The American flag is ubiquitous in the US, even when not fluttering in view. It’s in our folklore, with Betsy Ross. It’s in our public school rooms, with college children in all places rising to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. They’re fixtures on porches, lapels, and boxer briefs; at swearings-in, soccer video games and naturalisation ceremonies. The American flag is in all places and, so we’re instructed, for everybody.
Latest political divides, although, have chipped away at that promise. Since President Donald Trump – who by the way was born on Flag Day – first took workplace in 2017, the flag has taken on new which means, one which’s turn into more and more synonymous with MAGA ideology and a slim interpretation of ‘American values.’
Brooklyn-born equipment designer Alexis Bittar had been observing these shifts. As a homosexual man with three younger youngsters, he even started to contemplate leaving the nation. ‘It occurred to me that I can both be critiquing the nation or combating for it,’ he tells Wallpaper*. ‘I made a decision to struggle for it.’
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Alexis Bittar)
For Bittar, who based his eponymous label 35 years in the past, resistance took the type of a brief movie – and the American flag felt like the right place to begin. Working alongside Academy Award-winning producer Bruce Cohen, Bittar created and directed ‘Reclaim the Flag,’ a brief documentary launched final month that examines the LGBTQ+’s relationship with the Stars and Stripes.
Over the course of the 30-minute movie, Bittar and Cohen requested the contributors – who embody everybody from Emmy-winning actor and screenwriter Lena Waithe to tug royalty Symone – too share their emotions in regards to the flag and the expertise of being queer in America. The frank, typically uncooked, interviews reveal a variety of emotions – rejection, satisfaction, unhappiness, and, above all, hope.
Bittar needs the documentary to be each a wakeup name and a rallying cry – not only for the queer group, however for the left extra broadly. He’s additionally assured that, sooner or later quickly, the American flag will unite greater than it is going to divide. ‘For the primary time, I actually felt like I am American,’ Bittar says.
Learn our dialog under.
Wallpaper*: Now we have an obsession with the flag, right here in America. In grade college, I keep in mind studying about the way you deal with the flag, the way you’re by no means speculated to let it contact the bottom; you fold it in a sure approach. It has this unusual talismanic energy.
Alexis Bittar: I feel for lots of people, the flag was within the background. I do not suppose folks actually considered it that a lot. Its symbolism shifted step by step and all of the sudden on the identical time. It turned an emblem of anger and retribution. In a approach it felt prefer it was bringing us additional aside than uniting.
W*: I am a Millennial and keep in mind how, publish 9/11, there was a surge of patriotism, and the flag was ubiquitous. It’s attention-grabbing how, 20 years since, how that has shifted.
AB: I used to be eager about that too, as a result of 9/11 was the primary time that the flag was, in my lifetime, getting used apart from at, like, a parade, or another nationwide second. I grew up in New York Metropolis, and I am half Syrian and half Irish. So I feel rising up Arabic, I am all the time type of hyper-aware of feeling just like the ‘different’ in America.
W*: What made you pursue a movie on this subject?
AB: I used to be in Tokyo in early February with my household, and I had efficiently turned the information off between when Trump first got here into energy till then. I started trying on the information and I simply felt type of fearful. I’m homosexual, I’m married, and I’ve three children – they’re my centre. My associate and I have been discussing, with regard to Undertaking 2025, at what level would we really feel like we would want to go away the nation?
However after travelling world wide, I am very keenly conscious that there is not plenty of homosexual households. I started eager about this. It occurred to me that I can both be critiquing the nation or combating for it, and I made a decision to struggle for it. For the primary time ever, I felt like I am American. I do not love every little thing about this nation, however I imagine we’ve got to struggle for the beliefs of our nation.
I needed to open up a dialog and a story across the American flag, however by an LGBTQ lens. Whenever you discuss folks from that group, there’s a number of explanation why folks have felt that America didn’t embrace them.for those who simply speak in regards to the flag and what it is speculated to imply and what it represents, there’s one thing very highly effective about that,
I needed to open up a dialog and a story across the American flag, however by an LGBTQ lens
Alexis Bittar
W*: Had you ever made a movie earlier than?
AB: No, it is the primary time.
W*: What was it about movie as a format that compelled you?
AB: With my model Alexis Bittar, I had been directing social media skits – I gained a Webby for it. They have been satires on vogue. I wrote a TV present primarily based on these characters. I am fairly natural by nature. When the thought for this documentary took place, I felt prefer it was my approach of activism.
W*: Everybody within the documentary has a special tackle what the flag means to them, but there is a unifying thread. Are you able to discuss that?
AB: We requested everybody the identical questions. The primary was, what was it like rising up LGBTQ+ in the US? I believed it was necessary to type of undergo that. Then the following was, how do you are feeling about America immediately? What does the US flag symbolise to you? And lastly, how will we reclaim the flag?
I feel everybody felt in deep sorrow about how they felt about the US immediately. They’re all robust folks, robust personalities, and so they’re fighters. I feel everybody did have this angle, although, that they may really feel deep unhappiness about the place we’re immediately, however there is a love for this nation. And so I feel there was a shared thought course of, however everybody had a really particular expertise.
W*: It is attention-grabbing that you simply selected the verb ‘reclaim’, as a result of I’m wondering if a lot of your topics ever felt that the flag was theirs to start with.
AB: Most did not. Most felt prefer it by no means actually did signify them. However the phrase ‘reclaim’ was an necessary phrase for me, as a result of I needed it to be slightly punk – I needed it to really feel like an motion.
W*: One of many extra evocative strikes within the documentary is that you simply gave everybody a child American flag to carry – it is so small, but it is so highly effective.
AB: None of them knew they have been going to be given the flag. Rapidly, they’re actually hit with these unconscious emotions in regards to the flag, like saying the Pledge of Allegiance at school. Quite a lot of the folks had by no means actually talked in regards to the flag, ever.
The phrase ‘reclaim’ was an necessary phrase for me, as a result of I needed it to be slightly punk.
Alexis Bittar
W*: Considered one of my favorite moments – there have been many within the movie – was when Darren Walker [president of the Ford Foundation] quoted Langston Hughes, who mentioned, ‘Let America be America once more.’
AB: Langston Hughes says that he knew that America wasn’t America, that it’s going to by no means be America for him. And he’s additionally saying – or the way in which I interpret it – is that his hope is that sooner or later it will likely be.
My hope in making this documentary is that this may spark dialog and other people will suppose and transfer in the direction of not solely their very own unbiased sense of combating for the nation, but additionally in the direction of unity.
I feel placing a flag up is a good way to begin. We’re really now working with a social impression organisation and constructing a type of a broader platform to make this right into a nationwide motion.
This interview has been edited and condensed for size and readability.
Supply: Wallpaper
