Okay, so how many movies did you see in the theater last year? And live concerts? Yeah, that’s what we figured. And yet!

While arts and entertainment were severely impacted by the pandemic, it’s high time to take stock of how important they are. Award shows may be as virtual as your two o’clock meeting but that doesn't mean pop culture isn’t here to stay.

Get outside of your bias on popular topics in pop culture with personal narratives from anonymous writers. Break out of your echo chamber with The Doe!

Pop Culture Stories by Verified Anonymous Writers - The Doe

Pop Culture

He told me he liked my natural hair and that it reminded him of an African queen. Many of the women I worked with were very aware of who this guy was—and when I left they were full of questions. He hadn’t made any hints of self-importance, which I appreciated. But he was, even if I wasn’t aware, a well-known actor. 

We didn’t start dating at first—it started slowly, with a couple of acting roles, a few plane rides and fancy dinners. At the time, I identified as a lesbian and had recently had my heart shattered by a woman who I’d been with for a few years. But I also knew how to handle this situation, because working in a strip club gears you up for this kind of encounter. Usually you flirt a little, and the guy comes back regularly. That was the business, that was the point. But this guy was different. He seemed like he was just there to observe. We bonded over the fact that we were both humans within a space—not of that space. He seemed like he wanted nothing from me, and for about three years it stayed that way. Those were the good days. 

Indeed, those first few years were amazing. I quit my job at the club and started acting. I moved out of the city and ended up getting a larger role within a few months. I flew down to the city where we were shooting and stayed for two weeks. I barely saw him while working, but I always knew he was nearby and keeping an eye on me. He felt more like a mentor than anything else. About a year after landing that role, I was cast in a film that he independently produced. The process of auditioning for the film was long and hard, but I eventually ended up landing a different role and flying out to Los Angeles. This film would change the course of my life in many ways. 

This little indie film was short and sweet. It took a day to film my scenes and I stayed out in L.A. at his guest house for a week. I met some other actors and got to hang out with them, too. One particular actor shared an intimate moment with me and though I wasn’t prepared for the interaction—and still wasn’t sure if I liked men—I went along with it out of ignorance and fear. This particular decision, however, would come back to bite me. So unaware of the world I was entering, I had succumbed to a shark and would soon be paying for it tenfold. This encounter ended how most encounters seem to end with millennials—I was ghosted. I left Los Angeles the day after feeling useless and wondering what would happen next.

The next year, I was called down to meet the big-time actor—my original romancer—in Miami. By that point, I hadn’t worked since acting in the indie film he had directed the previous summer, and I was excited to shoot more. He’d purchased a one-way ticket for me and we spent quite a few months in Southern Florida shooting a television show. This is where our relationship rooted. When either of us wasn’t shooting we would spend time together. We hadn’t made anything official, so I was still able to do as I pleased without the “courtesy check-in.” Florida was our honeymoon phase. Things ended up going so well that he asked me to come to L.A., but I still had my own life and responsibilities. I said I would come eventually. 

“Eventually” happened fairly quickly. My cousin had a wedding in California on New Year's Eve, so he attended with me and my family. That night we made things a bit more official and I ended up staying with him. I wouldn’t say my life changed overnight, but it certainly became a lot more glamorous. I went from being a regular woman to receiving VIP treatment everywhere we went.

In certain places, servers and waiters gave us free drinks or the best seats, but for the most part in L.A., things were normal. Elsewhere, it was far more extensive. If we flew to Atlanta or upstate, we’d leave from LAX, which was its own sort of trap. No matter what, I was destined to meet the paparazzi at least once, and I was never ready for them. For those who have never experienced being bombarded by strangers with cameras, it's not as fun as it seems. If you’ve ever walked through a grocery store deciding what to buy, and then suddenly come face-to-face with an ex you haven’t seen in years, it's that kind of shock. At least, for me it was. It took some getting used to, but it was my least favorite part of the entire experience.

We continued to date. We continued to go to places and run into people he knew. Our routine consisted of auditions, workouts, pool time and L.A. adventures. One night, I decided to tell him about what happened the previous summer. At that point, I was all about being transparent and honest with my partners. I told him everything, even the part about not really wanting to do it. His response wasn’t of understanding but of complete disgust. In one evening, I went from being his favorite person to being worthless. His words, his emotions, his actions all led me to feel that way. I slipped into a deep depression. In my eyes, I had been the sun in his life for so long. Now, I was nothing. I wasn’t even worth keeping around to him, but he kept me and brought in other women to fill the gaps.

I found myself as the castaway girlfriend, the buffer for other girls who had to be nice in order to talk to him—a sort of comical gatekeeper. This wore on me, as I’m sure he knew. We began to drift apart, but we stayed together for a few months longer. When we finally did break up, and I moved back to Atlanta, I quit acting and became a standup comic. 

Dating a celebrity is similar to dating anyone else once you remove all the fame and the glamour. We had our problems and we handled them poorly, just like everyone else. We had public breakdowns, seen by other famous actors and civilians. We had horrible moments that we then had to push aside for red carpet events, for the semblance of unity. Dating an actor meant me laying down my comforts to pretend with him—to pretend, to this day, that our relationship was beautiful and beneficial because I was made to feel like I’d been given some sort of once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

The fact of the matter is you can date anyone who is available to you. But you shouldn’t. Sometimes you see a lifestyle and you go for it, head first, without knowing the cost of the endeavor. Without this experience, though, I would have never discovered what I won’t put up with. Or how to read people without even knowing them. Or that I could be brave enough to become a standup comic.

Black Voices

Featured

This Is What It’s Like to Date a Famous Actor

I grew up my entire life in Los Angeles, which means my career resume reads like a bad screenplay’s take on a Hollywood kid. I spent my early 20s in the modeling industry, traveling around the world—Milan, New York, L.A., etc. My late 20s were spent acting in Hollywood—a few soaps, a few bit parts, a few commercials. A lot of horseshoe and hand grenade moments. And then, when I finally saw the writing on the wall, I spent my early 30s as a producer. (There is some unwritten law of Hollywood that when you flame out as an actor you go on and become a producer.)

The point of me listing out my Hollywood bona fides here is that after 15 years in the industry (whatever that means)—attending the film festivals, hanging at the cool Hollywood parties, dating Victoria’s Secret models—I have come to the ironclad and scientific determination that there are three types of people in the world: those who admit they’re influenced by celebrities, those lying about being influenced by celebrities and those who just don’t know it yet. 

I’ll even take it one step further. There is the famous scene in The Devil Wears Prada (now memorialized by every fashion design major across the country) in which Meryl Streep’s Anna Wintour character disabuses Anne Hathaway’s intern of thinking you can opt-out of fashion—that there is a “none-of-the-above” bubble on the sartorial multiple-choice test. Instead, she lectures, the reality is that “trying-not-to-try” is, in and of itself, a byproduct of the fashion influence culture, where millions of decisions by tastemakers and designers have been made. To believe there’s an authentic counter-culture is to reveal one’s own economic and cultural naivety. 

I firmly believe after 15 years in this business, Wintour’s maxims are not just constrained to the world of fashion. It’s just as accurate for consumer products, as it is for narrative content, as it is for our politics. And that last part should give us all a cause for concern. 

I’m not here to bemoan this phenomenon in general, cursing the fact that kids look up to LeBron James or care what Cara Delevingne is wearing. Celebrity culture is arguably as old as culture itself. We are an imitation species at our core—we’ve been mirroring each other since the first chimp picked up a rock, smashed open a nut and another tried it. Since then, the gears of celebrity culture were set in motion. The sooner we all accept this immutable fact of our psychology the better off we’ll be.

What I am here to argue is that when it comes to imitation, celebrities, in general, are the last people who should influence our political opinions. They are, in fact, the most unreliable sources of political information in our culture, but because of our innate desire to mirror those we look up to, it is of critical importance that we curb the impulse to be swayed by their political opinions and be swept up by the celebrity influence tractor beam. 

Why should you listen to me? Well, you shouldn’t. But as someone who counts a fair number of high-profile celebrities as my genuine friends, and has spent the last 15 years with them as colleagues and associates, I do feel better equipped than most to make the following three claims as to why rewarding celebrity political opinions will bring about the downfall of the republic. 

It’s a cliché that the only celebrity you should trust is the one who tells you not to trust them. But that cliché is mostly true. It’s a celebrity’s recognition that they’re aware of the fact that they’re surrounded by people who are economically and dispositionally incentivized to appease and indulge them. There are a lot of reasons for this. Principal among them is that “celebrity” draws its power from social cachet. And with that social cachet comes economic power. Do people “care” about you and what you have to say or what you wear? If yes, then you can convert that “care” into dollars—from summer blockbusters to tequila brands. 

But celebrity and social cachet are tumultuous and fickle muses, and the more insecure the celebrity becomes in regards to that social cachet waxing and waning, the more apt they are to gravitate towards the “yes” people in their lives.

This isn’t a character flaw or moral frailty. I have met very few people capable of handling the power of celebrity on the biggest stages. Far more frequently I’ve seen it eat them alive. It’s the rare person who is autonomous, self-critical, secure and possesses an authentic courage of their convictions—both talented at their craft and successful with it—that end up invariably becoming icons. Think Dave Chapelle, David Bowie, Prince, Dolly Parton, Meryl Streep, the Rock, etc. Most, however, unfortunately, get swallowed up by their own gravity-bending vortex of affirmation and positivity. And those vortexes are especially great at ensuring that no cogent and sensible political views ever make it out of them.

The truth that celebrity culture reveals to us most radically is that political opinions, most of the time, aren’t worth much. Doubly so for celebrities because they’re often surrounded by so many people convincing them that they somehow are the exception.

There is a very serious selection bias at play when it comes to celebrity political opinions. Notice there aren’t poor or old celebrities. If you’re still a celebrity past your 50th birthday, in some sense that means you’ve managed to make money off your talents and fame. It means you are, by definition, wealthy. There is some analog here to the old adage, “The only old mountain climbers are cautious mountain climbers.” 

Celebrity culture, in general, is a young person’s game. Music, acting, writing, even just beauty and glamour, and so forth. As much as the postmodernists would like you to believe, there are some very sound evolutionary, psychological and economic reasons for this that aren’t as fungible as an idealistic utopian society might like to believe about itself. 

The problem here is that those demographic skews are not representative of Americans or the majority of voters for that matter. Baby Boomers and seniors from middle- to lower-income backgrounds are what make up the majority of the American electorate. I promise you their political views are not getting accurately represented by the Hollywood political messaging community. Moreover, it’s also the case that, as much as good politics requires subject knowledge, so too does it require general life wisdom, which can only be acquired after working for the same boss for 15 years at your small manufacturing company, or being intimately involved in the local politics of your small town in the Midwest for decades. All types of “wisdom” that celebrities (for the most part) lack through no fault of their own. 

An industry and occupation sector that rewards youth, openness, creativity, outlandishness and attention-seeking is not what you want to be calibrating your national political compass against. Imagine for a moment if we gave Instagram accounts with a million followers only to rural 65-year-old farmers, suburban 55-year-old career nurses and urban 45-year-old construction workers. How different the celebrity politicking would look then.

There is an alienation game at play here. The more celebrities speak up, speak out, get involved in politics, the more the rest of America gets the sense that their own opposing viewpoints are drifting further and further from the mainstream. The more they get the sense that America is leaving them behind. This sense of alienation inevitably leads to conspiratorial thinking and attraction to snake oil politicians shucking jingoistic, nationalistic nostalgia. The subtext being, “Remember when this country agreed with you on your views about the world? Let’s return to that time.” Sound familiar?

For the majority of celebrities, education—at least formally in the undergraduate and graduate level—is often given short shrift, if not ignored altogether. In other words, having an MFA in playwriting makes you qualified to opine on all things playwriting and little else. And even that would put you in the top one percent of the educated class in celebrity-land. The reason for this is mostly theoretical. If celebrity culture is a young person’s game, then to be hunkered down in a library or chemistry lab is not an optimal usage of one’s time. 

You will hear no cries of institutional credentialism as the only pathway to intellectual legitimacy from me. The problem instead is mostly one of Dunning-Kruger (the psychological phenomenon proving that the less you know about something, the more likely you think you know a great deal about it), multiplied across an entire industry, in which millions of followers turned into nightly news sessions on their Instagram and Twitter feeds. 

It would send chills down your spine to hear some of the questions my celebrity and influencer friends ask me about basic science or world affairs, and then two minutes later jump on to their social accounts to speak with conviction and solemnity about the socio-political topic du jour.

Celebrities, for the most part, are just like me and you, except many of them didn’t go to college and most likely weren’t all that great at school to begin with. If they did go to college, they weren’t majoring in mechanical engineering or biochemistry or public policy. They were communications majors just trying to make it through the second semester. And that’s the best-case scenario. The problem is only compounded by the fact that most celebrities are especially insecure about this fact and will go out of their way to publicly disprove it, making for a very dangerous combination. 

It’s simply the case that most political opinions suck. Most should never be shared with millions of people. The number of variables, counter-variables and deep knowledge required to understand the decision-making space concerning a single political issue is far too expansive for quick-draw political takes to ever be correct. Doubly so when you’re convinced that you have some moral legitimacy or high ground on your side, which celebrities in general never seem to be in short supply of doling out. 

To recap: Combining our psychological predisposition to be enamored and influenced by celebrities—a subset of the population composed mostly of young, creative, and exuberant people, who then surround themselves with sycophants and anchor themselves in scant expertise—and multiplying it across an instantaneous information network, you get the cultural equivalent of drunk sailors flicking lit cigarettes inside a fireworks factory atop a nuclear reactor. 

When asked why he hadn’t spoken more publicly against a clearly racist politician, Michael Jordan callously quipped, “Republicans buy sneakers, too.” This was poorly worded, poorly timed and poorly conceived. But there is also a deep wisdom hidden behind MJ’s statement. Offering political wisdom isn’t his job, and the only reason you should trust him is that he was humble enough to tell you not to. We’d do well to remind ourselves of this in the political election cycles to come.

Why You Shouldn’t Listen to Celebrities Talk About Politics

I wanted to work in the music industry since I was 12, when I first saw Snoop’s video for “What’s My Name,” where he turns into a dog and bites the old man and jumps out the window. My dad hated that song, so it was really formative for me. I was living in a third- or fourth-tier city, so I was discovering music from the outside. Skate videos educated me on music until 1999, maybe 2000, when somebody showed me Napster and explained what an MP3 was. Then I picked up a copy of The Source and there was this industry section in the back, and I saw a picture of the guy in a convertible talking about his job in A&R. At that point I didn’t even know what “A&R” meant, but I was like, “That sounds like a sick job. I want to do that.”

Eventually, I moved to L.A. with the goal of finding a rapper to develop into the next Kendrick or Chance. This one guy popped up on my timeline for some reason, and it was like half a song on YouTube but I thought it was really awesome. He was just really, really smart, and was talking about things differently than I had heard in the past. We spun up two mixtapes, spent $150 on a video, and then that video ended up doing millions of streams in a couple of weeks. We had every major label trying to sign us at this point. We chose one of them, and that’s when the shit hit the fan, in such a serious way.

There’s a path that most young rappers follow to get to a big record deal. Typically it starts with somebody who’s either good at freestyling or good at singing. That person’s work or notoriety, or their name, gets in the ears of somebody with studios. In a lot of the communities these rappers are coming from, people buy studios to diversify and legitimize revenue that they make through other means. Regardless of how they acquire the studio, normally they will invite somebody in and say, “Hey, you’re really talented. You can use the studio free for however long.” Or they’ll say, “There’s no studio fee, but you gotta sign to us as a production company. You can use our producers and you can use our engineers.” 

Those deals are where it gets really spicy. They can be egregious, and hard to get out of. They’re nuanced, but essentially at the end of the day they look like, “50 percent of every dollar you make goes to me, and whatever’s left goes to the label.” So when they arrange a label deal for the artist, they already own half the pie. A lot of the biggest rappers in the game are still stuck in deals like this that they signed at the beginning of their careers. If you get an artist to sign one early, they’re pretty much bulletproof. Being on the profitable side of them is how you get extremely rich in rap music. 

And they do provide a lot of value—a lot of people’s first mixtapes wouldn't be made without these people. Hence they wouldn't get the ear of the streets, they wouldn’t get the radio DJs and the mix show DJs playing them. But from then on they’re locked in. A lot of people don't really blow up on Soundcloud first. A lot of artists are incubated from a very early stage, to the point where they kinda can't fail. You're almost guaranteed to get to a certain level if you're signed to the right producer. 

That doesn’t mean you’re making any money. The label negotiates explicitly with the person that has the furnishing agreement, the production deal. So while they’re incentivized to get the best deal, you don’t have any say in it. If you hated your A&R, you wouldn't have a choice, you're just doing this. Or if you have any moral qualms with other music on the label, or if you just don’t think it’s the right fit, you don’t have a choice. 

Typically, at this point, the label teams step in and, either you’ve already got a single that’s doing really well and they want to amplify it, or they say, “Here’s a very small budget. Come back to us when you have a hit.” And then it’s up to you and the people around you, often your producers. A lot of people stagnate and stay in that zone. And if you get stuck there, they can’t really get out. They have really no agency, and they’re kinda living the same life they were living before, but they can't put music out. Because, again, everything has to be mutually approved by the producers and label.

So say you do manage to get a great single going. The next step is radio, where normally you start out at what’s called “mix shows,” which are certain time slots on urban radio where they test out new records, and the label gives you a small “promotion budget.” It’s very transparent that you’re paying to get the song played. (And it’s not just rap. You have to pay for play in rock and dance music and all kinds of other things.) Payola is absolutely legitimately still a thing. It’s just become one of those open secrets in the music industry.

If you can't get the single off the ground in mix shows, it’s very seldom it’s going to move beyond that. But if it’s undeniable, like if it’s a fucking smash, you’ll start getting adds on urban radio. At that point, they do what’s called “research,” where a company randomly calls people in the area, asks them if they’ve heard the song and to rate it on a scale of one to ten. You literally use a phone to say like, “Yes, Post Malone is a six.” And based on the data that comes back from these insanely outdated polling methods that determine the future of your single. It literally makes zero fucking sense. It’s so fucking weird and completely archaic.

But say your song does well, the research comes back semi-positive and it’s picking up in New York, Mid-Atlantic, down South, Texas, California—then you have to go to do radio promo. In New York, for example, we did one of the big shows, and the DJ is like, “Come by the club tonight, we’re gonna play your song.” This means we go to the strip club, and the DJ plays our song. But I’m not spending money at a strip club and neither is my artist, so our label guy goes to the ATM and brings us back $2K in cash. We just throw it at the strippers and walk away, because the club needs us to pay the DJ at the club, instead of the radio station where he also works. It’s just so transparent and fucking weird. And then you’ll do that six nights a week for weeks at a time, all up and down the coast. It’s a nightmare, but that’s what it takes to get a record played. 

If you can land your song in the territory of the Hot 100, you're pretty much set for the next couple of singles at least. You’d have to fall off pretty hard because the label at least sees there’s some traction and you’re worth investing in. But if you don't get that first one out, and they spent $150K on radio promo, and the record doesn’t break the Top Ten, and they spent $150K on radio promo, you’re very hard-pressed to get that opportunity again.

And then Spotify is a whole other beast. It drives a lot of interest from the labels because they make more money from Spotify than they do from radio, for sure. But it’s such a black box, as opposed to radio, where you very clearly say, “Here, I am paying you to play the record.” Spotify basically decides what becomes a hit and what doesn’t. 

There’s definitely payola going on there too. Certain people at Spotify get really good Lakers seats (like, I've actually been in the suites with Spotify people). It’s really well-guarded, and I’ve never really experienced the payola side of it, but it very much exists. Absolutely. The label can circumvent that framework a little bit, if they really want to, especially because Universal owns a chunk of Spotify. So sometimes there is a magic bullet that can be fired, but it’s super rare.

If you don’t get Spotify playlisting and you don’t have a single, then your album is fundamentally worthless, and you’re starting from the beginning, with no budget to get you back on track. People who wind up there get jobs, or they sell drugs. They put money in their pocket somehow. 

I manage an artist right now and she was looking at one of the production deals we talked about and she was like, “I’m never signing that. I’d rather go be a stripper again. My kid’s not gonna starve.” So that’s kind of what happens. They are just people who had this weird fling with a major label and then they go back to their lives.

Some may even wind up owing the label money on their deal. When you sign with a record label, typically there’s an advance attached. The advance means they put some money in your pocket to be able to sustain yourself while you work on the album. What’s not clear to a lot of people is that you have to pay that back, based on the split of the record deal. The label takes their side of the split, and you have to pay back the advance with your side. So say you’re in a deal with the label making 75 percent and you making 25. Whatever money comes in off your music, they’ll get paid back first, and then you start using your 25 percent to pay back the $100K or whatever that you got as an advance. 

And even if you do recoup, and they made all of that money, you still never own your master recordings. Essentially it’s like taking an insanely high-interest rate on a loan to buy a house, paying it off, and then you still don’t own it. But that rarely ever happens. Only about five percent of artists recoup, and I’m sure you can name those artists on two hands.

I’ve since experienced things at major labels with my other clients that are actually beneficial and positive. It’s about individuals. But at the same time, if you drill down into it, all of these companies are exactly the same. It’s not even these people, as much as it is their parent companies: the Carlisle Group, BlackRock or whatever it is. All of those companies are the ones that are ultimately benefiting from the talent of young people. These companies go to artists who are coming from lack of means, and they dangle checks in front of them and they invest in assets that they get at bargain-basement prices, and then leverage and eventually sell off. It’s just like private equity.

It’s a problematic system and I think Western capitalism will always dictate that it behaves this way. It’s win-lose by design. There’s a universally acknowledged idea that publicly traded companies have no obligation other than to return as much value to its shareholders as possible. And that will always be to the detriment of ancillary aspects of the business, whether that be environmental fallout from fracking, or starting a coup in Bolivia so you can get your hands on more lithium to make batteries for your electric cars, or chewing up and spitting out promising young artists. 

It’s not even the fault of the individual participants. They don’t realize that these systems can change. They think, "I’m a good guy, and I’ll perform in this fucked up system in the best way I can." There’s a certain purity in the music industry—if any of us just wanted to get rich, finance isn’t that complicated. We could be at hedge funds if we wanted. But we do it for the passion. We love people, love storytelling, love to provide opportunities for people who wouldn't otherwise have them. But until we can build something completely different, the best anybody within the system can be is less evil.

The Record Industry Thrives on the Exploitation of Young Rappers

I was told that I shouldn't go to modeling casting calls after the age of 18. The truth is, I did, and I often lied about my age to get into them. 

Just before turning 19, I moved to New York City to pursue a career in acting. Modeling jobs became a way for me to make money on the fly without having to work a day job, which would, without a doubt, cut into audition schedules and class hours. 

I signed with my first agent while I was working at a nightclub. A regular of mine was a studio owner, who shared a space with a casting office. Soon, I met with the executive director of the casting office, and he set me up for an audition with a well-known agent in the area. “Make sure that you tell them that you’re sleeping with me,” he told me before leaving. This was obviously a joke, because I wasn’t sleeping with him, but I did start to get some late-night texts from him every now and then. 

After signing with the agency on a freelance basis, I decided to make profiles on reputable acting and modeling websites to snag my own jobs as much as I could. By the time I turned 22, I started to get a hang of the industry, getting five-to-eight auditions every week. Around this time, I had booked a modeling job for a “sportswear brand” on my own accord. The photoshoot was scheduled in a well-known studio space, but I thought it was odd considering it was mainly reserved for dancers and actors to rehearse and not for photography. The rooms were dimly lit with a soft, yellow glow that would make any photoshoot have a porno feel to it.

When I arrived, the photographer showed me the wardrobe. Instead of sportswear, there was an array of thongs and large bras that didn’t even match. It looked as if he went to the clearance aisle of Century 21 and just grabbed a handful of lingerie without sorting through it. 

“Which sportswear brand is this for?” I asked the photographer.

He replied vaguely, explaining he would sell the photos to companies that were interested.

“Where are the sports bras and swimsuits?” I replied, receiving a smug look. “None of these are in my size,” I said.

“Well, I guess you will just have to do the shoot topless,” he said in a serious tone.

“I don’t understand. My sizes are listed on my profile.”

I was getting really overworked at this point and trying to think of an easy escape, but I wanted my payment.

“This is just what they had,” he said.

Finally, I just exploded. “I’m too old for this shit,” I told him. “You can take photos with what we can use, and you have to pay me.”

It’s commonly known that it’s hard to get into modeling as you age. I never quite understood this. Besides, I know many 35-year-olds who look as if they just turned 24. We toughen as we get older. It’s not just in appearance that we toughen, but it’s also in our mental state. Is it possible that there are power-hungry individuals that know that younger women are easily manipulated? Plus, if every Victoria’s Secret ad showed a 17-year-old’s body, wouldn’t that encourage pedophilia?

Modeling always seemed like such a glamorous profession, but it’s far from it. I would hear female directors calling models on set “stupid” or “too ugly.” I would continue to get hit on by men in the industry who promised me lavish vacations or a bigger role if I just spent one night with them. I once showed up on the set of a “short film” that had a dungeon set-up so they could strap me in and tickle my feet. Luckily I was sent home when they saw I wouldn’t comply. In another instance, I was called back for a feature film that required real sex for the role. Things got pretty weird, but I was strong enough to filter out the shady jobs and requests. 

Unfortunately, many younger women will find themselves with the urge to do these types of jobs in order to expand their name and credits. I was just short of giving up after one dinner with the guitarist of a famous pop singer. “Most women sleep with someone to get the part,” he told me. “If you’re not going to do that, it’s going to be really hard for you.” 

Thankfully, the #MeToo movement has shined the light on some of the shady activity that happens in the fashion and entertainment industry. But this isn’t enough. As women, we need to continue to stand up for ourselves and our reputations. We need to show that we can get the job because of our talent, and we need to be aware of the individuals who will prey on our desire to work in this field. 

The exploitation of women in these industries has been going on in the shadows for years and our strength in shining the light on this is only one small facet of its final departure.

Style

The Fashion and Entertainment Industries Encourage Young Women to Sell Their Bodies

Drugs & Alcohol

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Travel

Stories that can only be told from the land of the free, home of the brave.

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Motherhood

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The Doe celebrates its authors this Black History Month.

Extra, extra, read all about it! The news-media industry has shifted dramatically over the last decade—heck, within the last two years. Between print journalism, podcasting, social media and infotainment, The Doe turns over every rock in this evolving ecosystem.

Media

Stories of starting over and finding the fresh.

New Beginnings

The ol' nine to five has changed quite a bit in the past couple of years, from working remotely to, well, not working at all. This month we take a look at how cash still does rule in our capitalist society and what the future of business and money might just look like.

Money

Lord help us: They say it's not polite to talk about religion or politics, but—hey—we've already talked politics, haven't we? Prayer's up.

Religion

I am a fairly levelheaded person, so it took a lot for me to fall down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories at first. But the pandemic and all the events that have followed have sent me straight into the open arms of online conspiracists. 

The downward spiral usually goes like this: Something newsworthy comes to the surface. It doesn’t sit right with me, so I head to Twitter to see what the more sensible minds are saying. Someone will mention a conspiracy theory, so I instantly head to TikTok to get more information about the theory—because that’s super logical. After watching a few videos, I Google the event, the people involved and the ensuing theory to fact-check for plausibility. When things start to check out, I wallow in despair for a while. I then talk myself out of it and convince myself the theory can’t be true.

Then, the same cycle continues a few days later with a new theory.

This spiral recently happened with the cost of living increase in the U.K. Inflation is bollocks: The price of petrol is unbearable; a trip to the supermarket bankrupts me; and Thor only knows how I’m going to heat my house this winter.

Logically, I know many things to be true that would explain inflation. There was a pandemic that essentially shut the world down. China, where most of our supplies come from, is still in a bit of a slowdown. There’s a war between Russia and Ukraine, two of the biggest exporters of wheat. Global warming has ruined a good few essential crops. Oh, and the whole economy setup is more fragile than a vintage china teacup. I’m no economist and I don’t really know how it all works, but could there be an argument that globalization wasn’t really the best tactic? I fully believe that the government can do better.

At this point in my personal spiral is when some random person on Twitter mentions it—the conspiracy theory of all conspiracy theories: the Great Reset.

Now, this theory wasn’t plucked from thin air. The Great Reset plan was discussed at the January 2020 World Economic Forum summit, but the plan shares very little in terms of details. It’s intentionally vague, but the premise seems to offer world leaders and wealthy corporate heads of pharmaceutical, food, oil and technology companies a role in global governance. Allegedly, each of these people would be considered stakeholders in the global economy and would therefore be answerable only to each other.

You don’t need to be a seasoned conspiracy theorist to see that that’s fucked—or to see how it became a breeding ground for conspiracy. Theorists took to online forums and social media apps to express concern, speculating that the Great Reset has been in play for a long time and that COVID and its long-lasting economic pitfalls have been planned and manipulated.

What’s scary is, for once, everything the conspiracy theorists are saying now seems credible.

The U.K. is experiencing its highest inflation in 40 years at 9.4 percent, and the U.S. isn’t too far behind at 9.1 percent. If you were trying to manipulate the economy, how would you drive inflation up even more? Product shortages—which seem to be never-ending lately. Some conspiracists even claim that employees of shipping companies are being told to delay the export of containers.

Yes, China's slowed production, shipping issues and the war in Ukraine are causing delays, but are these all part of a bigger plan? Is this all intentional? Compared to the flat-earthers and the lizard people, the Great Reset is perfectly logical—which I think actually makes it worse.

So here I am, Alice in Wonderland-style falling down this rabbit hole, because when big companies like AstraZeneca and Amazon get involved with world leaders and magnates like Bill Gates, there’s cause for concern.

Admittedly, I’m still trying to talk myself out of this particular hole.

It helps assuage my concerns that not every foreign government seems to be following the same process. Some still appear to be making decent decisions, like Finland, for example.

All these current happenings might actually be knock-on effects of COVID, and it could all be one massive coincidence. Recessions do happen; it’s part of an economic cycle. It’s likely that lockdowns have been the sole cause for supply chain delays. And if this were to happen, surely there would be a massive global revolt, right? We, as a freethinking population, wouldn’t allow this to happen, would we?

While I’m going to put my faith in humanity doing the right thing, I’m also going to err on the side of caution. All it takes is for one conspiracy theory to be right to prove that not all radicals are insane.

In all honesty, we do live in a really scary time, a time ripe with conspiracy theories that seem plausible but take it one step too far to be totally believable. The use of technology and artificial intelligence can manipulate any situation. Smartphones are capturing all our data. Phone tapping has already been confirmed, and the ethical lines are already highly blurred there. Maybe I should check Twitter again.

Mental Health

An Endless Cycle: Trying Not to Believe Conspiracy Theories

When I moved to New York City with a $20 bill in my pocket to become an actress, I knew that it wasn’t going to be a walk in the park.

I had no connections in the industry and no savings, and I knew that I would need a day job to acquire the bare necessities. I eventually worked long hours doing overnight shifts as a cocktail waitress and bartender. I would work until almost 6 in the morning, which would become exhausting. Financially, I wasn’t able to take off a shift at the bar to work an acting job, because I made more money behind the bar than I did on set. As I sometimes rushed between bars and gigs, I hated that other actors could sleep well because their parents fronted their rent. 

Still, I’m proud of pursuing the American Dream with a family of blue-collar workers who didn’t coddle me but taught me life skills, values and work ethic. Eating out meant going to the gas station with only a $5 bill as a kid, and the concept of dressing in formal attire for a restaurant was foreign to me. I cherish that.

Everyone would prefer to move from a shitty town in America to the greatest one of all. Or so I thought. I came to realize that I didn’t come from a shitty town and New York wasn’t the greatest after all.

One of my first jobs in the city was dubbing commercial tapes in Times Square for $10 an hour. It was a family-owned business whose purpose was to clean up commercial spots before they went to air. It was a few blocks away from the acting conservatory I went to and a quick train ride back to Queens, where I was living at the time.

The company owner’s son showed me a taste of some of the characters I would be running into over the next decade. Not only did he tell me that if a girl got raped, it was because she “dressed like a slut,” but he also wrongly assumed that the Dolce & Gabbana purse that I bought with tip money from my waitressing shifts was “a gift from Daddy.” Even if I was aware of the many laws intact to extricate us from this type of workplace abuse, I was always one to fight my own battles.

“Oh, yeah? Is that how the girls in New York are raised?” I would snidely respond. He would look dumbfounded, like he wasn’t expecting my 19-year-old self to react with ease.

“Where are your parents from?” he barked back.

“People in New York City are usually first- or second-generation American,” he said in disbelief before he stopped harassing me for the day.

I always felt like I wasn’t allowed to be patriotic. New Yorkers genuinely thought Americans in the Southern States were racist. This was an eye roll. I went to an equally distributed mixed-race high school, and my best friend and first kiss were from a different race than me. We never spoke about it. Obviously, we looked different, but everyone does. It turned out that New York was more segregated than my hometown, so their projection onto places they’d never visited wasn’t surprising to me.

It had always been a dream of mine to explore the vast country that I called home. Many people in my hometown were content with never leaving, and even in New York City, there were some who never left the block they grew up on. I couldn’t imagine thinking that the rural South was America, but in contrast, it was even wilder imagining that some thought there was nothing outside of New York County’s lines. 

I was mocked for wearing cowboy boots in acting class, and I was told that my Southern drawl needed to be pocketed. As an actor, this made sense to me. I needed to transform into a character, and I couldn’t just portray myself on stage. We would do exercises in class that would require us to repeat each other’s words by starting with an observation.

I boiled with anger when my scene partner started with, “You have pimples on your face.” I was told by a friend in the industry that I needed Proactiv and to dye my hair blonder if I wanted to get cast; then, I was told by an agent that I was “too pretty and too white” to make it far. I felt like no one would ever be pleased, so I just tried to focus on the craft rather than changing myself completely for people who would always try to find something wrong.

The mockery didn’t stop outside of the conservatory’s doors. Oftentimes, I would run into someone who would try to negatively impact my drive toward success. “If you don’t come from money or know someone in the industry, it’s going to be hard for you,” some would say. “If you don’t sleep with someone, you’re going nowhere.” I was told that a few times. But I was determined.

Pain and struggle weren’t new to me. I didn’t grow up dirt poor, but my family was frugal. We were the typical blue-collar, middle-class family that makes up most of America. I was taught to work and save at a young age, and regardless of my upbringing, I knew that I would be my only limit. 

No one in America is forced to work, but it’s obvious that if you want to live a comfortable lifestyle, you have to. It was absurd to me to overhear fellow classmates complaining about having to work when I was juggling multiple jobs by choice. I wanted to make enough money to focus on my craft. And when I had a job that I felt didn’t suit me anymore, I would leave. We all have the freedom of choice. 

On the contrary, I met many who would milk the system. They would make sure they made under a certain amount of money so they could get the benefits of welfare. Instead, I just worked more so that I could take home more. I will never forget the security guard at a lounge where I once waited. “When I get tired of this, I’m going to try something new,” she told me. You are not married to a job unless you choose to be.

I won’t give in to the idea of being oppressed in America in 2022. Everything is within arm’s reach. My ancestors worked in coal mines, and the concept of pursuing a career in the arts seemed like more of a vacation than a career to my family. Yet I persevered. “Making it big” is a distorted idea that is set to crush our heart’s desires. For me, living comfortably in an artistic career and having a flexible schedule to be with those who I love is more than enough. I never wanted to be a millionaire. But in America, that’s possible.

It’s possible to be self-made through drive and talent alone. A friend of mine from Europe once remarked that in her home country, she wouldn’t be able to get a job without a degree. In America, there are many jobs that take experience into greater consideration. It’s easy for bitter people to knock the idea of an American Dream, but the idea of it is dependent on where our spirit lies. 

I could believe that I was doomed to fail because I didn’t grow up in privilege. Failure is also a concept that we create through romanticizing how we wish to exist. Some think the idea of not failing means not worrying about money, and some think that it means a collection of awards. Others see it as a spiritual concept that is between God and us. 

A life of ease without growth can actually be more destructible. The route we take in life is based on how far we all want to go. There will be roadblocks, but no one owes us directions to a detour. And as I learned after many auditions, no one owed me an explanation about why I didn’t get the job. It is not until we give up the idea that we should never have to struggle that we will finally be free. 

How I Moved to New York and Survived as an Actress

Journalists are known for being thick-skinned, taking no nonsense and being fearless in the face of everything they report on—after all, it comes as part and parcel with the job description, so it must be true, right? But there are different types of journalists and writers within the realm of the media, and not all of us are completely fearless and as thick-skinned as one might initially imagine. So what happens when a journalist, thick-skinned or thin, is named, shamed and called out for simply doing their job? Staff writers who work at various international news outlets and publications know all too well what I and many others have been through and continue to go through. And as an entertainment reporter like myself, who reports on high-profile celebrities, there is a risk that you might write something that they don’t like.

I wrote an article not too long ago about a well-known celebrity that later left me questioning my career and wondering if I was the ethical journalist I pride myself on being. The article was assigned to me and was based on some tweets that the celebrity had published on Twitter. Fair and balanced, I wrote the piece and ensured it adhered to everything it needed to. The piece then went through legal—a process where the article gets read by a solicitor, who will then recommend any changes to make, ensuring it’s legally sound and won’t get the publication into hot water. After about half an hour, my editor informed me all was OK, and the piece was published. 

Shortly after, I was hit with a barrage of hate messages telling me what a bad journalist I was. This was the first time anything like this had happened to me, and I felt shaken to my core. I then realized that the celebrity had named and shamed me online: This was when I knew that I wasn’t as thick-skinned as I had first thought I was. Tears trickled down my face, and an overwhelming feeling of sadness washed over me because I had been called out, hit with hate and left in the gutter for simply doing my job. 

Devastated that I might have done something wrong and feeling as though I should pack in the career I had worked for so long to forge out for myself, I couldn’t fathom how hopeless I felt from one single action. Luckily, my team backed me all the way, and after blocking the necessary accounts, everything blew over and all was OK in the end—but that didn’t and still doesn’t stop my nerves from creeping up on me whenever I have to write about that celebrity again.

The thing is, it seems that celebrities don’t realize that we’re only doing our job and that behind the byline, we’re real people too. Recently, I've seen more and more colleagues of mine get “dragged” and trolled online by celebrities and their online fans because they didn’t like an article that was written about them. It seems that these people have completely forgotten that just like them, we have feelings too.

Recently, I saw that a journalist I know and work with was hit with blistering criticism after they wrote a piece about another high-profile celebrity and TV star. They were doing their job and simply writing something that they had been told to—their photo and name were plastered across the internet and a hate campaign was launched against them. Knowing exactly what they were going through, I could sympathize with the emotions they were feeling because I had been there. And I often see other journalists and writers I know being targeted with hate online by the celebrities they write about simply because of articles they have been asked to write.  

Being a journalist or staff writer at an online publication means you’re writing newsworthy pieces in order to attract traffic to the publication’s website and, more often than not, writing what you’re told. Staff writers also don’t necessarily pick their own headlines, either, which will no doubt surprise many. If the journalist knows the publication well, their headline might stay, but headlines can also get tweaked to improve clickability—meaning it might not be worded how writers had imagined, which sometimes happens. We are given a list of articles that need to be written, often based on other articles online, tweets, Instagram posts or magazine clips—and then we have to write them up, adhering to relevant media law and publishing guidelines, as well as the publication’s house style. There are some quite rigorous laws and guidelines to follow as a journalist, and not doing so can have big repercussions for yourself or the publication you write for. Obviously, everything is written because it’s in the public’s interest, and this is what keeps websites and newspapers ticking over. But most of everything staff journalists write is written because it will do well for the website, driving traffic and readers and, in turn, keeping them employed. 

Celebrities need to understand that if they’re putting themselves in the spotlight, releasing books, press releases, appearing on TV shows and using social media platforms to air their views, then they’re likely going to be written about because after all, that is the job of a journalist. Staff writers and journalists have feelings and emotions, too, and we don't always choose our own headlines or pick out the stories we want to write. I have become accustomed to trolling a little more now and think my skin has thickened over time, which doesn’t make me as mad as I had imagined it would. In fact, it’s probably improved the way I do my job and given me more of a voice to speak my mind—but that doesn’t mean it’s OK for people to troll us. We have a job to do and we do it—and dealing with trolls shouldn't be part of the job description.

As a Journalist, I’ve Been Trolled Online: This Is Why It Needs to Stop

Ever since I was a kid, being in a sitcom has always been my dream. Making people laugh is my forte, and to do it for the masses, well, what a gift that would be. It wasn't until I was in my mid-30s that I decided to move to Los Angeles and pursue my ambition for acting.

L.A. isn't a cakewalk, and it sure as hell isn't cheap to reside there. I held numerous jobs while auditioning for roles, and I very quickly learned I didn't know a lot about show business at all. What I did know was I needed to be on sets to see how everything worked, and there were two easy ways to get on them: being a production assistant or an extra.

When you're a production assistant, you work closely with all aspects of the crew and behind the scenes while being treated like garbage and getting paid pennies. It's very common that production assistants are actors as well, trying to make it in La La Land. Being an extra is a pubic hair better than working as a production assistant, but it’s still clown work.  

Throughout my time working on sets, however, there’s been one common refrain: “You need to be in SAG-AFTRA.” 

“Are you part of the actor’s union, SAG?”

“You'll never make it anywhere in this business if you aren't in SAG.”

A workers union, historically, is meant for people to work as one, united to make the job better. It promotes superior benefits, proper raises and safer work environments. It's for the people, by the people—and I do know a handful of folks who have benefited extremely from a union. So when I heard these questions, I thought, well hell, let's join the union!  

Well, you get invited to movie screenings with the stars of the movies. You get health benefits. SAG-AFTRA sends you movies to watch that aren't out yet on DVD (who has a DVD player?).

You receive higher wages for work. There’s better food on set. You get taken seriously in auditions. And you get to take free acting classes through SAG. 

As I had only been working as a non-union actor, this was all very appealing to me.

If you're a union member, you get treated a lot better than if you're non-union. Here are some examples: Non-union actors get fed food that's almost inedible. Non-union actors sit in the sun, while union actors hang in the shade. Non-union actors change in the middle of parking lots, while union actors have designated areas to change their costumes. The production staff will scold non-union actors for needing to use the restroom, while union actors actually have easy access to them.  

I was booked as a non-union background actor on Ryan Murphy's The Prom, starring Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman and James Corden. It was three weeks before Christmas, and I had booked two weeks of filming, which was going to give me enough money to travel home to see my family for the holiday.  

On the first day, I worked with Meryl and James. Meryl was so lovely! She reminded me of my crazy theater teacher, Miss Palmer, back in my freshman year of high school. But James Corden was a supreme douche lord that carried a huge chocolate chip on his shoulder and always had a bag of Cheetos in his hand.

Usually, non-union actors don't get picked to do intimate scenes, but I was chosen by production and got to act with both of them. I had been eating non-union food, so when I was shuffled into the union area, the options for union actors were blindly different: lobster, crepes, sparkling water—and plenty of it. Not chips, Twinkies and doughnuts.

I filmed my scene and left feeling euphoric having worked with such a legend as Meryl. Then, I got a text from my agency that said they had cut the rest of my days on the show because they saw me too much and couldn't have me anywhere else in scenes. If I had been a SAG member, the production wouldn't have been able to do that—or, at least, they would have had to pay me for the missed work.

I wasn't able to go home to see family that year, and that still pisses me off to this day.

So yes, how the hell do I sign up for SAG?

Oh, well, you can't just sign up. You have to land a regular speaking part on a show or movie and production will assist you in signing up. If you're a background actor, you have to work and beg for a union voucher that's almost next to impossible to get, the equivalent to a Willy Wonka golden ticket. You need three of them in order to be eligible to join.

On sets, they only have a specific number of SAG actors versus non-union actors. And only SAG members get the union vouchers since, duh, they’re in the union. If you end up getting one, it's an act of Zeus because someone got sick and you were standing in the right place at the right time. Even that day on The Prom, I was treated like a union member with The Iron Lady and James dumb-shit, and I still didn't get a union voucher for that work. 

After two years in Hollywood, I finally received my first voucher on an anthology titled Into the Dark. The day I worked on a SAG voucher, I made a little above minimum wage. It wasn't until another year that I received my next two vouchers and became eligible to join. Oh yeah, one other requirement to join is $3,100 paid on the spot, through a loan with a bank or in six installments. If you choose the installments, you pay monthly, and the first payment is $1,026.79. The rest are $415.94. I chose the installment route because I didn't want to do a loan and I didn't have $3,100 lying around in an offshore account.

At that time, I had been working on Impeachment: American Crime Story consistently as a regular background actor, all the while doing hair in a blow-dry bar, so I thought I could manage with the payments. But Impeachment stopped booking a month after I made my first payment to SAG, and I started to struggle. My hair job was also struggling because we were in the middle of a pandemic where clients, to save money, started doing their hair themselves. Can you blame them?

I reached out to SAG to let them know my predicament, and it took days for them to get back to me. The response was what I feared. There was nothing they could do; I had already signed up.

I had some money in savings, but after a couple more months of payments, cocktailed with L.A. rent, bills and gas, I was broke. What in the actual fuck was I thinking? If SAG-AFTRA had a Yelp page, I'd give it one star. 

I'm sure you're like, "Well, why did you sign up?" I ask myself this a lot. I'm not usually a hopeful person, but I had hope that if I signed up and joined the union, my acting career would take off. Casting would take me more seriously and, to be honest, I thought SAG itself would be more helpful. My $3,100 balance was paid off, only to be met with annual dues that had to be paid. So I wasn't officially a member for another five months because I just simply didn't have the money. 

I haven't given up on my dreams of being an actor, but I have put them on pause due to not being able to pay rent and being forced to vacate my L.A. apartment. I now reside in my mom's guest bedroom in central Texas. Yeehaw! 

I Joined the Actors Union and Became Broke

My mother and I create a diagonal line across Manhattan. She works on the Upper West Side; I’m on the Lower East. We are the custodians of two different theaters, looking after the city’s creative class in their pursuit of culture. Uptown, my mom is a matron for a hallowed institution of music, song and dance. You may be able to guess it. Downtown, I work in the box office of an art-house cinema. Most days, we cater to empty seats. Airborne viruses, streaming services and the hypnotic doomscroll have made our jobs nearly obsolete. We wait on standby for the stray customer. At night, we swap stories. 

These days, theaters stay alive by doubling as event spaces. Premieres are their bread and butter. This is when the funniest things happen, like the time my mom recognized Liv Tyler but couldn’t quite place her, so she asked her what she did. Actress or model? Being a 65-year-old woman, standing 4 feet 11 inches with a loose grip on the English language, makes it easy for her to get away with rudeness. 

Or the time I had diarrhea in the single-stall bathroom at a private screening moments before I directed Anna Wintour to use it. This is what's funny about living in New York: You live close by to everything you see in magazines and on TV. But also so far away.

Of all the customers we tend to, celebrities are among the nicest. Their place in the hierarchy depends on the poor; they need our adoration. Like the time Zoe Saldaña gave my mom a kiss on the cheek for helping her with a dress malfunction in the bathroom. Or the time Maggie Gyllenhaal winked at me as I passed her a microphone at a Q&A. When rich civilians step out to see a movie, it’s also to display their wealth. The trust fund kids of today have dropped the “poor hipster” act of the past. Being rich is cool again. Oh, but who am I to make these statements about money? I’ve never had enough of it to know anything about it. One time, my mother found a gold ring in her bathroom and brought it home for me. I pawned it for groceries.

Sometimes, I’m jealous. I wish I could own this person’s Rick Owens boots or that girl’s Prada wallet. I am not immune. What’s humiliating is that I would probably flaunt my wealth, too, if I had any. So if I can’t own beautiful things then I’ll look at beautiful things. A movie ticket is cheaper than a plane ticket. This is what drew me to movies first and, later, the box office. When you work there, movies are free. You can go anywhere you like, privately or with a companion. Even if you’re alone, there are other hearts beating along with you. I like facilitating this for others. The printing of tickets, the smell of popcorn, the sweep between the aisles as the credits roll. This makes it worthwhile. 

Until it doesn’t. Until you have to spend an hour’s pay on lunch. Until my mother’s tendinitis makes her feet swell from standing all day. Many of cinema’s greatest achievements depict the poor and disenfranchised, largely catering to an educated, affluent audience. The suffering of many becomes entertainment for the very few. It is called Art.

Is empathy in movies a way to wash away class guilt? Maybe. Cinema is a medium that depends on compassion. It also depends on your looking away from the exploitation that seems to be inherent in filmmaking: The overworked and underpaid production assistant. The actor reenacting their trauma. The audience member who pays to watch. The box office employees with empty stomachs. The matrons who aren’t allowed to sit down.

Since starting this story, I’ve been fired for reasons that don’t fit into this essay. But if you Google "labor across theaters in New York," I think you’ll be able to guess why. I’m angry. I wasn’t the only one who was fired and definitely not the poorest. Although my bank account regularly floats below a hundred dollars, I have my mother. She tells me not to be sad. One should only be sad when good things end. She asks me to watch a movie with her to cheer me up. I find a torrent of Parallel Mothers, starring Penélope Cruz and directed by Pedro Almodóvar. 

While we’re watching, my mom tells me she was working the night it premiered and that she met Penélope in the bathroom. She told Penélope about the love we share for her films. Our favorite is Volver. Penélope squeezed my mother’s arm and said, “Hold on to each other.”

My Mother and I Wait on New York’s Wealthiest and Most Famous Art Patrons

Thanks to the release of the Oscar-winning film Belfast, people have started to turn their attention to Northern Ireland and gained insight into the national trauma that was The Troubles. For two generations of my ancestry, The Troubles was a very real and personal trauma, and the scars of that conflict remain to this day.

The film, which was awarded Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards in March, is an autobiographical look into filmmaker Kenneth Branagh’s working-class Belfast family life during the advent of The Troubles. It tells the story of the historical conflict through the eyes of a young boy, was described by Branagh as a search for “hope and joy in the face of violence and loss.” 

From the 1960s until the peace agreement in 1998, my parents and grandparents’ lives were shaped similarly by the political conflict, which pitted Catholics against Protestants and led to never-before-seen bloodshed in the region. In total, The Troubles resulted in around 3,500 deaths and some 50,000 injuries. While Catholic nationalists fought for an independent Ireland liberated from British rule, Protestant unionists defiantly sought to demonstrate their allegiance to the U.K.

My grandfather served as a Royal Ulster Constabulary police officer over the course of The Troubles. It was arguably one of the most dangerous positions to be in during that time, as some 319 RUC officers were murdered and 9,000 injured by the Irish Republican Army (IRA). By 1983, Northern Ireland was the world’s most dangerous place to serve as a police officer, twice the rate of even the second-most dangerous country, El Salvador. 

All of which resulted in my grandfather witnessing his fellow colleagues getting gunned down by the enemy, and himself descending into depression and alcoholism as he contemplated his own mortality every single day.

At the very start of his career in the late 1960s, my grandfather experienced such violence firsthand, as his police station was ambushed by the IRA one night while he served on duty. He was shot six times during the surprise raid, and barely escaped with his life. After being rushed to hospital, he met my grandmother who was working there as a nurse at the time. And the rest, as they say, is history.

But in spite of all of that, on his 90th birthday, my grandfather sat in his armchair and reflected on his life. “I hold no hate in my heart for what they did to me in 1968,” he said. A generation later, my parents lived under the same reign of terror.

The two religious groups were so divided that my then eight-year-old mother passed Friesian cows in a field one day and asked her mother whether they were Protestant or Catholic. They must have belonged to one of the two sides, she thought, because everyone else did. Such a naive perspective is something which Belfast achieves with both heart-breaking and eye-opening effect. 

In the film, nine-year-old protagonist Buddy has difficulty understanding the conflict, and relies on his parents to educate him about the turmoil going on around him. Such exchanges are endearing, but successfully illustrate the senselessness of the violence which has destroyed this young boy’s home.

As my mother matured, so too did her understanding of the conflict and the atmosphere in which she lived. She recalls, at 17, sitting in her car in her driveway and praying that she would be spared as she turned on the ignition. It was an all-too-real fear that a bomb would have been planted under the car to kill her police-officer father. In her younger years, she had grown completely accustomed to walking past army trucks on her way to school and being searched before walking into Sunday school or the supermarket.

On the other side of the city, my father also experienced the trauma of The Troubles. Very rarely would he speak about what he witnessed, but when he did, it was clear the memories of the conflict had stayed with him long after the conflict ended. While working in central Belfast, he witnessed a car explosion one Tuesday morning on his way to the office. 

An RUC officer and his girlfriend had been targeted, and my 28-year-old father saw the couple catapulted through the roof of their vehicle as the bomb detonated without warning. My father rushed over to assist the pair before emergency services tended to the scene. He only started to believe what had happened when he saw the incident being reported on the 10 p.m. news later that day. 

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