FIGHTING AND FUCKING IN BLACK MIRROR

Spoiler warning: Major spoilers for Black Mirror episodes “Striking Vipers” and “San Junipero.”

When I see that a new Black Mirror episode about video games and queerness has been uploaded, I am thrilled. For the uninitiated, Black Mirror is an electric Netflix series that explores technology’s effects on society and relationships. Black Mirror weaves together punchy narratives with biting critiques of our increasingly screen-filled society.

“Striking Vipers,” however, frustrates me deeply. It is one thing to encounter quiet, guarded men in the real world, where they are unavoidable. It is another to find them portrayed in fiction. Their creation feels more intentional, less forgivable. 

“Striking Vipers” tells the story of newly reconnected friends Danny (Anthony Mackie) and Karl (Yahya Abdul Mateen II, who just replaced Jake Gyllenhaal as my celebrity crush). Karl gifts Danny a VR version of a fighting game they used to play called Striking Vipers. In this new version, you virtually inhabit the body of your fighter. You feel everything they feel. Danny and Karl, through their respective video game avatars Lance and Roxette, quickly find out this applies to kisses as well as punches. 

After they have virtual sex for the first time, Karl/Roxette says, “So guess that’s us gay now… That’s a joke.”

Danny/Lance says, “Don’t feel like a gay thing.”

At this point, I slam my laptop shut. I wriggle into a tank top and run. I want to smash something. I don’t care what. Pavement, my muscles, a screenwriter. I play my favorite punk band’s lyrics on repeat: “I’m like Stone Cold Steve Austin. / I put homophobes in coffins.” I stop running because I hate running. I sigh a whole-lung sigh. I have known, since high school, that queerness is never a joke. I run home. I open my computer because I have to see how the episode ends. In the name of character arcs, I keep watching. 

But this episode fails me. It fails to present men who show vulnerability, and it fails to deliver a nuanced queer story. 

Danny and Karl cling desperately to toxic, stoic masculinity. Danny’s wife, Theo, sums up the episode with one line: “Guys suck at talking.” Guys suck at talking most in the climax of the story, when Karl/Roxette says, mid-fuck, “I love this… I love you.” Danny/Lance can’t handle this, so he dramatically kicks a trash bag and asks to meet in person.

In the midnight downpour, lit only by their headlights, Danny and Karl approach each other warily. Danny stands mannequin-still five feet away from Karl. He pockets his glasses and rolls out his shoulder. He remains silent. He looks like he’s gearing up for a punch, so Karl has no choice but to roll up his sleeves.

“We’re not gonna fight,” Danny says. “We’re gonna kiss.”

The line about queerness being a joke infuriated me, but this line defeats me. I see here a caricature of a profound truth. The two modes in which these men operate are fighting and fucking. Their mouths are made only for sexual kissing and punches to the jaw. They are men.

What I can’t help but wonder is why. Why do these men have a fight or fuck reflex?

Maybe it’s because for Danny and Karl, the performance of budding love looks the same as a pre-fight ritual. Tragically, this makes sense. I think of the queer theorist Judith Butler, who talks a lot about gender performativity. She writes, “Performativity has to do with repetition, very often with the repetition of oppressive and painful gender norms to force them to resignify. This is not freedom, but a question of how to work the trap that one is inevitably in.” Basically, when we try to perform who we are, we fall into ugly stereotypes. Think of a boy who tries to be a man by mimicking an older man’s rough handshake. He learns to present himself as more mature by valuing strength and male space-taking.

Danny and Karl can only perform their new love through old habits, and the most readily available performance is fighting. Because they started their sexual relationship in a fighting game, they approach each other like their avatars do. 

This revelation does not remove any of the tragedy from the scene for me; it simply contextualizes it.

Now what I want to know is why this limp scrambling at queerness must be televised instead of, say, an earnest, celebratory depiction of tender love. 

The simple answer might be that this narrative is palatable. “Striking Vipers” keeps masculinity and queerness in their cages. Queerness remains a question, not an answer. Danny explains why they should kiss: “If there are fireworks, then OK, bam, it’s an ‘us’ thing, whatever. At least we’ve got a foothold on it.” For Danny, to be gay and in love is to search a mountain for a foothold. 

The longer answer as to why this is televised includes the widespread failure of writers to imagine queer futures.

This failure is well documented. The ‘bury your gays’ trope is now a recognizable hashtag. We know that queer characters are killed off or brushed aside in all genres of shows. (If you want to hear more about ‘bury your gays,’ check out GLAAD’s annual report, “Where We Are on TV.”)

But Black Mirror had appeared to transcend this pattern of unhappy endings with “San Junipero.” I love “San Junipero”—I am queer and have taste. Plus, “San Junipero” is one of few pieces of queer entertainment I’ve seen with a happy ending. I can count all of them on one hand.

If you take a step back, “San Junipero” also falls short of a perfectly happy ending. Kelly and Yorkie can only reunite on the beach through death. As the credits roll and Belinda Carlisle reminds us that ooh, heaven is a place on Earth, we see a shot of Kelly Jane Booth’s coffin, devoid of any visitors or flowers.

This is just another instance of ‘bury your gays.’ The only difference: The characters accept death, and the afterlife accepts them.

I do not necessarily think this is unforgivable. Not all queer stories need to be radical or happy. Especially because who you fuck does not make you radical. Queer theorist Leo Bersani writes, “You can be victimized and in no way be radical; it happens very often among homosexuals as with every other oppressed minority.” Queer people have proven this by fighting long and hard for access to two rather conservative institutions: marriage and the military. Not everyone is like the dope poet CAConrad, who says, “I’m not the kind of faggot who wants to put a rainbow sticker on a machine gun.” 

So I don’t need or want all queer stories to find the ‘happily ever after’ moment. No. All I want is for queer characters to showcase the full range of humanity, in all its nuances. I want fictional depictions of men who attempt vulnerability. 

I want an expansive range of masculinities, femininities, people, and stories. I want fiction that creates as “San Junipero” does. Sure, it doesn’t totally reinvent the wheel (it buries its gays, it provides a typical coming out narrative for Yorkie, and it doesn’t dare imagine a world in which people are actually accepted—that’s just the virtual world of San Junipero), but it dares to let its characters put forth an idea of how they want to live, and then lets them attempt to act on that desire. Yorkie and Kelly reach toward a relationship. They reach toward what scares them.

It's not about perfection. It’s about finding what lies between the fighting and the fucking. It’s about queer people, real people, who turn to escapist entertainment for solace.

When I made out with someone who was assigned male at birth for the first time, I was swaying in the middle of the dance floor/living room of my friend’s dorm. Cheering ensued. Their stubble scratched in a way that excited. I had always thought this person was hot, and they were. They were my school’s version of an RA and I was a first year. They were not allowed to bring me back to their room. They did so anyway. On my way out the door, they said, “Make sure no one sees you.”

It's about showing me that there is more to queerness and masculinity than hidden sex, hidden feelings. It’s about ditching the tired tropes for something more human and true. 

It’s about providing people like me with roadmaps for how to exist. 

AUTHOR: Joaquin Munro is Mexican & white & queer & trying to learn how to be tenderly militant. He grew up in Boston & studies creative nonfiction at Brown. His favorite spot in Providence is White Electric Coffee.

ARTIST: Angie Kang