Matt Frassica Claire Hamilton Carolyn Lefebvre Robin Sutherland

Critical Review
Revue critique
printemps/spring 2002
Supervising Coordinator:
Michel Hardy-Vallée
Managing Editor:
Fiona Coll
Layout and Design:
Production Coordinator:
ALirio Ferreira
Artistic Director:
Timothy Bristow
Editorial Board:
Matt Frassica
Claire Hamilton
Carolyn Lefebvre
Robin Sutherland-Harris
Roberta Yeo
Hotel is a journal founded by a collective of McGill students with the
purpose of providing an arena for critical expression. Hotel is open
to submissions from McGill students of varying disciplines whose
works display a critical appreciation for literature and culture.
A
cknowledgements
Hotel would like to thank the following contributors for
their generous financial support:
The Arts Undergraduate Society
The Dean of Arts
The Department of English
Department of English Students' Association
The Students' Society of McGill University
We would also like to thank the following individuals
for their involvement with Hotel:
Prof. Michael Bristol
Derek Douglas
Prof. Miranda Hickman
Prof. Maggie Kilgour
Prof. Kerry McSweeney
Robert Sampson
Michael Todd
Copyright of each published text belongs to its author. No
parts of this magazine may be reproduced, either mechanically or electronically, without the consent of their authors.
Hotel
c/o Porter's Office
Arts Building
McGill University
853 Sherbrooke O.
Montreal, Quebec
H3A 2T6
ubmissions
s
Submssions to Hotel, in
English or French, should be
sent in electronic format to
[email protected] and
on paper in the Hotel mailbox
in the Arts Building porter's
office. Submissions should not
exceed 15pp of 12pt, doublespaced text. The person submitting a work must hold its
copyright (i.e. has not granted
it to a previous publisher), otherwise he or she will not be
allowed to publish in Hotel.
c
ontents
6
Editorial
7
Éditorial
9
A Shadow of Heaven: The Epic Simile and Human
Understanding in Paradise Lost
Joshua Kotin
21
“Awaking from the Dream”: Drawing the Line
Between Fantasy and Reality in The Graduate and
American Graffiti
John Simpson
27
Fiona Coll
Michel Hardy-Vallée
Yearning for a Rebirth Into Activity: the Body in A
Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White and spell #7
Sophie Boyer
41
The Invaluable Comma: The function of punctuation in Ezra Pound’s “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A
Letter”
Michael Sidman
47
Denied Motherhood: Maternal Nourishment in Toni
Morrison’s Beloved, Gabrielle Roy’s The Tin Flute, and
Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate
Rachel Carberry
57
JAWS: The Ocean-Dwelling Toothed Vagina
65
Two Sides of the Same Coin: Teesri Dunya’s Bhopal
71
The Sexual Life of Agnes Matzerath in Günter
Grass’s Tin Drum
Anca Szilagyi
79
My Own Private Shakespeare: On The Road With
Gus Van Sant
Shari Dwoskin
87
Polyphonic Power-Struggle: Memory and
Metafiction in Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient
Astrid Lium
Kathleen Grace
Karis Shearer
95
109
113
The Problem With Droopy Boobs: Female Sexual
Bodies Under Phallocentric Norms
Reiko Waisglass
Use and Misuse of the Word “Pretentious”
Edward Orloff
Justification
Murat Menguc
E
ditorial
Fiona Coll
A year ago, several students met to discuss the possibility of creating a journal
that would fill a gap in McGill’s collection of student publications. While several
venues were in place at that time to showcase poetry and prose writing by students,
there existed no real forum for undergraduate English students to share their academic work with one another. This journal is our first attempt to develop such a
forum.
What became surprisingly evident at that first meeting was the extent to which
the individuals who had gathered shared a similar vision of what a publication
focused on literary and cultural criticism could ideally be. Our first goal was to
reflect the variety of critical investigation that is encompassed by the three academic streams in McGill’s English Department: Literature, Cultural Studies and
Theatre Studies. Our second goal was to present student writing in an accessible
and aesthetic way. Our third goal was to come up with a stylish moniker that would
represent the inclusive, open and adventurous nature of the journal we wished to
create.
Hotels are places in which people from different parts of the world, on their way
to separate destinations, can come together for a brief period in somewhat neutral
territory to share thoughts, ideas and experiences. The transitory nature of a stay
in a hotel can be a liberating experience, a chance to try out experimental thoughts
and identities in a space that is amenable to temporary existence. At the same time,
hotels can become lasting institutions that impart their unique characters to the
streets upon which they exist, and to the city skylines they help to define. The
concept of the hotel is at once mutable, mythic and manifold – an apt emblem for
our project.
The essays in this journal were compiled from the submissions we received over
the last year. We hope that the many voices and styles herein reflect the diversity
of the English Department. We invite feedback – we have attempted to establish a
spirit of open academic participation in this first issue, but we have yet to see how
successful our efforts have been. After all, according to Mark Twain, St. Francis of
Assisi once said: “All saints can do miracles, but few of them can keep hotel.” Saints
we are not, but our intentions are good-hearted. We hope you enjoy Hotel.
Michel Hardy-Vallée
E
lairotid
Durant les derniers mois, la préparation de Hôtel a été pour moi une suite
constante de nuits anxieuses, d’attentes, de déceptions, parfois, et de joies que je
n’avais pas espérées. Je n’avais surtout pas espéré voir autant de gens s’intéresser à
ce projet, des gens dont vous voyez présentement le travail et qui ont fait de Hôtel
une réalité. Il y a les auteurs, les éditeurs, les graphistes, les coordonnateur, et tous
ceux qui sont passés sans faire de bruit mais qui ont donné un coup de pouce, un
sourire, un conseil ou une idée.
Pour la première fois donc, je vous présente *Hôtel, une revue critique*. Nous
avons choisis de nous intéresser à la culture et à la littérature sous un angle académique, et nous nous sommes de plus donné le mandat d’être dynamiques et
intellectuellement stimulants à chaque semestre. Cette revue est faite par des étudiants, pour des étudiants, et si vous aimez lire Hôtel, vous pouvez aussi y écrire,
en anglais ou en français.
Hôtel est un projet qui est né au département d’anglais de l’université McGill,
et c’est pourquoi vous verrez pour ce premier numéro un nombre important de
travaux liés à la culture ou à la littérature d’expression anglaise. Mais l’anglais
n’est pas notre langue unique. Nous avons deux langues, deux manières de nous
exprimer, et deux manières de voir le monde. Si nous avons choisi de supporter
l’anglais et le français, c’est afin de faire connaître à l’une et à l’autre culture ce que
l’autre pense. Pour le moment, notre ouverture est unidirectionnelle—de l’anglais
au français—mais ce sera le travail des numéros à venir de faire le chemin opposé.
En Amérique du Nord, l’anglais est une langue de diffusion des connaissances,
mais le français l’est aussi.
Paradoxalement, bien que j’aie vécu toute ma vie en français, je suis moi-même
un étudiant en littérature anglaise. J’ai décidé de m’intéresser à la littérature
anglaise pour voir ce qui se faisait de l’autre côté du boulevard Saint-Laurent, et
pour essayer de comprendre. Hôtel est ma contribution à la communauté qui m’a
supporté, et ce journal lui appartient désormais.
By Joshua Kotin
In Milton's Paradise Lost, figurative language – particularly the epic
simile – is used in the attempt to represent what is posited as unrepresentable and extra-logical: Adam and Eve before the Fall, Lucifer, the
Angels and God. More figurative than the simple simile, the epic simile
goes beyond merely signifying the object it represents (the tenor) to
achieve an affirmation of sublime nature and to signal the danger of
compartmentalizing the divine in a fixed set of meanings.
Paradise Lost, de John Milton, utilise le language figuratif, et plus particulièrement la comparaison sur le mode épique, afin de représenter ce qui
se définit comme irreprésentable et hors de la compréhension logique,
tel qu'Adam et Ève avant leur expulsion du Paradis Terrestre, Dieu,
Lucifer, et les anges. Plus riche de signification que la simple comparaison, la comparaison sur le mode épique dépasse la simple description de
l'objet qu'elle représente. De ce fait, cette figure de style permet au texte
d'atteindre une affirmation du sublime, et signale le danger inhérent à
une compréhension limitative et fixée du divin.
God’s motivation is the crux of Paradise Lost. If God is omniscient, then why
does he care about freewill, the choices leading to the Fall of both humankind
and the angels? Why test his creations if he already knows how they will perform?
Indeed, why bother to create Adam and Eve, the battalion of angels, the earth,
at all? This line of questioning ends in a paradox: how to reconcile divine omniscience with freewill, the ability to choose between good and evil? Obviously, this
problem is not Milton’s creation, nor is it unique to Milton’s conception of God.
It is, however, a major obstacle in Milton’s effort to “justifie the wayes of God to
men” (1.26), for justification requires that one show the reasonableness, purpose
– at the very least, the justice – of a set of actions. An effort to justify God’s
ways places God within human categories and the crux develops as we begin to
consider God as a human agent with human nature. Yet, for Milton to remove
God from these rational categories – to define him extra-logically and apophatically as an entity beyond human understanding – is seemingly to admit defeat
and the futility of his stated aim. This extra-logical solution, however, is not so
problematic. In fact, throughout his epic, Milton acknowledges it as his only
solution. Via Raphael, he states that the War in Heaven “surmounts the reach
/ Of human sense” (5.571-72) and thus a description of Heaven requires Raphael
to liken “spiritual to corporal forms” (5.573). Here, figuration – and explicitly the
simile – provides the means of relating divine information: God’s motives and the
war of angels. Even in their prelapsarian state, Adam and Eve cannot comprehend
heavenly actions. They must accept God’s word on the correspondence between
9
tenor and vehicle; we, as fallen readers, must have faith in Milton’s correspondences. Consequently, Milton’s justification of God’s ways becomes a question of
rhetoric and figuration, rather than of fact.
Milton’s similes1 are thus vital because they make his figuration and rhetoric
explicit. That is, they enact the problem of representing the divine or unrepresentable. By emphasizing difference, they also provide the best example of how
Milton works toward and recognizes his principal goal. Prelapsarian Adam and
Eve, Satan, the unfallen angels, and God all exist outside the understanding of
the fallen reader and thus require figuration. The required figuration, however,
is different for each character; the human and the divine do not exist on parallel epistemic planes (with fallen thought and action as knowable, divine thought
and action unknowable). Rather, the characters in Paradise Lost exist in a matrix
of relations: Satan is fallen, yet has experienced Heaven and, like Raphael, can
understand the “spiritual”; unfallen Adam and Eve are human and have freewill,
yet are innocent and in communication with God; the angels lack divine foreknowledge, yet are part Heaven; and God is perfect, omnipotent, and omniscient, and thus the most alien.2 Therefore, if we read Milton’s similes not only
as affirmations of likeness, but also as explicit acts of difference and deferral – as
an acknowledgement of the limits of human knowledge and as means to make
human sense of God and the divine – we should expect to see a marked difference
in their content and structure as they represent Adam and Eve, Satan, the angels,
and God. In this paper I will confirm this expectation with specific reference
to Milton’s epic similes. The epic similes are more explicitly figurative than the
simple similes; their numerous vehicles overwhelm their single tenor and include
a deluge of intra- and intertexual references and allusions. Their richness also signals the danger of compartmentalizing Milton’s similes solely according to degree
of figuration (i.e. of the tenor, the character described). Besides acting as a gauge
of difference between signifier (human language) and signified (the unknowable
divine), the individual epic similes reveal much about their tenor’s character.
Thus, as I illuminate the relation between vehicle and tenor as a paradigm for
Milton’s engagement and struggle with human understanding, I will also try to
show how each individual epic simile acts within the epic to illuminate character
and propel narrative.
An obvious objection to my thesis concerns the virtual absence of epic similes
in Milton’s description of Heaven. Kingsley Widmer argues that Heaven is the
“stylistic antithesis” of Hell and that “similitudes simply do not belong there”
(130-131). He reasons that “Immutable transcendent authority…is stark and
harsh; it could not be otherwise” (131). Widmer interprets Milton’s Heaven as a
literal, unadorned vision, free from the simile-induced complexity of Hell. Yet
he ignores how Milton frames his (and Raphael’s) descriptions. In the invocation
to Book 3, for example, Milton describes Heaven as “invisible to mortal sight”
(3.55). This of course plays upon Milton’s blindness and positions him as a blind
prophet, but it also acknowledges the imperceptible nature of Heaven. Thus if
10
A Shadow of Heaven
human beings cannot see Heaven, why should we be able to see Heaven through
Milton’s words? Both Milton’s words and our senses are not transparent gateways;
rather, they are tools toward a mental and figurative vision, a vision which provides a portal to Heaven via difference and artifice. One can read the narrator’s
references to other senses as emphasizing the point: he rejects the “Orphean
Lyre” (3.17) and the food of inspiration (3.37), and he is split from “Summers Rose”
(3.43), as all fail to yield Heaven. Similarly, Raphael repeatedly prefaces his narratives to Adam with comments about his inability to express, and Adam’s inability
to understand, God: “What words or tongue of Seraph can suffice, / Or heart
of man suffice to comprehend” (7.113-14). With these two examples in mind, the
absence of extended similes in Heaven may indicate a greater process of figuration. The warnings of the narrator and Raphael are analogous to ‘like’ or ‘as’ in
a traditional simile. In this way, the frames create a giant extended simile, one
as explicit as the similes in Hell. Their recognition only requires a broad view of
the text. In Paradise Lost, Heaven requires the greatest figuration because it is
the furthest away from human understanding. Single epic similes will not suffice;
Milton must frame the entire scene in a trope of difference.
Milton’s Heaven, however, does allow some epic similes. These are best thought
of as similes within the greater figuration of Heaven itself (analogous to simple
similes within epic similes). Consider this epic simile, which describes Raphael
descent from Heaven to Eden, the beginning of a long cluster of similes:
As when by night the Glass
Of Galileo, less assur’d, observes
Imagind Lands and Regions in the Moon:
Or Pilot from amidst the Cyclades
Delos or Samos first appearing kenns
A cloudy spot. (5.261-66)
The tenor is Raphael’s unclouded sight of Earth and Eden. The simile occurs
after the angel passes through the “Gate Of Heav’n” (5.253-54). (So, in fact this
is not a simile in Heaven, but rather a simile of a heavenly angel.3) Milton contrasts Raphael’s view downward with Galileo’s view skyward and, as Flannagan
observes, Raphael’s view is more “assur’d” (5.262-79n). Once again Milton emphasizes humankind’s inability to perceive Heaven. When we do look skyward, we
see the moon and imagined lands; that is, we engage in figuration. The Galileo
allusion suggests the ends of scientific, rational thought: the moon, not God.
The next vehicle stresses a similar idea. Raphael is compared to a naval navigator (5.263-80n) again looking toward the heavens. Here, however, the pilot sees a
“cloudy spot” much like the “cloud in stead” that obscures the narrator’s sight in
Book 3 (3.45). Flannagan, in his note on the Greek Islands, positions the islands
as geographically far apart, and then ignores the implications of this research.
The pilot is lost, or unaware of his direction, unable to interpret the clouds to
‘kenn’ his direction. He is either travelling toward Delos4 or Samos, either north
11
of the Cyclades or to the north east, “off the coast of Asia Minor” (5.265-80n).
This reading presents a problem if the reader tries to identify Raphael with the
pilot, for surely the angel knows his exact direction. A solution would be to
read the second vehicle like the first: as a negative simile. Here, the clause “less
assur’d” modifies the pilot’s sight as well. Clouds obscure sight, yet the angel – not
restrained by the limits of human perception – travels from Heaven with “no
cloud, or, to obstruct his sight” (5.257). In the negative similes – in which the connection between tenor and vehicle is a variation of ‘not like’ or ‘not as’ – Milton
emphasizes the difference between human investigation and extra-perceptual
truth. His entire Heaven is a figuration, yet within this “Imagind Land,” similes
direct us toward an acknowledgement of our deficiencies and thus, the need to
use figurative language.
Images from this epic simile echo similes in Book 1. These similes serve more
to describe and contextualize Satan than emphasize figuration itself; yet the simile itself as trope is always present, commenting on Milton’s project. For example,
Milton describes Satan’s shield as hanging on his shoulders:
like the Moon, whose Orb
Through Optic Glass the Tuscan Artist views
At Ev’ning from the top of Fesole,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new Lands,
Rivers or mountains in her spotty Globe. (1.287-91)
Here Galileo is again viewing the moon through his telescope. This simile,
however, is positive, stressing likeness rather than unlikeness. Satan’s shield is like
Galileo’s moon, imprecise and “spotty” when compared to the clarity of Raphael’s
vision. Thus, Raphael surpasses human perception, while Satan is involved in an
impossibly large version of it. Similarly, Milton associates Satan with “new Lands”
(Earth and Eden) not “Imagind Lands” (the heavens). The shield is material
– “like the Moon” viewed and created by an “artisan” (1.291-105n) – while Raphel’s
wings “Girt like a Starrie Zone his waste” (5.281). Satan bears solid matter, while
Raphael burns like the stars or “A Phœnix” (5.272). Satan exists on a different level
of figuration; this level places him in an earthly context. As Flannagan notes, the
shield is an intertexual reference to Achilles’ shield in The Iliad (287-104n). In the
Fagles translation, Homer describes the shield (after his long ekphrastic description in Book 18) as “flashing far and wide / like a full round moon” (19.442-43).
Milton associates Satan with pagan imagination and epic, and Achilles’s pride.
Again, Milton’s simile draws Satan toward the realm of fallen human perception.
As Spirit, Satan still requires explicit figuration – statements of non-identity
– but as fallen soul, his motivations are comprehensible and thus his similes are
bound to human affairs.
As in his figuration of Raphael, Milton’s simile involves navigation. The movements involved, however, are inexact (as opposed to the clear vision and direction
of Raphael in the pilot simile). The shield is like a telescopic view of the Moon,
12
A Shadow of Heaven
but the location of the telescope is in doubt – in “Fesole or in Valdarno” – as
are the features of the new lands, either “rivers or mountains” (Gregerson 144,
original emphasis). In similes involving Satan, our vantage point always shifts. An
explanation may be Satan’s relation to us: unlike God, he is not totally foreign;
rather, he is spatially and temporally foreign, existing outside human conceptions of space and time. We can understand his motivations – are even tempted
by them ourselves – but not his shifting presence. Consider this description of
Satan’s size:
[…] in bulk as huge
As whom the Fables name of monstrous size,
Titanian, or Earth-born, that warr’d on Jove,
Briareos or Typhone, who the Den
By ancient Tarsus held, or that Sea-beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim th’ Ocean stream:
Him haply slumbering on the Norway foam
The pilot of some small night-founder’d Skiff,
Deeming some Island, oft, as Sea-men tell,
With fixed Anchor in his skaly rind
Moors by his side under the Lee, while night
Invests the Sea, and wished Morn delayes:
So stretcht out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay [...]. (1.196-209)
This epic simile comprises two main parts, which are divided by the first colon.
The first part compares Satan’s size to various mythological and biblical monsters,
and the second part extends the comparison with the Leviathan into a short narrative or parable about a pilot and his “Sea-men.” The vehicles shift until the fifth
line of the simile; here, Milton returns to the diction of naval navigation. Up to
this point, as Flannagan observes, Milton uses mythological vehicles, monsters
that rebel against, or think themselves equal to, the gods (1.208-80n). Briareos
and Typhone are multi-headed (fifty and one-hundred heads, respectively) and
thus provide analogues to the numerous manifestations of Satan – or at least,
Satan’s pride and depravity – in Hell. In this way, the simile not only offers comparisons to illuminate Satan’s size, but also his actions. Milton emphasizes the fictional aspect of the vehicles: “Fables” offer the creatures analogous to Satan’s size
(as The Iliad offers the image of the shield). Milton, however, must move from
these Pagan allusions – corrupt monsters that war with false gods – to a complex
biblical image: the Leviathan. The move is necessary because rebellion against
false gods obviously fails to capture the severity of Satan’s crime. Moreover, the
move shifts the context of the simile (i.e. the era of the allusions) from paganism,
to our own Judeo-Christian epoch. Milton uses this shift to embrace the reader,
and emphasize the complexity and monstrosity of Satan.
The Leviathan originates in the Book of Job (1.201-76n). God rhetori13
cally asks Job: “Canst thou draw out Leviathan with an hook? […] Behold, the
hope of him is in vain: shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him? […]
His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal. (41.1, 41.9, 41.15).
The Leviathan is “a king over all the children of pride” (41. 34). Nevertheless,
the role of the Leviathan is ambiguous. He works as a “mortal analogue to God”
(Langstaff 1) and as a Satan-like obstacle threatening humankind. Like God, he
is so powerful that Job (and all of humankind) is powerless beside him. In Isaiah,
however, the Leviathan is clearly cast as a satanic figure: “In that day the LORD
with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish Leviathan the piercing
serpent, even Leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that
is in the sea” (27.1). By alluding to the Leviathan, then, Milton captures Satan’s
move from unfallen angel to the King of Pride, from God’s creation and symbol
of God’s power to tempter and Arch Fiend. James Whaler points the other,
more obvious similarities between Satan and the Leviathan: both share “enormousness…beastliness…deadly untrustworthiness” (1050). This final similitude
becomes evident in the second part of the simile.
In the second part of the simile, Milton uses this complex image of Satan-asLeviathan in an ignis fatuus narrative that foreshadows the pilot of the Raphael
simile. This pilot, however, is our vehicle – a substitute for humankind – and
Satan-Leviathan is the cloud that obscures our way. Again, Milton frames the
scene as a fiction: “as Sea-men tell.” He pictures the navigator of a skiff mistaking
the Leviathan for an island. In a deceptively beautiful passage (written in perfect
iambs), Milton presents the result: “while night / Invests the Sea, and wished
Morn delayes.” The mooring on the sea serpent delays the wished-for morning.
Satan is our obstacle, tempting and beguiling, always shifting, yet giving the illusion of stability. Thus, with similes concerning Satan, Milton shifts his technique
away from the purely figurative, ultra-extended, negative similes of Heaven. As
in my example, he frequently involves human beings as characters interacting
with Satan, being harmed or tempted. He also relates Satan to a tradition of
myth and fiction, positing similarity. The similes are the most accurate when
Milton uses vehicles of divine origin. This accuracy, however, comes at the sacrifice of “unexpected likeness between two seemingly disparate things” (Brogan
1149). The Leviathan is an appropriate vehicle for Satan because the two share
the same ontology and function. This fact threatens to collapse the comparison,
as if Milton wrote ‘Satan is like Satan.’ Milton oscillates between concrete and
abstract vehicles. He uses both divine images, which capture Satan’s character
and emphasize the problem of representing God – why does God test Job? – and
images, which align Satan with human constructs, but ultimately fail to reveal his
true being.
The final epic simile I will consider describes Adam and Eve after the Fall.
Here, figuration is no longer an act of difference, but of amplification and
emphasis. (Difference, of course, still exists between the tenor and vehicle. In
this post-Fall simile, however, difference no longer acts as a symbol for the dif14
A Shadow of Heaven
ficulty of justifying the spiritual.) Milton no longer has to defer meaning because,
as the fallen descendents of Adam and Eve, we live their fall. Consequently, in
a cluster of similes, Milton describes Adam and Eve making aprons after they
recognize their nakedness:
So counsel’d hee, and both together went
Into the thickest Wood, there soon they chose
The Figtree, not that kind for Fruit renown’d,
But such as at this day to Indians known
In Malabar or Decan spreads her Armes
Braunching so broad and long, that in the ground
The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow
About the Mother Tree, a Pillard shade
High overarch’t, and echoing Walks between;
There oft the Indian Herdsman, shunning heate
Shelters in coole, and tends his pasturing Herds
At Loopholes cut through thickest shade: Those Leaves
They gatherd, broad as Amazonian Targe,
And with what skill they had, together sowd,
To gird thir waste, vain Covering if to hide
Thir guilt and dreaded shame; O how unlike
To that first naked Glorie. Such of late
Columbus found th’ American so girt
With featherd Cincture, naked else and wilde
Among the Trees on Isles and woodie Shores. (9.1099-1118)
Milton here is as close as he gets to positing identity between tenor and
vehicle, while retaining the aforementioned unexpectedness. The two trees are
the same in kind, yet separate in space and time. Flannagan argues that “Indian
herdsman may be included in the simile for no reason other than to prove that
the figtree really existed” (9.1103-312n). The tree is a reminder of the Fall, a symbol of humankind’s shame. It generates children – daughters, specifically – that
take root and spread the first tree’s symbolic meaning. Analogously, humankind’s
sin – Eve’s, initially – spreads as Adam and Eve procreate. The tree also provides
“Pillard shade,” which, as Flannagan observes, recalls the “th’ Etrurian shades /
High overach’t imbowr” (1.303-304) of an earlier epic simile in which Milton compares the legions of fallen angels to “Autumnal Leaves” (1.302). The figtree simile
partially dissolves the earlier simile’s ambiguity5: the leaves cast shades, which
are symbols of sin and death, the multiplication of sin through the generations.
The “Pillard shade” is the sin-filled and deathly shade of the fallen angels, a stark
contrast to “Adams abode, those loftie shades his Bowre” (3.734). This shade of sin
is figured as “thickest” in order to emphasize its importance and prevalence. The
shade is everywhere and permeates every action. The herdsman cannot escape it;
he can only cut loopholes in which he tends his herds. In the fallen world, the
15
shade still surrounds him and us.
In this epic simile, Milton repositions other past images as well. In contrast
to how Raphael’s wings “Girt like a Starrie Zone his waste” (5.281), Adam and Eve
“gird their waste” with the aforementioned shade-producing leaves. One can easily
visualize this image, even if the leaves are hyperbolically as “broad as Amazonian
Targe.” This image of leaves as large as a shield itself echoes the earlier description of Satan’s shield. This time, however, the shield is the simile’s vehicle. And, in
comparison to the moon, it is relatively small. Regardless of its size, Adam’s and
Eve’s sin is so great that any covering will fail to hide their shame. These shifts do
not defer from the passages meaning; they reinforce it, amplifying the Fall. The
passage’s final negative simile simply and eloquently emphasizes the difference
between Milton’s figuration of pre- and post-Fall events. The concreteness of this
simile opposes the abstract image of humankind’s “first naked Glorie.” Finally,
to emphasize the literalness of the simile – the relevance of Adam and Eve’s
discovery – Milton concludes with a historical example: Columbus’s discovery of
similarly girded Americans. In this epic simile magnification surpasses figuration
as Milton’s examples bring Adam’s and Eve’s sin to our shores of shady woods.
Face to face with the problem of God’s motivation, Milton turns to the simile.
The simile’s explicit enactment of difference is a symbol for our separation from
God. In general, the degree of difference and abstraction present in the simile
parallels the tenor’s distance from human understanding. Thus, Milton’s images
of Heaven are one great simile, a pure figuration and abstraction, with ‘God’ or
‘Heaven’ as the tenor; his images of Satan are an amalgam of concrete and divine
vehicles, a constant oscillation, which mirrors Satan’s slipperiness; and his similes of the fallen Adam and Eve are an acknowledgements of sameness between
us and our fallen parents. From these observations, Milton’s other descriptions
appear in a new light. His metaphors and images of the pre-fallen and spiritual
world are implicit versions of his similes, functioning in the same way, yet without
the explicit acknowledgement of difference. For example, Jesus is a vehicle for
God as the serpent is for Satan. Vehicles are piled on top of vehicles and much
within Paradise Lost comes to resemble an epic simile. Within this hierarchy
and overlap of figuration, the uniqueness of individual characters blooms. Most
importantly, the reader becomes aware of the poverty and limits of his or her
fallen character. Because of the Fall, Milton’s poetic persona must resort to figuration, must add another layer to Raphael’s original figures. In this way, Milton
shows us the price of the Fall: abstraction and distance from God, as well as the
only way to recover: faith in correspondences.
Works Cited
Brogan, Jaqueline Vaught. “Simile” The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry
and Poetics. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993.
16
A Shadow of Heaven
Gregerson, Linda. “The Limbs of Truth: Milton’s Use of Simile in Paradise
Lost.” Milton Studies 14 (1980): 135-152.
The Holy Bible: King James Version. New York: Ivy Books-Ballantine, 1991.
Homer. The Iliad. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Viking, 1990.
Langstaff, Amy. “Some Relevant Articulations of the Leviathan Myth.”
Unpublished essay, 2001.
“Leto.” Encyclopædia Britannica Online. <http://www.search.eb.com/bol/
topic?eu=49063&sctn=1> [Accessed 19 November 2001].
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. The Riverside Milton. Ed. Roy Flannagan. Boston:
Houghton, 1998. 297-710.
Whaler, James. “The Miltonic Simile.” PMLA 46 (1931): 1034-1074.
Widmer, Kingsley. “The Iconography of Renunciation: The Miltonic Simile.”
Milton’s Epic Poetry: Essays on Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Ed.
C. A. Patrides. London: Penguin, 1967. 121-131.
1. The simile is “conservatively defined as an explicit comparison using ‘like’ or
‘as’” (Brogan 1149). It comprises a tenor (the subject) and a vehicle (the figurative
term). The trope does not posit identity, but rather likeness (i.e., similarity, affinity, resemblance, and/or correspondence between the tenor and vehicle) and, as a
necessary corollary, posits difference as well.
2. Of course, the relations are more complex than this; my intention is to intimate the heterogeneity of Milton’s characters, rather than provided a complete
schemata of reader-character relations.
3. Perhaps, this is why Milton uses the simile: the angel is coming to Earth to
become part of the material world. He is in a liminal space between the figuration
of Heaven and a quasi-understandable Earth (it is not yet a fallen earth). Thus,
according to my scheme of human-angel relations, Raphael is closer to humankind and thus more easily figured.
4. The myth of Delos and Milton’s later reference to the myth in Book 10 further
complicate the image. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, Delos “was a
wandering rock borne about by the waves until it was fixed to the bottom of the
sea for the birth of Apollo and Artemis.” Milton acknowledges this myth in a
simile: “fix’t as firm / as Delos floating once” (10.295-96). If Delos is moving, the
pilot’s direction is even more uncertain. If we read it as fixed, the human pilot
foreshadows the image of the Fall and provides an even starker contrast to the
17
angel.
5. Flannagan discusses the controversy surrounding the positive or negative
aspects of the “Etrurian shades” in his note: 1.304-111n.
18
A Shadow of Heaven
19
By John Simpson
In Mike Nichols’s The Graduate and George Lucas’s American Graffiti,
two main characters attempt to come to terms with the distinction
between fantasy and reality as they come of age. Rather than utilizing
fantasy to augment and explore their changing realities, Benjamin and
Curtis use it to escape from the impending trials of adulthood. Their
relationships with older women create an acute awareness of just how
different fantasy and reality are, and implicate language as a key factor
in defining this distinction.
The Graduate, réalisé par Mike Nichols, et American Graffiti, de George
Lucas, montrent tous deux un personnage principal devant tracer la
ligne séparant les rêves de la réalité alors qu'ils entrent dans la vie adulte.
Plutôt que d'utiliser la fantaisie pour augmenter et explorer leur réalité
changeante, les personnages principaux de chaque film l'utilisent pour
échapper aux contraintes de l'âge adulte. Leur relations avec des femmes
matures montrent une conscience aiguë des différences entre la fantaisie
et la réality, et sous-tendent que le language est un facteur déterminant
dans la définition de cette distinction.
Adolescence is a period defined by immense enjoyment as well as intense struggle. An
age when individuals develop both mentally and sexually, it marks a time of increased fantasy and “heightened concern with romance and sex” (Klinger 30). Encompassing a “very
large share of waking awareness” (vii), fantasy is an integral aspect of any individual’s life.
However, Sigmund Freud and other psychologists classify fantasy as a primary process,
one which is opposed to goal-directed thinking. Since “fantasy begins in lieu of reaching a
goal”(268) and necessitates that a “subject’s goal-striving must be interrupted” (251), fantasy
often counters and veils the responsibilities of reality. In Mike Nichols’s The Graduate
and George Lucas’s American Graffiti, the characters of Benjamin Braddock and Curtis
Henderson struggle to understand the role of fantasy and its distinction from reality as
they come of age in the films. Rather than utilizing fantasy to augment and explore their
changing realities, Benjamin and Curtis use it to escape from the impending trials of
adulthood. However, their relationships with older women serve as a central vehicle in
their coming of age, creating in Benjamin and Curt an acute awareness of the distinction
between reality and fantasy, as well as the role of language in defining this distinction.
Language plays a central role in the distinction between reality and fantasy in Benjamin’s
coming of age and his relationship with Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate. In one of the
film’s opening scenes, Benjamin and Mrs. Robinson are alone in Elaine’s bedroom. Trying
desperately to remove himself from the unnerving and unfamiliar situation, Benjamin
backs towards the door, pleading that “anyone might get the wrong idea.” Yet, through21
out the scene, shot primarily from Mrs. Robinson’s point of view, Benjamin cannot stop
staring at Mrs. Robinson’s body. Later, when Mrs. Robinson returns from the bathroom,
Benjamin again voices his desperation, this time in broken and often incoherent outbursts,
while split-second shots of Mrs. Robinson’s naked body flash on the screen. In both
instances, the placement of the camera behind Mrs. Robinson, along with the quick cuts
to her body, allows the viewer to see where Benjamin is looking as well as what he is seeing.
Initially extremely quick and nervous, Benjamin’s glances prolong as the scene continues.
Adversely, his objections, initially resolute, become stammeringly incomplete. His incapacity to look away from Mrs. Robinson’s body and his corresponding loss of control over
language illustrates the power of his physical and sexual desires and their role in subverting
language, veiling his reality, and fueling the fantasy of his relationship with the elder Mrs.
Robinson.
Later in the film, the role of language in defining reality again becomes apparent.
As he lies in bed with Mrs. Robinson, Benjamin wonders “if we could say a few words
to each other,” in an effort to learn about the reality of Mrs. Robinson’s family life.
Already aware of the negative consequences such a conversation would entail and the
way it would break down the world of fantasy within which both characters reside, Mrs.
Robinson is reluctant to respond. She instead turns the focus to Benjamin’s college life.
Caught unaware by the reference to his own outside life, Benjamin childishly buries his
head under the covers, attempting to hide from the reality Mrs. Robinson’s language has
made dangerously apparent. The conversation quickly transforms into an argument, both
characters exchange insults, and Mrs. Robinson sits up to get dressed and leave. Mirroring
an earlier shot from a scene in her kitchen, Mrs. Robinson’s leg, situated in the immediate
foreground, arches across the center of the screen as she alluringly begins to put on her
stocking. Standing in the background, Benjamin immediately reacts, telling his lover to
stay, because their time together is “the one thing I have to look forward to.” Using the leg
both as a symbol of her seduction and as a framing device in the shot, Nichols emphasizes
the physical aspect of the relationship and the role this plays in Benjamin’s fantasy. Moving
to shut the light off, he remarks, “let’s not talk at all.” According to psychological theory,
fantasies are expressed in and dealt with “by mental processes far removed from words
and conscious relational thinking” (Isaacs 89). Benjamin now understands the destructive
role language can play in his fantasy. However, being still a boy, he ignores his realization.
Suppressing any further conversation, and thus the distinction between reality and fantasy,
he returns to the silent bed of his physical and sexual fantasy.
At the close of this scene, Mrs. Robinson appears seated on the bed in a black and
white skirt. The colors black and white enact an extremely important role in the interplay
of reality and fantasy in the film. In one of the film’s most visually striking sequences, and
one conspicuously void of any conversation, the viewer watches Benjamin emerge from
the swimming pool in black trunks, put on a gleaming white shirt and enter into the house.
With Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence” blending into “April Comes She Will,”
Nichols portrays for the viewer a time-lapsed overview of the relationship in Benjamin’s
mind, zooming the camera in and out from his head, framed by a black backdrop, to reveal
different locales in which the lovers have spent time. Mrs. Robinson wears a black bra as
22
Awakening The Dream
the scene opens, then reappears in white before putting on a black jacket as Benjamin
watches, his head still framed in black, surrounded by white sheets. The scene closes with
Benjamin’s return to the pool in his black trunks and the song’s final and fitting lyric: “A
new love has now grown old.” Emerging from his dive to jump onto the raft, the camera
quickly cuts to him jumping on top of Mrs. Robinson in bed, before returning once again
to the pool. Using form to enforce meaning, Nichols illustrates the way in which the line
between reality and fantasy has been blurred in a world where language is absent. Through
the juxtaposition and interplay of black and white in both costume and setting, along with
the jump cut from the reality of the pool to the fantasy of Mrs. Robinson’s bed, one can see
how the seemingly black and white line between reality and fantasy remains convoluted
and ambiguous in Benjamin’s mind. April has come and gone, the seasons of the affair
have past, and Benjamin’s fantasy is drawing to a close. However, he refuses to accept this
distinction as well as the reality of his situation, instead escaping into fantasy.
Much like Benjamin, the character of Curtis Henderson in American Graffiti must also
become aware of and accept the line between reality and fantasy before he can come of
age. On what is potentially his last night in his boyhood town, Curt wonders, “where is
the dazzling beauty I’ve been searching for all my life?” Unimpressed and unfulfilled by his
reality, Curt yearns for this as yet undiscovered treasure. His search soon comes to an end
while “cruising the strip” with Steve and Laurie. While waiting at a stop light, Curt turns
to discover a beautiful and clearly older woman with golden, shimmering hair in a white
Pontiac T-Bird. Using visual tactics to further his emphasis, Lucas places the shot slightly
out of focus, causing the woman to glow in a dreamlike manner and blurring her distinct
features. Glancing over at Curt and speaking a few unheard words, she then drives out of
sight. Immediately, Curt demands that Steve follow her, crying, “I just saw a vision, I saw a
goddess...She spoke to me. I think she said ‘I love you’!” Although markedly more eager and
willing, Curt, like Benjamin, has been seduced into the fantasy world of the older woman.
Here, as in The Graduate, the role of language also comes into play. Since Curt does not
hear the words spoken to him, he can interpret them however he pleases, manipulating
language in order to impel his fantasy. He thus blurs the line between the reality of what
the woman may have said and his fantasy of her profession of love. Whereas the definitive reality of language emphasizes the distinction between the real and the fantastic for
Benjamin in The Graduate, the ambiguous nature of words in American Graffiti creates a
corresponding ambiguity between the real and the fantastic in Curt’s mind.
Curt’s repeated inability to find his mysterious woman forces him to face the reality of
his uncertain future. However, much like Benjamin, Curt uses fantasy to escape this reality
and the decisions and concerns of adult life. While discussing his future plans with an exgirlfriend, Curt remarks, “Maybe I’ve grown up,” to which she responds, “I doubt it.” Her
frank remark and unabashed use of language calls the reality of Curt’s status as a “grownup” into question. Seeking refuge in fantasy, he slides into the backseat of a friend’s car and
out of reality with the fantastical request, “to the opera, James.” Aware of, but still unwilling to fully accept the uncertainties that coming of age entails, Curt remains emerged in
his world of fantasy. As a white car passes Curt in the distance, Fats Domino’s “Ain’t that
a Shame” plays in the background. Here, as in The Graduate, the musical soundtrack
23
places added emphasis on Curt’s dying fantasy, as the lyrics lament the reality of the fading plausibility of any meeting between Curt and the woman. However, Curt will not give
up, turning to Wolfman Jack, a man who “promises to make your dreams come true,” in
a last effort to realize his fantasy and get in touch with his mystery love. As promised,
the Wolfman delivers, and Curt receives his long awaited call. After a short conversation,
Curt makes a final plea for the woman to “tell me your name, at least tell me your name.”
Replying only with “Goodbye,” she hangs up the phone. Once again, language plays a predominant role. The woman’s refusal to identify and define herself through language denies
her reality. Thus, Curt must acknowledge the end of his fantasy and turn to the reality of
his imminent departure. The scene ends with a close-up of Curt’s face, his lips turned in a
knowing smile. Although fleeting, his relationship with the older woman emphasizes the
distinction between reality and fantasy. With the lyrics of The Spaniels to guide him, Curt
says “goodnight” to his fantasy “sweetheart,” along with the dreamlike period of youth in
order to move into the bright reality of adulthood.
Like Curtis, Benjamin also ultimately comes of age using the knowledge gained from
his relationship with Mrs. Robinson. Soon after his affair with Mrs. Robinson, Benjamin
becomes involved with her daughter, Elaine. Returning to the locus where his fantasy
began, Benjamin reveals to Elaine the truth about the affair. As he turns to leave, he sees
Mrs. Robinson, clothed in black with her dark, wet hair plastered to her face, standing in
the hallway. The camera pulls back while she says, much like Curt’s older love, “Goodbye,
Benjamin,” and the viewer sees, as does Benjamin, her dark huddled figure clearly contrasted against the bare, white walls behind her. The line between black and white, as well
as between fantasy and reality, is now clearly drawn. Both visually and linguistically, the
scene emphasizes Benjamin’s ultimate realization and acceptance of this distinction, and
thus his coming of age.
Benjamin Braddock and Curtis Henderson epitomize the timeless uncertainty of the
coming of age process. Worried and unsure about their futures, the two boys hesitate to
face the realities and responsibilities of adulthood. However, through their experiences
with older women, they are forced to become aware of the distinction between reality and
fantasy, as well as the role language plays in defining this distinction. Fantasy is “central to
human functioning” (Klinger viii) and an unquestionably important aspect of human life,
but it must be distinguished from reality. Ultimately recognizing its proper place and function, the two boys thus understand the role of fantasy and are ready to accept their realities
and move on into adulthood: a world with new fears, new uncertainties, and undoubtedly,
new fantasies.
Works Cited
Isaacs, Susan. (1952). “The Nature and Function of Phantasy.” Developments in
Psycho-Analysis. Joan Riviere, Ed. London: Hogarth Press, 67-122.
Klinger, Eric. (1971). Structure and Functions of Fantasy. New York: Wiley24
Awakening The Dream
Interscience.
Lucas, George (Director) and Coppola, Francis Ford (Producer). (1967).
American Graffiti. [Videotape]. Bakersfield, CA: Universal Pictures.
Nichols, Mike (Director) and Levine, Joseph (Producer). (1973). The Graduate.
[Videotape]. Berkeley, CA: Embassy Pictures
25
The Body in A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White and
By Sophie Boyer
In Adrienne Kennedy’s play, A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and
White, and Ntozake Shange’s spell #7, the pregnant body is reclaimed
from its usual place of invisibility in traditional narratives to represent
the repressed black body in white culture and language. Kennedy’s play
highlights black infertility compared to that of white movie stars, and
emphasizes an overall inability for black cultural identity or growth in
the given cultural context. Shange contrasts the private realm, where
black activity exists, with the white, public realm where Blacks become
motionless, yearning for a rebirth into activity.
A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White, d'Adrienne Kennedy, et spell
#7, de Ntozake Shange, sortent les représentations du corps de la femme
enceinte de son invisibilité traditionnelle pour montrer la répression
de l'identité noire dans une culture et une langue blanche. La pièce de
Kennedy accentue l'infertilité de la femme noire en rapport à celle des
stars du cinéma, et met en évidence l'impossible croissance de l'identité
noire. Shange, pour sa part, contraste le privé, où l'identité noire peut
s'épanouir, avec le public où elle s'immobilise, cherchant une réaffirmation active.
Images of birth, death and sexuality in Adrienne Kennedy’s A Movie Star Has to
Star in Black and White, and Ntozake Shange’s spell #7, represent the repressed
black body in white culture and language. While the pregnant body’s transition
into childbirth is hidden from the cultural gaze in traditional narratives, Kennedy
and Shange burst out of this depiction of purity and innocence. Kennedy achieves
this by making blood the central image in her play, as miscarriage and menstruation are addressed freely. Similarly, Shange employs active, violent metaphors
to describe childbirth, new metaphors beyond the stasis of the white Symbolic.
Moreover, both plays emphasize how white culture renders the black race immobile and silent through forced stereotypes, epitomized by Shange’s minstrel mask.
On the one hand, Kennedy’s play works within the passivity of stereotypes and
highlights black infertility compared to white movie stars. Furthermore, she
emphasizes paralysed intellectuality and movement through the image of the
comatose brother, and an overall inability for black cultural identity or growth,
focalized in the miscarriage. On the other hand, Shange juxtaposes black liveliness
through dancing, singing and miming with the still and silent body, thus exploring
the private realm where black activity exists versus the white, public realm where
blacks become motionless, yearning for a rebirth into activity.
Narratives of the past tend to skip over the physical details of childbirth; they
27
follow a much more mysterious path where babies just seem to appear, keeping
the female body in a place of not knowing. This neglects the idea of reproduction as recreation, since birth is absent from the text. Although birth itself is not
explicated in A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White, Kennedy addresses the
female body more authentically because of her openness about menstruation and
bleeding due to miscarriage. As Linda Kintz puts it in “The Sanitized Spectacle,”
childbirth is “torn from its idyllic, abstracted connotations” in this play (75). While
Bette Davis “agrees to ‘give’ birth cleanly and purely” by acting as mother figure to
Paul Henreid’s daughter, Kennedy’s “pregnant Negro woman is involved with the
liquids and blood of female reproductive functions” (75). Whereas men’s bodies
operate linearly, women’s bodies are based on cycles. As Julia Kristeva explains,
“Men and women experience time differently – one in terms of production, the
other in terms of reproduction” (qtd in Barnett 142). Women’s bodies are prepared
for childbirth through a monthly cycle of menstruation, a natural and healthy
occurrence in the female body.
However, since the female body is traditionally clouded in mystery, menstruation
emerges as a shocking horror in Kennedy’s plays. The spectator is presented with
the image of blood on “white organdy dress[es]” in A Lesson in Dead Language,
the play Clara works on in A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White (94). In
A Lesson in Dead Language, the girls are taught that their bodies are responsible
for killing their little white dogs; they write on the board “I killed the white dog
and that is why I must bleed” (qtd in Barnett 146). The juxtaposition of white with
blood signifies a loss of innocence, although there is no overt reference to a loss of
virginity. Here, the loss of innocence becomes more a disappearance of part of the
self, since this image of bleeding connects to that of miscarriage. Thus, confusion
consumes the female body, which carries negative weight even when the process
is natural.
When the image turns to miscarriage, natural processes disintegrate. Clara
describes her experience through Jean Peters, who changes the bloodied black
sheets: “This reminds me of when Eddie was in Korea and I had the miscarriage.
For days there was blood on the sheets” (96). Relating the experience of miscarriage to memory in this makes it seem as though the blood on the sheets were
menstrual, and not from the miscarriage, further confusing the two bloody images
– one of life, the other of death. Birth, which continues cycles of familial regeneration, comes to an unexpected end here, and nature does not complete its course.
In much the same way, a black identity embedded in the white Symbolic cannot
follow its natural course because it has been so written upon by whites. Indeed,
Clara’s role models are white movie stars, the epitome of a mass culture focalized
by the white male. Images of these women, Bette Davis, Jean Peters and Shelley
Winters, superimpose themselves onto Clara, so that her colour is hidden, pointing out the tragic position of someone who must vocalize her desires with a white
mask. Sarah in Funnyhouse of a Negro says she must keep white role models “as
an embankment to keep me from reflecting too much upon the fact that I am a
28
Yearning For A Rebirth
Negro. For, like all educated Negroes . . . I find it necessary to maintain a stark
fortress against recognition of myself ” (qtd in Meigs 174). Both Sarah and Clara’s
selves exist beneath layers of a culture that represses black identity. Similar to the
absence of true reproduction in other narratives, the black self is absent from the
popular gaze and remains mysterious and ambiguous.
Black identity can never be synonymous with white identity, due to a gap in
visual representation. Depressing as it may be, a culture so focused on the visual,
as Kennedy points out in her employment of movies, will never dispel the importance of outward appearances. Jean Peters and Marlon Brando try to change the
sheets after the bleeding begins: “From now until the end [he] continuously helps
JEAN PETERS change sheets. He puts the black sheets on the floor around
them” (96). Essentially, they attempt to change or remove the black identity,
Clara’s, but it keeps coming back, no matter how many layers of sheets they take
off the bed. Clara blames her colour for the miscarriage, since the women in the
movies do not bleed on white sheets, and bloody childbirth is absent from the
screen. This notion manifests itself in Herbert Blau’s “The American Dream in
American Gothic: The Plays of Sam Shepard and Adrienne Kennedy,” when he
states that Kennedy is not “entirely sure, as she rehearses the guilt, fantasies,
and phobias of her secretly divided world, where sterility seems black, that she
wouldn’t rather be white” (531 emphasis added). Miscarriage becomes racialized,
and black culture infertile.
In this way, the black family cannot emerge in this “play [that] stages the way
photography and film insist on constructing a Family . . . coded by public culture”
(Kintz 71). Clara’s mother harps on family unity, and asks “Shouldn’t you go back
to Eddie especially since you’re pregnant?” (93). Her mother believes that Clara is
unhappy since her “family’s not together,” vocalizing the 1950s dominant ideology
that a perfect, nuclear family provides true happiness (93). Little does this ruling image show that cohesive families without problems rarely exist off screen.
Moreover, the stereotype of sterility stems from white, male anxieties about virility and racial purity. Karen Cronacher establishes in “Unmasking the Minstrel
Mask’s Black Magic in Ntozake Shange’s spell #7” that “Whites constructed the
African-American male as the exotic, primitive Other, the site of an excessive
sexuality represented in myths of the large phallus” (196). This fear of losing heterosexual women to black men “justified the[ir] castration and lynching” (196).
Black sexuality and miscegenation are violently aborted so as not to disrupt the
white, familial order.
Furthermore, Clara’s sexuality remains ambiguous since she does not appear on
either end of the female spectrum of sexual stereotypes: she is neither object of
desire, nor object for procreation. Helene Cixous in “Castration or Decapitation?”
believes that Don Juan represents “the whole masculine economy getting together
to ‘give women just what it takes to keep them in bed’” (47); thus, the proper place
for desire is the bed. Kennedy undermines this signifier when Clara or her movie
stars repeat “The doctor says I have to stay in bed when I’m not at the hospital”
29
(96). The place of desire becomes a place of illness and sterility. Although procreation does occur when Clara has Eddie Jr., this aspect of the play is almost entirely
subdued and overwritten by the miscarriage and rebirth from the tower as an owl.
To a large extent, Clara’s writing becomes her procreation, since the self emerges
in her plays. Here lies a comment on the cathartic and exploratory powers of artwork, much like Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, where people
take part in a collective type of “talking cure.” Recreation through writing often
furnishes a deeper exploration of the self; stripped of conscious layers, unconscious desires emerge. This self must be reborn from that hidden “black” core,
underneath the cultural stereotypes that perpetuate the death of identity.
Clara’s flight from culture occurs in The Owl Answers, where Clara travels to
London to recover her white ancestry only to be locked by them in the Tower of
London: “If you are his ancestor why are you a Negro? . . . Keep her locked there”
(qtd in Blau 534). Again, this highlights visual reality over verbal presentation, but
the point here is that she commits suicide, in an attempt to kill her white father
(Barnett 144), no doubt a God figure and stand-in for psychoanalyses’ Law of the
Father, and turns into an owl. In A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White, the
owl summons her into “the fig tree”; the owl says “I am your beginning, ow” (101).
Ultimately, she takes flight from white language by escaping the tower, or phallus,
the Lacanian “transcendental signifier” (Cixous 46). Since the owl can see in the
dark, it also signifies the power to see through masquerade; it “can see through the
darkness that empowers it” says Susan E. Meigs in “No Place But the Funnyhouse:
The Struggle for Identity in Three Adrienne Kennedy Plays” (178). Moreover,
the owl exudes authority through height when it flies above and beyond human
culture, and likewise operates through activity – it actively “spreads its wings” a
cliché employed to define a person who emerges into a more authentic being or
self. However, if she remains in the fig tree, she will not be reborn into authenticity since the fig tree symbol stems from the Bible. In essence, Clara circulates
between walls, between the Tower and the fig tree because she still operates in the
English language. Nonetheless, if Clara circles when she spreads her wings, she will
break away from the symbolicity of the linear phallus to an extent.
Although Sue-Jean’s childbirth completes its natural course in spell #7, this
character, played by Natalie, causes the grotesquely unnatural to occur when she
takes on a god-like role and interrupts her infant’s growth. Sue-Jean kills her baby
boy by “slit[ting] his wrists” (30), a suicidal tactic appropriate since the baby’s
name is “myself.” Consequently, the baby represents Sue-Jean’s second chance, a
rebirth, much like Clara desires recommencement from the tower in A Movie Star
Has to Star in Black and White. In Shange’s play however, Sue-Jean wants rebirth
into the tower, a privileged male (phallic) tower, when she specifies that she wants
her child to be “a baby boy” (26), and even points out “his lil dick” (29). She realizes
that both gender and race marginalize her. Sue-Jean’s failure to raise the child may
arise from awareness that the tower is white and not black, which would mean a
birth into death itself, since black identity is so suppressed as earlier discussed in A
30
Yearning For A Rebirth
Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White. Moreover, her opportunity to become
a mother likewise provides a “rebirth” of sorts from a stereotyped role as whore in
the theatre scene. In Act II, Natalie and Ross argue about going on the road; this
turns into a communal argument about “bit part[s]” (42). Maxine says, “well/ i got
offered another whore part downtown,” and Lily responds by stating “if you don’t
[take it]/ i know someone who will” (42). This scene underlines the limited roles
for black actors, women especially, on both the theatrical and world stage. Thus,
the baby boy is born into a bit part.
In light of the potential for motherhood, Shange stages Sue-Jean’s sexual interaction with Ray as similar to that between a prostitute and a customer. Sue-Jean
says: “there waznt nothing special there/ only a hot rough bangin/ . . . ray wanted
to kiss me/ but i screamed/ cuz i didn’t like kissin/ only fuckin” (27). As an aside,
the notion that Natalie narrates this jarring excerpt, rather than Alec who helps
her narrate this scene, makes it more “authentic” since Natalie/Sue-Jean controls
her own story. In any case, the absence of kissing echoes Adam Phillips’ statement
in “Plotting for Kisses,” that “traditionally prostitutes never kiss their clients on
the mouth” (100). Furthermore, Sue-Jean “masturbat[es] in the shadows” after
Ray leaves, truly emphasizing the manipulative and passionless essences of this
sex scene (28). Cronacher refers to Sue-Jean as “outside of the phallic economy”
(197). Yet, a “hard fuck” seems more likely to cause fertilization, and Sue-Jean plays
up the role of whore in order to get pregnant. She says, “everyone believed” that
all she wanted was “a hard dick” and that “no one in town really knew” why (27).
Similarly, Maxine who plays Fay, sleeps with the cabdriver to pay for her fare: “fay
had alla her $17 cuz i hadn’t charged her nothin,” “after I kisst the spaces she’d
been layin open to me” (20). In both cases though, the women are depicted as
seeking sex for personal gain – either sex for procreation or sex “for a good time”
(20), two very valid reasons to get physical. This reverses gender roles since men
are often depicted as exploiting women to either continue lineage or satisfy passionate urges. Like these stereotyped men, Sue-Jean and Fay embrace their sexuality and use it to their advantage, unlike the white woman whom Natalie plays and
says “i dont know how/ cuz i’ma white girl” when confronted with a black lover
(45). And yet, ironically, white women are not forced to employ their sexuality
as a power tool in this play, and depending on how far you think women have
advanced, perhaps this is also true in the world outside the play.
However, it might be more accurate to say that white women depend on sexuality in only slightly different ways than black women, since they can take advantage of different stereotypes. For example, when Maxine arrives on the stage she
“tak[es] on an exaggerated ‘femme-fatale’ character to bring the COMPANY
to attention. they freeze, half in respect/ half in parody” (19). The parody stems
from the exaggeration of a stereotypical white female role, the “femme-fatale,”
where women exploit sex as a weapon to fulfill their desires. Think of women in
James Bond movies, who can play both sides because they are sexually attractive.
Moreover, prostitution is not race-specific and happens across the female board,
31
making any statement about sexual empowerment applicable to both black and
white women. But it is also true that unlike A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and
White, spell #7 does not depict any scenes of domesticity or family. The characters are either in couples or single, and no babies enter the play besides Natalie’s,
which occurs outside wedlock. In addition, the two sex scenes do not occur in a
domestic setting, or Cixous’ bed – Sue-Jean has sex with Ray at the local bar (27),
while Fay and the cabdriver consume their passion in the car (20). While Kennedy
emphasizes breakdown within the family due to misconceptions about black
sterility and identity, Shange highlights black virility which is still destined to fail
inside the domestic, white cultural norm.
In the same way that Kennedy undermines white narrative by presenting the
female body with biological accuracy, Shange constructs a new symbolic system
beyond the white Symbolic when Sue-Jean gives birth. Shange says: “a truly
european framework for european psychology/ cannot function efficiently for
those of us from this hemisphere” (qtd in Pinkney 6). In other words, Freud and
the linearity of symbolism will not be sufficient to describe real experiences. In
“The Theater of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation” Derrida points out
that in Artaud, “[t]heatricality must traverse and restore ‘existence’ and ‘flesh’ in
each of their aspects” (40). How appropriate then that Kennedy focuses so obsessively on the body’s true existence as tissues coursing with blood. Likewise, when
Shange’s Natalie explains childbirth, she employs much more visceral and active
metaphors than those of the “passive” white female already mentioned. Natalie
says: “i pushed & i pushed & there waz an earthquake up in my womb/ i wanted
to sit up & pull the tons of logs trapped in my crotch out/ . . . i pushed & thot i
saw 19 horses runnin in my pussy/ i waz sure there waz a locomotive stalled up
in there burnin coal & steamin & pushin gainst a mountain” (29). These strong,
violent images evoke the pain of childbirth very accurately; these metaphors are
much more powerful than anything I have seen before. Cixous states that women
are “outside the Symbolic because [they] lack . . . any relation to the phallus”
(46), but this furnishes new beginnings for women who must work outside of the
Symbolic. Whereas the phallic tower of the Symbolic is fixed and static, Shange’s
metaphors move so quickly you have to stop and make sure you are aware the
horses are running past.
Though linguistic movement abounds in these plays, characters still struggle
with silence, stillness and death, things which are written upon the body. In A
Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White, Kennedy’s stage directions specify
Clara’s immobility: “She does not enter the [hospital] room but turns away and
stands very still” (82). In fact, the play as a whole has little movement; movements
are slow, lethargic. Characters “wander” (83), “sit”, “think” (84), and “walk” (88), but
rarely jump up or run to do anything. Even the drowning scene at the end is slow:
“She is in the water, only her head is visible, calling silently. MONTGOMERY
CLIFT stares at her. She continues to call silently for help, but MONTGOMERY
CLIFT only stares at her. Movie music. CLARA starts to speak as SHELLEY
32
Yearning For A Rebirth
WINTERS continues to cry for help” (103). Meanwhile the audience must be
thinking, “Do something, Montgomery! Why is he just standing there and letting
her drown!?” This call to action comes full circle back to the spectator who allows
black identity to drown or die slowly amidst white conformities, a culture which
forces Clara to “only writ[e] in a notebook” while “Her movie stars speak [her
identity] for her” (87). Kintz determines that Montgomery Clift “does not directly
cause [Shelley Winters’] death, though he has set up the circumstances and then
does nothing to help her” (78), a discovery similarly fitting for black and white
relations. Interestingly, the only “real” motion throughout the play is associated
with the white actors. Jean Peters and Marlon Brando continuously change sheets,
although since the black sheets keep returning, this movement is an ironic one.
There is no true forward movement here, in the same way that the ocean liner
does not move forwards in Now Voyager, since the motion is merely “convey[ed]”
by lights (82). Everything seems frozen in time, which is appropriate considering
Eddie believes that Clara cannot “accept the passage of time” (99). How can one
recognize time passing, when things have not changed for blacks over time? The
forward movement since the Emancipation Proclamation is limited, and blacks
still remain frozen in stereotypes like Shange’s minstrel mask.
In addition, Clara’s brother Wally provides the central image of stillness in A
Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White since he “does not speak or move” over
the course of the play (98). Wally exists outside white culture. He does not succeed
in university beyond his sporting capabilities: “I’m a failure he said. I can’t make it
in those schools” (102), and likewise does not conform to the domestic ideal. He
separates from his wife and “drives his car crazily around the street where she now
lives” (98) implying that Wally becomes an alcoholic, like his father who appears
drunk several times in the play (94, 101). These failures enforce the stereotypes
that black men only make good athletes, and that alcoholism is a problem associated with the lower classes, and by extension, blacks. Ultimately, Wally remains
frozen in racially determined roles, living as both “brain damaged and paralyzed”
(103). White culture ruins black intellect, by repressing it. Kennedy herself felt
“intense racial oppression from peers, teachers and even the administration with
its expected majors for black students” when she attended Ohio State (Brown 195).
No wonder Wally left so many universities (102). Moreover, stereotypes “paralyse”
natural growth, linking this image to the miscarriage.
Furthermore, the incidents leading up to his coma begin when Wally joins the
army. “He and his wife married right before he was sent to Germany” (102), and
it is only upon his return that they separate and Wally begins to drink. When
Clara asks him how Germany was he is “silent. Finally you said, I got into a lot of
fights with the Germans. You stared at me. And got up and went into the dining
room to the dark sideboard and got a drink [sic]” (90). Thus, silence, stillness and
separation begin after Wally encounters the white, political machine. Again, white
culture taints black selfhood, and not the other way around.
Similarly, in its propagation of the minstrel show, where white actors don
33
“blackface” to caricature black slaves, white culture immobilizes black identity.
The image has remained frozen in the cultural mind and reappears in Shange’s
play. When the minstrel mask is there, Dahlia’s solo is “lyrical but pained” (12),
but when the mask is up, characters dance to the “samba” (32), “tango walk to the
bar” (37), dance in couples (39), “seduce, cajole and woo” (35) and mime and act out
the words of a particular character’s story (stage directions 19, 21, 24, 26). Unlike
Kennedy’s piece full of stillness, where white actors go through the actions of the
movies, rather than the motions of Clara’s memories, Shange’s play focuses on the
gestural manifestation of speech and thought. She believes in expression of self
beyond words: “we understand more than verbal communication . . . we can use
with some skill virtually all of our physical senses,” and believes in employing the
body since “we ‘ourselves’ are high art” (qtd in Pinkney 14). This coincides with
Artaud’s conviction that in the theatre of cruelty “all creation comes from the
stage, finds its expression and its origins alike in a secret psychic impulse which
is Speech before words” (60). In “‘The Poetry of the Moment’: Politics and the
Open Form in the Drama of Ntozake Shange” John Timpani discusses for colored
girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf as a choreopoem,
but since spell #7 qualifies in the same category, the article is applicable. In the
choreopoem, “the speaker will be dancing or moving in some fashion . . . while
delivering the lines” (200), and Timpane believes that this “gestures toward improvisational theatre” (201). According to Shange, the choreopoem “ ‘fits in between
all’ genres and does justice to ‘human beings’ first impulses,’ which ‘are to move
and speak’” (qtd in Timpane 201). The same philosophy applies to Anna Deavere
Smith who directly recreates voice and gesture of her interviewees in Twilight: Los
Angeles, 1992. Both plays accept more actual, individual “play,” Shange through
improv and Smith through direct word transfer, and these playwrights emerge as
more democratic than the linear Stanislavsky technique of theatre in which the
actor is expected to combine his/her psyche with their characters’. In addition,
it is notable that the words “move and speak” are specifically used in Kennedy’s
work to describe that which Clara’s brother lacks.
Amidst a stage full of energy and life, Shange inserts significant moments of
stillness and silence. First, Alec describes Halloween night from his childhood
in St. Louis, where he, a child “usedta hugs drawls rhythm & decency” is “here
a tree” (10). This operates to show the discrepancy between a loving, happy life
as a child at home, and the petrified black child in public, whose face, not his
Halloween mask, “[was] enuf to scare anyone [he] passed” (10). Alec highlights this
point further when he says “this is our space/ we are not movin” (backslash added
12). Moreover, after Lily explains her fantasy to have straight hair, “LOU gets up/
points to LILY who is sitting very still” (26). Lou directs her out of this trance,
since trying to fit into a foreign cultural stereotype by putting on a white “mask”
cannot sustain personal growth. Essentially, both the minstrel mask and white
“mask” do not “fit”; they are not conducive to defining black identity accurately.
Lou says “you have to come with me/ to this place where magic is/ . . .to the place
34
Yearning For A Rebirth
where magic is involved in undoin our masks/ . . . in this place . . .i discovered a
lot of other people who talk without mouths who listen to what you say” (26). To
speak without a mouth means to speak through the body, not in appearance by
straightened hair, but in gesture or movement.
Even further, stillness creeps up in the scene of ‘myself ’. Alec says to Natalie/
Sue-Jean: “you werent really sure you wanted myself to wake up/ you always
wanted him to sleep” (29). If the baby can remain asleep, dreaming, he will not
have to face the racial realities of the exterior world, and will remain peaceful.
When dreaming ends, and “myself want[s] to crawl. . . & discover a world on his
own” (30), Natalie kills him. This suggests death as a more viable option than forcing oneself to live a dreamed identity. However, Natalie only metaphorically kills
herself, much like Lou who describes himself as contemplating suicide, without
ever following through with it; he is “not bitter enuf to die at an early age” (10).
Nevertheless, these characters consider death as an end to racial oppression, since
“the dreams aint enuf ” (10). Dreams separate the self from reality, a metaphorical
death in itself. And yet, the notion that Natalie and Lou do not follow through
with suicide, suggests that they look for an alternative to fantasizing.
Similarly, in A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White, suicide presents a
solution for several characters. Clara’s father attempts suicide, after “his biggest
achievement,” since the New Settlement he helped create after “seven years” of
raising money, only goes to show how unfair the economic situation is for blacks
(89). In addition, when the Columbia Pictures Lady speaks for Clara she says, “I
think often of killing myself ” (81), but since the audience at this point is unaware
of Clara’s white mouthpieces, this excerpt shows that suicide occurs across racial
boundaries. Moreover, Clara’s brother remains between life and death, in the
dream world of coma, but since we are all constantly between life and death,
birth and death, this implies that everyone lives in dreams. Consequently, we
are “spectator[s] watching” our lives (99) since the silence and stillness of coma
accompany dream. This also suggests the absence of authority over our lives, since
we cannot control our dreams; they are a product of the unconscious, and subconscious, all those images and phrases and repressions we have picked up along the
way, handed to us on silver platters and movie screens by the dominant culture and
ideology. This applies to all races and genders; in other words, we are all subject to
the performance of being.
Both Kennedy and Shange recognize the dominance of white culture over
black identity in their plays. While Kennedy’s A Movie Star Has to Star in Black
and White sustains a forced black passivity and slow death under racial stereotypes, Shange’s spell #7 highlights other possibilities for the black body beyond
immobility and dreams, since her characters and metaphors are extremely active.
Though she does retain the dichotomy between private and public selves, the
former being more authentic and lifelike, while the latter is immobile and illusory,
Shange hits upon that which plagues us all. Spell #7 manages to identify with more
than just the black community since other races are vulnerable to the stereotypes
35
of mass media; they too must decide whether to live up to or against a manufactured identity. Likewise, Kennedy underlines the media spectacle as false when
she designates the female body as more “real” through accurate depictions of this
body, compared to its absence in romantic movies. By undermining idealizations
of white culture, these playwrights show that white identity is also masked, that
we are living through a romantic screen which filters out anything dirty or disordered, anything real. Since a “romanticized version of history” does not exist for
those who carry the burden of slavery and Jim Crow as cultural history (Brown
199), these black artists return to the prelinguistic, that which is outside white
language. Ultimately, Kennedy and Shange employ the body, the corporeal in order
to redefine themselves.
Works Cited
Artaud, Antonin. The Theater and Its Double. Trans. Mary Caroline Richards.
NY: Grove, 1958.
Barnett, Claudia. “‘This Fundamental Challenge to Identity’: Reproduction and
Representation in the Drama of Adrienne Kennedy.” Theatre Journal 48.2
(1996): 141-55.
Blau, Herbert. “The American Dream in American Gothic: The Plays of Sam
Shepard and Adrienne Kennedy.” Modern Drama 27.4 (1984): 520-539.
Brown, E. Barnsley. “The Clash of Verbal and Visual (Con)Texts: Adrienne
Kennedy’s (Re)Construction of Racial Polarities in An Evening with Dead
Essex and A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White.” Hollywood on
Stage: Playwrights Evaluate the Culture Industry. Ed. Kimball King. NY:
Garland, 1997. 193-209.
Cixous, Helene. “Castration or Decapitation?” Signs: Journal of Women in
Culture & Society 7.1 (1981): 41-55.
Cronacher, Karen. “Unmasking the Minstrel Mask’s Black Magic in Ntozake
Shange’s spell #7.” Feminist Theatre and Theory. Ed. Helene Keyssar. NY:
St. Martin’s, 1996. 189-212.
Derrida, Jacques. “The Theatre of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation.”
Trans. Alan Bass. Mimesis, Masochism, and Mime: The Politics of
Theatricality in Contemporary French Thought. Ed. Timothy Murray. Ann
Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1997. 40-62.
Kennedy, Adrienne. A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White in Adrienne
Kennedy: in One Act. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1988. 79-103.
Kintz, Linda. “The Sanitized Spectacle: What’s Birth Got to Do With It?
36
Yearning For A Rebirth
Adrienne Kennedy’s A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White. ”
Theatre Journal 44.1 (1992): 67-86.
Meigs, Susan E. “No Place But the Funnyhouse: The Struggle for Identity in
Three Adrienne Kennedy Plays.” Modern American Drama: The Female
Canon. Ed. June Schlueter. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1990. 172183.
Phillips, Adam. “Plotting for Kisses.” On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored.
Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1993. 93-100.
Pinkney, Mikell. “Theatrical Expressionism in the Structure and Language of
Ntozake Shange’s spell #7.” Theatre Studies 37 (1992): 5-15.
Shange, Ntozake. spell #7: A Theater Piece In Two Acts. NY: Samuel French,
1981.
Smith, Anna Deavere. Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992. NY: Anchor, 1994
Timpane, John. “ ‘The Poetry of the Moment’: Politics and the Open Forum
in the Drama of Ntozake Shange.” Modern American Drama: The Female
Canon. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1990. 198-206.
37
38
Yearning For A Rebirth
39
By Michael Sidman
The punctuation in Ezra Pound's poem “The River-Merchant's Wife:
A Letter” is present not only for grammatical purposes, but also to represent the devices of the speaker's unconscious. In this poem, the punctuation serves a somewhat Freudian role as the speaker drowns herself
in the memories of her husband lost at sea. The punctuation helps the
reader to enter the speaker’s thoughts, and to follow the evolution of
her feelings for her husband throughout her life, ultimately uniting the
reader and speaker in mourning.
En plus de servir un rôle grammatical, la ponctuation du poème d'Ezra
Pound “The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter” représente les méchanismes de l'inconscient de la locutrice. Dans ce poème, la ponctuation
sert un rôle quelque peu freudien, alors qu'elle parcours ses mémoires de
son mari mort en mer. La ponctuation balise le chemin du lecteur dans
ses pensées, et unit ultimement le lecteur et la locutrice dans le recueillement.
The power of punctuation is something that many readers overlook, especially
when reading poetry. A carefully and masterfully crafted poem treats punctuation
with the same respect as it would the very words that make up its content. Just
as every word must be perfectly chosen to reflect the emotion the poet desires to
convey, every pause and break in the poem must guide the reader to this emotion.
An excellent example of this concept is Margaret Edson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning
play Wit. Here a professor discusses the sensational impact that punctuation can
have on a poem— particularly Donne’s “Sonnet Six.”
…this profoundly simple meaning is sacrificed to hysterical punctuation:
And Death-capital D-shall be no more-semicolon!
Death-capital D-comma-thou shalt die-exclamation point!
…Gardner’s edition…reads:
And death shall be no more, comma, Death thou shalt die.
Nothing but a breath-a comma-separates life from life everlasting.
(14)
Edson dictates a wonderful idea that something as simple as a comma can have
a drastic affect on something as complex as life and death. The same idea can be
applied to Ezra Pound’s “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter.” While this poem
is quite different from Donne’s “Holy Sonnets,” every comma, semicolon, and
period has an invaluable role on the reading and meaning of the poem. In this
41
poem, the punctuation serves a somewhat Freudian role as the speaker unconsciously drowns herself in the memories of her husband lost at sea.
The punctuation initially allows the reader to flow along with the thoughts
of the speaker. The first stanza paints the picture of a woman who cannot stop
herself from remembering. “I played about the front gate, pulling flowers./ You
came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,/ You walked about my seat, playing with
blue plums”(2-4). Notice especially the first comma. This is the first sign of free
association, as one memory triggers another. This mental trigger is represented
by the comma. As the speaker remembers playing at the gate, she pauses and
also remembers that she was pulling flowers at that moment. The period at the
end of this brief sentence is equally important. It signifies a longer pause. The
speaker’s memories are beginning to unfold before her, and the period tells the
reader that we are about to dive into them. In the next sentence, memory gives
birth to new memory until the entire sequence is finished. She remembers her
love coming by, she remembers what was on his feet and what were in his hands,
and she remembers what he was doing at that instant. The speaker cannot help
but remember every detail from the scene.
The second stanza follows the same childhood themes, but punctuation is
used for a somewhat different effect. Here the speaker remembers marrying her
husband at the age of fourteen. The use of punctuation matures as the speaker
does, as illustrated by the middle two lines of the stanza: “I never laughed, being
bashful./ Lowering my head, I looked at the wall”(8-9). Perhaps the period ending
the first stanza allowed the speaker to gather the words for her second thought.
In these two lines the commas are used as a signal for self-reflection, rather than
free association. She explains that she never laughed; and then, taking a moment
to remember why, she admits that she was shy. She continues in this playful fashion as if she is reliving her timid years. The commas and periods in this stanza
allow for a pace that is quite jumpy – similar to the disposition of a fourteen-yearold bride. The speaker ends the stanza by saying “…I never looked back”(10). It
is this abrupt end that signals a new theme in the speaker’s train of thought, and
a new function for her punctuation.
The third stanza signifies a change in tone and punctuation as we are confronted not only with the speaker’s personal maturation, but the maturation of
her love. She describes the next year, her fifteenth, as the year when she realized
the love she felt for her husband. The first line is of utmost importance: “At
fifteen I stopped scowling”(11). The speaker’s tone has changed drastically. She
has now made a confident statement, which will lead into a heart-felt memory.
She continues to describe, without commas, her immortal love for her husband. The absence of commas in this stanza symbolizes the speaker’s undying
and uninterrupted love, which is shown through the line “Forever and forever
and forever”(13). The speaker is consumed in the description of her love. She is
swept up in emotion and left breathless. There is no time for commas, no need
for pauses as she lets her love flow. However, this heavenly stanza is brought to
42
The Invaluable Comma
a jolting end as the speaker’s thoughts catch hold of a tangent. She asks, “Why
should I climb the lookout”(14)? Suddenly her memory of love is broken by the
abrupt realization that her husband may not be coming home. It is this transitional question that sets the mood for the fourth stanza. Another year has passed,
but in this year, the speaker’s husband has disappeared. The first sentence of the
stanza is reminiscent of the free association theme found at the beginning of the
poem. “At sixteen you departed,/ You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river of the
swirling eddies,/ And you have been gone five months”(15-17). Not only do the
commas once again signify the progression of memory, but they slowly return us
to the present reality of loneliness, and awaken us from a state of reminiscence.
The speaker again remembers that her husband left. This forces her to remember where he went, and in the development of her thoughts, she must describe
this place. As she is caught up in describing his departure, she pauses with a
comma, and brings herself to speak of his disappearance. The blunt forcefulness
of this last statement, followed by the ominous last line of the stanza, allow us to
become involved in the speaker’s sadness. She ends with the phrase: “The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead”(18). This line is similar to the other ending
lines of previous stanzas in that it creates a definitive statement that sets the tone
for the following stanza. This last line brings us back into the present. We are
now aware of the speaker in a new way, in that we sympathize with her sadness
and empathy, and we begin to sit with her and listen as she mourns.
The final stanza is not only the most devastating, but it also shows the most
brilliant use of punctuation. Here the speaker has returned to her present reality and tells her lost love of her pain: “By the gate now, the moss is grown, the
different mosses,/ Too deep to clear them away”(20-21)! We can almost imagine
ourselves with the speaker as she thinks about her husband by the gate. As she
stands there, she notices that her yard is unkempt and becomes overwhelmed. It
is a heart-breaking image to imagine that even this woman’s house has been overtaken by sadness. Each comma in this sentence is a pause as the speaker slips into
mild hysterics. She notices the moss, then she pauses as she realizes how much
moss has grown, and pauses again as she sees that the moss has not been tended
to for a very long time. The most important use of punctuation, however, is in a
following sentence: “The paired butterflies are already yellow with August/ Over
the grass in the West garden;/ They hurt me. I grow older”(23-25). Pound creates
a very noticeable pause by juxtaposing the first half of the sentence with the very
short phrases of the second. It is, in fact, the last line of this sentence that is the
key point of the poem. For the first time the speaker is actively expressing her
emotions rather than describing them through memory. She tells us that she is
hurt, and we see that the pairs of butterflies remind the speaker of her solitude.
When she comes to the realization that this image hurts her, she pauses with a
period. This is the first and only time in the poem that a period is used within the
line. It is this extended pause that separates what was once a woman immersed
in her memory from what is now a woman coming to terms with her reality. This
43
period is the difference between memory and consciousness. After this longer
break in the line, the speaker adds a similarly short but potent thought. By stating
that she is growing older she is recognizing that her life continues even though
her husband is not with her. These two sentences are too short for commas, too
definitive to allow for tangents. In a sense, they say what the entire poem is trying
to convey: that the speaker is in pain, but understands the source of her loneliness. The final line of the stanza abandons all internal punctuation, but creates a
pause through placement:
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-sa.(28-29)
Here is the speaker’s final, futile, offer to her husband. She tells him that she
still awaits his return (though we know he is not coming back), and that she will
go endless miles to meet him. The placement of the final phrase creates an important pause, because while the other pauses signify remembrance and reflection,
this pause, free of commas, is the speaker’s final statement of undying love.
The expressive function of punctuation in Ezra Pound’s “The River-Merchant’s
Wife: A Letter” ranges from free association to self-reflection to the depiction
of unbearable emotion. As the poem progresses and develops, so does the punctuation. But the punctuation is not present only for grammatical purposes; also
it is there to represent the devices of the speaker’s unconscious. In these pauses
we see triggers in the speaker’s emotion, association of thoughts with memories,
and thoughts that unfold an entire past in front of the speaker. It appears that
Margaret Edson was correct by stating that just a comma, a pause, a breath, can
mean so much. Pound has shown us that the absence of a comma can have just
as much meaning. The poem makes the reader pay attention to the period in the
center of line twenty-five not because of what it is, but because of what it signifies. Just as the comma shows a different function in each stanza, the period is
also unique. It creates a finite structure to the thought and jarringly breaks all
flow. The punctuation of the poem is just as important as the words themselves.
Ezra Pound shows that a comma holds endless possibilities, even when it is not
there.
Works Cited
Edson, Margaret. Wit. New York: Faber and Faber, 1999.
Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, The. Second Edition. Eds. Richard
Ellmann and Robert O’Clair. New York: W.W. Norton, 1988. 379-380.
44
The Invaluable Comma
45
By Rachel Carberry
Toni Morrison's Beloved, Gabrielle Roy's The Tin Flute, and Laura
Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate all describe the legacy left, via the cyclical nature of maternal relationships, by mothers who do not feed their
daughters for one reason or another. Beloved uses the denial of maternal
milk to express the uprooting of Black women by slavery, while The Tin
Flute shows a daughter providing meals for her mother in a context of
extreme poverty. In contrast, Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate presents
a daughter who uses food to fight for her identity against an oppressive
mother who would otherwise enslave her.
Beloved, de Toni Morrison, Bonheur d'Occasion, de Gabrielle Roy, et Like
Water for Chocolate de Laura Esquivel explorent tous l'héritage laissé via
le cycle des relations mères-filles des mères qui ne nourrissent pas leurs
enfants. Beloved, en montrant le déni du lait maternel d'une mère à son
enfant, exprime le déracinement femmes noires par l'esclavage; Bonheur
d'Occasion montre une fille devant nourrir sa mère, dans un contexte de
pauvreté extrême. Like Water for Chocolate, par contre, montre la rupture
du lien alimentaire mère-enfant comme un combat identitaire: une fille
utilise la nourriture comme un moyen d'échapper à une mère oppres-
“Feeding is posited as an inherently female activity. The mother’s
breast becomes a privileged and preferred object of both love and
food. The act… establishes a bond between the infant and the
(m)other. It creates primary human identity. The child is separated from the uterine world in which there is no split between the
desire—hunger—and its fulfillment—eating. [It is a] non-verbal,
emotional, instinctual language developed during the (truncated)
union with the mother…. This is the unconscious part of language,
the one ‘sucked with the mother’s milk,’ the part that gets repressed
upon successful passage through the Oedipal complex and entry into
the verbal, paradoxically called the mother tongue. For the mother,
feeding (and writing!) turn [sic] into giving oneself in order to preserve the other. As milk gives way to words, recipes for life and food
are created.”
-Ksenija Bilbija,
“Spanish American Women Writers: Simmering Identity Over a
Low Fire,”
Studies in 20th Century Literature
47
The ability to nourish is a fundamental maternal right; restricting or refusing this
role causes severe problems. In Beloved by Toni Morrison, The Tin Flute by Gabrielle
Roy, and Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel, the effects of denying maternal
nourishment on both the mother and child are examined. Each of these three novels considers the unique relationship between mother and daughter—created in her
mother’s image, the daughter represents a rebirth in possibility, a “fantasy of the future,”
like time’s “redemptive gifts, which the daughter, as a potential mother, symbolizes”
(Demetrakopoulos 72). By reflecting on daughters who are now mothers themselves,
Morrison, Roy, and Esquivel all consider the cyclical passing-on, the legacy or generational
heritage, which a maternal lineage provides. In Beloved, Morrison examines how slavery
in distorts the maternal relationship by reducing women to their reproductive value, and
denying women the right to feed their children. In her highly symbolic novel, Morrison
extends the metaphor of milk and hunger to the level of text, representing all African
American women as abandoned daughters, cut off from their African mothers, hungry
for history. Roy’s The Tin Flute similarly discusses a woman’s denied desire to nourish,
though Rose-Anna’s maternal role is stifled by extreme poverty rather than by the institution of slavery. Despite her efforts to stretch what little money the family can earn,
Rose-Anna’s poverty ultimately restricts her ability to provide with such severity that
she seems powerless to sustain the lives of her children. In Like Water for Chocolate,
Esquivel highlights Tita’s resistance through cookery to oppression at the hand of her
mother. Mama Elena’s suppression, rather than support, of her daughter is a rejection
of her maternity symbolized by her refusal to nourish. Esquivel explores Tita’s role as a
surrogate mother in nourishing her sister’s children when Rosaura fails to do so (a repetition of Elena’s failure to provide for Tita). Each of the novels considers the mother as a
daughter, exhibiting her actions as reactions to her experience with her own mother, in
creating an image of the maternal legacy.
The maternal relationships developed in Beloved are strangled by the institution of
slavery: Morrison “examines motherhood in its most denied form, the mother enslaved,
reduced to a brood mare” (Demetrakopoulos 71). In Beloved, Morrison is “troping
the mother… writing mother’s milk” in an attempt “to tell the invisible ‘unofficial history’ of black [women] during slavery” and resist the language of the oppressors (Liscio
34). Morrison uses the metaphor of mother’s milk, the most basic representation of
the maternal, throughout her novel to symbolize the disconnected heritage of African
American women resulting from the separation of mother and child in slavery: “Echoing
through this ‘history’ is a cry for mother’s milk, fusing a mass-scale historical deprivation
with that of the thirsting self, the daughter deprived of her ‘disremembered’ matrilineage”
(Rody 168). Morrison explicitly uses the rhetoric of hunger to describe a yearning for
history, and Beloved’s thirst for stories is the “jealous longing of the abandoned daughter”
that parallels African-American women’s literature (Rody 170).
Sethe’s experience with her mother shapes her determination to get her milk to the
“crawling-already? baby” (Morrison 93). Her ma’am was allowed to nurse her for only
two weeks, after which she was fed by Nan, the plantation wet nurse. Not only was she
denied her birth mother’s milk, Sethe was fed only after the white children: “The little
whitebabies got it first and I got what was left. Or none. There was no nursing milk to
48
Denied Motherhood
call my own. I know what is to be without the milk that belongs to you” (Morrison 200).
Most of what Sethe knows of her mother was “passed on to her by Nan… who became
her surrogate mother” (Bell 63). Sethe has so little contact with her mother that she
would not recognize her by face, only by a scar under the breast denied to her.
The effects of this maternal separation become clear as Sethe mothers her own children. First denied maternal contact, Sethe is then isolated from most feminine contact
altogether—at Sweet Home, Sethe knows no other black women. Having “never seen a
real woman mothering” (Demetrakopoulos 76), Sethe does not know when to feed her
baby solid food: “Milk was all I ever had. I thought teeth meant they was ready to chew.
Wasn’t nobody to ask” (Morrison 159).
Sethe cherishes the mother’s milk withheld from her as a baby—she “repeatedly cite[s] her milk as a kind of panacea, even as the bonding element of her family”
(Demetrakopoulos 74). The emotional scars left when the Schoolteacher’s boys take her
baby’s milk are far more painful than the “chokecherry tree” (Morrison 16) that grows
on her back. In holding her down and milking her, the boys not only reduce her to the
animal status that the Schoolteacher ascribes to the slaves, they take the one thing she
can give to her daughter. She is robbed of her milk, the symbol of her maternity. Because
of the pain of separation Sethe felt with her own mother, she is driven to nourish her
daughter. Her escape from slavery is motivated by her milk: “All I knew was that I had
to get my milk to my baby girl” (Morrison 16).
Before escaping, Sethe had to “love small;” her children “weren’t [hers] to love”
(Morrison 162). Once she is free, Sethe experiences true motherhood for the first time.
Because she had been “denied normal motherhood by the culture that envelop[ed] her,
Sethe carries mother instinct to an absurd and grotesque length,” once she is allowed
to mother her children at all (Demetrakopoulos 78). It is significant that “when a sow
began eating her own litter” (Morrison 12) Sethe does not look away, as if the subsequent
murder is Sethe’s attempt “to devour [her children] back into the security of womb/
tomb death much as a mother cat will eat her babies as the ultimate act of protection”
(Demetrakopoulos 71).
Sethe’s devouring of her child’s life is reversed with the arrival of Beloved, the grown-up
ghost of Sethe’s murdered child. In a supernatural birthing, Sethe gushes water as Beloved
gulps down glass after glass (Morrison 51). Similar scenes in which “Beloved ingests while
Sethe is drained” occur throughout her stay at 124 – “like the ‘mossy-toothed’ boys who
assault Sethe in the barn, Beloved also sucks Sethe dry” (Plasa 78). Beloved consumes
stories, sweets, and, slowly, her mother’s life. Denver soon observes that, “Anything
[Beloved] wanted she got, and when Sethe ran out of things to give her, Beloved invented
desire” (Morrison 240). So complete is the image of devouring that Sethe is described
as being “licked, tasted, eaten by Beloved’s eyes” (Morrison 57). As Carl Plasa writes, the
“process of giving and taking is materialized in the women’s bodies: the mothers begins to
starve herself in order to feed the daughter, so that her body withers, while the daughter
‘was getting bigger and bigger by the day’ ([Morrison] 239)” (131).
In becoming completely focused on satisfying Beloved’s appetite, Sethe ignores her
other daughter, Denver. Denver lives with the knowledge that her mother could kill her
49
as she killed the “crawling already? baby”; the contradiction of “infanticide motivated
by a mother’s fierce love” is “textually embodied in Denver” who once drank her sister’s
blood with her mother’s milk (Plasa 122). When Sethe stops working and the food at 124
runs out (she essentially stops nourishing or providing for Denver), Denver is starved out
of the “womb/home into the community to seek work” (Demetrakopoulos 75). Denver
assumes the role of mother as Sethe deteriorates due to Beloved’s consumption, bringing
Sethe mother food and nursing her back to health when Beloved is gone.
Like Sethe, Rose-Anna Lacasse in Gabrielle Roy’s The Tin Flute is unable to nourish her
children, and comes to depend on her daughter to do so. Rose-Anna’s inability to provide
for her many children stems from the extreme poverty under which she lives. Married to
a man who is completely ineffective in providing for his family, “himself like a child” (Roy
360), Rose-Anna’s maternal responsibility to nourish her children takes on great importance. Rose-Anna is described by Paula Gilbert Lewis as “essentially representing martyrdom, while extolling the virtues of motherhood” (Whitfield 24). Her spirit “glows at the
heart of the Lacasse family…. Her tenacious strength and devotion provide the little ones
with the only security they know” (Grosskurth, “Silken Noose” 8). Completely devoted
to her children, Rose-Anna is pictured as the sacrificing mother scraping together meals
“at which no one has noticed that the careworn mother has eaten very little to leave more
for the others” (Grosskurth, Gabrielle Roy 10). The image of her children left “with no
one to… feed them” (Roy 360) gives Rose-Anna the strength to push through pain when
she is tempted to welcome death during the birth of her twelfth child.
Yet despite her strong maternal nature, the pressures of poverty keep her from adequately nourishing her children, as she is “[c]onstantly concerned with where the next
meal is coming from” (Grosskurth, Gabrielle Roy 18). Rose-Anna, as “the earth-mother,
should be happily tending her babies, content in the fulfillment of her natural role. As it
is, preoccupied with worry and overwork, she sees her children slipping away from her
without ever having had the time to fully know them” (Grosskurth, Gabrielle Roy 14).
Her inability to provide separates her emotionally from her children.
This failure to nourish also separates Rose-Anna from her own mother. Madame
Laplante ends Rose-Anna’s pitiful visit, during which the emaciated state of each of the
Lacasse children is obvious when compared to their rural cousins, by giving her daughter
a gift of “a big cut of salt pork, fresh eggs, cream, and preserves” (Roy 197). Rose-Anna
is touched by the gift, knowing that her mother “would never let [the Lacasse family] go
hungry if she knew [they] were badly off” (Roy 197). Still depending on her mother to
provide, Rose-Anna has not reached the level of maternal competence needed to provide
for her own children.
Rose-Anna’s failure to provide enough nourishment for her children literally translates
into a failure to sustain the life she has given. Daniel dies of a “wasting disease” (Roy 227),
his “vitamin deficiencies” the result of the “right kind of diet to make sure the bones and
teeth were properly formed and to ensure good health” not being “within the reach of
[her] budget” (219). The orange that his sister (notably not Rose-Anna) brings for Daniel
before he dies comes too late to be of any use (Roy 355). In her failure to nourish, RoseAnna loses her child. Pitifully, Daniel’s death is portrayed as an escape, for he will “never
50
Denied Motherhood
be hungry… in heaven” (Roy 356). The Lacasse children who survive the hunger of their
childhood have little chance at full lives, their empty stomachs mirrored by the absence
of non-material nourishment in their lives.
Rose-Anna’s inability to nourish makes questionable her role as a maternal figure
from the very beginning of the novel. Florentine feeds her at the diner, reversing the
roles of providing mother and dependent child (Roy 117). Florentine is also responsible
for feeding her mother’s growing herd of children by providing for the family with her
wages. Rose-Anna has failed to provide for Florentine, leaving her “extremely vulnerable to the promise of… security” (Grosskurth, Gabrielle Roy 12) of which Jean is an
illusion. Assuming her mother’s role early in life, Florentine’s “future seems predestined.
Florentine foresees only a repetition of the experience of the past” (Hesse 16).
This repetition of the “maternal resignation characteristic of Gabrielle Roy’s fictional mothers” (Whitfield 23) is actualized when Florentine becomes pregnant and must
marry for reasons of social status and stability, foregoing any hope for a loving marriage.
Florentine, “expecting her illegitimate child, reflects: ‘She had made her choice, knowing full well that she could no more have done anything different than stop breathing’”
(Grosskurth, Gabrielle Roy 9). Her marriage to Emmanuel implies that Florentine
“possesses something of her mother’s solidity…. [S]he is saved from despair by the
sheer tenacity to live…. By the end of the book experience has taught her to modify
her ambitions, and we can see the hard lines forming around her mouth as she learns to
compromise with circumstance” (Grosskurth, Gabrielle Roy 11). The “hard lines forming” around Florentine’s mouth echo her own mother’s, and her mother’s before her, in
the cyclical nature of the women’s lives in the novel. Madame Laplante’s despair at seeing
the difficulties with which her daughter lives is mirrored when Rose-Anna finds herself
“strok[ing] the arm of her chair with her aged mother’s futile gesture” (Roy 198) as she
contemplates Florentine’s fate.
Roy’s image of the legacy of motherhood is starkly contrasted in Laura Esquivel’s Like
Water for Chocolate. Esquivel uses Tita’s remarkable ability to nourish as representative
of a split with her heritage. Mama Elena is so far removed from the typical maternal
figure that she “represents a masculine component of repression” (Dobrian 65) against
which Tita must assert her independence if she is to find an individual self. Elena so
completely controls Tita that even after her death, she haunts Tita’s mind. Elena does
“not fit into the traditional discourses of maternity…. [She is a mother] who by invoking
social rules, requires her youngest daughter Tita to reject any prospects of independent
life, and take care of her until hear death” (Bilbija 158). By refusing to allow Tita to marry,
Elena enslaves her daughter and denies her any identity of her own. She requires Tita to
provide for her, in total contradiction to Elena’s own maternal responsibilities. She stifles
Tita’s growth rather than nourishing it, clearly represented in her denial of milk to Tita
as a baby.
Like Water for Chocolate follows Tita’s fight for independence, asserted in her powers
of cookery, against Mama Elena’s control: “The somatic reaction caused by Tita’s bodily
fluids [in the wedding cake, and quail, for instance] actually shows how the daughter
undermines the mother’s authority and prohibition” (Bilbija 159). Tita “appropriates
51
the space of the kitchen, transforming it into the center of her power which alters the
dominating patriarchal family structure” dictated by Elena (Bilbija 158). Through the
dishes she creates, Tita voices her emotions, and shares herself with those around her in a
maternal way—giving herself to nourish others. She does not give birth, but gives life to
her family—to Roberto and Esperenza most explicitly, but also to Gertrudis in motivating her to find independence away from the ranch.
Rosaura’s maternity, or rather her refusal of the maternal, is a direct repetition of her
mother’s rejection of the same role. She is unable to breast feed Roberto or Esperenza,
and continues her mother’s tradition of trapping the youngest daughter in servitude.
Both Rosaura’s and her mother’s “estrangement from their essential female nature is
underscored by their inability to care for their own children and, especially, by their
unnatural relation to food” (Ibsen 140).
Rather than being nourished by mother’s milk, Tita “grew vigorous and healthy on a
diet of teas and thin corn gruels” (Esquivel 7) made by the ranch cook Nacha, who, in
feeding her stomach and soul, becomes Tita’s surrogate mother. Her diet and her childhood spent in the kitchen create in Tita a “sixth sense… about everything concerning
food,” and set up the kitchen as “Tita’s domain” (Esquivel 7). Having been raised by a
surrogate mother, Tita values maternity, represented in the act of nourishing others, as a
non-biological role. Susan Lucas Dobrian describes Tita’s ability to break through biological barriers in her overwhelming need to nourish:
In one poignant scene, when Rosaura is unable to breastfeed her newborn
baby, Tita find milk flowing magically from her own breasts to feed the child.
Pedro enters the room and stands over the woman who should have been
his wife and the child that should have been their child. The scene seems
to portray the typical family unit, but, in fact, is one which is not structured
through the socially prescribed relations of blood. The emotional bond
that exceeds the societal framework is strengthened as Tita becomes like a
mother to both of Rosaura’s children, in many ways caring for them, loving
them, and protecting them from the social injustices to which she herself
was subjected. This definition of motherhood, freed from the restraints
of biological birth, becomes particularly compelling, given that Tita’s own
mother is the evil villainess of the novel who constantly seeks to thwart
Tita’s attempts to be free of her authority. (61)
Tita learns the emotional danger of breast feeding a child that is not one’s own when
Roberto dies after being separated from her, and so she feeds Esperenza as Tita herself
was fed during her infancy – with teas and soft foods. By growing up in the same manner as Tita, Esperenza becomes a replica of her aunt, and takes her place as heir to the
kitchen and legacy of cookery that Tita inherited from Nacha. Her life parallels Tita’s,
and Esperenza becomes threatened by the same fate that stifled Tita’s growth as a young
woman—that of servitude to her mother. Tita fights for Esperenza as not only a mother
would, but as someone who identifies with her fate. Esperenza “portrays collective hope
for the future…. [She] will have a balance of public and private worlds, in which respect
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Denied Motherhood
for family and the kitchen will be threaded with new possibilities for creation in the world
outside of the home” (Dobrian 65). In Esperenza, there exists the influence of Tita’s lessons in a culinary heritage, but also the opportunity to extend herself farther than Tita
was able, into a more public realm. The success of this legacy is apparent at the level of
text—narrated by Tita’s grandniece, it is a “rereading [of] her ancestor’s cookbook and
[a reconstruction of] her experience” (Bilbija 155). The maternal passing-on is further
enacted by the reading of Esquivel’s novel.
In Like Water for Chocolate, Elena’s tradition of rejecting maternity is inherited by
Rosaura, but is successfully resisted by Tita, who passes on a new legacy of non-biological maternal nourishment to Esperenza. This positive break with tradition is contrasted
with the women in Beloved and The Tin Flute, who do not suffer from an internal rejection of the maternal role, but rather from the strangulation of maternal effort by outside
circumstances. Though Sethe’s experience of being denied her mother’s milk as a child
inspires in her a strong will to nourish her own daughter, her ability to do so is threatened
by the institution of slavery in which she lives. Rose-Anna’s severe poverty similarly distorts her maternal bond with her children—as is the case in Beloved, external burdens
restrict her ability to nourish so much that in her failure to provide, she effectively takes
away the life she gave in birth.
In all three of these novels, the refusal or failure to provide reverses the maternal relationship between mother and daughter—Denver comes to provide for Sethe, Florentine
for Rose-Anna, and Tita for Esperenza. The cyclical nature of maternal lineage is examined in each of the texts, as both the continuities and changes in motherhood through
the generations are clearly visible in the female characters. The failure of the maternal,
symbolized in the refusal or inability to nourish, inherently shapes the legacy—as daughters who were left unnourished by their mothers have daughters of their own, the effects
of their hunger become even more apparent than ever before. Each daughter is fed not
only by her mother, but by the mothers that came before, whose abilities to nourish
passed on a heritage of either hunger or fulfillment that shapes the maternal norms of
the following generations.
Works Cited
Bell, Bernard W. “Beloved: A Womanist Neo-Slave Narrative.” Toni
Morrison’s Beloved: Modern Critical Interpretations. Ed. Harold Bloom.
Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1999. 59-68.
Bilbija, Ksenija. “Spanish American Women Writers: Simmering Identity Over
a Low Fire.” Studies in 20th Century Literature. 20.1 (winter 1996): 147-65.
Demetrakopoulos, Stephanie A. “Maternal Bonds as Devourers of Women’s
Individuation.” Toni Morrison’s Beloved: Modern Critical Interpretations.
Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1999. 69-78.
Dobrian, Susan Lucas. “Romancing the Cook: Parodic Consumption of Popular
53
Romance Myths in Como Agua Para Chocolate.” Latin American Literary
Review. 24.48 (July/December 1996): 56-66.
Esquivel, Laura. Like Water for Chocolate. Translated by Carol and Thomas
Christensen. New York: Random House, Inc., 1992.
Grosskurth, Phyllis. “Gabrielle Roy and the Silken Noose.” Canadian
Literature. 42 (autumn 1969): 6-13.
Grosskurth, Phyllis. Gabrielle Roy. Toronto: Forum House Publishing
Company, 1969.
Hesse. M. G. Gabrielle Roy. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1984.
Ibsen, Kristine. “On Recipes, Reading and Revolution: Postboom Parody in
Como Agua Para Chocolate.” Hispanic Review. 63 (spring 1995): 133-46.
Liscio, Lorraine. “Beloved’s Narrative: Writing Mother’s Milk.” Tulsa Studies
in Women’s Literature. 11.1 (1992): 31-46.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Plume, 1987.
Plasa, Carl. Toni Morrison: Beloved. New York: Columbia UP, 1998.
Rody, Caroline. “History, ‘Rememory,’ and a ‘Clamor for a Kiss.’” Toni
Morrison’s Beloved: Modern Critical Interpretations. Ed. Harold Bloom.
Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1999. 168-171.
Roy, Gabrielle. The Tin Flute. Translated by Alan Brown. Toronto: McClelland
& Steward Inc., 1980.
Whitfield, Agnes. “Gabrielle Roy as Feminist: Re-reading the Critical Myths.”
Canadian Literature. 126 (autumn 1990): 20-31.
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Denied Motherhood
55
By Astrid Lium
Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) exemplifies Robin Wood's notion of a
reactionary horror film in its depiction of female sexual difference as the
enemy embodied in the guise of a killer shark, evoking castration fears
and threatening the hegemony of white male domination. In this movie,
however, the sexual symbolism is ambiguous, and embodies a sense of
shifting power structures and gender roles in the world. Generally speaking, the movie addresses patriarchal concerns about the threat posed by
feminist advances against male power.
Jaws (1975), de Steven Spielberg correspond clairement à la notion
de Robin Wood d'un film d'horreur réactionnaire. Le requin assassin,
montrant la différence sexuelle de la femme dans la peau d'un ennemi,
évoque la peur de la castration et l'attaque contre l'hégémonie masculine. Cependant, le sybolisme sexuel du film est ambigu, et montre plus
particulièrement un sentiment de déplacement des structures de genre
et de pouvoir. D'une manière plus générale, le film expose les préoccupations du patriarcat devant les avances féministes.
Social climates and concerns directly affect the form and content of all cinematic genres, shaping both the message cinema conveys, as well as the ways
in which it attempts to do so. Horror films prove no exception, as they reflect
contemporary anxieties regarding threats to social stability: by disrupting the
order established by the dominant hegemony (reactionary), or by portraying the
dominant group itself as intrinsically flawed and causing disorder (progressive).
Either way, such anxieties vicariously evoke fear in audiences by associating the
frightening aspects of the film—most notably, the villains/monsters—with the
greater social concerns at play.
The female body, and particularly female sexuality, often emerges as the villainous scapegoat whose presence threatens social equilibrium. Women, when coded
as both Other and abject, evoke fear both onscreen and in the audience, requiring separation from the collective “we”—a necessarily exclusive male “we”—and
oppression or destruction to restore the given dominant order. Steven Spielberg’s
Jaws (1975) subscribes to such a conservative perspective, and exemplifies Robin
Wood’s notion of a “reactionary” horror film in its depiction of female sexual
difference as the enemy—embodied in the guise of a killer shark— that induces
castration fears and threatens the hegemony of white male domination.
Throughout the film, the shark’s identity constitutes an element of uncertainty,
as does the audience’s identification with it. Both aspects emerge most notably
in the opening sequence as the sub-aquatic footage conceals the villain’s appearance, but offers its, and the audience’s, perspective as two of the same. Given
57
Carol Clover’s assertion that “point of view equals identification”, the “fact that
Spielberg can stage an attack in Jaws from the shark’s point of view (underwater,
rushing upward toward the swimmer’s flailing legs)” indicates the expectation for
viewers to identify with the killer shark. However, as the plot progresses, the “I”
camera offers the viewpoint of the terrestrial humans, thwarting audience sympathy for the beast. Alongside the shift in perspective, the villain simultaneously
reveals more of itself with each attack, until viewers witness the horror as onlookers who identify with the terrified human victims, not the shark that emerges as
an uncontrollable man-eating machine.
Even when the camera offers the viewers a glimpse of the underwater view,
the mise-en-scene invokes a sense of anxiety, rather than identification, as the
under-view sight of the vulnerable, unsuspecting swimmer cues the viewer to
anticipate a bloody attack. Also, the soundtrack guides the viewer’s emotions
and expectations, contributing to the overall effect of each scene. The infamous
foreboding music, inextricably associated with Jaws, supplements the underwater perspective prior to an attack. Essentially, this occurs whenever the shark
dominates over the humans, linking its power with a sense of anxiety evoked
by the tune. Conversely, when the men take control and gain the upper hand as
they pursue the shark, a light-hearted, fast-paced beat accompanies the sequence
of male empowerment, resembling the excitement of an adventure film. The
change in music shifts the focus from the negative—the threat of an approaching
enemy—to the positive—a collective “buddy” bonding sequence, united to defeat
a common foe— and forces the audience to sympathize with the latter group.
Even after the audience identifies the monster as a great white shark—and
clearly marks fellow humans as those with whom to sympathize—the villain’s
gender remains ambiguous. Creed deems the shark “a toothed vagina/womb,”
placing the body of woman at the source of the horror. A toothed vagina in perhaps the most literal cinematic depiction, the shark threatens the power of the
phallus, particularly as it exhibits the ability to castrate. Such role-playing aligns
the vehement destruction of the shark with the existing social concern about
female liberation that threatens male power. It also requires men to retaliate, and
to forcefully reiterate their social dominance in the name of gender superiority
and sexual difference.
Conversely, Karen Hollinger claims that Jaws presents “the creature-as-phallic-symbol” where “the monster is overtly, even excessively, masculine.” When
speaking about the shark, the characters consistently call it a “he,” going so far
to call it a “son-of-a-bitch.” The gendered references and characteristics indicate
a male attacker, but such signifiers serve to disavow the genuine threat at hand.
Following Hollinger’s argument, that “the monster not only represents castration, but also disavows it and provides filmic pleasure for the male viewer by
soothing castration fears,” Jaws essentially codes the shark as male to ease the
horror of an explicitly powerful and sexually dangerous woman.
The symbolic castration imagery, however, materializes as the film progresses,
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JAWS
offering visuals that validate the possibility of a female threat, despite contradicting signifiers of discourse. The more of its appearance the shark reveals—progressively increased with each attack—the more it resembles a “toothed vagina,” and
proves potentially more harmful with its evident ability to castrate. Illustrated
most explicitly during the third attack, the shark exposes its deadly teeth for
the first time, and uses them to bite through a man’s knee, removing it from the
thigh. Sinking to the ocean floor, the appendage obviously comes from a human
leg; however, its phallic shape resembles a castrated penis, though disguised to
alleviate and disavow the horror that such a powerful creature can inflict. The
scare of this attack finally pushes the authorities to take action—after they realize that local townsmen had caught and killed the “wrong” shark. They plan to
seek and destroy the “real” killer, reclaiming the safety of waters in which they
previously roamed freely— reflecting their undisputed dominance—and controlled as much as they did their own terrestrial grounds.
In addition to the role of villain as a castrating female enemy, the women’s
roles themselves add to the film’s misogynistic tone. The main female characters
include Chief Brody’s secretary; his wife, Ellen; and the mother of a shark attack
victim, each of whom respectively appear obnoxiously incompetent, banal, and
hysterical. The general attitude towards women is one of disrespect, evident in
men’s interaction with and reference to them. For instance, Brody (Roy Scheider)
curtly cuts off his wife’s sentences and responds to her comments condescendingly. While speaking to Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), Ellen states naively and
somewhat nonsensically, “I hear you’re in sharks.” Hooper laughs at her remark
while Brody responds with a silent, but piercing glare that aims to silence her.
Brody’s secretary acts like a bumbling idiot, and he treats her like one, scolding
her for the ineptness of her work. Quint (Robert Shaw) recalls a story about a
celebration in light of his “third wife’s demise,” as though it was a happy memory.
In contrast to the shark—the threatening counterpart to the submissive human
females—the women are characteristically subordinated to their stronger, more
active male counterparts, offering no contributions to the story line, or to the
shark’s demise. They act either as insubstantial fillers or as negative figures that
appear less and less important as the men take over the limelight and reassert
their sexual and social dominance, both domestically and in the dangerous territory of shark-infested waters.
The notion of literal and symbolic territoriality and that of the abject lie at the
center of the conflict, illustrating lines of demarcation that separate the adversaries from one another, and the horror that results when the enemy crosses the
boundaries and the two sides conflate. The territorial struggle occurs primarily
between shark and human, who battle over the ocean waters. Hooper, the shark
researcher summoned to investigate the attacks, actually deems the shark problem a case of “territoriality,” a term used to describe a “rogue” shark that roams
shallow waters alone and feeds on the available food supply until it runs out.
Symbolically, this particular battle transpires between the order established in
59
the tradition of male-domination and the looming threat of disorder, caused by
the dangerously empowered woman—powerful in her difference and awareness
of it—(re)claiming her turf, so to speak.
Boundary crossing, similarly, constitutes an integral element of the abject.
According to Julia Kristeva, the abject constitutes “the place where meaning
collapses.” To this description Barbara Creed adds, “the place where ‘I’ am not.”
Essentially, that which exists on the other side of arbitrarily established and
constantly shifting borders embodies the abject, and must be kept away from the
“us” on this side. In Jaws, mankind pushes the border as it assumes domination
over the waters, deeming it a safe realm to enter and control. However, when the
shark resurfaces, threatening the humans who enter the presumably safe oceanic
sphere, the parameters of separation blur, causing a restructuring of demarcating
borders. The shark attacks force the human water-dwellers to retreat, thus reinstating the border at the shoreline, separating land from water, man from beast.
When the worlds of “us” and “them” collide, evident in the shark attacks
within the presumably safe recreational waters, the abject results. The merging
occurs in the spillage of the victims’ blood that turns the water red, resembling
female menstrual blood, a notable example of the abject that is, in this context,
closely linked with the killer shark. Convinced they had solved the problem and
restored safety to the waters, local boaters kill another shark, the depiction of
which exhibits more explicit imagery of the polluted female body. Surrounded
by a throng of cheering men, the dead shark’s head, penetrated through a nostril
with a phallic looking hook, resembles a toothed vagina with symbolic menstrual
blood dripping from its open mouth. This display presents a limp, helpless body
at the mercy of its hunters, signifying defeat of the presumed enemy—symbolically female—that lies defenseless at the feet of the male victors who have
reclaimed their territory and the security of their hold over it.
The male protagonists eventually succeed in destroying the “real” shark, but
they face territorial differences among themselves. Arguments of jurisdiction
and boundary rights arise among the protagonists—significantly, all of whom are
men—who express diametrically opposing views in reacting to the threat. Each
man stakes a claim in the shark’s demise, and takes a different approach to deal
with the problem. Three men—Hooper, Brody and Quint, a navy veteran and
local fisherman—agree to set out together to pursue the shark in the depths
of unknown waters. They must, however, overcome individual differences and
join forces to reach their goal—to destroy the shark and restore public safety in
the water. Hooper’s primary concern in the sea-faring mission lies in his career
ambitions and the prestige of capturing and/or killing a great white shark. Quint
undertakes the task for a cash reward, but also reveals a personal grudge in this
quest as he recaps his tragic tale about losing navy friends to shark attacks. Brody,
the most altruistic of the three, is most concerned about fulfilling his role as the
town and family patriarch, carrying out his duties as police chief, husband and
father, to protect the general public and his family. Significantly, he alone shoots
60
JAWS
the fatal spear that ultimately kills the shark. Essentially, the task calls for collective action as the men bond, despite their divided interests, and face a common
enemy.
The notable bonding scene, which unifies the men and shifts the focus from an
internal feud to a common external threat, occurs just before a late-night shark
attack as the men drunkenly share stories and battle scars of sorts. The tales
involve a plethora of past shark encounters and other dangerous feats, among
which Hooper includes the lost love of a woman. Trying to outdo Quint and
prove his manhood with evidence of endured suffering, Hooper lifts his shirt to
reveal an ostensibly scarred torso, claiming “I got you beat …this is la crème de
la crème.” Displaying no visible scar, he explains in response to the others’ confusion, “Mary Ellen Moffett, she broke my heart,” and all break into laughter at
the joke. Hooper and the others vicariously compare the potent danger of both
sharks and women, paralleling the permanent damage caused by both.
Similarly, Quint reveals the scar of a tattoo he had removed, to which Hooper
replies, “Let me guess…MOTHER!” Though intended as light-hearted mockery,
the comment contains symbolic truth, given the context of the quest and Quint’s
personal vendetta against sharks. In indicating that he may have removed a
“mother” tattoo, Quint symbolically represses his castration fears, which have
resurfaced in the shark that he and his comrades seek to destroy, once and for
all. Quint’s repressive fears eventually consume him as the shark devours not
just a phallic appendage—like a leg—but his entire body, returning him to the
“toothed womb” which he repressed and sought to destroy. The other two men
survive, successful in defeating the shark only through violent penetration and
total annihilation. Failing to show off scars in the previous scene, Brody asserts
his masculinity by prevailing over the shark in a symbolic rape scene. He shoots
a phallic spear into the beast’s vaginal-looking mouth, piercing the bottle of
compressed air which he had managed to toss into the threatening mouth just
moments before, causing an explosion of excessive force that blows the creature
into several useless pieces. The total destruction of the shark restores order and
the film ends on a light note as Brody and Hooper paddle their way safely back
to shore.
In Karen Hollinger’s analysis of Paul Schrader’s remake of Cat People in 1982,
she claims that by that time “women had made so many threatening advances
against male power that… it became necessary to reassert male dominance in the
only way possible, through the use of force.” Produced only seven years prior,
Jaws addresses similar concerns regarding the uncertainty of gender roles and
power shifting among them. On the heels of women’s liberation, the film takes a
conservative approach as it reacts to the growing social empowerment of women
and the clout that feminism had established. Jaws addresses the gender issue by
polarizing the roles of women—either weak and naturally subordinate when kept
subdued, or threateningly destructive when left free to roam—and encouraging
men to reassert their dominance in the battle of territoriality, displaying a suc61
cessful result with such an active response.
Works Cited
Clover, Carol J. “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film.” The Dread of
Difference. Austin: University of Texas Press,1996. 66-113.
Creed, Barbara. “Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary
Abjection.” The Dread of Difference. Austin: Univ. of Texas, 1996. 35-65.
Hollinger, Karen. “The Monster as Woman: Two Generations of Cat People”.
The Dread of Difference. Austin: Univ. of Texas, 1996. 296-308.
62
JAWS
63
By Kathleen Grace
Presented last year in Montreal, Teesri Dunya’s play Bhopal is an
attempt to throw light on the Bhopal chemical catastrophe, caused
by an emanation of toxic gases from a Union Carbide plant near the
Indian city. Citizens have been fighting for compensation from the company, but have so far received little but haughty indifference. This essay
reviews the social and artistic implications of the play, and comments on
aspects of social activist theatre.
Présentée l'an dernier à Montréal, la pièce Bhopal, de Teesri Dunya
tente de faire la lumière sur la catastrophe de Bhopal, en Inde, causée par
une émanation de gaz toxiques venant de l'usine Union Carbide près de
la ville. Les citoyens se sont battus depuis des années contre la compagnie pour avoir une compensation, mais ils n'ont jusqu'à maintenant reçu
qu'une indifférence hautaine. Cet essai évalue les implications sociales
et artistiques de la pièce, et commente d'une manière générale le théâtre
socialement engagé.
As I walked into the MAI to see Teesri Dunya’s latest production Bhopal,
something was haunting me. A little voice peeped, “ I feel like I have to like this
show.” Fortunately, I did. Well, at least I thought I did. As a piece of theatre
Bhopal succeeds in creating an atmosphere, developing textured characters, and
challenging the audience. The show’s design, with swaths of dyed cheesecloth
as both wall covering and costume pieces, functions like a double-edged sword:
it creates great beauty with color and texture while also reminding us of the
chemical decay that surrounds the people of Bhopal. The moving wall units with
window screening serve both to obscure and reveal. With this dynamic design
Sheida Shojai parallels how Union Carbide manipulates the people of Bhopal
like a master chess player: closing them off, cornering them, selectively chooding
what information is revealed. This kind of dynamic also demonstrates itself in the
characters’ relationships. Warren Anderson is the puppeteer-turned-cellmate of
Devraj Smith, who is the employer-turned-lover of Madiha Akram. Each character goes through a series of permutations much like the set design.
This kind of evolution is what makes Rahul Varma’s text so strong. He refuses
to allow his characters to become caricatures. Through these nuances Bhopal
succeeds where, in my experience, most social action theatre fails. In attempting to correlate character with issue, social action theatre tends to ignore the
contradictions and confluences that can exist in one person. Most often, social
action theatre aligns each character with a single perspective on a particular issue,
thereby dividing the dramatis personae into oversimplified and opposing catego65
ries. Varma seems to do this at first with characters like Warren Anderson, who
represents the corporate entity and Izzat Bai, who represents the poor of Bhopal.
However, following the events of the explosion he undermines these strict divisions exploring each character’s personal reaction. Warren Anderson cowers in
the face of the stockholders. Jagan Lal Bhandari struggles between protecting his
people and protecting his political ambitions. Suddenly, in the wake of the explosion the gray areas between the characters become apparent.
Despite the nuanced text, the actors did not always succeed in carrying out
Varma’s vision. Rachelle Glait, playing Dr. Sonya Labonte, was like a dot matrix
printer droning away through the whole performance. Not once did you see a
selfish moment in the entire show. Didn’t the doctor ever consider just going
home? Did she ever think of the fame and acclaim she would receive for revealing
her research? There was not a single moment of reconsideration. In her performance, Glait approaches Varma’s text like a narrow-visioned social activist. She
sees her character as a pure reflection of one side of the issue. Glait does not
seem to see the importance of the unspoken or the silenced. Like Union Carbide
silences the people of Bhopal, Dr. Labonte covers Izaat’s mouth throughout
the play. Glait gives no indication that she sees or understands this parallel.
Furthermore, Dr. Labonte harps on and on about her “research” and never mentions the poor or the citizens of Bhopal. In creating his character’s vocabulary,
Varma indicates the values that lie beneath the façade of outrage. But in her performance Glait equates concern for “research” with concern for Bhopal, instead
of seeing the underlying meaning of the repetition. In her shallow interpretation
of Dr. Labonte, Glait exemplifies the failures of most social action theatre that
Varma attempts to avoid with his subtle text.
The events of Bhopal affected an estimated 20,000 people. Why is then that
Jack Langedik used his chorus of SAYA actors so ineffectively? He relegates
them to the corners and the shadows of the stage and the few moments they
are allowed to shine are shallow. If Langedik was making a political statement
about the slums of Bhopal, he should have put a little more “umph” into it. In
the production Langedik falls short by not giving a voice to the chorus. Too
often he uses the chorus as set dressing: piling them in the back of the stage or
pushing them to the sides. The chorus is rarely implicated in the actions of the
script, serving as a theatrical device rather than a representation of community.
At a couple of moments in the show, Langedik does attempt to integrate the
chorus into the play: when two members are ordered to move a bench by Devraj
and when two members parade in front of Bhandari and the press. Each moment
represents a high and low in the development of the chorus. During the paparazzi
scene, two members of the chorus take the forestage and pose for the cameras.
The failure of this moment is two-fold: the chorus upstages the main action and
they enact cheesy stereotypes that cheapen the depiction of a struggling community. However, Langedik depicts a key power relationship when he shows the
chorus being ordered around by Devraj. He illustrates how one person or entity
66
Two Sides Of The Same Coin
can have power over many by virtue of education or money. This kind of power
relationship could have been explored more by allowing the chorus to interact
more with other characters. Too often they literally become a pile of bodies on
the stage floor.
Despite these stumbling blocks two actors stand out: Mille Tresierra and
Shomee Chakrabartty. Tresierra demonstrates great range with the evolution of
the Madiha. Shomee posseses the kind of youthful desire for success and love
that is needed to give his character humanity. Both these actors manage to capture the nuances in Varma’s script, rounding out the production. This kind of
textured acting combined with the strong script allowed Bhopal to escape what
I see as the two main pitfalls of social action theatre: the tendency to attack the
audience, and the inclination to oversimplify the issues. Both of these failings
relate, in that to avoid them, the production must possess a sense of subtlety.
Teesri Dunya’s subtle depiction of the events left me both satisfied and provoked
– a kind of response I have never had with the more heavy-handed social action
theatre I’ve experienced.
But then, I went to the group discussion. In the time span of the ten minutes
it took to gather the chairs and settle, the entire audience seemed to mutate into
little Dr. Sonya Labontes: droning on and on about the greatness of the piece and
the horrific nature of the events it depicted. My hope for the discussion was that
it would create some kind of dialogue instead of one collective monologue. This
hour and a half or so brought back all my frustrations with social action theatre.
What kind of action can you get when you put fifty people in a room that are
all in agreement? Well, who was going to disagree? Who wouldn’t argue that the
events weren’t horrific? That Union Carbide wasn’t to blame? The whole discussion got swamped in the emotional outpouring of a few individuals and the few
moments that approached true discussion were diffused. I almost think that it
would have been more successful if Rahul Varma had not been there to step in
every few moments to clarify his intentions, or to didactically explain the issues
in the script. I think that without his voice the discussion would have wandered
into some ambiguous and interesting territory. But the discussion only managed
to assert another ideology in opposition to the corporate ideology. In a sense,
the audience became like the chorus in the show, relegated to the shadows, and
lacking their own voices.
67
68
69
By Anca Szilagyi
Agnes, a character generally omitted in criticism of Günter Grass's
novel The Tin Drum, is not only the most important female figure in
the novel, but is also a key figure in the text's focus on sexuality, guilt
and self-destruction. Through the individual, social and international
symbolism that can be extrapolated from Agnes’ love triangle, Grass
describes both the decline of a middle-class family and the disintegration
of a national community.
Bien que la critique tende à ignorer le personnage d'Agnès dans Le Tambour
de Günter Grass, elle est néammoins le personnage féminin le plus
important du roman, et une clé de voûte dans l'approche du texte face à
la sexualité, la culpabilité et l'auto-destruction. À travers le symbolisme
individuel, social et international du triangle amoureux autour d'Agnès,
Grass décrit d'un même souffle le déclin d'une famille bourgeoise et la
désintégration d'une communauté nationale.
A powerful element in The Tin Drum, sexuality represents the negative state
of being in which the characters of the novel and their society exist. Agnes
Matzerath, child of a “Firebug” (Koljaiczeck) and a fertile Gaea-figure (Anna),
has a ravenous appetite for sex, and her gluttony for sex (and later, fish) lead to
her unhappy end. The neglect of Agnes in literary criticisms of The Tin Drum
is shameful. As mother of the protagonist, she is not only the most important
female figure in the novel, but her life encompasses many of the themes Grass is
expressing, especially guilt and self-destruction. Her life is replete with symbols
and messages. Thus, it is necessary to examine her life, and in particular, the allegorically multi-leveled love triangle that rules it.
Agnes’s beginnings are an influential part of her life. Her father, Koljiaczeck,
is an arsonist, a “firebug.” He is the preliminary element of destruction in her
life. His involvement with Polish revolutionaries also adds to the international
aspect of the characters and their interaction with each other. Agnes’s mother,
Anna, is represented as a fertile Gaea figure, because of her womb-like skirts.
Under her skirts, Agnes is conceived in a potato field, while Koljiaczeck is hiding
from authorities. It is under Anna’s skirts that Agnes hides as a child, and later
Oskar hides there as well. The hiding motif, perhaps, is an inability to face reality,
and a desire to remain in the womb. The primal quality of these potato-colored
skirts is perhaps an element that deserves an entire essay of its own; I will only
add that the compulsion with which Koljiaczeck impregnates Anna in the potato
field has some influence on Agnes’s later compulsive behavior.
The photograph described on pages 55 and 56 sets up Agnes’s adult situation nicely:
71
Three persons: a woman sitting, two men standing [. . . .] All three are
smiling, Matzerath more than Jan Bronski; and both men a good deal
more than Mama, for their smile shows their upper teeth while of
her smile there is barely a trace in the corners of her mouth and not
the least suggestion in her eyes. Matzerath has his left hand resting
on Mama’s right shoulder; Jan contents himself with leaning his right
hand lightly on the back of the chair.
This picture of the “triumvirate” (as they are called by the narrator on page
56) depicts Matzerath’s lawful possession of Agnes, Jan’s subservient role of lover,
and Agnes’s compulsive participation in both affairs. Compulsive seems to be
the only appropriate word to describe Agnes here because she feels the need to
have both husband and lover to gratify her needs, although her needs are never
quite fulfilled and she is never happy. The institution of marriage becomes a
crucial aspect in this situation. Why does Agnes stay married to Matzerath? Is it
because of her need for two men? Does she feel she must remain married because
her Catholic background deems it so? Do the societal conventions of her petitbourgeois life compel her to remain married? Or perhaps she stays on account of
Markus’s political advice: “Don’t do it no more with Bronski [...] He’s with the
Poles, that’s no good. Don’t bet on the Poles; if you gotta bet on somebody, bet
on the Germans, they’re coming up, maybe sooner, maybe later” (106).
Whatever combination of these aspects might prove relevant, Agnes’s marriage
and affair has a dutiful feel to it; indeed, the term “triumvirate” has militaristic
connotations to it:
Thus Oskar does not forget to state that his parents’ wedding took
place at the time of the Treaty of Rapallo, a pact of economic and
military aid between Germany and the new state of Soviet Russia
signed in 1922. The adultery which Oskar’s mother committed, we
are told, on her very wedding day creates a humorous parallel, if one
cares to draw it, to the shaky, opportunisticnature of this and subsequent Soviet-German treaties. (Cunliffe 59)
These connotations heighten the symbolism of the love triangle to an international scale. If the three were to represent political entities, Jan would represent
Poland, Matzerath Germany, and Agnes Danzig. Matzerath, the bourgeois and
the Nazi, controls what is eaten in the house. Societal propaganda and conventions are forced down his family’s throat, via his masterful cooking. Slaymaker
suggests an even more insidious aspect of the cooking: “Oskar’s mother dies in
a mysterious way of fish poisoning. At the time of her death, she was pregnant.”
(51-52) Agnes as Danzig is ravaged by the tensions of Germany and Poland. Jan’s
subservient manner also plays on Poland’s weakness in wartime.
A juxtaposition of Jan and Matzerath is needed to further understand the situation:
72
Sexual Life of Agnes Matzerath
The contrast between Bronski and Matzerath is partly between
introvert and extrovert, the former being quiet, sly, and passionate,
while the latter is jovial, loud, and rather foolish (but an excellent
cook). With the masterfulness that is typical of Grass’ women, Agnes
Bronski takes as a husband the one who cooks while she works the in
grocer’s shop she has inherited; she takes the other as her lover. This
arrangement provides a derisory parallel to the arrangement made
concerning Danzig on the international level. (Cunliffe 57)
The differences between Jan and Matzerath also provide a breakdown of Nazi
ideals. While Matzerath behaves as the properly enthusiastic Nazi member,
physically he is not ideal, because he is overweight. Jan, on the other hand, is
physically ideal but often described as effeminate and unfit for war. Matzerath
is also a bourgeois, frowned upon by the Nazis, and criticized at some length by
Grass (or Oskar?).
The petit-bourgeois society in which Oskar lives is chock-full of mass consumption in an attempt to fill up the emptiness of life. Mass (and over-) consumption
can be seen as a sort of surrogate mother – one cannot hide under mother’s skirts
as an adult, so the bourgeois becomes occupied instead with material goods.
Oskar’s mother is the ultimate example of this through her compulsive and selfish sex life and her later gluttonous appetite for fish. “An oblique indication of
this is the way that loving affection and sex are constantly kept separate in the
novel [. . .] there is little love and certainly no spirit of giving in the MatzerathAgnes-Jan Bronski love triangle or in the later relationship between Matzerath
and Maria” (Reddick 40). As Reddick points out, the love triangle has no reciprocation, let alone a spirit of giving. The participants simply use each other.
Agnes, in particular, uses Jan and Matzerath, and in her guilt she devises ways
of making herself feel better about the whole situation. These include banishing
her partners post-coitus, “for Mama had always said go away to Jan and go away to
Matzerath and go away, go away” (286), devout religious practice, and ultimately,
eating herself to death. Agnes’s weekly visits to Jan in a rented room are just as
timely and regimented as her weekly visits to the confessional. By purging herself
of her guilt to the upholder of the institution of marriage, the Church, she allows
the ridiculous three-way to continue for years. Maurer comments that, “Oskar’s
three parents [. . .] play combined skat and hanky-panky as if they were keywound toys set in motion by their limited adultness” (60).
Fervent but unfulfilling, the sex life of Agnes Matzerath ultimately eats away
at her as she attempts to consume her lovers, fish, anything that will fill the void
in her life. Reddick writes that Markus the toy-maker longs for the “crumbs” left
of Agnes and Jan’s weekly meetings, but none are ever left. “This not only points
up the gross insatiability of their lust, but also the novel’s first explicit indication
that it tends to self-destruction” (Reddick 41). He adds, “Their goings-on are
always so depicted that they consistently appear inordinate and compulsive—
73
their irrepressible petting at the least opportunity, Jan’s foot between Agnes’s
thighs whenever they are at the skat table, their regular coitus in a rented room”
(41). Their compulsion does not even come to a halt after a climactic event in the
novel – the horse’s head being pulled out of the sea.
The horse’s head is a turning point in Agnes’s life. Reddick rightly states that
she sees the deadness of her own life in the horse’s head, but this does not stop
her compulsions:
Not even so traumatic an experience as Agnes’s on the sea-front can
inhibit their furious sexuality is a final demonstration of its excessiveness and autonomy, its complex governance of Agnes’s being. And it
is impossible to not associate this with the ‘abyss’ that then opens up
before Agnes’s eyes. (Reddick 42)
Indeed, the corpse is writhing with eels, phallic symbols and devilish symbols
(as they are akin to snakes), that devour its insides. The horse’s head opens her
eyes to “an abyss of emptiness which apparently nothing could fill but enormous
quantities of fried, boiled, preserved, and smoked fish” (Grass 160).
Maurer summarizes Agnes’s situation aptly, with only a quick reference to
Oskar’s nun-nurse figures:
Agnes, killing herself with overeating, trying futilely to stuff an ‘abyss
of emptiness,’ may be viewed as a mindless victim of a crass social
milieu, or as one link in a long chain of nun-nurse figures that Oskar
seeks for sanctification and contradictory spoliation. None of these
generalized interpretations is abstruse; none makes the character, in
Oskar’s words, ‘stand for more than it can;’ none leads a reader any
great distance from a specific reality—[…] in Agnes’s case, from a
woman who bounces indiscriminately from adulterous bed to confessional box, finally to become unbearably conscious of her inner sordidness by a disgusting display of black, slippery eels emerging from
a horse’s head hauled out of the sea by a fisherman. (Maurer 54)
In a nun-nurse figure, Sister Agneta, one can see a resurrection of Agnes. This
character briefly appears in Books II and III, long after Agnes’s death, and appears
to echo Agnes. Reddick does not explicitly draw parallels between the two but
has this to say: In book II, “[Sister Agneta] moves towards the soldiers and their
bunker, is told to come away by her Superior, and replies ‘I can’t! It’s stronger than
I am!’” (Reddick 42) In book III, “[Sister Agneta’s] own sexuality drives her willynilly into the bunker with Lankes, and she draws the consequences afterwards by
apparently drowning herself.” (Reddick 42) Obviously, Sister Agneta’s compulsion
and guilt lead her down the same path as Agnes. While perhaps Agnes’s sordid
sex life is much more extreme and her disgust with life more apparent, Sister
Agneta’s loss of chastity (with a Nazi soldier, no less) understandably leads her to
her own death. In this echo of Agnes we are reminded of the powers of guilt and
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Sexual Life of Agnes Matzerath
self-destruction apparent in the novel.
Retrospection also becomes necessary when examining Agnes’s life. While
Sister Agneta provides an echo or parallel to Agnes, Oskar provides his own
insight to his mother’s death and life:
Besides, my mama’s death was no surprise to me. To Oskar, who went
to the city with her Thursdays [to see Jan] and to the Church of the
Sacred Heart on Saturdays, it seemed as though she had been searching for years for a way of breaking up the triangle that would leave
Matzerath, whom perhaps she hated, with the guilt and enable Jan
Bronski, her Jan, to continue his work at the Polish Post Office fortified by thoughts such as: she died for me, she didn’t want to stand in
my way, she sacrificed herself. (161-162)
Oskar says she would leave the guilt with Matzerath, perhaps because of his
insistence on buying the eels that emerged from the horse’s head. The situation is
filled with guilt on all sides and this can be seen right before Agnes is taken to the
hospital. Matzerath pleads with her: “Why don’t you want the child? What does
it matter whose it is? Or is it still on account of that damn fool horse’s head? [. .
. .] Can’t you forget it, Agnes? I didn’t do it on purpose” (161). While Matzerath
is guilty over the horse’s head (and perhaps his wife’s affair), Agnes is guilty over
having another child that is perhaps Jan’s. In the knowledge of her pregnancy, one
can argue that her overeating (and vomiting) was an attempt to vomit her second
child. Obviously this is not possible, and so she must die. Guilt is not confined
to the triangle. Oskar too, feels guilty. He later often says that he was the cause
of his mother’s death, via his incessant drumming, high-pitched screaming, and
glass breaking. If he is a result of her affair with Jan, than her fatal attempt at
purging the second child (as well as her own guilt) would certainly be a cause of
guilt for Oskar.
Thus Agnes’s sex life provides an arena for the themes of Günter Grass’s The
Tin Drum to be played out. Guilt, self-destruction, mass-consumption, and the
sordid monstrosity that is life are apparent in the three symbolic levels of the love
triangle: the individual level, the societal level of the petit bourgeois world, and,
of course, the international level. Thomas ties these themes together nicely: “In
short, Grass places the decline of a family in the midst of a petit bourgeois environment side by side with the disintegration of a national community” (Thomas
144). Grass’s novel remains poignant today not just because the time period is
still fresh in the collective memory, but also because it reflects the continuing
disintegration of both national and international communities.
Works Cited
Cunliffe, G.W. Günter Grass. Twayne Publishers, Inc.: New York, 1969. (p.5286)
75
Grass, Günter. The Tin Drum. Trans. Ralph Manheim. Vintage Books: New
York, 1962.
Maurer, R. “The end of innocence: Günter Grass’s The Tin Drum.” Bucknell
Review: a Scholarly Journal of Letters, Arts & Sciences. 16(2): 45-65. 1968
Lewisburg, PA
Reddick, J. The “Danzig Trilogy” of Günter Grass. (p. 3-86) 1974
Slaymaker, W. “Who cooks, winds up: The dilemma of freedom in Grass’ Die
Blechtrommel and Hundejahre.” Colloquia Germanica. 14(1): 48-68. 1981.
Tubingen, Germany
Thomas, N.L. “Günter Grass.” The Modern German Novel. Bullivant, K. (ed.)
314 pp. Berg. Leamington Spa, England; 140-154, 1987.
76
Sexual Life of Agnes Matzerath
77
By Shari Dwoskin
Mike, the main character of Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho
echoes Van Sant's quest at a turning point in his career. Not only is Mike
homosexual, as Van Sant is, but he shares the director’s concerns about
which path to take at this point in his life. At the heart of this concern
lies a conflict between tradition, embodied by Shakespearean heritage,
and innovation, represented by the creative choices of the director.
Mike, le personnage central de My Own Private Idaho, de Gus Van Sant,
fait écho à la propre quête du réalisateur, affrontant un point tournant
de sa carrière. Non seulement Mike est-il homosexuel, mais il partage
en plus avec le réalisateur les mêmes souçis quant au chemin à prendre
dans sa vie. Au coeur de ce questionnement, un conflit entre l'héritage
culturel de Shakespeare et les choix artistiques du réalisateur expose le
problème entre la tradition et l'innovation.
“I always know where I am by the way the road looks.” Mike Waters, narcoleptic street hustler, stands in the middle of a prairie road as Gus Van Sant’s film My
Own Private Idaho begins. The road is a recurring motif in this film of journeys
and returns. For Mike, it represents his never-ending quest for his mother and his
search for home, for the place where he can stop traveling. For Scott Favor, the
Prince Hal character in this pastiche of Northwest underworld and Henry IV, the
road leads to the future, not the past; it will take him into his inheritance, into a
“normal family,” and into straight culture. Matt Bergbusch suggests that Mike is a
stand-in for Van Sant “because he occupies the subject position of a gay man” (12),
but I think the parallel runs much deeper. Van Sant is Mike because they are stuck
on the same road, the road between coming-from and going-to, the road that all
Shakespearean directors must traverse at some point in their career.
Curtis Breight, in his essay “Elizabethan World Pictures,” argues that My Own
Private Idaho is essentially about empire, and about how American and European
imperialism exploit and marginalize certain classes of people, represented in the
film by Bob and his gang of gay teenage street hustlers (304-313). I suggest that the
road in Idaho connects two empires: Shakespeare and traditional textual authority
on one end, and the power of the individual filmmaker on the other. Van Sant is
trapped in a liminal space because, as his movie demonstrates, the reclaiming of
Shakespeare as an originating source and influence must precede the individual
creative act. Idaho is thus a self-reflexive film, dramatizing the double-imperial
relationship between Shakespeare and Van Sant.
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The central idea here is the problem of agency. As a voyager on this road, how
can one create anything without obliterating what came before? That is, how can
one avoid being a subject of either the empire of origin (Shakespeare as source of
meaning) or the empire of creation (the self as the sovereign producer of meaning)? The film does not answer this question; rather, it posits itself as a method of
answering it. It is, as Bergbusch claims, an allegory: an allegory for the process of
balancing these two imperial domains. Both Mike and Scott have problems with
agency, which I shall examine further in this essay. I shall then explore the ways in
which Van Sant uses the film to ‘privatize Idaho,’ to take what is essentially communal space (Shakespeare) and make it his own.
Mike Waters is trapped in a downward spiral. The film begins and ends with
shots of him lying in the middle of the road, emphasizing the cyclical nature of
his (and Van Sant’s) world. Roads, of course, are supposed to be used for traveling,
they are not places to be; Mike sees his road more as a location in and of itself
– the “fucked-up face” defines it for him. He can’t go anywhere; he has no vehicle,
and whenever a car approaches, he falls into a narcoleptic slumber. Even Mike’s
genetic makeup demonstrates his circularity. The incestuous union between his
mother and his brother Dick exemplifies the return to origin in a Freudian sense;
a family doubles back on itself instead of seeking new outlets for creation. Mike’s
homosexuality, as Bergbusch notes, firmly excludes him from a “‘normal’ Family
and Home” which is defined by the “limiting notion of biological reproductiveness
and lineality” (11-12). Since, according to Scott, “two guys can’t love each other,”
and furthermore “because of a blinkered sexual essentialism which maintains that,
since same-sex couples cannot produce offspring, they do not qualify as Family”
(Bergbusch 7), Mike is prevented from linear creation and progression, and is thus
associated with the concept of immaculate conception (which I will discuss below
in the context of the creation of art). Furthermore, his narcolepsy punctuates his
experience of the world so that each episode of awakening begins his existence
anew. Mike has very little self-consciousness (Arthur and Liebler 28) simply
because he is not awake for long enough at a stretch for it to develop. It will never
be possible for Mike to be a creator, because he is always on the verge of falling
asleep and recommencing the whole cycle. Mike’s other motif is the image of
salmon swimming upstream to spawn, which occurs at the beginning of the movie
when he is brought to orgasm by Walt, and again at the end when he collapses on
the road that “probably goes all around the world.” As Robert F. Willson puts it,
“Mike ‘Waters’ drowns in reverie and sleep; his life meanders aimlessly through
time like a river” (35).
Scott, on the other hand, is painfully aware of his origins. His father, Jack Favor,
is the mayor of Portland, and like his Shakespearean counterpart Henry IV, looks
unfavorably on his son’s low-culture connections and the shenanigans unbefitting
an heir. Scott’s problem of agency is not that he can’t act on the world, but that
his actions can’t mean anything unless he questions his origin. Scott, like Prince
Hal, initially rejects his father’s world but always intends to come back to it. He
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My Own Private Shakespeare
has a plan of action and follows through with it. Scott’s real problem, however, is
that he can’t see that the script he’s following is not his own. As the interlude in
the adult bookstore shows, Scott is a subject of art. He is always a construct of
another: a photographer, his father, Shakespeare, Van Sant; in order to maintain
his self-determination he can only operate within this sphere and never question
the limits of it.
We can see Scott and Mike as marionettes: Scott can move, but someone else is
always pulling the strings; Mike has no puppeteer and thus can’t move at all. This
is demonstrated by the language of the film; Scott recites the quasi-Shakespearean
soliloquies predicting his own actions because he doesn’t have a language of his
own. Keanu Reeves is the perfect actor for this role, because (purposely or not)
his command of Shakespearean language and rhythm is so bad that it draws
attention to its “self-reflexive clumsiness” (Bergbusch 1) and the audience immediately becomes aware that Scott is not speaking his own words. Scott’s ability to
become a productive member of his father’s straight, upper-crust society hinges
on his willingness to reject Bob/Falstaff, his “true father” and elective origin. Scott
admonishes Bob, “There’s no reason to know the time, for we are timeless.” He
is right; he is timeless because he is always moving from present to future—he is
not rooted in his past. Van Sant told Graham Fuller: “The reason Scott’s like he
is is because of the Shakespeare, and the reason the Shakespeare is in the film is
to transcend time, to show that those things have always happened, everywhere”
(xlii-iii). Scott has origins, but because he doesn’t question them, they can’t ground
him enough for his actions to mean anything.
Looking at Scott and Mike as allegorical figures for a director’s relationship
to Shakespeare, we can see that a Scott-type director would reject Shakespeare
completely but, due to his lack of cultural grounding, he would ultimately fail
as an artist. A Mike-type director would always be struggling with Shakespeare
and would be unable to create until this struggle was complete. Though Van
Sant associates himself with Mike, as Bergbusch points out, the very fact that he
made this film shows that he, unlike Mike, can actually pick himself up and travel
somewhere along the road, but only because he has first dealt with the liminality
of his position.
Idaho presents this liminality in several ways. I have discussed how the road
and Mike’s narcoleptic episodes function as liminal elements; now let us look
more closely at Mike’s dream vision, the little house on the prairie. This is not
the green house that we see in the home-movie sequences of Mike as a child with
his mother. And yet, for Mike, it represents Home. It does look remarkably like
Carmella’s house in Italy, blurring the distinction between dream and reality. The
house is not a memory of his past, but rather it is an archetypal Dream Home
often accompanied by a slide guitar rendition of “America the Beautiful.” It exists
in the liminal space between Mike’s personal dreams and the dreams of American
society as a whole. Another expression of liminality in the film is the circle of male
prostitutes, hustlers, and drugstore cowboys that surrounds Mike, Bob, and Scott.
81
They are mostly teenagers, liminal by virtue of being neither child nor adult, as
well as being completely marginalized: they are neither accepted by society nor
are they totally outside of it. We see a similar circle in Rome, showing us that this
group is not a function of geographical location or of a degenerating American
society, but a universal class of people able to disappear into the streets, to be
everywhere at once. Two adolescent hustlers tell the stories of their first tricks in a
documentary format; Van Sant uses this stylistic change to subvert the distinction
between the real and the fictional.
Art can come only from this liminal state. This idea works its way into the film
through the notion of immaculate conception. First raised by Mike’s neat-freak
john Daddy Carol near the beginning of Idaho, immaculate conception is later
tied into the issues of paternity which permeate the film. It is involved in both versions of Mike’s paternity: either Sharon Waters was impregnated by the “lowlife
cowboy fuck” without a name, who is essentially an embodiment of the American
Western myth and certainly not a “normal dad;” or by her own son Dick, in which
case she is Mike’s sole parent, creating via her own progeny as in some primal
Earth-Mother myth. Breight reinforces this idea by noting two moments in the
film where Mike is posited as a Christ-figure: “The Mother who cradles a partially
flag-draped Mike in two early frames is matched by Scott cradling Mike on arrival
in Portland, imitating Michelangelo’s Pieta” (305), and later, in Rome, outside the
Coliseum, “the boys lean against trees, another subtle reference to the crucifixion”
(312). Susan Wiseman adds a third instance: “once at her [Alena’s] home we and
Mike are shown a luminous stained-glass panel of Virgin Mary and infant Jesus”
(230). We can also read Scott as having been immaculately conceived; where Mike
only has a mother, Scott only has a father. He mentions his mother several times in
the film, but she is markedly absent, even from the photograph Jack Favor keeps
on his desk of himself and Scott as a child. Also, Scott thinks of Bob as his “real
father,” which not only brings out Oedipal themes, since the two were lovers, but
also brings up the question of who Scott’s real mother might be. I have already
mentioned how the film posits Mike’s homosexuality as the cause for his inability
to create; Bergbusch (after drawing a connection between Mike and Van Sant as
“little Dutch boys”) further argues that Van Sant as gay filmmaker sees art, which
is immaculately conceived, as the way to surmount this biological difficulty. As he
puts it,
the profoundly metaphysical longing for the birth of a discursive
framework beyond the prison-house of inherited concepts, a brand
new idea unsullied by lineal indebtedness (the vitiation of inherited
tradition), yet bound to ‘the’ great foundational Truth, has always
been the objective of both radical politics and of the ‘strong’ artist or
poet.” (12)
Art is born out of immaculate conception, but only when it is both free from
“lineal indebtedness” (unlike Mike) and bound to “foundational Truth” (unlike
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My Own Private Shakespeare
Scott). Van Sant is able to create Idaho because he frees himself from his debt to
both Shakespeare and Orson Welles, whose film Chimes At Midnight (1967) is
quoted extensively in his own film, by taking as his “brand new idea” not the story
of Scott/Hal nor of Bob/Falstaff, but of Mike/Poins and his impotent place in the
creative liminal space. Van Sant succeeds as a Shakespearean director because he
is able to recreate Shakespeare, instead of just restaging it.
Let us turn, finally, to the title of the film, taken from a B-52s song. Bergbusch
asks: “How do you make Idaho, that is, an entire state within the American Union,
your own?” (7). The question in the context of this essay translates as: How do
you make Shakespeare, the common cultural origin, your own? This imperialistic
attitude is echoed politically in the film, as Breight demonstrates, with multitudinous references to the Roman, British, and American empires. The idea of
history not only as Home but as exploitative is at work here; these two ideas play
off each other throughout the film, especially in the concept of the hotel/motel.
As Wiseman and others suggest, the “Family Tree Motel” where Mike seeks his
mother binds genealogical stability with transience (231), but I see the various
hotels in the film (the St. Regis, the Gatewood, the Imperial, etc) also as symbols
of exploitation. Not only is a hotel a “home” where you have to pay to spend the
night, but in this seedy district of Portland, they are the locations where Mike and
the other hustlers sell their bodies for drug money. Empires are also both home
(if you belong to them) and exploitative (if you don’t). “The imperial theme links
the personal to the political: Mike’s frequent narcoleptic fits are not simply a personal struggle to remember his own Mother but a kind of ‘political unconscious’,
a need for the Mother of all Empires to give an accounting for the damage done
to her children” (Breight 305). The three empires are evoked in the adult-magazine
sequence. Mike is on the cover of “G-String” magazine, which bears the captions
“Pillars of the Roman Empire” and “Go Down on History.” Digger adorns “Torso,”
a quasi-Shakespearean rag touting “King Leer,” “Pleasure for Pleasure,” and “Julio
and Ron Dewet.” Digger is wearing a kind of crown and holds a wine goblet and
an ornamental sword; this is supposed to evoke for us the English Renaissance and
the beginnings of British cultural (if not commercial) imperialism. Finally, Scott’s
magazine is “Male Call,” whose cover says “Homo on the Range” and “Cowboys
and Indians All Tied Up.” The mythology of the American West is thus “tied up”
with the exploitation of Native Americans, and continues a few scenes later with
the statue in Portland bearing punning homage to “The Coming of the White
Man.” As Mike (and, by extension, Van Sant) searches for his origins, we come
to realize that history is not only Home, but also exploits those on its margins.
Privatizing Shakespeare involves reversing the imperial direction implied on the
cover of Digger’s magazine and expanding the empire of individual creation. To
do so without exploitation, however, a director must first accept it as a point of
origin; it is a starting place, but not a Home. This acceptance is the quest of Idaho,
and it takes place in the liminal space of the road.
In an interview by Graham Fuller, Gus Van Sant refers to Mike as the “salmon,
83
swimming against the current that is life, and trying to reach his roots” (xliii). He
also says that “America has a certain culture that’s always reverting or trying to
figure out where it came from” (xliii). Michael Bristol brings up the same point
in Shakespeare’s America, America’s Shakespeare: “Renewal and the return to
origins are perennial themes of American cultural experience” (51). For Bristol,
“Shakespeare is a founder or creator of a specifically American experience of individuality and of collective life” (3). In order to contribute to American film culture,
Gus Van Sant first has to return to Shakespeare’s empire and pay his respects, then
create art out of the liminality that results.
Works Cited
Arthur, Paul, and Naomi C. Liebler. “Kings of the Road: My Own Private Idaho
and the Traversal of Welles, Shakespeare, and Liminality.” Post Script 17.2
(1998): 26-38.
Bergbusch, Matt. “Conceiving the Origin: Shakespeare, Queer Allegory, and My
Own Private Idaho.” Unpublished essay, 2000.
Breight, Curtis. “Elizabethan World Pictures.” Shakespeare and National
Culture. Ed. John J. Joughin. Manchester: Manchester U P, 1997. 295-325.
Bristol, Michael D. Shakespeare’s America, America’s Shakespeare. New York:
Routledge, 1990.
Fuller, Graham. “Gus Van Sant: Swimming Against the Current, An Interview
by Graham Fuller.” Even Cowgirls Get the Blues & My Own Private Idaho.
Gus Van Sant. Boston: Faber and Faber, 1993. vii-liii.
Van Sant, Gus, dir. My Own Private Idaho. Perf. River Phoenix and Keanu
Reeves. Videocassette. New Line Cinema, 1992.
Willson, Robert F. “Recontextualizing Shakespeare on Film: My Own Private
Idaho, Men of Respect, Prospero’s Books.” Shakespeare Bulletin 10.3 (1992):
26-38.
Wiseman, Susan. “The Family Tree Motel: Subliming Shakespeare in My Own
Private Idaho.” Shakespeare the Movie: Popularizing the Plays on Film, TV,
and Video. Eds. Lynda Boose and Richard Burt. New York: Routledge, 1997.
225-39.
84
My Own Private Shakespeare
85
By Karis Shearer
Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient refuses to be read in terms of
any sort of linear plot. Because the way Hana reads to her patient leaves
the narratee (both the patient and the reader) utterly lost, the novel
depends upon metafictional techniques to teach how to translate this
three-hundred-and-two-page poem into a novel. Ultimately, the book
that pretends to be a metaphoric complex representing memory reminds
us, in self-reflexive moments, that both memory and history are subjective concepts.
Le Patient Anglais, de Michael Ondaatje, échappe à une lecture linéaire:
parce que la lecture que fait Hana du roman brouille les pistes pour les
narrataires (le patient et le lecteur), le roman dépend de techniques
méta-fictionnelles pour montrer comment traduire l'immense poème
qu'est Le Patient Anglais en un roman clair. Ultimement, la mémoire et
l'histoire sont montrés comme des concepts subjectifs par ce livre qui
veut se présenter comme un complexe de métaphores représentant la
mémoire.
Words, Caravaggio. They have a power.
– Michael Ondaatje
A refusal to hold shape.
A refusal to remain static. This is the desert; this is the mind; this is the narration of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient. A novel about the desert, the
persistence of memory, and the division between nations, The English Patient
refuses any fixed form; it obscures borders between past and present, shifting
voices, tenses, denying all identity.
In his essay “The Reading Lesson: Michael Ondaatje and the Patients of
Desire,” Stephen Scobie examines The English Patient through patterns of
image, symbol, and metaphor. He writes that often “ a critical response to
Ondaatje’s novels will have to adopt the techniques of talking about poetry as
much as, if not more than, the techniques of talking about fiction” (92). In fact,
it is nearly impossible to approach The English Patient in terms of any sort of
linear plot, since Ondaatje himself admits that the way Hana reads to her patient
(which is the way the novel reads to its audience) leaves the narratee (both the
patient and the reader) utterly lost. This essay will use the terms of French critic
Gérard Genette to narratologically deconstruct a novel in which narrative properties form a metaphoric complex that attempts to map the desert of memory.
In order to function as a guide, as opposed to merely a pastiche of beautifully
described postcards, Ondaatje’s map depends fundamentally upon metafictional
87
techniques that teach the reader how to translate a three hundred and two page
poem into a novel.
The English Patient opens with an image of a woman who “stands up in the
garden where she has been working and looks into the distance. She has sensed
a shift in the weather. There is another gust of wind, a buckle of noise in the air,
and the tall cypresses sway” (3). This image is relayed by what Gérard Genette
calls an “extra-heterodiegetic narrator” who is introduced by no other narrative
voice (Gourdeau 44). The third-person narrator is the omniscient constant who
exists on the extreme parameter of the diegesis, allowing the reader to see into
the minds of the characters. This is the narrator who observes the characters in
the present tense, and relays the images of the villa.
Of Ondaatje’s imagism, Stephen Scobie says, “it is typical of Ondaatje that he
would begin his book with an image, rather than a character or a plot; his sensibility as a writer is grounded in poetry, and all his ‘novels’ may be described as poetic
novels” (92). The problem with such an imagistic approach to the novel is that
Ondaatje is asking his audience to make leaps, which are often quite large, from
image to image, and from level to level of narration. If the audience is incapable
of making such connections, the novel fails. Fortunately, what rescues the novel
is that, as Scobie says, “to a great extent, The English Patient is a novel about
reading, a theme made explicit in the scene in which the English patient teaches
Hana how to read Kipling” (104). Through metafictional passages, Ondaatje and
his narrators teach the audience how to read his novel.
One teacher, the anonymous narrator, keys the reader to his ‘own’ narrative
values by describing Hana’s narrative techniques:
She was not concerned about the Englishman as far as the gaps in
plot were concerned. She gave no summary of the missing chapters.
She simply brought out the book and said “page ninety-six” or “page
one hundred and eleven.” That was the only locator. (8)
Like Hana, the anonymous agent is not in the least bit concerned about the
linearity of his narration. This agent narrates incidents such as the scene where
Almásy and Katharine are at the botanical garden (158), even though the patient
himself will narrate this incident later in the diegesis (171). This double narrative
allows the subjectivity of narration to surface, as certain descriptions are changed
or omitted depending on who is narrating. The anonymous narrator moves from
Hana’s room in the Villa San Girolamo into her childhood memories, to the desert and back again, and is frequently interrupted by intradiegetic narrators like
Hana and the English patient. The narrative agent is able to move the narrative
forward and backward in time by shifting tenses and shows omniscience through
a description of Caravaggio’s future:
Caravaggio glances down to see the young man’s face blowing out
all the air quickly through his cheeks. He suddenly thinks he owes
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Polyphonic Power-Struggle
him a life… Caravaggio will remember the slide… Years from now on
a Toronto street Caravaggio will get out of a taxi and hold the door
open for an East Indian who is about to get into it, and he will think
of Kip then. (Ondaatje 208)
The narration of The English Patient wants to be a metaphoric complex for
memory itself. In fact, the narration of the novel is a mirage that Ondaatje creates
in order to make us believe he has synthesised the patterns of human memory.
The novel captures the movement of the desert (which is another metaphor for
both memory and the narrative) and depends fundamentally on the association
of images and symbols in order to propel the plot forward and backward, and to
fill the gaps in much the same way as human memory works. Ondaatje depends
on the reader’s ability to follow and connect the associative elements in the novel
since it is these elements that drive the plot. In an interview, Ondaatje describes
the construction of the narrative in relation to the way memory works, saying
that he doesn’t
believe stories are told from A to Z anymore; or if they are, they
become very ponderous… We discover stories in a different way…
that sense of discovery, of memory, and how we reveal ourselves to
each other — none of that is chronological. Hana will read twenty
pages of a book to the poor Patient, and then she’ll read on to herself,
then carry on aloud twenty pages later, and he’s utterly lost in the
plot. (Wachtel 258)
But Ondaatje cannot afford to leave the reader “utterly lost in the plot,” so
he links the images and levels of narration through the symbol of fire, which
transcends all levels of narration, both extra and intradiegetic (Gourdeau 45).
Through subtle metafictional passages, the author teaches the reader how to
navigate the narrative of his novel.
From the very beginning, the extra-heterodiegetic narrator refers to the way the
narrative is constructed. The narrator describes the English patient’s narration as
“dragging the listening heart of the young nurse beside him to wherever his mind
is, into that well of memory he kept plunging into during those months before he
died” (Ondaatje 4). This is exactly the way Ondaatje’s narrative works, plunging
from images (narrated largely in the present tense) into series of analepses (narrated in the past tense) and back again. The text again shows its self-reflexivity
when the anonymous narrator speaks of “the stories the man recites quietly into
the room which slip from level to level like a hawk” (4), which immediately calls
to mind the book’s many narrative tenses and levels (extra-, intra-, hetero-, and
homodiegetic).
In a novel that, on both a thematic and formal level, has so much to do with
retaining anonymity, it seems appropriate that the text comments on its own narration and ambivalence, illustrating the unreliability and selectivity of memory.
89
On the multiple levels of narration, Stephen Scobie remarks, “as the English
patient slips into talking about himself in the third person, the supposedly
authoritative third-person narrative of the novel begins to refer to him by the
name, Almásy, that Caravaggio has ascribed to him” (99). “When I went back
into the desert, I took with me the evenings of dancing” (243), the patient-narrator describes in the first person, but then takes on the third-person voice in
order to distance himself from what he recounts not two paragraphs later- that
“in those days he and she did not seem to be getting on well” (244). Between
the shift in voice, Caravaggio metaficticiously asks himself a question that is no
doubt on the reader’s mind: “Who is [the English patient] speaking as now? (244).
Caravaggio is now the literary critic who questions the reliability of the narrator.
These metafictional moments that teach the reader to recognise the metaphoric
structure of the narrative come early on in the novel, but the question of how
exactly Ondaatje moves the plot still remains.
In The English Patient, stories and books trigger memory, or analepsis. In
order to delve into the ‘well of memory,’ one must have a sort of rope with which
to pull oneself out – that is, back to the surface, or present tense – again. To pull
the narrative up out of the well, Ondaatje often uses the symbol of fire, which
in Scobie’s accurate observation “[dominates] the novel, right from the English
patient’s first account of his crash” (93). The symbol of fire that permeates the
novel helps move the patient’s analeptic account of falling burning out of the sky
back to the villa where Hana reads to him. It is a symbol common to both levels
of narration; the patient, who is an intra-homodiegetic narrator, recalls his fall:
The Bedouin knew about fire. They knew about planes that since
1939 had been falling out of the sky… I was perhaps the first one to
stand up alive out of a burning machine. A man whose head was on
fire. They didn’t know my name. I didn’t know their tribe. (5)
As the narrative moves back to the present tense, the extra-heterodiegetic narrator resumes the task of narrating, but the symbol of fire remains, in the form
of the candle that “flickers over the page and over the young nurse’s talking face,
barely revealing at this hour the trees and vista that decorate the walls” (5).
Further on, it is a different symbol that triggers an associative memory, moving
the plot backward in time instead of forward. “Your hands are getting rough,”
the patient says, triggering for Hana the memory of “her father [who] had taught
her about hands” (8). In another instance, it is a book (often the Histories of
Herodotus) that triggers memory and propels the narrative to another level,
another analepse. In this case the map inside the front cover of Kipling’s Kim
triggers a memory for the patient and thrusts the novel out from the present
tense, from the control of the extra-heterodiegetic narrator, into the hands of
the patient who narrates on an intra-homodiegetic, or first-person level.
The symbols which produce associative memories (which work on both the level
of the character or the reader) create a tension amongst the voices, or a struggle
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Polyphonic Power-Struggle
for narrative power. In a polyphonic novel, where a number of voices pull against
each other, and ‘sins of omission’ are revealed as the narrative comes back on
itself, the novel makes a formal and rather uncomfortable comment on the accuracy of both history and memory. Through gaps in the narrative and sometimes
contradictory voices, the book reminds us that history and memory are subjective and can be intentionally compromised by ulterior motive, such as the English
patient’s desire to remain anonymous. A striking example of the manipulation of
narrative is one that Scobie highlights in his essay, writing that:
Ondaatje’s narrative becomes complicit with Caravaggio’s desire.
Whether Caravaggio’s version of the English patient’s identity is
true or not scarcely matters… The English patient becomes the character that both Caravaggio and Ondaatje will him to be — insofar as
Almásy goes along with Caravaggio’s decoding, he becomes also the
character that he wills himself to be. (98-99)
What Scobie’s analysis shows is that the one who is the narrator, or who
writes the history, has the power (and conversely, that whomever has the power
narrates the history) – an idea that the text itself reflexively identifies when the
English patient says “Words, Caravaggio. They have a power” (Ondaatje 234). It
is through the double narratives, and the back-tracking in the narratives that the
unreliability of the narrators becomes very clear. Holes and omissions emerge,
leaving only questions behind them.
Ultimately, then, the book that pretends to be a metaphoric complex representing memory reminds us, in self-reflexive moments, that both memory and
history are subjective and fluctuate according to the voice or narrator in control.
None are to be trusted, not even the author himself. In the end, this is Ondaatje’s
reading lesson.
Works Cited
Gourdeau, Gabrielle. Analyse du discours narratif. Boucherville: Gaëtan Morin,
1993.
Ondaatje, Michael. The English Patient. Toronto: Vintage, 1993.
Scobie, Stephen. “The Reading Lesson: Michael Ondaatje and the Patients of
Desire.” Essays on Canadian Writing 53. Toronto: ECW, 1994. 92-106.
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By Reiko Waisglass
Although men and women each posses distinctive iconic physical features that contribute to identity construction, the female body is placed
under particular cultural pressure to conform to phallic ideals. By looking at the evolution of devices designed to contain and shape the female
body, this author considers whether these literal and symbolic manifestations of cultural power can be a source of female empowerment.
Bien que les femmes et les hommes possèdent chacun des caractéristiques physiques distinctes qui participent à leur construction identitaire,
le corps féminin doit faire face à des pressions culturelles particulières
pour se conformer à un idéal phallique. En regardant l'évolution des divers vêtements utilisés pour contenir et mettre en forme le corps féminin,
l'auteure tente de déterminer si ces démonstrations litérales et symboliques d'un pouvoir culturel peuvent être une source d'autodétermination
pour les femmes.
If you ask a child about the differences between men and women, she is likely to
point out two things – men have penises and women do not; women have breasts
and men do not. Cultural trends have influenced the construction of the female
breast and the male penis as markers for sexual difference. Consequently, these have
also become the gauge for how much of a man or woman one is – a judgment based
on the size and proportion of these distinctive sexual features. At some point, however, things appear to have become mixed up and men began to judge womanhood
according to the male model of sexuality and desire – the erect penis, or phallus.
Thus, breasts have historically been, and continue to be, constructed as objects, solid
and phallic, by major trends in feminine undergarments, pornography, and the media
in modern Western culture. As a result, women’s bodies have been pushed, pressed,
stretched, taken apart and put back together again, all in the attempt to make them
conform to an impossible ideal: to construct women’s bodies, their sexualities and
desires, in the image of men’s.
In Volatile Bodies, Elizabeth Grosz wishes to define the body as a threshold. To
her dismay, only women’s bodies are popularly defined as fluid, changing, marginal
and permeable while, in her opinion, both women and men’s bodies share a similar
potential fluidity. Grosz writes, “in the West, in our time, the female body has been
constructed not only as a lack or absence, but [. . .] as a formless flow; as viscosity,
entrapping, secreting; as lacking not so much or simply the phallus but self-containment” (203). Women are seen as biologically, emotionally and physiologically fluid.
Aside from a woman’s literal fluidity (lactation, menstruation, uncontrollable tears),
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the woman’s body contains ‘surplus’ deposits of fat and body mass (not present in
the male body) that render her form more malleable than a man’s. Without a bra or
corset or plastic surgery, women’s breasts are “much more like a fluid than a solid;
in movement, they sway, jiggle, bounce, ripple even when the movement is small”
(Young 195). Thus, Grosz’s discussion of the female body in terms of its ‘construction’
may be clarified as the physiological construction of women: the woman’s physical
body is thought to be ‘naturally’ formless. Thus, the cultural construction and formation of women’s bodies manifests as a reaction against this ‘biological’ reasoning. In
other words, due to the belief that women’s bodies are naturally fluid and anti-phallic,
there have been numerous attempts by masculinist regimes to contain the female
body. This limitation becomes a means to avoid the horrors associated with women’s
‘formlessness,’ to establish an ideal comparable to that for men, and to transfer the
male symbol of desire (the phallus) onto the bodies of women.
In fact, Grosz herself recognizes this movement toward containment and highlights its relevance to both women and men:
The fluidity and indeterminacy of female body parts, most notably the
breasts but no less the female sexual organs, are confined, constrained,
solidified, through more or less temporary or permanent means of solidification by clothing or, at the limit, by surgery [. . .]. This process too
may account for the valorization of the erect over the flaccid penis and
the humiliation, the feminization, presumed in men’s sexual impotence.
(Grosz 205)
The attempt to construct female bodies is not simply about the confinement and
solidification of women’s breasts; it is more complex. It is an attempt to phallicize
female sexuality and the female sexual body. Women’s breasts are pushed, prodded
and sculpted to resemble the large, firm, round, erect and always-sexual phallus.
Fiona Giles reinforces this conclusion as she writes, “The dominant shape of the
thrusting, large, brassiered breast is a phallic one. A perpetually erect monument to
the credo that size matters for women, too” (Giles, online).
If the connection between breast and phallus is not immediately clear, Iris Young
puts it simply:
A fetish is an object that stands in for the phallus – the phallus as the
one and only measure and symbol of desire, the representation of sexuality. This culture fetishizes breasts. Breasts are the symbol of feminine
sexuality, so the “best” breasts are like the phallus: high, hard, and pointy.
(190)
Young claims that the phallus is the only symbol of sexuality we employ in the construction of desire. Consequently, if breasts are to be fetishized as objects of desire,
they must also resemble the phallus.
The constitution of the phallus as the symbol of choice is not at all random. Grosz
discusses what she calls a “corporeal universal” in terms of a heterosexual, male norm.
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The male form is evaluated as the ‘complete’ human body, and the female form thus
becomes a variation of the norm (Grosz 188). Since the phallus is the dominant (and
perhaps, the only) symbol of male sexuality and desire, it also becomes the standard
against which to measure all other, potentially incompatible, sexualities and desires.
Another component of the universal corporeal norm is the mechanism for evaluating sexual bodies. The privileging of sight over touch as a means of determining the
erotic value of bodies is, according to Young and Irigaray, another phallocentric construction. “A phallocentric construction of the breasts,” Young argues, “privileges the
look, their shape and size and ‘normalcy’” (Young 201). Luce Irigaray further emphasizes that the privileging of sight (scopophilia) over tactility is a masculinist norm:
[T]he predominance of the visual, and of the discrimination and individualization of form, is particularly foreign to female eroticism. Woman
takes pleasure more from touching than from looking, and her entry
into a dominant scopic economy signifies, again, her consignment to
passivity; she is to be the beautiful object of contemplation. (Irigaray,
online)
While I disagree with the notion of countering one essentialist claim with yet
another, Irigaray has a point. The scopophilic system excludes tactile pleasure and
usually results in the woman becoming an object of the gaze. Young follows Irigaray
in claiming physical contact as a feminine concern, at least when it comes to breasts.
She suggests that the dimensions of women’s breasts do not effect their feeling and
sensitivity: “The size or age of her breasts does not matter in the sensitivity of her
nipples” (Young 194). Unfortunately, size and shape does matter for the cultural conceptions of breasts and women’s sexuality overall.
Modern social history suggests that the sexual body, specifically the female sexual
body, has been judged principally on its appearance over all other factors (movement,
sensitivity to touch, and performance). As notions of female sexuality change, so do
the material shapes and meanings of women’s garments. Thus, examining the iconography of bodies and dress throughout history (through fashion, design, and adornment) is an effective method of identifying phallocentrism’s influence on the norms
of sexual bodies. The transformation of the physical (‘natural’) body into the cultural
body can be marked by the construction and design of intimate apparel (Fields 4).
The shaping and manipulation of women’s bodies through corsets, bras and, most
recently, plastic surgery, are the literal and symbolic manifestations of cultural power
over the female form.
The corset has existed since the Middle Ages, but its shape has changed throughout history. At times it has supported the breasts from underneath, and at others it
has crushed them into the woman’s chest. During most of the eighteenth century,
the corset formed a V-shape and was heavily boned with whalebone, cording or
steel (Steele 54). The nineteenth century brought styles varying in length, tension,
shape and function (different corsets were developed for day and night). Overall, the
Victorian period favoured the hourglass figure: large bust, small waist and wide hips.
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At the turn of the twentieth century, during the Edwardian period, the ‘fashion line’
changed again: “the corset became straight in front, throwing the sloping line of the
bosom forward and creating an S-shaped silhouette” (Steele 67). This straight-fronted
corset made the bosom appear “as a monolithic expanse [. . .] – the notorious ‘monobosom’ of fashion history” (Steele 68). The corset also began to extend longer on the
hips and thighs, affecting women’s mobility (Fields 75).
Despite all of these changes in shape and style, corsets have always had a few things
in common, namely, a number of phallic discourses surrounding the apparel, the
encasement and reshaping of the female bosom and torso, and the consistent investment of sexual (phallic) significance in material design and symbolic association.
Firstly, the language used to describe corsetry has always had a similar ring; words
such as ‘stiff,’ ‘erect,’ ‘tight,’ and ‘boned,’ are all loaded with sexual connotations. Not
only are they sexually implicit terms, but they are also informed by phallocentric discourses. This discursive association results in the implicit phallicization of the female
body and, consequently, the corset itself. Kunzle elaborates, “The corset sexualizes
the body in form and action; in so doing it becomes itself sexualized, in its material
components and the associations they arouse” (28).
Despite the corset’s obvious manipulation of the female form, other discourses discussing the corset have made use of terms such as ‘nature,’ ‘normalcy,’ ‘comfort,’ and
‘morality’ to promote the wearing of corsets. By claiming to help ‘maintain’ the natural form, these discourses have contributed to how women perceive and experience
their bodies. Perhaps the best example of this occurred in the early twentieth century, during a backlash against corset wearing. Masculinist interest groups (the corset
industry, medical professionals, politicians) began to disperse pro-corset propaganda,
calling the anti-corset movement “a dangerous and evil fad” (Fields 83). Fear mongering infiltrated women’s lives – from the threat of ‘injury to internal organs’ to ‘damage
to moral fiber’ to ‘contamination of race pride and purity’ (Fields 84). This insistence
on maintaining a corset-wearing culture touted the need to contain women’s fluidity.
The possibility of losing control over the female form (letting it loose, to spill out
freely) led to an overall moral panic and to strong attempts to inject the necessity of
corset-wearing back into the dominant ideology (Fields 86).
The term “corset” comes from the French word “corps” or body. This is fitting as
the undergarment often dominated the body within it, creating, in the end, a mere
‘figure’ of a woman’s body: “Constructed of stiff fabric and pliable stays or “bones,”
the corset literally displaces the wearer’s improperly shaped human flesh and skeleton” (Fields 70). This highlights the lack of concern for women’s natural bodies, and
an emphasis on restrictive and manufactured corporeal ideals. The corset’s material
form – the stiffness and length of the corset – is inherently phallic. At times, various
parts of the corset have even been designed in phallic forms, as well. In the corset’s
earlier days, the main stiffening mechanism was the busk – a wide, heavy and inflexible strip of wood or other material. David Kunzle claims that “the erotic symbolism of the busk is beyond dispute” (30). It was phallic in shape, often engraved with
amorous verses, and sometimes even concealed a dagger.
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Beyond the material shape and design of the corset, its symbolic significations are
also phallocentric. Kunzle writes:
The corset as a protective device embodies masculine associations; morally in danger of man, it is as if woman puts on the man over her vulnerable womanhood, which is, however, preserved – indeed exaggerated
– beneath. This very act of hardening and stiffening herself, which is on
one level defensive, becomes a militant form of transference to herself
of masculine eroticism. (29)
Thus, the corset enacts a symbolic wearing of masculinist values, and at the same
time, a defense against male danger. The corset is also sexualized by the constrictive
tension it creates: “The state of being tightly corsetted is a form of erotic tension
and constitutes ipso facto a demand for erotic release, which may be deliberately
controlled, prolonged, and postponed” (Kunzle 31). The sight of this construction
is arousing. Thus, again, men choose a scopophilic form of arousal while women
enjoy a more physical form – the promise of sexual release in the act of unlacing.
Overall, these material and symbolic meanings reinforce the masculinist interests at
play in the construction of fashionable and sexual bodies. The act of manipulating,
standardizing, and containing the female body shows a disdain for each woman’s
individuality.
While the corset persisted throughout the early-twentieth century, a new breastshaping fad was also in the works. The brassiere is a twentieth century creation, yet
despite its recent invention, its exact origins and creators are uncertain. Herminie
Cadolle (a French corsetiere), Lady Duff Gordon (an English designer), Paul Poiret (a
French couturier), and Caresse Crosby (an American ‘socialite’) all claim the invention
as theirs (Fields 123). Nevertheless, the necessity for a new undergarment arose due
to the fashionable dress of the time. In the 1910s and twenties, dress designs became
straighter and looser at the top. Consequently, corsets began to sit lower on the chest
and be longer on the hips, concentrating on shaping the hips and torso. This created
a need for another layer, a separate lining, between the blouse and the breasts. During
the 1920s flapper era, breast compression was the fashion, and thus, bras of the
time did not act to support the breasts, but to reduce their appearance (Fields 127).
However, following this period of breast ‘flattening,’ there began what has proved to
be a century-long fetishization (and consequent phallicization) of breasts.
The Maidenform bra design (two cups that separate and lift the breasts) grew in
popularity during the 1920s (Fields 136). ‘Uplifting’ began as a means to correct the
injury of the previously fashionable breast-binding. Naturally, however, the industry
suggested that it was the wearing of the earliest bras, and not the design, that was
injurious (Fields 137). A return to a ‘womanly figure’ marked this period and replaced
the ‘boyish figure’ of the earlier 1920s. The woman went from having ‘nothing’ (lack)
to having something desirable and phallic. This model for the female body (with its
focus on protruding breasts) proved to be more successful than the ‘boyish’ look and,
as we can still see today, is far longer lasting.
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At first there was a moral panic about the ‘vulgar’ showing of the bust, but by the
early 1930s it became the accepted norm (Fields 140-1). Already the popular bra styles
were considered ‘extreme’ and ‘pointy’, but Fields notes that “What seemed extremely pointy in 1933 did not approach the peak of pointed brassiere cups which emerged
in later decades” (Fields 141-2). From this point to the 1950s, the popular bra designs
became increasingly phallic in size and shape. In 1935, the V-Ette Whirlpool was
introduced. This was the first bra to be made with the “spiral stitched uplift” (Fields
144). This sewing technique rendered each cup a cone and brought each breast to a
perfect point. This conical shape was clearly not developed with the natural breast
in mind. Again, whether conscious or unconscious, it is more likely that a desirable
design was created with fetishistic and phallic intentions.
The industry called these new bras ‘uplifting’ because they not only elongated
and reshaped the breasts, but also lifted them away from the chest. The increased
distance of the breasts from the body and its unnatural appearance supported the
cultural dismembering of the female body by alienating breasts from their natural
state. In some cases, the bra industry promoted this as a desirable quality. In a 1941
Beautee-Fit Co. advertisement for their new ‘Swirl’ brassiere, they exclaimed, “each
breast is separate in its own swirl; at last attaining not only complete separation of
breast from breast, but also freedom of breast from body” (quoted in Fields 151).
This ad highlights many factors influencing the complete disassociation of women’s
breasts from the rest of their bodies. It creates clear boundaries: there are two
breasts, they are objects unto themselves and they are distinctly separate from the
rest of the body. By suggesting that breasts can be separated from the woman, this
ad implies that breasts do not contribute to the make-up of a woman’s body, that
they are an add-on (an extra part). Furthermore, the separation of breast from body
(subject) renders the breast an object, thus opening up the possibility for another to
claim ownership over that part of a woman.
The bra style that marked the 1950s took the circle-stitch design to its most
extreme. In 1949 Maidenform’s infamous Chansonette bra was developed. The
Maidenform company described their new circle-stitched cups as “pointed roundness” (Yalom 177) – a diplomatic name for a bra that was clearly more pointed than
round. This bra was not just passing fad, nor was it relegated to a minority of North
American women. By 1955, it was America’s most popular bra (Fields 144).
The Chansonette was aptly dubbed ‘the bullet bra’ or ‘the torpedo bra’ as it “made
each breast look like a projectile about to be launched” (Yalom 177). This reference
to bullets and torpedoes is quite relevant to the argument at hand. Torpedoes, bullets, firearms, and some bombs are long, hard, powerful and explosive. As perhaps
the epitome of “pointed roundness,” these arms are phallic in shape and function.
Thus the naming of the bullet bra inevitably implies its relation to and its connotations of phallic symbolism. Kunzle suggests that “the peaked bras of the ‘50s may
have been unconsciously intended to stylize erection of the nipple. These, like the
male codpiece of the 16th century, served the illusion of a body in a permanent state
of sexual excitation” (Kunzle 21). As a symbol of phallic prowess, these ‘killer’ boobs
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Droopy Boobs
are always-already erect. With the popularization of this bra, the breasts became
not only objects available to external ownership, but were also heightened in their
status as objects of desire and of penetration – objects of a masculinist gaze. The
post-war period saw the emergence of a widespread phallocentric society concerned
with reinforcing its strength, virility and fertility as a nation. Kunzle argues, “The
consciously modulated and aggressive forms of breast-sculpture which emerged in
the post World War II era seem to correspond to a peculiarly Western sexual anxiety
which has taken positively phallic forms” (Kunzle 21). The bust became one of these
symbols, a virtue in itself and a way for men to finally possess the phallus. However,
following the ever-changing trends, breast fashion again shifted in the 1960s.
Much like the 1920s, the sixties and seventies experienced a backlash against
repressive undergarments. In fact, bras were taken to be symbols of ‘the patriarchy’
and as such were shoved to the bottom of sock drawers and hampers as a means of
emancipation. But again, like the flapper era, this did not last long and big boobobjects came busting back into the fore. The eighties brought Victoria’s Secret, the
Wonderbra (or ‘push-up bra’) and the well-endowed Supermodel. To mark this occasion, the Wall Street Journal announced in December 1988 that “Breasts are back
in style” (quoted in Yalom 188). Bosomy ‘Supermodels’ (like Cindy Crawford and
Christie Brinkley) became female superheroes and the female counterparts to the
‘unified national body’ of the Reagan era. These women embodied the Americanness,
heroism, power and success of the male iconic body of the same period.
In Hard Bodies, Susan Jeffords argues that the iconic body of the Reagan era
was marked by race and gender – the “hard body” being that of the white male
(25) –but this superhero figure seems to have had a partner (or at least a mascot):
the Supermodel. These women were the embodiment of a phallocentric ideology.
As the symbol of power and desire, the phallus is symbolically reinforced by the
Supermodel. Her body is ‘tight’ and ‘cut.’ Her breasts are firm, full and round. Even
the fashions of the late eighties and early nineties were cut with straight, hard lines.
Like the male icon, she is “a body not subject to disease, fatigue, or aging” (Jeffords
25). Sure weakness, laziness and immorality were still associated with femininity, but
these women were no ordinary women.
Besides, times were changing. Women could get what they wanted – the perfect
body came in underwire bras, exercise classes and silicone sacs. If the average woman
had any trouble attaining her goal of corporeal perfection, a mighty Supermodel would
descend from the sky and offer one of her fabulous tips on weight loss and great abs.
This era also brought about a rise in breast-augmentation surgery. “Few people,” says
Young, “are fooled by the feel of an enlarged breast – it is firmer and harder than one
made only of flesh” (Young 201-2). The augmented breast is the ‘superbreast,’ if you
will – in need of no bra or corset to help ‘get it up.’ The phallus is infused directly into
the breast and becomes a permanent part of the female body. The Amazon women
of the eighties, with their Wonderbras and silicone sacs, brought back the breast as
an important phallic (and therefore desirable) commodity.
My summation of these movements throughout modern history is meant to out101
line some of the ways the woman’s body has been manipulated to fit into and symbolize a phallocentric culture. But addressing the past is always easier than reflecting
on current conditions. The changeover of trends and styles happens so frequently
that we have a constant sense of ‘moving forward’ or improving on the past. Fashion
has a tendency to create this illusion. As Steele muses, “we perceive modern dress
as “natural” and as following (rather than distorting or concealing) the lines of the
body, primarily because we are used to seeing people look the way they do now.
Our perceptions of the body are conditioned by its clothed appearance” (Steele 94).
The original patent description for the Maidenform Brassiere Company, from 1926,
claimed that their product was “to support the bust in a natural position” (quoted in
Carpenter, online). Today it is quite easy to point out how unnatural the Maidenform
bra became, but at the time it was advertised as such.
Advertising has always been an effective way of masking the strangeness of new
inventions. The Maidenform Brassiere Company was extraordinarily successful
in its promotions and advertising. With the introduction of the Chansonette bra,
Maidenform launched one of the most effective ad campaigns in history. Its “Dream”
campaign lasted for over twenty years and led to that bra’s enormous success (Yalom
178). The ads featured women in various (public) situations, fully dressed from the
waist down, but sporting only a Maidenform bra on top. Each ad featured a different fantasy, from shopping to boxing, all done “in my Maidenform bra.” These ads,
featuring the circle-stitched bra, managed to emphasize the bra’s already phallic connotations. In one ad, a woman is standing next to a bull with her hand firmly grasping
its horn. Holding on to the horn (placed approximately at face/mouth level), she leans
back slightly, her pelvis forward. She looks at the viewer and says, “I dreamed I took
the bull by the horns . . . in my Maidenform bra.” The bull’s horn, the ‘bullet bra’ and
the woman’s positioning all contribute to an overtly sexual and phallic paradigm.
Another ad offers a ‘Western’ theme, whereby the model is dressed in a cowboy
hat, leather gloves and riding chaps. Markedly, the cowboy ‘theme,’ leather in general,
and chaps in particular, are no strangers to pornography or to fetish enthusiasts. To
further the sexual overtones, the model looks ‘dangerously’ sexy and points a gun at
the viewer. The gun, another symbol of masculine (phallic) virility and power, works
with the bra to create another paradigm of phallic fascination: gun + bullet (-bra)=
boom; sexy woman with phallic breasts equals object of desire.
Thus, the bra does not “support the bust in a natural position.” It manipulates
its natural form to fit a fashionable size and shape. To reiterate, the ‘natural’ bust is
not as standard in shape and size as is the bra. Nor are breasts pointy, perky, solid or
immovable. Young writes,
Without a bra, a woman’s breasts are deobjectified, desubstantialized.
Without a bra, most women’s breasts do not have the high, hard, pointy
look that phallic culture posits as the norm. They droop and sag and
gather their bulk at the bottom. Without a bra, the fluid being of breasts
is more apparent. (195)
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The bra sections-off the breast from the rest of the body, and so the breast
becomes a bordered and definable object. Whereas certain women may choose to
see their bodies as fluid, undefined by a single part, masculinist regimes isolate the
breasts as the symbol of female sexual difference and an object capable of standingin for the whole woman. An object is determinate and separated from other objects.
Once the breasts become independent entities, they no longer answer to the rest of
the body; they cease to be individual or integral parts of each woman. They are mere
objects to be carried around like currency. If they are droopy, out of shape or old, they
are not phallic. They are worthless.
If breasts stand-in for the woman, and the ideal breasts are phallic, then the woman
is phallic. By this logic, the man can posses the phallus by possessing the woman
through an ownership of her breasts1.
This works with Judith Butler’s interpretation of Lacan:
[W]omen are said to ‘be’ the Phallus in the sense that they maintain the
power to reflect or represent the ‘reality’ of the self-grounding postures
of the masculine subject [. . .] Hence ‘being’ the Phallus is always ‘being
for’ a masculine subject who seeks to reconfirm and augment his identity
through the recognition of that ‘being for.’ (Butler 59)
The symbol of woman’s sexual difference is arbitrarily the breast, thus it is the
breast that ‘makes’ the woman.
Strangely, all of this focus on breasts rarely acknowledges the nipples. The thick,
often-padded materials of bras and corsets erase their presence from the female
silhouette. The entire breast may be paraded and glorified, but only as long as the
nipples are hidden from view: “Cleavage is good – the more, the better – and we can
wear bikinis that barely cover the breasts, but the nipples must be carefully obscured.
Even go-go dancers wear pasties. Nipples are no-nos, for they show the breasts to be
active and independent zones of sensitivity and eroticism” (Young 195-6). Iris Young
attributes the shunning of nipples to the fear of women reclaiming breasts as part
of their active and autonomous bodies. The nipple is the most sensitive part of the
breast, but it is foreign to the image of the phallus. Since the phallocentric imagining
of the breast only values the gaze (and not touch), the nipples are not important in
their representation.
Nipples are also the sites of lactation. Since the masculinist image of the female
body contains all bodily flows, nipples are again undesirable. Pornography, however,
seems to take a different stance. An entire sub-genre of ‘adult films’ is committed
to the fetishization of breast milk. Fiona Giles acknowledges a “growing market of
male readers who want women’s breasts to ooze and spout milk and who are sexually aroused by such images” (Giles, online). It seems as though the infamous ‘money
shot’ (gratuitous and degrading images of men ejaculating on their partners) has
been replaced with the reverse: women spraying men with their bodily fluid: “their
expression of milk becomes auto-erotic and the male ejaculation becomes a mirror
of a new, female kind, that last longer, spurts farther and tastes better” (Giles, online).
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This celebration of fluidity seems to contradict the supposed pornographic celebration of the hard and solid phallus. But semen, according to Elizabeth Grosz, is one
of the ‘non-polluting’ fluids (along with tears) (206). It is the accepted bodily excretion. Breast milk, similar in colour and viscosity to semen, may be considered equally
non-horrifying. Hence, in keeping with the phallic model, lactation is acceptable if
presented as ejaculation (i.e. sexual and not maternal).
If one accepts the above argument – that a phallocentric culture has not only fused
phallic meaning into breasts, but has physically manipulated breasts to have a phallic
appearance – one must ponder why this has taken place, and what the implications
are of defining female sexuality as such. Is woman’s acceptance of this model a compensatory reaction to a real sense of lack? Is it an attempt to divorce the breast from
reproduction, rendering it completely and absolutely sexual? Is this male narcissism
at play? Young claims that this phallocentric and heterosexist construct of female
sexuality is “a complement to male sexuality, its mirror” (Young 194).
This gives rise to questions: Could women find this empowering? Can we appropriate powers associated with the phallus? The breast is potentially a more compelling
phallus. Breasts are naturally bigger and more prominent than the male penis, and it
is now mere child’s play to improve their size and shape. Furthermore, are not two
guns better than one? Fields agrees that “women’s desires to infuse their bodies with
the power offered by glamour is not merely a means to strengthen their attractive
force for men, but also to enhance their power as a force to be reckoned within themselves” (162). Is this female identification with the model for male sexuality a greater
violence to women than a model based on difference? Perhaps we might face even
greater troubles if we relied on a system different than that of the phallus.
Nonetheless and without a doubt, women’s bodies do not uniformly nor naturally
work the way the phallic norm shapes them. This ideal shape and proportion for
breasts – round, high, large and firm – is a contradiction: “If breasts are large, their
weight will tend to pull them down; if they are large and round, they tend to be floppy
rather than firm. In its image of the solid object this norm suppresses the fleshy
materiality of breasts” (Young 191).
However, the flaccid penis is also not always-already large and high and firm. Thus,
men are faced with many of the same anxieties. Young concludes, “Phallocentric
norms do not value a variety of breast forms, but rather elevate a standard; women
are presented culturally with no choice but to regard our given breasts as inferior,
puny, deflated, floppy” (Young 202). While this is clearly true, it is also important to
consider that the average man is subject to the same unattainable ideals. The difference is, of course, that the phallus is an explicit symbol of man’s generative powers
and frankly, women don’t have dicks. Hence, the comparison is unfair, and the odds
of the average woman ‘shaping up’ to the phallic ideal are not good.
Ultimately we must ask what a female-defined breasted experience would be.
Young suggests that it would entail a fluid and undefined sense of being. However,
the answer to this question seems to lie in a territory not traveled by anyone in our
culture – that of a full-grown woman’s body, unaffected by cultural norms, ideologies
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and notions of ideal beauty.
1 I use ‘ownership’ to mean the power assumed by others to control representations
of, and to physically manipulate, a woman’s breasts.
Works Cited
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge, 1999.
Carpenter, Mackenzie. “The bra: Wired, Padded, Itchy (and occasionally comfortable).” Post-Gazette. September 25, 2001. <http://www.post-gazette.com/
healthscience/20010925hhistory.asp> November 2001.
Fields, Jill S. The Production of Glamour: A Social History of Intimate Apparel,
1901-1952. Michigan: UMI Dissertation Services, 1997.
Giles, Fiona. “The Nipple Effect.” <http://www.smh.com.au/news/0105/12/spectrum/spectrum1.html> November 2001.
Grosz Elizabeth. “Sexed Bodies.” Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal
Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994.
Jeffords, Susan. “Hard Bodies: The Reagan Heroes.” Hard Bodies: Hollywood
masculinity in the Reagan Era. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1994.
Kunzle, David. Fashion and Fetishism: A History of Tight-Lacing and Other
Forms of Body-Sculpture in the West. Totowa: Rouman and Littlefield,
1982.
Steele, Valerie. Fashion and Eroticism: Ideals of Feminine Beauty from the
Victorian Era to the Jazz Age. New York: Oxford UP, 1985.
Yalom, Marilyn. A History of the Breast. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.
Young, Iris. “Breasted Experience: The look and the feeling.” Throwing
Like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory.
Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990.
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By Edward Orloff
“High-Falutin.” “Artsy-Fartsy.” “Fancy-Pants.” These are expressions critics try
to avoid in their written assessments of artwork. They tend to prefer the word
“pretentious”——it sounds more serious, more authoritative. The trouble is that
“pretentious” isn’t exactly synonymous with “artsy,” or with any of these other
idiomatic terms. Words like “artsy” and “high-falutin” refer to art that is, in the
opinion of the critic, excessively showy——art that parades the fact that it is art. In
a word, the critic who is bothered by “artsy,” “fancy-pants” art is bothered because
it is ostentatious. That the word “pretentious” is used as a straight substitute for
“ostentatious” is understandable, and perhaps even technically permissible. Indeed,
part of the OED’s definition of “pretentious” is “making an exaggerated outer show;
showy, ostentatious.” But this is only one piece of the complete, nuanced definition.
“Pretentious” should not be just another way of saying “artsy” or “ostentatious”;
pretentiousness is a special kind of ostentation.
When “pretentious” is used in a careless way——when it is just a replacement for
“showy”——the primary sense of the word is lost. According to the OED, the root
of “pretentious” is the Latin verb praetendere, meaning “to pretend.” Hence the
principal meaning of our adjective “pretentious”: “Characterized by, or full of pretension.” But this definition re-routes attention to a new word (“pretension”) which,
in turn, leads to yet another word (“pretense”). Happily, all of these words——pretentiousness, pretentious, pretension, pretense——originate from the same verb:
praetendere. The semantic tie between them, therefore, is the act of pretending.
The essential meaning of “pretentious” is simply characterized by an act of pretending. As a final etymological note, it should be pointed out that “pretense” and
“pretend” carry with them strong connotations of deception. So, a more explicit (if
slightly redundant) definition of “pretentious” would be characterized by an act of
deceptive pretending.
To call an artwork pretentious is to make two distinct claims: one about its intentions (what the art wants to be), and the other about its ‘performance’ (what the
art actually is). The essence of the pretentious artwork is that these two elements
don’t add up——it is pretending to be something that it isn’t. Everybody dislikes
art that does this, so bad artists, if they are prone to pretentiousness, try to conceal
the fact that their art is lacking, and that they’re merely pretending to have talent,
or imagination, or depth. This is why pretentious art is usually ostentatious as well.
Its exaggerated outer show obscures and compensates for its limited inner one. The
ostentation, in other words, is an attempt to confuse the audience——to make us
doubt that we are even capable of understanding the artwork, let alone criticizing
it. Pretentiousness, therefore, is a peculiar kind of ostentation, where the purpose
of the showiness is to conceal an underlying deficiency.
The word “pretentious” is a negative description (i.e., it gives information about
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what something is not). To accuse an artwork of pretentiousness is to say “this piece
is not really [insert adjective], it’s just pretending to be.” This is what readers of art
criticism are interested in——what the artwork is aiming for, and why it comes up
short. The critics who yell “Pretentious!” without elaboration tell us almost nothing
about that artwork. They tell us that something is missing, but not what.
When we read a headline like “Mr. Lear an intriguing, pretentious curiosity”
(McGill Tribune, 3 April 2001)1, we expect the article to explain why, precisely, the
artwork in question involves an act of pretense. Granted, this is not always an easy
explanation to give, especially for novice critics. To call an artwork “pretentious”
presupposes that the critic has some degree of expertise in the subject matter. After
all, not only must the critic ‘get’ the artwork as it’s actually presented (which can
be hard enough)——he or she must go further, and see the work for what it really
is (i.e., a pretension), behind all the smoke and mirrors. Unfortunately, critics like
using the word “pretentious” as a way of saying, “I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.”
But if a critic finds a work incomprehensible, then how could it possibly be accused
of pretentiousness? To call an artwork “pretentious” is to call a bluff, to expose a
fraud——it’s the critic versus the artist, so the critic better be capable of substantiating the accusation. Short version: it makes no sense to say “I didn’t get it because
it was pretentious”; one can only say “I get it, and damn it, it’s pretentious.”
Getting back to the article on mr lear (a play), we find some classic misuses of the
word “pretentious.” For starters, something cannot be both “an intriguing curiosity”
and “pretentious” at the same time. Calling an artwork pretentious means that, for
you, it is transparent, and in a bad way——you see though its deceptive little games,
you recognize it for the fraud it is. An “intriguing curiosity”, on the other hand, is
something opaque, but still puzzling——you can’t quite see through it, but are eager
to keep looking. In other words, if you find an artwork truly puzzling (which can
be a good thing), you’re incapable of declaring it pretentious. Moving along into the
body of the article, matters only get worse. The author spends most of the short
write-up describing how mr lear was off-putting and intimidating (e.g., the foreboding stage set-up, the multi-lingual dialog, the long passages of silence). According to
the review, there is a point in the play where the Lear character flies into a “shrieking lament,” and the critic’s response is this: “Some may term this avant-garde
performance ‘art,’ others may deem it pretentious rubbish, yet there is merit in this
approach.” Apparently, what the writer is trying to tell us with his tacked-on clause
“yet there is merit in this approach” is that there are good grounds for considering
mr. lear “pretentious rubbish.” Maybe so, but the article surely doesn’t give any—
—it only gives a floppy description of the play’s ostentation, its ‘artsy-fartsy’-ness.
If the critic doesn’t try to examine why an artwork is being so ostentatious——and
what, if anything, lies behind that ostentation——then he has no good reason to call
it pretentious. There’s plenty of ostentatious, ‘artsy’ art out there. But ostentation
alone doesn’t make something pretentious.
What is truly dismaying about so much current art criticism is not, in the end,
the misuse of a word——the problem is the critics’ dismissive attitudes. Admittedly,
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Pretentious
“pretentious” is closely related to “ostentatious” and “artsy,” and all the others. And
if a critic makes an honest, sympathetic attempt to engage with an artwork on its
own terms, and still finds it to be affected and un-affecting——then it doesn’t matter much whether the word “pretentious” or “ostentatious” is used; in that critic’s
experience, the artwork was all surface and no substance. But it’s disheartening
when critics don’t even make the attempt to appreciate an artwork——when they
dwell on only the most superficial aspects of its appearance, what they (incorrectly)
call its pretentiousness. This is not to suggest that critics need to do more interpretation of artworks (quite the contrary). The point is that some critics retreat at even
the slightest hint of ‘artsy-fartsy’-ness; they seem to think ‘this is pseudo-intellectual,
artsy-fartsy crap, and I hate that stuff.’
Art criticism should give the benefit of
the doubt. It should want to allow artworks (even bad ones) achieve the most they’re
capable of achieving (even if that isn’t much). Any hack critic can pronounce an
artwork “pretentious.” It’s a lot harder to describe art in a way that makes it come
alive.
1. By singling-out this article, no personal attack on its author is intended. The word
“pretentious” is regularly misused in the pages of The Daily and The Tribune, so this
particular case should be thought of only as an illustration of a more general trend.
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By Murat Menguc
It is considered improper to write a graduate thesis from the first person
perspective. A graduate student often avoids using the word “I” and instead
submits to the common tradition of scholarly literature, which involves writing from an outer standpoint, and using the passive voice. However, there are
reasons why one masters the thesis s/he masters. Although I do no use the first
person throughout my thesis, I welcome the personal and political reasons that,
with or without my knowledge, made me write about what I am writing about.
I am drawn to my subject matter – historiography – because I am an immigrant.
My grandparents and their grandparents were also immigrants. During the mid1800s, apparently, my great-grandparents began their journey somewhere in
Austria. Each subsequent generation of my family was dislocated as a result of
economic and political situations that emerged after the fall of the Ottoman and
Hapsburg empires, or after the rise of various nationalisms and communisms.
The only exception to this tradition of displacement among my ancestors was my
mother’s father, who always lived within 200 kilometers of where he was born.
Still, even he fell in love with an immigrant woman – my mother’s mother. I will
not go into the confusing details of who moved where and for what reasons, but
I would like to reinforce that I come from a family of immigrants. At the age of
22, I joined this family tradition myself. It has been 12 years since I became a first
generation immigrant.
For the immigrant, history is a crucial part of his or her being. It is impossible
to put streets, temples, rivers and open plains into one’s suitcase. Clothes, habits
and ideas are all an immigrant can pack. History is one of those ideas that travel
with the immigrant.
As a bible in itself, a collection of rhetoric, this history stands against endless
opposition when its bearer immigrates. Because it is taken out of the context
in which it belongs, this particular version of the past becomes fundamentally
challenged. Furthermore, an immigrant always compares where s/he is and where
s/he was – a comparison that requires the deconstruction of the history at hand.
Inevitably, deconstruction of the history at hand brings about the era of postdeconstruction, meaning the era of re-construction or re-writing.
In a sense, immigration causes one to be able to re-write his or her history.
Somehow, immigration and being able to re-write one’s own history are two faces
of the same coin. Some people immigrate because they wish to re-write their
histories, and some re-write because they have immigrated.
Historiography is of an interest to me from this perspective, as I am an immigrant who has this type of double relationship with history. I am addicted to retold stories, altered histories and discourses of renovation; I love travel bundles
and I love the patches that color them. And I know, it is possible to psychoana113
lyze my motivations and critically review my words from this aspect – it is only
proper to do so. Still, my motivations don’t necessarily constitute a bias. I write
history as objectively as anyone could.
Every unit of existence belongs to the context in which it becomes. A unit
achieves a universality when it is transferred from one context to another and still
manages to remain functional. So, too, does my version of history, the history I
carry in my suitcase, and my critique of the historiography of the past. Together,
we strive to be valid enough to remain functional as time goes by.
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