In A Heartbeat Breaks LGBT+ Barrier

Closeted Sherwin confesses his love to Jonathan in the animated short film In A Heartbeat released on July 31, 2017, from directors Esteban Bravo and Beth David.

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In recent years, there has been more acceptance towards the LGBT+ community. In 2015, same sex marriage was allowed by the Obergell v. Hodges Supreme Court case and a ruling on

the Civil Rights Act. Imposed was the prohibition of workplace discrimination against LGBT+ employees, and much more.

However, one of the areas that lacks movement is the entertainment world. We have seen in the past that LGBT+ roles are played by actors who identity themselves as straight or are only minority roles in the movies. In the entertainment world, we have had movies that involve LGBT+ characters like Philadelphia, which won major awards, but no short animated movies. The most recent talk of LGBT+ involves the movie, Beauty and the Beast, where LeFou, played by Josh Gad, has an intimate moment with another man in the last moment of the movie. But that’s about it. Nothing more.  

But recently, the short animated film In a Heartbeat directed by Beth David and Esteban Bravo focuses on the idea of a gay relationship. In just seventy-two hours from the release of the film, it was viewed over 12 million times on Youtube, and it was selected for the 2017 Animation Short Films Festival and 2017 LGBTQ Shorts Film Festival.

The animated short focuses on Sherwin, a red haired boy, who is in love with Jonathan, a dark haired boy. Throughout the short, Sherwin is too timid to confess his love to Jonathan and his heart literally jumps out to confess his love for him. Sherwin must run after his own heart before it reveals his true feelings and both Sherwin and Jonathan must confront how their peers will react to the situation.

The producers of In A heartbeat did not expect the animated short to be such a huge success. And the journey to ensure it wasn’t easy either. The producers of the short first started a Kickstarter so people could donate to their project and were aiming a goal of raising $3,000 and surpassed it, eventually reaching $14,000.

Initially, the animated short was supposed to be a love interest between a girl and a boy, but they changed their minds for the love interest to be between two boys. Their actions on changing the love interest was motivated due to the fact that the producers have never seen a movie or a short basing it off of LGBT+ people. They wanted to show a film to show diversity and teaching kids at a young age that it’s okay to love someone of the same sex, a lesson that the producers missed to learn in their childhood. In an article published by TheGuardian, written by Jake Nevins, David stated, “It wasn’t until Esteban and I decided to switch it to a same-sex crush that the film started to feel like a personal story that we were invested in. It was the kind of story we wish we had seen as kids.”

The younger generation weren’t the only ones that resonated with the animated short film, but also the older generation. On the Elders React channel on Youtube, where the elderly watch movies, videos, or shows it conveyed their first time reactions and comments. In the first two minutes of the video, the elders immediately commented that it is a love interest between two boys. They did not seem upset by it, and fast forwarding to the part where the heart broke, elderly reactors, Jennifer and Catherine who were watching the film started to cry. Once the video was finished, Jennifer, with tears in her eyes, commented, “ It was powerful,” a commenter named Robert said, “They did a great job with this.”

Ever since the short has been released, Beth and David had transitioned on to better their careers. They received compliments from Adam Lambert, Ashton Kutcher, and from the Twitter account of The Human Rights Campaign. As a result, Esteban Bravo is now an intern working at Blue Sky Animation and Beth David is an employee at Jib-Jab working towards to be an animator in Sony Pictures Studios.

By Cassandra Reyes