The creators of a brand new “Scooby-Doo” film have lastly depicted Velma as a lesbian on display, after years of hypothesis in regards to the beloved character’s sexuality however no definitive portrayals of her as queer within the well-liked cartoon franchise.
Velma crushes on one other feminine character, a fancy dress designer named Coco Diablo, in a Halloween particular, “Trick or Deal with Scooby-Doo,” that was launched on-line Tuesday and can debut on Cartoon Community on Oct. 14. She’s voiced by actor and comic Kate Micucci.
In a single scene, Velma’s glasses fog up and her cheeks redden as she fawns over Coco. “Jinkies,” Velma says — her traditional tag line. She flirts with Coco all through the film, clearly smitten.
Velma’s queer sensibilities have lengthy made her a favourite of LGBTQ followers of “Scooby-Doo.” Whereas a few of the producers of sure iterations of the present have beforehand confirmed her character isn’t straight, she hasn’t outwardly flirted or expressed such robust attraction to different feminine characters within the decadeslong historical past of the franchise.
Producer Tony Cervone confirmed in 2020 that Velma was a lesbian in his depiction of her in “Thriller Integrated,” a cartoon sequence that ran from 2010 to 2013.
“We made our intentions as clear as we might ten years in the past,” he wrote in an Instagram publish on the time. “Most of our followers obtained it. To people who didn’t, I recommend you look nearer.”
James Gunn, the filmmaker behind “Suicide Squad” and the “Guardians of the Galaxy” franchise who wrote the live-action “Scooby-Doo” movies of the early 2000s, mentioned in 2020 that Velma was initially written as a queer character in these movies. However he mentioned the studio, Warner Bros. Footage, refused to maintain her queerness within the script.
“However the studio simply saved watering it down and watering it down, turning into ambiguous (the model shot), then nothing (the launched model), and eventually having a boyfriend (the sequel),” Gunn wrote on the time.
Representatives for Warner Bros. Discovery Inc., which owns each Warner Bros. Footage and Warner Bros. Animation, which produced the brand new Halloween particular, didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Velma’s extra overt expression of her sexuality is the most recent instance of queer illustration in animated movies or TV exhibits, regardless of this summer time’s controversy following the discharge of Pixar’s “Toy Story” spinoff “Lightyear,” which was banned from theaters in Muslim-majority nations for exhibiting a same-sex kiss. Just a few weeks in the past, the writers of the British kids’s present “Peppa Pig” included a lesbian couple in an episode after years of requires extra LGBTQ characters.
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