When did the first season of the Netflix adaptation come out? heart blockbased on the beloved graphic novel series Alice Osmandebuted earlier this year, social media this time around has been flooded with messages of love and support for the series and its heartfelt depiction of a budding romance between two high school students, Nick Nelson (Keith Connor) and Charlie Spring (Joe Locke). In particular, a trend has emerged on Twitter in which members of the LGBTQ+ community, mostly gay and queer men, have shared images of the various media they consumed as children, with the caption: “That was my heart block“. Some of them were funny, some were accurate, and some were downright sad - an instant demonstration of how far we’ve come in terms of properly representing queer youth, and how far we still have to go.
I really just read heart block graphic novels months before the series premiered, completely unaware that it was developed for Netflix. Naturally, as someone who squealed with glee over Nick and Charlie in the books, I had no hesitation in gravitating towards its adaptation. This, of course, made me emotional, given that I was already familiar with the story, to the point that I wrote to my best friend who lives in another city, asking her to get on a plane to return home and hold me for hand while I watched heart block. (Her useless response? “Sit on one arm until it goes numb, same effect.”) Needless to say, as a gay man who grew up projecting his own desires onto the mostly heteronormative media I consumed, the series made me squeal . and smile until my cheeks ache, a feat rarely accomplished. But such happiness is often accompanied by the downside of returning to the real world.
Not to say that queers are deprived of happiness or unworthy of it in real life, of course. Vice versa. But it goes without saying that queer media, even the most inclusive ones such as heart, in which real-life queer actors portray queer characters is still often marred by an inexpressible notion of sadness. I felt every emotion in all the ups and downs of the first eight episodes of Nick and Charlie’s journey, and since most of the heteronormative media I typically consume don’t evoke such an emotional response, they just serve as a reminder that despite all the progress, achieved for the LGBTQ+ community around the world, we are still isolated, closed off, forced to fight and demand that our experience and our humanity be allowed to just take a place. And it can be tiresome.
Especially for a series like this. heart blockwhose backdrop of high school and puppy love conjures up themes that are familiar and comforting to viewers who watch heteronormative rom-coms over and over again as if their lives (read: mine) depended on it, it’s all the more a double-edged sword. Part of me is so happy and grateful that I’m still young enough to see the progress that has allowed series like heart block to be done, and the fact that maybe today’s gay kiddos will watch this after school instead of dodging bullies walking home from eighth grade alone to watch Young and restless while overeating white cheddar Cheez-Its like I did. Not to mention the very premise of the show, that the handsome jock you’re in love with turns out to be bisexual and actually likes you too? Almost enough to heal my love for a painfully straight jock during my high school days. (Yes, I still follow him on Instagram, yes, he’s still great, and yes, he still doesn’t know I exist.)
in the middle of my heart block obsession, I got another older friend to watch it with me during a slow work day, during which she turned to me and asked a laden question, “Is high school still hard on gay kids today?” The short answer is life in general and of course high school will always be difficult for queer people who don’t fit into the mold society puts in front of them, plain and simple. Life can and does get better, especially after high school. But we never recovered from the trauma of being gay in a straight world. “Despite the success drag racethe existence of lesbian Christmas romantic comedies and openly transgender Oscar nominees, we have never recovered from the trauma of growing up in a culture that hates us,” Grace Perry wrote in her collection of essays. 2000s made me gay. “We don’t really go any further from the injury. We cannot leave this in the past. It becomes part of us and we move forward with it.”
I love heart block inside and out, from his happy moments to the very handling of such bizarre injuries, and the nuances of Connor and Locke’s performances. After watching the first season a good three times, I realized that the sadness it evokes is so weird that I couldn’t help but accept it. I don’t feel as happy watching something else, and I also don’t feel as sad when watching something else.
This is a unique type of emotion, best conveyed by a country singer and LGBTQ+ ally. Casey Musgraves in his song “Happy & Sad”. She wonders if there is a word for how she feels tonight, happy and sad at the same time. I don’t know if there is a word for this emotion, maybe there is, but the concept that best describes this feeling for me is being weird. We are made up of such deep contradictions, free from the suffocating constraints of a heteronormative society, yet still suffering from the traumas that define our existence. Maybe the ability to contradict ourselves, to be happy and sad at the same time, is just an extension of the freedom that we have. And when I look heart blockI think I’m fine with this feeling.
Source: Collider
