Is ferdinand the bull gay

Illustrated by Robert Lawson, Faber and Faber, 2017. The Norton Anthology of Theory and

Criticism, edited by Leitch et al, W.W Norton and Company, 2001, pp.2485-2490.

DeNada Dance Theatre.

Animals, in most contemporary societies, are generally other, and their otherness is one that children relate to very easily (Halberstam 145).

Every night, he watches with admiration as the Moon dances and sings flamenco, and soon discovers that he identifies as Lola, a flamenco dancing cow. When he finally wears the shoes, the society of animals is silenced, and thanks to the heels and the wild footwork he can do with them, Rosario is scared off in her second attempt at fighting him. Set in 1930’s Spain, and structured along the format of a bullfight, with four distinct rounds (and their “entre’actes”), it tells the story of Lolo, a little bull that loves flowers and is scared of bullfights- especially of Rosario the matador.

They have expectations and demands concerning Ferdinand, and they also fear him.

51-72.

Butler, Judith. Many of the games we played in the studio were concerned with images of constructing gender through props and costume, and many of these were choreographed into the performance. The Story of Ferdinand. When developing the characters in the studio, we improvised through moving in space with the physical characteristics of the character (downward weight and broad chest for Rosario, undulating arms and spiralling back for Luna), playing along a scale of exaggeration in the amplitude of the movement.

Girls are taught to cross their legs when they sit, boys should not angle their arms and break their wrists because a broken wrist “implies weakness…serving as a visual metaphor, perhaps, for a broken weapon” (357). The story, “will show the children to be what they want to be and the parents to realize that their children should be as they want, without having to apologize for them,” says a review in ferdinandfull.com.

The message is further helped along by Nick Jonas’ Home, which is featured in the film.

The lyrics should be clear to LGBT+ fans: “Always out of place, I knew I needed something new for me/I never knew just what that was.”

A later verse evokes what every out LGBT+ person has felt – relief.

Routledge, 2012.

Leaf, Munro. Did it hurt!”- Ferdinand “ran around puffing and snorting, butting and pawing the ground” by accident, moving just like the other bulls do. Robert Lawson’s illustrations, as Martínez points out (35), make an interesting hermeneutical use of close-ups and longshots. The text has experienced two popular adaptations: Disney’s 1938 cartoon, Ferdinand the Bull, and Carlos Saldanha’s 2017 animated movie, Ferdinand.

It is a movie that should ring true to LGBT+ children and adults. In doing so we portrayed the agency of gender definition: Lolo chooses not to perform the movements Rosario demands of him, and instead decides to learn the dance that Luna shares with him. “Eluding Capture: The Science, Culture and Pleasure of ‘Queer’ Animals.” Queer Ecologies: Sex, nature, politics, desire, edited by Mortimer-Sandilands, C and Erickson, B., Indiana UP, 2010, pp.

In terms of exploring queerness, animals are a particularly good allegory because of their relation to nature, and how this translates to the historical collocation of queer identities and desires as against nature (Alaimo 52).  The Story of Ferdinand, like many other texts for children, makes a clear distinction between the civilized world and the wild.