Today's Young People Need to Learn How to Be Punk
'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.
I told the students stories. My hero was my father, a closeted bisexual Army major general who, in the 1990s, argued in favor of gays in the military by reminding people that they've always been there. Yes, the military vibe could be depressingly macho, but it's also about having your buddies' backs, no matter their gender, sexuality or race. I spoke about the subject of my new play, Claude Cahun, a French Jewish Surrealist who, with her partner, Marcel Moore, broke into a church at night during the Nazi occupation and put up a banner, reading: 'Jesus is great. But Hitler is greater. Because Jesus died for people — but people die for Hitler.' Voilà, punk!
I told them how I learned about punk in a 1990s downtown drag scene that was in no danger of landing brand deals for sponsored content. I recommended the 2012 documentary 'How to Survive a Plague,' which chronicles a particularly queer brand of AIDS activism that negotiated with Big Pharma (You may hate us, but if you save us you could make billions) while also taking to the streets to shame their greed with eye-catching art. (My favorite was 'Enjoy AZT,' which mimicked the Coca-Cola logo to protest the inflated cost of that imperfect but important early drug — and a lack of other, better options.) Protesters slipped a monster-size condom over the home of the monstrous homophobe Senator Jesse Helms and poured the ashes of fallen comrades onto the White House lawn. Now, that was punk.
'Your homework is to stop canceling each other, find out about punk, and get laid while you're at it,' I told them. 'Punk isn't a hairstyle; it's getting your friends together to make useful stories outside approved systems. And it's still happening right now, all over the world.' MAGA has adopted an authoritarian style of punk that disdains what Elon Musk calls our 'greatest human weakness,' empathy. But O.G. punk, while equally free of trigger warnings, is constructive and caring.
Above all, it's about community, whether it's pro bono legal work, food banks, neighborhood gardens or, in New Orleans, where I mostly live, second line parades, which everyone is welcome to join. The city maintains strong traditions of storytelling, hospitality and neighborhood engagement. When a hurricane comes, you'd better know your damn neighbor! Well, Hurricane Trump has made landfall, and the president has convinced us that all facts are suspect except the ones he likes. But when all news is fake, all stories are true, and they might be the last tools we have to convince one another of anything at all.
So, how can all of us access the punk? Get in the room with other people (more D.I.Y. and I.R.L.). Embrace the analog, which can't be surveilled by artificial intelligence. Reach out to unexpected, even problematic (I prefer 'problemagic'), allies, with different but compatible definitions of justice. Luckily, kindness looks the same to most of us. And as you start making that useful thing, you might lock eyes with the person working at your side, and maybe this time you won't flinch. The walls of identity crumble in the face of our greatest human strength: empathy.
As the lights came up after the 'Shortbus' climax, which evoked the beauty of the great northeast blackout of 2003 (we thought we were all going to die, but we didn't), I spied more than one tear-stained face. 'Why are you crying?' I asked. Came the response: 'Because we just watched the youth we never had.'
I am rooting for these wonderful kids to find their own punk that, at worst, might make them feel less alone, and at best create real change. After the screening, an Emerson student approached me. What she said gave me the hope I was trying to give her: 'Mr. Mitchell, next time you see me, you're going to be proud.'
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