Erin Davies has an interesting tale to tell this Thursday at Cal State Long Beach: she woke up on April 18, 2007 and stepped outside her Albany, New York home to find her Volkswagen Beetle graffitied with “fAg” and “U R gay.”
There is a strange sense of irony to the whole situation: it occurred on the National Day of Silence, a day meant to recognize the bullying, harassment and discrimination of LGBTQers. As if the car itself didn’t give it away, Davies proudly had a rainbow sticker attached to it–definitively giving every single gay and gay-friendly and comedic person who saw the car a tongue-in-cheek, chuckle-under-your-breath moment.
A series of coincidences then led her to take the car, herself, and a video camera around the U.S. to document the concept that homophobia is not just an issue within the LGBTQ community alone, but one that involves all Americans. Her documentation went on to create Fagbug, the highly successful documentary that has been shown across the States.
However, the sense of empowerment that naturally developed side-by-side with the roadtrip was not always there–at least for Davies it wasn’t.
“I was humilated and embarrassed,” Davies said to the Post. “You see [the graffiti] and all you want to do is escape it… [Even though] I came out when I was 17, the presence of it still affects you.”
Davies called her parents. She called the police. She called her insurance company that, backed up several days due to an overwhelming amount of claims, initially denied her a rental car since the Beetle’s operating ability was intact. Davies fought back–in every way she could–to escape the words that seemed just as etched in her head as they did painted on her car.
“The words they spraypainted,” Davies explained, “it… The graffiti has the ability to breathe.”
That ability sparked an unforeseen amount of conversations that, even while in the rental car that was eventually provided to her, people would approach Davies with: discussions of what it is to be part of the LGBTQ community, talks of hate crimes and homophobia, and chit-chats of bullying and discrimination surrounded the Bug’s presence.
Before she knew it, her best friend and ally Cory Magin said he was going to buy a website–and he did just that. Generating more and more social buzz, Davies then took part in a 58-day roadtrip that spanned 41 states, stopping to film the reactions, conversations and mental perspectives of 500 Americans confronted with homophobia directly a la Volkswagen.
Following a year of driving the car with the original graffiti, Davies gave her Bug a dramatic makeover that paid homage to fags across the country: decking out the car in bright rainbow paint, she has an equally bright, white decal on the side that simply says, “Fagbug.”
“I get sour reactions from both gay and straight people about my use of the term ‘fag’,” Davies said. “But there’s so many levels to the Fagbug. It is hard not to poke fun, to show that homophobia is everyone’s problem, that there are so many assumptions out there. I mean: they [the taggers] used a term that is typically geared towards gay men.”
Much like those who have reclaimed “dyke” and “queer,” the power of inverting a homophobic tagger’s attempt at generating hate has come to resonate with audiences since its premiere in 2009–and Davies hopes that her discussion and screening will do just that with Long Beach.
Cal State Long Beach will present “An Evening with Documentarian Erin Davies and the World-Famous Fagbug” on Thursday, April 25, beginning at 5PM in the Beach Auditorium of the campus’ University Student Union.
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