Netflix’s I Am Not Okay With This Turns 1980s Pop Anthems Into Lesbian Love Songs
It used to be that queer kids had to imagine themselves into love songs. The ones with no pronouns were the easiest: No chance of daydreaming about the cute girl in English class only to hit a “he” like a speed bump. Otherwise, the best bet was a cross-gender cover that did all the work for you (think Melissa Etheridge doing Springsteen’s “Thunder Road”). Once, fiddling with the sound on a new computer, I discovered a setting that pitched audio down a few octaves, and I lived briefly, deliriously, in a world where Taylor Swift was a down-home country boy seeking the same. But in the age of King Princess, Troye Sivan, and Hayley Kiyoko, there’s no longer much need for this. Gay teenagers, at last, have access to songs that tell their stories.
So why is Netflix’s new lesbian rom-com I Am Not Okay With This soundtracked like a period piece? Though the comic-turned-seven-episode-series is set in a modern-day Rust Belt burg and concerns teenage BFFs on the verge of becoming something more, nearly every needle drop is a thoroughly heterosexual 1980s cliché. Pixies’ “Here Comes Your Man” bounces over a getting-ready-for-prom montage. Roxette’s “It Must Have Been Love” echoes as the show’s lead couple—the troubled, telekinetic tomboy Syd (Sophia Lillis) and her outgoing, empathic bestie Dina (Sofia Bryant)—sway together at said dance. Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl” plays at a house party, nearly to completion, as a love quadrangle blooms. It’s an unusual choice that brings the story back to an age of pretending. But the effect is triumphant, imbued with the thrill of taking something by force from the clutches of straight culture.
The series’ music supervisor, Nora Felder, is best known for her work on Stranger Things; here, she uses similar ’80s pop selections, but to a strikingly different effect—not channeling so much as challenging nostalgia. Pop music, for most of its history, has relegated the expression of gay love to the subtext, so there’s an audacity in Felder’s repeated selection of overtly straight music to score a lesbian love story. When Dina asks Syd to homecoming, and Syd says yes, and “Here Comes Your Man” rushes in over their goofy grins, the scene is sly, subversive, but thoroughly natural, too. After all, falling in love does feel like the unruly opening roll of “Here Comes Your Man,” with all its giddy, hiccupy twang. Why not let Dina and Syd lay claim to that feeling, those guitars?
Equally crucial is how carefully Felder has chosen these songs, placing each one deliberately into the broader context of Syd and Dina’s love story. When “Jessie’s Girl” comes on at that house party, and Dina pulls Syd off the couch, the camera lingers for a moment on Stanley (Wyatt Oleff), a sweet geek who’s shockingly oblivious to Syd’s lesbianism. Stan, yearning, watches Syd dance; Dina is Jessie, Syd is her girl, and Stan is poor, lonely Rick Springfield. Then the scene cuts to Dina, easing Syd’s hoodie off her shoulders, casting a longing look at her and a more challenging one towards the couch. Syd is still Jessie’s girl, but Dina evidently sees Stanley as Jessie and herself as the interloper. Then Dina’s dickhead boyfriend shows up and loops his arm over her shoulder, and a contemptuous Syd finally steps into Springfield’s shoes. He sings what she’s thinking: “Where can I find a woman like that?” Felder’s cleverly made point is that the song could belong to anyone. We are all Jessie’s girl. Even if we’re not girls at all. Even if Jessie herself is a girl.
Felder’s strategy here—to play straight classics over queer storylines—pushes back against the notion that there’s anything new or novel about two girls being in love. Lesbianism isn’t a modern innovation, after all; it’s existed for millennia, newly invented every time a woman met another woman’s eyes and thought, Oh, fuck. When the sweeping love theme from Pretty Woman echoes faintly over Dina’s shy, late-series love confession to Syd, the message to young queer viewers seems clear: This song doesn’t just belong to Julia Roberts and Richard Gere; it belongs to these girls, and it belongs to you, too.
More than any other television show I’ve ever seen, I Am Not Okay With This feels like it was made for teenage lesbians and bi girls—not just about them, but truly for them. There’s not a whiff of education for straight viewers, no gentle hand-holding, no pleas for inclusion and understanding. Some dude calls Syd a dyke, and she literally explodes his head with her telekinetic powers. (Try doing that on Freeform.) With each moment like this and every straight song recontextualized, I Am Not Okay With This gives young queer girls a rare thing: a TV series in which they are the entire point.
Originally Appeared on Pitchfork
