Clearly there's a deep hunger for innocent gay teenage romance. Which explains the gushing, wildly over-generous reviews of both Oseman's books and the TV series based on them. And - yes, absolutely - young gay readers and viewers deserve some wholesome, joyful, uplifting romance. I will also happily admit that I found the first series of the TV show a pure delight. Sure, the story is wafer thin, the characters are barely there and some of the dialogue would seem basic coming from kids five years younger than the characters are supposed to be. But it is charming enough to overlook all of that. Except... by the time we get past the first episode of the second series the charm starts to wear a little thin. Pretty soon there are some niggling questions about the whole Heartstopper enterprise and in particular about how Oseman deals with teenage gay guys and their sexuality. Or, more precisely, how she doesn't deal with it. Because despite Heartstopper being all about sexual identity and coming out, Oseman cannot bring herself to honestly and realistically discuss or depict sex, even in the most delicate, oblique or tastefully vague way. So the first series is all yearning and hand-holding and tentative kisses. Fair enough; that's what teenage relationships are like at the start. But by series two Nick and Charlie have been together for months. And, let's be real here: teenage boys are horny devils. They think about sex ALL THE TIME. At the very least there would be some VERY heavy petting going on. And it wouldn't matter if they were evangelical Christians or Mormons or suffering from a heady mix of social anxieties and neuroses around sex (which, unless I've missed something, Nick and Charlie are not). That's just the way it is. Always. But not with Nick and Charlie. No, they are fantastically chaste. When the subject finally comes up some months into their relationship they both react as if burned by a red-hot poker, then swear that they're not ready for sex just yet. Then Charlie then tells Nick that, although he wants to - one day - that if Nick is never ready, then that will be fine with him too. Because I guess Love Is Enough. Anyone who has been a teenage boy knows that this is complete nonsense, and that no sexually-healthy teenage boy in history has ever said this. And this is where we need to address the elephant in the room. Alice Oseman is asexual. So we have to assume that she has an asexual agenda here. Because she sure hasn't done any actual research into what actual teenage boys think or do. And this is where I start to have some concerns over just how "wholesome" and "uplifting" Heartstopper really is. Frankly, denying natural sexual urges isn't wholesome at all. And shrouding them with fear, dread and various other un-named negative feelings is positively dangerous, and not what you'd expect of a 21st century teen / young adult story that purports to have a healthy approach to sexual identity and coming out. But that's precisely what Oseman does. And the more I think about Heartstopper now, the more I see it as another piece of exploitative M/M fiction. It's another gay fantasy written by another woman who largely wants to deny the everyday sexuality of real gay boys/men. It's the teen version of A Little Life, if you like. It'll make a lot of girls/women weep buckets for the unbearably urgent romance - so long as they are not confronted by boners, semen or the icky things those boys do together. No, no, no. We'll have none of that here. Right? So tell me - honestly - just how positive and uplifting and wholesome and heartwarming is Heartstopper really? Hmmm?
Review of Heartstopper
