the last lover girl alive

inspiration picture:

tony casting is jason schmidt!

As of recently me and @antonwyzek have been watching Riverdale. Mostly because we need something to watch and we both happen to be writing fics related to the show. It’s a fun time! I watched season 1 and 2 when it came out all the way back when I was in high school. It brings back fond memories and I’m remembering more than I thought I would… except for the following storyline… As we were watching season 1 we came to the episode Body Double which is the third episode of the show.

While watching there was an ugly feeling I had when watching the Sticky Maple storyline and how it’s written. I know this show is often the butt of jokes on online spaces including Tumblr but I still think it’s worth analyzing even if people write it off as “camp”. I would like to say camp is not immune to criticism and just because something is camp doesn’t mean we should not analyze it on a deeper level.

The concept of a sticky maple as I (and the fandom as a whole according to blogs and Reddit posts made at the time of the shows release) is seemingly the act of a guy cumming on a girls face. As this was a CW show (aka cable tv) they couldn’t get explicit as they likely wanted to

In the show, "Sticky Maple" is an act of visual/virtual slut-shaming. The selfie that Chuck and Veronica took is edited with maple syrup covering her face and it’s all over social media. I would like to point out that the maple syrup is artistic shorthand.

The maple syrup is edited clearly to be a cum shot. This is not me pulling this out of thin air that is clearly what the writers intended when they wrote this storyline and edited the picture that is posted of Veronica.

Chuck making this post on social media seems to be a confirmation that a sexual act was Done™️. The show explicitly states through Veronica (and later Ethel) that there was no sexual contact between her and Chuck. We DO see Veronica and Chuck kiss but again it doesn’t seem to go further than that.

We find out later through Ethel (this is her first appearance in the show) that her and Chuck didn’t even kiss. She was apparently just helping him find a book in the library (I believe that is what she says I haven’t been able to find the actual clip where she says this if I am wrong please correct me).

So Chuck lied about doing sexual acts with girls in order to write them in the book that various football players keep. We never find out how many football players KNOW about this book. Presumably it’s older football players? But Chuck and Jason are the same age as Archie and the other central cast. How did this book of sexual conquests start? Did Chuck start it? Did Jason start it? What do the sexual acts get you presumably it’s just credibility and respect with the other male players.

Archie is said to be a football player from even before season 1 which would make him 14 as the show takes place during the fall sophomore year. How did he not know of this books existence? How many of the football players dont know of its existence? The storyline implicates all the football players. But the show wants you to believe Archie does not know as it does not wish to muddy Archie’s ethics.

I want to quickly go back to episode 2 of season 1, A Touch of Evil. In 1x02 of Riverdale we actually see Chuck and Veronica sitting close to one another. Chuck isn’t a character in episode 2 and doesn’t even have any dialogue in this one scene he appears in.

Episode 3 is his first introduction to the audience, as he doesn’t even explicitly have a name in his cameo appearance.

the reveal of the “sticky maple” is odd to me for a lot of reasons.

The sticky maple as we see it through the dialogue IS a sexual act. Veronica (and the audience) have it explained as a “Riverdale thing”

“It’s kind of what it sounds like” says Kevin to Veronica. Through this exchange and the talk of other characters this is how we know the Sticky Maple in itself is an actual sexual innuendo/joke. The maple syrup is in reference to Riverdale being a maple syrup manufacturer town.

I want to talk a little bit about Veronica’s word choice here.

She states: “I’m not a slut nor will I be shamed.”

I find this wording to be… strange to say this least. There is an implication that the audience and the characters in the show would Approve of this act of shaming. If Veronica HAD done a sexual act. If her and Chuck had consensual sex and he posted this later she would be a slut™️. It was clearly not meant to be that serious in wording but that is what it comes across when you have Veronica defend herself in this manner. So Veronica didn’t have sex with Chuck. He lied about it to his friends and social media for cred. This isn’t bad character choice but the act of making it clear that Chuck and Veronica DID NOT have any sexual contact outside their kiss makes the rest of the storyline fall apart.

I’m not saying it’s unrealistic for a teenage boy to lie to his friends about having sex that’s not the problem. The problem is the puritanical framework that this storyline dives into. Ethel states her and Chuck did nothing but the reaction to her saying this, gives the impressionimpression Chuck actually physically assaulted her.

I wanna be clear I’m not defending Chuck’s actions what he did is clearly wrong but the way it’s written about in the show makes the framework muddled.

As far as WE the audience know Chuck is not sexually violent. He’s just a liar.

What’s interesting to me is that the show frames Chuck as a sexual predator and a threat to the women of Riverdale when all he’s done is lie about having sex?

Chuck says Veronica isn’t “virgin territory” after she kissed Archie in the closet back in the pilot.

Using Chuck (the only named black character up to this point not including Pop Tate who doesn’t really have any dialogue and is race swappers for the show) for this storyline is bizarre. They introduced Chuck as an explicit antagonist.

Veronica is meant to have our sympathies especially when we see her crying while reading demeaning comments. Chuck slut shames two (2) girls at Riverdale high and doesn’t physically assault anyone and he is told to us that makes him a predator and he must be stopped. It’s a muddled metaphor.

ways to fix the sexual assault aspect of this storyline:

1. make Chuck and Veronica have consensual sex and have him post this anyway

2. make Chuck an ACTUAL rapist/sexual deviant towards Veronica and Ethel

My point here is that the storyline and how its frame is inherently flawed. The show goes out of its way to clear Veronica of any “wrong doing” (giving a guy an alleged blowjob in a car isn’t wrong or makes her a bad person) but with this they write it as if Chuck actually committed some type of sex crime. We are sympathetic to Veronica because what is happening to her is Incorrect. She didn’t have sex. But she’s being shamed like she did. If she did have sex the shaming would be fine but the problem is that She Didn’t.

The existence of this book of sexual conquests done by the football players is puritanical. It is revealed that Polly’s name is in this book - Jason wrote her in. We don’t know what sexual act is done but

Betty states to Cheryl: “Jason hurt my sister!”

How do we know that? We don’t. They could have done a consensual sexual act and Jason wrote it down. Does Betty think Jason raped Polly? Are we supposed to think that? Cheryl says later when her and Betty are burning the book that “maybe she didn’t know Jason as well as she thought she did”

I am actually not opposed to Jason’s inclusion in the plot as it muddles the ethics of the main storyline Jason Blossom is not a perfect victim. It also broadens the list of suspects to include Polly. It’s actually very interesting but the writers don’t follow through.

When we see Polly later in the season she doesn’t have anything bad to say about Jason. She’s pregnant with his children and they were gonna run away together. So no violent sexual act was committed then? The whole framing of Betty being upset on Polly’s behalf is why she assaults Chuck later in episode 3.

Now I want to talk about one of the major problems with this storyline and it’s the use of Chuck as the primary antagonist and how his “punishment” at the hands of a white woman plays into stereotypes of the sexually violent black man and their “lust” for white women.

Chuck Clayton first appeared in Life With Archie #110 in 1971. Chuck was EXPLICITLY put into Archie as a means of adding diversity to the main cast - by this point Valerie from the Pussycats WAS a black female character but he is the first black MALE character in Archie.

In earlier stories, including his recurring appearances in Archie at Riverdale High, Chuck was shown an athlete. He was from the beginning depicted as a close friend of Archie, often spending time together or engaging in various adventures. By the early 1990s, Chuck's interest in cartooning was added to round out his character and separate him from Archie and Reggie. He wasn’t just an athlete, he was an artist. In modern stories, Chuck is depicted primarily as a cartoonist, whose greatest ambition is to become a professional comic book writer/artist.

He’s a soft masculine character. While the stereotype of the violent and sexually charged black man was around obviously Chuck very much did NOT apply to that trope. He is always portrayed as sensitive and caring. His main problem in stories is usually time management.

Chuck as a character is liked by the main cast. Despite him not being in the core four of Archie, Betty, Jughead and Veronica he is still an important character in the mythos and doesn’t really have a problem with anyone. He’s really just the chill artist friend. The conflicts he has in stories is usually internal, a Troy Bolton archetype of wanting to be an artist and an athlete.

I wanna note that the pairing of Chuck and Veronica isn’t really a thing in the comics either. They’re friends but it doesn’t seem to be a real romantic relationship or pairing that fans ship. His canon girlfriend is Nancy Woods - who to my knowledge does not actually appear in the Riverdale show. (Nancy is pictured above with Chuck).

I also want to make it clear that in pretty much all of his comic appearances he is not a guy who dates/crushes a lot. He is devoted to Nancy and typically is dislocated as single or in a relationship with Nancy. This is mostly because Archie comics didn’t want to deal with backlash from interracial relationships in putting him with main characters like Betty or Veronica or even Cheryl who was created in the 80s - after Chuck had been around for a decade.

In this analysis I will not be diving into Nancy as a character as it is not in the framework of this article but if you wish to learn more about her there are some great articles online.

Anyways even in later comics Chuck is still usually paired up with Nancy. Although in Afterlife with Archie Nancy does cheat on Chuck with Toni.

Nancy was a character who didn’t have a real personality until the 90s and Chuck was often paired with black female characters who had one off appearances. Nancy and Chuck usually have stories together and when they have conflict it is not because Chuck wants to be with other girls or is a pushover with sexual acts it is often because they are creatively different. In the grand scheme of Archie comics Nancy and Chuck are probably one of the more healthier relationships. Which is why I find it so Odd that they decided to use Chuck in this way for this storyline.

Although the show portrays Betty (Dark Betty as the fandom refers to her) pouring maple syrup on Chuck to the point that he starts drowning - as a messed up and “too far” act it still ends with Betty and Veronica victorious. On some level we are supposed to agree with them getting revenge and putting Chuck in his place.

When he comes back later in the season he doesn’t particularly seem angry that Betty almost drowned him it’s more so just annoyance at her and a bruised ego for getting kicked off the football team. He’s not the good guy so why would we take his claims of assault seriously.

We’re not supposed to feel bad for Chuck. We’re supposed to feel bad for Betty who did the act of violence. The framing of this is clear when at Jughead’s party Chuck reveals to everyone what Betty did. It’s not framed as Chuck being a victim of Betty. It does not have the characters look at Betty as a perpetrator of violence but instead is used as a plot point to show a humiliating moment for Betty and to show that Betty isn’t the “good girl” she claims to be.

Chuck describes the assault almost like a sexual escapade. Something kinky that went in a bizarre direction. The black man was almost drowned to death by a white woman going through psychosis and somehow Betty is still the victim and who we should sympathize with.

Riverdale race swaps characters for black such as Josie and Melody of the the Pussycats and Pop Tate - but their first black male character in the comics and the show is a sexual predator who uses his position of power being the coaches son to leer over the (white) teenaged population of Riverdale High.

It’s callus writing and the writers clearly didn’t think through the racial implications of using Chuck for this storyline. They tried to make up for it later in season 2 when Chuck becomes more of an “artist” but the damage is already done. The audience is always going to dislike Chuck - which is by design. You can’t have a sexual predator in your show and barely redeem him and then expect your young primarily female audience to welcome him back with open arms.

This storyline does a disservice to Veronica and Chuck. The feminist critique rings hollow when the show is afraid of making actual comments on sexual politics. The shows woke (for lack of a better word) marketing is a facade when your commentary on race is sloppy. It’s an example of older white male writers trying to appeal to the times but failing.

This whole storyline should have been scrapped or at the very least reworked because it shows a complete disregard for the characters and their source material. I’m not an Archie purist I don’t hate all the changes Riverdale did to the characters but this is one of the most baffling decisions I’ve seen from this show so far.

I also want to say that I just wanna say that I do enjoy this show and I don’t think the writers intended for this storyline to read as badly as it does. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I’m sure this came from a good place but as a black girl who does enjoy Archie comics and this show it was really hard to ignore this decision especially when it doesn’t even seem to have any long lasting consequences for the story and the only real consequences are for Chuck and his character.