Love, Simon Is a Gay Rom-Com and That’s Fine, I Guess
Here’s my hot take. Go. Go see Love, Simon. It’s not going to hurt anyone. If lot’s of people see it, producers and execs will hopefully make more gay movies.
BUT Let’s not pretend that this movie gave us full service. This was just stopping by the drive-through to pick up some nuggets. Don’t get me wrong, I fucking love chicken nuggets. But ugh, now I’m gonna be the person who compares the book to the movie, but the book just presents the missed possibilities so well. I think the movie brilliantly handled adapting the book by altering the order of events and recreating tension for the love interest for those who read the book. Brava, bitches! And even though it shouldn’t need to be said, it definitely does: congrats for not whitewashing (to an extent, and I’ll come back to that). I thought, the movie was a solid adaption in terms of the plot and bringing the characters from book to screen - introduce the blackmailing later, eliminate a sister for time constraints, rearrange some love interests to add the element of surprise. All good.
What we lost, however, was the layers of any character’s experiences besides Simon. WHICH IS LIKE THE ULTIMATE WHITE GAY NARRATIVE. This is what was (unnecessarily) lost in the adaptation. The brilliance of the book - and the reason for the title “Simon vs the Homosapien Agenda”- is that “coming out” is framed as an experience many people, not just gay folks, go through, and it’s Simon’s anxiety and ignorance that prevent him from seeing the challenges his friends and family are undergoing. Why do we hold our secrets so close to our chest, the book asks. Sure, we have fears of being ostracized and disregarded, but more often and moreso, we fear attention and the disruption of our sense of identity. Book Simon hates that his family celebrates and notices any change he makes, and he reveals his sexuality to Abby, who just moved to the area, instead of his lifelong friends because he recognizes a sense of flexibility and opportunity with Abby that lacks with his steady friendships elsewhere. Then these anxieties are reflected among others throughout the book: his older sister’s boyfriend, his younger sister’s rock n’ roll ambitions, Leah’s drumming and friendship dynamics, Blue’s race (and subsequently class in a de facto segregated community). To come out is to expose a new part of yourself and introduce a new factor to your dynamics, and many people feel that they are burdening others with this introduction or fear people’s new perceptions. There’s a sense that coming out is the creation of a new identity, which feels inherently shallow and dehumanizing. The book, in a very metamodern approach, moves beyond a simple critique of that process and recognizes that allowing people to see us fully, although terrifying, is an additive process, not a replacement. The shame Simon feels or Blue feels or Leah feels or either of Simon’s sisters feels is relieved, not initially in coming out (in fact, the moment of “coming out” is often presented as poorly handled by the receiving party), but through reintegration with the community of loved ones. The shame created through keeping your life and experiences a secret causes a sense of isolation and hurtful actions that require amends to be made by multiple parties after the secret is revealed. (I think Skam is another piece of media people should check out if they’re interested in this process).
But the movie kind of misses…all…of this. Like it gets the gay thing. And thanks for including the rant to martin. But Simon gets to remain clueless to all of his peers struggles. Abby discussing her dad isn’t framed as a coming out, Simon’s little sister has zero internal life, Leah’s revealing of her crush is framed as only that. Everything is squashed into a one-dimensional act in service to Simon’s story. In the book, Simon is clueless and brought to enlightenment of his friends’ complicated lives through his struggles and by fucking up and hurting them immensely, therefore requiring him to understand them better and recognize his own experiences in their’s. Movie Simon is just casually racist and in love with everyone?? And class is just ignored…??? His resolution feels pretty unearned because he had very little reckoning beyond his friends banishing him (and not fucking sticking up for him when he’s being fucking bullied in front of the whole school? wtf was that? complete disconnect there? who would ever be that angry?? but anyway…). What did he learn over the course of the movie? That it’s okay to be gay??? Cause he already knew that at the beginning of the film.
I think it is a major misreading of the book to believe this was about Simon finding love. The metamodern rom-com is interested in love not as fulfillment of our worth but as a symbol of empathy with others and humility for ourselves. If I may, I’ll touch on Skam for reference. Each season of this Norwegian teen drama, is framed around a different character and the development of their relationship in an ostensibly rom-com tradition, with meet-cutes, montages of the characters falling deeply, deeply in love, a conflict to the relationship just when you think things might work out, and funny friends to help our lead to make it through their hard times. In the first season, the main character, Eva must learn to better understand herself and value her own opinions beyond her relationship. In the second season, a different lead in the same friend group, Noora, must learn to be vulnerable with others and seek help (notice the switching of perspectives which allows us to recognize what we were missing from our previous vantage and invites us to be more empathetic both to the new lead character and to the other characters in the show, who we previously thought of as supporting characters and now recognize might also be suffering in a leading season of their own). And the next two seasons continue in this fashion. Perhaps the third season of Skam offers us the best perspective on what Love, Simon could have been. It focuses on the coming out and budding relationship of a white gay male lead, but the closing scene of the season (opening and closing episodes of Skam are majorly important and suggestive of their narrative goals) does NOT focus on the love the lead found. In fact, in this scene he admits that his relationship is hard and tenuous and that he has doubts about whether it will continue. Instead, this scene focuses on a conversation with Eva, the lead of the first season who has barely interacted with the gay guy for two whole seasons. He apologizes to her for lies and deception he committed in the first season. What does this say about the moral of this season? I think it’s similar to Simon and the Homosapien Agenda. They both highlight the importance of humility of self and empathy towards others through honesty.
That’s why I feel put-off in many ways from the film. I did not need it to mimic the book, but “Is love possible?” feels like a silly irrelevant question for a film to ask. It doesn’t feel appropriate for our moment in time. A metamodern rom-com is interested in the question of “how is love possible?” And it involves interrogating all of our relationships because love requires us to recognize our limits, the value of others and their experiences, and the hurt we cause one another. Love, Simon missed this point. No one else got to come out. Instead they were busy pairing up or getting over their crushes. And then, most inconsistent with even the film’s logic, Simon forces Blue to out himself publicly. This adaptive choice (in which Blue deletes his email account and Simon posts for Blue to meet him on the ferris wheel on the school secrets tumblr account creeksecrets, ostensibly to ??ramp up the drama??) demonstrates the impetus toward romance for romance’s sake rather than romance as a boat to ride to the shore of self-actualization (lol what a fucking metaphor). The only other purpose it serves, perhaps, is to inspire others to post their secrets openly on the tumblr account. But that feels especially cheap, or at least unfamiliar with our relationship with the internet, because we recognize how one’s suffering is so flattened into a one word identity on the internet and does not actually build the humanizing community that we each seek in our lonely secret dwellings.
So, it’s cool we got a gay movie. I’m totally into it. More gay shit, I’m always down. But let us be human. Let us harm others. Let us recognize ourselves in them. Let us make amends. I hope Love, Simon and it’s hopeful success brings more films like it to our screens and allows filmmakers to dive more deeply into a metamodern question of love and explore the connections that can be drawn through using a queer lens as well as the limits of a queer lens that need to be filled through further interrogation of systems of oppression (lol sorry to go full sjw on ya). Go see the movie, but if you want to be knocked off your feet and cry your eyeballs out for everyone instead of just Simon, read the book.
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