A friend posted something today that kind of got stuck in my head in a tangle of other things I've seen or talked about lately, which is a cue to me to write it all down. Sometimes these collections stick together and sometimes they don't. Let's see which one this will be, shall we?
The post was a screenshot of another post with the first comment showing "Part of maturity is looking back and realizing you were toxic too" and the comment was "If you can look back at your past and not cringe it means you haven't grown or changed."
Earlier today I was watching an Instagram clip from someone talking about how hard it was growing up gay in the 90s and early 2000s. That homophobia and transphobia permeated everything and if you weren't gay or trans it was so pervasive that at the time you didn't even notice. A straight friend of his had gone back and watched some old episodes of a comedy that they used to love and had been shocked about how homophobic it was. He said, who knew? The guy making the clip said "I did. And every gay friend you had did. And we all laughed along with it because we didn't want to call attention to ourselves." And he grew up in the 90s and early 2000s. It just gets worse the further back you go. Like I've talked about having friends in high school who were out and how rare that was at the time. Even if everyone KNEW you were gay you did not say it. You tried your best to hide it. If you got bullied for being too femme as a guy you were told to act more manly and stop being such a...fill in the choice of slurs here.
This past weekend when I was talking to Katie she was telling me about a movie she had seen the previous weekend. It was one that really meant something to her and she is interested to see what my take on it will be. Because it's a queer allegory. Or more specifically a trans allegory. We talked about how no matter how much I can try I will never experience life the same way she does because I'm not trans. I will view things through that cis lense. And then she said that a few critics have pointed out that it also seems to be a reflection on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and how looking back at it how problematic it was.
Which I told her to shut her fucking mouth.
Just kidding, I didn't. I told her that I hadn't gone back and rewatched Buffy in a long time and I didn't think I would again. Because it's too important to me. Then asked if she understood what I meant by that. She got it.
Buffy, at the time, and for the time, was really progressive. But Joss Whedon isn't a good guy. And there were things in there that were clearly not great, even at the time. The turning point in the Spike story line, for instance. But we papered over a lot of the issues with retconning and love for other things about the show. But I won't watch it now because I wouldn't be able to look past some of the things that I'm sure are there that I didn't notice. Because it was pervasive and if it didn't directly affect you, you just didn't see it. But Buffy was important to me. It was a show that spoke to me. It and Angel actually meant something more to me than just a TV show story. It colored my life in a different way.
I don't do rewatches of most older shows. I tried going back and rewatching Friends a few years ago. Everyone seemed to be on a kick of binging it and I thought, what the heck, it's something I can turn on when I don't have to really concentrate and I watched it all the first time and really liked it so...
Yeah. No. I mean I remembered it was incredibly white. Like even for the time when everything on TV was incredibly white they got push back. And so they added a Black character. A. For awhile. Then went back to just them. But it's also homophobic, transphobic and fatphobic. Like constantly. I'll just stick with my memories of the parts that weren't. I don't need to have the rest spoiled by remembering that they made Chandler's dad trans just for the jokes. Or Ross's ex-wife a lesbian for the same reason. Or that Monica in a fat suit dancing was a whole joke on its own. Just that. A joyous fat girl, hilarious.
When Katie was younger we did a rewatch for me, first watch for her, of a lot of the John Hughes films that defined my teenage years. Now, I will be honest and I've always railed against Sixteen Candles. Like from the moment I walked out of the theater, much to the hate of all of my friends. But almost all of them are terrible. Ferris Bueller's Day Off was about the only one that held up. The rest had Katie looking on in horror at times. But it was all really normal at the time. We were like the woman in the Palmolive commercial...we were soaking in it. (Only a smaller and older handful of you will get that reference)
But now when we reread books or rewatch shows or think about our own word choices or friend choices we see the things we would not do now. We wouldn't laugh at certain jokes. In fact we'd say something to the joke teller like What the Fuck is wrong with you? Or So what, exactly, makes that joke funny? Explain it to me. That second one is actually a good one to toss out. Start out by saying you don't get it. Then ask why it's funny. Make them explain it to you. They might still go out and tell racist, sexist, queerphobic, jokes but at least you will have made them really look at it at best or embarassed the fuck out of them, which might actually be the best part now that I think about it.
But that's change. We change. We evolve. We progress. It's why the Right rails against "woke" because they don't want to. It's uncomfortable to look back and realize that you were being racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, fatphobic, or just a general asshole. Nobody likes to think of themselves that way. But if you are changing, if you are growing as a person part of that is knowing that who you were 15 years ago is not who you are now. And that's okay.
So you either get to rail against the change and demand your right to be an asshole that is never questioned, or you change and grow and stop being an asshole.
I know I have been a person in the past that I would smack down in the present and I also know that right now I say things and believe things that I won't in 15 years. Because I'm always changing. I'm always trying to grow.
But I'm also okay with letting somethings remain important enough to me not to fuck with now. Buffy won't get a rewatch, but I'll always love it. I won't watch Friends but I will sing Smelly Cat to my boys and ask Brent How you doin? And that's also okay. Take the good parts and leave the rest.
Change and growth are uncomfortable but staying the same is worse.
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