The Bi Eye: Split Screen By William Burleson
Will Min and Leah make it as a couple, even though Leah, the beautiful cheerleader, is in the closet, much to the chagrin of out-and-proud Min? Will Russel stay with Otto, whom he loves but lives a thousand miles away, or will he go back to his first love, Kevin Land, the popular high school jock? Young adult literature has come a long way, baby. Author Brent Hartinger has tapped into that change in a big way with a series of books for teens from a GLBT perspective. And he has done it with both warmth and intelligent story-telling. In 2007 Split Screen was the winner of the Lambda Literary Award in the Bisexual category. It is the third book in a series that began with Geography Club (a Lambda Literary Award Finalist in 2003) followed by The Order of the Poison Oak. “Right when I decided to commit myself to teen lit, which was around 1995, that was the start of this absolute explosion in the genre in terms of both quality and quantity,” says Hartinger,. “Teen fiction is one of the few genres that is actually pretty healthy these days….” Split Screen features a continuing cast of characters focused on three friends from Robert L Goodkind High School: Russel, the protagonist from the Geography Club and quintessential gay teen navigating his sexuality, Min, an outspoken bisexual, and Gunnar, a straight and perhaps somewhat Asperger’s ally.
The book is actually two stories built on the same situation but told in the first person from two different points of view. Split Screen: Bride of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies and Split Screen: Attack of the Soul-Sucking Zombies are back to back, with instructions to “flip the book!” Often a device like this can be really annoying; however, it works here because each of the stories stands up quite well on its own. In Attack, Russel and Kevin Land, whose relationship was the subject of Geography Club, are reunited. Russel has to square his old feelings for Kevin with the reality of his new boyfriend. In Bride we join 16 year old Min lamenting her lack of a partner: “…I would have been ok with either a boyfriend or a girlfriend. I didn’t have either one, however, so I was feeling a little excluded.” This all changes when Min, Russel, and Gunnar spots a flyer, “’Zombies Wanted!’” looking for teen extras for a horror movie. On the set Min meets Leah, a Cheerleader from another school. They hit it off. However, there’s a problem: Leah is in the closet, something Min has been very outspoken against in the past. It is the strength of Min’s character that led to the book winning the Bisexual Lammy. Hartinger draws Min as an intelligent, complex, and ultimately compelling young woman. The fact that she articulates many of the issues that bisexuals face traveling in the LGBT community didn’t hurt, either. “Bisexuality is huge right now, really resonating with teens, especially girls. But it's being ignored by most adults,” according to Hartinger. Min was bisexual “right from the beginning, probably in part because so many of the teen girls I was working with were also bi. I knew there was something going on in society among young people, even back in the 1990s, which most
adults were completely unaware of. What's depressing is that here it is over ten years later and bisexuals are still fighting for awareness!” As with all good teen lit, Split Screen is much more than either mere fluff or thinly veiled lectures. As with all good continuing series, it stands on its own two feet. And as with all good GLBT literature, it transcends the category offering something for everyone. “There's a little secret about teen books: we have many, many adult cross-over readers. I think it's especially true of GLBT teen lit--adults eager to read stories of the teen years they wish they'd had. Since so many of us were robbed of a true adolescence, we relive those years through these books,” says Hartinger. He adds, “That's certainly part of the reason why I write these books!” One could go on about what Split Screen means in the context of the progress that has achieved by the LGBT community in general and the bisexual community in particular. Better to just take Hartinger’s work for what it is: an enjoyable, well-told story.
William Burleson is the author of Bi America: Myths, Truths, and Struggles of an Invisible Community from Haworth Press. www.williamburleson.org