The Confusing Queer Representation in “The Electric State”

Even though Netflix’s The Electric State decided to strip away the lead character’s queerness, it still decided to add a bit of homoeroticism between the male character Keats and his “male” robot buddy Herman, making me quite confused about the reason behind said changes.

SPOILER WARNING: This post contains spoilers for The Electric State. Proceed with caution!

I wasn’t interested in watching The Electric State at first. The entire sci-fi trope of the human vs. robot war leading to a post-apocalyptic world isn’t really for me. However, when I saw the film debuted to an incredibly low Rotten Tomatoes Score (it currently stands at a 14% Critic Score), especially after having a reported $320 million production budget, I was intrigued. Also, I was up late during the weekend and was like, yeah, might as well see what Anthony Russo and Joe Russo have done now. Their post-Avengers: Endgame track record is… it’s sure something.

This isn’t a review of The Electric State. But I’ll give you some information. The premise deals with Michelle (Millie Bobby Brown) being asked by a robot supposedly housing the consciousness of her brother Christopher (Woody Norman). This leads to Michelle accompanying the robot to find Christopher’s human body. On their way they meet John D. Keats (Chris Pratt) and his robot buddy Herman (voiced by Anthony Mackie).

The dynamic between Keats and Herman is that of an odd couple. They used to be on different sides of the human vs. robot war but ultimately become “friends”. There’s a lot of banter between the two, with each character throwing shade whenever they got the chance to do so. It’s your typical “male” friendship involving a duo who don’t have anyone else in their lives except each other. However, their dynamic took a drastic shift during the finale battle.

With Herman having sacrificed himself to save Keats, we got to see Keats share his feelings in front of Herman’s damaged body. Again, nothing out of the ordinary. We have seen this before, where a character proclaimed how their companion was their best friend and they can’t imagine their life without them. But what was surprising was Keats continuing and saying he loved his “best friend” Herman “maybe more” than just a friend.

I knew Herman wasn’t actually dead. He’s been shown to have multiple bodies. So, I was interested in seeing how Keats would respond to Herman having heard his love confession. With Herman coming back, in a new body, he brought up Keats’ love for him and, as expected, Keats tried to deny he had said anything love-dovey when Herman brought it up. The scene ended with Herman making a joke involving his current 8-inch robotic body and Keats’ alleged 8-inches down there (if you know what I mean) before the two teamed up again to make sure Michelle was okay.

Seeing Keats being in love with a male-presenting robot like Herman brought up so many questions for me. Of course, the movie didn’t talk about the aftermath of the love confession at all. The entire thing came across as confusing and frankly, unnecessary.

I say this because The Electric State decided to add the scene between Keats and Herman when it could have featured actual queer representation thought Michelle.

For those of you who might not know, The Electric State is based on an illustrated novel by Simon Stålenhag. Michelle is a queer character in the source material and has a (somewhat) doomed relationship with another girl named Amanda. The story’s themes also talk about conversion therapy and religion. However, the live-action film adaptation completely got rid of Michelle’s queerness. The script didn’t outright straightwash her or anything. It’s just that the romantic element has been stripped from her character development, making her solely focus on rescuing her brother.

In my opinion, a single line from Michelle mentioning having had a girlfriend or a crush on a girl would have been a lot better than the confusion-causing interaction between Keats and Herman.     

It’s unfortunate that a hauntingly well-written sci-fi story about societal collapse and loss of humanity like The Electric State had a young queer female lead and yet the live-action adaptation meant for Netflix (of all places) took away a major aspect of Michelle’s character only to replace it with whatever the heck was going on between Keats and Herman.  

What did you think of The Electric State and the film’s so-called queer representation?

Let us know.

Author: Farid-ul-Haq

Farid has a Double Masters in Psychology and Biotechnology as well as an M.Phil in Molecular Genetics. He is the author of numerous books including Missing in Somerville, and The Game Master of Somerville. He gives us insight into comics, books, TV shows, anime/manga, video games, and movies.

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