50 years after release, Disney’s Robin Hood is still a life-changing furry phenomenon

polygon.com:

A Century of Disney

The 100th anniversary of the Walt Disney Company has arrived with the requisite amount of fanfare, from special merchandise and food items at the Disney parks to a new studio logo in front of its movies. 2023 also marks the 50th anniversary of a specific Disney animated movie that may not get the same level of corporate self-congratulation: 1973’s Robin Hood, which adapts one of the most recognizable English adventure stories of all time with a full cast of anthropomorphized animals. The film’s half-century mark is an appropriate moment to consider how it’s one of the earliest examples of a Disney story resonating with a marginalized community. Though the studio has been slow to create stories about non-white characters, with Robin Hood, it accidentally made a film that hit hard with furries.

“Robin Hood was undoubtedly my entry point into the furry community,” says Katav, a Chicago-based Ph.D. candidate studying the Hebrew Bible. (Katav is their furry identity, and their preferred way of being identified in this piece.) Though not all fans of anthropomorphic animal art associate that fandom with sexuality, or associate Disney’s Robin Hood with sexual awakening, Katav does, and they note that a specific image within the film seemed to unlock a personal longing. “More than anything, I wanted to be [Robin] in the scene in which he’s tied up. So as I was exploring my sexuality, this definitely came to mind.”

Part of the unique qualities that made Robin Hood a furry media mainstay comes down to the fact that the title character — a dashing, jovial hero who robs from the rich and gives to the poor — is a fox.

“Robin’s role as an inspiring fox was huge. You could (and still can) see his influence in