Just a Thought About…. Queer Theory

 How does the movie Love Simon By Greg Berlanti showcase the ideas of Queer Theory?

By : Brielle Smith

Queer Theory as many other lens can be complex, but most importantly it can be eye opening in helping us to better understand man things we read, write, and watch. Queer theory dives into essentially the mismatches between sex, gender, and desire. In this post i will put this lens and its complexities on the movie Love Simon By Greg Berlanti. I will touch on identity, gender roles, performing identity and more.

To begin, let’s do a short plot of the movie. Love Simon is a movie about a 17 year old closeted boy named Simon, who is struggling to come out to everyone he loves as gay. This movie shows his journey of an online friendship with another closeted boy via their pseudo names. As Simon is figuring out his family, friends, and blooming connection with this boy online he faces the possibility of someone outing his secret.

https://images.app.goo.gl/AZ4vz7y3TEpBjiN49

       

 Performing  your identity is a key concept in the Literary Theory book by Mary Klages. It is showcased within this movie multiple times. At one point in the movie Simon goes to a halloween party thinking he knows which classmate is his online crush. After failed attempts at talking to him he walks into a room to find him kissing a girl. Later in this movie you find out that this suspected classmate was his crush, but it’s all about performing identity. Klages says “ the inhabitant of a particular body takes up and performs historically determined roles or positions”. She also says, “gender is always a performance”. I think we can relate this to Simons crush, he is performing an identity of a heterosexual teenager who goes to parties and kisses girls, and doesn’t do anything out of the normal. If he were to show unnatural tendencies then he would be labeled and it would be “wrong”. 

https://images.app.goo.gl/ukzPkHmM84vGZfeg7

Michel Foucault 

Towards the middle of this movie we see Simon on Christmas break and is outed by a blackmailer. Due to this shame and humiliation Simon shuts his friends and family out due to his sadness. In our society you can be shamed for your sexuality if it doesn’t fit the standards when it hasn’t always been this way. Foucault speaks about how there was no such thing as sexuality up until the mid nineteenth century. He said, “ a sex act didn’t constitute an identity category”. I think this is an important part of this movie because after this happens Simons parents and friends happily accept him for who he is. This shows how sexuality isn’t important nor should it police how we see people, especially because sexuality isn’t a natural thing.

Lastly, this move shows something that is an emphasis in the Queer Theory lens. Mary Klages says, “your identity is unique to you, that who you are is the product of some core self, some un changeable aspects or markers that are at the heart and center of you”. At the end of the movie Simon has come out, his crush becomes his boyfriend, and his life returns to normal. We can see here and throughout the whole movie that your identity is unique to you and there is no reason to hide it. In the end hiding yourself just hurts you rather than protecting you. 

Or maybe as a society we can stop shaming people? 

I don’t know, Just a Thought!