on the first kill cancellation and what it tells us about representation in media
the most heartbreaking part about the first kill cancellation is that it’s an evidence of this trend in audiovisual media big corporations to profit over claims about representation, all while delivering the most sanitized and harmless to the consumption by the cis het , white, able-bodied etc people form of representation they could possibly offer.
because, that’s the thing, back in 2016, when lexa from the 100 and plenty other lesbian and queer characters in general were killed off of shows and it sparked a whole conversation over the "bury your gays" trope, our biggest hope was that having more people from marginalized groups making the decisions in the writers’ room and as showrunners would result in better representation for us.
and, the thing is that, while lots of people were concearned about shaming the show for having CGI problems – problems that are perfectly explained by the very low-budget the show got from netflix --, the truth is that first kill actually achieved a lot in the “representation on behind-the-scenes” front.
the author of the short story it’s based on, victoria “v.e.” schwab, is queer, identifying as gay and using she/they pronouns, and also signed as showrunner, inspite having an adviser role. Not only that, but victoria declared in interviews and even penned an article talking about how they wrote the short story and the pilot for the show in an attempt of giving to the new generations the representation she needed as a teen and longed for when she watched sci-fi/fantasy shows like buffy the vampire slayer.
the “the facto” shworunner, felicia d. henderson, is not queer, she is a cis het woman, but, she is still a dark-skinned black woman with a long and successful resumé in the show biz, with classic shows hailed by the african american community like fresh prince of bel-air and moesha under her belt, and who also worked for DC in their comics’ division (yeah, THE DC Comics) and worked on marvel’s the punisher, in other words, one of the best people you could possibly ask for to work on a sci-fi/fantasy show in which a huge part of the main cast is comprised by black people – actually, to work on sci-fi/fantasy shows in general.
both felicia and victoria have mentioned plenty of times on social media, interviews and so on about how diverse the writer’s room was.
not only that, but they also talked about how there was representation on the production crew as well . people on the camera crew, make-up crew, wardrobe crew, the cinematography crew etc, were all comprised by black people and queer people , an information that was also shared with pride and enthusiams by the leading actresses sarah catherine hook and imani lewis on their interviews.
so, the representation on FK wasn’t just on the characters on screen, it was on the entire production chain.
and, yet, it wasn’t enough for preventing us from losing the representation, because the show got cancelled.
this is not to say that we should give up on trying to get more people from marginalized groups working on behind-the-scenes or anything like that, especially because, I things are hard enough when we try to occupy these spaces, if we stop fighting for space, then that’s when things will not getter better AT. ALL.
but we should definetely stop to think about what do we mean when we say we want more representation and what kind of content we praise or not.
back in 2018, under the release of love simon on movie theatres, buzzfeed news published an article written by contributor john sherman titled “Popular Gay Media Is Still Focusing On Straight Acceptance, Rather Than Celebrating Queer Difference”, inspired mostly by the new york times article by queer and non-binary activist, writer, producer, television host and actor jacob tobia, “Does Gay Hollywood Have Room for Queer Kids?”, and both articles pointed out how the movie’s entire narrative was structured around the Idea that simon was just like another guy, except that he was gay and reinforces the discourse that it’s ok to be gay, as long as you’re “not TOO gay”, especially considering the way the narrative uses feminine, gender non-conforming, flamboyant and campy gay ethan as a prop for masculine, straight-passing gay simon’s story, using the bullying ethan goes thru the entirety of the movie as an excuse for simon to not come out all while never really having simon acknowledging how he was embarassed by ethan because he was struggling with his own internalized homophobia.
four years later, and these articles are actually more relevant than ever.
because here is the thing: the discourse revolving around the need for more “wholesome” queer representation, while completely valid when it comes to defend the production of more LGBT+ content aimed at children and pre-teens, oftenly gets mixed up on the internet with very conservative opinions about LGBT+ sexuality, gender expression and lifestyle choices.
that is what is problematic about the heartstopper vs first kill debate, that started really as soon as the first teaser trailers for FK were released and people begin to make assumptions about how FK was gonna sexualize women and cater to the male gaze, and now took another turn after the cancellation news when FK fans, lesbians in general, BIPOC in general and so on started to point out Netflix’s and the entertaiment industry’s double standards when it comes to the representation of the LGBT+ community, favoring cis White queer, able-bodied, slim, masculine men over all the other groups in the community .
It’s not that heartstopper is bad or awful or that it should have been cancelled like first kill was, that’s definetely not the point.
heartstopper as a franchise is actually far bolder than love simon ever could, with the comics talking about topics like bullying and mental illness, shining a light in some topics not so talked about in media like anorexia and body dysmorphia in young boys, storylines that the fans hope to see in the new seasons of the show .
on top of that, it did a great job at portraying Nick’s realisation about his bisexuality and ditching the “bisexuals are traitors and manipulative” trope by contrasting nick’s honesty about his sexual confusion and his loyalty to charlie to the toxic and abusive way Ben treated charlie during their secret relationship.
still, it is a show that is centered around two cis White boys and that has lesbians, trans people and people of color as side characters at most, being in the background of the cis white boys’s love story, like a book footnote.
and the thing is, most people don't care about the book footnotes.
tao and elle, the straight couple formed by a cis chinese british boy and a trans black girl of egyptian descent, is still on the background, not the fore front.
and while tao defying gender norms about cis het boys is a very welcome change, nick and charlie, the main characters, are still pretty much very masculine, straight-passing boys. also, the fact that, from all the boys, it is the asian guy who is the less traditionally masculine when we consider the way western culture desexualizes and mock asian men
yes, charlie is bullied by the school’s rugby athletes for not being masculine enough, but, in spite of being gay, he is not much different from the same old cis het nerdy white guy in coming of age movies and indie movies, who is sensitive and listens to indie bands and is some sort of “cool loser”.
and nick nelson is still the very stereotype of the masculine jock, except that he is the “gentle brute" type.
it’s important to note that not only non-binary bisexuals do exist, but also that gender non-conforming cis bisexuals exist as well. there are bi guys with a gender expression that is affeminated, and also there are bi girls with a gender expression that is masculine.
when it comes to the lesbian interracial couple, formed by masculine white girl darcy and more feminine, dark-skinned black girl tara, they are side characters in nick and charlie’s story like tao and elle, having a smaller role than taoelle.
i actually remember reading somewhere that one of the changes the show made from the comics was to actually give a bigger role to tara and darcy, with the storyline about how their school reacted when tara came out actually being exclusive to the show, which means that their roles were even smaller.
and while it’s true that these side characters are still more rounded than your typical side characters, they’re still, guess what? Side characters.
people like tara and darcy, tao and elle deserve to be the main characters in their own fictional stories too, much like they are the main characters in their stories in real life.
people like calliope and juliette deserve to be the main characters in their own fictional stories too.
especially in a genre like the sci-fi/fantasy one, that is beloved by queer people and people of color for its fantastical elements and adventures and themes that flirt with the weird, unusual and that these and marginalized groups in general find comfort in because the social outcasts relate to the weirdness of it all.
so, it’s very important that we have shows like first kill and main characters like juliette fairmont and calliope burns, out and proud lesbians who are comfortable in their sexuality and whose biggest conflict with their families is not about their queerness, but because one is a monster hunter and the other is a vampire; who never get to face homophobia; and get to be the main characters and kick butts on screen and be the heroes just like cis het white abled-bodied people, mostly cis het white abled-bodied guys, get to do.
all this talk is because we have to question what has been sold to us as diversity and inclusion.
because diversity and inclusion don’t involve people from marginalized groups forcing themselves to fit into the standards of the dominant groups just to be accepted and be treated with basic human decency.
Queer people shouldn’t have to repress their sexuality and gender expression to be accepted, much like autistic and neurodivergent people shouldn’t have to supress their quirks like stimming or the way they react to sensory overload to be accepted, or like fat people shouldn’t have to lose weight, or indigenous people shouldn’t have to abandon their cultures to fit in, or like people with disabilities shouldn’t have to display some form of productivity to be accepted and so on.
We shouldn’t have to water ourselves down, it’s society that should create a safe space so we can live on it according to our experiences.
and that’s why the discourses revolving around normalcy are so tricky and can get problematic very easily, because while it was useful in the past, as the buzzfeed article points out, it also reinforces the Idea that there’s something naturally wrong with being different from what society says it’s the norm.
and we can see the wa ythis mindset is spreading around the internet, even amongst teens and twenty-somethings, as we can see by the whole discourse against the use of the word “queer”, even if it was historically reclaimed by the LGBT+ community.
or the way we can see people on tumblr spreading the "the kinky community shouldn't be at pride" discourse.
“queer” is precisely about celebrating the differences as they are what makes the experience of being yourself so unique, and it’s also precisely a reaction about the way the narrative about LGBT+ activism was historically centered around the experiences of cis het gay men and cis achilleans in general.
so, when we see society being more receptive towards the boys from heartstopper and not towards the girls from first kill, it doesn’t happen by accident, it's a part of an entire social structure.
the same goes for the topic about femininity and sexuality. traditional social conventions about sexuality basically censor and shame woman and transfeminine people for having any interest in sex and , something that, combined with the conventions about queer desire and attraction being wrong or predatory, creates a scenario of intense sexual repression in ways that it doesn’t happen with cis white men -- except for, maybe, the disabled ones.
the way people reacted so negatively against the calliette make out scenes wasn’t an accident, it was part of this structure that shames female pleasure, interracial sex, lesbian sex and acts like girls and women are uncapable of enjoying sex, having sexual desire and having any interest in the matter.
that’s the kind of nuance that usually escapes from conversations about fetishization of women: it’s not that we are uncapable of sexual desire, it’s just that most of the narratives put us in a position of objetcs instead of agents. that’s what the male gaze is about, taking our agency and input on the matter from us to cater to cis het men’s fantasies of power.
and male gaze is not what happened in first kill, a show in which felicia, the showrunner, made sure to ask for the lesbians and sapphics on set for their advice and input over the calliette scenes to make sure the final product were true to the lesbian and sapphic experience rather than the assumptions of a cis het woman about the lesbian and sapphic experience. not only that, the show hired an intimacy coordinator, named dr. tiff, that, if I’m not wrong, is a queer woman as well, to help the actresses feel comfortable even with the smallest of touches, like a hand on a shoulder or a hug, and it was discussed amongst said intimacy coordinator, the directors, the showrunner and the actresses how to portray the scenes between calliope and juliette without sexualizing the teenagers too much, how to find a balance between showing the interest of non-asexual 16 year-old girls on sex and not oversexualising them . one can’t be further from the male gaze and fetishization as that.
still on the topic of sex, it’s not a coincidence that the general audiences were so receptive of heartstopper, because the show is almost devoid of sexual scenes.
of course, this isn’t a problem on itself, especially because it seems like the show is aiming not only at teenagers, but at children as well.
but it gets problematic when people begin to defend that all types of LGBT+ media representation should adhere to these standards even if they’re not aiming at children and pre-teens as their target audiences.
especially because it’s not just lesbians and sapphics, or just trans people in general, who are shamed and have their sexuality treated as inherently wrong and predatory, it happens with cis gays and achilleans as well.
again, and I can’t emphasize this enough, there is nothing wrong with heartstopper.
there’s nothing wrong with LGBT+ media that is fluffy, family-friendly and PG-rated.
the problem is that LGBT+ fiction, and fiction about marginalized groups in general, shouldn’t have to be forced to adhere to the fluffy, family-friendly, PG standards to have a space in media and not get cancelled by networks and streaming services; and that media companies are imposing these conditions for LGBT+ content because they know these standards are seen as harmless by the cis het white audiences, and, therefore, these media companies are profiting over a serious cause like that of diversity and representation all while continuing to treat the cis het, white, abled-bodied, skinny etc audience as the only valuable one.
this is not about fandom wars, and some people are right when they say that there is space for all types of queer shows, for shows like heartstopper and for shows like first kill alike.
the important question here is why is it that we from marginalized groups are forced to adhere to all these respectability politics to be accepted when cis het, white, abled-bodied, skinny etc people aren’t.
don’t know whether first kill can be saved by another network like it happened with one day at a time, or what the future holds, but, that is the important question that we all should take from this mess.
and, most of all, we got to remember that we can and deserve to have so much better than what companies are delivering to us, and we don’t have to settle for less, in pop culture and in any other area of society.
