Noves visions de la subjectivitat adolescent queer a Merlí i Merlí Sapere Aude

Merlí (2015-2018) and its sequel Merlí Sapere Aude (2019-2021) are teen television comedy dramas that cover usual topics of the genre —parental and school relationships, adolescent maternity, drugs, sexual transmitted diseases, gender and sexuality issues— with an educational approach for family and school audiences. Pol, the main character in both series, queers the typical heterosexual male school leader of many Hollywood films and teen comedy dramas, developing the commonplace storyline of coming out of the gay or bisexual young man who assumes, though, a homonormative and rather individualistic identity. Drawing on scholarship of queer media representation, the article explores the narrative of adolescent queerness on the “Merlí saga”. Despite the idealized style of the romance teenage stories and educational television programming, Merlí and Merlí Sapere Aude struggle to undermine the traditional conservative version of masculinity. Their engagement with identity politics is however ambiguous and controversial, since in general they promote a homonormative gender script for millennial young men, thus discarding other understandings of queer masculinity as obsolete or old-age, feminine and marginal.