The Most Revolutionary Part of Love, Simon is How Unrevolutionary It Is.
Originally Posted: Mar 25, 2018
This film feels like a white counter to Moonlight. Where Moonlight was a deep, quiet take on the struggles of black masculinity convening with queerness, this movie is a bubble gum pop version making it seem like white men have a more loving and easier time transitioning into their queer identity; it’s mediocre, corny, commercial and doesn’t really have much to say besides “hey kids, it’s okay to be gay.” Chiron takes his identity and struggles with it for over a decade, what takes Simon the course of one Christmas vacation to move through. It seems to only highlight the difference of privilege in this country. Simon repeats that he is “just like you” but he is anything but. He is a straight passing, white, cis, handsome boy with loving supportive friends and family from a seemingly well to do background, but Simon isn’t talking to queer kids, this isn’t a movie for LGBTQ people, this is a movie for straight people. This is a movie to help straight people feel better about queer love and relationships. Where Moonlight showed queer love in its most raw, broken-down, ugly form, sending a message to queer people of color struggling with their cultural identity versus their sexuality, Love, Simon shows the straights the gay stuff isn’t icky, it’s just like straight stuff! In the shadow of Call Me By Your Name, a film where the depiction of homosexuality was similarly shown as being easily adopted by all those around the protagonist, this film feels like a unfair depiction of queer life for many non-white, non-cis, non-privileged people, especially youths. Which leads me to ask, who is this movie for?
While I think that this movie is an easily digestible film for teenagers and their parents to understand the humanity of queerness and development, it was packaged in a very deliberate way. The characters look the way they do because we are trained to have more empathy for white characters, which is why year after year we get bombarded with movies about the plight of white, cis, brown haired boys and anything else is seen as subversive and niche. It’s getting old. Now that Love, Simon has been made and will hopefully be seen by many young adults, we can move on to telling stories about many different people.
Nick Robinson (who stars as Simon)
Is not
Alden Ehrenreich (from as Han Solo)
Is not
Ansel Elgort (from Baby Driver)
Is not
Tye Sheridan (from Ready, Player One)
Is not
Logan Lerman (from Perks of Being A Wallflower)
Is not
Dylan Minnette (from Open House)
How do I know? They all have different names and that’s how I know they are not the same boy. But to clarify, I have never seen them in the same room together. These young men represent the tired and exhaustive issue that writers, specifically white, male writers (who make up the majority of films produced out of Hollywood) have with limited imaginations when it comes to their leads. Movies starring teenage boys, will probably have a white kid, with an average build who is brown haired with blue/green/ brown eyes.
They will be pretty, but not intimidating. They will be sarcastic but not mean. They will be coy but not cowardly. They are outsiders but not in an alienating way. They are rebels but only against direct threats. They will get the object of their affection. They will have a group of friends as race and gender diverse as a college catalog. They will have a life altering experience but not without the support of the people around them, whose only purpose is to get the protagonist to his rightful place as hero.
Now this is nothing to affront about the actors listed. They are all… okay actors. Nothing remarkably special about any of them, nothing distinguishable, which makes me have to search IMDB for the other movies they have been in to remember which one I’m thinking of. They all act within the range of the material they have been given, which is the wish fulfillment of the writers and directors who looked nothing like them in high school but think they did. Their acting is fine, the problem is their material is stale, unoriginal and completely oblivious to the changing world around them, which is not the responsibility of the actors.
Hollywood works this way for white actors, there can be more than one of each. Since 2011 we have been battling a barrage of Chris’, Chris Pine, Chris Pratt, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth… almost all within the same movie franchise. Imagine if we lived in a world where there were just as many Jamal’s, Keisha’s, Abdul’s… I hope there is a day where I can’t get them all straight.
The members of the cast have the same issue, Josh Duhamel is married to Fergie, he’s not the guy married to Kristen Bell and is not related to Timothy Olyphant, even though when I squint my eyes I can’t tell the difference. Jennifer Garner who has played the same character in all her films since Juno in 2007, could have been replaced by Jennifer Connelly or Liv Tyler and it would have been the same performance.
The movie starts in Vermont, no Austin, no California, no Georgia? It starts in Anytown, USA with a racial makeup of a United Colors of Benetton ad, where the biggest problem isn’t classism or racism but bullying. The main character, Simon, is surrounded by a white girl, a black girl, a black boy and he rounds it out as a white boy, [I thought this was slyly referenced by the main characters penchant for Oreos but that is giving the writers too much credit]. The movie centers around Simon’s coming out and his closeted pen pal who he communicates with, in a sort of queer ‘who dun it’. It plays like a mystery thriller, Simon is unable to identify who around him might be the one and the audience is tricked again and again into believing that it must be one character over the other until the final “outing” at the end. That, honestly is the most interesting part of this entire film. It is no more groundbreaking that any other teenage movie besides the fact that the main character is gay and American cinema has been starved of queer youth in media.
I don’t know exactly who this movie is for. Middle America? The conservative south? Teens? Queer teens? Closeted teens? Perhaps all of them. This film speaks to a large room full of no one and plays like a prime-time CW movie (factoring in that Greg Berlanti, creator of Flash and Arrow was the director, that is not accidental). It’s a cute movie. Where Moonlight, was a splash of coconut water and your grandmother’s most nurturing meal and Call Me By Your Name was a decadent French confection filled with butter that you can only have in small bites, Love, Simon was a candy coated sugar trip you enjoy as a child but is full of empty calories; good for a while but always leaves you wanting something more substantial.
