Disney decided to pull a J. K. Rowling recently, announcing that Ryan Evan, a hilarious side character from the hit 2006 movie High School Musical, is actually gay.
First of all, this is not a new tactic on the part of Disney. Kenny Ortega, the series’ director, tried to make this claim back in 2020. Apparently, he’d always thought that Ryan was gay, but he “was concerned because it was family and kids, that Disney might not be ready to cross that line and move into that territory yet.“
This is absurd, and it’s a blatant attempt at virtue-signaling. It’s also an obvious stunt to promote the sleazy, crappy, lousy excuse for a TV show that is High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. As I have written before, this show takes the charming original story and fills it with woke platitudes and constant kowtowing to the LGBTQ+ agenda:
. . . in 2019, Disney+ released High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. This last offering, which is now filming its fourth season, has none of the creativity of the 2006 movie. Brash, snippy, suggestive — it’s a convoluted and unoriginal knockoff. The first High School Musical drew audiences in by presenting them with fun characters who looked like normal high-schoolers having the time of their lives. This new show is stuffed with over-the-top dance scenes rarely seen outside Broadway, catty, brooding teens, and clear LGBTQ plot points. While this isn’t surprising coming from today’s Disney studios, it’s still disappointing.
Finally, we have the character himself. Ryan is a very silly and excellent sidekick to his devious twin sister, Sharpay. Over the course of the three original films, he comes into his own, crazy costumes and all, and is dating a fellow (female) classmate by the third movie’s finale. Ortega may claim that Ryan’s character was “probably going to come out in college,” but this isn’t playing fair.
It also raises an interesting point: Why do we assume that if a young man is interested in art, music, or theater, he must be gay? This is unfair in the extreme and creates a stigma around these activities. Perhaps I’m terribly naive, but a young man should be able to join show choir without getting weird looks.
The main point though? Rewriting cinema history to make you feel better about yourself is poor storytelling.