“Booksmart,” a thoroughly Gen Z comedy that balances thoughtfulness and irreverence, confirms what last year’s raucous delight “Blockers,” among other recent titles, only suggested: the movie mainstream, catching up with television, is finally ready to tell jubilant stories about teenagers who happen to be lesbians.
In the film we meet Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) on her last day of high school. She and her best friend, Molly (Beanie Feldstein), have been accepted into Ivy League colleges, and Amy hasn’t kissed a girl yet. As the two embark on their first — and last — night of high school partying, a driving force in the movie’s unfolding chaos is Amy’s crush on her classmate Ryan (Victoria Ruesga), a smiley, tattooed skateboarder.
Amy is anxious about her inexperience, anxious that Ryan won’t like her back, anxious that she will embarrass herself — in short, she has the classic worries of a never-been-kissed teen. Add to that the question of whether Ryan likes girls at all: in an exchange that is typical of how comfortable the film is with the evolving way we talk about identity, Molly notes that Ryan wore a polo shirt to prom. “That’s her gender performance, not her sexual orientation,” Amy replies.
Unlike several recent movies that follow a gay teen’s coming out (“Alex Strangelove” and “Love, Simon,” for example), Amy is not anxious about the fact of her queerness. She’s out to her parents, who are overbearingly supportive; she and Molly identify as sex-positive feminists.
In “Blockers,” Sam (Gideon Adlon) and her best girlfriends make a pact to lose their virginity at prom. Attempting this with her male date helps Sam realize she’s gay, and despite her initial worry, coming out is frictionless (her dad has already realized she’s a lesbian), and loving (her friends react with squeals and affirmations). The movie’s last triumphant moment is Sam kissing her crush, Angelica (Ramona Young), on the dance floor.
In this way, these movies reflect a decision that Dan Levy, the co-creator of the television show “Schitt’s Creek,” made to never include homophobia or bigotry in his series. In an interview with Vulture, he said, “If you put something like that out of the equation, you’re saying that doesn’t exist and shouldn’t exist.”
Television has its own uneven history portraying gay women, including a trend at the turn of the century on shows like “Party of Five” and “Sex and the City” of introducing a lesbian or bisexual character, who would have a single, much-publicized kiss with a main character before disappearing from the show.
But these days you can find thoughtful portrayals of teen lesbians on “Riverdale,” “One Day at a Time,” “Everything Sucks!” and “Derry Girls,” among others.
Creating characters like Sam and Amy means figuring out how to weave several strands of sexuality — teen, female and queer — in a way that does not feel exploitative. Hollywood filmmakers have not been especially comfortable depicting desire that is either female or queer, and the teen comedy has long been a kingdom ruled by hormone-riddled straight boys. That’s why the space given to these lesbian teen protagonists feels like a breath of fresh air.
For the past two decades, Hollywood’s fictional high schools have — by and large — clumsily lumped teen lesbians into two dehumanized categories: fetishized or feared.
For the objectified lesbian, “American Pie 2 (2001)” set the tone. The film’s dude leads are spending the summer painting houses, and Steve Stifler (Seann William Scott) becomes convinced the two women living in one home are lesbians, so he breaks in, hunting for “proof.” The women (who, in heels and short skirts, are presented as a male fantasy of what lesbians look like) arrive home to change, watched by three of the house painters who are now hiding in the closet. The two guys left outside describe the “hot lesbians” over their walkie-talkies, gaining a rapt audience of men (cashiers, truck drivers, police officers) whose radios accidentally pick up their channel.
When the women discover the boys have broken in, they kiss and touch each other for the enjoyment of their intruders. In its assertion that lesbians exist for male pleasure, “American Pie 2” was just reflecting a mainstream contemporary understanding of what being a lesbian means.
“Mean Girls,” released three years after “American Pie 2,” epitomizes Hollywood’s fear of lesbians. The beloved comedy, written by Tina Fey, feels like it belongs to a later, more progressive generation of teen movie (not least because it continues to be referenced by people like Ariana Grande and Hillary Clinton). But the central revenge plot is based on lesbian panic: Janis (Lizzy Caplan), so traumatized by a rumor that she’s a lesbian, becomes determined to destroy Regina (Rachel McAdams), the classmate who started the rumor.
Janis is staunch in her rejection of feminized girl culture, wearing a suit to prom. In a different version of the movie, she could have an empowering arc in which she comes out and is accepted. Instead, by the end of “Mean Girls” she has a boyfriend, and the assumption that being a lesbian is both life-destroying and shameful remains uncontested.
“Mean Girls” is far from the only teen movie to marginalize lesbians: “Bring It On,” “Sierra Burgess Is a Loser” and “Pitch Perfect” all have jarring jokes that laugh at queer women.
As questions about representation in Hollywood entertainment have become more urgent in recent years, prominent lesbian characters have slowly begun to trickle into the movie mainstream. Of course, independent cinema has long been a place to find complex queer women, from “Desert Hearts” to “Bound” to “Pariah.” Mainstream movie culture, which carefully takes its cues from societal norms, is just catching up. Recently, we’ve seen lesbians on the big screen in a tear-jerker romantic drama (“Carol”), a girls’ trip movie (“Rough Night”), a twisted period drama (“The Favourite”), a classic period drama (“Collette”), a sports biopic (“Battle of the Sexes”) and a revenge thriller (“The Handmaiden”).
The conventional high school comedy is not the only place you can now see nuanced stories of lesbian teens on the big screen: “The Miseducation of Cameron Post,” a wrenching movie about a gay conversion camp, “Hearts Beat Loud,” an earnest indie about a Brooklyn teen and her dad, and “Princess Cyd,” a coming-of-age movie, were all released in the past few years. (Honorable mention should also go to Netflix’s “Dumplin’,” whose combat boot-wearing, patriarchy-hating Hannah is lesbian-coded, even if she isn’t explicitly named as such.)
In movies like “Booksmart” and “Blockers,” there’s no question we’re laughing with and rooting for our girls to get the girl. And why wouldn’t we? Seeing Amy and Sam’s crushes through their gazes is a delight.
When Amy sees Ryan, the world goes into slow motion as a wistful Ra Ra Riot song plays, the camera cutting close to Ryan smiling into the California sun. When Sam gazes at Angelica, choral music plays and Angelica doesn’t walk, she glides, a vision in face jewels and a velvet cape. These moments are overflowing with longing, aching with emotion that feels both very female and very teenage at once.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.