HBO’s new series “Looking” revolves around a group of four gay men in San Francisco. It is one of the first shows in which being gay is fully explored — not reduced to being a punchline, something to be avoided or ashamed of. In a time when parts of the world are beginning to look differently at homosexuality and one in which gay marriage bans are being abolished, a show like “Looking” is overdue.
However, “Looking” is about more than just the intricacies of gay culture. At its heart, “Looking” is a show that offers a beautiful representation of what every young person in the world is doing right now: looking. Looking for purpose in a world cruelly ruled by chance. Looking for something real in a world where the superficial is too often lauded. Looking for meaning in the lives of those around us, the lives of those we care for and the lives that we live.
It would be easy for me to segue into a wonderful narrative about how I have come to Dartmouth and learned to “look” differently. That in coming here, I have become more attuned to how my words and actions can offend and oppress. This would not only be easy, it would be true, too. But it would only be a tiny part of a complicated and ever-morphing truth. To leave my description of Dartmouth at just that, as a gloriously imperfect institution, would be to commit a sin of omission.
Alfred Lord Tennyson would have us believe that if we strive and seek, then we will find and never yield. But to allow yourself, on a campus filled with predominantly strangers, to be vulnerable — to not only purposefully seek and look, but to openly admit you are doing so? That’s hard. But alas, the best things in life always are.
So I ask, why not send that email to that cute ’15 guy or girl? Well, because when he or she rebuffs you, it’ll suck. A lot. But hell, do it anyway. To quote that venerable genius of relationships, Aubrey Graham (also known as Drake), “Who the hell wants to be 70 and alone?” The answer is no one. Gay, straight or somewhere in between, we are all looking for friendship, for connection, maybe even for love. It’s a scary thing to admit. We Ivy Leaguers don’t need anyone else, do we? We’re strong, independent people with personalized goals and hearts overflowing with ambition. It’s easier to focus on that and just settle. Honestly, the idea of settling used to make me laugh. Now it just breaks my heart.
At my all-boys high school, being outwardly emotional generally meant that within seconds, someone would tell you to “stop being so gay.” That was a funny thing to say then, but now these jokes just make me cringe. I finally realized that the overriding issue, in the patriarchal Zimbabwean society in which I grew up — and in Hanover and across the world, in fact — is that we keep grasping at what it means to be a man, but we do it all wrong.
This is the importance of “Looking.” It challenges our existing understanding of who deserves love, of what it means to be a man. Without a doubt, a major part of its appeal is that it is a show about gay men and the first major series of its kind. But just as we are so much more than the labels placed upon us, the same goes for this series — one that illuminates an oft-forgotten fact about our current existence. Though our tools for connecting have changed, evolved and some might even say become distorted, our desire for real connections still burns pure and bright. We still keep looking.
