The GF had a late call tonight, so I had the ipad and watched a bit of I will destroy you. I think I am unused to watching anything on television, as I found myself looking at it rather than sinking into it, though I did start enjoying it partway through the second. Yet remained entirely unmoved by it, whereas I understand it’s quite the gut puncher. The main character, Arabella, is really compelling, though. I’ll keep watching it whenever I can, and hope to fall into it more.
It certainly seems reasonable that people on TV and film never seem to live a life I recognise as even slightly appealing. What I do find appealing, and what I live, would make for superbly tedious viewing. But I do wonder, do other people hang out and/or converse while using the toilet as much as these shows seem to suggest? Or is it just one of those conventions to show characters at ease with being together or something?
Apropos of nothing at all, certainly nothing contemporary, I wonder if young Pakistanis are more open and welcoming of LGBT stuff than earlier generations. I think probably not (at least – there is probably a divide here between burgers and non-, but the latter are in greater numbers and are more conservative than those with equivalent voice used to be), but maybe there is hope for a future generation. Certainly, I feel that young upper class men from socially liberal backgrounds are probably less homophobic than their equivalents when I was growing up. And the young women too. And once when I was about 14 or 15, someone said something pejorative about homosexuality and I protested, without thinking about it, ‘there’s nothing wrong being being gay!’ And that felt at the time like something so transgressive to say, something I should not have voiced aloud in that atmosphere of mild feminine disapproval, even as I realised that I had blurted it out because I could not think of any reason why there should be anything wrong with it. It was a funny sort of bind to be caught up in, and not one that my equivalents today in Lahore would be troubled with, I think. A year or two later I was applying for university and an uncle took me to one side and advised me very seriously not to apply to a women’s college in the US, lest I become a lesbian. I remember staring at him, dumbfounded. Had I been a more interesting or courageous person I would have challenged him, but I stayed silent and applying to Bryn Mawr anyway.
While I am fairly sure that that uncle holds the same views today, I am also fairly sure that of the dozen or so girls I remember from that school corridor, at least one is gay and no more than one is a homophobe. So that’s something.