The evolution of queer characters in children's animation

• In 2018, Rebecca Sugar's "Steven Universe" featured both the first LGBTQ wedding and the first LGBTQ marriage proposal in a kids' animated TV show. And in 2020, Benson from "Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts" was the first kids' animated character to directly identify themselves as gay.
• These are groundbreaking achievements in LGBTQ representation, but it took a long time and a lot of hard work to get here. Here's a look back at how LGBTQ characters in kids' shows evolved from Hays Code-era stereotypes and queer-coded villains.
• Check out Insider's database here, cataloguing more than 200 confirmed LGBTQ characters in kids' animation

Following is a full transcript of the video.

Steven:We are gathered here today to celebrate Ruby and Sapphire.

Narrator: You're looking at the first LGBTQ wedding in a kids' animated show. And this is the first kids' animated character to directly identify themselves as gay.

Benson: Yes! Because I'm gay.

Narrator: These are just a few examples in a recent push to include more queer representation in children's animated shows and movies. But it took a long time and a lot of work to get here, battling decades of harmful stereotypes and queer-coded villains.

Rebecca Sugar: You know, it was just a matter of not so much busting down these walls, but just very slowly chipping away at them for years and years and years and years.

Narrator: Let's take a look at how we got to this from this.

This is a scene from the 1933 animated Flip the Frog short "Soda Squirt." The flamboyant character turned Hyde-like monster pretty much sums up to the extent to which "queer" characters appeared on screen at the time.

A year later, in 1934, the Motion Picture Association of America started enforcing the Hays Code, which banned in films, quote, "Sex perversion or any inference to it."

That was the same year the US government established the Federal Communications Commission and the first set of commercial TV regulations. This created an era of internal censorship out of fear of being hit with reprimands, fines, or having their broadcast license revoked.

But creators did get creative, especially when it came to animated films.

Melanie Kohnen: People actually found ways of inserting queerness into cartoons and stretched the boundaries of the Production Code, because animation in itself is a medium that already lends itself to surrealness or strange situations.

Narrator: Live-action TV couldn't show two men kissing, but a character like Bugs Bunny could kiss hunter Elmer and pass it off as a joke.

Speech patterns, mannerisms, costumes, and more also became signals of queerness, or queer coding.

Let's take a look at Bugs Bunny again, who first appeared in 1940. In addition to kissing other male characters on the mouth, he also cross-dresses in many episodes. But this didn't make him queer. According to creator Chuck Jones, this was all meant to make him "funny."

Viewers, however, could have their own interpretation. RuPaul, for one, has said that Bugs Bunny was his "first introduction to drag."

Cartoon characters were also given the freedom to veer from traditional gender roles, so we could see characters like an effeminate bull who refused to fight or a tea-sipping dragon.

Queer coding may also have been a way around censorship, but it wasn't ideal and relied on harmful stereotypes. And as television grew in popularity, these stereotypes would play out again and again, sometimes in damaging ways.

The '50s. A time known for conformity in the States and for the television cartoon boom. Both those things came into play with the Code of Practices for Television Broadcasters, a set of evolving guidelines that covered everything from decency and decorum to TV's responsibility towards children.

The original 1952 code stated that "Sex crimes and abnormalities" were unacceptable topics and that shows should foster "commonly accepted moral, social and ethical ideals characteristic of American life."

This was all happening with McCarthy's Lavender Scare in the backdrop, and it became visible on screen.

Queer characters were no longer just a source of ridicule, but violently attacked, fueling a decades-long "bury your gays" trope that persists today.

Many popular characters were still coded from the '60s to the '80s, despite a sexual revolution and the start of the gay-rights movement. But queer-coded characters were also increasingly cast as villains.

Melanie: If you go with the classic hero-versus-villain model, the hero will embody what's normal, and then the villain has to be the opposite. And an easy way to suggest that is to draw on really obvious stereotypes that suggest queerness.

Narrator: Let's look at the earliest entry in Insider's database that cataloged more than 200 confirmed LGBT characters.

This is Skeleton, a villain in the 1980s show "SuperTed." The creator confirmed Skeleton's sexuality as gay in 2014.

Skeleton: Do you think I look best in diamonds or rubies?

Narrator: Many iconic queer-coded Disney movie villains emerged in the late '80s and '90s. Ursula from "The Little Mermaid" was inspired by the drag queen Divine, and queer communities welcomed her with open arms.

Melanie: Audiences may, in fact, embrace the villain over the hero because the villain offers an alternative vision of life or an alternative life path, and one that doesn't end in heterosexual romance.

Narrator: Other characters like Gaston and LeFou from "Beauty and the Beast" and Jafar from "Aladdin" could have been influenced by their makers. They were created by Andreas Deja, an openly gay animator, and sang music written by openly gay lyricist Howard Ashman.

But that sliver of representation had its downfalls.

Rebecca Sugar: If you can only exist as a villain or a joke, I mean, that's a really heavy thing to be saturated with as a kid.

Narrator: And despite code improvements, networks were still hesitant to show any obvious representation.

Powerpuff narrator: The only safe way to refer to this king of darkness is simply ... Him.

Narrator: Animators described a "culture of fear," with studios worried about losing advertisers and boycotts from conservative groups and angry parents.

This fear was realized in 2005 with an episode of "Postcards from Buster," an "Arthur" spin-off series. "Sugartime" featured two lesbian moms, one of the earliest overt queer representations in children's animation.

In response, Margaret Spellings, the then secretary of education, said PBS "should strongly consider" returning the funds it used for the episode. It was a major setback for queer representation at the time.

14 years later, an episode of "Arthur" featured the anthropomorphic aardvark attending the wedding of his teacher, Mr. Ratburn, to his partner, Patrick, and strangely enough, we have the rise of cable TV and eventually streaming to thank for that.

With fewer regulations and less government oversight, cable TV opened the door for more representation. But getting anything approved for children to watch, whether it was commercials for bike helmets or junk food, remained a long process, with requests having to go through seven or eight levels of approval.

This could add extra hurdles for creators, and did for Rebecca Sugar during her time at Cartoon Network. In 2010, Rebecca was working on "Adventure Time" and floated the idea of a past lesbian relationship between Princess Bubblegum and the vampire Marceline.

Rebecca: But even then -- It was pretty much impossible to have characters in an animated show that were openly LGBTQIA.

Narrator: Pendleton Ward, the show's creator, supported this idea. But Rebecca said she faced years of pushback from the studio, which was concerned about distribution in countries where being gay or lesbian was censored in media and considered a crime.

Rebecca: When we tried to talk about it openly, the hammer came down, and they basically -- it went all the way to the top and came down hard on us.

Narrator: The characters' relationship wasn't confirmed until 2018 when the two kissed in the season finale. After her experience with "Adventure Time," Rebecca decided to create her own show and push the boundaries even further.

♪ We ♪ ♪ Are the Crystal ♪ ♪ Gems ♪

Narrator: So in 2012, she started developing "Steven Universe," about a gender-nonconforming boy who is friends with extraterrestrial nonbinary beings, or gems.

In season one, viewers learn that two of those gems are in love, but revealing this relationship was a slow process, and each step was a struggle with the network. Rebecca says she received specific feedback from Cartoon Network that the two characters couldn't kiss.

Rebecca: And it all became very disturbing, and realizing that I was sort of getting these direct notes, this really made me realize that I had been receiving that message indirectly from all of the content that I had seen growing up, where LGBTQIA characters just aren't present. And they aren't present because they're being, you know, blocked from existing. You know, they're being systematically removed.

Narrator: Their relationship was first hinted at in an episode called "Jail Break," which aired in March 2015, just as same-sex marriage was about to become legal in the US.

Rebecca: Even the audience members who were excited about it or who liked it would say things like, "I can't believe you're getting these adult themes into your show." It was all treated as if it was very subversive. It's not that we snuck adult ideas into a children's show. I mean, children are flooded with heteronormative content all the time.

Narrator: Most animated Disney films, like "Sleeping Beauty," involve the love between a princess and a prince. Those scenes inspired Rebecca to create ones for queer audiences.

Rebecca: You know, I wanted to experiment with some of these really classic visuals.

Narrator: In 2015, Rebecca says, studio executives told her it was her choice to make Ruby and Sapphire LGBTQ. They warned her that some countries might pull the show and it could get canceled altogether.

But the next year, Rebecca came out as bisexual at San Diego Comic-Con and began to speak more publicly about LGBTQ issues, both in the industry and in her work.

Rebecca: It's really hard to twist yourself into a different person to make art. It was hard for me to try and make heteronormative art, and that's part of the reason I ultimately realized that I could come out and I could speak about this and that it was a part of who I am.

Narrator: Coming out helped her speak more openly and advocate for her characters to be LGBTQ, and it paid off. In 2017, "Steven Universe" was nominated for the GLAAD outstanding comedy series award, and in 2019, it won in the kids and family category.

Rebecca: And then, all of a sudden, the force of decades and decades of activism and advocacy were suddenly behind me.

Narrator: The first gay proposal and wedding episode aired in the summer of 2018 and made kids' animation history.

Steven: I now pronounce you Garnet!

Narrator: "Steven Universe" was the start of a wave of animated shows with LGBTQ representation, and the rise of streaming apps would make that wave even bigger. Without FCC regulations or broadcast codes and with fewer layers of approval, creators were given more autonomy with their characters.

This is where we start seeing much more representation in animation, and not only with sexual orientation, but with gender identity and queer communities overall.

Velma from the original 1969 "Scooby-Doo" cartoon was long read as gay before being officially written as lesbian in a 2010 update, "Mystery Incorporated."

Benson, a leading character from "Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts," made history as the first kids' animated character to directly identify as gay in dialogue.

Benson: Yes! Because I'm gay.

Narrator: And Noelle Stevenson's "She-Ra and the Princesses of Power" featured a multiseason queer story arc, capped off in 2020 by a famous on-screen kiss between Adora and Catra. The show also broke ground by featuring a trans male character, Jewelstar, voiced by trans male actor Alex Blue Davis.

From 2017 to 2019, our database showed a more than 200% spike in queer and gender-minority characters in children's animated TV shows.

Melanie: We need to have queer representation in children's animation between queer children exist and they deserve to see themselves on the screen. They deserve to see romance and happiness that represents the things that they already feel.

Narrator: There are still some limitations to the progress, though. 90% of the characters are behind a paywall of some sort, preventing all children from equal access to LGBT representation. And the stories don't always do the characters justice.

Shiro, the leader of the Paladins in "Voltron: Legendary Defender," was revealed to be gay at the 2018 San Diego Comic-Con, but his partner was killed off in the same episode he was introduced in, a controversial moment that played into negative tropes and didn't sit well with fans.

But just like Rebecca Sugar pushed the boundaries in the past, a new generation of animators is raising the bar for the future.

Rebecca: What I hope for in the future is that more and more marginalized artists are going to be in a position to make the art that they want to make and to reach people with that art who can relate to it.