New York is not the "real" America? God, I wish.
There has been a lot of discussion about the "real" America over the past few years, which generally refers to people living outside of the major cities, as if New Yorkers aren't Americans. Needless to say, New Yorkers often find this idea offensive. It could even be said that the story of New York is the story of America, but I don't want to get into history here.
Anyway, when people throw around the "real" term, it's usually flung at New Yorkers as an insult. You know, because we're all privileged and elitist and self-involved or whatever. I'm not really sure what "they" think we are, but I know that they don't like us.
What do people mean when the say one part of America is the "real" America? I'm not sure I understand. Do they mean working class America? Conservative America? Or are they only referring to location, as if population density turns a place Scandinavian (God, if only!)
Back story: I was born in rural Kentucky, where my family worked in the coal mines for generations. My mother married a military man though and so we kids were the first generation to leave Appalachia. I lived in rural Florida, Philadelphia, San Diego, and then grew up mostly in rural Washington State. I went to college in Seattle and have lived in New York since 2003. I've lived in the country and I've lived in the city and in between I've at least driven through almost every state in the country. I know America like the back of my fucking hand.
I resent some of the assumptions made about New Yorkers, especially assumptions that everybody here is wealthy or privileged in some way. This is flatly idiotic, as New York contains true diversity. There is some pretty startling poverty here and lots and lots of middle class folks who are trying to get by. Also, if the "real" America refers to class, Kentucky houses some of the nastiest of the wealthiest 2%. Are they "real" Americans because they live in Kentucky and not Manhattan?
Growing up queer in a military family that was constantly moving from state to state was extremely difficult, to say the least. Sometimes we lived in a city, sometimes in the country, sometimes on base, sometimes off. Do you know what every place had in common until I started college in Seattle (which is a whole other topic that deserves a post, by the way)?
What every place had in common was that I was treated really, really badly and never felt safe until I was eighteen and moved to Seattle. They were all in the process of being destroyed by strip malls and chain stores. Each location I moved to had a fresh appallingly bad public school for me to attend because my family couldn't afford private schools. It wasn't all about being gay either, though that was a big part of it. As my interest in art grew I discovered I was pretty much all alone. Nobody seemed to care about films and music the way I did, which was further isolating. Just football or whatever. I'm being hyperbolic like always, but the underlying truth is real. All in all, the so-called "real" America was full of people who didn't value what I valued and people who soundly rejected me from the day I was born until I finally quit that bitch.
Now I'm working class Brooklyn playwright and I'm a lot happier. New York isn't easy, there's still a lot of stupidity and bigotry, but it's better for me. Seattle was good too, but there were no jobs there, theater or otherwise. Both cities have a lot of queers, but are still very much a part of America as much as I wish they weren't. As much as I wish New York was just the East Village and Williamsburg, it isn't. It's full of cultureless blobs who couldn't care less about art just like any place else. It's easier for me to live here because it's queerer than, say, Omaha. That's it.
Anyway, I actually agree with A Poor Player and Theatre Ideas that theater is too New York centric and only represents upper middle class whiteys. You'd be hard pressed to find somebody as vocally opposed to the elitist theater as I am. What these two don't recognize in their New York hating though is that not only does this yuppie theater not represent the so-called "real" America, it also doesn't even represent New York. Even in New York we have a theater that only represents white folks in Manhattan, between 14th Street and 110th Street. And that ain't much considering the sheer diversity of the city.
The point is, I feel left out on both ends. I write plays mostly about working class people, sometimes in the city, sometimes in the suburbs, sometimes on a farm in the country. The one thing that my plays have in common is that they are for and about queer people, and I mean queer in a larger sense. Most of my close friends could be called queer, even if they aren't gay. My granny, who had a mixed race baby out of wedlock in rural 1950s Kentucky, was queer. I worry that in order to have a "successful" "career" as a playwright I have to somehow earn entry to some pretentious bore of a grad school and write plays for dusty old white folks from the Upper East Side. But I also resent the notion that I should be writing for some imagined "real" American, because those people are assholes too.
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