This young male audience is arguably the audience in most immediate need of a sex-positive outlook, and the most likely to benefit from an examination of their assumptions about traditional gender roles. These are the young men who need an education about affirmative consent, who need to understand that female sexual expression is just as valid as their own desires, who need to question the doubles standards that have been quietly accepted and reinforced by entire generations of popular culture.
This is to say nothing of the simple value of having studio backing behind these liberal and progressive ideas. Major studios have largely been afraid to commit to LGBTQ themes and characters in their big budget and mainstream releases, afraid of how audiences both domestic and foreign might react. Characters like Deadpool and Valkyrie have their bisexuality toned down or erased. When LGBTQ themes do manifest themselves, as in Star Trek Beyond or Power Rangers, they tend to exist at the edge of the frame behind a haze of plausible deniability. This is to say nothing of the exploitation of lesbian attraction to satisfy the male gaze in films like Atomic Blonde.
With this in mind, it feels like something of a tipping point that a film like Love, Simon can not only survive the studio system, but thrive in it. A charming young adult movie about a gay character trying to come to terms with his identity, Love, Simon opened in 2,402 theatres and earned significantly more than either Moonlight or Call Me By Your Name. Indeed, Blockers has a subplot focused around a teenage girl coming to terms with her sexual identity that not only provides the most surprisingly touching moment of the film, with the most surprisingly affecting adult performer, but also speaks to how comfortable the major studios are with content that would never have made it to screen in a wide and populist release even a decade earlier.
It is impossible to quantify this subtle shift. It is not an accomplishment that can be measured in dollars earned or awards garnered. It is intangible and unspoken. Nevertheless, it is does demonstrate the inroads that are being made towards a more inclusive and more open-minded society, one willing to look at familiar stories in new ways. Even stories as crass as the archetypal juvenile sex comedy. This is progress, albeit in an unexpected form.
CinÉireann / June 2018 37