Fire Island — Disney’s gay romcom comes loaded with controversy
Asian-American-led movie mixing Jane Austen with ketamine and fellatio arrives in tricky times for the studio
In chipper new comedy Fire Island, the New York resort of the same name is called the “gay Disney World”. Last summer when the movie was shot, the line would have merely seemed impish, given that the financing came from Disney itself. Now it can’t help but sound loaded in a gay romance released in tricky times for the company’s relationship with the LGBT+ community.
First came a lack of response from the company in March to Florida’s new “Don’t Say Gay” school legislation, prompting angry staff walkouts at Disney. Then came a change of course into public opposition of the bill that angered Republicans, leading to Disney World being stripped of its ability to “self-govern” in the state. All things considered, Fire Island could be taken as a sincere landmark movie for the studio, Disney merely exploiting a market — or both. Either way, it finds itself still more caught up in the American culture war than it would have been in 2021.
Kudos to the film, then, that it feels as breezy as it does, a wry, intelligent riff on Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen is a favourite of the resolutely single Noah (Joel Kim Booster, who also wrote the script) for all he disputes her universal truth that every single man “must be in want of a wife”. Here in place of the Bennet sisters, Noah and his affable misfit group of friends arrive on the island for their annual fix of hedonism, despite being poor relations amid doctors and lawyers with zero body fat.
Booster deals deftly not just with sexuality but with class and race (he and co-star Bowen Yang are Asian American), a smart grasp of pop culture adding another flavour to the familiar tale of lovestruck crossed wires. Ketamine and fellatio are new ground both for Austen adaptations and Disney, but the movie’s most radical step might be how subtly conventional it really is. Progress means sugar-coated romcoms for all.