Throwing Shade at Cyrus: Willingness to Censor Teen Homosexuality in Disney’s Andi Mack

ABSTRACT

The inclusion of a gay 13-year-old main character (Cyrus Goodman) on the Disney television series Andi Mack prompted social conservatives to call for the show’s cancellation due to the alleged negative impact that Cyrus would have on the show’s child audience. The present study explored individuals’ support for the censorship of television portrayals of teen homosexuality in a sample of 232 United States residents who viewed clips from the series detailing Cyrus’ storyline. Results found that censorship support was explained by homonegativity, conservative ideology, and authoritarianism, as well as perceptions that such depictions have a negative impact on the self and others. Response surface modeling also found evidence for a severity third-person effect (others more negatively impacted than the self) being related to increased censorship support. Directions for future research on the role of authoritarianism and sexual orientation beliefs in willingness to censor depictions of homosexuality are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Censorship
• third-person effect
• attitudes toward homosexuality
• authoritarianism

Acknowledgments

Portions of this research were previously presented at the 2018 annual convention of the National Communication Association (Salt Lake City, Utah).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The Walt Disney Company (i.e., Disney) owns multiple assets, including the Disney Media Networks division that oversees subsidiaries operated under the Disney-ABC Television Group. One such subsidiary is the Disney Channel, which is the television network that airs Andi Mack. The series is broadly about the lives of the titular character and her friends (i.e., Buffy Driscoll, Cyrus Goodman, and Jonah Beck) following the revelation that the person Andi believed to be her sister was, in fact, her mother. As a coming-of-age story for the main characters, the show portrays important life moments that children and teenagers experience (e.g., coming out, mental health, equality, death). Although Andi Mack and the Disney Channel’s relation to other more well-known Disney assets (e.g., Walt Disney Studios, Marvel Entertainment) may be somewhat peripheral, the significance of featuring a gay main character in any Disney asset is societally historic and is meaningful to those who have long advocated for adequate, equal media representation.

2. The video used in the present study may be viewed at https://youtu.be/4cy3E3j1g0w.