When I started The Memory Tourist, I had a handful of writers that I mentioned. They all shared certain transparency that I hoped to achieve when starting my first official website since Optigrab went kaput. To me, there was something substantial about finding a way to make my writing more reflective of me. I’m sure that it always had, but without having any substantial connection of myself within the text, it never felt personal in a way that I felt would make everything more impressive and exciting. It was a chance to make every piece a bit more singular, where you’d be able to read it years later and not find it boringly rooted in a moment.
I’m sure that a lot of it will anyway, but I hope it becomes so apparent of my bigger ethos: a look at a life through the media that helped define it. As someone who loves all things entertainment, it’s hard for me to not want to write about it, and as a result, I’ve acquired so many critics that I follow on a daily basis, excited to see what their next big project will be.
Among them is Emily VanDerWerf, who came out as transgender a year ago last week in a piece that she published on Vox. In the year since, she has become even more open about her alliance with women and their causes, such as the tampon tax, in ways that are worthy of reading. With over a decade of experience writing and analyzing media, she has a special eye that has evolved into something essential in recent times. She isn’t just writing about media anymore. She’s writing about causes that are important to her.
Which does not not include some passion for media. I first became aware of her work over on The A.V. Club, which used to host a whole lot of pop culture’s greatest writers. VanDerWerf was especially known for her work on TV work and I’m pretty sure I’ve read all of her entries on American Horror Story out of order as I’ve discovered the series. In the time since she’s been featured everywhere, and I think it is an essential voice in the world of TV criticism.
Which makes her coming out piece an impressive exercise in self-examination. I confess that I personally don’t have a lot of connection to personal transgender stories. While I have studied them in media, I don’t know that anyone has personally told me their struggles. At most I’ve had friends from college who have since transitioned. Still, I am eager to grow more compassionate, understanding the struggles of those different than me so that I can become more tolerant in my worldview.
VanDerWerf’s Vox piece is an incredibly personal story of how she came to embrace Emily. As she puts it, it starts with a dream where she and her wife are driving to safety with a child. There is a fear that she will lose the child. The twist is that VanDerWerf isn’t a mother. Why does she have this dream so much that it becomes numbing? Hint: you'll have to read the piece to find out why.
This leads into a lengthy discussion of how she saw the Hulu series The Handmaid’s Tale as a place where she negotiated with her identity. It was a place where she began to see the role of women in society as something that was being suppressed, not allowing them to be emotional and three-dimensional. There was one character in particular, Emily, which she latched onto.
It would be disrespectful if I just recapped the entire essay here because I do encourage you to just read it for yourself. The way that she discusses it is far more touching and impactful than any commentary that I can give.
It’s an example of someone coming to terms with their own identity for the first time. It’s grappling with the idea of former privilege and how the struggle to come out is informed by current trends. At the time of its publication, there was a concern that transgender rights would be taken away, making the struggle to embrace your true self much more difficult. To hear VanDerWerf discuss this as yet another hesitant is to reflect something personal that the rest of us take for granted. She knows what the road ahead will be if she comes out now.
It’s the struggle of self and social acceptance, and it’s an incredible journey that includes a metaphor about a sweater as well as a deeper exploration of The Handmaid’s Tale both as a metaphor for women’s rights, but also the belief that the system needs to greatly change. There is an urgency in her words that are clear. Suddenly she is seeing clearly, and she perfectly ends the entire thing by choosing to push away the clutter and reintroduce herself.
She also gave one universal truth that I personally related to:
“Many of these people have asked why I’m writing this piece. But I never once imagined I wouldn’t. Professionally, I have always tried to be as open as possible in my writing, to let my criticism be obviously informed by myself. It is impossible to write about something as personal as art without revealing at least something of yourself, after all. But now I am also correcting a misconception. The real reason I have always shared so much, I think, is that I knew I wasn’t really sharing myself. If I could build up trust by telling every truth except one, no one would ever guess I was hiding something.”
That alone is the sign of a great writer. It is more than fighting for the best causes, but understanding on a very human level why these experiences matter. While there’s room to love academia and journalists, and I credit those writers as being just as useful, the voices that last the longest are ones that live their lives and find ways to find the humanity inside the experience.
For me, VanDerWerf’s coming out was more than a clinical take on something personal. It was a chance to reflect personal struggles and empathize with them. She found it in the media, which is where I tend to find my own form of communication. It also shows that even when looking at the same series, there can be a radical amount of difference in how we see the same images. It proves that what we bring to a series is just as important as whatever message they’re trying to share. VanDerWerf has spent her life consuming media, so to have one connect with something deep down means something special.
It’s the idea of finding these traces of moments that reveal the bigger picture. It’s taking someone else’s experiences and slowly beginning to see how similar they are to your own emotions, thinking that there are aspects of yourself that could be better expressed. It’s struggling with decades of living as someone else, trying to make sense of your own identity.
It’s why I believe that media representation is important. As Little Women (2019) suggested, the only reason that The March Sisters’ stories weren’t seen as important was that nobody told them that women’s stories were. There needed to be a shift that makes one realize the value in the simple actions that they deserve to have their stories told. I think it’s especially true right now with The George Floyd Protests to listen to the Black experience.
It’s by listening that we get anywhere as a culture. Having these stories expressed allows us to understand that we’re all just human, wanting to live a satisfying life. In the months since the Vox Piece, VanDerWerf has made a concerted effort to not write a direct analysis of TV, but connect with it on a more personal level in bigger exposés. By doing this, there’s room to look at media as more than nuts and bolts. It’s something that has the potential to change how we see the world and ourselves.
It’s also a chance to find a deeper fulfillment within ourselves. By the end of her essay, you get the sense that VanDerWerf has finally let go a lot of personal repression in her life. These are thoughts that have existed in her head for so long and to have them shared is this scary thought, this worry that she won’t be accepted as her new self. The issue however is that she can’t go on living a lie. This is who she is, and there is something fulfilling with how she goes about using elaborate metaphors and allegories to find a human core.
The truth is that I still don’t know on a personal level what it’s like to transition, but there is a strong emotional reaction you get reading her words that makes you understand VanDerWerf’s journey. In that way, it normalizes the transgender experience in such a way that it becomes accessible, making us realize how this perspective has grown throughout time. It’s only when you begin to see people for who they are and accept it that change can be made, and by demystifying this experience, it makes transitioning feel less radical.
Even the origin of the name Emily gets its own subplot in this essay that takes on a profound deeper meaning.
The reason that I admire Van Der Werf is her own openness, to reflect how personal moments in her life have led to some major changes in how she sees the world. Even if The Memory Tourist is more rinky-dink, it’s a lesson that I hope to apply to my writing, where there’s something deeper in the media that I like, engaging with the moment and understanding that art’s interpretation is personal, worthy of a bigger conversation. It’s in the discussion that the subconscious can reveal something truer about ourselves, and as I’ve found in just a few months, it’s rewarding once you accept that mystery.
Comments
Post a Comment