Lenses

Despite the Fire Safety Day video debacle, my parents let me consume any media I wanted. In fact, the combination of my mother rebelling against her strict upbringing, my dad’s chaotic upbringing, and the lax parenting of the 1980s, meant that I was free to do pretty much whatever I wanted whenever I wanted (as long as I kept my grades up).

Additionally, from a young age, I had no set bedtime. We often ate dinner at 8 or 9 PM. My mother said as long as I could get up in the morning, she didn’t care when I went to sleep. I watched the nightly news, adult shows like Cheers, and the weird cutting edge animation of MTV’s Liquid Television. Once in bed, I’d often still stay up reading, listening to the radio, or watching the giant brown-paneled television in my room.

This constant stream of media meant I often viewed my life through the lens of a television screen. Honestly, I still do. It’s not that I was paranoid or thought I was in a Truman Show (see?) situation, always being watched. But I often play to an invisible camera, a la Jim from The Office (see??). Once it was developmentally appropriate, I understood the difference between fiction and reality. But I always emphasized with fictional characters as deeply as real people. And the reverse of that was seeing myself as a character, too.

Later, much later, in grad school, I latched on to the idea that everything we do is performative. Every outfit is a costume, every facial expression a mask. I could more easily compartmentalize and just survive. That steady media diet led to a steady feeling of always being in a narrative, both observer (of myself) and observed (by myself). Somewhere under all those layers was a person, but mainly I was a ghost.

But returning to my kindergarten self, to that bedroom with green shag carpet and tons of stuffed animals and plastic dinosaurs. The freedom my parents gave me was often exhilarating. But. I watched Tim Burton’s Batman in kindergarten and The Joker gave me nightmares and I still rewatched it every time it was on HBO. The Joker replaced the faceless man who stood in my bedroom, next to my dresser. Maybe it was comforting that he now had a face, a personality. “Oh, it’s just that guy,” I could tell myself.