The Love, Simon Impact
I cried. I jumped up in my seat. If it wasn’t for my very British cinema etiquette it’s entirely possible I would have shouted and ran gleeful laps of the screen.
It’s probable that the tidal-wave like affect that Love, Simon had on many of us in the LGBTQ community completely washed over many people, but allow me, in my humble little way, to explain why it was SO impactful for many of us.
As a British gay guy, who grew up in a small town that didn’t even have a single screen cinema, let alone anything else, my exposure to the LGBTQ culture was minimal and restricted to the boundary pushing Channel 4, the occasional soap opera character, such as Simon Raymond and Tony Hill in Eastenders, and camp as Christmas game show/talk show hosts. There was no RuPaul, no Queer Eye.
Bear in mind at this time there was no Sky TV or Xfinity. We had 4 channels, then 5 (I’m not as old as you think, I see you). As far as I was concerned if you were gay, you had to be feminine and flamboyant and chances are you would have to hide, never find real love and run the risk of getting your ass kicked every time you left the house. These were the realities, or at least the presented realities, of being gay. Fun, right? It’s suddenly not so shocking that a lot of gay men who didn’t fit into ‘categories’’ or ‘types’ were so confused they chose to stay in Narnia in the back of the closet and play with the White Witch rather than come out.
Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Queer as Folk came out in the UK which was a massive confidence boost for me, but still it portrayed a gay lifestyle that I just didn’t want to fit into. Clubbing, drugs, promiscuity. That just wasn’t me, so where the hell did I fit in this world? A world that felt completely alien to me, and one I felt severely underqualified for. Will and Grace went some way to rectify that, with Will being less of a stereotype, but is one show really enough?
There were films around. Beautiful Thing was one that made a big impact on me, the story of two high school guys on a council estate in London finding love with each other. I clung on to that film for the longest time. The leads weren’t caricatures, so it felt more accessible and it gave me some hope. But this wasn’t a film that had a wide theatrical release. This was part of a sub-genre of film that usually went straight to video or may be shown at specific film festivals that I, in my tiny little world, had no knowledge of or access to. In fact, I only found it because someone I knew showed it to me.
Queer cinema was something more arthouse, something that could be beautiful, evocative, daring but rarely was it actually realistic for those of us that were just… people. And so, it carried on. LGBTQ representation grew but a lot of it was still stereotyped, or secondary ‘comic value’ characters. Where was my big romantic Julia Roberts style love story? I was always left wanting.
Films came up through the festival circuit such as the recent Gods Own Country, Moonlight and Call Me by Your Name, and although they may be beautiful, raw and incredibly well made, they still were not the accessible, John Hughesian love story that I wanted.
And then, like a bright Sun rising, Love, Simon came along. A teenage, coming of age story that had a wide release, so everyone could see it, it wasn’t arthouse, it wasn’t a festival film, it was a big, Hollywood style film and I was beside myself with jubilation. Simon is a teenage boy who gets up, checks his social media and emails, gets dressed in a hoodie and jeans and goes to school. Underneath all of this he has a secret, but he is. Just. A. Guy. There isn’t just one thing that he does that is relatable, his life, his reactions, his choices are ones that we all make. They aren’t accentuated, they aren’t extravagant. The film isn’t extravagant.
THIS is why Love, Simon had the impact it had. It was available to, and spoke to, gay men, gay teenagers, gay boys the world over. Sitting in that cinema the fifteen-year-old within me was screaming;
‘This is it! This is what I need!’
If this film had been released when I was fifteen, rather than thirty-two, I can guarantee my life would have been completely different.
- It’s a beautiful love story.
- It BRIMS with hope and love, rather than hate and fear.
- The lead is just a guy. He isn’t feminine or queer in presentation. He’s just a guy.
- The reactions of people around him are real, not standard or what people expect.
- The final scene makes my heart swell like the Grinch at Christmas. Love is just as real for us as it is for straight people, which, believe it or not, a lot of us spent a long time not believing.
Love, Simon represents our fight, our journey to inclusion and representation. A mainstream film with a gay male lead in this incarnation has been so long coming, and it is so important that kids going through this have something to cling to. Something to tell them it will be OK. Especially for kids who may not live in big cities with access to a wider variety of film and media, like I didn’t.
Love, Simon is a beacon of hope to thousands, if not millions, of kids and it speaks to many of us who grew up without that beacon. It’s an arrow of love straight into our rainbow hearts.
That’s the impact of Love, Simon.
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