PicoBlog

I first became aware of Todd Haynes’ new awards darling last Spring. Fittingly, it was May. An image appeared on my screen out of the film festival fog: the bright red carpet of the Croisette, flashbulbs, and Julianne Moore, and Natalie Portman, and…Charles Melton? 

I was struck with the kind of dumbfounded shock that generally sends me into a fugue state wherein I black in moments later and realize I am deep in the bowels of his profile on IMDBpro incessantly muttering “who is his agent?” 

To be clear, I don’t mean to imply that I believed Melton to be undeserving, in fact, quite the opposite. I became immediately infatuated with him when he famously replaced Ross Butler as “Reggie” on The CW’s Riverdale. He has the inherent magnetism and on screen gravitas of a Hollywood star of decades past, the likes of which we just don’t see anymore. 

Our heroes are towering giants whom we call “babygirl” and an army of twinks let loose by Jonathan Anderson and emboldened by their never ending invitations to sit front row at fashion shows. For the record, this latter group is the one to which I aspire. I was not gifted with Melton’s bone structure or capacity (read: discipline) to develop visible abs, but I do have the audacity to wear a t-shirt dress in public whilst being photographed next to Brian Cox. 

If all Melton had given us in this life were his abs they would’ve been more than we deserve but when provided the opportunity, he proved he has the range of a burgeoning film star, seasoned by the grueling schedule of Canadian television production and an artist who is in full control of the celebrity “x-factor” the present-day internet requires. 

And after seeing May December I reluctantly admit I had hope, “my God, I live on it.” (Devil Wears Prada, 2006) that the Academy would recognize the talent required for this level of full body transformation. That hope was dashed when my “king”, our future “zaddy”, was unceremoniously snubbed and completely shut out from tonight’s awards.

For all the money in the world I couldn’t tell you a single fact about the Mary Kay Letourneau case but when a Netflix marketing executive referenced her while pitching May December to me at Hotel Delmano, I realized I remembered her name. 

Halfway through our first martinis I realized I had been overcome with an extreme disdain for the whole endeavor. It was the kind of bitterness I like to think I’ve evolved past, particularly after 26 years in an industry that makes less and less sense the closer one gets. Avoiding rage is labor and given our professional proximity, I have to admit that I found Melton’s path from the CW to Cannes, an ascent entertainment journalist, Matt Belloni, characterized as a transformation from “teen soap star” to “prestige track.”  An enviable evolution to say the least. There are, as it turns out, those who “pop” and those who don’t. 

Charles Melton: Heartthrob, Artist, Trailblazer.

But there is a particular genius to casting a 32 year old man known for playing a high schooler on a show with a median cast age of “late 20’s” (if generous) and narratives of hyper sexualization. To regard Melton’s “Reggie” as an adult, perhaps in bed on one’s laptop, is to navigate the ethical grey area of coveting youth.

In one sense, the proximity of the actor’s age invites the adult viewer into a world that mostly lives in our past. When we see Melton, we see ourselves. Well, not exactly, as his is a vision of masculine musculature typically reserved for fitness influencers turned OnlyFans models, of which I am unfortunately neither, but when we look at him we see an adult and when we’re told he’s 17, we believe it. And it’s important to talk about his body because it serves a significant role in the subtext of the film.

To be clear, the Melton we get is not the Melton we know, physically, artistically. Where the actor normally stands tall and confident, jawline and pout on display, Melton’s “Joe” hunches and slouches, as if he’s trying to disappear, as if he’s developmentally stunted at the age when he and Julianne Moore’s “Gracie” initially started their affair. The impossibly hot Melton of our fantasies lives only as a memory in this world and one senses that at one point this sad, dissociated man with a dad bod and facial expressions that suggest a permanent sense of confusion might have inhabited a body that could have been sexualized by the surrounding world—his classmates, his neighbors, his teacher. 

This complicated layering of desire and perception is one of the main themes May December wrestles with. Gracie tells Portman’s “Elizabeth” that they met in the middle, so to speak, Gracie always feeling younger than her age and Joe presenting as older, both in body and in maturity. And being Melton’s exact same age, it is hard to imagine anything other than total system malfunction if my high school self had shared space with his—a sentiment that has absolutely carried to the present. 

Then there is the ethical grey area of the film itself. Though notably not an official biopic of the Mary Kay Letourneau case, the similarities are clear enough to make that connection without much help. Haynes reportedly did not consult Vili Fualaau, Letourneau’s ex-husband and the corollary for Melton’s Joe, a fact that reportedly left Fualaau “offended.”  

Is this not, to an extent, what Portman’s Elizabeth does to Gracie? And is that not also the point? 

Elizabeth breezes into town with the aire (read: complete lack of self-awareness) of a celebrity actor who perhaps takes themselves too seriously—this trip, after all, being background research for what will ultimately be the equivalent of a Lifetime TV Movie. She pushes boundaries, she crosses lines, and she makes fun of Gracie and Joe to their faces. And though she has returned to this story with the excitement of a memory lost and found again, notably similar to the sentiment with which I approached the film as a viewer, it becomes immediately clear when a box full of excrement is waiting for Elizabeth when she arrives at the house, that this is an ongoing reality for Gracie and Joe, not the nostalgia of a salacious past. Though they have a small community of friends who work to maintain the illusion of normalcy, Haynes is clear, these two are isolated both from their larger community and from the world because of their choice to stay together and have children while Gracie was in prison for statutory rape. 

But what is the responsibility of the filmmaker here? When the details of someone’s life become so saturated in the public consciousness, what is owed to them? 

And then there is the question of genre. The film, which did not win any awards at the Golden Globes, was submitted in the category of Best Musical or Comedy prompting everyone, including Variety, to ask the question, “is May December a comedy?” 

There are undoubtedly camp elements. Moore speaks through an affected lisp that appears to be as weird to the people in the world of the film as it is to the many viewers who took to the internet to make countless memes. As part of her research, Portman goes to the “scene of the crime”, the storage room of the pet store that Joe worked in as a high schooler, a place that is alluded to as an infamous detail of the headline grabbing case. She finds her way to the back room and drapes herself on a set of stairs, presumably the very spot where Joe and Gracie were, and assumes her forthcoming role, moaning, arching her back, breathing heavily before ultimately breaking into an eerie cackle. Is she aware of the absurdity? 

Is May December Camp? 

In the never ending onslaught of this relentless awards season, compacted by the strikes and supported by an Algorithm whose appetite for Zillennial hunks grows increasingly insatiable, one would have to be completely disconnected from the outside world to go a single day without thinking about Melton. Either that or they’re just in a different corner of the internet than I am.

But I like it here. “This is now a [Charles] stan account” as they say, and I will be cornering people at dinner parties and preaching the gospel of Melton for the rest of my days. 

Furthermore, if the CW to Oscars pipeline is ever solidified, run me mine next.

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