Let’s say you agree to take part in reality TV (it’s not an experience I highly recommend), you’ll be asked to sign a contract forbidding any public statement about what happened during the show.
You might want to say all kinds of things about that show. You might, for example, have felt tricked into participating — crucial information might have been withheld so that your consent was not informed. The format might have been manipulated to introduce arbitrary rule changes, seemingly on-the-hoof, or escalate contrived drama. I’m sorry, but you will now be expected to both put up AND shut up.
Thaaaaat’s Entertainment, folks!
You will do your best with the format and the rules, but you will have to understand that the dice are loaded. If you are, for example, someone who speaks up for human rights or likes to fact-check disinformation, your entertainment value is rather less than that of Turkeys Voting For Christmas and other contrarians.
The revolution will not be televised
TV has an insatiable appetite for migrants opposed to migration, gay people opposed to gay marriage, right-wing journalists of mixed race who think racism is just a bit of a laugh, guys who think they’re experts on the sexuality and beliefs of asylum seekers because they’ve stood outside their accommodation and studied them (probably whilst wielding a pitchfork) and women who absolutely insist on being defined solely in relation to their genitals and reproductive capacity. Radio and what’s left of the papers prefer Hermès handbag-clutching Stepford Wives who consider every public office except the Presidency to be beneath their attention, crusty aul’ lads who want the bad roads back and religious fundamentalists who’ve lost every public debate of the past 30 years. If you don’t tick any of those boxes, they’ll probably find you surplus to requirements sooner, rather than later. But go ahead and give it your best shot – I know I did!
You will probably also find that the rules applying to you seem not to apply to the Christmas-loving turkeys. For example, you may hear that one of the turkeycocks has mentioned you on the platform formerly known as Twitter but now known mainly as a sewer of disinformation. The turkey will gobble excitedly about how you had the neck to “challenge” him on some gobbet of the anecdotal nonsense they dress up as “evidence” and imply you were unable to counter it, when the truth is you were given no opportunity to do so.
If you’re anything like me, you’ll pay no mind to the turkeycock. Nobody pays any attention to Twitter now, apart from the bots and the people whose main hobbies are scrawling slurs on ballot papers and setting fire to public transport. You’ll pay it no mind, but you’ll be grateful to the turkey also, because if the turkey is not contractually prohibited from comment, you surely aren’t either – and you will have quite a bit to say, by and by…
Beyond the media
I’m grateful to the (surprisingly large!) number of people who’ve told me they enjoyed my appearances on Dinner With The Enemy. I’m also grateful to every person who tries to carve out a bit of space in any medium for voices crying out for justice and human rights and dignity. I met some of those people during this experience.
I meet these people everywhere – in my work with homeless people, in my other life in rural Leitrim, on the train, on social media, wherever! Ireland (and the world) is full of decent people — people who know what’s happening in Gaza is genocide, that LGBTQ people deserve to live in peace, that nobody deserves to be assaulted or harassed for the colour of their skin, their religion, their gender identity or their sexual orientation.
These people understand that the concept of having enemies is a risk-free parlour game for some, but a matter of life and death for others. The fox and the hunter can be portrayed as equally-matched enemies engaged in a traditional “rural pursuit,” but only one of them will be dragged across the fields and torn limb-from-limb. The stakes are not equal.
We are many. But even when we prove it by going to the polls in large numbers to vote for bodily autonomy or for an equal right to marry and found a family, or when, despite non-stop smears, we vote for the candidate who speaks out against genocide and in favour of human rights, the media and entertainment industry are still much more interested in the handful of people who smear their shit, sometimes literally, on the ballot paper. Somehow, they’re always more interesting than people like us.
But we are many and we will continue to find ways, both new and old ways, to make our voices heard. Onwards and upwards!
Izzy Kamikaze is a veteran LGBTQIA+ activist and one of the founders of Dublin Pride and Northwest Pride.
Featured image via YouTube – Screenshot
