If I ever experienced a defining, a-ha series of moments directly connected to the media arts and my sexuality, I would say my relationship with Disney's 1989 animated classic, The Little Mermaid, symbolizes that. Though I had an inkling of the film's importance at the time, real cognizance that it marked a significant point in my development and self-awareness materialized more slowly over self-analysis during the ensuing decades.
I distinctly remember when and where I first saw The Little Mermaid, which happened almost 30 years ago now. My younger siblings and I were spending time with one of our cousins and her kids, the youngest a toddler. We played games, took turns riding around the block on the back of a motorcycle, and watched The Little Mermaid. From the wondrous animation to the charming musical numbers and endearing characters, the movie captivated me entirely. The vivid sequences of Prince Eric's ship caught in the throes of a violent storm, Sebastian leading denizens of the deep in "Under the Sea," and the final confrontation with Ursula the Sea Witch stuck with me in the days and weeks afterwards. Not able to get the film or the music out of my mind, I got the soundtrack on cassette tape and began listening to it almost nonstop. Before long I knew every word to every song, no doubt annoying my brother and sister by singing along at every opportunity. I was, in a word, obsessed, a term I have frequently employed throughout my Countdown to 40 project. Then, one day while strolling the aisles of the local K-Mart, I noticed a copy of The Little Mermaid on VHS for sale. My fondness for the movie and preoccupation with the music led me to ask my dad if I could buy it. He responded with a resounding no, commenting that cartoon movies were for kids and I was much too old. Taking the contrary position I so often did with him, I argued and pled for him to change his mind. Though I could not convince him otherwise at the time, I eventually circumvented his decision and acquired my very own copy. Or maybe I simply wore down his resolve with my constant requests. Either way, once in possession of the video tape, I took every chance I could to watch The Little Mermaid, thereby satisfying my desire to escape to another world. I often chalk up my fixation with The Little Mermaid as simply another stereotypical signpost of my innate homosexuality. My predisposition for the animated movie musical fit nicely alongside other examples throughout my childhood and teenaged years hinting at my gayness. One particular example comes to mind. Around the age of six or seven I asked my parents for a doll house for Christmas. (Or was it my birthday? Some details are fuzzier than others...) Regardless, I ended up receiving one, complete with working light fixtures and everything. My parents, for their part, fulfilled my unconventional request without hesitation or prejudice, and if they questioned it at all, I never knew. Other members of my extended family, on the other hand, proved less than understanding, and I remember being teased heavily for having a dollhouse...even though it had lights. (Did I mention the lights?!? Seriously cool.) They made sure I knew boys played with Tonka Trucks, Transformers, and footballs, not dollhouses. Unequipped to effectively deal with the jabs, I took them to heart much more than I think my family intended. I remember wondering whether or not something was wrong with me, and in a fit of childhood frustration and rage, I cut all the wires for the lights. Perhaps I thought my actions would earn me some recognition that I wasn't such a girly-boy after all. In the end, though, all I got for destroying the wonderful gift I so desperately wanted was disciplined. Within the context of figuring out when my sexual orientation became clear, I often look to experiences like the one with the dollhouse for clues. I clearly didn't know then, but did my parents? I also reflect on the interchange that occurred between my dad and I over The Little Mermaid with a peculiar sense of fascination. What really was the big deal with a 12-year-old wanting an animated movie? I mean, I was not yet a teenager and therefore still a kid by most peoples' definitions. The more I thought about the whole experience, the more I wondered if my dad's refusal represented an intentional or unintentional reaction to my homosexuality. Surely my parents noticed the repeated signs I exhibited growing up, and maybe they originally thought nothing of them. Unlike my request for a dollhouse, which could be attributed to my young age rather than my sexuality, my adoration of The Little Mermaid defied expected behavior for a typical, straight boy of twelve. Perhaps, then, my obsession made the final connection between dots for my dad, and as a result he shut my request for the VHS down. Of course, this could all be in my head and related to my tendency to overthink things. My dad may have truly believed I was too old for an animated Disney movie and thought nothing more of it, a forgotten exchange between the two of us twenty-some-odd years ago. The memory probably stands out so strongly for me because of my desire to constantly search my youth for any and all tell-tale signs that said, in big neon lights: "YOU ARE GAY." And even if it is not the signal to my dad I suspect it might be, The Little Mermaid, my love of it, and the processing of memories connected to it certainly symbolize important milestones in my coming out story.
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If I am being totally honest with you, Will & Grace almost didn't make my Countdown to 40 list. I initially thought it would be all too cliché to pick a show that very clearly spotlights members of the gay community, living in New York City no less. I figured people would read the post and think to themselves, "well, that was an obvious and easy choice." Except, settling on Will & Grace proved anything but obvious and easy for me, and until today, this post was set to focus on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
As my good friend Erin can attest to, I waffled on which of the two television shows to write about as late as this afternoon and struggled to explain why The Mary Tyler Moore Show and not Will & Grace should be today's feature item. Yes, The Mary Tyler Moore Show was groundbreaking for centering on a single woman establishing a career as well as an identity independent of men, marriage, and children. Mary Tyler Moore's character of Mary Richards confronted several tricky topics in addition to gender roles, like abortion, sex, divorce, and homosexuality...during the 1970s. In so doing, the show truly challenged many of the social norms of the time and helped change the definition of what it meant to be a woman, all while setting a gold standard for television sitcoms. Quite revolutionary, if you ask me. When you think about it, Will & Grace followed much the same revolutionary trail blazed by The Mary Tyler Moore Show. At a time when more and more people were confronting and struggling with the reality of homosexuality, either their own or that of gay family and friends around them, Will & Grace featured two out men, one as a title character. This groundbreaking concept was made all the more groundbreaking by the show's portrayal of Will as a normal, down-to-earth, guy-next-door type. Through the complicated but entirely relatable (and often times hilarious) relationships between Will, his straight BFF Grace, his gay BFF Jack, and his drunk BFF Karen, the show helped to normalize homosexuality and gay people, thereby challenging society's stereotypes of what it meant to be gay. Neither Will nor Jack were creepy, perverted guys who lived on the fringes of society, mired in drugs and sex. Instead, they lived rather mundane lives, just like everyone else around them, trying to find the perfect balance between work, life, and relationships, with one another as well as their significant others. As a young man coming out, I very much needed Will & Grace and its humorous brand of normalizing the lives of gay people, for I felt alone during the early stages of accepting my own homosexuality. Of all the people in my life at that time, I knew no other members of the GLBTQ community and therefore had no one in my inner circles who really understood what I was going through or what was in store for me. I had my friends and family, of course, who surrounded me with nothing but love and acceptance, and I will be eternally thankful for that. (We all know the heart-breaking and horrible realities many people of all ages face after sharing the most beautiful and honest truth about themselves.) What Will & Grace helped offer me to supplement the love and support of family and friends was permission to accept my homosexuality as simply a part of who I was but not solely who I was. After all, I was still the same son. The same brother. The same friend. The same uncle. The same cousin. The same nephew. The same grandson. The same college graduate. The same Janet Jackson fan. The same lover of Christmas and snow. The same connoisseur of popcorn. The same Chris. Actually, acknowledging and accepting my homosexuality as just another part of myself made me a better, truer, stronger Chris. So, at the end of the day, my own life experiences and path of self-discovery connected more with Will & Grace than with The Mary Tyler Moore Show, no matter how much I love them both. My love and adoration for Janet Jackson runs deep and true, and if I had to choose a single musical artist as my all-time favorite, it would be her. No contest. For most of my family and friends, this confession is neither surprising nor particularly revelatory, since I never kept my fandom much of a secret. Posters of Jackson adorned my bedroom walls. I celebrated her May birthday rather than the end of the school year and never missed an opportunity to insert her music or lyrics into my homework. A number of passages scribbled on the pages of my senior-year yearbook mention my infatuation with Janet as one of my defining characteristics, a badge of honor I was all too happy to carry with me to college and into adulthood. Even one of my tattoos--the first one, actually--is Janet Jackson related: a symbol from The Velvet Rope on my upper left arm, the significance of its permanence not lost on me.
Whereas Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill defined an era for millions of people the world over, my friends and I included, Janet Jackson's The Velvet Rope seemed more singularly important in my journey of self-discovery. Though I fully recognized my adoration for Jackson was well established and others obviously connected to The Velvet Rope for a variety of reasons, I felt as if this Jackson album spoke directly to me and my burgeoning sense of identity when it arrived in the fall of 1997. I was 20 years old at the time and serving my second year as a Resident Advisor in the on-campus apartments at UMD. Many of the close and life-long friendships made that first fall grew stronger over those two years. Others faded. New lasting friendships developed as my position as an RA connected me to new people on an almost daily basis. The days of living within a shell were officially gone, and with the awkwardness of freshman year receding into the past and my first year as an RA successfully under my belt, my self-confidence and sense of purpose never seemed stronger. I felt like I had found my calling and finally began to understand who Chris was. In short, life was great. Never before had I felt so alive or so connected to my fellow human beings. I lived for socializing with my friends, hosting programs for residents, and going to class more often than not (most weeks). I threw myself and all of my energy into the people and activities that brought so much fulfillment to my life. Despite my amazing circle of friends and profound sense of happiness, however, something inside of me was just not adding up, something I couldn't quite identify. Or, more appropriately phrased, there was something I wasn't quite ready to acknowledge and accept. I was having the time of my life but felt as though part of me was missing and false, and I worked really hard to focus energy on everything else. Turns out leaving that shell I lived underneath proved more of an evasive maneuver than a courageous declaration to the world that I had arrived. Shells and living underneath them provide a certain amount of protection from the outside world, this much is true. But they also sometimes facilitate the time and space needed to engage with the type of introspection required for self-discovery. You see, I had a secret I didn't want to confess or confront. I liked men. I REALLY liked men. I lingered over images of shirtless men in print ads. (Marky Mark's famous campaign for Calvin Klein comes to mind.) I anticipated movies starring Hollywood hunks. (Brad Pitt in Legends of the Fall anyone?). In the very early stages of the Internet, I also chatted with guys I'd never meet. (Anonymity was key.) But I didn't quite fully understand that part of myself. I definitely did not embrace it yet, and I avoided sharing this information with anyone for fear of rejection, though I'm pretty sure they all knew and accepted me for who I truly was. All the signs were there, stereotypical and otherwise. My ever-so faint lisp. My slightly effeminate affect. My obsession with Disney movies. My love but not lust for Janet Jackson. And, of course, my ogling of guys passing by. So, as aspects of my identity became more difficult and scary to face, I ventured further and further away from that shell, and my introverted self tried very hard and mostly succeeded at appearing as an extrovert. For a while. Along came The Velvet Rope. I plopped the CD into my player and pressed play. The first words Janet spoke were, "It's my belief that we all have the need to feel special. And it's this need that can bring out the best yet worst in us." Wait, what? Something triggered in my brain. Was that what I was doing? The wonderful friends around me made me feel special, that's for sure, and I cherished every moment of that. But by completely embracing that feeling of being special and being part of something special without regard for the scary yet honest truth within myself, was I also bringing out the worst by justifying a false life, a lie? Okay, Janet. Where are you going with this? And did you write this just for me? Over the subsequent 75 minutes of songs and interludes, Janet continued reaching out to me, relating all too closely to my emotional and psychological journey at the the time with lyrics like: "You spend most your life pretending not to be the one you are but who you choose to see" and "Boy meets boy, boy loses boy, boy gets cute boy back. Girl meets girl, girl loses girl, girl gets cute girl back. One rule, no rules. One love, free Xone." She even tackled the subject of meeting strangers online: "How could it be that you knew me? My deepest fears, my fantasies...confide in you what no one knows, but it feels so real." In almost every way, The Velvet Rope proved the album I needed most in the fall of 1997, and to be perfectly honest, that need still resurfaces from time to time. At one point during the title track, Janet sings a line that rings as true today as it did 20 years ago: "One love's the answer, you'll find in you." I'm still working on that, though I recognize and acknowledge that I'm now in a much better place in terms of self-identity and self-acceptance. After all, I didn't have to leave my shell behind, I simply needed to come out of it. It would take another two years before I fully came out. Many wonderful friends helped me through the process, but, in part, I also have The Velvet Rope to thank for that. |
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I am a self-proclaimed pop culture geek and list enthusiast who is celebrating the big four-zero by counting down the most important, influential, and favorite music, movies, television shows, books, and video games of my life so far. Categories
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