"Riverdale" television show is harmful for asexual viewers

[scarletlatitude]

The Red & Black

29 Jan 2018

 

https://www.redandblack.com/opinion/opinion-riverdale-television-show-is-harmful-for-asexual-viewers/article_d81783ee-0473-11e8-9e23-cff5b38593cf.html

 

Spoiler

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"Riverdale," the popular television show based on Archie comics, returned to the CW on Jan 24. Netflix summarizes the show thusly: “While navigating the troubled waters of sex, romance, school and family, teen Archie and his gang become entangled in a dark Riverdale mystery.”

 

While the cast of the comic and of the show remain similar, some meaningful identities changed in translation from comic to television show. One major change from comic to show is the erasure of Jughead Jones’ asexuality. This erasure harms the LGBT+ community by perpetuating common misconceptions and by removing much-needed representation for asexual people.

Asexuality is a sexual identity where an individual feels little to no sexual attraction, according to the Asexual Visibility & Education Network (AVEN). Jughead Jones, in the comics, shows little interest in dating or fornicating with people of any gender. His friend also explicitly states that Jughead is asexual in Jughead #4. However, the kiss between Jughead and Betty in episode 6 “Faster, Pussycats! Kill! Kill!” dashed any hopes the asexual community may have had for representation.

 

“I was very excited when I found out that they were going to make it because I thought that it would be good representation," said Reagan Scott, a junior psychology major. "But then at the end of the season, not only did he have a girlfriend, but they also showed them hooking up.”

 

The erasure of Jughead’s asexuality deeply affects the asexual community because there is little to no positive representation of asexual people in media. Media “‘symbolically annihilates asexuality, misrepresenting it as a lack of social skills or as a physical or mental disability rather than a legitimate sexual orientation,” wrote Benjamin Marks of the University of Iowa. “For most of its history, a lack of sexual desire has been pathologized as a medical disorder or illness, or conversely praised as a religious virtue like abstinence.”

 

Media can dehumanize or delegitimatize asexuality as a sexual identity. The representation the asexual communities receives promotes the idea that little to no sexual attraction correlates with a medical emergency, such as in the episode of House titled “Better Half." Asexual people are misrepresented as lying or confused, such as in "The Olivia Experiment," or that asexuality is simply a barrier to overcome to have sex, such as in "Sirens."

 

Jughead represented positive asexual representation that the community desperately needs and wants, and erasing Jughead’s asexuality in "Riverdale" reinforces the idea that larger society views asexual people as inferior.

 

“Media itself especially in America is very sexualized, even commercials have women posing for sex appeal to sell their products. And I think that media does treat sex and sexual characters as kind of the goal for humans," Scott said. "I think that it would just be nice to take a step back from that and realize that that’s not everybody’s prerogative."

 

Erasing Jughead’s asexuality in Riverdale dismisses an opportunity for asexual people to see themselves as normal teenagers in high school, a representation direly needed. Therefore, Riverdale producers should stay true to Jughead’s comic persona and allow him to be asexual.

 

[Jax Nikara]

I still like the show but... this was definitely disheartening.

[Haze.]

Ouch

[arekathevampyre]

that's sad 

[Lonemathsytoothbrushthief]

I mean it really has to be reminded that aces don't just not have sex or relationships, as  much as I don't date now I had a period of time where I was very... *ahem* forward with the guys I went out with, and I was actually alright with kissing. I did the usual dating stuff, as much as I tried to put off actual sex with any of the guys I was with(though "actual sex" is already a misnomer, in the end we did go all the way unless you want to be cisheteronormative and say it has to be a cis guy penetrating a cis girl which I didn't do, at which point I give up) and as much as in retrospect, the guys I was with were all in some way bad for me and it did definitely feel like a sort of compulsive heterosexuality. If this show was going to actually ask aces about what it should do with Jughead's character, my take on it would be that it absolutely makes sense for him to end up in some sort of relationship given there is always that pressure in society. But it's during the process of dating that he could discover more about himself, and realise some of the things he's not comfortable with while discussing it with his partner. He could even conclude that he should break up with them and decide to find happiness on his own, with some people commenting that he'd enjoy dating if he tried it to add that extra obvious aphobia that we can all relate to, and I think something like that would actually be great for his character growth-after all, I learnt a lot about myself from doing things which went against what I was learning about myself, and I doubt I'm the only one. Plenty of aces realise who they are in ways other than just resisting the pressure to be in a relationship from day one, as good or bad as that may be for us.

Anyway I have mixed feelings about the people we end up having as representation for the community. Aren't they generally not the best characters? The ones I usually hear about are those like Sherlock and the Doctor and Sheldon etc, and they're incredibly boring as well as sometimes harmful. If at least one of the above had been written decently, he(yes I don't mean the Doctor) would have been written as openly autistic and asexual a well as an empathetic, relatable human being, and I wouldn't have had a knee-jerk oh-hell-no reaction to my friend saying I might be asexual because I was like Sheldon as a kid.

[Lucas Monteiro]

14 minutes ago, Lonemathsytoothbrushthief said:

Anyway I have mixed feelings about the people we end up having as representation for the community. Aren't they generally not the best characters? The ones I usually hear about are those like Sherlock and the Doctor and Sheldon etc, and they're incredibly boring as well as sometimes harmful. If at least one of the above had been written decently, he(yes I don't mean the Doctor) would have been written as openly autistic and asexual a well as an empathetic, relatable human being, and I wouldn't have had a knee-jerk oh-hell-no reaction to my friend saying I might be asexual because I was like Sheldon as a kid.

One character that has always been commented around here at AVEN, it's Todd Chavez from "Bojack Horseman", and believe me or not, he is a good character and well written. He has an incredible development around his personality and the stories that goes on with his quest to try to find his sexuality are really close to the reality of asexuals. The character gives a good visibility for the asexual community and how asexual people feel. If you haven't yet watched or heard about the series, I recommend for you to watch not just because of this character, but because the series itself is really good. But if you don't like dark humour, it's best for you to not watch. 

[Guest]

Honestly, Jughead seems like another lame asexual character. I can't relate to any of the asexual characters that there have been so far. I think what hurts us even more than not having any representation is to have poor representation.

[babygyrl09]

14 minutes ago, Wish Bear 🌠 said:

Honestly, Jughead seems like another lame asexual character. I can't relate to any of the asexual characters that there have been so far. I think what hurts us even more than not having any representation is to have poor representation.

As I said in another post (awhile ago, at least a few months), the best representation I've "seen" is in podcasts. The Bright Sessions has Chloe, an asexual panromantic, who I really relate to, character-wise, and Ars Paradocixa has the main character Sally Grissom, who I don't like as a character, but when I asked about the character in a q+a, the creator said that he always had that in his head about her character but because of fan reactions, they had to state it explicitly that she is ace.

[Lonemathsytoothbrushthief]

15 minutes ago, babygyrl09 said:

As I said in another post (awhile ago, at least a few months), the best representation I've "seen" is in podcasts. The Bright Sessions has Chloe, an asexual panromantic, who I really relate to, character-wise, and Ars Paradocixa has the main character Sally Grissom, who I don't like as a character, but when I asked about the character in a q+a, the creator said that he always had that in his head about her character but because of fan reactions, they had to state it explicitly that she is ace.

Podcasts I will be taking those on as recommendations

[Lonemathsytoothbrushthief]

53 minutes ago, Lucas Monteiro said:

One character that has always been commented around here at AVEN, it's Todd Chavez from "Bojack Horseman", and believe me or not, he is a good character and well written. He has an incredible development around his personality and the stories that goes on with his quest to try to find his sexuality are really close to the reality of asexuals. The character gives a good visibility for the asexual community and how asexual people feel. If you haven't yet watched or heard about the series, I recommend for you to watch not just because of this character, but because the series itself is really good. But if you don't like dark humour, it's best for you to not watch. 

Todd Chavez is a decently written character for what he is, but he's also not very relatable to plenty of people-he's rich, cis, white, whatever, it's not like that makes him bad or anything but we do need a lot more variety, and especially the aspect of Bojack Horseman which is focused on pretty wealthy people with consequentially very different lifestyles to most of us is probably less relatable for a lot of us. I've watched the series and enjoyed it(I mean, you really think I'd not watched it after every ace page and site talks about him? ) but I do want more. Stephen Universe is probably also to bear in mind-it already has good takes on non binary people, a whole bunch of cute sapphics and Peridot is aro ace so yeah...that's my recommendation

[babygyrl09]

4 minutes ago, Lonemathsytoothbrushthief said:

Podcasts I will be taking those on as recommendations

Podcasts are life. I've almost quit tv altogether, I think I only watch about 3 shows regularly, as opposed to about 30 podcasts that I've caught up on, and about 90 more in my queue. I find that "new" internet based media is more diverse and inclusive than "mainstream".

[Lonemathsytoothbrushthief]

3 minutes ago, babygyrl09 said:

Podcasts are life. I've almost quit tv altogether, I think I only watch about 3 shows regularly, as opposed to about 30 podcasts that I've caught up on, and about 90 more in my queue. I find that "new" internet based media is more diverse and inclusive than "mainstream".

I definitely agree. The choice of TV which my housemates go for, lovely as they can be otherwise, puts me right off. I can't stand Ru Paul's shit, since it's pandering to a cis audience while being blatantly transphobic, yet they watch a lot of it, and also The Undateables which is an overtly ableist shitty TV series, basically just inspiration porn for able NT people(which I am not, I'm autistic and of course as an ace I have even greater levels of scorn for a program making it seem like everyone has to be "dateable" and to be anything other is deserving of pity). Finally there are the cop shows and the likes and...well, I'm an anarchist, what do you think my reaction would be?

 

My main podcast was just Welcome to Night Vale, it's too good, but I've got some which are just myths and legends that are all right. Will be checking out your recommendations, and hoping I can get them on my phone easily!

[babygyrl09]

45 minutes ago, Lonemathsytoothbrushthief said:

I definitely agree. The choice of TV which my housemates go for, lovely as they can be otherwise, puts me right off. I can't stand Ru Paul's shit, since it's pandering to a cis audience while being blatantly transphobic, yet they watch a lot of it, and also The Undateables which is an overtly ableist shitty TV series, basically just inspiration porn for able NT people(which I am not, I'm autistic and of course as an ace I have even greater levels of scorn for a program making it seem like everyone has to be "dateable" and to be anything other is deserving of pity). Finally there are the cop shows and the likes and...well, I'm an anarchist, what do you think my reaction would be?

 

My main podcast was just Welcome to Night Vale, it's too good, but I've got some which are just myths and legends that are all right. Will be checking out your recommendations, and hoping I can get them on my phone easily!

I listen to them through a 3rd party app, not Google play or iTunes, so if you just search in your favorite podcatcher app, you should be able to find them. Pm me if you want some more podcast recommendations, as I said, I listen to a ton.

[Scott1989]

1 hour ago, Wish Bear 🌠 said:

I think what hurts us even more than not having any representation is to have poor representation.

With the latest AVENues which was about aces in media, one if the questions asked in their survey for it was asking about if ace representation in the media was a good thing and I more or less said it was a double edged sword and more or less said this.

[babygyrl09]

1 minute ago, Scott1989 said:

With the latest AVENues which was about aces in media, one if the questions asked in their survey for it was asking about if ace representation in the media was a good thing and I more or less said it was a double edged sword and more or less said this.

I haven't watched Riverdale, and was going to since I heard that Jughead is ace, but now I don't want to because of the poor representation/ace erasure.

[LeChat]

Thanks for the link. It's good to know that other asexuals haven't decided to let it go and stay quiet about the lack of, or bad, asexual representation in T.V. shows. Preach.

[EggplantWitch]

On 1/29/2018 at 4:51 PM, Wish Bear 🌠 said:

Honestly, Jughead seems like another lame asexual character. I can't relate to any of the asexual characters that there have been so far. I think what hurts us even more than not having any representation is to have poor representation.

I can't comment on what Jughead is like in Riverdale, since I've sworn never to give it any of my time unless the erasure is rectified, but in the comics that initially labelled him I think he's a great ace character. He doesn't fall into the negative stereotypes aces are often labelled with - antisocial, socially awkward, unlikable, ugly, etc - and there are quite a few lines and panels that I found relatable. One that sticks in my mind is complaining that talking to a love-obsessed friend is 'like having a conversation with a spreading wildfire'.