An Evening with Terry Crews at CSULB

Laughter and excitement filled the room as the audience watched Terry Crews reenact his hilarious “singing thousand miles” scene from the movie White Chicks. The celebrity spent the evening discussing his life stories and experiences with students and guests at the Cal State Long Beach Richard and Karen Carpenter Performing Arts Center.

Crews noted he was grateful to be there. “It’s such an honor to have colleges ask you to come because I’m a 50-year-old man. It’s one of those things I never take for granted,” he said.

Crews explained that he’s always telling his own stories because people get into trouble telling someone else’s stories. The lines get blurred and “we’re all still figuring out what’s going on.” He told the audience that he’s not going to give them the total answer and is sorry to disappoint them. However, he hopes students can take away something from the discussion. This way, students deeply resonate with him and also see that celebrities are human too.

Crews was born and grew up in Flint, Michigan in 1968, which was infamously known for its riots. This was also during the peak of the American automotive production. He explained that “General Motors (GM) was basically the Google back then.” GM globally expanded as the world’s largest manufacturer of motor vehicles and became one of the largest industrial corporations in the world, meaning there were families that came from down South and all over, in order to get some jobs. This is especially important because his father was one of them. He stated “the city itself was doing really well.” But the problem was that his father came from the “hood” with a lot of baggage and he couldn’t let go of it.

He remembered his father knocking his mother to the ground when he was a toddler. “Literally hitting her in the face!” he said. At that time, he pondered if his father actually meant what he said about loving her. Then, he wondered what’s going to happen when his father hits him with those “giant hands.” He brought his trauma to light in order to let it sink in the students’ minds.

Crews said “Because this is the deal, everybody  experienced some trauma. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, black or white and male or female. You have gone through trauma. And what helps you is how you deal with this trauma.”

The relationship between Crew’s father and mother traumatized him, so much that he peed on the bed up until he was 14 years old. “Then, what happens is you start to develop and realize things,” he said. After this experience, he fixated in becoming strong, such as being muscular and looking like the super heroes from comic books.

In relation to the imagery of Crews being muscular on his Old Spice commercial, he also addressed that he learned about masculinity in a toxic way during his youth. He said “Shame dictates that you are mad and you never did something wrong. However, guilt does that and it’s a good thing. Shame is a very bad thing to have especially since it can affect a man’s perception of masculinity.”  And he mentioned shame and guilt because he was shameful for being addicted to pornography as a youth.

Audiences were interested in the fact that Crews, a man that embodies manliness and pride would be so vulnerable. Fabian Casillas, a marketing major at CSULB, noted that he gained some insight on the man himself. He said “When you look at someone like Terry Crews; you see someone who is really buff, loud and likeable. Often times, you don’t usually think that someone like that would have so much baggage that they’re carrying.”

Another attendee, Logan Cross, a journalism and public relations major at CSULB, also noted that the discussion of trauma helped her gained a different perspective on Crews. “When he talked about his trauma and how he was dealing with it and how it was affecting his personal and professional life. I think that was inspiring, especially because he is portrayed as this big masculine guy and it’s great to see him be so vulnerable in such a public space and forum,” she said.

Crews stated he learned one aspect of manliness, which is a man’s worth more than his woman. He explained that this type of attitude transcends everything. He said “It is not my job to tell you how good I am, how slick I am and how smooth I am. My job literally is to kill that masculine imagery. When it comes to masculinity and men are too prideful, so they avoid being emotionally vulnerable and bottle up those feelings of shame and guilt in their life. However, it stops all progression in men and women.”

Our hardships and desensitization of masculinity shouldn’t stop us from moving forward because they don’t define us. “Trauma can create an enormous amount of drive and can push us beyond our limits,” Crews said. 

anthony@beachcomber.news