Now entering Bitch Island

I'm usually too busy yelling at kids to get off my lawn to follow MySpace and YouTube celebrities, so Chris Crocker has flown under my radar until now. Reading a profile of Crocker in Seattle's The Stranger makes it clear that I should start paying attention to Crocker's video blogging.

Crocker lives in a small, conservative town (he refers to it simply as Bitch Island, for anonymity's sake) where intolerance and homophobia are completely acceptable, a place where Crocker had to turn to homeschooling to avoid a constant threat of violence in school. Turning to the internet, Crocker has found a voice and a community that accepts him.

There's a lot of anger and a confrontational nature to Crocker's videos. In "Gay People" (language NSFW) the effeminate Crocker rails against the internalized homophobia found in the idealization of passing for straight and "normal" (as one video response tellingly puts it). Crocker displays a similar anger in "This & That" (another video with NSFW language), a response to the homophobic comments he's received.

Crocker also entertains his fans with his flair for drama in videos like "Healthy Foods" or his review of the many iterations of the phrase "Bitch, Please." If these videos didn't exist with his frank talk about dealing with discrimination, Crocker might come off as a stereotype. A good part of the power of Crocker's work is that he makes it clear that he's not on MySpace and YouTube existing just to entertain but a fully rounded person.