Saturday, January 31, 2009

Tokenization

So my senior year if high school the local branch of NBC came to my school to follow around 10 seniors for their senior year...

I dont know how, but somehow I ended up being one of those seniors....

I should have turned and run, I remember talking to my girlfriend at the end of my junior year about it, she was like, your gonna be the gay one... and "I was like no one knows Im gay"... (yea riiiiight...)

For the day of the launch of the project we got to go to NBC studios and check it out, and they took video and pictures of us and it was cool, and then there was a newspaper reported, she was talking to us in like a group of 4, and she was like "SOOOO all these reality TV shows have like a token gay character"... so at this point I am holding my breath... but thinking to myself, im not really out to these people, or am I?

and all these things flash through my head in the .5 of a second it takes this woman to change her position so that she is starring me down and she says "AAAAND that must be you"... and she stairs at me, waiting for me to, i dont even know, do something dyke-y i guess?

I should have run out, and screamed, or told her to fuck off...

but i just said "Im no ones token anything" and that seemed to shut her up...

during the year we got to pick segment topics, and so I thought I would take advantage of my platform, and reach out to other gay students, we did an interview and i talked about coming out... and after that one kid did come up to me and say, i saw your segment, it helped me come out, and that one is enough for me...

but what damage did I do? show that, in the words of my ex "turn into one of those gay people who only cares about gay people"....

I won a scholarship my senior year... for media production, and the anchor that had worked with us was presenting the award, I wasn't there to receive it (I was fighting off brainwashing in Israel) and so he made a little speech about me... and he started off with "and so, the next scholarship goes to Hannah Horwitz, and well first off... SHES GAY..." he went on to say some very nice things... however, that one sentence at the beginning..."

is that all I am to you?

there are many ways in which NBC saved me my senior year... the administration would have loved to squish me, but NBC stood up for me...

Not to endorse NBC as a news source, or ally with coorporate media, but the people I knew there were on top of their shit, and they were good people...

but I still wonder, where does it leave me? Will I just always be that gay kid?

It was a mixed battle, I could hear myself bringing up gay issues in our interviews throughout the year, but as much as i didnt want to be that token, I wanted to speak for my people, and speak to my people, the kids who were in their living rooms on a friday after noon, sad, and watching the news...

so I guess its a double edged sword...

1 comment:

Genevieve said...

Oh, Jaysus.

I'm glad that the experience with the Upper Darby Project did something for you, Helyx, because it very near put me out of my mind. Why I thought I could deal with near strangers poking around in my life is completely beyond me.

You, though, handled your piece of the project with a whole lot of grace; you said what you wanted to say when not everyone wanted to hear it. I wouldn't be at all surprised if some people just didn't quite know how to reckon with your forthrightness on (for them) uncomfortable issues, and therefore struck upon your 'token gayness' because it was something they felt they could grasp.

In any case, I wouldn't fret it. Just keep doing what it is you do, yeah?

Cheers.