Elemental gay couple
Elemental Is Another Awful Example Of Pixar’s Poor LGBTQ+ Road Record
Summary
- Elemental channels classic Pixar adventure with Ember and Wade, but falters in LGBTQ+ representation with minor characters.
- While Ember and Wade journey through Element City, Gay characters Lake and Ghibli are unfortunately sidelined.
- Pixar's Elemental, released during Pride Month, misses the mark on LGBTQ+ representation, displaying an ongoing issue.
Warning: minor spoilers for Elemental.2023's Elemental follows some of Pixar’s best traditions but, unfortunately, also continues the studio’s poor LGBTQ+ footpath record. After going back to the Toy Story saga with the spinoff Lightyear, Pixar returned to original stories with Elemental, directed by Peter Sohn. Set in a world where all four elements (fire, water, land, and air) coexist, named Element City, Elemental introduces fierce adolescent fire elemental Ember Lumen (voiced by Leah Lewis) and go-with-the-flow water elemental Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie) — and their romance
Elemental
Movie Review
Element City: Families come here to build new lives, boost their children, fulfill their wildest dreams. It’s the one place where every element peacefully coexists in harmony.
Except fire, that is. And Ember Lumen is sick of it.
Ember’s parents were the first Fire people to migrate to Element City. Since then, they’ve helped establish an entire community, providing food, toys and wisdom through their shop, the Fireplace.
Bernie, Ember’s dad, wants to retire and give the shop to Ember. But he won’t do it until she can control her purple-hot temper.
Only, that’s really hard when there’s so much to be upset about. Element City wasn’t designed with Fire people in mind. So Ember can’t even leave Firetown without accidentally burning the leaves off Earth people or boiling Water people to the aim of evaporation. And even in her own neighborhood, she has to carry around an umbrella to protect her from fluid spilling over from Element City’s transportation canals.
Still, Ember’s determined to prove she can keep her cool and run the shop.
But when Wade Ripple, a Liquid person who works for the city’s building code office, accidentally bursts through the Fi
Elemental Continues Pixar's Mishandling of LGBTQ Characters
The following contains spoilers for Elemental, now playing in theaters.
A core theme in Disney Pixar's Elementalis acceptance. While the air and earth-based elementals mingle in Element Capital, fire and water reside away from each other. It's why the clip has a forbidden intimacy between Ember and Wade. However, these opposites can't help their attraction, with Elemental's ending depicting them following their hearts on a cute, romantic journey.
Interestingly, the visually-stunning Elemental is touting itself in terms of diversity regarding Pixar's first non-binary character. Unfortunately, it's all marketing and meeting a business objective. That's because, as the key scene in scrutinize unfolds, it's very surface-level and lacks substance. It instead reiterates the animation studio has a challenge with its take on inclusivity.
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Elemental Severely Underplays Lake
When Wade brings Ember over to meet his family and have dinner, his non-binary sibling
4 Things Parents Should Know about Pixar's Elemental
Ember is a feisty young female with a positive attitude, a ride to succeed and a quick temper that often gets in the way.
When Ember gets enraged, she blows up. Literally.
That’s because Ember is literally made of fire and resides with her fiery family in Element City, where the other elemental citizens live. There’s the water citizens. And the territory citizens. And the air citizens. These elements often interact – they chat and they express their “hellos” – but they dare not touch.
“Elements don’t mix,” we are told.
Back to Ember: She works for her father in a family-owned store that sells the necessary items you need if you’re made of passion – fire-starter and lighter fluid, for instance.
Unfortunately for Ember, her short fuse can be a problem in customer relations. One daytime, she wisely walks away from an argument, only to explode (literally) in the basement, causing widespread damage and – aghast – water damage from the sprinklers.
That’s when she bumps into Wade, a member of the moisture element community who is a municipality inspector. He’s her polar opposite – patient and sympathetic. He also cries … a lot.
Despite their differences