On ‘Pose,’ Janet Mock Tells The Stories She Craved As A Young Trans PersonJanet
On ‘Pose,’ Janet Mock Tells The Stories She Craved As A Young Trans PersonJanet Mock remembers when she saw the documentary Paris is Burning for the first time. She was in 10th grade, living in Hawaii, and had already socially transitioned her gender identity. She was about to embark on her medical transition.“My friend had a VHS that she got from another friend,” Mock says. “It was kind of like this little magic ticket that was passed down to a bunch of us.”Jennie Livingston’s 1990 film focuses on the gay and transgender drag performers in the underground ball culture in New York City. “It was one of the first times that I got to see people who looked like me, and who represented me and my community, be the centerpiece of a narrative,” Mock says. “I felt so seen for one of the very first times in my life.”That same ball culture she saw in Paris is Burning would come up again in her career, decades later. After launching a career in journalism, writing two memoirs and becoming a trans activist, Mock made history as the first trans woman of color to write and direct an episode of TV when she joined the production of Ryan Murphy’s series Pose.The FX series, now in its second season, tells the story of LGBTQ youth in the 1980s and '90s ball scene — a community mostly populated by black and Latinx people — and the “houses,” or chosen families, that they create as a mechanism for survival.“The fact that I get to go on set and supervise production, write scripts, direct … it’s astounding,” Mock says. “I watch the monitors sometimes … with tears in my eyes, realizing that these were the sort of stories that I was craving as a young person. There’s no over-explaining of our experiences. … It’s just: 'Welcome to our world.’”Photo: Rich Fury/Getty Images -- source link
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