Heartstopper is Gaslighting an Entire Generation

Why do I feel so conflicted about this charming celebration of gay teenage life?

I have a very strong memory from my university days. I was wandering around The Strand in London with a girl I got on well with from my course, and a friend of hers I’d never met before. The prospective legalisation of gay marriage was in the news a lot—this would have been 2010, I suppose—and it came up in conversation. I expressed some ambivalence on the subject which I think, in retrospect, was somewhat contrarian and performative.

My friend challenged me: “but you’re not gay”. And I told her that, actually, I was. This was a substantial pronouncement for me, even at the ripe age of twenty. I was now “out” at university. And the fact she hadn’t suspected I was gay was to my credit, I believed—I was passing.

But then her companion—again, a man I’d never met—interjected, “it’s so refreshing”, he said, “meeting a gay guy who doesn’t make that his whole personality.” I took this as a compliment; it was intended as a compliment.

In my early twenties, I had a habit of distancing myself from anything (political or cultural) that might mark me out as gay; that is, too gay. While I was becoming more comfortable with the fact that I was homosexual in the narrowest sense of that term, I cleaved to the notion that this was purely a description of my sexual orientation—and that it didn’t colour my perspective on life more generally, at all.

Why should it? Sure, I was attracted to men—but that didn’t mean I was interested in the trappings or paraphernalia of gay life. This was a very conscious and deep affectation; a mode of presentation that was very important to me, especially when I was with people I didn’t know well.

You can be gay, I told myself, but not that kind of gay. Not the grating, caricature who spits out double-entendres, listens to Kylie Minogue to the exclusion of all other music and adores RuPaul’s Drag Race. That gay man was frivolous—and by extension, more exposed to the hatred and contempt of society at large. Internalised homophobia was not merely something that would dog me for years; I was its diligent, if unwitting, student.

And while I harbour no resentment towards the man I mentioned at the start of this piece—I don’t even remember his name—that sentence, that memory, lodges in my mind to this day, some fifteen years later. I bristle at the sentiment, its implications, its suppositions and its utter naivety (which I shared myself at the time). I’ve heard similar things, had similar exchanges with plenty of other people since – some much more recently – and none of them intentionally hurtful or glib:

“No-one cares about you being gay anymore.”

“I’m sure things were pretty bad in primary school – but it’s a lot better now, right?”

“Gay people can get married – isn’t that a sign of progress?”

“Sexuality is so much more fluid these days – it’s not a big deal.”

“It’s 2023 – we’ve moved on.”

Have we? Who is the “we” in that last sentence?

I understand this narrative, though. And that it’s meant to soothe, even as it rings hollow. But when I’m in a less generous mood this feels like gaslighting. Sometimes it does feel like the battle’s over, though – we have the rights we wanted, and everyone can go home now. What’s the point of Pride? Why should I even feel “pride” about something I had no hand in, and which I’m not (or certainly wasn’t) exactly thrilled about anyway. What’s the point of activism?

But still, something about it feels false and amnesiac, a litany of comforting bromides. It makes me feel like the self-loathing and debilitating anxiety I felt growing up (feeling nauseous every morning on my way to school)—and that’s contributed to serious mental health crises I’ve been through—is missing from this account of progress.

And not just mine, of course, but a whole generation’s. Not to mention the generations of gay men and women before me – who had it much, much worse. There’s a very funny line in Bros—a film I can’t recommend enough—delivered by the protagonist, a forty-year-old writer, played by Billy Eichner. Observing the gulf between different generations of gay men—only a few decades really—he quips, “we had AIDS, and they have Glee.”

I think there’s a cohort of gay men and women—roughly between the ages of thirty and forty—who occupy a particularly strange moment in gay history. It’s crucial I emphasise that I don’t mean the most challenging, by any means. I regularly attend a gay book club in Bristol. Many of its members are decades older than I am and lived through the AIDS epidemic—I know things are better now.

I use the word “strange” because I think the generation I’m referring to is experiencing something I’ll call “cognitive whiplash”. We grew up in a society that we felt despised us (section 28 wasn’t repealed until 2003 in England and Wales; the early parts of my education were truncated by that policy, and gay relationships were never mentioned in what passed for “sex education classes” at my secondary school.)

Same-sex marriage was finally legalised in 2014; gay and lesbian people are a protected group under the Equality Act of 2010, building on piecemeal anti-discrimination legislation that had been in place since 1999. Astonishingly, the ban on LGBT people serving in the military was not formally lifted until 2016. This is all very recent history. And now we find ourselves bombarded with messages of affirmation and the repeated insistence that the UK is an inclusive place, largely free of homophobia or judgment.

A friend of mine put it like this: “I spent my entire childhood preparing for a world that would fully reject me, only to wake up one day and be told ‘you’re great, let’s watch Glee together!’” This is progress, sure. But just because society is catching up – and somehow both very rapidly and too slowly at once—I’m afraid that doesn’t eliminate the profound shame I experienced from the age of about five until quite recently.

The well-meaning but trite slogan “It Gets Better” is true. But shame is toxic and insidious. The fact that Barclays sponsors Pride and that everyone has a gay friend or two is not a retroactive panacea.

This is something I’ve been mulling over recently, and it’s related to the hype around the new series of Heartstopper. But it’s much broader than that, and this is not a review of that series.

For what it’s worth, though, I found it incredibly sweet and charming (I’ve only seen the first season), but it’s also brought up a lot of other complicated emotions, too. Not all of them pleasant or comfortable.

There’s been plenty of reflection on this messy constellation of feelings—particularly from gay men who are older than the show’s characters or its primary target audience—across social media, in newspapers (the former vicar, now writer and broadcaster, Richard Coles, wrote a particularly poignant piece in The Times recently) and in conversations I’ve had with gay friends and acquaintances.

The consensus is that this show—had it been aired decades earlier—would have been profoundly reassuring and comforting for confused and anxious children, grappling with their identities and how the world saw them; that it could, perhaps, even have saved lives. We’re mourning the young adolescent years we weren’t afforded. Or, as a friend of mine phrased it, “eighteen-year-old me would have been really grateful for Heartstopper.”

I’ve certainly thought, ruefully, about how my own experience of adolescence might have been improved by the show. I could have watched this with my Mum or Dad (it has Olivia Colman in it!) It’s PG in a sense that Queer as Folk certainly wasn’t – remember what happens early on in the first episode of that series? (If you know, you know.)

The point is, I share these sentiments, but I also find something lacking in Heartstopper. Alice Oseman, the creator of the original graphic novel which inspired the TV adaptation, spoke to The Guardian in 2022 about the response the show has received. “I like to think the lack of negativity is because Heartstopper is so positive and joyful and full of love, it’s hard to actively hate without seeming like a horrible person”, she said.

And while “positive and joyful” coming-of-age, gay-themed stories are obviously welcome and overdue, I also think that giving primacy to those themes bears the risk of creating something that doesn’t quite ring true; or, at least, might leave out some of the complexity and darkness that might make it more compelling, more believable.

To be honest, I felt confounded by it. By the protagonist, Charlie’s, lack of anxiety and internal conflict. I remember thinking: where is the bafflement? The feelings of alienation? The fear of being outed?

The terror I felt at having “fucking faggot!” bellowed at me in the street, in broad daylight, for having the temerity to hold hands with my boyfriend at the time – something I haven’t done since. Two friends of mine have told me, separately, about aggressive homophobic incidents they’ve experienced in the last few months – in the centre of Bristol, where I live.

I don’t feel comfortable criticising Heartstopper to be honest – but it essentially serves as two things at once: a fairly light and family-friendly TV show with the intention of normalising difference; and a corrective to what’s come before it. It’s both entertainment and a cultural sea change.

And perhaps it isn’t fair to burden its producers, its cast, or Oseman herself, with this much emotional and cultural baggage, when they’re essentially producing something that’s good for the world. Like I say, I feel conflicted.

Speaking with a close female friend—the same age as me—she made a comment that complicated my own feelings towards the show even further: “oh god Heartstopper is so lovely” she said, “but I’m not sure who the audience is actually supposed to be. Because it’s so idealistic that it doesn’t really offer any comfort to someone who might be struggling with coming out.”

It’s not that the principal characters in the show face no struggle at all – they do; but it’s framed in such a way that you’re always—as the viewer—on their side, instinctively.

The few incidents of outright homophobia and bullying are presented as repellent – and flagged as unconscionable within the narrative – rather than simply experiences that a gay person should expect, as a result of being open about their sexuality.

I’m acutely aware that there’s an irony at play here. There’s been a great deal of pointed criticism levelled at all sorts of books, films and TV shows that, arguably, dwell perversely on the inevitable misery of gay characters in fiction. They die of AIDS; they’re murdered or take their own lives; often, they’re totally ostracised by their own families and communities.

Films like Brokeback Mountain and Moonlight—as well as novels like Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life and Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart—come to mind. I happen to love all of these books and films, and perhaps that tells you something about me. In that context, then, isn’t a show like Heartstopper a tonic? Absolutely, it is. I like it and, more importantly, I’m glad it exists. But I can’t enjoy its overwhelming purity and sweetness without feeling a lot of other things at the same time – and that’s my loss.

That said, I’ll definitely watch the second series when I get the chance. And when I do, I’ll try to keep those unpleasant, ancillary thoughts at bay. It’s not Heartstopper’s or Alice Oseman’s fault I feel this way; but I don’t think it’s mine either.