[Heartstopper] is instead burdened with the task of being a standardized piece of queer representation on-screen and off.
October 3rd, 2024 marks the premiere of Heartstopper’s third season on Netflix. Heartstopper follows the story of teenager Charlie Spring as he falls for his classmate Nick Nelson. The story began as a webcomic, before becoming a graphic novel, then a Netflix coming of age romantic comedy series. Heartstopper is consistently in the top 10 most-viewed programs in the first weeks of each season’s release. However, each season’s drop on Netflix has also sprouted new moments of discourse for the crisis of representation that has plagued the show and the cast. Following the release of season 1, Kit Connor, who plays Nick, came out as bisexual as a means to stave off harassment from viewers questioning his sexuality—many viewers assumed Connor was straight, and based on that assumption, critiqued his “fitness” for the role. The lack of sexual activity beyond kissing between main characters Charlie and Nick has also been a subject of frustration for some viewers, the most viral example being Trixie and Katya for Netflix’s “I Like to Watch,” claiming that a refusal to go “all the way” is unrealistic for queer teenagers.
The comments and conversations around queerness occurring in Heartstopper’s orbit carry a taxonomical tone to them, expressing desires for “believable” and “good” queer characters, demanding out actors who match the sexuality of those characters. It is not enough that Heartstopper is one among many shows with queer themes and characters; the show is instead burdened with the task of being a standardized piece of queer representation on-screen and off. Rather than the show being a chance for a new future for queer representations, it has instead been made into something more akin what Tourmaline, Eric A. Stanley, and Johanna Burton call “a trap of the visual,” in their anthology Trap Door. They use this term to denote how the hyperfocus on representation rarely leads to proper protections for trans and gender nonconforming people. However, rather than coming from Heartstopper itself, this trap of the visual for queer representation instead comes from fans. Interpretive strategies by some of Heartstopper’s most vocal consumers have become catalysts for perpetuating enduring queerphobic rhetoric—such as evaluating whether Connor “seemed” “queer enough,” or insisting upon queer teenagers as hypersexual—rather than speaking to new possibilities or even new problems.
Take viewer frustration around Charlie and Nick’s purportedly “unrealistic” romance: the characters’ slowness to engage in sexual activity is interpreted by some viewers as an active effort to desexualize the characters by Netflix and therefore inherently “unrealistic,” “repressive”or perpetuating myths of Gen Z’s supposed decreased interest in sexual activity. Under this metric, there is no space to interpret Charlie and Nick’s relationship otherwise, no space to suggest that it may instead reflect tentativeness surrounding one’s first relationship. Charlie and Nick’s “non-sexuality,” or more accurately, the fact they do not go “far enough” for some viewers, can only be read as a corporately-imposed desexualization. Never mind that to even make this argument, one must actively ignore the other, more sexually explicit queer content hosted on Netflix (such as Sex Education, Elite, Special, Sense8, Glamorous, or AMC’s Interview with a Vampire).
But it is perhaps not surprising that such reductive visions of queerness have spawned around a Netflix program. Netflix, as a streaming platform, can also function as a sort of trap of the visual. Despite not being a social media platform per se, Netflix is able to quite efficiently engage in what Tarleton Gillespie calls “the politics of platforms,” which describes how digital intermediates like YouTube leverage various definitions of “platform” to cater to users, audiences, and advertisers. While Gillespie primarily has platforms like YouTube in mind, Netflix’s shift in offerings over its seventeen-year history has demanded a shift in their political capabilities and discursive work. Although Netflix may not stand out as an obvious example of platform logic and politics, I argue that its engagement with the politics of platforms allows Heartstopper to become a trap of the visual.
Netflix rests comfortably between two definitions of platform that Gillespie offers: computational (infrastructure that supports the design and use of particular applications) and architectural (raised level surface). These two definitions speak to Netflix’s early years as a distributor and hub for the intellectual properties of major studios, until their pivot into original content in 2013. Now, more than a decade on from that pivot, Netflix uses the production, marketing, and reception of series like Heartstopper to dip into the political definition of “platform” (a space where beliefs are articulated), wherein cultural capital can be gained from championing queer and trans representations appropriate for young viewers. By figuring Heartstopper as simultaneously on the vanguard of queer representation and for and about young people, Netflix attempts to thread the needle of being a platform that gives space for diverse stories while also not altering any of its algorithmic politics. This becomes a trap of visual when we consider the high-profile transphobic conservative content that Netflix courts while supposedly celebrating queer and trans stories.
While Netflix supposedly imagines itself as a hub for queer inclusive content aimed at a young audience, it all too often quickly reverts to being merely a computational and architectural platform when necessary. Netflix leadership has consistently defended its choice to court comedians with transphobic material onto its platform, as in the case of Dave Chappelle. When receiving pushback from critics, audiences, and even staff at Netflix regarding his inclusion into the programming, responses have rested on the entertainment value of its programming. Co-founder Reed Hastings said he would order specials “again and again” in 2022, a promise he kept when Netflix hosted Chappelle’s 2023 special The Dreamer, the same year that Heartstopper premiered its second season. While Netflix certainly loves the cultural capital that comes with hosting queer programming, it will easily reduce the platform to simply an intermediary looking to entertain the masses if it’s economically expedient to do so.
Heartstopper finds itself a trap of the visual on two fronts. On one front, there is a vocal audience that uses the show to expound regressive rhetorics about queer sexuality cloaked in progressive posturing. On another front, Netflix is able to use their hosting of the show to pitch an image of progressivism for themselves while platforming transphobic comics. This push for perfect and profitable representations of queerness happening though Heartstopper will, I fear, do more harm than good. A cute show should be an opportunity, a starting point for queer youth to see themselves and potentially be inspired to imagine new lives for themselves. Instead, they are stuck with frustrating and limiting discourses that foreclose such possibilities. As Heartstopper enters a season with more mature themes, I wonder if there will be an audience here for it, an audience willing to navigate through more traps.
Kyle Lindsey is a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan, where he studies how Black content creators navigate the temporality of Blackness in tempestuous platform economies. He is currently figuring out how to make a Beyoncé bracket without losing all his friendships.