Empowered

 

As I do on most days, when dinnertime rolled around I popped my meal in the microwave and sat down at the computer to watch YouTube. I can go searching for some remembrance while I chow down or see the trailers to upcoming movies I won’t attend. For some reason, I landed on the 1967 LA riots. Black and white film of army trucks full of white kids with helmets and bayonets marching down the streets full of burning or burnt out buildings as folks looted and set fire to their neighborhood. Then I looked at my options and there were more riots. The calendar flipped by but the story was the same. Something would tick people off and for whatever the excuse (or movement) folks looted and set fire to their neighborhood while lines of police wearing helmets behind shields walked down the street.

The folks who are upset enough to throw rocks, flip the bird, and yell words that would normally get their mouth washed out by their grandmother while tagging wherever the spray can will reach. Then the folks who were hired to protect and serve would form a line and start throwing flash bombs and tear gas to clear the area.

Like any battle the lines would go back and forth until everyone got exhausted and went home. The winner was the department of clean up who get extra overtime picking up trash, replacing windows and putting things back to normal.

I personally have never felt empowered to march the street yelling and screaming and banging on drums and disturbing the peace and trashing cars or defiling personal property knowing full well at the end of the line will be well armored folks who, by their costumes, have to right to beat on you and tie you up and drag you into a cage. Then came social media where everyone could protest in the security of their warm sofa.

Now I grew up in a mid-size conservative southern town. I was taught and obeyed the rules as they were understood and accepted. I was (am) white male, living in a good neighborhood, going to good schools, attending a large church and had friends who had the same cultural privileges. This was my world, as I knew it.

Did I feel empowered by my circumstances?

Then at the end of being adolescent and the shock of puberty, I was introduced to people who were different.

There were people who were orphaned. There were people who had single parents. There were people who lived in rented property. There were people who did not have automobiles. There were people who did not attend church services. There were people who never ate out. There were people who had not learned golf at the country club or attended cotillions. There were people who wore second hand clothing.

Those people who did not feel they were empowered enthralled me. These people were honest for they had nothing else to lose. They didn’t have to work the caste system or play by the fake rules to satisfy cultural traditions or lacks in personality.

 

Some people feel empowered by wealth. Some people feel empowered by their family name. Some people feel empowered by athletic skills. Some people feel empowered by their appearance. Some people feel empowered by where they went to school. Some people feel empowered by their title. Some people feel empowered by their skin color.

Was I privileged? I did not attend the private schools or drive the foreign cars. I did not find the label fashion but the similar knock offs. I was entitled and didn’t realize it just because I was a white male.

 

Somehow scrolling around on YouTube (remember I’m still eating dinner – that is my excuse and I’m sticking with it) I come across some ‘Buffy the Vampire Killer’ Entertainment Weekly cast reunion show.

“What does that have to do with riots and white supremacy?” you ask.

 

Growing up in my normal white bread world, television became my baby sitter. My dad was fascinated in the latest gizmo and television was the latest wonder appliance everyone wanted. This was the 50’s.

There were three channels. It was black and white. The images were fuzzy and the sound weak but it was all we had. My dad would drive downtown to the Ward’s Appliance Store and we’d walk past rows of these screens showing the same images. It was mystifying.

The first television I remember was the size of a small refrigerator in a wooden cabinet with a maybe 8 – 10” screen and an adjustable rabbit ear antenna. The images started around 7AM and would go off the air around midnight. My stay-at-home mother listened to the radio in the kitchen all day so I could be absorbed in the television.

One day I got a small portable television that I could put in my room so I never came out. I watched the ‘Mickey Mouse Club’ while wearing my ears. I watched the cowboy shows like ‘Roy Rogers and Dale Evans’, ‘Hopalong Cassidy’, ‘Have Gun Will Travel’, ‘Wagon Train’, and ‘Gunsmoke’. All had the good guy /bad guy sermon with all white actors and stunt men in bad wigs falling off horse into a hay pit and horses racing around the same rock and every hero could shoot a pistol out of the hand of the bad guy without aiming. If there was a dying scene, it dragged out as long as filler before the commercial and was bloodless. The bad guys would even show up on the next series under a different name. Resurrection?

After school, while my friends were taking music lessons or playing sports, I was in my room drawing pictures and staring at this magic box. I watched the JFK funeral on television. I watched the first rocket go into space on a television. I believed Walter Cronkite like some wise uncle and was scared of Oral Roberts healing the lame. Instead of reading, television (and movies on Sunday after church or Saturday matinees) was my world of fantasy.

By the time I left home there was a television in every room; a tradition I continued. My first color television was a heavy set bought at Thalhimers and brought home on a bus. It even had a remote the size bigger than a cell phone. I even got cable that had a dozen channels and got free movies because they couldn’t get the billing straight. Mostly the television was on but the sound was turned down so I could play records and smoke dope. Television had become a distraction by then.

My second wife loved appliances and a television is an appliance. We got televisions of different sizes in every room with VHS (and then DVD) players. This is the point.

She watched television all day. She followed the soap opera circuit on Channel 8 with fervor. “Days of Our Lives”, “The Young & Restless” and “General Hospital” were times when she must not be disturbed. I would come home from work and hear about all these fascinating events that happened to people who I didn’t believe were our neighbors. These were her friends. They were her only friends. I couldn’t keep track of who was the richest man from 2 to 3 PM or when I did see a scene wondered where was the woman who was named ‘Blair’ yesterday but looks different today?

Then soap operas started to come on at night. “Dynasty” and “Dallas” became the mysterious family adventure of the rich and famous coming into the bedroom.

By now, we had settled into a routine of watching the evening news and then whatever came on after it. “Quincy, ME” to “Doctor Quinn, Medicine Babe” to “ER” (until that got to realistic) to “M.A.S.H” was a group of series watched every week. “Miami Vice” to “Rosanne” to “The Cosby Show” to “Cheers” entertained us every night. We became television junkies.

Work had moved beyond the 7½ hours day to extend hours spent writing reports and documenting associates I’d been empowered by the company to supervise. I moved out to my ‘man shed’ and turned on football as background noise and a filter from my wife who was not interested in sports to hours of typing about people who deserved a raise to those who didn’t deserve to be employed.

Without cable (it was a waste of money and time watching movies until 4AM and wonder why?) new series that was not on analog TV were not available… until the VHS. My wife purchased box sets of “M.A.S.H.”, “Gilmore Girls”, “Air Bud” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” from Barnes & Noble for binge watch while I worked 24/7. Are you following this so far?

“Buffy…” was a good series, from the parts I saw, but I didn’t know all the characters. The actors, who were mostly unknown and in their elderly twenties, were playing teenagers in high school with the angst and emotional trials of that age. Oh, and they killed vampires. The script was fast and witty but I didn’t follow it. “Buffy…” also crossed some barriers of showing strong female leads, death of a parent, lesbian couple, and experiences of the coming of age series. It even had a musical.

Last night I’m listening to the actors reliving a television series that was a cult following for teens from the late 90’s to the turn of the century. In the story, Slayers, or the “Chosen Ones”, are chosen by fate to battle against vampires, demons and other forces of darkness. Buffy struggles throughout the series with her calling as Slayer and the loss of freedom this entails, frequently sacrificing teenage experiences for her Slayer duties. Her difficulties and eventual empowering realizations are reflections of several dichotomies faced by modern women and echo feminist issues within society.

My wife was an orphan. She never found her birth mother (pre-Internet) but kept the dress she was adopted in. She didn’t speak of her adopted family but wanted to be accepted.

Television accepted her without question.

Did I empower her?

I certainly gave her the freedom to explore whatever interested her. Cooking, gardening (landscaping), knitting, sewing, animals, fashion, art were all sparked by television.

What about “Buffy…”

The television shows were her family. Reality was a lonely place of only one other person (reside to or preferred?) and television gave her a choice of family she could live with.

In the end, Buffy passes being a slayer, not to one, but to all girls (women) everywhere to be empowered to follow their dreams and strengths without restrictions of gender or old traditions.

The bewitching hour came and I shut down my YouTube connection with a smile feeling empowered.