Book of D: Can We Really Go Home Again? The Real World, New York Can—and Did

Okay, I'm doing this, I am going to write about the MTV series of my generation that started a craze within the reality tv genre. The 1992 inaugural season of The Real World, New York, which will forever be my favorite season, not only made reality tv popular, but it defined a generation. According to historians and social science pundits, The Real World “reimagined the long-form documentary format for television.” There are many reasons why I fell in love with the docuseries. One reason was that during the early 90s, we had not seen anything like it before. It was compelling and organic. At least I think it was. It was supposedly “unscripted,” but we will never really know if it was or not. We were reality-tv virgins, per se, so it did not matter if it was scripted or not. The characters were all interesting nonetheless; each person different with so much to contribute, whether we viewers liked them or not. Regardless of what each person brought to the reality series or what their personalities were, we viewers were enthralled.

So, in watching TRW Homecoming series, I have been taken back into time sans an Einstein-Rosen Bridge or time machine. I have been allowed to remember what I was doing during the times the respective season(s) of TRW aired. I have also been forced to ponder that back in the 90s, my own world was hindered with attributes of prejudice and malformed worldviews. There was no synesthesia, nothing was black or white; everything was muddled. Those were the times: everything and everyone was somewhat corrupted, and seldom did anyone take time to be an upstander, including yours truly. I like to think of myself as an upstander these days. I facilitate bystander intervention at the local university for goodness’ sake, and I am an LPC-I trained to be self-aware of biases, but am I truly “woke”? Hardly. I have a lot of growing and learning to do. I have revisited the Real World, New York scenes that were extremely controversial in 1992 and should still be provocative in 2022. 

Most of the scenes included Kevin Powell, Becky Blasband, and Julie Gentry. I won’t include their bios; Google them if you aren’t familiar with them. I remember being scared when Becky and Julie were in arguments with Kevin; mostly, I was scared of Kevin, and I wanted the castmates to vote to kick him out of the house. Not being “woke” to racism back then, I just viewed Kevin, apparently like most of racist America did, too, as an “angry black man.” Looking at episodes now, I see from where Kevin was coming, and how he was fighting for equality and equity in a world that was demeaning toward and killing black people. Moreover, I see how privileged Becky and Julie were back then (and still are to this day) as white females; plus, both women came from well-off families, so add that to their entitled lives. My views were marred back then because I was not educated in the area of racism and bigotry. It is now 2022, and as a female, person-of-color (P.O.C.) in the twenty-first century, I am versed in how racism is tearing our country apart at the very fabric of the freedoms it was originally created to provide (freedoms but for whom?). I’d like to think that my fear of angry men like Kevin was because of the fear my ex-husband embedded in me by his verbal, physical, and emotional abuse, but that would be a much-too-easy way out for my ignorant behavior back then. I will forever regret looking at Kevin in such a terrible manner in the 90s. I have been a victim of racism, classism, sexism, and heterosexism for the last three decades. I am sure I have victimized others along the way via some sort of "ism." For all the crap I put out into this often vulgar and pungent world, I am remorseful, and I will continue learning and teaching about biases, prejudices, and inequalities; finally able to accept culpability for my own shortcomings. Everyone should have a homecoming, if anything, to examine their own "wokeness."

New York Cast: Norman Korpi, Julie Gentry, Becky Blasband, Kevin Powell, Andre Comeau, Heather Gardner and Eric Nies.