From left: Wilson Cruz, Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey.Photo:Getty
Getty
“I wanted to pay homage … to the power of what television is able to do in order to open up people’s minds," CruztoldPEOPLEin 2020.
Now in an exclusive guest essay for PEOPLE, Cruz, who currently stars onStar Trek: Discovery, discusses the importance of the Showtime seriesFellow Travelers,how the sweeping gay romantic drama hearkens back to the darker periods of LGBTQ+ history and how lessons from the past can be powerful tools to educate today’s young people.
Wilson Cruz has championed LGBTQ+ rights for nearly 30 years since starring in ‘My So-Called Life.'.Denys Ilic
Denys Ilic
Throughout the seriesFellow Travelers, we follow the lives of multiple diverse LGBTQ+ characters. Starting in the ‘50s with the Lavender Scare during the Army/McCarthy hearings through the ‘80s at the height of the AIDS epidemic, one character after another finds themselves fighting an internal battle between the shame they’d been taught to feel about themselves and the pride and love they inherently know and feel as Queer people. No one is born into this world feeling hate for themselves. That kind of debilitating self-hate is carefully taught in order to suppress and control a segment of society that has historically been maligned and oppressed for merely being who they are or for who they love. They are lessons based in ignorance and fear and they are lessons taught for the sole purpose of control. To quote Bell Hooks: “Shaming is one of the deepest tools of imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy, because shame produces trauma and trauma often produces paralysis.”
InFellow Travelers, we are witnesses to the ever-present shame that our heroes confront, whether in school and home as children and/or in culture, church or work life, as adults, we see how that shame manifests in the internal, the external and the interpersonal as it seeps into even the most tender and intimate moments. The shaming is and was the point.
So, it’s no wonder that when the modern LGBTQ rights movement began, our elders latched on to the word PRIDE to begin the deprogramming of all the lies and fears instilled in us. It’s ironic and yet, historically accurate that inFellow Travelers, it’s Noah J. Ricketts’ character, Frankie, a Black, gender non-conforming drag queen who, despite being the most marginalized of the core characters, completely embodies this spirit of rebellion, determination and Queer joy.
‘Fellow Travelers’ stars Matt Bomer, Jonathan Bailey, Allison Williams, Jelani Alladin and Noah J. Ricketts.Kurt Iswarienko/SHOWTIME
Kurt Iswarienko/SHOWTIME
Frankie stands tall and firm in their humanity and rejects any attempts to shame them. Frankie and the generation of Queer elders who took to the streets during and after the Stonewall Riots understood that the first step to true liberation had to begin with ourselves. The rejection of that indoctrination has been at the center of our struggle and it’s an effort that continues, even today… perhaps especially today.
It would be so easy to watchFellow Travelerstoday and think about how terrible life was for LGBTQ+ folks back then, but know this: when Christian Nationalists like Speaker of the House [Mike] Johnson, Governor [Ron] DeSantis and the most recent former President — and the leading contender for the Republican Party’s nomination for President of the United States — talk about making America great again, this is what they’re talking about. They are actively working to turn the clock back to a time when our shame kept us in closets, when a series like this wasn’t even allowed on our screens, a time when our relationships and our humanity were dismissed, a time when people, young and old, found it easier to take their own lives rather than imagine a life in which they could be who they are, love who they love and live up to their potential.
The fact is that they know what we know: when we are brave and proud and share who we are, who we love and our humanity, we inspire others to do the same. It has been through this education of society and of ourselves that we’ve effected the immense change we’ve seen in the last 50 years and rejected the shame that had been used to control us.
‘Fellow Travelers’ stars Jonathan Bailey and Matt Bomer.Courtesy of SHOWTIME
Courtesy of SHOWTIME
Fellow Travelers, though fictional, is a historical drama that illuminates a very real, fraught and harrowing time in our history that is seldom spoken of and of which very few people are aware. Christian Nationalists also know the power in learning this history and this is why we see such a concerted effort to erase us from the history that is taught, to burn our books and to censure our teachers, despite the overwhelming evidence of the benefit to all students, but especially LGBTQ+ students and young people. Even the attempt of erasure and censure sends a message to LGBTQ+ students and their heterosexual cisgender counterparts that these subjects are taboo and should only be discussed in whispers.
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Fellow Travelersairs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on Showtime.
source: people.com
