Revisiting Balto: My First Non-Binary Icon
“You have to understand that there was no sign of all of this when you were younger.”
I’ve had many conversations with my Mom about my transition, and in our most recent conversation this piece of dialogue came up between us. I have always been open with my Mom about my lesbianism, but my transition was something completely alien to her. I meditated on these words as I lay flat on my bed, twirled my beard, and chuckled almost heartily at how wrong she was.
I’ve known I’ve liked girls since I was at least 5 years old. I gravitated toward others like me in grade school. Girls who didn’t fit the mold of what others expected of us. We didn’t flirt with the popular boys in class or talk about the latest trends in clothing or dolls. The first time I was called a dyke, I was 8 years old. I didn’t care for dresses or dolls. When my Mom dressed me for church on Sundays, I cried often out of a discomfort I couldn’t articulate. The second time, 11, when me and my friend were reading comic books and drawing anime characters on the bleachers in PE class.
Boys had always been cruel to me. To girls like me. To girls not like me. And yet, I had a palpable understanding that it was only acceptable for girls that I was attracted to, to be with boys. Girls who took the time to do their hair really nice, wear make-up, or paint their nails, did so for boys who didn’t appreciate them. My own gender performance during my adolescence and early twenties was driven by compulsory heterosexuality. Although I was never attracted to men, I wasn’t immune to pressure from my family, friends, and society at large to perform femininity for them in order to not stand out completely. I struggled to maintain an unhealthy weight, I wore form fitting clothes and dresses, and at one point in college I even wore a weave.
My life was transformed when I met my femme. In the lesbian community, femme and butch dynamics are not the same as men and women in straight relationships. Because butch lesbians are not men or men adjacent despite what people are inclined to think. In my last year of college, my femme and I met, dated, and eventually eloped. Knowing and loving my femme helped me embrace my butchness, and the lesbian community we found in online spaces proved invaluable to the both of us in curating a space for growth and sharing our lives with others like us.
I began transitioning some time after my femme and I eloped. As I grew more comfortable exploring my gender identity, I was ready to go all in on doing what felt right for me. I began taking testosterone to gain the features I wanted on my body, and scheduled top surgery later the next year.
It’s been 3 years since I’ve made these choices, and I’ve never been happier, but I’ve also arrived to a point in my life where I’ve found a loneliness that I’ve never experienced before. And in this time, I’ve rewatched a film that was very near and dear to me during my time as a child in the 90’s.
There was nothing accessible to me as a young person in the 90’s that was age appropriate that told me explicitly it was okay to be a girl and have crushes on girls. To the naked eye, there was certainly not any age appropriate media at the time that was accessible in the mainstream that told me it was ok to be a Non-Binary lesbian. But looking back on the media in the 90’s, Balto was one of the first heroes that filled this void for me.
“Not a dog, not a wolf, all he knows is what he is not.”
Balto is just as much a film about loneliness, chosen family, and having the right to be seen as who you truly are as much as it is about a film about accepting differences in one another.
When we are introduced to Balto, he is excitedly watching the dog sled race from the sidelines with Uncle Boris, a goose who is one of Balto’s family members. We travel with them both as they travel through town as the sled race finishes. The camera follows them as Balto jumps from rooftops, through open windows and back alleys and eventually ends up at the finish line of the race. The movie in this opening scene indirectly begins to craft Balto’s loneliness and desire to belong to and assimilate into a town that shuns him. I rewatched this film often as a child, and noted that while Balto wanted so desperately to fit in with the other dogs and win the affection of the humans, Uncle Boris was always a presence to ease his loneliness whether he realized it or not.
Now in hindsight, I note that in the same way that being a member of the LGBTQIA community and having only Cis-het friends, or being Black and only having White friends, or a combination of both, Balto’s feelings of isolation are a constant because while his chosen family may understand and see him for who he is (Uncle Boris, Muk and Luk), the desire for companionship and community with others like him is still a need.
This is an animated talking animal movie where said animals are personified with human traits and social constructs. As a child and later an adolescent when returning to this movie, it felt and was safe for me to watch this movie and enjoy the dynamic between Jenna and Balto without worrying about prying questions about the content I was consuming. Jenna, a purebred husky, is the ‘love interest’ opposite Balto and his half husky half wolf status. This adds a tension to Balto and Jenna’s pursuit of one another, and, additionally, creates cracks within the social structure of Jenna’s world.
Jenna is the first dog we see in town to be warm and affectionate toward Balto and the first to challenge Steele. Steele, the antagonist of this film, represents a typical toxic masculine archetype who uses his masculinity to belittle those who around him with fear and intimidation-using the size of his body and words to be verbally abusive. Steele’s dynamic amongst Balto and Jenna in this film was engaging to me because Jenna openly and unabashedly admonishes Steele when he makes advances toward her or ridicules Balto.
While Steele bullies, lies, fights and runs races for attention and praise, Balto maintains a persona of genuine kindness, empathy and compassion that attracts Jenna to him. In watching this film as a child, I engaged with Balto’s character not only because he was the protagonist but because he was the antithesis to Steele’s character and I was observant of his treatment of Jenna. Jenna and Balto’s relationship dynamic represented everything I knew I wanted in real life in my own relationships with girls. When Balto asks Jenna out on a ‘date’, he immediately puts it out of mind when Jenna tells him that Rosy is sick. He genuinely cares for Jenna’s feelings and doesn’t treat her or her affections as a prize to be won.
I was still in my girlhood when I rewatched this movie repeatedly, and Jenna’s character being treated with care and development meant that I could digest the message that being feminine meant that I had the freedom to talk back, be strong, and be a provider. In the same vein with Balto, I learned being masculine did not have to correlate with abrasiveness, rudeness, or being aggressive like it did with Steele’s character. Jenna and Balto’s characters and relationship subverted what the casual viewer should expect from these characters perceived ‘traditional’ gendered roles.
When Balto makes the choice to travel out of town to find Steele and the antitoxin, it is because it serves a purpose greater than himself. He is not driven to do this task to win the affection of Jenna or the adoration of others, even though we are shown that these are things that he desperately seeks and desires. He is simply being driven to do good by his inner compassion. It is simply in his nature, instinctual for Balto to put his wants aside for the betterment of others. The lack of ulterior motives in this character was always something admirable for me to look up to, and seeing this play out in relation to his relationship with Jenna made it all the more inspiring. Jenna reciprocates Balto’s feelings with ease, and their relationship has a slow build up throughout the film that is built on mutual respect and support.
Calling back to the need for community in the midst of isolation, we see Balto finally find it with Jenna. Though Balto seeks to quell his loneliness by assimilating and becoming a dog on the sled team, he ultimately finds the solace he needs in Jenna. In vice versa, in supporting, defending, and loving Balto, we see ways in how Jenna has changed her mindset and how she navigates much of her own world after choosing Balto. Jenna is first introduced to Balto’s otherness when she is taken to visit one of his secret spots in town to help her gain information about Rosy’s illness. He takes her through a crawl space through a boiler room. Jenna is used to being able to walk in the open and the light, and quickly comments on the gloominess of where they are. But Balto helps her see that you can rework something that is perceived to be broken or gloomy by the untrained eye into something beautiful.
When Jenna is brought home and defends Balto again in front of, we are to assume, all the dogs in town, when Steele lies about Balto and the sled team being dead, it elevates the relationship between Balto and Jenna to another level. She has now gone all in on supporting Balto by this act, and in doing so she has now othered herself in the eyes of the other dogs and the town at large. They have all given up on the sled team and turned off their lights to guide them home. Jenna is now the only one to believe in their return. For Jenna to side with Balto against Steele, and use the pile of broken glass bottles, an established symbol of otherness, to recreate the Northern Lights as a marker and guide for the his return solidifies Jenna’s final step into Balto’s community.
Arguably the most memorable scene in the film is when Balto gives in to his self doubt and sends himself and the antitoxin over a cliff. Here he has reached his rock bottom and it is in this moment where his Mother, the white wolf, appears to him. At first, Balto hesitates a connection with her, but then the words of Uncle Boris echo,
“A dog can not make this journey alone, but maybe a wolf can.”
Wolves are not often shown in this film, but when they are, they are always shown to be accepting of Balto. It is Balto who is always hesitant to join them, and who has forged his own version of family, or a pack of his own in the form of Boris, the goose who doesn’t fly south, the polar bears who do not swim, and now Jenna who chooses to go against the social order of the dogs in town and join with this band of outsiders. So when these words echo for Balto,
“ A dog can not make this journey alone, but maybe a wolf can.”
I believe it is a realization that he was never truly alone at all. At every part of his journey he wasn’t alone, having had family by his side the entire time, albeit one that was not seen as traditional in the eyes of those whose approval he most desperately wanted. But in accepting his wolf heritage, his otherness that he had been running from, he is able to climb from his metaphorical rock bottom with the antitoxin, and complete the final leg of the journey with the sled team. For me this scene always resonated with when I was a child, and maybe even more so now, because embracing otherness is difficult. In a world that tells you at every stage of life from the moment you are born that you are supposed to think and act one way, and then you grow completely against the grain because you don’t know how to be anything else, can lead to a lonely existence. I do believe it is no small feat to live against the status quo of this world, one that is built on white supremacist values and the colonization of Black and Indigenous peoples. To live openly as you are is scary for many of us who are members of the LGBTQIA community, and seeing Balto’s repeated hesitation to claim his wolf heritage and try to assimilate into a social structure that has shunned him, for the sake of feeling a sense of belonging, even if he knows his acceptance would be conditional, is a scenario that can hit close to home for many of us.
The power in this scene, is that when Balto howls with his Mother, resonates with you, the viewer, because everyone who has ever been on the outside of the status quo can relate to a moment in their life when they first claimed their otherness. For me, it is reminiscent of the first time I felt butterflies sitting behind my crush in grade school. Watching this scene now, I think about the day I told my friends I wanted to switch from using she/her pronouns to he/him pronouns. I think about my first shot of testosterone and how I almost instantaneously began to feel more at home in my body, and the months after that waking up from top surgery. I think about the lifetime of firsts I still have yet to claim.
Balto’s final scenes are straightforward, he comes back home and saves the town’s children with the antitoxin. But there is a bittersweetness to this ending, as when he arrives back in town, guided by the Northern Lights that Jenna has created for him, because everyone else has given up hope, Balto still does not trust the adoration and affection that is suddenly thrust upon him by the very humans who forced him in exile his entire life. He instinctually shrinks away from them when he is met with pets and praise.
We see Balto happy and comfortable not when he is surrounded by praise from the strangers he initially wanted to fit in with at the start, but when he is welcomed home by family. The ones who believed in him and encouraged him all along from the start of his journey and helped him along the way. Muk and Luk wrap him in an enriching hug, Uncle Boris enthusiastically praises him and encourages him to accept the thank you from Rosy, and companionship that he’s found in Jenna. Jenna and Balto celebrate playfully, meet eyes and in this moment are able to simply be. The peril has passed, and Balto is lonely no more because he has found companionship in someone who is not only a friend, but now a romantic partner.
So what is the takeaway from Balto’s journey in this historical animated fiction? For me upon returning to this film, it was a retreat into a softer version of myself. A look back into who I was, when assimilating and proving that I could be just like everyone else was something that I desperately sought. Now I’m much more selective with who I let into my life and my experiences, but I wish I didn’t have to be. In writing this, I’m making space for myself and others like me who feel there aren’t others like us who are simply existing in this world.
And so, as I retrace the steps of my childhood through the media I consumed, thinking about my Mom’s choice of words “There was no sign of all of this when you were younger…” in referencing my transition, I think about the shaggy haired wolf dog of my youth. The damsel in distress that needed to be saved and warmed by a pretty girl, who was bit but never bit back, who took verbal abuse and kept himself in forced isolation and formed bonds with others like himself. I think of how he was saved over and over again not by powerful speeches or stirring songs, but the simple presence of the family he chose and eventual love. I think of all the power there is in how Jenna loved Balto for simply being Balto. I think about how I watched this film repeatedly and reveled in Balto’s softness and saw myself in him, even though he was supposedly the ‘boy’ character. And how I would do the same with other characters throughout my adolescence for many years to come. And I smile and am thankful that Balto was the first.
All the images in this article are not owned by me and are ©Universal Pictures.
