People are very stupid. As Stranger Things sets to air its series finale episode in less than 24 hours, the seventh episode of the fifth season has been review-bombed.
And it’s all because of a scene where Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) finally comes out to his mother and his friends that he’s gay. Of course, it’s a difficult thing for him to say as his friends seem to know where he’s going but you can tell they’re not really sure either.
Three years ago during the fourth season, there were speculation that Will is gay. As a matter of fact, there was a lot of queerbaiting. It’s obvious he’s in love with Mike (Finn Wolfhard) who doesn’t exactly return the same love. The topic became so much of an issue that Schnapp actually came in real life months later in January of 2023.
Who cares is probably the question people are asking?
Well, in 1987, it was a huge issue if people were gay. Just about every talk-show had the obligatory episode where someone has a “secret.” Being gay in the 1980s was technically illegal. There were sodomy laws that states passed that actually were challenged in court.
Most notable is Bowers v. Hardwick, which was discussed in the Julia Roberts/Denzel Washington movie The Pelican Brief. It stemmed from an incident in the summer of 1982 when an Atlanta police officer went to the house of local resident Michael Hardwick to issue a citation warrant that actually was invalid due to Hardwick already resolving the matter. But a clerical error led for the invalid citation to be given to Keith Torick, the officer.
Torick reportedly opened the residence because he claimed the door was unlocked and ajar. Hardwick was engaged in consensual oral sex with another man when the officer went into his bedroom. Hardwick wasn’t prosecuted because the warrant was considered invalid. There was also questions over whether Torick had entered the home illegally as if unlocked is the same as an open door.
Hardwick filed a lawsuit against then Georgia Attorney General Michael Bowers citing the law was illegal. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Bowers favor in 1986. Since then, many states have struck down sodomy laws against anal and oral sex against men. However, they have passed laws on forcible sodomy in sexual assaults.
Regardless, many men and women had to live in secret. Even with the state laws struck down at the state level, many municipalities passed residential laws to keep men and women who weren’t related by blood or marriage from living together.
In the media, most men and women who were gay or bisexual were often used as the butt of jokes. Or they were portrayed as sexual deviants or predators. A comedy bit Dave Chappelle did on Def Comedy Jam in the 1990s talked about his phobia of a gay person pointing a gun at him and demanding oral sex. Eddie Murphy has since apologized for jokes made against gays in the 1980s.
Laws have been in place to make violence justifiable against gay men if someone is “fooled” or “provoked.” It’s been called the “gay panic defense” and it was used in the murder of Scott Amedure of Lake Orion, Mich., who was fatally shot by Jonathan Schmitz, a friend of a friend. Amedure and Schmitz had appeared on an unaired episode of The Jenny Jones talk show in which Amedure said he had a crush on Schmitz. Amedure was shot and killed after the taping.
That was in the mid-1990s. In 1998, Matthew Shepherd, a college student, was killed when he was physically attacked and left to die out in a field in Laramie, Wyo. Defenders tried to say the two men who killed Shepherd were actually trying to sell Shepherd drugs when the deal went bad. Basically, they were trying to say Shepherd, 21, was doing drugs and that’s what killed him not the fact he was gay.
I can go on and on, which is sad because this is just the very small pinpoint-size tip of iceberg of laws, statutes and ordinances that have been passed citing decency but it’s actually prejudice and bigotry. In the 1980s, as HIV/AIDS spread, many people initially associated it with just gay men. Born a hemophiliac, Indiana teen Ryan White had contacted AIDS through a blood transfusion. Even though it wasn’t an airborne virus, many parents and teachers of the Russiaville, Ind., community didn’t want White to come to school and he was constantly being prohibited from attending school during the 1985-1986 academic year.
White even said he and his family were harassed as he called “fag” or “faggot.” White later would die of AIDS complications in 1990 at 18. My own school more or less kicked a chorus teacher out when he tested positive for AIDS. That was in the early 1990s. While most schools had lenient laws on PDA among heterosexual couples, being openly gay could lead to suspension or even expulsion.
And the U.S. Armed Services prohibited people from serving. They even faced a court martial if it was discovered. It wasn’t the best time to be gay.
So, someone like Will who is more knowledgeable of world events by the Fall of 1987 is still worried about how people will perceive him, even his friends. Dustin Henderson (Gaten Mattarazzo) is grieving the loss of his friend, Eddie Munson, thus turning more bitter and cynical.
One thing Stranger Things has shown is how young men are expected to act as opposed to how they really act. It’s no surprise that Steve Harrington (Joe Kerry) would mellow out after he graduated high school and become more friendly with Dustin. The show has repeatedly mocked the jocks and preppies who seem to peak in high school.
The young men on the show are very open about their feelings and their platonic love of one another. It’s a brothership that is rarely examined in pop culture. And it’s mostly because most pop culture is still geared toward young men who are heterosexuals. So, when they see two young men hugging, filmmakers are afraid audiences will assume they’re gay.
Yet, there are changes about gay characters in movies and on TV since 1987. However, it’s not a complete change. I think it says something that Robin Buckley (Maya Hawke) admitted in the third season she is a lesbian without much of a fan reaction. Maybe it’s because Robin and her current girlfriend, Vickie (Amybeth McNulty), seem to exhibit a more acceptable “lipstick lesbian” sexual fantasy of heterosexual men.
And this tells you all you need to know about the people review-bombing the episode. The truth of the matter is that Will has been gay since the first episode. He just didn’t know how to express himself yet.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 