All in the Family

I'm trying to figure out what I found so irritating about the cover story in today's New York Times Magazine. The topic is growing up with gay parents, as experienced by one family, and particularly the younger daughter, Ry Russo-Young.

For a little while, I was at a loss. What was annoying me? It certainly wasn't the politics of gay families. I think family is a great thing, and support gay families, gay rights, gay marriage, and practically any other gay issues one might mention. Nor was it the article's treatment of the topic; in fact, I thought the broader social discussion was especially enlightening.

No, it seemed to be the family in question that was annoying. But what could I possibly have against them? Was it this?

Sitting behind a projector last April in the front row of a small theater in the East Village, Ry was looking apprehensive. Although her work has been shown at venues like the Turin Film Festival, she was now about to show a short film at a comparatively humble event called Avant-Garde-Arama. The festival's hosts, dressed in a look somewhere between bridal and bondage, were calling on audience members -- straight, gay, strangers, whatever -- to volunteer to be married onstage. It might have been great theater if anyone had, but no one did, and eventually the hosts introduced Ry, who started the projector rolling.

She had mounted three separate screens, and on each a different variant of the shower scene from ''Psycho,'' recreated in stark black-and-white flatness, played itself out: on one, the stabbing of the doomed Janet Leigh figure happened on cue, while in another, a second actress playing Janet Leigh turned the knife on her attacker and left him bloody at her feet. That vengeful Janet Leigh figure then seemed to step, naked and dripping, into the third screen, where she took her knife to Janet Leigh figure No. 3. The film was visually interesting and unexpected, a slasher film with a brain, and the audience responded with enthusiastic applause.

After a few more acts -- a nude dance, a rapper named Mint T. -- Ry's parents, Robin Young, 49, and Sandy Russo, 64, left their seats to meet Ry by the stage. Ry was dressed in vintage femme fatale, a black checked dress with fish nets and heels; her mothers wore jeans and glasses. Ry still looked uncomfortable, and Young and Russo (whom everyone calls by her surname) seemed less than enthusiastic, with shrugs passing for commentary. ''I don't think they liked it,'' Ry reported later. ''They're not into the violence-against-women thing, I guess.'' She'd been trying to comment on the hackneyed image of woman as victim, she said, but ''Moms,'' as she and Cade sometimes call their parents, apparently saw only the same old thing. She sighed heavily: ''Do you ever stop caring what they think?''

Yes, this seemed to be getting closer to the nub. For a self-consciously queer and creative family, they sure seemed to be hitting their stereotypical marks: the daughter who is a filmmaker and "performer," whatever that means; the pretentious arts festival whose hosts were "dressed in a look somewhere between bridal and bondage" (cue eye-roll); the predictably and tediously P.C. parents from the West Village (cue second eye-roll).

But what could I have against these people, as long as I am never forced to sit through a meeting with the parents, or watch the daughter's films? —I'll take the author's word for it that the film was interesting; I think I'll pass on finding out for myself. They seem like pretty nice people, on the whole, setting aside the business of the daughter's name. (When people give their children weird, made-up names, I think the idea is to celebrate their children's individuality. Unfortunately, the result is that for the rest of their lives, whenever they meet anyone new, regardless of context, the first conversation they'll have is about their special name and why it's so special and how they are so, so special because of it. It takes a very, very special kind of parent not to realize this, or, worse, not to see how there could be anything bad about it.)

No, finally my complaint was with the article itself. Two things stand out. One is the article's standard upper-middle-class New York provincialism. I have the very strong suspicion that the author met up with her subjects through the usual journalistic means, namely by telling her friends she was going to write an article on families with gay parents and asking if they knew anybody interesting who might want to be interviewed. This technique usually works, and it's very easy, but it means that a huge percentage of articles end up being about the same general cast of characters. The Times does write articles about people who live outside the New York metropolitan area, and/or outside the well-off, well-educated classes. But by and large, these articles might as well be written about space aliens — at least that's the tone that usually crops up. This article fits the more comfortable mode, written by and for members of the upper-middle-class New York family. Maybe some of the aliens out in flyover country might read it and learn something — good for you, rubes!

The other thing can be stated more simply. Ry, our tall, striking, flamboyant, Oberlin-educated filmmaker and "performer," is the focus of the piece and the cover photo. She also has an older sister named Cade, a pudgy, unflamboyant woman who works as an AIDS educator. A New York Times reporter might have interviewed her for an article, and the article might even have been published. But never in a hundred thousand years would Cade have been the center of the article and photographed by Robert Maxwell to be splashed across the cover of the magazine. Even in our self-declared transgressive age, some standards will never be transgressed, or questioned, or probably even consciously recognized.

Growing Up With Mom and Mom