The new season of Love, Victor dropped last Wednesday. As we do, the gays lit up the discourse on Twitter because one of our fav subcultural phenomena is returning. Like many queer audiences, I was truly excited about the new season because I had too many damn questions that were not resolved from the last season, and my nosey ass can’t wait. The biggest question being who would be behind the door after the season 2 finale that saw our titular character and potential romantic interest Rahim dancing together, and ex-boyfriend Benji walking in on this.
All of this narrative tension set by the writers for this show really had me thinking that Victor was going to end up with Rahim. I wouldn’t have been mad about it. There were so many points during season two, where I was counting down when Victor and Rahim were going to get together. The reason for such anxiety is because of a whole slew of reasons.
One of the easiest things that come to mind is how Benji likes to police aspects of Victor’s identity as a queer boy of Latino descent. Initially, one of the biggest areas of tension between Victor and Benji’s relationship was the fact that Benji was not in approval of Victor playing basketball despite the fact that Victor was always encouraging of the fact that Benji wanted to pursue music with his bandmates. The show makes obvious connections between Victor’s athleticism as a stand-in for his masculinity. It also doesn’t help the fact that the show is already surrounded by previous cultural discourses related to queer men participating in sports such as Michael Sam and Adam Rippon. Eventually, the two are able to remedy this part of their relationship but also after causing a considerable disturbance in the way that Victor begins to think about his own queerness.
This is one of only a few examples in which Benji engages in this behavior. Throughout the entirety of their relationship in season two, Victor constantly reminds Benji that their situation needs to move with patience and grace since he has just recently come out publicly to everyone, including his deeply conservative Catholic Columbian family. This brings attention to the fact that Benji’s foresight and vision is incapable of seeing the underlying cultural dynamics that are at play. Growing queer is already difficult; growing up queer and BIPOC adds a whole other layer that Benji fails to notice. This failure of recognition is most noticeable when Victor confronts Benji about the way he’s been handling the bumps in their relationship after Victor and Benji are caught by Victor’s mother, Isabella, having sex which then ensues into a melodramatic and emotionally volatile scene. Benji and Isabella essentially are yelling at each other, while Victor is trying to get both parties to calm down after what just occurred. The noise from their fight ends up waking up Victor’s little brother,Adrian, and Benji ends up accidentally outing his boyfriend after correcting Isabella when she calls Benji Victor’s “friend” instead of boyfriend.
It is definitely undeniable that both sides are in the wrong, and that both Benji and Isabella could have handled the situation differently. However, watching this scene looked all too familiar to me as I remember hashing out similar conversations with White queer people in my life that I know. The survival strategies that BIPOC queer folks engage in look a lot different than the resistance that White queer folks, like Benji, pride themselves on. It also troubling and honestly a little patronizing that Benji won’t trust Victor to handle his own family business. Being a queer Latino boy means that Victor essentially has to learn the “rules” that govern queerness, while at the same time trying to reconcile that with the fact that he is Latino. Victor’s expression of queerness differentiates itself in that is in tune with its own cultural dynamics and discourses.
While most of these issues seem to be related to race( which by the way, they definitely are) and occurred during season two, season three in all of its narrative indecisiveness, still fails to address this issue directly. Narratively, in season three Victor is positioned as being an unruly boy of color, despite the fact that all he wants to do is help his boyfriend as he struggles with his alcoholism. Benji’s father specifically points Victor out during Benji’s recovery process saying that Victor “creates chaos wherever you go.” You can certainly read into that as being part and parcel of Benji’s father’s homophobia, which I don’t think anyone’s really missing the mark on theirs. However, something else about the encounter still strikes me as odd because of the way that race has previously affected their dynamic.
Even moving away from Benj specifically and focusing on the narrative treatment of Victor, the show’s plot is capable of making Victor’s expression of queerness visible but still presenting it as something that should not be modeled after. During the seventh episode titled “The Gay Award,” Victor struggles with choosing to accept what is known as the Bravery Award because he feels that he is only gaining the award because he identifies and lives out life publicly as a gay guy. Ironically enough, it is not Benji that causes him to see a different perspective and accept the award but Rahim. Specifically, Rahim approaches it from the perspective of the positives of representations and what that afford audiences, both of the show and during Victor’s acceptance speech of his award. While affectively it brought me joy at the end to see Victor standing up there and just owning the moment, I also couldn’t help but think about the limitations of such practices, especially as someone who was often seen as a role model and figure for change in the same way that Victor was during college. Rahim was right to tell Victor that he should embrace himself for who is, but at the same time, who is to say that Victor isn’t already doing it, just in a different way. Controlling who has access to you and what parts of you they have access is a form of resistance, despite the way many genres of film and television attempt to paint the coming-out narrative.
These are just a few of the reasons this new season had me in a little bit of a moment. Like I said before, I was ready to bust down on this new season of Love, Victor. I was excited to see where the narrative might end; I was not about to let anything get in my way come that Wednesday. After marathoning through it though, I can only begin to wonder what is the point of continuing these practices of representations if the representations aren’t actually serving the group they are supposed to highlight. Love, Victor engages in these narrative and aesthetic deceptions, which makes me wonder just how necessary all of the advocacy and work that we might all push for in popular culture.
