Asexual Representation: Selah and the Spades

Transcript Transcribed by Laura M.

Courtney: Hello everyone and welcome back. My name is Courtney, I am here with my spouse, Royce, and together we are The Ace Couple. And we are back for another episode discussing asexual representation in the media. A rare film, in fact. Although not necessarily a brand new one. We are going to be talking about Selah and the Spades, which was doing the film festival circuit in 2019, but, I believe, was released for streaming capabilities in 2020.

Royce: Yeah, it was picked up by Amazon.

Courtney: So a five-year-old movie at this point, which is going to be a very complicated and nuanced conversation about ace rep, because we always like to talk about the good, the bad and the ugly and there’s just a lot of layers to this one that we’re going to dig into today. The asexual character in question is Selah Summers. The asexual character in question is Selah Summers and she is the main point of view protagonist in the movie, which is, or at least has potential to be, huge for asexual representation. Selah is a 17-year-old Black girl who goes to some sort of private institution, a type of school that I know exists, but I have no personal frame of reference for whatsoever.

Royce: Yeah, anytime we see young people living in a sort of boarding school sort of environment, I have to pay attention to the setting and make sure we’re very clear about what country we’re in, because that’s a very foreign concept to me.

Courtney: Well, this one is set in the US, I believe Pennsylvania. Or if that’s not specified in the movie, I think I read that’s where the director went to school.

Royce: It is. It is Pennsylvania. Yeah, I don’t know if I’ve even known very many people in person that have went to a boarding school like this.

Courtney: Mm-mm. As someone smack dab in the middle of the country, it seems very like ‘of the coasts’. And she’s very clearly a high achiever in a number of arenas. She is head of the Spirit Squad. If she herself is not necessarily concerned with grades, she’s at the very least getting a tremendous amount of external pressure from her mother, who, we get several clues throughout the movie, is a very, very strained relationship. But she’s also the head of an extra extracurricular faction known as The Spades, who is one of five factions in this school who they all each seem to have to some extent their own thing. Like there’s one faction that’s kind of like the theater kids, but they aren’t just cliques. They also, like, like, have this little drug ring situation going on at this school. So they’re bringing in alcohol, they’re bringing in drugs, they’re selling it to the student body.

Royce: Yeah, the five cliques are working together in a way, in an elaborate– I guess, you can almost kind of describe it as like a student mafia sort of thing.

Courtney: Oh yeah, it’s very five families.

Royce: Yeah, there’s one group of students that’s in charge of all the gambling, one that’s in charge of the substances. There’s a group of Prefects that are in charge of, like, covering up or fixing situations, because of their staff contacts a whole ring devoted to cheating on tests.

Courtney: Yeah, it’s a very interesting dynamic. And Selah and the Spades are most specifically the drug dealing faction.

Royce: Which– The Spades is the name of that group. Selah is the current head of the Spades.

Courtney: Yes. Which– the name the Spades is interesting too because if you go in knowing you’re watching this for asexual representation and the head of this is the ace character, obviously a spade is a very big symbol within our community. And aces are going to know that and try to latch on to that. I’ve also seen just in general conversation people discussing the movie and trying to figure out why certain decisions were made. I’ve seen some people speculate that they’re called The Spades in a sort of reclamation sort of way from instances where Spade has been used as a racial slur in a very derogatory way. I haven’t seen in any official commentary with the director that she has specified that. If she has, I haven’t personally seen it yet. But I think in the context of this movie the latter probably makes more sense. Because of the factions, noticeably all of the members of The Spades are Black, and although racial themes are sort of a strong undercurrent in all aspects of this movie, it’s not very explicitly laid out or discussed in extreme detail.

Courtney: We also know from the director, and we’ll get into this a little bit more when we start talking about the good and bad of the ace rep here that the director does stay– the director does say that Selah is asexual, but doesn’t have the word for that yet. Couldn’t describe herself that way with that label at this point in time. So we know that even if there was any consideration to using that iconography in an ace way, it would be more of an illusion or an easter egg on the part of the director who made that decision rather than Selah as the head of the faction making that choice for that reason. But it also might not even, like, be as deep as any of those. I mean, since this is very like organized crime/mob coded spade is just such a like– that is the ace, that is the one that everyone hears that card suit and thinks ace. Because like, yeah, a heart and a diamond are also card suits, but they also have very different connotations. If you just see a heart without any context, you’re not immediately going to go, “Oh, ace cards card suit.” A spade, on the other hand, seems to have that effect more often than not.

Royce: Yeah, and the other factions don’t follow the suit of card naming convention, like there isn’t a convention there. The other ones are the Sea, the Skins, the Bobbies, and the Prefects.

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Royce: And at the– Many of the meetings between the faction leaders, it does seem like the Spades may hold a little more authority, with, you know, ace being the high card, essentially.

Courtney: Exactly yes, because ace, high card. Ace, the best. Ace on top, which very much fits in with Selah’s personality and desire to be at the top at all costs. So the ball really gets rolling when a new student, Paloma, enters this boarding school and she’s introduced to Selah because she goes to photograph the cheer squad. And this scene is very, very interesting. And I want to discuss it and contrast it with the asexual scene later on, I will call it for now. Because, very much in line with Selah’s need for control, there is sort of a monologue during this montage of photographing this squad, where the tone of the movie sort of changes almost into a bit of surrealism. Like there are moments just here and there, very strategically, where Selah will, like, stare directly into the camera and start monologuing.

Courtney: And this is probably the biggest, most important example of that. Because she starts talking about what it means to be on this Spirit Squad. And it’s this big, powerful, feminist sort of monologue talking about how we design our outfits, we decide how short or long our skirts are, we choreograph our routines, we have the power, this is us taking control over our body and our club. And she talks about how little power and control you have when you’re a 17 year old girl, and she’ll even say because when you’re 17, you have to grab onto that control wherever you can and hold tight for dear life, because they always try to take it from you. And the reason why this is so interesting and important to contrast to the next scene we’re going to talk about is because it still gives us insight into some of her psychology. It still gives us– which at this point in time is a very sympathetic reason for her to desire control over herself, over others, over situations.

Courtney: And a lot of people can relate to how few rights you have as a minor, how, especially as a teenage girl, one who may be hyper-sexualized, that’s, you know, alluded to at least, when they talk about the lengths of their skirts. And in the context of a school that is certainly going to call to memory examples of sexist dress code policies. So it’s a frame of reference that a lot of people can understand and relate to. And we do have every reason to believe that Selah does believe everything she’s saying, but she’s not talking about it on a personal level. She’s not saying they’re trying to take control away from me, so this is how I reclaim my power. She’s making it this big societal statement. She’s making a big, grandiose claim. And in the context of, you know, doing a monologue as the head of the Spirit Squad, and having a photoshoot, she’s making a statement, but it’s not personal. It’s almost guarded and reserved in the way that she is making this a social commentary instead of personal feelings.

Courtney: But then we do, at various periods of time, see this strained relationship with her mother. So that scene also comes to mind frequently during instances like this. And oftentimes it’s very subtle she might get a phone call and she’ll just answer the phone and you don’t even hear what’s on the other end of the line. You just see her face change, her posture change. She’ll sort of, you know, fold into herself and grab her head and, with a much more defeated tone of voice, just say like, “Hi, mom,” and then it’ll cut. So those moments when we start seeing her personal feelings, her emotions as a result of what’s happening around her, are all sort of in private. There aren’t other people around, she’s not expressing this to other people, this is just us as the viewers getting a very small snippet of how these things affect her. And I think that that can be a very gripping way to do storytelling. I am not at all mad about that.

Courtney: But the scene that heavily implies Selah’s asexuality is very singular within this character’s storyline because the word asexual is not stated, which in analyzing other pieces of asexual representation, usually that points to bad. Normally if you don’t say the word asexual, you haven’t made it explicit enough, and everybody online is going to argue every possible way they can that this character is not asexual. So we always advocate for if you aren’t going to say the word, make it really obvious. And usually making it really obvious, to me, means put it in a couple different places, put it in a couple of different ways. Make it so that it is very, very obvious. I have talked about a rule of three. Give us three situations where this asexuality is mentioned, where it’s taken by another angle and where it’s, you know, really heavily solidified in a third area.

Courtney: But while this movie didn’t do that, I think it did do something else very interesting that I’m inclined to say, for me as the viewer, not necessarily for the rest of the audience– we’ll talk to– we’ll talk about some of the other audience discussions I’ve seen. This scene takes place in a dorm room between Selah and Paloma. They’re just chatting and this is, I think, the one time where we have a full scene of Selah just talking about her personal feelings and experience. And she’s taking it on a personal level. She’s saying this is how I feel, this is what I haven’t felt, this is what confuses me. And it is a decent length of a scene compared to many others that do get cut very short, like the phone calls with the mother where things are left up to our imagination. But it is a sharp contrast to other scenes where Selah is making a big social statement but not making it about herself.

Courtney: This one it’s about herself and it has to be the biggest, most specific insight we get into her own personal experience in the entire movie. Because everything else is either like the monologue before or it’s showing her in situations where she is exerting her control and power over other people. And don’t get me wrong, Selah, although she is the protagonist of the movie, she is the villain. She is awful to everyone around her and gets increasingly so throughout the movie. So she is consistently manipulating others. She is hurting people. And so that presents us a lot of complicated feelings when we have this very horrible manipulative person who normally doesn’t discuss her personal experience in a vulnerable way with others, and the one time we do, she is explaining her presumptive asexuality to someone else. The first time we watched this movie, probably a couple years back, I was fairly upset about it. I think more so than I was the second time. And I’ll explain that when I find the words for it, which I will before the end of this episode.

Royce: We gave it a second watch because we didn’t record anything after the first time and it had been long enough that it was warranted.

Courtney: Yeah, refresher. And I’ll actually give– because this is so complicated and I have conflicting feelings in a lot of ways, I’ll give a couple of other places where you can see some commentary on this movie. One is a YouTube video on the channel Voice Memos for the Void entitled Selah as the Ace of Spades. That link will be in the description on our website. That link will be in the show notes on our website as well as the description on YouTube. And there’s also a small section amongst other commentary on general ace representation in the book Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture by Sharronda J Brown. This is a book I’ve mentioned several times and still recommend highly. So if you have not read this book either, I will also put a link to where you can find that, because I think everybody should. And I’ll describe this scene just so we have a frame of reference for what we’re talking about when we say the asexual representation before we analyze the good and the bad of it.

Courtney: To me it is very explicit. I think anybody who is going to argue that Selah isn’t asexual is probably very silly, very silly person. Although I have seen it done, because that always happens with ace rep. That always happens with ace rep. If the character does not sit here and say, “I am asexual,” everyone will say no, they’re not. No matter what they say. And in this case Selah and Paloma are just sort of talking about relationships and dating and have you ever done these things? And just sort of having that back and forth. And Selah specifically says, “I don’t do that. Dating and sex and like making out, I don’t do it. I never wanted to.” She even goes so far as to say, “I don’t think I’m just waiting for the right person, I just don’t think I’m interested in the thing itself.” And to me that’s about as explicit as you can get without literally saying the word asexual. And because this is a character who so rarely has this emotional vulnerability with someone else, it also very much stands out from all of the other scenes where she is manipulating, if not people, the narrative.

Courtney: And so I think that does further emphasize that. But the thing that bothers me, so many articles that talk about Selah or mention Selah’s asexuality, don’t tend to quote the part of, “I’m not interested in the thing itself, I’m not just waiting for the right person, I don’t do that. I don’t do sex, I don’t make out, I don’t date.” They don’t quote those parts. They quote instead, time and time again, a sentence where she talks about how she sees girls crying in the bathroom. And when she sees girls crying in the bathroom, she just wonders why would you do something that would lead to you crying in the bathroom. And that is the quote that I see over and over again anytime someone writes about Selah’s presumed asexuality, and I hate it. I hate that so much. I hate that so much because while she specifically says, “I don’t do that, I’m not interested in that, I never have been.” And cite specifically sex, dating, making out, not interested. No, thank you, ma’am.

Courtney: People take this already very complicated character who’s very cold and calculated and manipulative, and they reduce it to like, yeah, she doesn’t want to cry in the bathroom. Which explicitly or maybe implicitly intertwines her asexuality with her refusal to be emotionally vulnerable, with her need to control people and situations. And although that is already inherently a risk of writing a character like this, by taking the villain who is hurting people and making them asexual, you’re already going to be treading a line of: is this character asexual as just another shorthand for less human, fewer emotions, bad person will hurt people. Because that is very much a stereotype, that is very much a trope. And especially at this point in time when we have precious few characters in movies who are asexual, especially in movies, that is already a concern. But my further concern is not only that, depending on how charitable you want to be with your viewing of this movie, the director may already be in that territory of using asexuality as a means of further dehumanization.

Courtney: But I think all of the commentary and the articles being written after are making that worse. Because you could, I would argue, watch this scene, as this is the one time Selah is actually letting her guard down and sharing an important piece of herself with someone else on a one on one, interpersonal, human level. You could argue that. Because in the context of the rest of the movie, this scene is unique. And one could then argue that asexuality is not used as a lazy shorthand to further the narrative that she’s a bad person, but instead it is being used as the one way that they are showing that she’s real, the one way that they are showing that she can sit and have just a real conversation with someone where she isn’t trying to get anything out of them in this moment she’s just sharing something real about herself. But all of that potential nuance or ability for conversation goes away when every single article says, yeah, Selah is probably asexual because she says she doesn’t want to be crying in the bathroom. Oh my God.

Royce: Yeah, the bad take there is trying to recontextualize what they are seeing as a self-protective avoidance of harm as a motivation for a character to be celibate. To, to choose like– Like, you are avoiding relationships to avoid being hurt. Where looking at this as an ace character is just someone who is looking around at all the allos people doing allo things around them and being generally confused.

Courtney: Yes, of course. Because you know relationships can, and nearly always do, lead to heartbreak at the ages that these students are, and if you don’t have that underlying desire for sex, for romance, if that desire is not there, of course it’s going to be confusing to you. That’s very, very normal. We consistently, throughout our lives and on this podcast in the Ace Community, do look at allos and go like, “What…?” That’s– You know that’s just a silly, normal part of it. So, especially when she is observing people are getting very profoundly heard about this, and I don’t see the appeal, it’s because she, fundamentally, is not experiencing the attraction, the desire necessary to risk that kind of hurt. So, with that in mind, though, we’ve now been put in the really, really complicated position of saying is the movie actually bad for doing this, or is it just the audience who doesn’t get asexuality? And it’s the allosexual audience who is, in fact, the problem?

Courtney: And I ask myself that a lot, and with increasing regularity, as we talk about ace representation in the media. And there’s an easy case to be made in this as well that Selah could also be aromantic, but neither the words ace or aro were uttered specifically. And so I suppose I will say that the first time I watched this I was more upset because I just sort of knew what viewers of this movie would likely take away from it. And knowing how consistently dehumanized asexual people are, knowing also that we’re dealing with, you know, a Black teenage girl who’s very consistently hypersexualized, dealing with someone who is the villain of the story, I suspected people either would still say Selah is not asexual or the only reason why people might accept that she is asexual is because of all of her character flaws. Like, oh yeah, she is asexual because she’s emotionless, she’s heartless, she’s manipulative, she hurts people. Of course she’s asexual.

Courtney: And that’s bad. That’s not good. But I suspected a non-inconsequential percentage of the audience would be more receptive to admitting that she’s asexual because she’s the villain. And that is a societal problem that I don’t think I can blame the director for. But as ace people, it is so hard to watch a movie like this and not fundamentally understand how poorly it’s going to land with the average viewer. And, to quote a line of analysis from Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: “Her disinterest in sex and romance becomes a function of story, another way to demonstrate her apathy, narcissism, detachment and disregard for others, to drive home the fact that there is something ever so slightly off about Selah Summers.” And I will say, the first time I watched this movie, that was very much what I had in mind. I went in knowing very little about the movie and sort of saw it as, well, here is a character whose entire story is about manipulation and harming everyone around her, with one conversation about how she’s asexual. Like great, awesome. Love that for us. Very salty and cynical, yes.

Courtney: And going back to Refusing Compulsory Sexuality once again, we have a quote here from Melanie, who is actually the Black ace writer and creator of that YouTube channel I mentioned and that we will link. Melanie says, quote, [reading] “Ace or aro coding as a stand-in for a disinterest in all intimate connections often trickles down to a lack of character development. A lot of our media depicts intimacy as only a sexual or romantic experience. So removing the interest for romance or sex from a character means removing the potential for showing them forming deeper relationships with anyone. – end quote – Among asexual and aromantic characters, there is a clear pattern of dehumanization through constructing them as people without empathy and without any real concept of the emotional complexities of humans. With Selah and the Spades, Selah’s Blackness will always complicate and magnify this dehumanization.”

Courtney: So of course we’ve got the complexities now of intersectional identity being Black and ace. I’d argue, being Black and aroace in this instance. So of course there is always going to be the ever present question of why is the first Black asexual protagonist in a movie, probably the first, the villain and awful to everybody? And it’s not even really a redemption story either, because we get these moments where she’s directly hurting those around her, her right-hand man, Maxxie, she really starts to alienate him. And it also sort of coincides with the fact that, although it’s not a huge focus, he seems to be in a new relationship or a budding relationship with somebody. And he says something directly to Selah’s face at one point where he confronts her and says something along the lines of you just can’t handle someone else being able to provide me something that you can’t. Implying heavily that by Maxxie seeking a relationship, having relationships with other people who are not Selah, that she feels threatened by that, that she won’t have as much control over Maxxie if there are other people in his life.

Courtney: Which is a very abusive way to go about relationships, if you are trying to keep the people around you away from others and if you are trying to isolate and alienate them from other people. With Paloma, she’s decided– because at this point Selah is a senior, so she wants to make sure that the Spades will continue after she graduates – so aside from that one conversation of personal depth in that dorm with Paloma – a majority of their interactions are just grooming her to be the successor of the Spades after Selah leaves school. And that very much entails training Paloma how to do her dirty work, outright convincing her to beat someone up at some point, which is very much outside of Paloma’s comfort zone. And she tries to fight it for a time but then does end up making all of these concessions to Selah. But then, when Paloma does play along enough and gets personally invested to the point where she’s starting to have her own ideas for projects that the Spades can be involved in, including hosting a prom in the forest, she starts just sort of getting excited about the future and thinking, wow, you know, things are really great now and I’m going to make them even bigger, I’m going to make them even better. Next year is going to be so great then.

Courtney: Even though Selah is not going to be here, she’s not going to be at this school, she’s not going to be in high school at all or in charge of this club – she’s presumably going to be on to bigger and better things, although it’s also kind of shown that her mother is very much forcing her to go to a college that she did not pick for herself, so there’s probably also some concern of like, well the Spades are when I get to do what I want to do and I don’t know if I’m going to have that after I graduate, and so there are all these messy feelings – but she gets very threatened by that and becomes very defensive. And even though it was her idea to take this girl and try to train her to be the next leader of this group, she decided as soon as she feels comfortable and confident in that, her head has gotten too big. She needs to be cut down to size. And in a moment of desperation she outright drugs this poor girl with way too many drugs.

Royce: And leading into this, right before this happened– right before this happens, we learned that this is at least the second time that that has happened.

Courtney: Yes, the first time was referenced on a couple of occasions before we got the full story. But there was someone who was a member of the Spades previously who almost certainly got drugged by Selah, ended up crashing her car onto school property and, just like outright, got expelled. Potentially ruined this girl’s life. But she’s not a character, so we don’t know where she is now. We don’t really know what happened to her. We just kind of know that that is what happens when you get in Selah’s way. And we get further confirmation of this when Selah realizes, “Oh, maybe I fucked up. Maybe I gave her too many.” And so she runs to Maxxie, who is not on great terms with her right now, but just sort of asks like, “Hey, theoretically, how many drugs is too many drugs?” And when they realize that it was too many drugs and she may very well be in trouble, they go to try to find her. And he outright says– Maxxie says to Selah’s face too, “You can’t keep doing this.” So that certainly begs the question like, has this only been the two times?

Royce: That’s what I was wondering, because the only other instance we heard about, I don’t know how long ago it was, maybe it was just the prior year, but it was Selah’s previous protege. A person who was in a very similar position to what the position Paloma is in.

Courtney: And in the final scene, when Paloma learns that she has been drugged, she gets very upset and runs off and is clearly quite disoriented. And there’s a really scary moment right at the end where she could have gotten very, very seriously hurt if Maxxie was not there to help. If Maxie and Selah had not run after her to try to pull her back. And so when they retrieve her and just sort of all exhausted, all scared, just sort of like grab each other, just like side hugs over the shoulder and just start slowly walking back, that is basically the end of the movie. We get a shot for a decent amount of time of them just walking and you get to see Selah’s face. She doesn’t say anything, she doesn’t offer an apology. She’s clearly thinking of something. But it’s one of those moments where it’s left to silence and it’s left a bit to audience interpretation. And it’s left to subtlety. Subtlety within the acting and the space in that silence.

Courtney: And I think the first time when I watched this I came away thinking Selah did not learn anything and did not grow. And wasn’t sure even, was she upset and worried because she was upset about Paloma’s safety, or was she more concerned about potential ramifications that would fall back to her for being the one to put her in this situation? And while it is still ambiguous and potentially up for interpretation, I think the second time I watched it I was really really studying for the nuances in the acting and really trying to look for it. And I don’t know if I tried so hard that I made myself see it whether or not it was there or if it was just a subtlety that I missed the first time. But it seemed to me in that final scene that there was a lot of inner conflict that was ever so subtly showing on Selah’s face coming back. And there’s a lot of room to sit with that and play with it in your own mind and think about what is she thinking about and is this going to be a turning point for her? Is this where she realizes, yeah, I really can’t keep doing this, and is this going to be what ultimately leads to her growth? I think a charitable viewing, you could make the case.

Courtney: I think some people could come away from this movie seeing that. But on the other hand, she doesn’t offer apology, she doesn’t try to make a further attempt at connection with Paloma and/or Maxxie in these final moments. She sort of retreats back into herself, which is still very in line with her character. This is what we have grown to expect from her at this point. And considering she didn’t have that moment of growth when a previous supposed friend of hers was also drugged, got in a car accident, got expelled, if that wasn’t her turning point, if that wasn’t her wake-up call to do better, we also don’t have, you know, all the evidence in the world that this is going to happen here either. So the movie itself is very much a snapshot of a very specific period of time in this person’s life. It is the senior year snapshot and so we don’t have all the answers, we don’t know if she grows or where she goes from here.

Courtney: And I think perhaps another reason why I watched it, as I say, more charitably the second time, is because we so recently watched Severance. Because I love Milchik, that character, he is a very complicated character in this very manipulative corporate hellscape of a company. He’s very– he’s a very interesting character demonstrating the sort of performance of and drive for a concept of Black excellence. Someone who you see is oppressed but in turn oppresses others. And I think, with that character just so fresh in my mind, we still have, you know, a very different set of circumstances here, this is in school as opposed to a big corporation. This is a teenage girl instead of a grown man. That’s also a TV show where you get a lot more screen time with everybody involved and it’s a much different tone. But the actor who plays Milchik in Severance I think does a very good job of portraying very subtle cues in his face, in his body language that I think can say a lot.

Courtney: And I think, with that in mind, watching Selah and the Spades the second time, I was trying to look for similar subtle cues. Because on its surface, like taken away from context, this absolutely can and should be read as a girl who does have a number of oppression she faces just being a teenage girl, being 17, being a minor with very few rights, being a Black girl, for that instance, being queer without the vocabulary to explain that, and then we have the most obvious example of that in her mother’s overbearing expectations for her. So when you see it as striving to be the best, having to perhaps work twice as hard to get half as far, knowing that you have to be the best of the best, knowing that having as much control as possible – or not necessarily knowing, but at least believing having as much control as possible to be a survival tactic – there’s still no room to say that any of Selah’s actions are justifiable because they are not. She is a villain and she hurts people and does bad things. She literally drugs her friends and makes them do horrible things to other people as well.

Courtney: She is incredibly toxic at least at this snapshot in her life that is the only one we’re getting insight into. But when you read it that way, that at least gives you, as the viewer, room to hope and believe that this is finally the turning point for her, even though we don’t get to see it. We can sort of have something else to grasp on to that’s not, oh, she is just a lost cause, she is just a monster. She is just always going to be terrible to everyone because that’s just how she is. That at least gives us something where it’s like this is a major character flaw, but it’s not just your default setting. If you do the proper work, you can become better, you can stop hurting people. So that at least gives a lot more depth to the character when you view her that way. And depth is so, so key when writing asexual characters. Depth is so important because of how often asexuality is used as a means to remove depth.

Courtney: And if you take what I’ve said on a number of occasions when discussing ace rep, that asexuality canon should always be used as a means to add depth to a character, I can see a case to be made that Selah and the Spades did that on the grounds that the one time she is emotionally vulnerable and does just have a conversation with someone on a personal level happens to be discussing asexuality. But I do think that can add depth to her. All of the other depth that she has in this movie is very subtle and, I do think, sometimes overly subtle. I think that is somewhat of the downfall. Because there isn’t necessarily anything I’d point to in that conversation about asexuality where I would say, oh, you could have done this to make it more obvious, you could have done this to give it more depth. I think that was handled in isolation just fine. But if other aspects of her character were given just a little more overt depth and not relying so heavily on subtlety for everything else, I think overall, this could have been a much more effective example of a complex, nuanced asexual villain.

Courtney: So those are my complicated feelings. I mean, I watched it twice and had two different takeaways. So I couldn’t begrudge anyone watching this movie and feeling one way or the other, necessarily. But I will begrudge any news outlet out there or viewer who is just going to say, “No, Selah’s not asexual.” Because that happens a lot. I’ve seen so many people talk about how Selah is probably just a closeted lesbian and I’m like– [sighs] Still, again, in a very flawed character who isn’t even going to be viewed as good asexual representation by a fair number of aces who would watch this just given the way the villain storyline was done on her, we’re still gonna play this game of can’t possibly be asexual? No, get out of here. And in fact it’s not just viewers who have done this, it’s like news outlets.

Courtney: There is an article here on NPR. This is a direct line on NPR: “Despite the discreetly powerful current that ebbs and flows between her and Paloma, she claims to be uninterested in sex or romance.” What the fuck?! Why can no one ever just believe a character when they say something. And like, yeah, someone’s gonna be like, “Well, it’s only just because Selah– because she manipulates and controls everything. So how can we believe anything she says?” Like, I don’t know? Maybe just admit to the fact that this one scene discussing asexuality is not subtle. It’s pretty on the nose. And it’s distinctly different from any of the scenes where she is manipulating people.

Royce: I assume that was the scene people were going to be using for justification for that idea. And I think it’s just a case of some people not being able to divorce emotional intimacy from romantic or sexual attraction. Or like, emotional intimacy might not be the right word, but at least personal vulnerability.

Courtney: Well, this– This even says immediately following like, “Oh, she claims to be uninterested, but I don’t know. I’m feeling some vibes here.” I have observed myself allosexual viewers of media will find vibes where there are none. Every time. But then they use the line: “‘Why not just do things that keep you from crying in bathrooms?’ She asks. Scheming and asserting control are much more fun. Like many who mobilize others for their dirty work for them, Selah is deeply insecure.” So, yeah, I don’t know. I think allosexual viewers don’t get an opinion on Selah either way. [laughs] Only aces are allowed to have an opinion on her.

Courtney: It’s just so deeply upsetting when, like, I want to have the conversation about nuanced, complicated, problematic characters who are asexual. What’s a good way to write asexual characters? What’s a bad way to write asexual characters? And like, maybe even have a conversation about problematic allosexual viewing of media and their interpretation that is often very off the mark when we’re talking about ace characters. I want to have those conversations, but that’s so hard to do when even a messy, complex example of ace rep is still having people going like, “Yeah, she kind of said she’s asexual, but I don’t really believe her.” Because now we’re right back to square one, where now we’re going to have to like viciously defend that she is an asexual character before we can even have the interesting conversations about her. Right? Like, I shouldn’t have to vigorously defend. No, Selah is actually asexual. And I shouldn’t have to.

Courtney: But I will dig up what the director herself has said about Selah and Paloma’s sexuality, because anybody who listens to this podcast knows I am a word of God hater. If asexuality was not so much as hinted in the source material and the creator later goes on Twitter or Tumblr to say, “By the way, this character is ace.” I can’t stand that. We aren’t playing that game. But if I view media as very obviously asexual and people still aren’t getting it? Yeah, okay, I’m gonna pull out what the creator said. When people are still saying Anne Rice’s vampires have sex? Yeah, I’m gonna pull up Anne Rice quotes saying that they aren’t. Because did you even read the books? I did. I know there’s like at least three of you out there that really want me to do the next book in the Vampire Chronicles series. It’ll probably happen at some point, but we have more important things to talk about in the meantime.

Courtney: So an interview on HuffPost with the director, Tayarisha Poe, even hints at the interviewer maybe wondering if Selah’s a little gay, because the way this question was asked: “Last week a friend of mine asked me if the film was queer, given the tension between Selah and Paloma. I initially said no, but I’m thinking yes, maybe? What say you?” To which the director responded: “Lovie, Celeste and I – those are the two leads who played Selah and Paloma – talked about the character’s sexuality a lot, but do you really want to know what I think?” The interviewer says, “I absolutely want to know.” I think this is also good because if there’s an intention for a character’s sexuality that is written into the script but isn’t explicitly labeled, I do think it’s important to have those conversations with the actors. But her ultimate response was: “I think Selah is asexual, but she doesn’t have the words for it, which happens. For Paloma, she can fall in love with anybody and loves love and she wants to be loved. Which is why she does all of these things for Selah. This is a story about power and unrequited love, and Selah knows how desperate Paloma is to be loved by her. Selah will never love her the way she wants her to, but she will use Paloma’s love to get what she wants every single time.”

Courtney: So then we’re right back to yeah, obviously she’s asexual and I’m going to fight anyone who says she isn’t. But now I’m gonna be newly mad at the director for outright being like, “Oh yeah, this is someone with unrequited love for an asexual character,” and that asexual character is going to specifically know of. She’s going to clock it. She’s gonna see this girl loves her and she’s intentionally going to use that to manipulate her…? Now I’m right back to this is bad ace rap again! I don’t mind having a manipulative character who is also asexual, who has similar depth in other areas of her life, fleshed out as a character. But oh boy, I really don’t like using that. Because that’s a real life stereotype and problem that people, like, see falsely in asexual people. They will think that we’re manipulative. They’ll be like, “Oh, you’re just a cock tease.” They’ll think that you can’t be in a real relationship because any relationship you’re in is inherently going to be manipulative because you don’t feel love the right way. So [groans] I’m so angry, but I’ll live on.

Courtney: I think people should watch this movie. Complex feelings aside, I think it was a pretty solid movie. I think there were some interesting choices made, interesting acting. The little dips into surrealism here and there, I think we’re kind of good. If you, like, just a snapshot of a period in someone’s life. I think it’s interesting, I think it’s complicated. Sometimes I like it, sometimes I hate it.

Courtney: But the last little bit of just sort of social commentary in what we do see as valid ace rep or not, is the fact that this movie came out in 2020, it has a lead who is a Black teenage girl who is pretty explicitly asexual on screen, about as obvious as you can be without saying the word, and the director backs that up in interviews that that was in fact the director’s intention behind that character the whole time. And yet I don’t ever see prominent talking points in the asexual community about this movie or about this character. People do not have the same hype for it as they have newer things.

Courtney: And, in fact, to give two examples of movies that we will also talk about in the future – Dear Luke, Love Me and Slow – are both movies that I have seen really heavily praised and touted as the first asexual character in a feature film. I have seen it multiple times for both of these movies and I was like, well, nope, someone’s wrong. And so I’m not even all that interested in, like, seriously sitting down and pinpointing what the first asexual character in a movie is. But I think we need better measurements of what is like landmark asexual representation. Like something that could be very obvious and overt and measurable and indisputable, is like this is the first time a character labeled themselves as asexual in a film. Because that’s a– that’s a word we can check, that’s something we know. Everything that the word isn’t said is gonna have a bunch of allosexual people being like, “No, that’s not a thing. No, actually probably just closeted gay,” etc, etc. People will deny it.

Courtney: But then there are going to be things where characters who are white are going to get amplified heavier. Characters who are men are going to get amplified heavier. So what the community sees and praises and uplifts as like the first ace rep is always fascinating to me. Because it’s almost always wrong. And it’s a much more complicated question than I think people who try to answer it make it out to be. So just that last little nugget to keep in mind, because those are movies we have watched, we will eventually also talk about them. They are very much their own episodes. And only really two examples of that also. Although, like, if you go to the list of fictional asexual characters wiki, I do want to point out because this is a fun update from when we talked about The Hangover. One of you absolute legends of our listeners out there actually got– What was his name? Alan?

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: Alan from The Hangover removed from the list of fictional asexual characters in film. Because technically, as per that list, which may or may not already be incomplete, Alan would have been the first asexual character in film. And that was one we were not gonna let happen. [chuckles] So you know who you are. You reached out to us. Whoever got that pulled? I love you so much. That is so funny.

Courtney: But on that little lighthearted note, that is going to be all for today. So we will leave you off, as usual, with our featured MarketplACE vendor of the week: LnR Shop, where you can get character merch from the webcomic LnR, which is a story about two people in a queerplatonic relationship. In the merch shop, I really love these two QPs just screaming at each other going, “AAAA!”. I like the way they’re illustrated. I like the screams. Very relatable. I often feel like “AAA!” And if you aren’t familiar enough with LnR to want to buy any of their merch, I think you better fix that problem. LnR is a webcomic, you can see it on Webtoons. You can see it on Tapas. Wherever you get your webcomics, check out LnR. We will put links to the webcomic, as well as their merch store, in the show notes on our website and the description box on YouTube, as per the usual. As always, thank you all so much for tuning in and we will talk to you all next time.