Boycotts like this, and the Starbucks Red Cup controversy or the uproar over the hunting death of Cecil the Lion, or the death of Harambe the gorilla aren’t really about the Henagar Drive-In, or the red cups, or lions, or gorillas. Quite simply, the boycott and the 50,000-strong petition don’t amount to even a drop in the box office bucket.īut online, the theater’s boycott fits a classic model of online outrage.
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Current box office projections have the movie raking in over $200 million worldwide on opening weekend. The Henagar Drive-In’s decision to not show Beauty and the Beast will affect, at most, approximately 2,500 local residents who will have to, according to MovieFone, drive to the Hollywood 10 Cinema in Scottsboro (around 16 miles away) if they want to see the movie. And it raises a question: Who’s really boycotting the film? On social media platforms, there’s a backlash to the boycott.Įssentially, the Henagar Drive-In’s boycott is now much bigger than the town of Henagar. There have also been many articles denouncing the boycott, like a piece at The Christian Post which questions whether participants are being hypocritical by denouncing their fellow human beings. The petition, which states that “Disney wants to normalize homosexuality in its productions,” has over 50,000 signatures - more than 20 times Henagar, Alabama’s population of 2,300 people (according to the 2010 census). Perhaps the biggest sign of the boycott’s reach is a petition from the American Family Association (AFA), a fundamentalist “family values” group, in support of the boycott. It’s unclear who wrote the post, but it quickly went viral, and national news outlets like USA Today picked it up. We will not compromise on what the Bible teaches." I know there will be some that do not agree with this decision. If I can't sit through a movie with God or Jesus sitting by me, then we have no business showing it. “We all make choices and I am making mine. "When companies continually force their views on us, we need to take a stand,” the March 2 Facebook post stated. Earlier this month, a representative of the theater posted a now-deleted Facebook note declaring that they would not show the movie because LeFou is gay, and homosexuality goes against Christian beliefs.
The Henagar Drive-In in Henagar, Alabama, is the movie theater at the center of this controversy.
The boycott in Alabama is the perfect outrage story for both sides It’s about the outrage culture we’ve grown so accustomed to, the spectacle, and the opportunity to define ourselves online by publicly performing our morals. It’s not just about Beauty and the Beast or gay rights. That Alabama theater is now part of the national news cycle - part of the larger discussion on LGBTQ tolerance.īut like so many of today’s cultural controversies, this fight over boycotting the movie is part of a bigger picture.
And the news that an Alabama movie theater, Mother Russia, and Malaysian censors are seeing eye-to-eye over banning a Disney film has a novelty to it. The new Beauty and the Beast is a joyous, oddball homage to the animated classicĬondon’s rejiggering of a classic has hit a nerve: A drive-in theater in Alabama has boycotted the film, the Russian government is considering doing the same, and the film censorship board in Malaysia asked Disney to cut the film’s gay scene (the studio refused).