Content area
Full Text
Abstract
In this article, I analyse two same-sex romantic comedies, Happiest Season (DuVall, 2020) and Love, Simon (Berlatti, 2018). Using a dialectic reading and the concepts of homonormativity and post-gay consumerism, I explore the ideological function of interpellating LGBTQ+ consumers into the mainstream. I draw on Sara Ahmeds conception of the good life to understand the framing of the family and the monogamous relationship within the genre of romantic comedies. I also pay attention to consumer perceptions of LGBTQ+ representation more generally. I conclude that, despite the utopian kernel of queer happiness signified by these movies, the inclusion of lesbian and gay main characters in the romantic comedy genre also serves the ideological function of assimilating queerness into the mainstream in ways that reinforce other relationship-based norms, such as monogamy and family orientation.
Key words
Homonormativity, LGBTQ+, media studies, romantic comedies, lesbian film, queer cinema.
Introduction
Both Happiest Season (DuVall, 2020) and Love, Simon (Berlanti, 2018) are firsts - Happiest Season is the first lesbian (or gay) holiday film funded by a major studio; Love, Simon is the first teen romantic comedy featuring a gay main character funded by a major studio. Queer reviews of Love, Simon and Happiest Season simultaneously reified the movies as groundbreaking LGBTQ+ narratives while also criticising various aspects of them, including their narrow, privileged view (both main characters are wealthy and White) and the unrelatable nature of the movies given the privilege depicted (e.g. DAddario, 2018; Nicole, 2020). Happiest Season was also criticised for presenting itself as a Christmas romantic comedy when many viewers found it depressing and disappointing (Nicole, 2020).
In this essay, I explore the cultural narratives about queer lives espoused in both Happiest Season and Love, Simon. I use a dialectic reading to explore both their ideological function in heterosexist, capitalist society as well as the way they represent a positive shift in societal attitude towards accepting LGBTQ+ (although primarily lesbian and gay) people. I have chosen Happiest Season and Love, Simon as examples of mainstream films that centre on a homonormative love story because they are the only recent examples of mainstream Western same-sex romantic comedies.
Summary of the movies
Let me begin by offering a summary of both movies in order to get a...