How to Train your Gay Dragon…I mean Dragon

My wife is bonkers about How to Train your Dragon. She’s studying to be a vet-tech, so I suppose a lot of its appeal is in the relationship Hiccup has with Toothless, a big cute animal. I think it’s a good movie, but if you were someone who was offended by Sponge Bob telling kids it’s okay to be gay, then Dragon has some secrets you might not want to know.

Hiccup is a frail effeminate kid. Even his village’s females are manlier than him. He is different than everybody else living there, and his interests seem to be focused against the grain. Still, he tries hard to blend in and win the approval of his father. Now, while Hiccup does show a sexual interest in the female Astrid, I’m not talking about what is explicit. I’m talking of the implicit. Outwardly, this is children’s fairytale. As such, it has to follow the rules of your common fairytale. Hiccup is the prince archetype and Astrid is the princess archetype. Hiccup is expected to save the day and win the girl in the end. That’s how these things go. However, would the plot really be affected if you removed her from the story? The core of this film circles around the relationship between Hiccup and Toothless, not Hiccup and Astrid. This is a story about the love two male characters have for each other. Not in an explicit sexual manner, but an implicit deep connection.

Dragons in this village are seen as monsters, as evil. The Vikings are intolerant, preferring to kill the dragons instead of trying to understand them. Hiccup tries to force himself to kill a dragon like everyone else would, but he can’t do it. He instead unties the dragon and begins their relationship.

In another scene, Hiccup is handed an old book about dragons. This book is essentially the collected believes on dragons of the tribe, a dragon bible if you will. Hiccup flips through this bible, finding that the beliefs he now holds in no way match up to that of the populace. He feels further alienated, as if he’s doing something wrong. To continue the biblical nature of the dragon book, I refer to the scene where Hiccup must face and kill a dragon. When he turns his back on the tribe by throwing down his helmet, his father strikes a rail and sends the dragon into attack mode. The set-up of this scene is much like how the Romans fed Christians to the lions in the Coliseum for abandoning the old dogma for something new.

I do not believe that the homosexual overtone here is by accident. In one scene the word “abomination” is used to describe a dragon. In another, Hiccup tries using the excuse of making leather outfits to cover for his secretive behavior. And in the scene after the fight in the coliseum, Hiccup faces his father who is outraged over his son’s relationship with the dragon. If you replace the word “dragon” with “boyfriend” the scene suddenly takes on a new meaning.

At a certain point in the movie, Hiccup says, “Everything we know about you guys is wrong.” From this point on, Hiccup is essentially an atheist. He no longer has a dogma to follow. This harkens back to what Lewis wrote about being a pagan first.

In the end, the village finally comes around, but not before Hiccup sacrifices himself and then is reborn a new man…with a metal foot. The end credits play over the pages of a book titled, “How to Train your Dragon.” This would most defiantly be written by Hiccup, his new testament.