Victoria Alonso reveals Disney fired her for opposing LGBTQ+ censorship
Victoria Alonso had been an integral member as the Executive Vice-President on the Kevin Fiege-led Marvel Studios executive board. So, naturally, her removal from Marvel in March 2023 sent shockwaves through Hollywood, with the studio already struggling with allegations of overworked VFX teams and a dwindling artistic quality in their releases.
Alonso, an openly-queer Argentine producer started her tenure with Iron Man and since, executive-produced every Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film and shows up until 2023’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Several theories have been speculated behind the 57-year-old’s firing from Marvel (and its parent company Disney).
But now, Alonso’s own legal team has an answer and it has to do with LGBTQ+ erasure.
Why was Alonso fired?
Alonso has had a steady track record as a producer with solely Marvel films. However, in 2022, she went on to produce the historical legal drama Argentina, 1985 that went on to win the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film this year. Industry insiders suggested that her decision to produce this non-Marvel film breached a non-compete clause of her contract with Marvel.
However, in a press statement shared and written by her lawyer Patty Glaser, Alonso claims that Disney actually fired her for her views on opposing censorship over LGBTQ+ related content within the studio’s properties.
To quote Glaser’s statement,
Did Disney and Marvel actually censor anything queer?
The exact nature of these censored scenes or properties involved hasn’t been revealed but it is clear that Alonso is not on good terms with her former employers. It is being speculated that the “reprehensible” thing in the press statement alludes to Disney’s recent decision to blur out queer-friendly imagery in Quantumania for the movie’s Kuwait release.
Kuwait, a widely homophobic nation where gay people can be prosecuted and punished under a “debauchery” law, is still an integral market for Marvel as is evident from its censorship of content that wasn’t even that integral to the plot. Quantumania didn’t feature any queer characters but protagonist Scott Lang walks past a shop that featured the word “Pride” along with rainbow decorations.
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According to a report by The Hollywood Reporter, Marvel executives requested the film’s editors to blur out the rainbow imagery in January, a decision which Alonso wasn’t very fond of.
As Alonso has been overseeing visual effects for Marvel since the start, her answer was in the negative, following which the execs proceeded to make the changes through an outside vendor!
Other “adjustments” in Marvel’s past
Kuwait has proven to be quite a demanding market for Marvel. Even before Quantumania, 2022’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever came under fire in the Middle-Eastern state for a scene that involved the female warriors Aneka and Ayo sharing a kiss... on the forehead.
Even though the two characters are lovers in the comic books, the movie only subtly hinted at their romance and had no mentions of the word “lesbian”. And yet, the forehead kiss had to be eventually removed from the theatrical cut in Kuwait.
A similarly profitable yet challenging market is China where the first Black Panther film’s posters had to be released with a masked T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman). Even though one of the official posters featured the hero without a mask, the masked posters were the only ones allowed in China given that the Chinese populace might have negative reactions to seeing a black man!
Similarly, in Doctor Strange, the sorcerer known as the Ancient One was supposed to be of Tibetan heritage but Marvel yet again feared a boycott from China if an integral character belonged to the highly-controversial territory that the country allegedly “annexed”. So instead of a Tibetan person, the studio resorted to Tilda Swinton (a white woman) for the role!
Doctor Strange’s sequel The Multiverse of Madness also faced backlash in Saudi Arabia where it was banned just because the newly-introduced character America Chavez is openly-queer in the comics. Spoiler alert: America has no romantic partners in the movie regardless. She just mentions her "two moms" in one scene.
Saudi Arabia had similarly banned Eternals as it included a gay character Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry) kissing his husband. Homophobic fans similarly review-bombed the film for this one kiss.
Marvel is trying to increase its diversity (whether or not “tokenistic” as some might argue) with more female-led properties, queer characters, and multi-cultural superheroes. Ms Marvel is of Pakistani-origin. Loki Season 1 pointed to Loki being either asexual or pansexual. MCU’s future roster includes an original Native American character called Kahhori while Sabra will be Marvel’s first Israeli superhero (although that decision again comes with much controversy for anti-Palestinian fears).
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But despite all these changes, Marvel bowing down to censorship in international territories and Alonoso’s new alleged claim might affect the studio’s public image.