Word: sharked
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Shark Tale’s main characters, Lenny (a shark voiced by Jack Black) is so obviously meant to be a doppelganger for a homosexual man that five-year-olds are likely picking up on it well before the scene in which Lenny has a garish performance in full drag as a dolphin (the peaceful, sensitive creatures of the film’s world...
...domineering, alpha-male father (naturally voiced by Robert De Niro), a moronic brother who behaves like a compulsive frat boy and eats anything that moves and in addition he identifies himself as a vegetarian, a lover of all things living, and as “different from other sharks.” Sharks in the world of Shark Tale are the patriarchal keepers of the sea, the top of the food chain. Lenny’s refusal to kill and be “like other sharks” makes him the odd fish out. They’re also...
...evidence’ of Lenny’s sexuality as is implicit in the film. Any reader who doubts the obviousness of the intended meaning of Lenny’s character should see the film immediately. It’s doubtful you’ll disagree. What Shark Tale ultimately represents, and what makes it so eminently aggravating, is Hollywood’s static view of homosexuality as something that must be hidden from the public. In a political atmosphere in which queers are increasingly gaining agency and winning countless victories in the marriage debate, Hollywood thinks itself sneaky...
...escape the ages-old right-wing dictum that homosexuality is a perversion. It’s not that the predominantly liberal denizens of the world’s dominating film industry are homophobic. The problem is that by hiding representations of queers, be them human or shark, under a (pathetically transparent) veil of allegory reinforces queer-dom in culture as something that is adult, pornographic and too controversial to address directly. The question is, why can’t Lenny just be gay? Shark Tale’s makers already have him in drag and trying to cuddle with Will...
Thus, Lenny the Shark can act just as gay as Jack in “Will and Grace,” but remember—this is a children’s film. The fact that Jack likes men is fine, but men liking men is a decidedly adult narrative element in Hollywood, and “Will and Grace” is marketed to adults. It’s fine that Angelina Jolie’s fish in Shark Tale is explicitly presented as a gold-digging, sexually charged vixen, but Hollywood fears that the mere mention...