‘So now, I had a secret life’: Understanding the queerness of Ratatouille

Abstract

Remy’s character arc in Ratatouille follows his journey from rural secrecy to a celebrated urban openness, a narrative that I propose intrinsically parallels that of many queer adolescents. Through Remy’s alternative masculinity, and queer narrative tropes such as the ‘closet’, ‘coming out’ and an alternative gaze, Ratatouille codifies Remy’s otherness firmly within the realms of queerness. Given The Walt Disney Company’s recent fluctuant response to Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill, it is worth engaging with the comparison between Remy’s culinary otherness and contemporary cultural understandings of the queer male, so as to understand how Disney has recently managed to balance the tightrope between LGBT representation and conservatism. Through a deployment of studies on queer otherness, literary connotations of rats, and ‘food porn’, this article explores the ways in which a mass media conglomerate like Disney has subconsciously mobilized alternative sexuality and the stories of non-normative identities in recent history. In doing so, we see that Remy’s otherness is abundantly delineated as queer, though rid of its sociopolitical subtext in order to appeal to the largest possible audience.