#this was a response to an actor-turned-politician from one of the very few openly LGBTQ+ supportive parties in the country

[bgfashkii]

Translation: I haven't heard bigger bullshit when I shove it from bebind he'll see how civilised it is and to shut Gayot

[potagepotiron]

Hate crime

Season 3 of WTFock has ended, Robbe & Sander have found love and everyone is eagerly awaiting Christmas. It is a time to be happy. Well I’m not. I’m not happy because of how WTFock handled an important event that could have been a gamechanger for LGBTQ fiction. I’m talking about the hate crime that ended episode 28. The way in which this plot line was conceived, handled and received, tells you a lot of how our society views minorities.

Fist and foremost, I am a SKAM fan. I watched every clip and every remake. My favourite is Season 3. Because I’m a gay man. I also know this series can change people’s minds. How different crews made it into their own and are very proud about the result. So I had high hopes when a Flemish version of Season 3 was announced.

So I was watching season 3, had a few remarks here and there, and then came that slur. I’ve written about it earlier. To a gay man like me, familiar with internalized homophobia, the concept of using a terrible slur and throwing accusations at Sander like Robbe just seemed baffling. Do not do unto others what you wouldn’t want them to do to you. You wouldn’t subject another human being to such hate, because you know how it feels. Pure and simple. And then, the hate crime happened.

Let’s be honest, WTFock failed in handling the hate crime, from the absence of trigger warnings before the clip, to the immediate aftermath, right until the very end of the series. There was no middle ground, it either had to commit to its choice and be brilliant or fail. It failed miserably. It chose to portray Robbe & Sander as victims and refused to show any form of queer resilience. And even when it became clear, near the end, that they decided to have the attack trigger other major events in the story, the writers opted to not address the hate crime. And to the optimists stating that the attack could be dealt with in Season 4, I say this: too late.

Personally, I wouldn’t have included graphic violence in the first place. To me there is no value in showing violence. I seriously doubt its inclusion in a series aimed at a teenage audience, because the negatives (trauma and copycat behaviour) far outweigh the learning opportunities, even when handled perfectly. I couldn’t finish the clip. That night, I, a grown man of 35 years of age, was wide awake in my bed until 4 in the morning. I couldn’t sleep, knowing that a number of LGBTQ youth saw that clip and became afraid. Decided to hide in the closet for a bit longer, maybe. The scene simply is not worth it.

And despite my sentiments, the reactions online seemed to disagree: “we needed to show this. We needed to be shown this. People need to know.” I couldn’t understand. Trust me, I know about gay bashing. And so should you. I read all the articles in newspapers about the atrocious hatecrimes in Belgium and elsewhere. I know who Ihsane Jarfi is. Friends of mine who are in a relationship have been scared to go out late at night. I’ve been called names in the street myself. I know. The quesion is, why do I need to see two boys being beaten and left in the street?

I don’t think the depiction of a gay bashing had its place in WTFock. However, I do think that a discussion of homophobia should be included, albeit in another way. Gay violence and intolerance could have been a part of the talk that Robbe & Milan had. I’m not demanding to turn a blind eye to homophobia or to sugarcoat a story. Also, I myself am not blind to homophobia. On the contrary, I have encountered more of it this year than ever before. Belgian football, for example, is still rife with homophobic chants. And recently far right politicians have stressed the need to clearly define norms and abnormality with regard to sexual orientation and the rights to adopt or to get married.

The real question is what kind of homophobia the show chooses, wants to or needs to battle. Gay bashing is a radical example of hate, but hate has many forms. And all hate is the result of a much more complex undercurrent in Flemish society. Hate stems from fear of the unknown, indifference or lack of knowledge. And that is why Flemish LGBT interest group çavaria remains committed to eradicating homophobia in schools. This behaviour can be unlearned. Education is key. And that is why it was a good decision for WTFock to zoom in on the reactions of friends after a coming out. They could have gone the extra mile, though. Homophobia is far more varied and widespread than WTFock shows you.

Back to the hate crime. I wonder why the WTFock writing team missed the mark. Norwegian SKAM director Julie Andem demanded that research into the local youth culture should precede any adaptation of the original content. I’m finding it hard to believe that the gay community was on board with the decision to show a gay bashing. I consulted among my gay friends and all thought it was a bad idea. I also wonder whether or not anti-gay violence is a problem that is typical of Flanders. It’s hard to find reliable data on hate crimes and to interpret it because there could be a reluctance to report incidents, but there seems to be no significant difference between Belgium and its neighbouring countries, nor is there a statistically significant rise in homophobic attacks during the last years. There has been a rise, but that could be due to a higher percentage of people reporting incidents.

I’ve argued that the choices the writers made are bad, and that there is little or no claim to say that hate crimes are typical of Flanders, no more than anywhere else in Western Europe or Scandinavia, where the series originated and where gay bashing wasn’t included. But do I believe that the writers knowingly sabotaged their own writing efforts? Surely not. Yet, it’s hard to pinpoint why the series was developed the way it was without hearing from the makers. Chances are we’ll never know. Unlike their French or Norwegian counterparts, the screenwriters have, up to now, chosen not to communicate on the series. It is my perception that indifference to its LGBTQ audience, an appetite for drama and shock value and a degree of ignorance manifested itself throughout the series. That may or may not have been the intention of the makers, we can’t know, but it certainly had that effect on me as a viewer.

As always, a part of me that says I’m being too harsh. I can imagine it’s a lot less difficult and a lot more relaxed to write series on superheroes then it is navigating your way through the pitfalls of minority representation or gay televised fiction, a genre that exists less than 30 years and of which the rules are being rewritten constantly. It’s also not easy to have a number of militant gays like myself looking over your shoulders constantly, scrutinizing every line and every motive and picking on the one detail that got overlooked.

And should we dismiss the entire series because of this one incident? Let’s move on, Sander and Robbe are happy. Isn’t that a heartwarming prospect to gay kids? But this relativity is the problem. Silencing a hate crime not a detail. Showing violence on tv has repercussions, and they can’t be undone by having a cute gay couple smooch underneath a Christmas tree. A SKAM remake has a responsibility towards its audience. And it’s not that a chance like this comes around often. Budget cuts in locally produced fiction will mean it will take years before there’s another chance to see local gay fiction on screen. So every chance we get needs to be perfect. Because it will affect a new generation of young people.

Ultimately, the question is why it is so hard to have good quality gay stories, made by queer creators for a queer audience? Why was this series made by three white middle-aged men with a background in marketing, with only one of them with proven credentials in screenwriting? Why is it so hard to hire gay actors or to find authentic gay voices? Is it really necessary that a series like SKAM S3 contains “learning moments for the straight community”? Can’t we, for once, make a tv series without taking into account the heterosexual majority? It might be a bit tentative of me to say this, but I’m sure Niels Rahou, the writer of Season 3 of SkamFrance, wouldn’t have included a gay bashing scene. He has commented frequently on his scenarios, he is openly gay and he stated he would have benefited from a similar series during his adolescence. I don’t think the Belgian writing team wrote with the same sense of urgency or treated SKAM as a passion project.

To end, let’s go back to the original version of Skam Norway. The reason why the format was so revolutionary is precisely because being gay or coming out wasn’t a big deal. Jonas didn’t bat an eyelid when Isak told him he’d been with a boy. His friends were fine with it, and so were his parents. Isak faced an internal struggle, gradually coming to terms with and being the result of living in a heteronormative society. But ultimately the mopey kid with a love of sleeping waged a bigger war with his eternally overflowing locker. He just accepted his sexuality. In the end, though, Isak had grown as a person and showed serious committment to his boyfriend Even. But the eye-opener of the series was the way in which same-sex attraction was treated as something not to worry about.

As a reaction to the way in which homosexuality was depicted as part of mundane everyday life, people rightfully complained that this story was a bit too rosy. And it’s true, there is white middle class privilege in this story. Among certain communities, coming out still isn’t evident and living a gay life is considered unsafe for some people. Yet, Julie Andem would rather show her viewers with a vision of an ideal world, in order to help and comfort a LGBT audience, than care about what the public would think of the season. I think WTFock could have been more attentive to that message.

Luckily, for most of us, being gay doesn’t lead us to being the victim of a hate crime. That doesn’t mean we can turn away from the reality of such violence. But almost all of my gay friends have, one way or another, been confronted with various examples of homophobic behavior. More often than not, these instances are based on ignorance and are more small-scale in nature. Being called names in the street. A supposedly witty remark made by a drunk uncle at a Christmas party. Or take the well-known Flemish tv personality who, in all his innocence, made a plea for abolishing the Antwerp gay pride parade during a televised comedy show in june. He was applauded by the audience and genuinely seemed impressed by his clever, seemingly inclusive reasoning. More often than not, the threats the homosexual community face consist not of the raw violence of the physical attack, but of vulgarity, stupidity or ignorance. It is a potentially dangerous to narrow down homophobia to physical attacks and take the risk to have your audience believe that they’re in the clear as long as they don’t punch someone to death.

The only way things will change for the better is when the heterosexual majority steps up its game. This means they have to change, they have to start questioning their accepted beliefs, or how they educate their kids. Ultimately, they themselves won’t benefit from these changes, on the contrary, society as a whole will be a bit less tailored to them when heteronormativity is eradicated.  Inclusivity is about the majority caring about the minority. So this is my advice to the WTFock team. Don’t care about clicks, controversy or drama. Don’t perpetuate the representation of LGBT individuals as victims of a harsh outside world. Dare to shake up old, established narratives. Show that homophobia is far more pervasive and far more subtle than the large-scale evil of a hate crime. And if you’re going down that route anyway, commit to it. Don’t brush it off. Status quo is no longer an option.