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[NQV] SF visit: 8/31/96 (8)
Saturday 8/31/96
(continued)
Rolland made a few introductory remarks (once again about the
ubiquitous issue of confidentiality) to start the workshop on
"Emotional & Practical Support" before showing two short videos
on PWAs: "Out in Silence" was a moving documentary on a black
woman's stoic and dignified experience with being HIV+, and "Not
a Simple Story" was a somewhat more diffuse examination of many
issues facing Asian PWAs in SF (represented by personal stories
of a middle-aged Chinese, a young Samoan, and a young Filipino,
among others), from coming out, family acceptance, activism, sex,
relationships, AIDS/HIV, old age, and approaching death. After
the videos (which took about 20 minutes), pieces of papers were
passed out for anonymous feedback (hence cleverly sidestepping
the issue of confidentiality with regards to the identity of the
respondent). They were collected and read aloud in alternating
turns by Rolland and Viet (both of whom took on remarkably solemn
demeanors, in stark contrast to their lively clowning during the
breaks! :-)) The responses were mostly positive and appreciative
of the sensitive and thoughtful presentation of the issues; a few
variably expressed fear and anger at the sadness of the situation;
and there were also a few personal tributes to people in the second
video who were real-life friends with the respondents. The power
of the videos was consistently recognized, even from those who had
already seen them several times. Alas, to spoil the show, there were,
however, two unexpected responses which provoked both laughter and
grimace from the audience -- and I would like to report on them here,
never mind the question of confidentiality because nobody knew who
the respondents were, and I'm not interested in identifying them
either, but to comment on the substance (or lack of it) of what
was said which I found particularly distasteful, if not thoughtless,
in view of the context of the workshop. Both of these responses
were apparently by women audience members -- and I don't care if
I'm guilty of breaking politically correct commandments of "thou
shalt not be sexist," and "though shalt not speak ill of thy fellow
queers" -- but I just found them to be so irresponsibly thoughtless
(or at best in such bad taste/humor) that I don't want to let them
pass without reprove anymore: instead of providing any comment on
the videos themselves, these female respondents publicly insulted
the attention and seriousness of the rest of the audience toward
this highly sensitive matter: they simply didn't bother to pay
attention attention to what was being shown because they were too
busy oogling a fellow female audience member (who was identified
by name in both responses, but who will remain unnamed in my report
here) who suddenly found herself the object of unwanted public
attention/recognition by a startled audience which could barely
diffuse its shock of surprise by roars of laughter. I do not wish
to act/sound holier-than-thou (if anything, I wish I could be as
brazen as these female respondents about oogling male objects of
desire who might catch my fancy, but alas, I'm too self-consious
for that, and would regrettably fail to approach many very nice
and apparently quite approacheable people there because I didn't
even have the guts to come up and say hello to them!), nor do I
wish to dicount the value of humor (but only when it's good humor
and in good taste), but this kind of response this completely out-
of-character for a discussion of AIDS/HIV issues: okay, it's still
possible to find comfort in laughing away the pain/suffering (as
shown by a number of classic AIDS-related plays which successfully
integrated humor into their treatment of the topic), but it's quite
another matter to make fun of something else in willful negligence
of the topic of discussion at hand when it happened to be such a
serious/grave topic as AIDS/HIV. It's beyond bad taste, and it
doesn't take a holier-than-thou person to recognize that it's NOT
FUNNY! At the end of the workshop, I turned over and mumbled to
chi Trang-Anh, only half-jokingly, "Gee, imagine if those remarks
were made by men! I'm surprised that the women seem to be such
rabble-rousers today ("qua^.y qua'"), the men will have a long way
to catch up with them!" Oh well, enough of my litany. On the whole
I did find the workshop helpful and thoughtful (in a clinical sort
of way), but this glitch somehow ruined it for me: no wonder the
Vietnamese are fond of saying, "a worm can ruin a whole pot of soup"!
(to be continued)
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