The Power of Representation

Since I stopped posting on this blog roughly one year ago I’ve felt very little need to come back to it. My creative energy was (and still is) focused on completing my first feature film Andy Mitchell Wants to be a Wrestler and my time outside of that was taken up by uni and work. On top of this, I’d really said everything I had wanted to say in one way or another in the reviews I had published in that year, and one of the reasons I stopped writing them in the first place is that I felt I was beginning to repeat myself. For me, writing reviews was a way to keep myself occupied while I made the transition from one chapter of my life to another. When this process was complete I no longer had any use for these reviews on a personal level. Earlier this year I saw a movie that changed all of that. That movie was Love, Simon. Not since I saw Kill Bill (any of you who claim to know me well in any capacity should know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is my favourite film) have I experienced such a rush of emotion while watching a film for the first time, and ever since this movie came out I have wanted to get my thoughts on paper about it. Simply put, seeing Love, Simon not only reaffirmed my belief in the power of a film to connect with it’s audience on a deeply emotional level, but it also when I truly came to understand why representation matters in storytelling.

At the end of 2015 I came out to my friends as bisexual. It’s not something that I usually talk about in great detail, but the main crux of my personal experience that I want to get across is the self-loathing, fear and confusion (I didn’t know what I bisexual was until I was like 15) that led me to keep this part of me repressed, and the relief that came from my incredible friends/brothers unwavering acceptance of who I was (I know I haven’t told them how amazing I think they all are often enough). This is the exact emotional journey that Simon goes on in the film and I cannot emphasise enough how powerful it was to see a part of myself that I had, for a very long time, felt was weird or strange or scary being openly discussed by the character of Simon and played out so accurately (albeit a bit hyperbolically) on screen. While my experience is obviously different in Simon’s in some ways (Simon comes out as homosexual in the movie) there were so many small nuances in the film that I found incredibly relatable, minor details that I thought had only existed in myself and my own consciousness. A young Simon’s fear of looking at the Harry Potter poster on his wall because of the emotions it made him feel might as well be taken from my very own childhood experience (with the added confusion as to why I felt the same sensations for Hermione), and Simon questioning how he himself may change as an individual following his coming out is a dilemma that I posed to myself round about that time. Furthermore, as Simon came to embrace every part of who he was it took me back to my own journey that I made a couple of years prior, wherein I decided to stop acting according to everyone else’s expectations for me and to stand up and be counted as the man I wanted to be. Overall, I can say that watching this movie was a truly emotional yet deeply liberating experience.

The reason I am writing this is not to give you an in depth look at my own past, but to explain the importance of representation at the top level of cinema. While Love, Simon is far from the first film to tell the story of a gay kid coming out, it is the first mainstream teen film produced by a major studio to feature a gay character in a leading role. It is the first film that has allowed this story to cross over into the mainstream, and therefore be told with a bigger budget and marketed to a wider audience. And while many of you reading this may see yourselves in other characters from across cinema history (maybe even in the John Hughes movies which this flick lovingly pays tribute to), there are others who have their stories have been excluded. I never realised I was a part of the second camp until now, but this goes much much much further than just me. In fact, it goes further than just sexuality. When Wonder Woman was released last year, stories hit the internet of female cinema-goers literally breaking down in tears at finally getting to see a female take centre stage in a tent-pole superhero film that celebrated all that it meant to be female. Oh, and you also might have heard of a little movie called Black Panther? It made over 1.3 billion dollars world-wide at the box-office making it the 9^th highest grossing film of all time? Yeah that one. On top of being a really solid film, it is also the first high profile superhero movie to feature a black lead since the Blade franchise petered out in the early 2000’s. For many young kids this is the first time they would have got to see a person of colour featured so prominently on the big screen, which is what led celebrities such as Kendrick Lemar and Octavia Spencer to buy out whole theatres so that young kids could see a version of themselves on screen. They understood that representation matters. They understood the liberation these children would experience in being able to watch that film collectively because it was something they didn’t get to see in the mainstream when they were younger.

And this is what it ultimately boils down to: a challenge. I don’t write this to come across as preachy (it’s a problem with my writing that I find it sometimes does) but if there’s one thing from Love, Simon I’ve taken it’s to love and be proud of yourself in toto. That’s what I want everyone reading this to remember.  We now live in an era where we shouldn’t be afraid to speak what we truly feel and tell the stories we want to tell. Yes their will be people who might hate you for it but fuck them, you do you and don’t ever let someone put you down just because they haven’t come to terms with their own insecurities yet. The challenge I set to all the writers and creators who might read this is to not be afraid of leaving a piece of yourself in your work. The team behind Love, Simon weren’t, and I know that their film has a profound effect on me because of it. We do not live in isolation. You are never the only person going through something. What I’ve realised is that truly great writing can be achieved by telling the stories you specifically need to tell. That doesn’t mean all storytelling needs to be autobiographical, but it should say what you want to be said, it should be an extension of yourself. Going forward in my writing I intend on confronting head first the themes and experiences I know I should be writing about, things in the past I’ve found it far too difficult to address. However, what Love, Simon showed me is that holding back any part of yourself in this way is selfish. If I can make someone feel as accepted and understood as Love, Simon made me feel, then any difficulty I may have in putting the deepest parts of myself into my work will have been worth it.

In conclusion, I just want to get across how proud I am to be part of a world where a film like this can exist. I know our world isn’t perfect, but I truly believe it is becoming more accepting, and with this comes a more diverse range of stories being told on-screen. As has been said many times before, with representation comes normalisation, and I hope the influx of big tentpole blockbusters like Love, Simon, Wonder Woman and Black Panther which transmit a message of acceptance and inclusion will endure going forward. For a long time I felt incredibly sad to hide a part of myself from those closest to me. I hope films like Love, Simon will help to make sure the children of my generation do not feel the same way.

I want to dedicate this to Jon Schnepp. I watched Jon on Collider Video mostly every day for the past two years and he never held back his views on any issue and was proud of who he was. His passing inspired me to finally write this post.