Love, Simon Provides a Fresh Perspective on the Rainbow

Film opens ideas on sexual orientation

The film Love, Simon is about what every teenager who identifies him or herself part of the LGBTQ+ community goes through by “coming out of the closet” or opening up about their sexuality. Seventeen year old Simon Spier tells his own coming out story.

 

Spier is a seventeen year old closeted gay teenager, who has trouble coming out to his loving family and three of his best friends since elementary school. Spier becomes attached to another unidentified closeted gay teen by the name of “Blue”, who also attends the same high school.

 

They exchange emails through the internet and Spier later falls in love with him. Later in the movie, one of Simon’s classmates exposes the emails that he exchanged with Blue to his best friends, family, and classmates, but Simon learns to accept his sexuality towards the end of the movie.

 

Simon plans to meet his ‘secret’ internet admirer, Blue, on top of the ferris wheel and, ironically, it was one of his friends named Bram who was waiting. The film concludes with his friends enjoying the irony within, as everyone knows Bram and Simon Spier are now dating.

 “I’ve known I was gay since middle school. Seeing the end of the movie I felt okay with being myself and at peace of who I am. Its helped me be more comfortable with my friends. Everyone can relate to the film even if you’re not gay,” said Oxnard High School student Luis Perez  [pseudonym] who identifies as gay.

 

“I like this movie compared to other high school related movies because this movie felt more realistic and relatable than others. I remember at the end of the movie that many people were so happy and maybe that movie touched them like it touched me,” added Perez.

 

“I like that it’s original. It actually has a gay person as a protagonist and we haven’t seen much of that represented in the movie industry,” said OHS junior Ashley Cardena. She also agreed that people who are still closeted can watch the movie with their parents and use it as a way to come out of the closet after viewing the movie.

 

“It’s shown not only that it happens, but you can come out and people can be okay with it. Gay people have people have feelings too. It’s hard for them to come out and it’s not easy. There’s been a lot of improvement in acceptance,” said Cardena.

 

Films that deal with taboo subjects may provide the viewer with a new lens on an old idea. Simon has brought a much-needed perspective on the struggles that gay people face every day by proving that feelings are universal, regardless of sexual orientation.