This morning I was listening to a "Latinx" actor and performer who I admire and respect and fanboy over a little bit discuss his new project, a comic book. (I use quotes because I'm still mystified by the obfuscation of gender, particularly in a diaspora of cultures wherein gender is so embedded that it has engendered personification elements in at least one Latin language that I know of, Spanish.) The comic book's main character is a "Latinx" superhero (presumably, this character has a defined gender -- or maybe not). The actor's inspiration for the idea was his belief that, and this is almost an exact quote, "People need to see representations of themselves or they feel invisible." Well, this is not the first time I've heard this and whenever I do I sort of squint and shake my head, and for several reasons. But first, I had to be honest with myself: Growing up, did I used to read books and magazines and watch films looking for representations of myself? (No.) Did I find them whether I was seeking them out or not? (Yes. Sometimes.) Did I think they physically looked like me? (No.) Did I ever think that in order to feel "represented" someone in the movie or television show or magazine had to be black? (No. Never.) Did my family try to impose more racial "identity" into my way of being myself, via my taste in music, clothes, and chosen friends? (Yes, and it caused a shitload of self-esteem problems I still resent them for.) Then how did I feel represented? Because I saw other things about myself in the characters or models that had nothing to do with race or ethnicity, and that's because I never looked at these surface elements as the be-all-end-all of who I am. I'm sure that I'm described by people I know as, "My friend Brandon, he's black and gay," or "I have a gay black friend named Brandon," and that doesn't bother me. It's instinctive to do that. But would those be the first things I would say to describe myself? No. I've always thought being black and gay were the two least interesting things about me. I mean, these are qualities I share with hundreds of millions of people. How could such banal categories actually describe me as an individual? I don't like hip-hop and I don't listen to Lady Gaga or Beyonce, so there. (Irony intended.) But so often people hitch onto these constructs to frame their entire identities and this is why people are so easily offended today. Personally, I have never felt unrepresented because I've always felt such a huge presence within myself that I didn't need anyone else to "open" for me, so to speak. I have never felt invisible. Or silenced. Or easily ignored. Maybe that's a personality trait. Maybe that's my imagination. Or, maybe, that's because I've always been Brandon Fizer first, writer second or third, "Margi's son" somewhere around forth or fifth, and a million other things before ethnicity and sexuality enter the picture. I have never noticed it if I'm the only black person in a room. I have never felt self-conscious shopping in a store. I am very hard to offend because I've never felt vulnerable to the encyclopedia of insults our culture has generated to make individuals feel lesser than others for their belonging to whatever group they belong to. I've never belonged to a group, not to myself. I know how I appear to others and I can feel it when I'm being boxed, troped, packaged, proto- or stereotyped. But I don't care -- because I know how to represent myself, and that always ends up trumping whatever anyone thought about me before I wrestled control of the situation just by being myself.
No comments:
Post a Comment