Vive La Vida 01272009

I was posed the following question yesterday by one of my favorite professors in my documentary film critique class:

If money and time were no object, I would make a documentary about
______1_______ as it relates to my passion about (war, poverty, violence, opportunity, urban voice, or race.

I filled my answers in with gender construction and identity as 1 and urban voice as 2. At any random moment of my day I reminded of a time when I was a child and I asked a question to some authority figure (parent, teacher, relative, etc) about why things were a certain way. Why was blue for boys and pink for girls; why can girls play with dolls but boys can't? The answer I received always pushed me away from asking questions about such topics. It was not until I took another class with the same professor that I truly began to ask these questions again. Given the freedom of access to the vast amounts of knowledge, my inner self finally felt vindicated. I began to use a technique best described as 'interrogating the image' to form my questions about gender construction and identity. There a myriad of images, devices, nuances, vernacular, morals, folkways, and mores that provide an exclusionary vision of what it is to be masculine/feminine or woman/man.

Through my own personal journey, I have been more empathetic to feminine debacles and hardships. Watching a mother work to the bone to provide for three kids while a father goes from unmotivated participant to simply absentee is a story that resonates with a lot of people in my generation. And several personal journeys have opened my eyes to the vast marginalization of 'invisible minorities'. The various cultures of Central and South America, the vast nationalities of Asia and the Pacific Islands, homosexuals and transgender are just a few. I believe that the struggle of one group is akin to the struggle of another. There are definite parallels between gay rights to marriage and immigration issues.

I provide this back story to allow you to see through my eyes. I become enraged when I see the aforementioned devices at work. I become more agitated when the agents of the conventional construction of gender have the privilege to voice their opinion through one of the media that reaches a mass audience. Michael Baisden happens to be one of those agents.

I had the displeasure of stumbling upon his show on my way home from school this evening. I chimed in on his discussion with George Wilbourne and the active male audience about a man's role in a relationship. One caller described the situation as, 'the female's tendency to de-claw a man....to remove his canines so that he is all bark but no bite.' To this Michael and George enthusiastically agreed. Providing basis for Michael's next line, which instructed men to 'take the baby off your back [and] the basket off your head.'

With these and other euphemisms, Michael left impressionable members of audience with the foundation to construct gender roles. He also marginalized many 'invisible minorities' that are working to debunk the convention of a patriarchal household.

As a student of culture, I felt insulted. As a product of a broken family, I felt insulted. As empathizer for minorities, I felt insulted. As a black man, I felt embarrassed. I heard in him, and his listeners, many of the voices that I had to surmount to get where I am currently. I heard older members of my fraternity that are still using early and mid 20th century logic to solve 21st century issues. I heard the shouts of anger from a mother who couldn't cope with her son's life. But I also heard my inner voice and the voices of those whose ideas and convictions synchronize with my own. I heard the children of the future calling me to take up the cause and work for progress and change. And to them, I owe everything!