“Mr. Mitchell, how do we access the punk?”
That’s what a student asked at Emerson College in Boston after a recent screening of “Shortbus,” my 2006 film, which chronicles a real-life bohemian New York City art and sex salon scene that flourished before most of the college-age viewers in the hall were born. When the film was rereleased a few years ago, I sensed that members of this younger, judgier generation loved it but felt: There’s got be something to cancel about it! Last year a young woman asked me if the story of an Asian woman, the protagonist of “Shortbus,” seeking an orgasm was “my story to tell.” I replied, trying not to sound defensive, “Through the alchemy of writer and performer, it became our story to tell.” She smiled, but only with her mouth.
This year’s students felt different: more scared, more open, potentially more radical? They know they need new skills to confront the very real possibility of a post-democratic America. In other words, they need to find their sense of punk. And I was here to help.
I self-booked (I used to be a tour de force; now I’m forced to tour) a 14-college speaking tour for this spring semester, armed with my films “Shortbus” and “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and my newer podcast sitcom, “Cancellation Island,” in which Holly Hunter plays the founder of a rehab for canceled people. It satirizes a form of mob justice that quickly breaks down in the face of the existential threat of Hurricane Taylor — renamed Hurricane Beyoncé, “in the spirit of impending diversity.” I played excerpts; the professors laughed too loudly while the students appeared politely confused.
The tour kicked off after President Trump’s second inauguration, and the professors who’d invited me were in a panic. They were risking their jobs to discuss the arrests of student protesters and funding threats, but they also found it difficult to talk about the disunity that’s resulted from a well-intentioned culture that has fetishized a progressive purity not found in nature and sought to slice us up into ever more specific identities carefully ranked by historical oppression. As one professor whispered to me, “We did Trump’s work for him: divided ourselves so he could conquer.” After all, you can’t cancel an aspiring despot.
I found myself looking out at faces still shining with hope and I was touched. Hope comes naturally to the young, but these students felt old. Screens and lockdowns had left them with hummingbird attention spans, spotty memories, an obsession with self-diagnosis and a fondness for slippers in winter. Don’t even mention dating or — gasp — sex when the simple act of looking into someone else’s eyes provokes anxiety. But what could they do? Give up their phones and the corporate-controlled, like-driven culture, which is all they’ve ever known? Silent scream emoji!
That’s when I was reminded of what I learned from 18 years of military upbringing (socialism for rednecks featuring free health care), 45 years of theater and film (authoritarianism for liberals with not much health care) and an introduction to queer activism in the time of AIDS (anarchism for all in an attempt to save lives). I’ve come to believe that D.I.Y. collective action — specifically, the punk variety — might be our only way through the darkness.
