“And Matilda found, to her surprise, that life could be fun. She decided to have as much fun as possible. After all, she was a very smart kid. Matilda and Miss Honey each got what they wanted: a loving family.”

So, there’s obviously been an overwhelmingly positive reaction to “Love, Simon” so far, and the majority of audiences have fallen head over heels for the film. But I have seen critiques of it as well. And to be honest, upon first seeing the film (although I adored it), I agreed with some of the negative comments I read. But after sitting back and really thinking on the movie, and everything it is, and what it stands for, I’ve come to realize that maybe in those critiques, we are not really understanding what Berlanti was trying to do or say in certain moments. 

For instance, the biggest critique hands down has been how Simon’s friends react (or don’t react) when he’s getting bullied. How they put their own selfish egos before his feelings and don’t even attempt to see things from his perspective. And I mean, that’s true. They don’t. They suck in that moment. I mean they really, really suck. Suck way worse than you would have expected, because up until that moment in the film, they’ve been pretty stellar friends, you know? Which made me think, there’s got to be a reason for this jarring juxtaposition here, Greg Berlanti knows what he’s doing and what story he wants to tell a little too well for this to just be an awkward blunder in the movie. 

And so in thinking about it, I realized…that’s kind of the point. Sure, Simon’s friends are good people in general, but they don’t think about how he feels when the emails leak because they don’t know how he feels. They don’t understand. And they don’t try to. Which, is the manifestation of his fears from the very beginning. And that’s how it is for so many in the LGBTQ community, right? That the rest of the world will fail (or does fail) at seeing things from any other point of view but their own, therefore completely ostracizing and undermining any other way of thinking, living, loving? In that moment, his friends represent that wall, that barrier. The movie is trying to convey the message of “if you aren’t going through this, you aren’t going to understand, so please understand that you won’t ever understand”. You feel me? And that’s why they can just brush it off. Because they don’t grasp the gravity of his predicament. Because they think his coming out would be the equivalent of leaking any old secret, not the most life altering, terrifying, dangerous secret there ever was. They believe there’s nothing that could justify Simon betraying them, when in reality there’s nothing that could justify what they end up doing to him.  And that’s because they have never been faced with holding something inside of themselves  the way he has been forced to. 

So yeah. Eventually, they regret it. Eventually, they listen. But for those few moments, those moments they turn their back on their friend and leave him to fend for himself, they become the representation of the exact reaction LGBTQ people are fearful of from straights. And in it’s own right, that’s kind of brilliant. Because in making his friends the ones who don’t understand, not just the bullies and outward homophobes and Martin’s of the movie but these people you’ve already decided are good and kind and nice and on Simon’s side, you realize that for someone whose gay, coming out means truly risking losing anything and everything in a society like ours.  And through your own personal reaction, you get to see how outrageous that is, and how absurd it looks. 

So it’s possible Berlanti hopes that maybe, when you’re watching the film and you’re yelling at the movie, outraged at how totally shitty his friends are, you’ll sit back in your seat and  think “Wow. This is how it is. This is what real gay kids go through. I’m so angry about it now, why am I not angry about it every day? I want to jump through the screen and defend this fictional character to the ends of the earth, so why am I not doing that in real life?” And then the drama teacher does what you want to do for Simon, and maybe you’ll think “That’s who I should be. From now on, that’s who I’m gonna be.”

SNL - Cut for Time: My Little Step Children