Representation Matters: In Response to Hallmark’s First Movie Featuring a Gay Storyline
The Hallmark Channel’s The Holiday Sitter starring Jonathan Bennet and George Krissa is the first movie on the network that features a gay couple as the lead storyline. Hallmark has released movies in the past that have LGBT characters such as The Christmas House and Mix Up in the Meditteranean, but what’s pivotal about The Holiday Sitter is that the movie’s main storyline features two gay cisgender men who are in the process of falling in love. It seems wild that this is the first, considering it is 2022 and we’ve come a long way with queer rights and societal acceptance (while obviously still having a long way to go).
The response to Hallmark releasing this film on December 11, 2022 has had widely positive responses from 2SLGBTQIA+ community members, while receiving severe backlash from people outside of the community. The most notable of negative responses was Full House’s DJ Tanner, actress Candace Cameron Bure, who left the Hallmark network due to its commitment to featuring more queer storylines. This backlash isn’t surprising, and there’s way more to say about this story, but it has already gotten more attention than it deserves.
What’s more important is the positive impact this long overdue Hallmark film has had on a lot of the queer community and its feature of incredibly important themes and conversations that often go missing in queer-centered films.
Media, especially TV shows and films, have a huge impact on our culture, and have the ability to open the hearts and minds of people who may not have otherwise witnessed stories outside of their own lived experiences. We also know how important it is for marginalized people to see themselves authentically represented in TV and film. I have heard countless stories of queer people saying the only way they survived their childhood was because of a book, a show, or a film that they saw themselves in. Representation is powerful and is, in fact, life-saving. The Holiday Sitter, while not without faults, was a great first Hallmark queer-centered storyline for many reasons.
The actors who played the main characters, Jason and Sam, are actually gay, and Jonathan Bennet, who plays Sam, was one of the film’s main writers. The movie’s director, Ali Liebert, is queer as well. When we reserve queer characters and stories for people who identify as queer in real life, we give opportunities to people who have limited access to them due to their very identities, and we simultaneously represent queer experiences in the most authentic way possible. This interrupts the replicating of harmful stereotypes and helps prevent the spread of these stereotypes to to audiences that often use that messaging to cause further harm or double down on bigoted beliefs. Queer people playing and writing queer stories, and trans people playing and writing trans stories, is essential in the current political landscape and beyond.
When posing this viewpoint, the predictable backlash responses we hear are, “well, then should queer people be allowed to play cisgender and heterosexual characters?” While I don’t want to spend too much time on this “argument,” I do think it’s important to name that, as queer people — we have likely spent a vast majority of our lives either thinking we’re heterosexual and cisgender or working very hard to fit in as such. We are navigating cisheteronormativity everywhere we turn, and we have to understand these identities and experiences in order to survive. For these reasons (and many more), we tend to understand cisgender and heterosexual identities and experiences; whereas cishet people are merely given glimpses of queer and trans identities and experiences.
Of course, the odes to queer culture were another enjoyable and appreciated theme throughout this movie. We love a good Mean Girls reference (especially from the actor who played THE Aaron Samuels in the movie) as well as gay people being able to find each other from knowing fashion trends that only gay people are privy to. Having subliminal ways to “clock” one another has been a way that queer people have found each other for decades.
Jonathan Bennet as Aaron Samuels in Mean Girls (2004), playing alongside Rachel McAdams as Regina George.
Perhaps one of the most important through lines of this movie was that being gay wasn’t a central plot point. All too often, movies featuring queer characters center the struggles of our community, or even make it about how the character is closeted and/or in the process of coming out. While these are realities that a lot of queer and trans people face, it isn’t the entirety of our existence. These storylines are tired and trauma-triggering for so many. We need representation that shows our identities and experiences going far beyond just being queer. We are so much more than that, and in that sense The Holiday Sitter was absolutely refreshing.
The only mention of queer struggles was toward the end of the movie. Sam has an awakening as to why he’s been pushing away and scared of love and starting a family for so long. Talking it through with his sister, he explains, “You’ve known your whole life that marriage and kids were at least an option. That hasn’t been my experience. Most of the time, I’m told no…legally and perception-wise, you know, I’ve faced a whole lot of ‘uh-uh. Not you.’ And, yeah, it’s different to a degree…but my internal voice is still catching up. I think that’s why I run and never make it to a second date.” Watching this filled me with emotion, as I know so many 2SLGBTQIA+ people can relate to this. It felt like such an important internal struggle to name, and perhaps one that many of us don’t recognize we’re actually struggling with. It was a beautiful moment, a truth-telling that only lasted for about two minutes of the movie while the rest was playful and joyful just like cishet romcoms tend to be. Normalizing queer love to be just like any other relationship is powerful and this is the representation that we as queer people definitely need more of.
Queer representation in media is still vastly small in comparison to the attention given to white, cisgender, and heterosexual stories. With every green-lit 2SLGBTQIA+ film, show, article, etc. comes a great responsibility to ensure that it accurately represents the nuances of queer experiences while also igniting enough interest in the network or publication’s mainstream audiences to inspire more representation to continue. It’s a lot of pressure and holding the complexities of both seems near impossible.
While this was such a powerful movie and should be widely celebrated as Hallmark’s first ever movie featuring queer characters, it is not without its faults. The two gay men featured are white, cisgender, non-disabled, and in thinner bodies. Within the wider 2SLGBTQIA+ community, these identities/experiences tend to be the most featured as they are closest to the cultural norms that mainstream media consumers can embrace. This furthers the expectations and norms within our wider society while continuing to subliminally tell more marginalized people within our community that their stories and experiences don’t matter. There are very few shows and films that feature more diverse 2SLGBTQIA+ identities and experiences. The stories that tend to be emphasized are of those who hold the most privilege in our community since they are deemed to be the most “palatable.” As we advocate for more inclusivity in media, it is important that we do so for those whose stories need more representation. And we can do so while celebrating the progress we make along the way.
Growing up in the midwest, I only consumed mainstream media. Over and over again, the stories featured were those of predominantly white, cisgender, heterosexual, non-disabled, and non-fat bodies. I never remember seeing a story about queerness. This left a subliminal message that who I was was not okay, and for a long time I wasn’t aware that being gay was even a way to be in the world. All I knew is that I did not fit into the stories I was seeing over and over again, but wasn’t able to make sense of why. This was of course compounded by the same subliminal messages I was receiving from society at large.
It’s a tough reality to swallow that my life would’ve been drastically different had I seen myself in mainstream media. TV gives us access to stories and worlds that we otherwise may not have. It has the capability to open hearts and minds to ways of being outside of our own. It has the power to shape our culture and wider society at large. I am elated for younger generations, as more diverse media representation is becoming increasingly common in rapid ways.
While queer-inclusive representation has a long way to go on the Hallmark Channel, this was an incredible start. Here’s to hoping it’s the first of many.