“‘She-Hulk’ is easily one of the horniest shows currently streaming on Disney Plus, and for that, one of the most refreshing.”
That cringe-worthy line is from an interview and profile piece published in the geek-centric publication Polygon on Monday about Kat Coiro, the director of the excruciatingly meta Disney/Marvel series “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.”
In that same article, Coiro describes how “one of the horniest shows currently streaming on Disney Plus” is also, apparently, “something that everybody can enjoy, including children.”
Nor, indeed, are these two elements divorced from each other, as you can tell from the story’s headline: “She-Hulk director wanted to make a sex-positive show that kids could also watch.”
Welcome to the wonderful world of Disney, 2022 style.
Trending:
In case you haven’t managed to catch it — and I haven’t seen enough of it to avouch for it being “one of the horniest shows currently streaming on Disney Plus,” but I’ve seen enough to be familiar with the basics — “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law” is a superhero show about … She-Hulk being an attorney at law. The title is the premise. It’s like the old Cartoon Network show “Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law” — except a little more serious, not animated, blessed with a way bigger budget and featuring a lot more rutting, apparently.
“The thing I always loved about the show were the smaller moments and being able to see a superhero coming home and kicking her shoes off after a long day at work,” Coiro told Polygon.
But She-Hulk — or her alter-ego Jennifer Walters, both played by actress Tatiana Maslany — is kicking off a bit more than her shoes.
“We always felt like there was a fear around sex and around the idea of sex positivity,” Coiro told Polygon. “So it was our job to keep having the conversation. We wanted to say, Look, she’s a woman in her 30s navigating modern life; sex is a part of that story, and [ask] how far could we go.”
Actress Maslany liked the idea, too. “I know it’s something that’s very important to her, this idea of sex positivity and kind of smashing the rules when it comes to women and the way that they’re perceived,” Cairo said. “A lot of the conversations about sexualization in the show came from Tatiana, and were with Tatiana.”
“Sure, why not?” you may be saying. We’re well past the days when we’d politely pretend the Ricardos would sleep in side-by-side twin beds — and you’re paying for a subscription on a streaming service, if one that disproportionately features content for children. If you want to indulge in “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law” when the kids have gone to bed and you’ve heard “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” for the 261st straight day, nobody is begrudging you that. (Questioning your taste in comedy, sure — at least from what I’ve seen. But begrudging it? Hardly.)
The problem is, neither Coiro nor Polygon’s Matt Patches seem to think the show is for, you know, when the kids have gone to bed.
Right after Patches declares the series “one of the horniest shows,” etc., etc. (I’m not sure if he was entirely self-aware when it comes to how preposterous and creepy that line sounds, but don’t let that stop you from laughing with/at him), he wrote that “Coiro says that her goal was still to deliver a show that could play to the broader, youth-skewing Marvel audience.”
“The director says ‘She-Hulk’ is the first show she’s ever really worked on where she was receiving voicemails from 9-year-olds begging to hear what happened next,” he continued. “And her parents and friends who normally didn’t watch Marvel movies were hooked on ‘She-Hulk.’ There was a greater responsibility and challenge to make ‘She-Hulk’ be everything for everyone, without losing its commentary.”
“We wanted to make it realistic, and about a woman navigating sex, but also make it something that everybody can enjoy, including children, because there is an element of the show that is really fun for young people,” Coiro said.
She-Hulk director Kat Coiro wanted to make a sex-positive show that kids could also watch https://t.co/6Ym5OJcnzi pic.twitter.com/q7C9Qguegc
— Polygon (@Polygon) October 17, 2022
So Coiro is aware 9-year-olds are watching — and I promise this is the last time I quote this humdinger — “one of the horniest shows currently streaming on Disney Plus,” realizes she has a responsibility, and that responsibility is … to write a show with sex scenes that kids can enjoy right alongside grandma.
Yeah, I don’t know if “responsibility” is quite the correct word here.
To be fair, it’s Patches’ description, not a direct quote from Coiro — but it certainly sounds like she wouldn’t be averse to the word choice. Whatever the case, this exemplifies responsibility in the same way a drunk dad does when he drives extra carefully if the kids are in the car. Look, he’s trying.
The result, according to a parental guide for “She-Hulk” on IMDb.com, is “a lot of innuendo, references and even a very suggestive sex scene and leaked sex videos.” It says that “although nothing very explicit is shown, it is still very inappropriate.”
Then again, what do you expect? Disney’s 2022 has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that if you’re the kind of parent who has moral qualms with your 9-year-old watching sex scenes in “She-Hulk,” you probably shouldn’t have a Disney+ subscription in the first place.
Let’s review: First, the media giant was a conspicuous objector to Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis’ so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which a) ironically didn’t say “gay” once and b) simply forbade instruction on sexuality and gender ideology in public schools for those in the third grade and lower, something most people approve of, including a majority of Democrats.
That wasn’t a particularly big deal, considering most of Hollywood was aghast at a law they didn’t even understand. Granted, Disney had a bit more skin in the game, given it has a massive theme park in Florida, but it was hardly alone.
However, company employees managed to kick it up a notch in videos leaked from an all-hands virtual meeting held in response to the Florida legislation and shared by journalist Christopher Rufo.
In one clip, an executive producer for Disney Television Animation said the company was helping her sneak her “like, not-at-all-secret gay agenda” into cartoons.
SCOOP: I’ve obtained video from inside Disney’s all-hands meeting about the Florida parental rights bill, in which executive producer Latoya Raveneau says her team has implemented a “not-at-all-secret gay agenda” and is regularly “adding queerness” to children’s programming. pic.twitter.com/eJnZMpKIXT
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) March 29, 2022
In another, the general entertainment president said she was “here as the mother of two queer children, actually, one transgender child and one pansexual child, and also as a leader,” and promised she’d ensure 50 percent of Disney leads were LGBT or minority characters.
SCOOP: Disney corporate president Karey Burke says, “as the mother [of] one transgender child and one pansexual child,” she supports having “many, many, many LGBTQIA characters in our stories” and wants a minimum of 50 percent of characters to be LGBTQIA and racial minorities. pic.twitter.com/oFRUiuu9JG
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) March 29, 2022
The Florida legislation also prompted the company to reinsert footage of a lesbian kiss that was wholly irrelevant to the plot into the Pixar film “Lightyear,” which subsequently bombed upon its release.
Nobody seemed to figure out why it fizzled, but they all assured us it had nothing to do with rubbing the company’s wokeness in middle America’s faces. Or with the voice for Buzz Lightyear, actor Chris Evans, calling those who objected to the obvious LGBT virtue-signaling “idiots” and “dinosaurs” — that didn’t factor into it, either.
And just to top it off, in June, just after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a leaked internal memo indicated the company would pay for employees to travel out of state to obtain abortions if it was illegal in their jurisdiction.
Can you still morally support Disney?
So, if, say, Polygon’s Patches gets too hot and bothered while watching “She-Hulk” (as he’s apparently wont to do) with a female Disney employee and forgets to use appropriate protection when the physical act of love occurs, he doesn’t have to worry about the burdens of fathering the life he created.
Perhaps it’s for the best, at least for Patches. Once his progeny gets a bit older, the writer might not be so impressed that the director of “one of the horniest shows currently streaming on Disney Plus” (sorry — couldn’t resist one last laugh) is sexualizing his kid by writing explicit scenes with 9-year-olds in mind, no matter how “sex-positive” they may be.
As for the director herself, Patches wrote that “Coiro’s next project is a episodic [sic] reimagining of ‘The Spiderwick Chronicles’ for Disney Plus.” For the uninitiated, “The Spiderwick Chronicles” is a series of children’s books.
Mickey help us all.
