Documentary Unit: Channel 4 Documentary 'Underage and Gay'

From left to right: Mykyla/Kyle, Beckham, Tamika, Alex & Cariad

To help with our research and planning, I decided to watch an 11pm Channel 4 documentary that Mary and I found when looking at TV listings. With the title being 'Underage and Gay' it immediately stood out to us, and with the description being "British teenagers are coming out younger than ever before. But in an age of internet trolls, this documentary meets five teenagers to find out what it's like to be underage and gay today." we decided that this could be of a lot of help to us.

I found that the central character of the documentary is Beckham, a 15 year old who came out as gay when he was 14 (where the documentary starts). The other characters are Mykyla (lesbian, 14), Tamika (bisexual, 16), Alex (transsexual, 17) and Cariad (lesbian, 14). While Beckham seems to be the central character, due to the documentary beginning and ending with him, all five of the teenagers bring a unique story.

I found this documentary very helpful for the unit as it managed to explore a lot of different areas just within 45 minutes. We got to see how strong Beckham is in dealing with his current bullies and not letting them get to him as well as moving forward and thinking of his future, the emotion of Mykyla's story and how she goes through a big change and by the end wants to be referred to as a boy, Kyle, Tamika realising who she really is and becoming more feminine and possibly being bisexual instead of gay, Alex deciding to move on with his life and starting over in a new part of the country, and Cariad also becoming more feminine and realising what a huge influence she's been on other teenagers at her school who decided to come out since she did.

I think that this documentary had a lot of the things that Mary and I are looking for. While we don't have the same amount of time, characters or locations to play with, we can certainly use a lot of topics and story-lines. For instance, Underage and Gay touched on so many subjects including bullying, discrimination, coming out, finding your sexuality, simply growing up, friends, family, LGBT groups, YMCA youth groups and gay pride. It also had a good mix of past stories and current stories, a lot of tension in places, such as 'Kyle' being briefly taken into police custody after attacking a friend with broken glass (off camera) as well as the comic relief of Beckham's personality, the inspiration that comes from all three of Tamika, Alex and Cariad's stories and a resolution for every character at the end, giving the audience something to route for.

I've found this research extremely helpful, the documentary kept me entertained and intrigued throughout and I hope that Mary and I can do the same for our audience.