>>6222181>how?All this talk of Lefou lately makes me wish Disney Store would have included him in the $80 Deluxe set. I would have taken him over a plus horse any day.
I did a little research into this, and found a little info that helped to clear things up for me.
The thing you’ve gotta understand about the whole Beauty and the Beast controversy is that Lefou was always viewed/written as a homophobic joke by the late Howard Ashman.
Lefou "The Fool" is the stereotypical sad, flamboyantly creepy little man hopelessly pining for the towering caricature of heterosexual masculinity (and tolerating incredible amounts of verbal and physical abuse in the process) is one of the classic homophobic gag roles - it shows up quite a bit in older media.
Few people were inclined to make a big deal of it up until now because A. it’s an old-school stereotype that doesn’t get much play in contemporary media, and B. Lefou is a relatively mild example of the type in any case, but that doesn’t mean it ever stopped being a thing. Disney is building it up as such a positive thing yet it's kinda sad that they would pick this type of character to be the first ever openly gay in a Disney film if you think about it.
