Pedro at 40: How a Television Show Changed the Way a Generation Viewed LGBTQ Persons

By BylineJohn Dyer on
Credit: wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RWSFCast.jpg
Real World Cast (Pedro second from right) Credit: wikimedia

Vote for Pedro

My generation might best be defined as those who remember watching Pedro Zamora die of AIDS in our living rooms.

If you’re not familiar with Pedro, he was an openly gay, HIV-positive castmember in the third season of MTV’s the Real World which aired in 1994. Those who watched Pedro’s life play out on the tiny 4:3 screens of the time were presented with a high definition portrait of kind young man who didn’t fit any of the caricatures of homosexuality that one might see in the movies or hear about from the pulpit.

He was warm, funny, and extremely thoughtful, always facing his illness and his antagonistic, homophobic roommate “Puck” with a kind of conflicted dignity that captivated viewers.

But just as the Real World: San Francisco started airing that summer, Pedro’s health began deteriorating rapidly, and he was soon diagnosed with progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy. Although MTV offered to pay for his medical expenses, Pedro’s health continued to worsen and, hours after the season finale aired, Pedro died, surrounded by his friends and the family members Bill Clinton had flown in from Cuba.

Not surprising, the gay community mourned the untimely loss of this bright, energetic educator and activist. But what was surprising was that many people who wouldn’t think of themselves as “pro gay” at the time were also deeply affected. Anyone could see that Pedro was a good person who cared about others, and just about anyone would choose him as a friend over some of his heterosexual castmates. No matter what one thought about homosexuality, his death was clearly a great injustice.

Credit: Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1994_Nov_Pedro_Zamora_and_family.jpg
Pedro in the hospital (Credit: wikimedia)

The Enfleshing of the Other

Before The Real World began airing that summer, one could afford to conceive of homosexuality an abstract concept, an idea about those people over there whom football players made fun of and preachers condemned. But by the time school was under way in the fall, one began to sense that something more than the colors of the leaves was changing. Macho guys couldn’t fire off a “That’s so gay” attack without feeling at least a tiny twinge of guilt, and church youth group kids (who weren’t supposed to be watching MTV anyway) began to wonder if things were as black and white as they used to be.

Now, make careful note: I’m not referring to people who heard or read about Pedro’s death after the fact (like we’re doing now). In the 1980s and 1990s, there were plenty of stories about people dying of AIDS. And here in 2010s, “reality TV” is just a cheap way to get famous, and gay characters are common on every channel in every genre (Modern Family, Mad Men, Caprica, etc.).

But in the early 1990s, The Real World was just an experiment. It was new and novel, the evolution of a network that no longer played music videos, but still shaped how young people viewed themselves and the world. Watching the The Real World back then actually created sense of getting to know a genuine “real” person.

The result was that long before many of our friends or family members had come out of the closet, Pedro stepped in our living rooms and inoculated us against seeing homosexuality as wholly “other.” It was no longer possible to think about homosexuality without picturing at least one homosexual. We might not want to fully “embrace the other” in a Volfian sense, but we couldn’t easily exclude them either.

Pedro’s Influence Today

Last February, Pedro would have turned 40.

And it turns out that 40 is just about the age where one can see a clear ideological fault line on opinions about gay marriage. A poll by Christianity Today shows those 35 and under tend to support same-sex marriage, while those over 35 tend not to, and this division is present among both those that call themselves “born again” and those who don’t.

Normally, one might be able to chalk this up to the old saying, “If you’re not liberal when you’re young, you don’t have a heart; and if you’re not conservative when you’re old, you don’t have a brain.” After all, a recent Lifeway poll showed that young people are also more likely to see same-sex marriage as a civil rights issue than their older counterparts. But other data suggest something more complex is going on than youthful naivety or elderly curmudgeony. Another poll by Lifeway Research says that among “born agains” of all ages, over 80% believe that “homosexual behavior is a sin,” but at the same time, those same young people seem to be supportive of gay marriage (or don’t think it should be fought against).

So why do the young at times to agree with the old on the morality of sexual activity, but differ with them when it comes to same-sex marriage? I think the answer is that stories like Pedro’s – so innovative and provocative at such a key time – humanized homosexuality, pulling it out of the abstract and concretizing it in a way that almost forces people who experienced it to separate their ideas about homosexuality from how they feel about homosexuals. After all, it’s much easier to condemn a thing than it is to condemn a person.

This seems to explain the angst many young Christians feel about “the issue” – i.e. they don’t want “it” to be an “issue” at all, because for them homosexuality is just one important aspect of the complex, multi-faceted people they know (or at least watched on TV). They know what the Bible says about sexual activity, and many seem to believe it, but their souls are torn because they can’t easily resolve the tension between what they believe in their minds about an idea and what they feel in their hearts toward their friends. It’s easy to tell a faceless crowd what to do, but it’s much more challenging to look into the eyes of an enfleshed being and do the same.

Where We Go From Here

As one with degrees in genetics and theology and an abounding interest in culture, it might seem natural for me to connect all this to the recent Supreme Court decisions (e.g. Bill Clinton passed the recently struck down DOMA just two years after he helped Pedro’s family get to the US) and the “culture wars” more generally. But instead I’ll keep my “media critic” hat on and direct you back to my central point which is that a single human story, particularly one told via new media, has the power to bend the trajectory of public opinion and throw the feelings and beliefs of a generation into conflict.

The enduring significance of Pedro’s story was that it normalized a way of life that at the time was easy to caricature. Back then, most TV shows portrayed gays as cultural deviants with strange hair and high voices, but Pedro broke every stereotype and served as the archetype of what 12-18 year olds in the 90s thought of men and women who would later be called LGBTQ.

Now, two decades later, following Jesus has in many ways become the new “way of life that is easy to caricature.” The popular media representation of a Christian is often as a cultural outsider with big hair and a loud mouth. Sound familiar?

So I’d like to suggest that Christians today might learn from Pedro’s life and even emulate it in a certain sense. I want to be cautious about misusing the life of a man who died so tragically, but perhaps we too through character and conviction can consciously use the story of our lives (that we are constantly telling and retelling on social media) toward making certain religious stereotypes impossible to believe.

Could you, like Pedro, hold counter-cultural beliefs, and yet be so kind and so courageous that people had trouble dismissing you and your God? When you look back 20 years from now, what will your media footprint say about your God?

 

80 thoughts on “Pedro at 40: How a Television Show Changed the Way a Generation Viewed LGBTQ Persons”

  1. John, this is your best post ever. Unique, provocative, well-researched and well-written. Thank you!

  3. This is the first time I’ve ever heard of Pedro. I’m 48. Maybe I was too old then. Or maybe I wasn’t supposed to be watching MTV and so I didn’t.

  4. Somehow I missed Pedro, too. I remember “The Real World” and I remember that I wasn’t supposed to watch that channel.

    It feels like there is a growing movement of Christians today who espouse what you talk about in the last paragraph. Christians who really do hold counter-cultural beliefs but don’t feel like they need to be a jerk about it.

    I wonder – if that movement continues to grow – what the landscape will look like 20 years from now? It could be a different world.

    Great post as always, John.

  5. There is nothing wrong with encouraging the acceptance homosexuality and bisexuality in society. It certainly won’t hurt anyone. It should be seen as normal and equal to heterosexuality, because it is! A huge benefit to society is that same-sex couples can adopt babies to give them a loving home and family.

    1. Thanks for your comment.

      This article is not about the morality of homosexuality, but rather how media has shaped the outlook of certain groups toward homosexuality and homosexuals.

      1. I wonder though how moral perspective is intertwined with media in this case. That is, the moral perspective of the media, MTV in this case.

  7. Pingback: Pedro at 40: How a Television Show Changed the Way a Generation Viewed LGBTQ Persons | Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

  8. Thank you for this. It was so incredibly encouraging because of a dialogue I’ve been dealing with at work recently about this very issue- including the AIDS crisis, and my personal beliefs. Thanks again. Great post.

  9. “This article is not about the morality of homosexuality, but rather how media has shaped the outlook of certain groups toward homosexuality and homosexuals.”

    JD, for about 1,950 years, about the only media shaping Western outlook on homosexuality (and slavery, etc.) was scripture, and mostly one guy’s opinions (St. Paul). The generational change in opinion is likely less about “media agenda” and more about those using new media (<40) simply having far greater access to a more accurate and broader and inclusive picture of culture, life, and normal deviancy.

    Really good essay, thanks.

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  77. Well, I’ll post here and see how it works out. I don’t bother pentreding to be fair. If Lender and itz tards on VNNF see it, then there will doubtless be a cumplaint to the Alex-kenite-nutzi [Colostomy-Bag] Defecation League hindquartered over on VNNF. That ought to be good for another daze haet.I listened to your call with Jim Giles and the gut-sick guido kikenweasel with jew ass-GAIDS, i.e. Lender/Linder. Linder got rather shrill and like a California jewboy stuck in goyim-land, i.e. in the Grannyz-basement-bunker in Kirksville, Missery, refused to justify itz religious position, equivalent to Lenin and Ayn Rand. However it got shrill about you Southron hicks who dare believe in Jesus Christ. What does Jesus got that Linder doesn’t, except for Chrons/jew ass-GAIDS and much more humility? Christ was the Savior of Aryan White men and women while Linder can’t save itzself from Crohn’s pangs. Of course, Christ had His Judas Iscariot, and Linder’s jewd-ass is Linder’s unruly bleeding kike bunghole. I’m still wondering why some jewboy bleeding out the ass stuck in the Grannyz-basement-bunker amongst the Deutch goyim in NorthEast Missery is bitching about some learned whigger of dubious sexuality living in Sans Fagscrisco all the time. Perhaps it is time to testify against some whigger tard posting on VNNF like back in December 2009 again? Most thangs bad to Lender happen around Christmas. Like Christmas Coups. No wonder it hates Christianity!!! I also fail to see how someone who isn’t willing to even run for a county precinct committeeman and form a county political committee, then on from there to try to take over a minor third party up to the state level is somehow suddenly going to form a nation-wide political party. Hell, I got a Newton County Libbertoon party organized so as to run Roxie for county commissioner for free and she got 1659 votes/13.5 % of the vote in her half of the county. All Linder could do was to squeal about how much it hates and despises Southrons and Christians, and how stupid they are. What that accomplishes is . . . same thang as VNNF has always accomplished, i.e. to get idiot whiggers put in prison, i.e. Kevin Harpham, Bill White, etc.You go on doing what you are doing now, building up your blog, doing some podcasting with your friends, urging secession for Dixie-land. I’m glad that you called into my show last night. And I think that your call to Giles and Lender/Linder worked out fine.Hail Victory!!!Pastor Martin LD Lindstedt CJCC/ANP.S. I’m on Skype when I boot up Toshiba #2 as Pastor.Lindstedt-PMLDL

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