James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room is a story of a white male’s navigations through his own feelings and identity in terms of his sexuality. Not ever fully confronting his love for men, or his desire for women as well, we trace the unbecoming of David, our American foreign in Paris, France. Baldwin states that he chose to make his protagonist white because he could not have tackled a novel that dealt with both homosexuality and being black because it would have been too large a task for him to undertake.
However, someone is now trying to tackle both monoliths simultaneously – and surprise! She’s a black woman.
Issa Rae, star of HBO’s hit show, Insecure, is co-releasing a show with Travon Free about the dating life of a black, bisexual man. The name of the show is fittingly Him or Her. Though the show has not even been released yet, there is already backlash from both heterosexual and black communities about the nature of the show.
Her co-star, Travon Free, is a bisexual black man. He says “From the time I began to develop a [bisexual] sexuality up until the age of about 20, my life felt like oil in a world made of water… The two don’t mix very well if at all”. Wanting to dispel myths that bisexual men are greedy or secretly gay, Free took on this show with Rae.
However, not many people are too excited about it. On the shade room, featured in a “clap back” session, Rae responds to an instagram post saying:
Another instance of resistance is a comment from twitter saying: “The black male community dont want that fruity ass show bruh. Keep it. Take thay gay shit to the gay network”
What I find particularly interesting is how Baldwin did not want to take on black homosexuality as a topic due to the backlash he might receive and yet 62 years later, there is still a hesitant push back from communities about exploring a subject such as this. Baldwin’s novel may have paved the way for Rae’s show to be approved on HBO’s services, yet there is a stark difference – a novel about a young homosexual white man may be a Great American Novel while a TV show featuring a black homosexual is being demeaned for “ruining the black community” of being part of a “white agenda”.
Both medias seek to pursue the inner-workings of a marginalized group of people in America, and yet despite being half a decade apart, both are resisted forms of expressing the humanity of a specific kind of person.
However, this is not the first kind of show with male/female gay characters…but it is the first featuring exclusively black gay characters. Will and Grace was on the air for eight seasons, and won 16 Emmy awards. The difference between the two? White is right.
This goes to show that Baldwin had ample reason to shy away from producing a novel that focused on a black man’s sexuality. Because if he had, it (arguable) would not be incorporated into being a GREAT American Novel.
No comments yet.