Why the hell is this still a problem? How on God’s green Earth have we gotten to a point where showing a delightful, harmless Disney film in a classroom becomes such a rampant political debacle? When are we going to take a moment to stop and consider that maybe the education curriculum that has historically put Christopher Columbus on a pedestal isn’t the best entity to identify what is and isn’t indoctrination?
Anyway, the Florida teacher who made the apparently daring decision to show Strange World to her class of fifth graders has resurfaced on TikTok, and the divided nature of the comments section indicates — as any comments section on any website would — that we’ve still got a long way to go in the realm of empathy, rational thought, and most respectable qualities that humans can have in general.
Amongst the more vile responses, it is nice that one of the top comments reads “as a fellow educator, I’m really proud of you…”, but let’s not focus on internet comments; the internet is not a real place, and the overwhelming majority of trivial contrarian edgelords who populate the internet would not be a fraction as vocal as they are without the veil of anonymity.
Let’s instead focus on how suspiciously swiftly the Florida education system cracked down on this poor teacher for showing a film that happened to have a very tiny, very inconsequential scene of two teenage boys awkwardly flirting with each other, and how that was enough to send more than a few poorly-adjusted parents and suits into panic mode.
Let’s instead focus on how that same film had a number of heterosexual kisses, and nobody batted an eye despite them being far more sexual scenes than any of the screentime shared between Ethan and Diazo.
Let’s instead focus on the fact that same-sex attraction is not a political nuance, but a simple fact of nature, and how the raucous rejection of that truth is blatant evidence that queer people aren’t the ones with an agenda, so to speak; if you have to go to laughable lengths to remove any evidence of queer love, queer individuals, or queer anything, who’s really doing the indoctrinating?
I fear incredibly deeply for queer children who will be forced to grow up under such a purge-happy education system; how long before it gets to a point where queer kids are removed from their classes because a parent of a classmate signed a form saying they don’t want them there?
Strange World is available to stream on Disney Plus, in case you’re wondering what all the fuss is about.