One of the hats I wear is that of a co-producer, co-director, writer and the host of several documentary projects. In this particular case, I’d like to talk of a CBC documentary called The Pretendians.
Quickly put, the show explored the tendency for some ‘colour challenged’ people to wrap themselves in the Indigenous flag and officially claim some sort of Indigenous background, usually for their own personal benefit. The rub, as Shakespeare used to put it, is that they aren’t. They’re just wearing a spray on tan. The show was a provoking and detailed look at the practice.
The response was equally provoking. While largely positive and encouraging, there were a few that… how shall I put it… weren’t so positive. Now of course this is to be expected. How boring would the world be if everybody had the same tastes and opinions? Vanilla ice cream everyone (I actually love vanilla but I needed a metaphor).
But what amused/interested me is that the dissenting opinions came frequently came from opposite ends of the spectrum. Some were very angry with me for not punching hard enough. I should have used my soap box to go after more so-called pretendians. To call them out. To publicly ‘out’ them. One person, who felt it was absolutely necessary, avidly campaigned for me to reveal just this one popular Indigenous presence, or else the entire validity of the documentary would be suspect.
In my defense, we didn’t ‘out’ anybody in the film. That was not the purpose. We talked to one person who had already been accused, and gave her the opportunity to deal with the accusations. Another highly publicized person refused to meet with us. The focus of the film was the issue, philosophy, the causes of pretendianism itself, not so much to provide a catalogue of suspects.
Others out there in the community felt the opposite. I was just adding fuel to the fire. That somehow, and I am curious about this, I have set myself up as the gatekeeper. That I was saying who could legitimately wear the moccasins and who couldn’t. This was new to me but I frequently find myself being educated by the public. And of course, this was somehow tied into the fact I have blue eyes and a fair complexion (when not coming back from Mexico). In short, I was practicing medicine without a license.
All this is fine. Its par for the course. When you talk about sensitive issues in the public eye, what do you expect to happen?
But recently, The Pretendians won a prestigious award at the Canadian Screen awards, best Political/Social documentary program. That’s when things got really worse. Suddenly my twitter was afire with critical comments and shots regarding the show and my participation. I was surprised. Twitter is twitter, I know. Using an overused metaphor, it’s the wild west and frequently that’s why people like it.
In one morning, after reading many of the comments, I found myself blocking four people. I had never done that before. But the abuse was too much. As a humourist, I try to be positive. I try to improve the world around me. As I mentioned, our documentary wasn’t angry or accusatory, it explored the issue. Even using some humour in the process. My partner, the lovely Janine, calls it a form of lateral violence that sometimes permeates our people.
Based on my experience with twitter, my blocking them might actually delight these people. I’ve seen other twitterers who have been blocked by others proudly retweet the “You Are Blocked” response they get, signaling the fact they were wonderfully effective in getting under somebody’s skin. It’s something to be proud of.
So maybe, that’s the positive aspect I was looking for. I may have inadvertently made somebody proud today!
Hey, any victory is a good victory.
