Rapper Snoop Dogg has added fuel to the culture wars fire with a new swipe at LGBTQ+ representation in children’s films, pointing to the recent Pixar release Lightyear as an example of where he felt it was inappropriate.

On a recent episode of the It’s Giving podcast with host Sarah Fontenot, Snoop said that he had taken his grandson to see Lightyear earlier this year, and had been caught off guard by the inclusion of a same-sex couple in the animated feature.

The director’s cut of Lightyear is a spinoff of the Toy Story franchise, with Chris Evans returning to voice the space-age sci-fi character he previously played in the Avengers movies. While the character itself is male, Lightyear features a same-sex relationship as part of the main character’s storyline, including a kiss between two women.

The LGBTQ+ moment was a central part of the culture war firestorm, and was even removed from the movie before its release after conservative voices complained. However, the kiss was later reinstated amid Pixar employee backlash and advocacy for the feature.

During the podcast, Snoop revealed that while watching the film, he was suddenly interrupted by his grandson, who had questions about the relationship he was seeing on screen. “Why, my grandson, in the middle of the movie, like, ‘Papa Snoop, how does she have a baby with a woman? She was a woman,” Snoop recalled. “Oh s—, I didn’t come in for this s—. I just came to watch the g—— movie.”

Asking his grandson to hold on and keep watching the movie, Snoop said he was caught completely by surprise by the same-sex relationship in the movie, even though he had previously viewed Lightyear’s synopsis. “They just said she had a baby. They are both women. How does she have a baby? S—. The movie ain’t over with,” he went on to say on the podcast. “I’m scared to go to the movies. Like y’all throwing me in the middle of s— that I don’t have an answer for.”

Snoop went on to explain that the difficult part was that children can be caught off guard and ask questions when they are young, but adults do not necessarily have the answer. “It threw me for a loop,” Snoop said. “These are kids that we have to show that at this age, like, they’re going to ask questions. They are going to ask. I don’t have an answer. And I was just there to go to sleep and watch the movie. That s— woke me up.”

Responses to Comments and the Continuing Debate On Lightyear

The comments have unsurprisingly led to a new backlash against Snoop, particularly in Australia w,here the rapper is set to perform at the Australian Football League’s Grand Final later this year. According to PinkNews, AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan has expressed support for Snoop to stay on the event performance lineup regardless of his remarks.

The AFL, which has publicly backed inclusion and diversity in recent years, has not so far indicated that the rapper would be pulled from the Grand Final show.

Lightyear has itself been a source of controversy. Conservatives decried the same-sex kiss upon the film’s June 2022 release, complaining that it was not suitable for a children’s movie. The backlash against the film led to the kiss scene being temporarily removed, before Disney restored it following criticism from Pixar employees and LGBTQ+ groups.

Chris Evans, who plays Buzz Lightyear in the new film, defended the inclusion of the scene at the time in an interview with Reuters Television. “The real truth is those people are idiots,” Evans said, referring to critics of the LGBTQ+ moment. “There’s always going to be people who are afraid and unaware and trying to hold on to what was before. But those people die off like dinosaurs. I think the goal is to pay them no mind, march forward, and embrace the growth that makes us human.”

Lightyear centers around the “real” Buzz Lightyear, the space-age science-fiction character who with,in the Toy Story world was ,an inspiration to the toy which took Buzz’s name. The film’s purpose was to expand on the Toy Story movie universe by focusing on the character itself. Lightyear suffered from mixed reviews and underperformed at the box office, failing to cross $226 million worldwide despite big marketing and an obvious cross-promotion of Pixar’s most famous movie series.