The Guilty Pleasure of Love, Simon

Welcome to my first ConsolationBlogPlost™

I've fallen behind schedule for releasing chapters of One More Year, and while I have reasons (some of them even good!) I still feel like I should be aiming for frequent blog-postings, despite the fact that very few people are currently reading them. It's just important to me that I get around to writing them, and it's not very difficult to do.

Warning: Honestly, I might not be handling this issue with the full sensitivity it deserves, but my intention is not, and will never be, to offend anyone or undervalue their points of view or life experiences. (Unless your points of view do that to others, in which case, they're fair game.) So if I say something genuinely upsetting, let me know and I will apologize and introspect on it, and attempt to grow.

Okay, so, online I've seen 2 kinds of opinions expressed online about Love, Simon

1. It's a masterpiece, transcendental in it's normalcy, heartwarming, great, important.
2. It's garbage, unrelatable rich-kid nonsense, out-of-touch and everything that's wrong with the gay community, Hollywood (in the case of the movie) and the world.

SO IT CAN GET PRETTY DIVIDED, to say the least.

Since I'm such a bookworm, I obviously purposefully hit the book before taking a crack at the movie. (It took me a long time to get around to either actually, because I'm a fickle consumer of media.) Anyway, they're very different, and I have a hard time figuring out which is better (Yes, better. I liked them both. FIGHT ME.) 

Obviously, there are issues in terms of representation, because Simon is:

• White
• Upper-Middle Class (Car as a birthday present upper middle class)
• From a stable home (Two parents very much in love)
• Relatively masculine (In the books, he comes across as quirky and nerdy, but in general, everyone is shocked when he comes out.)
• Not embroiled in any sort of unaccepting culture (Whether religious, political or more general.)
• Well established friendships with a loving, accepting group of people.

The movie adds some additional ammo, on that front:

• Nick Robinson, with his boy-next-door good looks and his deep, manly voice. As a casting choice, he kind of glosses over the cute and quirky theater kid vibe of Book-Simon, replacing it with something pretty generic. (Not dunking on NR though - he still brought a lot else to the role.)
• Ethan, who if I'm remembering correctly doesn't exist in the books. Which is troubling, because the only purpose he really serves in the movie is a sort of gay-punching-bag, to show that homophobia exists in this otherwise perfect world. I have no problem with the inclusion of a femme, POC character - but they really should have treated him better.
• Completely removing any nuanced discussion about race, which you think would be important in Georgia, USA, but apparently not. The book actually had one or two really well done moments (I thought, anyway) but apparently it was too edgy for Hollywood.

That's the extent of the problems, as far as I can tell. There might be more - yell at me in the comments if I am wrong - but that's what I've managed to gather is wrong in the 'problematic' sense. And honestly, I get it. I do. Representation is so important, and it sucks that there are people out there who have to keep hearing about how great this movie is, and they just can't relate to it at all.

The thing is, I do relate. Not heavily, mind you. I'm not American. I was only at my (very upper-middle class) school on a scholarship, so while I was surrounded by the trappings of upper-middle-class-ness (and a whole lot of whiteness, but we white people in SA get insular like that.) 

But I wasn't exactly a part of it, because I still had to go home and be not-so-middle class.

I also hung out with actual homophobes, because my only options were being the weird pariah kid or spending an obligatory amount of time with people who made me feel bad about myself. I did not have a particularly stable home life.

But I did have a family that would love and support me, no matter what. I had come to a fully-internalised self-realisation about my sexuality, and I wasn't agonising over it. Also, no one had an inkling I was gay. At least, I'm fairly sure they didn't.

But I just couldn't come out. I was terrified. Life wasn't exactly enjoyable at that point. I was too awkward, too different. It didn't really seem like coming out would make anything better. I wanted to cling to the few nice things I had, without anything changing, which I assumed would only be for the worst.

Honestly, Love, Simon captured that, 100%. I get that to some people, his problems are pathetic problems - but they were my problems at the time too, and they CONSUMED me.

Basically, some of the things that Love Simon got SO RIGHT for me were:

• Your coming out having no reasonable barriers in the way does make it easy. It's not a rational decision. You worry. Also, in terms of media we can get exposed to, coming out can go SO awfully. Even if you're fairly sure your parents are the coolest people in the world, you have tonnes of mental material to work with to create an imaginary scenario where they surprise, betray and reject you. Weirdly, media like love Simon - where being gay can be something that is celebrated - is probably helping people combat that irrational dread. 
• You're twisted into a knot. Your life, so far, has pretty much rewarded honestly at every turn. You're not a good liar, because you've never needed to be. And now, you have ONE BIG LIE. It takes it's toll. It tears you apart. And because heterosexuality is the assumption, and you 'don't seem like one' and straight people are just as over-sexualised as they always accuse gay people of being - you're constantly fielding questions about girlfriends, and crushes, and fantasies, and you have to lie or avoid all the time suddenly. It wears you down.
• You're already pretty different. Book-Simon is better at this than Movie-Simon, because he reads a little bit better as a product of his interests, which makes him seem like a bit of a 'different' kid. I'm less sure this experience is universal, but I've come across a lot of nerdy gays like myself, so I think there's something to it. However it is that you sit outside of the 'normal' social hierarchy of high school though, if you already feel like an outsider you're absolutely sure that being the 'gay' kid will just be the final nail in the coffin. If you get shit for being 'Chess team captain' or whatever, you can easily laugh it off, because it's not who you are - it's a little bit harder to do that when it's your sexuality.

Honestly, there's probably a lot more I could fixate on, but those are the three major things that Love, Simon knocked out of the park for me. I don't think the book was perfect, and I don't think the movie was perfect, but man alive, did I feel SEEN.

I'm sorry for anyone who didn't. I really hope they'll get a movie or a TV show out there that makes them feel this way, while at the same time knowing (depressingly) how difficult, or even impossible, a lot of forms of representation still are. And not even for very good reasons - just because the world is a messed up place. 

As a writer, I'm struggling with representation, because there are sensitive issues I just don't trust myself to cover. Honestly, I'm surprised Becky Albertalli wrote about this at all, given that she's never been a young, closeted gay guy. But I'm glad she did. Because it feels important. To me, anyway.