'ParaNorman' Slips in First Gay Animated Character

'ParaNorman' Slips in First Gay Animated Character

You knew it was only a matter of time before the gay community, which has successfully integrated gay characters into every possible form of entertainment for adults, targeted children.

Warning: Both link and paragraphs to follow contains mild film spoilers.

Now, for the first time, an American animated feature features an openly gay character.

Laika’s stop-motion animated zombie comedy “ParaNorman” has a character named Mitch, who is, of course, a heavily-muscled jock who seems heterosexual until the end of the movie, at which time a girl named Courtney asks him if he wants to see a movie.

Sure, he says, you’ll just love my boyfriend, who’s into chick flicks.

It’s a time-honored technique of the gay community to hide the fact that a character is gay until the audience has developed a real affinity for him/her, then catch the audience off-guard by divulging that the character is gay. Mitch kicks a zombie’s head for a mile, then reacts with amazement at his own strength.

Chris Butler, who is gay and wrote the script, said:

“A lot of things in this movie is (sic) stuff you can see in kids TV shows everyday of the week. We’re telling a story of real human beings. Our approach to it was to tell a very real emotional story about a kid … we just happen to tell it through a zombie story.”

There aren’t any kids’ shows that feature an openly gay character, so that must be one of the “things” Butler forgot. Speaking of having Mitch be gay, Butler asserted:

“I wanted it from the start, absolutely. It seemed like the best bookend to that whole tolerance thing and to do it as a joke, a kind of throwaway thing, but something that has NEVER been done before. I think we’re telling a story about intolerance, so you have to be brave about it.”

If they really were “brave” they’d announce from the start that Mitch was gay and see just how many parents would take their children to see this movie.

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