Katie Koach

                   Being a teenager is hard, really hard. It is especially torturous with rumors, bullying, mental illness, depression, sexual assault, and rape. The Netflix drama 13 Reasons Why, released in March 2017, tackles these issues as they pertain to the main narrator and character Hannah Baker. She narrates from beyond the grave as her classmates listen to tapes she left for them when she committed suicide. Though the show revolves around Baker and her main love interest and tape-listener, Clay Jensen, this analysis is focused on the reoccurring characters Tony Padilla and Courtney Crimsen. Padilla’s character is a breath of fresh air as his homosexuality is not the forefront of his characterization. Crimsen’s queerness is lathered and soaked in harmful stereotypes. Netflix allows Padilla to exist as a character and person with his sexuality being part of his characterization and not the center of who he is, while also having Crimsen, the only queer female on the show, adhere to harmful stereotypes.
                   Netflix, a streaming service, has been producing original content since 2013 and this content is more progressive and diverse than its primetime competitors. Actor Christian Navarro, a heterosexual cisgender Hispanic male, plays Padilla. The actor and character differ only in sexual preference. Michele Selene Ang, an Asian-American female, plays Crimsen. Ang’s sexuality cannot be determined as she is a relatively new actress there are no reliable sources with her sexual preference. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is a white heterosexual middle-aged male. The storytellers of 13 Reasons Why are both middle-aged white males. Jay Asher wrote the original book and it was adapted into a television show by Brian Yorkey, a middle-aged white homosexual male. Yorkey along with Diana Son, an Asian-American heterosexual female, are the show runners. Anonymous Content and Paramount Television produced the show, with Selena Gomez being one of the executive producers. The cast is predominantly white, but far more diverse in skin color and characterization than most primetime television shows. It is important to note that behind the scenes and in front of the camera there is a large majority of heterosexual, white, cisgender men because it distorts the way the audience sees television and real life situations. I chose 13 Reasons Why to analyze because though it is still filmed through the male gaze, it is a very progressive show and a fairly good representation of the hardships being a teenager in today’s cruel society.
                  There are six notable queer characters; they range from teen to adult, from questioning to openly queer, and from stereotypical to breaking stereotypes. Padilla’s characterization of homosexual follows hegemonic masculinity because though he is metrosexual, he is overall masculine. Padilla’s character is introduced by driving up in his beautiful, old car and defending Clay Jensen from the schools big bad bullies. By introducing his character in a masculine, protective roll the audience does not question whether Padilla is homosexual; it is assumed he is heterosexual. Padilla’s homosexuality is revealed slowly to the audience, with his big coming out being a simple question. “You know I’m gay, right?” This question is towards Jensen, but it is really for the audience that was still denying Padilla’s homosexuality. It is made obvious that Padilla is gay far before his question, but he is never affectionate towards other men in the forefront of the screen. This can be interpreted as Netflix not wanting to show men kissing, but it is likely because Padilla is not a physically affectionate character. “The lesbians and gay men in this research generally preferred to avoid extremes and radical portrayals, so they mostly opposed explicit ‘queer’ representations,” (Ross, 273). The subtlety of queerness is not to silence the queerness, but to make other characteristics the forefront of characterization. Different characters in 13 Reasons Why are more stereotypically queer, so other characters being more flamboyant balance Padilla’s performance of hegemonic masculinity. Showing this range from masculine to feminine homosexual males is a solid representation in comparison to primetime television shows, but 13 Reasons Why still falls short in representing lesbians and bisexuals.
                  The shows only queer female character is Courtney Crimsen and her queerness is plot driven. Crimsen is the only lesbian in the show and one of the only Asian Americans and her character embodies the negative stereotypes of both. Crimsen, unlike her male counterparts, is questioning her queerness and this questioning is used only to further Baker’s plotline. Crimsen is also the A-plus student who will crush anyone to get to the top, an all too familiar Asian stereotype. In Mary Bernstein’s article Paths to Homophobia she shows “that the primary antigay/lesbian arguments center around promoting negative stereotypes and assert in heterosexual superiority or a sense of group position,” (Bernstein, 51). Though 13 Reasons Why is arguably an LGBT+ ally, it is in the end anti-lesbian because it perpetuates harmful stereotypes: lesbians are always questioning, lesbianism for the male gaze, the girl is mean because she is ashamed of her sexuality, and the insensitivity of her classmates towards her lesbianism. As I found in my own research, Linda Garber finds in her article Where in the World Are the Lesbians. “Most scholarly journal articles that discuss ‘gay and lesbian’ or ‘queer’ Asian cultures say very little about lesbians,” (Garber, 43). Netflix has a chance to make a truly groundbreaking lesbian character, but instead they chose to incorporate stereotypes about Asian people and lesbians. Bisexual is all together absent. The significance of this critique is to analyze a relatively progressive and diverse show for both its good and bad qualities.
 
References
Bernstein, Mary. "Paths to Homophobia." Sexuality Research & Social Policy, vol. 1, no. 2, 2004, pp. 41-55, GenderWatch; Research Library.

Garber, Linda. "Where in the World are the Lesbians?" Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 14, no. 1, 2005, pp. 28-50,236, GenderWatch; Research Library.

Ross, Karen. Handbooks in Communication and Media Ser. : The Handbook of Gender, Sex, and Media (1). Hoboken, US: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 17 April 2017.
 
 

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