by George Takei
But part of the risk of carefully growing a cohesive online community is that the cohesion can prove illusory, giving way quickly in the face of divisive politics or beliefs. Although I was quite proud of them and knew that they could move many viewers to action, my endorsement videos were, shall I say, not welcomed by a certain percentage of my fan base. It didn’t matter that I had prefaced the first post as tactfully as I could imagine:
I did take the time, as I usually do, to read through a great deal of the comments below my posts. To my dismay, most of the 4000+ comments expressed on the first video expressed disappointment; indeed many were highly critical. Hundreds questioned how I could speak so passionately in the video about how my family was incarcerated in camps during World War II simply because we were of Japanese descent, yet support a President who had signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) — a provision in which grants him the very power of indefinite detention without trial that I had just condemned. For the record, I had blogged about my opposition to the NDAA earlier and was dismayed that the President had signed it. It had been passed by veto-proof majority of 93 out of 100 senators, which may explain but doesn’t excuse his signature.
So this wasn’t just a case of shaking the tree and having a lot of nuts fall down. Thousands of my fans on the opposite end of the political spectrum were genuinely upset and were citing valid concerns. While I was happy that my “push” on my Facebook page ultimately lifted the number of YouTube views on the first video to over 175,000, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d pulled a Sinead O’Connor on some lesser scale (you might recall, on Saturday Night Live Ms. O’Connor had ended a performance by ripping a picture of the Pope in half — a highly controversial statement that cost her significant goodwill with many fans, some of who began booing her at concerts).
But another part of me was upset that I had somehow managed to turn myself into some kind of Internet personality who wasn’t allowed to have real world opinions anymore. Every engaged adult citizen has the right to vote in this country, and all of us are supposed to be guaranteed freedom of speech. How could the Internet manage to censor, through public opprobrium, what the government itself had no power to silence? Was I to curtail my own outspoken nature in order to keep a portion of my fans on board?
It struck me that, in the minds of many fans, I am an actor and an entertainer, and it is therefore presumptuous of me to use whatever popularity I have to push a social or political agenda. This is why Richard Gere’s decision to talk about Tibet on the Oscars raised a collective sigh of exasperation. Actors aren’t any smarter than anyone else, so the thinking goes, they’re just more popular. But their fans made them popular so they could make movies and TV shows, not so they could lecture the world.
So let me be clear. I am an actor, yes, but I am also an activist. Indeed, the “golden” years of my life have been marked more by the latter than the former. As I write this book, I am starring in a musical called Allegiance which I consider my legacy project. Allegiance is set during World War II and the Japanese American internment, and it’s the first time such a story will be told on the Broadway stage. I want this story told because I want it remembered.
The internment, you see, was not just a Japanese American story; it was an American one. It was the U.S. Constitution that was violated by the detention of over 120,000 persons of Japanese decent, without charge or trial, and it was our nation’s promise of due process that was eviscerated. One of the reasons I believe Allegiance will succeed, where other internment stories have failed, is that it entertains as well as educates. It lifts the spirit, its music soars, and our hearts break together, actors and audience, as we participate in the story eight times a week.
I truly hope my social media work has the same ultimate effect. Sure, it’s primarily entertaining, but it’s also educational. I want people to not only laugh, but to think, to not only be inspired, but to participate. Fans may not always agree with me, but they will know I have an opinion, as will they, I’m sure. My Facebook page will remain a place where those opinions are hashed out freely and openly on the Internet.
About a week later, I released my second Obama endorsement video, joining with Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Jane Lynch, Wanda Sykes, Billie Jean King, Chaz Bono and Zachary Quinto in praising the administration for its strides forward on the question of LGBT equality. I told the story of how moved I was to hear the President say that he believed gays and lesbians should be allowed to marry. And I expressed my firm belief that we have to keep fighting for our rights, which means not supporting the party that would take us backwards — in this case, the Republican ticket.
It came as no surprise that this second endorsement video raised another hoopla, though smaller than the first. It seems my fan base is less surprised that I would endorse Obama on account of his stance on gay rights than on account of his support for the Asian American community. Or perhaps the fans have just gotten more used to me speaking my mind on a political matter. I began to feel a bit of what the candidates themselves must feel each time they take a position that threatens to alienate their base. Ultimately, you must take a position, and accept the consequences of that decision, even if it means losing some support. If people truly support you, they’ll come back around, and even hold their nose and vote for you (or in my case, reluctantly start clicking like and sharing my funnies again).
It may seem I’ve gone full circle, arguing that to build a fan base it has to be about them, but to reach them with any kind of message, you have to be willing to sometimes make it about you. I suppose in the end it’s all about the balance and the timing. Fans will forgive the occasional self-promotion (after all, it’s what’s selling this book) and even forgive the politics in a political season. As far as I can tell, few of my fans “unfollowed” me for the sin of expressing my opinion, and if they did, well, I hope they miss the laughs and come back. I’ll keep the light on for them.
Spider-man, Spider-man, George Takei should be Spider-man
I’ve come to understand, in a small way, the demands that humanity puts on its superheroes. Allow me to explain.
The producers of Allegiance approached me with the idea that we should do a video series called, “The Road to Broadway,” with me auditioning for various shows currently playing. I thought it sounded like a splendid idea. We were years away from our own Broadway debut, but I understood that to get there, we needed to build buzz early for the show. So I was all for it.
Then they told me that the first show I would make a video about was Spider-man: Turn Off the Dark. Now, if you haven’t been paying attention, Spider-man on Broadway is a multi-million dollar extravaganza that was plagued from the outset with numerous technical difficulties and injuries, some very serious. So I wasn’t sure how I was going to pull off my own Peter Parker. “Don’t worry,” they assured. “We’ll do everything on green screen, and we’ll have professional stunt people there to help.”
When I got to the sound studio, I learned that I would be spending much of my day in a body harness, dangling several feet off the ground. Now, this may not sound like that big of an ordeal, but try doing that after over seventy years spent with your feet mostly on the ground. I had done some of my own stunts for my appearances on NBC’s Heroes, including one where I had to lie on my stomach — on a body-form pedestal — nearly horizontally in mid-air with my arms and legs suspended by thin wires for quite some time, and I knew how exhausting it could be.
My Spidey costume was something our production assistant had purchased online as a one-size-fits-all, so to make it look like I wasn’t wearing a pillowcase, it had to be stretched taut around my arms and legs and safety-pinned in the back. Brad, who is used to dealing with such last-minute fixes, set out immediately to find some pins, while I practiced singing the theme song: “Spider-man, Spider-man, George Takei should be Spider-man!” I wanted to prove I really had the chops for a Broadway audition.
The truly hilarious moment came when they final
ly got the harness on me. It accentuated, shall we say, certain parts of my body that no one had expected. You see, the straps came under each leg right around the crotch and tended to push everything else forward.
When they lifted me up, there was an embarrassed silence for about five seconds before the entire team burst out laughing. It was decidedly absurd. But the producers loved it, so rather than adjust the harness (or get me some kind of dance belt), we decided instead to run with it, adding a line to have me say, “As you can see, I’ve got the whole package!”
There was another unexpectedly hilarious aspect of this. Once I was airborne, there was no way to predict which direction I would be facing. So I literally had to “swim” my way around to face forward. The mechanics of that were so awkward that, again, the producers decided to use it to underscore the absurdity of the shot.
The video (which you can see at allegiancemusical.com/Road-Broadway) has me fending off some super-villains, all of whom were played by the same volunteer (thank you, David Rae from Los Angeles). Because we were improvising the way the hoist was positioning me, the fight choreography was also something we had to invent on the spot, and given our budget, had to shoot again and again from different angles. Here are some of my favorite screen shots:
On occasion, the choreographers and our director (a talented young man named Ryan James Yezak who has made many terrific short films on behalf of the LGBT community) would consult on how to achieve the next sequence without killing or injuring me, forgetting that I was still dangling in the air above them. After a minute or two, I’d have to remind them with a gentle, “Can I please come down for a few?” (The crew later told me that I actually had been a terrific sport about it all, and that by comparison another better known actor who had recently worked with the crew, and who was known for his tough-guy image, would complain every few seconds about being left dangling. Let’s just say his name rhymes with Snarky Snark.)
I don’t think the world was quite ready to see me as Spider-man. When the video launched, nearly every major blog picked up the story, as well as much of the mainstream entertainment media. It wasn’t clear if this was so epic that it had to be seen…or so awful. Either way, the producers had hit upon a great combination — someone of my years going out for one of the most dangerous roles on Broadway. Nobody seemed to mind that it essentially was a gigantic advertisement for our show, done in an entertaining and subversive way. I still get fan mail asking whether I got the part. After all, as I told the viewers, not only do I have great vocals, I’ve got great insurance.
My second “Road to Broadway” video had me cross-dressing. I portrayed “Sister Mary Teriyaki,” and I was bent on crashing the set and joining the cast of Sister Act on Broadway.
Of course, we shot the whole thing in Los Angeles, and edited in footage (actually from the London production of Sister Act) to make it look like I was there. Ah, the magic of green screen!
While this shoot proved to be far less technically demanding than Spider-man (I didn’t have to spend any time in a body harness), I had to brush up on my vocals. To sing the part in the show’s signature number “Raise Your Voice,” I had to memorize a real tongue-twister of a lyric: “Laudamus te; benedicimus te; adoramus te; glorificamus te.…” Try saying that a few times fast. And I had to do this trying not to laugh at how I looked in a wimple.
The producers also wanted me to show off my deep bass at the end of the video by shattering a glass, solely using my voice. No really, that’s what they wanted. Of course, it was all a big stunt. They had provided me with a prop “magic” glass which I held in my hand, and which I could shatter with just the slightest pressure. I was assured it posed no danger to me, but it was still a challenge to make it appear as if the vibrations of my voice alone did the work. So I let loose with a deep “aaaaaaah” and broke the sucker — and we got it all in one shot. Oh, Maaaary!
I haven’t had a chance to do a third video, but I’m looking forward to what the producers select. Perhaps I should play a missionary for The Book of Mormon or don an animal mask for The Lion King.
Apart from my “Road to Broadway” series, I’ve also enjoyed doing what I call “public service announcement” videos. Back in the day, on Jimmy Kimmel Live, I called out NBA star Tim Hardaway for his homophobic remarks by facetiously threatening to have gay sex with him. I suppose that set the stage for my future videos that lampooned other anti-gay individuals. My favorite among these was my “It’s OK to be Takei” piece.
A bit of background. A bill proposed in the Tennessee Legislature by Representative Stacey Campbell would have prohibited the teaching in elementary schools of even so much as the existence of homosexuality. The bill was quickly dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill because it proscribed even the very mention of gay people. To me, this was not only an egregious violation of equal rights, but also a suppression of the right of free speech. It was premised on the misguided belief that gay people could be silenced, and made to disappear, if no one could talk about us. Inherent in its sweep was the presumption that gays were bad people, and that children therefore could be kept from knowing about us. On a deeper level, it restricted our right to participate in civil society by closing the doors of the classroom to us and our causes, such as marriage equality or the right to adopt.
When I heard about this, I felt I had to speak out, but in a way that would bring the right amount of public disdain upon this proposed law. So I first put out the following tweet:
Based on the immediate virality of that initial tweet, I knew I was on to something. So with the help of my Allegiance production team, I put together a video. If teachers and children were forbidden to say “gay,” they could simply say “Takei.” You could proclaim yourself a supporter of Takei marriage, march in a Takei pride parade, and at the holidays even sing, “Don we now our Takei apparel!”
But I wanted to do more than just get out the word on this awful bill. I wanted those who opposed it to be able to support those who would actually help defeat it. So I did what other causes do: I sold swag. The “It’s OK to be Takei” line featured t-shirts, hats, mugs and buttons, with all of the proceeds donated to charities, including education funds for LGBT causes.
The video went viral beyond my wildest expectations, with over a million hits. I was particularly surprised when MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow picked up the story, naming me and the campaign the “Best New Thing in the World” on her show. Oh myyy. You can see the whole video here: youtube.com/watch?v=dRkIWB3HIEs
The video helped bring attention to this ridiculous law, but the Tennessee legislature was far from done. Within a year, they proposed two other outrageous bills. One protected bullies who target LGBT youth by making an exception for acts committed in the name of “religious freedom.” The second, targeted towards transgendered people, would make it a criminal offense to use any public facility designated for a gender other than what appears on your birth certificate. The sponsor threatened publicly to “stomp a mud hole” through any transgendered person coming near his family.
I again felt compelled to respond. In a second video, which I modeled after the fireside chats of President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, I suggested that these three lawmakers were like certain “friends of Dorothy,” in that they lacked brains, heart and courage. So I got gifts for each of them, hoping to help their situation: an “It’s OK to be Takei” shirt for the author of the “Don’t Say Gay” law, whose bill was a true straw man; for the author of the bully protection law, a copy of Twilight — a movie so “Takei” that even his heartless soul couldn’t help but flutter; and for the author of the transgendered bathroom prohibition, a gift certificate to women’s clothier Lane Bryant, in the hope he could find the courage to be who he really is on the inside. You can see the full video here: vimeo.com/38068014
I don’t know ultimately whether my videos changed any minds within the Tennessee legislature. What I do know is that they helped bring national attention to local tomfoolery,
and that all three bills failed to get to a full vote on the floor. For that, I’m grateful.
In taking on certain Tennessee state legislators, however, I set for myself quite a precedent, one that I fear will be hard to match. So many states and municipalities have become embroiled in controversy, particularly over marriage equality, that I am asked almost daily to lend my voice and support (or opposition, as the case may be) to ballot measures, initiatives, pending legislation, or political struggles. It seemed the LGBT cause needed a new hero, but I wasn’t sure I was its guy. This is all very new for me, because suddenly I have what I call a responsibility of numbers; the more “numbers” of fans, the more I know I can make a real difference. But not all of us are built to be real superheroes. I may have donned a Spidey outfit and taken on some bad guys, and I may have even thumbed my nose at small-minded legislators in Tennessee. But will my style of activism, coupled as it is with a particularly quirky sense of humor, be able to carry the day with greater causes, and before larger audiences?
I already know that many fans prefer that I stay on the sidelines, and stick to acting and making people laugh. They prefer to see me as an affable good sport, not someone out to make a real difference. But they might have to get used to seeing more of “activist” me around. Once you put on a superhero outfit, you start to feel like you really can take on the world’s villains.
By the Numbers
When I first started posting my miscellany online, I had only one number to keep track of — Twitter followers. At the time, I didn’t have a Facebook account, though there was a fan page on Facebook that someone else had created using my name with something on the order of 20,000 “likes.” In the early going, it was rather like a game to see how many more people each day had clicked “follow” on Twitter, and to pay attention to things like my “Klout” score — which purports to measure influence across the Interwebs, but really feels more like a constant source of collective judgment.
