How The Mitchells vs the Machines Excelled at Queer Storytelling
As Pride month wraps up, I wanted to talk about one of my favorite new movies. This film came out right at the height of the pandemic. It brought me so much joy, and I have returned to it constantly in the last year. I am talking about The Mitchells vs. The Machines.
The Mitchells vs. The Machines centers around the Mitchells family. The protagonist is Katie, an aspiring filmmaker who is excited to start her new life in college. She clashes constantly with her pragmatic father Rick, who just doesn’t understand technology and the internet. Her mother Linda is the heart of the family working to try and bridge her daughter and husband back together. Little brother Aaron is the dinosaur-obsessed kid who supports and shares in Katie’s life (many fans theorize that Aaron is neurodivergent which is fantastic representation if true). With their pug, Monchi, the family set out on a cross-country road trip after Rick takes it upon himself one last effort to fix his relationship with his daughter. During the trip, the robot apocalypse strikes leaving the Mitchells as the only ones who can save the world.
I love this movie so much. While it has the prominent names of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller on it (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, The Lego Movie), I came into this film as a fan of Gravity Falls. The Disney show’s alumni Mike Rianda and Jeff Rowe wrote the film with Rianda as the director. Early storyboards and pitch materials were by alumni Matt Braly (Amphibia) and Dana Terrace (The Owl House). Gravity Falls series creator Alex Hirsch served as a creative consultant for the film.
Anyone who follows my writing on the Geeky Waffle knows I’m a huge fan of Gravity Falls, The Owl House, and Amphibia and have discussed the shows at length. This is a team of people who I love and trust their stuff as they repeatedly put out solid work over the last ten years. With Lord and Miller’s names and track record on The Mitchells, there was very little chance that I wouldn’t like the movie.
I’ve wanted to discuss The Mitchells vs the Machines for some time now. There is so much to love about this movie. It rightfully won the Annie Award for Best Animated Feature. For why that’s important, the Annie Awards just focuses on animation and is considered one of the top accolades in the medium. The Emmys and Academy Awards, while prominent and important, don’t always take into account the work and importance of animation. Just see the backlash to the whole “animation is just for kids” from the 2022 Academy Awards.
There is so much I could discuss about The Mitchells from the new technique of animation created for the film. How they took hand-painted illustrations and transformed them into CGI. How they made new lightning techniques for their characters. How they created brand new software to achieve the watercolor look of the movie. They even had a manifesto to push for a new art style. There is the blending of puppetry into the movie to showcase different forms of mixed media. The humor captures internet and meme culture. Some critiques griped it would date the film. I argue that all the memes used are from Katie’s lifetime and what she was raised on. Even the climactic song “Live Your Life” by T.I. and Rihanna is a callback to one of the earliest memes on Newgrounds and YouTube being the Numa Numa Guy.
I could talk about the heartfelt moments of Rick and Katie learning to see the other. The wonderful family dynamic of the group. Linda becoming a powerful warrior in her own right. Aaron being his lovable self. The guys over at Cinema Therapy did a fantastic job breaking down the characters. There’s the commentary on tech companies as the internet is an essential part of our world. Mark Mothersbaugh’s soundtrack is excellent as he mixed digital scores with hand-played instruments to blend Katie and Rick’s stories. “Mall Robots Attack” lives rent-free on a lot of my playlists.
The Furby scene! That speaks for itself.
There are also my lovable robot boys Eric and Deborahbot 5000 that have my favorite one-liners and represent the theme of changing one’s programming. Katie’s internal vision of how she sees the world is relatable. Actually, every character in the main cast has something we all connect to. I grew up a Katie, but as I get older, I find myself with some of Rick and Linda’s traits. This movie reaches across generations and a fan can grow up and revisit it.
I could probably write an entire dissertation about The Mitchells vs. the Machines. Every single time I watch it, I see new details in the background. I love to pause a scene to enjoy the subtle jokes hidden in signs or in the fine print of saving Prancer the mule. This film has so, so many levels and there’s a ton to love about this movie.
As I said at the top, I want to focus on talking about one part of Katie that this movie handles so well. I want to discuss Katie as the queer protagonist. In the wake of controversies such as Florida’s Don’t Say Gay bill and Disney’s reaction to it as well as LGBTQIA+ rights constantly challenged, movies like The Mitchells vs. the Machines are more important than ever. In a Q&A with the creators of the film, the moderator Rebecca Sugar (Steven Universe) explained why queer stories are important stating:
“The exclusion of queer characters in stories and in media for kids has really alarming implications. By leaving these stories out of media for kids, queer kids are essentially told during their formative years that they don’t or shouldn’t exist. And so that’s why it was so exciting for me to see in [The Mitchells vs the Machines] a central character to be confirmed as queer on screen. This is a big first and it speaks to the barriers being broken.”
Author’s note: This is a very good Q&A talking about the process and trials of writing queer stories in animation. I highly suggest watching the 17-minute video after reading this article. It’s fantastic.
But how exactly did The Mitchells vs the Machines go about telling Katie’s story?
The execution of the movie was a big part of why The Mitchells works so well for me. Instead of waiting for an answer from the studio, the creators put in the queer content without Sony’s initial approval. Phil Lord said in the Q&A that they just went ahead and wrote Katie’s queerness in so they could in turn challenge Sony and say, “Are you really going to make us cut this out?” While they had to still convince some higher-ups, Sony was relatively open and excited to make a queer protagonist. This is really inspiring compared to the many stories that come out of their competitor Disney and their cuts of LGBTQIA+ content.
Something else they also discussed in the Q&A were the shows that put in the work before them. We have been so spoiled with the plethora of queer stories in animation lately. Shows like Steven Universe, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, and Adventure Time paved the way for a movie like The Mitchells to be made. But it’s also easy to forget what it was like prior to these historic series.
I remember growing up in the 90’s and the shows I watched as a young queer person. There were stories in animation where characters have been queer-coded over the decades. Disney villains are quite famous for their coding, but even that in itself is harmful. When the only queer-coded characters on screen are villains, it sends the message that queer people are evil. The other route that queer coding takes is heavily implying that a character is queer but never actually confirming it on screen. That is not queer representation and a lot of times can lead to queer baiting, the promise of queer characters in a show and then not delivering on them.
There is also the “Very Special Episodes” format of shows which have a PSA air about them talking about how we’re all equal. In the 80’s and 90’s, these were often focused on race, gender, or just random advice from the G.I. Joe guys. But gender and sexuality were usually left out, leaving questions for young queer people if they were actually equal. It wasn’t until the 2000’s and 2010’s that queer content began to make more strides despite the many roadblocks for creators. But when a person’s experience is boiled down to a special episode, it makes them stand out. Their entire identity is wrapped up in being gay. Being queer is just one piece of a person, not someone’s entire being.
Then there was also the censorship. I loved Sailormoon and Cardcaptor Sakura. Still, American censors were adamant to rip out any queer content from those shows when they were brought to the states. Very famously, Sailor Uranus and Neptune, who are a lesbian couple, were changed to be cousins. But the censors left in their flirting because implying incest was far better than being gay on-screen APPARENTLY. Between queer coding, isolating a queer person in “Very Special Episodes,” and censors, a lot of time queer characters in media were actually quite harmful when not written well.
What I love about The Mitchells vs the Machines is for a good majority of the film it actually follows some of these decades-long tropes in writing queer characters. Instead of taking the harmful route, the writers and animators were smart to subvert those tropes in a lot of ways before showcasing how to do them correctly.
The Mitchells vs the Machines hides details throughout the entire film hinting at Katie’s queerness. One of the most subtle moments is seeing the movies Katie has made in the opening minutes. There are several films hinting at Katie loving women including one film about asking a girl to prom and another titled Portrait of an Idiot on Fire, a parody of the film Portrait of a Lady on Fire about two women in a lesbian affair. Previous animated films that would code their queer characters would hint at moments like this. It puts it on the audience to search for these clues to decipher the secret lives of the characters.
The Mitchells starts to move the imagery a bit further very quickly. More details emerge as the film progresses. Another subtle one is the rainbow pin Katie wears on her jacket throughout the film. A lesser movie would leave that in as their only indication that Katie is queer. But The Mitchells is better than that. Not as subtle is the use of rainbows more and more throughout the movie. In Katie’s artist vision, rainbows often indicate her happiness and wonder in moments. In the movies she creates, rainbows are a constant, showcasing her putting her true self on screen. Again, a lesser movie would leave it at that for the audience to interpret how they wanted.
The next step that The Mitchells vs the Machines use is taking the vagueness of queer coding and then making it more explicit. In Katie’s opening monologue, there is one moment showing Katie trying on various clothes from suspenders and sporting a fedora to wearing a dress. Oh boy! Did I ever have a fedora phase trying to figure out my identity! This is a trope often used with queer characters as they try on different outerwear to try and figure out who they are internally. She also talks about feeling different and like an outsider to the norm. It took her a while to figure herself out. These are all very queer-coded scenes that are often used to describe someone who is discovering their queer journey.
That alone is vague storytelling. It’s also the normal kind of storytelling that big animation studios do so not to offend people. The idea is to keep it vague enough to where it can hit a wide audience. Which is not to say it’s entirely bad. This makes Katie relatable, even to people who aren’t queer. Everyone has felt like an outsider at some point in their lives. Everyone has those moments trying to figure out how they wish to present themself to the world. It’s a narrative device that allows a wide audience to connect with Katie. The issue is that many movies and shows would leave it at that and not go further into Katie’s queerness. It’s the bare minimum, storytelling 101 to get the audience to like the character.
The Mitchells then quickly moves a step farther by laying down more hints. In the opening monologue, the movie becomes queerer. The specifics are what start to separate this movie from others. As Katie talks with her college friends, there is another girl named Jade who compliments her work. While there are other people on the screen, in the Katie vision there is a little heart as she notes she found her people. Found family is a big theme for the queer community, but it’s also just a common theme in general in storytelling. Heck, like all of Star Wars is about found family.
By this point, these creators have done all of the usual work that other media has done in the past when it comes to LGBTQIA+ stories. It's the specific throughline of Jade that separates Katie’s story from the rest. In the first act as the family prepares for their road trip, Katie says there’s a really cool girl name Jade she wants to meet. Jade and Katie text constantly throughout the first act of the film. When Katie texts Jade, more hearts appear around her in her Katie vision. As the robots attack, Jade is the person Katie checks in on first.
At no point does Katie officially come out on screen. Not that she needs to because coming out stories are so overdone. For decades if there was a gay story on screen, it was almost always about the queer kid coming out to their family or friends. Sometimes it’s a harmful trope because the act of coming out is used as a narrative device for fear. It’s there to cause conflict and drama instead of simply letting a queer kid just exist in the story. This is another way that The Mitchells vs the Machines stays away from past queer stories. Michael Rianda clearly states in the Q&A that being queer shouldn’t cause conflict in a movie. The creators were adamant that being queer would just be the norm for Katie and everyone already supports her. This allows her to give advice to her brother when she finds out that Aaron has a crush on their neighbor. Katie flat out says, “Don’t hide your feelings, man. That’s no way to live.”
Queerness is just a piece of Katie. It’s not her entire identity. While being queer is an important part of a person, it does not define 100% of who they are. This is why at no point in The Mitchells does Katie’s queerness take over the film for her to have, for example, a big coming out scene. Compare her to someone like Kurt in Glee where his being gay drove a good chunk of his stories. And I don’t want to downplay Kurt in any way. For all its flaws, Glee was important in a lot of ways to the queer community. But a lot of Kurt’s stories reduced him down at times to be a caricature. He was “The Gay One” which goes back to the “A Very Special Episode,” PSA mindset of that being his defining trait. The Mitchells focuses on all of Katie. She is a fully fleshed-out character with wants and needs. She has flaws and messes up spectacularly at times. She’s a filmmaker. She’s a teenage girl. She loves art and movies. She rocks out to music. She has a great relationship with her little brother and mother and wants to connect with her father.
Katie is more than just “the gay character.” She is Katie Mitchell and this movie does a good job establishing that while important, her queerness is just one part of her. At no point is her queerness ever used as a source of conflict either.
And then they stick the landing. This is where The Mitchells excel because many shows and movies don’t hit this final crucial moment. The Mitchells come right out at the end and say that Katie and Jade are dating. Linda and Rick are excited to meet their daughter’s girlfriend. It’s so simple but so powerful. There are no leftover what-ifs if Katie is queer. It’s there plain on screen. It’s stated clearly.
It’s maddening that it is this simple. They set up that Katie likes a girl. She is dating the girl at the end of the movie. Boom! Done! It’s that easy!
But there are so many hurdles that animated movies especially have to jump through. It took loud backlash from Pixar creators to get Disney to put a queer kiss back into Lightyear. More often than not, these moments are blink and you miss it scenes. They’re so fast that they’re easily removed for overseas markets. Or they’re so small that those same markets don’t bother to cut them (looking at you The Rise of Skywalker). A single moment can make queer content work. It’s really this easy, but money and pandering over and over to bigots keep this from happening.
Katie being queer is so well done. They use the same tropes that other media has done for years and then take it to the next step. They make it part of Katie’s story, but it’s not slapping you in the face going “THIS IS A GAY CHARACTER! GET IT!?” It’s not the conflict of her story. It’s not harmful tropes. It doesn’t isolate her. There’s no queer coding because Katie just exists as a queer woman. It’s not muddled. It’s clearly defined and she gets the girl in the end.
This is why The Mitchells vs the Machines excels at being a piece of LGBTQIA+ media. It takes all the mistakes from past media and rights them. It allows Katie to be what makes her great. Because she’s more than just a queer woman.
She’s a Mitchell.
This queer storytelling is just one of the many reasons The Mitchells vs the Machines swept the Annie Awards. It was Netflix’s biggest animated movie ever with over 50 million views in its first month of streaming. I hope the success of this film will lead to more queer stories in animated films to come.
To end this, here are the words from the creators from their acceptance speech when they won Best Animated Feature at the Annie Awards:
“[Our creators] proved you can portray a queer main character in an animated movie that plays to kids and adults alike. They proved all the things that everybody always tells you are impossible just are not.”
