The Town of Riverdale remains stuck in the past.
In 2017, why must a show still rely on queerbaiting to garner interest in it’s passionately heterosexual plot?
It’s generally unfair to judge a book by it’s cover.
It’s probably all the more unfair to judge a show by it’s pilot. A pilot does not define the path of action a series will ultimately take. By all means, it’s intended to sell an idea that can be played out for the length of eternity (or close to it), but from just about every show I have ever watched, the pilot tends to differ far more from the series. For this reason, I usually try to give shows a few shots after their initial pilot. In the case of Riverdale, it doesn’t seem like I will be missing much by not continuing.
I finally caved and jumped into the lion’s den so late into the game by watching the pilot on Netflix, as the streaming service loves to plaster it on my recommendations (I blame my history with Glee). I had been recently intrigued with the conceit of this relatively mysterious show when I started seeing Betty/Veronica shipping pop up in my twitter feed every now and then. I generally don’t become invested in a show because of a queer ship due to the fact that, well, I like watching shows for good plots. If I’m only watching a show for the good fan-plots that come about from a non-cannon queer shipping community, than I can’t say I find the show’s relationships terribly convincing. However, I followed the Betty/Veronica ship to the pilot because I actually believed that this queer ship was not a work of fanfiction. I was sold by this gif:
Not a spoiler. It happens in the pilot. It happened in the trailer. And it’s a totally unnecessary, unfulfilling throwaway bit that neither we nor the characters take anything from. Here is the rest of the scene:
It is almost jarring after the initial heat of the kiss. I was surprised to find it in the pilot, and even placed in the scene that it was. It didn’t fit. It felt tacked on. Worst of all, as the rest of the episode unraveled, I didn’t have to keep watching the season to know that it would never happen again.
Don’t worry, I did a little spoiler heavy research before writing this to confirm that it would never happen again. This was not a set up to a bigger, underlying sexual and romantic tension that would complicate not only Betty and Veronica’s friendship, but the age old love triangle between them and Archie. No, this was just a misplaced, edgy-teen-show attempt to prove that the Riverdale we were witnessing was not the wholesome, All-American fantasy world of the original comics. But here’s my question:
It’s 2017, why is queerbaiting still a thing?
To disguise your queerbaiting as a witty gag on an age old television tactic (“faux-lesbian kissing”) does not make you subversive. It makes you lazy writers. Hell, it wasn’t even a justified stunt. I’m not even sure why it happened. Who even wrote that?
I was disappointed (but not at all surprised) to find that Lili Reinhart, who plays our dear Betty in the CW show, had already expressed that there wasn’t room for a Betty and Veronica romance in the show the team was writing.
“ They’re soulmates but in a friends’ way. Our show is not meant to be fan fiction. We give them a taste of it when they kiss, but that’s all it is.”-Lili Reinhart to Hollywoodlife.com
Now this was from an interview in January. (A lot has changed since January. Donald Trump has been president, the world is different now.) I hold no ill feelings toward Lili, as she’s not the writer or the showrunner. And, honestly, she’s right. That’s not what’s happening in the show, that’s not her character, and that’s not the show they’re trying to sell. How else does an actress address an incredibly enthusiastic group of fans pushing for something that isn’t true to her character? What she fails to address, though, is the lack of responsibility the creative team of Riverdale takes for creating the very expectations their fans are throwing back at them.
You cannot give your fans a “taste” of a possible relationship and a chance of queer representation and then expect them to not run to the moon and back with it. I’ve been in rabid fandoms. We start shipping shit over a shared look between characters who barely know each other. However, it is one thing to humorously queerbait a fandom that has a long history with queer shipping asa compromise to cater to some of their wishes (see Sherlock).
To lure LGBTQ youth to your show on the false hope that you would explore a queer and female relationship is just slimy marketing. To then throw this kiss in during the the building blocks of their friendship (when you still aren’t even sure how to interpret it yet because Veronica’s kindness to Betty so early on is so rarely seen in a show with a love triangle) is awfully deceiving.
Because I went in expecting them to kiss, I began interpreting their friendship all wrong. So, instead of getting the opportunity to appreciate the show for depicting a positive friendship between two women who like the same guy, I’m left feeling kind of robbed by Hollywood once more for fooling me into believing there could be genuine exploration of female sexuality. Especially by timeless characters that could use a more genuine and thought provoking makeover anyway.
Rather, Riverdale settles for cheap tricks, and while I could devote a stupid amount of time to watching the rest of the season to prove to myself that they’re smarter than I perceive, I have to remember that this is an edgy teen show that airs on the CW. So I doubt I’m not too far off the mark in my decision to go no further. But I guess that’s okay, half a year has passed and so I’m sure everyone is over it and I am in the wrong.
Riverdale is fanfiction.
It is important to note that since that interview back in January, Lili Reinhart responded to a fan’s question on her personal tumblr account. You may read the entire post here.
In that response, she explains the misunderstanding in her use of the word “fanfiction”. Again, I must emphasize that I do not believe Lili is homophobic, queerbaiting, or responsible for the problems that Riverdale has created within it’s own fanbase. However, too often does the enthusiastic support of queer representation on a show becomes regarded as fanfiction simply because writers refuse to either admit to their exploration of the sexuality of their characters for the sake of maintaining popular demographics, or implement purposeful queerbaiting tactics to cash in on a demographic that they will never fully invest real stories in. Riverdale, it seems, is partaking in the latter. And while there is room for change as Lili consistently advocates, Riverdale remains a pretty predictable (though undeniably effective) contribution to the teen drama of today.
The bottom line.
I’m not saying Betty and Veronica need to be gay in order for this show to be good. In order for this show to be good, they shouldn’t use gimmicks like baiting LGBTQ youth with faux-subversive scenes of homosexual interest with not only an interest to cash in on the hopeful hearts of queer youth, but posing them in the position of the ones fabricating the love connections.
The whole show is fanfiction. Archie, a high school sophomore, having sex with his teacher wasn’t canon until Riverdale. If that’s canon, anything should be possible. Even the healthy and powerful romantic relationship between two beautiful, intelligent, and fiercely strong-willed women.
But I digress. I’m late to the game, so what’s the point of even playing?
