It’s up to the millennials to stop the hate
In Moonlight, the recently released heartachingly beautiful movie that has thrilled critics, Chiron, an African American boy in Florida who is not yet sure he is gay, is viciously bullied by his peers.
One particular act of bullying and his reaction to it sets him on a course that will transform his life in both terrible and good ways.
I watched this movie last week on the brink of tears, unable to separate the onscreen bullying from the real life bullying that the world has been witness to and, in a very real sense, harmed by in the 2016 American presidential race.
Like so many others, I felt bruised by the spectacle that consumed us all. As the campaign limped to a close, almost instinctually, I spent last week not in front of my television set being verbally pummelled by cable TV panellists, but out in my city in search of antidotes to this rancour — Build a wall! Kill the bitch! Screw the press!
I was trying, if you will, to locate a cultural EpiPen to block the sting of the potentially fatal political poison that had seeped into all of our veins.
I found it among arts makers under 40, the generation that takes diversity for granted, and has the most to lose from a world filled with restrictions and hate, a world in which exclusion is a primary value, and the main message telegraphed is we’ve got to get back to the past.
Make. America. Great. Again. That final word was always the leaden giveaway — a word that signalled regression and should have been unbearable to most American millennials.
They had a right, maybe even a duty, to fight for the future they wanted, but they seemed, after Bernie Sanders left the Democratic race, to be largely unmoved by either the historical fervour surrounding the election of America’s first female president; or the nightmarish vision of the future offered by a blowhard billionaire demagogue.
Apart from Moonlight, my week included a musical set at a west-end venue, the Burdock by Vancouver singer Adrian Glynn. (A family friend I’ve known since he was a child, but never seen play) at which we were clearly the oldest people at a hip venue.
Glynn, an actor who had a small (blink and you’ll miss it) role as a soldier in the Oscar winning movie The Revenant and is also a member of the folk band the Fugitives, was performing his second indie rock solo album morelightthannolight. Along with his band he did a show that offered humour, connection and emotional depth.
And my week ended with the play Acquiesce at Factory Theatre (happily surrounded by millennials in the arts), which hauntingly probed the cross cultural, cross-generational complexities confronting a young man of mixed heritage.
It was so inspiring to be chasing the light of a movie, a concert, a play, to be away from the noise of a brutal election that had consumed so many of us because there was true danger in the air. So relaxing to step into a world imagined by a younger generation, some of whom may never be able to afford a physical house but have already created a larger home for people of colour and varying genders.
I must have been emotionally porous this past week, waiting for an historical moment that I deeply feared might not come, because I felt an obligation to almost apologize to the millennials and their slightly older and younger fellow travellers for this political spectacle.
Even Hillary Clinton, incandescent at her packed Philadelphia rally at which Bruce Springsteen sang “Thunder Road,” told her supporters: “I regret deeply how angry the tone of the campaign became.”
Clinton clearly never meant to make us feel “gross” as Alec Baldwin, breaking character as his brutally funny Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live poignantly said to Kate McKinnon’s feverishly ambitious but still likeable Hillary before they grabbed hands and rushed into the street to hug each other’s supporters.
Hugs alone can’t heal this very real divide. That is unquestionably the seminal task of post-election America — to heal, include and move forward. But it can’t just be left to a president, a party or a government that has to first find a way to lift itself up out of the muck before it can lift up its populace.
I hope the millennials, building on the passion many felt for Bernie Sanders’ message, start organizing now for their political future. I hope they take all the talent and hope and creative energy they have and consider how they can remake — or continue to make — their great country a more tolerant, inclusive and kind place.
The world depends on it. “Democracy is not a spectator sport,” said Marian Wright Edelman, American activist and founder of the Children’s Defense Fund.
She also said “You really can change the world if you care enough.”
That sounds about right. Judith Timson writes weekly about cultural, social and political issues. You can reach her at judith.timson@sympatico.ca and follow her on Twitter @judithtimson.