In these dizzyingly divided times, perhaps the one thing all Americans can agree on at this point is that there are too many freaking streaming services. When Disney announced plans for its own streaming service, which went live November 12, it entered a very crowded field. So how would the Mouse stand out from its competition?
One major difference Disney pointed out early on was its decision to stick with “family-friendly” content—G, PG, and PG-13 films only. This meant that its superhero options wouldn’t include the R-rated films it added to its catalog after acquiring 20th Century Fox, Logan or Deadpool—or other more adult Fox films for that matter. It also meant that while The Mandalorian was billed as “darker, freakier,” it probably wouldn’t be showing any gore or Baby Yoda cloaca (look it up—or don’t). But when lines are drawn, it is human nature to seek their edges. Is there truly no adult content on Disney+? What, exactly, has Disney deemed SFS (safe for streaming) or banned as too naughty? One must naturally inquire: Is there anything even remotely raunchy, ribald, or freaky available on Disney+?
To find out, I first went through the films to see whether I recognized any movies with some dirty, nasty moments in them. There were a number of films with titles that sounded filthy, but which are not, like: Double Teamed, The Swap, and Once Upon a Mattress. All shockingly devoid of even a whiff of naughtiness. I asked my colleague Miles Surrey, who recently spent 12 hours watching Disney+, whether he’d seen anything that could be considered “sexy.” He noted that The Love Bug has a number of surprisingly ribald jokes, including intimations that “Dean Jones fucked Herbie.” Surrey also noted that Herbie (the car) locks a woman inside of him so a man can flirt with her. Disturbing! But not, it must be said, hot.
Next, I reviewed a few famous urban legends about hidden Disney freakiness. It does still appear like the bishop who weds Ariel and Prince Eric in The Little Mermaid has a hint of a boner during the ceremony; however, during an interview with HuffPost in 2015, animator Tom Sito noted that the questionable bump is meant to be the man’s knees. “The joke was he’s a little man standing on a box and his robes, his big bishop robes, are draped over everything so they’re covering his whole body. And people are just seeing what they want to see,” Sito said at the time.
Suspicious, but OK. (And in the end it’s a moot point anyway—the Disney+ version of Little Mermaid doesn’t show any of the bishop’s body parts, knees or otherwise.)
There’s also one legendary, frequently rewound scene in Aladdin in which Aladdin whispers something that sounds an awful lot like “good teenagers take off their clothes” as he’s about to take Jasmine on his magic carpet. I rewound and watched it several times, and it sounds like he’s just shooing away Jasmine’s tiger, so if Aladdin ever was surreptitiously trying to encourage youthful nudity, he no longer is. Likewise, the Disney+ version of The Lion King appears to have removed the infamous dust poof that looks like it spells “SEX” (in actuality, it spelled “SFX” as a very dorky in-joke for the special-effects team). I watched the scene five times and it just looks like a generic, nonsexual swirl of airborne debris now. Disney had already altered this scene to remove the ambiguous letters back in the early 2000s, so it may have selected the newer version to offer on its streaming service. And while 1977’s The Rescuers did actually feature a brief glimpse of a Playboy centerfold—an animators’ joke in two frames of the cartoon, too quick to see when played at normal speed—Sito also confirmed to HuffPost that Disney removed the offending bit. In 1999, when Disney accidentally released a VHS edition of the film using the original version, it had to recall millions of the video cassettes due to the flash of salaciousness—20 years later there seems to be no need for such measures.
I asked Disney+ whether it had any specific rules banning nudity or excising adult content from its offerings. “Disney+ is a family-friendly service, so no, no rated R content. The max rating for programming on Disney+ is PG-13/TV14,” a spokesperson emailed me. While they did not respond to my question about whether they were tailoring programming for the service, as I browsed around its offerings, I noticed that nothing appeared to be changed to be more kid-friendly. Princess Leia is still in her gold bikini in Return of the Jedi, the blue aliens still have hair-coitus in Avatar, Homer still says “ass” on The Simpsons. So perhaps there was something a little frisky hidden among High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, Baby Yoda, and all the available Swiss Families Robinson on offer?
“So just to confirm, there is no nudity?” I emailed back, like a complete pervert.
“I’m pretty sure the PG13 rating dictates no nudity in sexual context…” they responded.
Sensing that the people in the publicity department for Disney+ no longer welcomed my admittedly objectively upsetting emails, I turned to a far more enthusiastic assessor of horny-making content—Jim McBride, who is best known as Mr. Skin, the founder of a website devoted to cataloging instances of celebrity nudity and sex stuff in television and film. McBride once helped me figure out whether Euphoria had shown the most male nudity in mainstream programming, so I suspected he’d be willing to help. Within a few hours, he responded with the following missive:
Okay - we went through EVERYTHING. The closest is Femi Taylor in 1983’s RETURN OF THE JEDI - but she had nipple patches.
Also Brendan Fraser ALMOST showing his butt in GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE.
That’s it!
So there you have it, the full extent of adult content on Disney+, truly the Puritan’s go-to streaming service. Nipple patches and Brendan Fraser’s near-butt.
That’s it!