A tribute to Kevin Smith

Silent Bob, the not so silent bi ally (and possibly more)

I would like to take a moment to sing the praises of Kevin Smith.

“Kevin Smith?” you may well be thinking right now. “The Clerks guy? Silent Bob?”

Yes, that Kevin Smith.

“The guy who just rebooted He-Man?”

Yup.

"The Chasing Amy guy?!”

There it is.

Any discussion of Kevin Smith and queerness must necessarily begin with his 1997 boy-meets-lesbian movie, Chasing Amy. There are a lot of people — most of whom haven’t seen the film — who will tell you right off the bat that Chasing Amy, a movie written and directed by a straight man that’s about Ben Affleck falling in love with a lesbian and winning her heart, is a homophobic mess and some ex-gay propaganda. Except that read wildly misrepresents what Chasing Amy is actually about (and, like I said above, pretty much requires you to have not actually seen the film).

Chasing Amy — which I unabashedly stan — is far deeper, far more complex than its logline. If you haven’t seen it, I urge you to (though be sure to steel yourself for a bunch of edgy late 1990s humor, which can hit different a quarter of a century later, in more sensitive times). Despite the superficial premise, Chasing Amy is not a movie about how Ben Affleck’s dick is so great it can conquer lifelong lesbianism. In one read, Chasing Amy is actually a movie about how bi women construct our identities and navigate a monosexist dating sphere; in another, it’s a movie about how the unfathomably severe insecurity of straight men leads them to sabotage their own happiness. (I subscribe to both of these reads.) While I wouldn’t call it a queer movie, or praise it for any kind of accurate or nuanced depiction of queer life, I do think it’s a brilliant analysis of the particular hell that bi women face when we are on the dating market — and an especially smart take on the simultaneous fetishization and disgust that straight men direct our way.

I first saw Chasing Amy when it debuted in theaters, as a fourteen-year-old girl just a few months into her own bi journey. From the moment I’d read about it in the newspapers, I was desperate to see it, and though I was emphatically too young to see an R-rated movie, I looked old enough that no one questioned me and my 19-year-old sister when we showed up to see it*. To say it impacted me is an understatement: for years (decades?), it was a touchstone, a movie I thought about whenever I thought about what it meant for me to be out in the world and dating men. I’ve returned to it again as an adult, and I think it still holds up: quite frankly, there are few films that so thoughtfully, so honestly, skewer the ridiculous neuroses of straight** men, that portray bi women, and the complex decisions we make about how we identify and what we share with partners, with such a degree of sensitivity.

But Chasing Amy isn’t why I’m writing about Kevin Smith.

No, the actual reason I think that Kevin Smith is an amazing bi ally is because of Degrassi: The Next Generation.

If you’re unfamiliar with Degrassi, it’s a longstanding Canadian franchise*** that explores the lives of teenagers at a fictional Toronto junior high/high school known as, yes, Degrassi. One of the defining qualities of Degrassi is that, as a mid-aughts ad used to say, it goes there. Few topics are off limits for the show: teen pregnancy, abortion, school shootings, drug use, bipolar disorder — all of these topics have been explored by Degrassi at one point or another, and many were touched on at a time when it wasn’t commonplace to do so****.

Degrassi: The Next Generation debuted in 2001, picking up where the original 1980s/1990s Degrassi High left off. I’ll spare you all the ins and outs of Degrassi canon and lore (for now), because the only thing that’s crucial to know here is that a) Kevin Smith grew up a fan of the original Degrassi and b) at least in part because of that, Smith and Jason Mewes have a multi-episode arc in the fourth and fifth seasons of Degrassi: The Next Generation. Within the world of Degrassi, Smith and Mewes wind up in Toronto because they’re shooting, and then premiering, Jay and Silent Bob Go Canadian, Eh!*****; Degrassi High and some Degrassi students wind up being featured in the film and thus attending the premiere and, look, none of this actually matters but it felt important to explain anyway.

Smith with Paige Michalchuk (Lauren Collins) on Degrassi: The Next Generation

My actual point here is that in the second half of the fifth season two-parter “The Lexicon of Love,”****** Kevin Smith delivers one of the most beautiful, most insightful, most amazing speeches on human sexual fluidity (and by extension bisexuality) that I have ever heard. One of Degrassi’s cheerleaders, Paige, has been hanging out with resident bad girl, Alex, and to Paige’s shock, her feelings might be more than friendly. A distraught Paige runs into Smith in the school’s gym, and after she expresses her confusion — she’s not gay, her brother is the gay one, she likes boys! — this is what Smith says to her:

I’m probably the last guy in the world who should be giving you advice on this very subject, but I don’t know, you guys seemed happy the other night, you know? And that’s kind of rare. And whether it’s gay, straight, bi, whatever, that’s kind of worth investigating a little further, I’d say. Just my two cents.

You guys. It’s so basic, and yet. That unbelievably simple statement, that assessment that happiness is worth far, far more than loyalty to any label — it makes me cry. I’m actually crying right now, because I had to rewatch the scene to get the exact wording of Smith’s speech, and it never fails to get me.

And it’s that speech — those few lines of dialogue that Smith wrote and performed for a Canadian high school drama in the mid-aughts — that makes me forever loyal to the man, because as simple, as basic, as it is, it’s also a statement that’s so rarely uttered onscreen (or, honestly, anywhere). And for all my high fallutin queer theory and essays on bi identity, it’s that very straight forward sentiment — go chase the person who makes you happy — that really is the crux of it for me.

Indeed, there’s really only one thing that gives me hesitation when I call Smith an incredible bi ally — and it’s not some fear that he might be secretly biphobic. No, it’s because in 2014, after a hacker hijacked Smith’s Twitter account and “came out” as gay, he posted the following after regaining control of his account:

I don’t know how Smith’s conception of his own identity has evolved over the past 8 years — whether he still sees himself as bi-curious, whether he’s embraced a bi identity, or whether he’s now more firmly straight, or something else altogether — but if anything robs Smith of the “ally” label, it is only his own bisexuality itself. And for whatever it’s worth, in my capacity as a Professional Bisexual™️, I’d like to extend this offer to Smith if he ever reads this essay: whether you’re bi-curious or bi, whether your attraction to men feels theoretical or actual, and no matter how brave you feel, you are always welcome under my bi+ umbrella, no matter the weather.

* Hilariously, I went into Chasing Amy knowing absolutely nothing about Kevin Smith or his oeuvre, so when Jay and Silent Bob showed up in the back end of the film I was just like, “Wait Chronic and Bluntman are supposed to be based on real people?”

** Or, I suppose, straight (?)

*** Now somehow affiliated with HBO I think? After being affiliated with Netflix? I dunno, I can’t keep track.

**** The American debut of Degrassi: The Next Generation episode about Manny’s abortion was infamously delayed for two whole years because American broadcasters just weren’t that comfortable showcasing a story of teen abortion.

***** A movie which, sadly, does not exist

****** Available on HBO Max and probably pirated on YouTube too