One of the loveliest feelings we experience is that of first love, and when that tenderness is portrayed in a sweet animation that also explores how that might feel for two boys grappling with their sexual identity, that animation is going to have an impact.
Just three days after being posted this LGBT short film has racked up almost nine million views. It was our teenage kids who showed it to us, and like them, we were touched by its tenderness.
The four-minute animated video, which went online on July 31, is about an adolescent boy, Sherwin, who runs the risk of being outed by his own heart after it pops out of his chest to chase the boy of his dreams.
It was created by animation students Beth David and Esteban Bravo for their senior thesis project at the Ringling College of Art and Design. Sherwin’s crush was originally conceived as being for a girl, but David and Bravo decided to instead make the object of his affections a male classmate.
“The moment that it turned into two boys, I completely changed my emotional response to the film,” Bravo told MTV News. “When we were trying to write the story of the film, I would hear myself get emotional.”
The short film has captured the world’s imagination, with the Human Rights Campaign posting the video on Twitter on Tuesday with the caption, “We can all relate to this.”
LTGB characters are grossly under-represented in film and TV with only 22 out of 126 major movies released in 2015 containing characters who identified as LGBT, according to the 2016 Studio Responsibility Index from GLAAD (a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy group). GLAAD created the annual report in 2012 to map the “quantity, quality and diversity” of LGBT people as in films released by Hollywood’s seven largest studios (Disney, Fox, Lionsgate, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner Brothers).
Bravo continues, “A lot of people have been yearning to see this kind of relationship portrayed not only in media but in animation. People are very excited, and a lot of LGBT people who needed this kind of representation finally see themselves represented, and that inspires them.”
David and Bravo are both now pursuing individual careers in animation but say they plan to create more content together – we can’t wait to see what they do next.
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