In this edition of Cinema Issues we will be talking about the character of Will in Stranger Things and the idea of negative representation.
Post season three of Stranger Things all Will is is an LGBTQ+ youth. The writing strips him of being able to be anything other than his sexuality. Worse yet it makes him hopelessly in love with his straight friend Mike. It makes him act out over the course of season four and believe there is a future there despite the fact his friend is straight. Will expects to be accepted for who he is and yet does not accept that for Mike thinking instead that he can still win him in the end, despite sexuality being an immoveable force.
Recently the actor who plays Will, said in an interview that we would get good representation for Will, being gay, in the next lot of episodes, as heavens knows we haven’t had that yet. The writing presents Will as being catty and mean and trying to break apart Mike and Eleven, and then wants us to feel bad for him as he gets rejected, the fact that he cannot accept it and move on is not a thing worthy of sympathy but rather one that makes him, and by default the movement the show so clearly wants to appeal to and represent look worse. If this was a young man going after a woman, trying to break her up from her partner, then being rejected, then acting the victim, then being obsessed and not moving on, in the modern parlance you would say that made them an awful and unsympathetic character. Yet the moral framing here is that he is gay so it is fine. Wrong. It pushes the gay people are manipulative narrative line.
The fact that the first part of season five simply had Will and Robin discussing that they were gay over and over again, and then Will embracing his gayness granting him superpowers, it is very clear the show doesn’t want to do actual representation that matters but would rather boil theses characters down to one thing, and then present incredibly moral questionable choices as good because otherwise people on the internet would get mad.
It is very interesting to compare Robin and Will in terms of characterisation, and how they are written, Robin has far more going on outside of just being a lesbian, even if season five muddies that a bit, whereas Will just has the upside down, which increasingly he is irrelevant for and being gay.
Increasingly the character doesn’t show positive representation on the show but rather stereotypes and boiled down cliches. It is tokenism plain and simple.
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