost my only gay relative to AIDS & I think of him every day. I never got to meet him, but I wish I had so that I could better carry on his legacy. It’s nice to know that people like Howard will still be remembered. 💖🥺 I haven’t seen the documentary yet but I’m going to after this!
When I like about the end of Beauty and the Beast is that what saves the Beast is love. Belle being by his side and loving him for who he is completely.
Like you said, so many people during the AIDS epidemic didn't get a proper burial, a lot died alone, or abandoned by their family. Like The Mob Song and Gaston, it was bigotry from the masses and the government that killed all those people. That instead, if the governement and the people were more like Belle, if they had empathised and loved more, they could have saved lives.
To put into perspective Howard’s talent and what he would’ve achieved if he had lived longer, Alan Menken (his creative partner) is one of only 16 people to have an EGOT.
great video! god, ashman is such an interesting and talented person. youtuber james somerton has an absolutely wonderful and in-depth video about gayness and disney (Evil Queens: A Gay Look at Disney History) that i would also recommend!
agree, absolutely love that video
same and i absolutely agree
Yes I love that guy! That's an amazing video! 10/10 would recommend
No wonder those yearning character songs were always my favourite. Thank you for sharing this tragic piece of history. It's heart-breaking when people pass away before having the chance to bloom fully and freely.
The video title is a good band name
Somewhere out there,it's a punk rock band name.
Omg
Nice, looking for a title for my new punk band right now, hahaha.
wow - the aids quilt is an absolutely beautiful and heartbreaking tribute that I never knew existed. I think we need so much more education about AIDS and HIV. thank you so much for sharing Rowan
Thank you for this video, I always love to learn and honor the lives and appreciate more the work and legacy of the ones that came before us 🏳️🌈💜
Really appreciated this video. Man, mainstream education on the AIDS epidemic in general is just so lacking. When you talk about all the stories that we've missed out on hearing... that got me.
I wrote my thesis on Howard and Alan!!! so cool and important to learn the history, and also so devastating that he's been gone all this time.
Ashman's sister really tried to up the authorial intent when she wasn't even the author smh... idk maybe just let people have alternative ideas about media, especially as she didn't write it...
the story of howard ashman wrecks me every time i hear it, especially because his influence was so profound in my life even though he died eleven years before i was born. i was named after the little mermaid, i watched the little mermaid, beauty and the beast, and aladdin on an almost daily basis growing up, and i had a friend of mine who was also a major disney fan that passed away from a cancer-like illness five years ago. his story is so personal to me, and i feel like he doesn’t get enough credit for what he did for animation and music, and it’s stories like his that help us understand the major impact of the aids crisis that isn’t talked about nearly enough. thank you for this video 💓
Halfway through the video I paused and had the same thoughts that you mention at the end. I cried thunking about all the lives and potential lost but also about the great cruelty they were subjected to. It’s just so sad, the persecution and erasure our community has gone through for basically the entire history and it’s still not over. Some people like to think that it is but there’s still so much more to do.
So we raise a glass to Howard and fight for a better future
What you said about lgbt+ people trying to figure out what their happily ever after looks like really struck a cord with me. I’ve always struggled to understand & accept things about myself like being pan. I thought I had no other options than to live a heteronormative life. But, very recently my trans girlfriend came into my life & has been changing everything for me. & I’m terrified but excited too
I should've known I was gay when I could stop staring at Ariel's waist as a kid. I also remember looking up at Disney princess dolls in the toy aisle when I was like 7 thinking "I wonder if I like Disney princesses more than other little girls."
When I was young and thought about my family in the future I always saw myself as a single mother because I didn't grow up knowing lesbians were a thing. Or that girls could be anything other than friends or that girls could like other girls like boys like girls
There was a show called Life goes On that aired on Sunday nights when I was really little on ABC that had a prominent HIV positive character. I remember that it was pretty depressing a lot of the time, but it facilitated the conversation between myself and my parents about the issue. My mom's favorite cousin died of AIDs in the 80's, so her thoughts were always pretty progressive, but three decades later I still think about that show sometimes, even though I never see anyone talk about it. Media we consume when we're kids has a big effect, for good or ill.
I first encountered Howard Ashman while searching around online for lost and abandoned Disney material. I stumbled upon Howard singing "Proud of Your Boy" one of his many cut songs from Aladdin. His rendition of the song is hauntingly beautiful. Howard might have only been with us for a short time but during that time he burned bright leaving behind an amazing legacy.
Finding out about Howard Ashman was such a huge moment for me personally. When I was a little girl, long before I realized I was gay, I was so enamored with the Little Mermaid and Disney movies in general. I felt a sense of safety and warmth and hope in these stories about people who were different, who had dreams they were maybe shamed for having but who still fought for them. I didn't have the words for what made me different yet, but I felt understood and loved by these stories. Coming into my identity as a lesbian has definitely shaped the way I see these stories and there's something so uniquely cathartic about knowing that the man who made these stories resonate with me so much was gay himself. It makes everything about the Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast mean more to me. Even if he wasn't intending to make any direct allegories or parallels, you can absolutely see how his understanding of otherness and longing for a happy ending you weren't sure you'd get to have added such emotional weight and depth to the music he wrote and the characters he shaped. It feels like he made these stories for me in a way. Like he somehow managed to reach out to me and tell me I was going to be okay. It makes me wish I could thank him for helping me feel seen and understood.
The, "I want" songs. Now I know why they have always spoken to me. The yearning for acceptance and a place in the sun came from a very real place.
Loved this heartfelt analysis and how much it adds to my perspective of my favorite Disney films. "...a lot of queer Disney fans continue to feel this connection to the films into their adulthood...they are still defining what the concept of a 'happy ending' can look like for them...". god that hit hard. I'm 31 y/o and while my cishet friends have homes and kids by now, I'm still re-structuring a path to a happy ending for myself. As queer people, I think we live in the "now" so often out of necessity. I'm watching "It's a Sin" right now and that point is illustrated so clearly from what I've watched so far.
"Beauty and the Beast" was the first Disney film I ever saw in the theater as a kid. I related to the Beast right away. Nowadays I like to think that I relate to both Belle and the Beast as two halves of a whole person who feels like they are running out of time but who needs to love themselves as they are despite everything society tells them.
Thanks for this video. I'm gay and I'm an epidemiologist and I have worked on HIV and AIDS in the past. I think very frequently about the magnitude of our shared losses from AIDS. Where would we be politically and with art if we hadn't lost sooo many of our elders so quickly and in such a traumatic way? It's a very emotional thing to think about. I feel sad that a lot of other gay men my age (late 20s) don't even know that they are also living with this loss, a loss they are unable to grieve since they don't even know about it.
and it's sad stigma around being gay and having aids is still very present till this day, just a month ago a friend of mine died from aids, he was also gay and i guess that was the reason why he didn't want anyone to know what he was going through, i think he didn't want to feel rejected, when he died it broke my heart, he was very very young, i also imagine how lonely it must've felt for him not to be able to share how he was feeling, he had a pure soul and i'll always miss him
ok but i would love a full cover of howards song by dreamsounds
Check out their channel! They do some covers at the end of some of their video essays, it's really worth checking out :)
they also release full songs on their patreon!
2:33 in to the video and then you hit me with the dedication at the end of Beauty and The Beast and I'm already crying.
I remember being very young and watching something about Howard Ashman in the Beauty and the Beast 2-disc DVD, I thought it was really sad, even if I didn't fully comprehend it. When I got older, I learned more about him and I admired him more.
As someone who watches Sideways, I only just realise how often he talks about the I want song and Howard Ashmen. Like, 1 in 3 chance he'll mention it in a video
Beautiful work, Rowan
Thanks for uploading I just had some bad news (not HIV related but still) and it always cheers me up to see you put out queer-positive content! It means so much to people like me - thank you :).
Hope things have gotten better since you posted this! Much love from strangers!
The only thing anyone needs to know about the kind of company Disney or rather their leadership is, is the fact that employees referred to it as Mauschwitz and later, after they were told that anyone using that reference would be fired, as Duckau.
Creative beauty and death at the same time, sounds like the "dark age" with the plague but also people enjoying life at the same time. Probably even the superstitions at work (in a time where modern medicine, exists)
And not political, haha, art is always political. Because it expresses some sentiment about something.
crying throughout this video
one of the songs that resonates with me, ever since I learned of Howard Ashman and his story, is ‘Proud of Your Boy’ (which is beautiful and you should check it out if you have not heard of it before), scrapped out of Aladdin and brought back for the musical version. the way the lyrics present a boy alienated with his family and just trying his goddamn best to let his mother know that he will make her proud, gets me every time. maybe it wasn’t his story, maybe it was, but it’s definitely something all of us can relate to.
beautiful video (i cried too!), thank you for it.
Phew, I'm crying. Thank you very much for your work, I didn't know about Ashman at all. I grew up in the 80's, I still have a vivid memory of the AIDS crisis, all these deaths and all the homophobia at the time... My best friend's favorite Disney movies are Beauty and the beast and The litte mermaid, your video puts a whole different light on these... I also didn't know how LGBT friendly the Disney work environment is, it's crazy that their movies lack representation so much >
Upon seeing the title of this video: Well, I guess it's time for me to go cry over Ashman and AIDS in general again.
Yeah, that sounds fine.
23 minutes in, crying as expected: Oh good, it's not just me.
Touching video.
This is so beautiful & made me cry. He was a beautiful person
gay millennials find comfort in disney and gay gen z find comfort in shrek and in this essay I will
Where's the essay op?
The music Howard left behind has touched so many of us without us even knowing. This one man from a community we belong to brought us together with beautiful lyrics and meaning and it just hurts to know, if he had lived, how much more of himself he could have shown us. I always cry when I think about the pain and suffering he and the rest of the community went through.
In 1978 (before conscious awareness of HIV) I was at Disneyland with a buddy of mine and there was a dancing area with a live rock band in an outdoor courtyard. It was surrounded by barriers and you had to enter through a gate monitored by Disney staff. We tried to enter and were told that only boy & girl couples were allowed to enter. We saw two young women standing against the barrier nearby, we asked them if they wanted to get in and they said yes, but they weren't allowed in. We said "Let's enter as two boy and girl couples" and they happily agreed. As soon as we got in the women paired off to dance and so did we. Within a minute someone came out on stage and signalled something to the band, who immediately stopped playing, mid-song, and the dance area barriers were separated. The dance zone was over...
Beauty and The Beast is my favorite Disney movie and now I love it even more.
Thank you for this video! It's been mysterious to me why my Disney Feature Animation co-worker Vincent DeFrances (1954-1994) was treated extremely well by the company. A common observation is The Disney Company's complete focus on making money. At a time when being openly gay could contribute to loosing your job at that Disney, Vince was taken under their wing and promoted to development. With illness of any kind generally not tolerated by large corporations, possibly some kind of legal threat could have brought about this action. I was so happy for him, that I didn't give Disney's motivation any thought.
I knew a but about Howard Ashman and his work with Disney but hadn't considered B&tB as an allegory for the AIDs crisis. I knew that Alan Menken would have been coming to terms with his dear friend's terminal illness when writing the music and often wonder about the impact on that, it's certainly some beautiful music. Whether the allegory was intentional, subconscious or coincidental there are clear parallels.
Warning, about to share a very sad alternate reading of B&tB ending. In case you don't fancy that.
I don't think this is at all what was meant or intended, and I prefer the intended, happy ending, but a few years back when listening to Transformation (possibly my all time favourite piece of Disney music) I had a thought... What if, the Beast wasn't saved by Belle's kiss. She was too late. The transformation that follows, and the music going along with becomes a representation of the Beast entering his vision of heaven. Light, love, happiness and community. When pairing this with thoughts of Howard it really is heartbreaking. But I'd like to think that if he did have any afterlife beliefs, that's the sort of thing he imagined awaited him and the others in that lost generation. 💙
Watching this video with tears streaming down my face I have many of your videos I began to wonder how often you must cry working on them was a little shocked when you answered the question you’re a stronger person than me
Wow I honestly had never heard about Howard before and Beauty and the Beast was THE most important film in my childhood. Thank you so much for this incredibly informative video (as are all of your videos).
Part of your world is one of my favorite disney songs and beauty and the beast is my best friend's favorite movie...I cried a lot watching this video and now I'm gonna listen to some happy songs XD
Death is so tragic, not only in the people it takes from us, but in the lost possibilities we realize in hindsight. Ashman’s input on these matters would’ve been so enlightening; it was his work, after all. I also wonder what he would’ve thought about modern Disney, and modern queer representation in general.
Re comments c. 20:00 about Mulan being transgender: As a preface, it's totally great if trans folks identify with Mulan. That being said, the historical folk hero figure of Mulan was a female crossdresser who changed her clothing because of misogyny and to save her father. To say that she is trans erases the fact that she was a strong woman who fought for her country. It also implies the fact that these traits of strength, fighting prowess, heroism, etc. are incompatible with being a woman.
Lol both of these can coexist you don’t need to say that trans people are corrupting a story to find meaning it in as a cus woman
@@mikeymullins5305 Sorry for being unclear in my comment. It's not trans people corrupting the story by finding meaning in it that I take issue with. It's the assertion that Mulan was trans.
I think it's just a headcanon some people have.
@@cecilia5093 it's more of a historical theory than a headcanon tbh
Thank you for this video, Rowan!
Glad to see Dreamsounds involved in this. The video would've felt lacking otherwise.
I really enjoyed the collaboration with Dreamsounds, thanks!!!
I guess I need to reevaluate my hatred for Disney as a whole. I've always held their intellectual property and employees in high regard but the flagrant abuse I've read and seen from Disney to its creators and fans has been a major boycott in my life since I was 9 and they forced a local family owned daycare to close for the audacity of painting a mouse named mickey on a wall to make kids happy.
It's... Nice to hear something positive that I can get behind.
Thank you so much for this, I'll be sharing with friends
so basically cried the whole way through and now i know why like part of your world so much
Howard Ashman is the most important man in Disney history. Scratch that; movie history. He deserves all the praise and love for his work. He would be so happy to see the LGBTQ representation we see in media today. If only Disney would get with the times...
In my ranking of the most important Disney Composers I listed him and Menken on place two, after the shermann brothers, but I added that they would have most likely taken the top spot if Ashman hadn't died so young. Menken without Ashman is just missing something.
Excellent video, thank you.
thank you for this channel. we should have learned this stuff in school💗
Thanks Howard!!!
I hate that youtube isn't notifying me of your videos anymore... But I cried so hard during this
Returning to this video again amid the "don't say gay bill" and Disney's active participation in it...and feeling...pained.
I can't talk about Howard Ashman without crying. It's just too much, and a really painful microcosm of what we lost in the AIDS crisis. Thanks for this video, it was great.
I'm an animation student and so far, I never learned about Howard Ashman, so thank you so much for this video
I have not watched the whole video yet, but I just wanted to thank you for having captions on the video! It makes things so much easier to understand for me personally!
I'mma go cry thank you very much
I wish more people would watch Rowan's videos. I have learnt so much from her - more than I ever learnt from school. What's more, is that I am actually still at school and was affected by the governments' new legislation that means every student has to learn about LGBTQ, yet those lessons taught be fuck all.
Great video! I loved the fact that you two collaborated
I'll definitely watch Howard Ashman's documentary now that Disney Plus is available in Mexico. Which reminds me of the fact that here in Mexico they censored Pixar's Out short film. I've seen some people on twitter reach out to the director and he says it'll come in eventually, but I have my doubts... I'm surprised I've not seen more people talk about that
Yeah, Disney is a strange animal...behind the scene, the studio was actually always kind of progressive...apparently Walt Disney genuinely didn't care who someone was as long as he saw talent, hence him supporting Mary Blair and her art so much. It was the first studio which had a black animator, the first which featured women in leading positions, and it showed a lot of understanding for LGTB employees early on. On the flip side, it's public image is very much "don't rock the boat", it follows the main stream, sometimes even one step behind. Disney only wants to tell stories which touch as many people as possible, they don't care about changing the world...but naturally they are kind of confirming the system this way.
yes i just sobbed all the way through
Thank you so much Rowan for making this video! It was very interesting and insightful, I learned a lot and cried a little bit. For me, Michael Foucault's early death of aids has been a source for more or less the same feeling of "what if?". I feel with you!
This video gave me too much chills
archive.org/details/AladdinTheOriginalTreatment for any one who is interested this is a link to the Aladdin scripted done by Howard and Alan. The script was heavily edited after Howard's death. This version has not been completely forgotten about however as many elements where used in the Broadway Play adaptation.