Life doesn't just magically get better, but you get stronger

Life Doesn't Get Better But We Get Stronger

This film was created by my friend Kitzia with my help. One exciting thing about somewhat figuring out how to make movies is helping others to express themselves cinematically as well. She had never made a movie before and was interested in making one after I told her about the whole "It Gets Better" phenomenon and showed her some of the movies.

"It gets better" was created in the wake of the young gay suicides that were taking the news by storm and meant to be preventative of more deaths. The idea was that an older LGBTQ individual would take directly to their webcam and describe the hard time they had as a youth but their subsequent survival, stating that "it gets better" if you stick it out. There have been a slew of criticisms of this movement.  Many bloggers stated that the campaign encourages youth to just accept bullying, and can I just add that this bullying meme is driving me crazy-the problem is much bigger than youth to youth name calling, it is a larger societal homophobia and heterosexism perpetuated mainly by adults.  Some stated that since most of the digital storytellers speaking to the webcams were white that the movement doesn't speak to people of color, and to add to this, another criticism that I haven't so much seen as felt was also based on identity politics as most of the faces represented on video were of men.  The most prevalent criticism is class-based stating that things only get better if you are rich like Dan Savage.  One of the most famous criticisms in the queer movement was in video form and was made by a woman of color (LuzLoca821) stating that it doesn't get better but you get stronger.  Her digital story was also made by speaking directly to a webcam.  Some other responses to "it gets better" include the youth-based video project "Make it Better" and the intersectional project "I Am Proof That It Gets Better."

When Kitzia expressed interest in the project we engaged in a discussion on all the criticisms as well as the good things.  I found many of the videos to be inspirational and am happy to know that people were being proactive about the suicides.  Though many people criticized the video bloggers for making videos instead of doing something, I don't think that these are mutually exclusive.  Many people are doing many things for the movement including making video and though some people are making videos as their first activity, this can be just the beginning.

A week later Kitzia showed up at my house with a poem she had written in Spanish.  Surprisingly, or maybe predictably,  her thesis was the same as LuzLoca821's though she had never seen her video.  I was excited to support an "It Gets Better" video that could both provide hope to youth, give representation to an underrepresented community, break form from the project by being in poetry form rather than in a rant, and by being in Spanish rather than English; literally speaking to a different audience.

 We decided to do partial talking-to-the-camera and partial video and photo, and it was a new form for both of us.  I had help from a friend, Samthropology, who taught me how to detach audio to layer over image and video and I showed Kitzia.  It was difficult to do something new and it has taken us a month to organize time and work out all the glitches.  In filming her talking to the camera it became clear that I needed to learn how to use a microphone and lights.  We used my floor lamps but the lighting is still not great.  I am hoping my next production class, Documentary Media, will teach me these skills.

Since the video is in Spanish I will post a translation as soon as Kitzia makes it.  But for now, a brief translation from me is that she is saying that life doesn't magically get better but you get stronger and urges people to seek out other queers and form their own battalion of queer warriors.  She tells her audience that they are stronger and more beautiful than they imagine and tells them to have hope, adding that they are needed.

I had a fun time video recording Kitzia and helping her to edit and brainstorm.  I think skill-sharing is an important part of the movement and am confident that she will share as well.

Part 3. On Digital Storytelling

    Digital storytelling is a broad term that brings what is private and personal, usually stories and narratives, into the public; many times on a global scale, in mediated forms. This includes but is not limited to Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and blogging. Before webcams, video and digital cameras, and laptops were widely affordable or accessible, the traditional digital story was when an outsider with technology such as voice or video recording devices came in and recorded stories of usually underrepresented populations. This has largely changed and many of these unheard voices and stories represent themselves without the need of another person facilitating the recording.

       Today, digital storytelling is created in line with our re-mix culture as it often takes things that are already produced such as images and sounds to help people tell their stories.  There are institutions such as The Center for Digital Storytelling which assist people in creating their digital stories according to very specific guidelines in terms of length, form, and purpose, and then there are more DIY forms which are unmediated by institutions.  But in general, there are not that many models of digital storytelling and people tend to use the same structure over and over again, usually making photo slideshows with voiceovers or they talk to a webcam, their stories often confined to conventions specific to their topic.  For example, a typical digital story on being “hapa”, mentally ill, “coming out” or being “AB540” will often follow certain respective narrative patterns which one can decipher with a little Youtube or Blog research.  

Here is an example of an AB540 Digital Story created by 1.8 Million Dreams:

Part 4. On the 1.8 Million Dreams Project

  The 1.8 Million Dreams project was much like the traditional digital story and basically identical to the institutional digital story in that the group would come in and capture the person’s story of being undocumented using expensive, professional equipment and uploading it to their website. Unlike the traditional and institutional forms however, the project members were not exactly outsiders as four out of seven of them were also undocumented and 1.8 Million Dreams was not in fact an institution. It appeared that 1.8 had two goals according to their website: to “serve as a resource for those currently working on undocumented student issues at the state and federal level” and “to empower the current 1.8 million undocumented students across the United States by putting a face to the number.” They believed that the storytelling process would benefit the specific students and that the captured stories would also help to further immigration reform.

Their videos are formulaic. They were created in an interview format, with the interviewer out-of-frame and asking the same open-ended questions to each subject: “how did you come to this country”, “how was it growing up and going to high school in the US”, “what were struggles you have faced” and “what are you doing to help pass the DREAM Act?” This formula in many ways mirrors the typical AB540 testimonial in which students were coached to talk about their lives and the struggles they faced as a student.

Here is a little more on that:

Part 5. Breaking Form: Dreamers Adrift and Fluidity

The new project of Dreamers Adrift has somewhat abandoned the typical AB540 narrative, the so-called “sob story” and adapted a much more fluid expression. Here Deisy talks about the differences between the projects.

The fluidity of the Dreamers Adrift project manifests in that one day they are using personal voiceover narratives, the next they are telling a creative story and acting, they are creating a short documentary of a political action, and, most recently, using stop-motion animation, all the while changing roles in terms of who is holding the camera, coming up with the ideas, and hosting the filming.

Here is their stop-motion piece:

Part 6. On Ethics and Digital Storytelling

There are often ethical issues in digital storytelling projects. Traditionally this referred to when Western, privileged experts/professionals captured Third World images, thus owning them. But this power dynamic and issue of ownership continues. In the 1.8 Million Dreams project, the project members are the owners of the images of the subjects, many of whom were friends with the members. These images are on the internet, available to be seen globally, basically forever. Larry Friedlander discussed how the idea of ownership has changed in a digital age. “In a networked world all texts can be appropriated, so the very notion of proprietary authorship becomes problematic (Freidlander, 182).” These images are vulnerable and available to be used in any way that a viewer decides. But the subjects trusted the project members, and signed waivers stating that they understood the risks. What they didnt’ know was that the 7 person so-called collaborative project faced problems when one of the members, the “artist-expert ” and filmmaker, a US citizen, did not allow anyone else to handle the equipment, or have or edit the material.
       This caused the members who were DREAMers (and were also subjects in the project) to feel like they were not in fact collaborating but working for the expert. John Hartley says that “the expertise of the filmmaker or documentarist when coupled with a ‘parallel’ intelligence from the lay population can result in new and compelling stories that do credit to both parties (Hartley, 205).” This I believe was the idea of the project, to couple art, creativity and aesthetics with the personal expertise of the subjects for “the movement.” But the artist-expert was concerned about having their name, like an auteur, on the videos, and having them be consistent with their vision, and this is what caused the Dreamers to run Adrift. And by abandoning the formulaic, standardized film-form of 1.8, they were able to create self-made media not limited by these conventions or video-art standards which demand expensive equipment and programs.

The Dreamers discuss the problems with the previous project:



         I would like to focus briefly on some ethical dilemmas that the Dreamers discussed in the above video. Jesus describes the confusion he felt that the artist-expert said he wanted to help AB540 students’s voices be heard meanwhile not listening to the AB540 voices in his own group. “Giving voice” has been a historical project of Digital Storytellers, but not all of these storytellers do this with the sole intention of social change. I will discuss this concept later in the paper in terms of both voice and visibility. Related to this is the emphasis on art as being in the hands of the camera-holder. All art is created via collaboration and is a bottom up phenomenon. Artists could not create what they are creating if they did not have other art as models; it is silly to place so much weight on a single artist’s name at the expense of having help and sharing credit.
        Another issue discussed was the publishing of the confidential, anonymous videos on public pages, basically “outing” people to their social networks. This brings up the issue of who owns your right to publicity. Though someone might own your image, you own the right to guard that image and control its use; the image should not be placed anywhere you didn’t agree to. A final issue I will end with on the previous project is that the artist-expert maintained the name, the footage and the project even though the idea was created as a group and the footage taken together. This is something that may or may not be considered an ethical issue, but I find it disrespectful and a misuse of power.
         In terms of the current project there are no longer issues of owning others’s images or the power-imbalance of the “expert” and the “layperson.” But a critique that comes up in digital storytelling often is “self-exploitation.” This is something I will not argue either way, it is just something to think about. Lastly, something that affects most all user-generated digital storytellers is the issue of corporate control of the internet including Facebook, Blogger, and Youtube-two of the three of which are owned by Google. Within this corporate framework are issues of censorship for reasons of copyright, flagging by anti-immigrant users, and rigid limitations such as time limits on Youtube and page limits on Blogger. Again, this is not something I have an answer to, more of a responsibility I feel I have to point it out.


 

Part 8. On Visibility

     I mentioned earlier that I would be discussing visibility and voice.  Communications and Media scholar Nick Couldry succinctly defines digital storytelling as “the idea that each person has a voice and a story” and cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner defines narrative as “a central mode of human thought and as a vehicle of meaning making” (Couldry 58, Erstad and Wertsch 28).  James Wertsch says that narratives are important cultural tools which help people to form their identities both collectively and individually.  (Erstad and Wertsch 29)  In telling their stories, Dreamers Adrift are really telling counter-narratives, creating representation for the underrepresented, and using identity politics.  But the Dreamers are not telling their stories with the purpose of forming their identities or to make meaning of their lives, they are telling their stories as part of the project of “remapping and renaming (Shohat 290).”  Ella Shohat describes this as when “the Third World and its diasporas in the First World rewrite their own histories, take control over their own images, and speak in their own voices (ibid.).”
    Central to the politics of digital storytelling is that it employs the transformation of the private into the public which can go hand in hand with the feminist principle of making the personal political.  Similar to the public/private concept is what bell hooks describes as “coming to voice” or “moving from silence into speech as revolutionary gesture (hooks 12).”  She goes on to say that in speaking,  “one moves from being object to being subject.  Only as subjects can we speak.  As objects, we remain voiceless-our beings defined and interpreted by others (ibid.).”  This is an important part of self-representation, remapping and renaming, but it is important to note that digital storytelling does a whole lot more than speak, it makes one visible.  The following video deals with the dangerous and high-risk issue of becoming visible as undocumented.

       Audre Lorde said that the "visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength (Lorde 42).” As Deisy, Julio and Fernando described, the visibility of “undocumented unafraid” students was powerful because of the power in numbers and also because of the exponential power inherent in inspiration. I am often asked how I am able to spend my energy on activism and volunteerism knowing that so many people don’t care or are lazy. My answer is always the same: because I also know that the people who do care are working harder than I am and risking more. Undocumented activists have everything to lose and they are my s/heroes. But while I am looking to them, they are looking to eachother. As Julio described, if he is deported he is at less risk than queer activists from other countries. Visibility in the context of Dreamers Adrift was both motivated by visibility and an expression of their own for the purposes of inspiring action. Lorde also uses the rhetoric of voice but adds to it as she believes in the “transformation of silence into language and action (Lorde 40-44).” It is not enough to solely raise one’s voice. Digital storytelling is based on the notion that every person has a voice. But where does that bring us?