| dc.description.abstract | Over the last few years, Netflix has produced and released various teenage series featuring LGBTQIA+ characters, reaching large audiences. Television is pointed to as a strong influence on teenager’s sexual identity formation, knowledge on the LGBTQIA+ community, and the (re)production of gender and sexuality norms. Therefore, it is important to study queer representation in teen television series. The Swedish teen series Young Royals (Netflix, 2021-) shows a seemingly awareness of intersectionality and recognizes the struggling relationship between monarchies and modern-day society, making it an interesting case study of queer representation. Therefore, this research made a textual analysis of Young Royals, with the aim of answering the following question: How is intersectionality represented through the characters of Wilhelm and Simon in the teen series Young Royals? The concept of intersectionality is used to see what ideologies the series embodies.
Following Leslie McCall’s intercategorical complexity approach, this thesis focuses on the categories of sexual identity, race, and class within the series’ first season. To analyze Young Royals on a textual level, John Fiske’s theory of codes of television is employed to examine how the different layers of their complex identities are portrayed and thus represented. The textual analysis has shown that class was highlighted more for Wilhelm and Simon than the categories of sexual identity and race. The technical and social codes that transmit the conventional representational codes to shape the representation of ideological codes seem to embody the ideologies of traditionalism and classism. Instead of problematizing queer identity and focusing on sexual identity like many other queer teen series, Young Royals problematizes the social issues that queer people are facing by showing how Wille and Simon navigate their intersectionality. Young Royals centers social issues that are relevant today, like discrimination caused by the social class system and the traditionalism of monarchies, leading to the marginalization of social groups such as queer people. | |
