Focus on the Family: A Dialectical Shift
A Gentler, Kinder, Subtler Queer Propaganda
[N.B. — My goal in writing this review/analysis is not to dissuade anyone from watching this movie, but to shed light on a more subtle feature of the film, and encourage rational reflection and discussion of the arts in general.]
In 2022, DreamWorks released Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and, surprisingly, got a lot of positive feedback from many conservatives. The movie didn’t harp on “social justice” issues or overtly talk about “sexual diversity,” there were no discernibly gay, lesbian, or trans characters, and it promoted moral values that can hardly be argued against (e.g. thankfulness, love, patience, trust, self-control, etc). Not only this, but the artwork is impressive, the story is coherent, the characters are fairly well developed, and the jokes land well.
I like the movie a lot. But I was surprised to see this in a film made by a corporation who openly touts its dedication to
…identifying and empowering diverse voices to tell authentic stories that inspire and entertain audiences worldwide.1
The words diverse here does not simply signify a “wide variety,” but instead has a very specific meaning given to it by critical social justice theorists. Dr. James Lindsay explains that
“Diversity” in the Critical Social Justice usage, while occasionally claiming to be tolerant of differences of ideas and political viewpoints and nodding toward “philosophical differences,” focuses, in reality, almost entirely on physical and cultural differences, which it evaluates according to the Critical Social Justice conceptions of privilege and marginalization…It therefore aims to privilege the marginalized and marginalize the privileged in order to redress the imbalances it sees in society2
Given that DreamWorks is fully on board with all things DEI, proudly celebrating “Pride”,3 focusing in on “queer representation” in animation,4 as well as on the impact of gay characters on gay viewers,5 I had a hard time understanding why the film lacked any of these kinds of characters. Until, that is, I remembered that Queer Theory is currently producing reams of content related to what its proponents call “Chosen Family” families.
Chosen Families
Like “diversity” the phrase “Chosen Family” is loaded with meaning that is not immediately present to the reader unfamiliar with queer theory. According to queer theorists,
“Chosen family” is a term employed within queer and transgender (Q/T) communities to describe family groups constructed by choice rather than by biological or legal (bio-legal) ties. Chosen family implies an alternative formulation that subverts, rejects, or overrides bio-legal classifications assumed to be definitive within an American paradigm of kinship. The provenance of the term “chosen family” in social science discourse derives from anthropologist Kath Weston’s Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship. In this watershed project, Weston describes the central role that close friends played in the lives of sexual minorities who often experienced distance or rejection from their families of origin.6
As one reviewer puts it, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is a film that teaches its viewers that
…family is who we choose to surround ourselves with, and it is our responsibility to learn how to appreciate those who choose to show up for us.7
This can be easy to miss given the current tumult raised by those promoting, as well as those fighting against, things like drag queen story hour, secret school support of “gender transitioning”, hormone manipulation, chemical castration, and genital mutilation.
And I think that is the point.
Many of us have become used to seeing homosexuality and sexual deviancy explicitly and brazenly promoted by LGBTQ activists, and so we let our guard down in other contexts that are doing the same thing, only in a much more subtle manner. In the film, chosen mixed species families function allegorically, representing “chosen families” that may be comprised of individuals with diverse sexual identities. And Puss in Boots: The Last Wish definitely seems to hint at this in its presentation of Goldilocks — a human who has chosen the three bears as her family — as a tomboy, and Perrito — a dog who has chosen two cats as his family — as a feminine-voiced male dog who dresses like a cat.
A Synthetic Family
What we see in Puss in Boots is not an outright assault on the natural family. Rather, it is a kinder, gentler, more “conservative” approach toward “queering” the concept of family. Lindsay explains that —
In the Theory of Critical Social Justice, more specifically in the branch of applied postmodernism called queer Theory, the term “queer” is not merely used as a noun and an adjective but also as a verb, to queer. To queer is to make change or to act in a way that is disruptive of normativities, which is to say in ways that rejects both the normal and norms as a matter of principle, particularly but not entirely limited to matters of sex, gender, and sexuality.8
Queering does not entirely do away with the original idea, in this case family, but seeks to redefine it. This accounts for why the “parents” in Puss in Boots are heterosexual, while the adopted children seemingly are not. Goldilocks’ family was a nuclear family unit — mother, father, and sub — until she was accepted as a daughter and sister. The family unit expanded to include children who were not brought about by means of sexual reproduction but adopted. Perrito’s adopted “parents” are Puss in Boots and Kitty Soft Paws, a heterosexual couple whose sexual identities are very clearly male and female.
What shouldn’t be missed here is the fact that in this “queering” of the family, there is a place for heterosexuality. In fact, the heterosexual couples in the story provide the basis for the family. Contrary to the more radical attacks on the natural/creational order, this subtler attack is accomplished by means of an emotional appeal for empathy, acceptance, and, if necessary, a willingness to let one’s family member go their own way. Goldilocks’ family, for instance, finds out that she wants to leave them and join her biological family. Rather than forcing her to give up her quest, the bears give her the choice of staying with them or leaving them.
In other words, what is at work here is a more accepting LGBTQ agenda in which heterosexuality is not presented as a negative, hegemonic structure that oppresses sexually deviant family members, but as a fallible but stable, structured, and loving environment where “queer” family members can feel safe and accepted. And this is, I think, more dangerous than outright assaults on the notion of “heteronormativity”, seeing as it does not oppose natural sexual identities, natural reproduction, and the “traditional” male and female “roles” in a family, but simply suggests that “queer” identities can enhance the family.
The movie presents the viewer with a synthetic family model, in two senses. In the first sense, the family model is synthetic because it is literally the product of the synthesis of different kinds of beings (animals and humans). In the second sense, the family model is synthetic because it is a new family model made from two opposed family models — namely, the genetic and the non-genetic. Rather than presenting these two family models as locked in conflict with one another, Puss in Boots sublates them. In Hegelian jargon, sublation is the dual process of cancellation and preservation. What renders the models mutually exclusive is cancelled out, and what is preserved from both models results in the synthetic family model we see in the film.
Conclusions
While Puss in Boots: The Last Wish seems to be pushing the idea of “Chosen Families” currently being given greater emphasis in pop culture by queer theorists, it manages to focus strongly on certain values that are inherently good. We Christians can take aesthetic productions like this and use them as examples of how evil is parasitic on the good. Without the goodness of the natural family, there would be nothing after which the non-natural family could model itself. The non-natural family is a simulacrum of the real family in which a husband and wife reproduce children, protect them from harm, provide for them, teach them, and encourage them to make rational, moral decisions. The non-natural family, moreover, necessarily retains the idea of family resemblance, moreover, seeing as the characters in the movie belong to families with characteristics to which they have chosen to conform. This implies that family, natural family created by God, is the standard from which all other family models have deviated and to which they aspire, but which they will never be.
—h.
“DEI DreamWorks”, DreamWorks, https://www.dreamworks.com/dei.
“Diversity”, New Discourses, https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-diversity/.
“DreamWorks Celebrates Pride Month” YouTube.
“Queer Representation in DW Shows”, YouTube.
“Pride: First Gay Character”, YouTube.
Levin, Nina Jackson, et al. “‘We Just Take Care of Each Other’: Navigating ‘Chosen Family’ in the Context of Health, Illness, and the Mutual Provision of Care amongst Queer and Transgender Young Adults”, in International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health Vol. 17, No. 19, (2020). https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/19/7346.
Shlesinger, Jonathan. “Movie Review: ‘Puss in Boots: The Last Wish’”, UCSD Guardian, Jan 29, 2023, https://ucsdguardian.org/2023/01/29/movie-review-puss-in-boots-the-last-wish/.
“Queer (v.)”, New Discourses, https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-queer-v/.