Oh Mickey you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind, Hey Mickey

Disneyland. . . simulacra. . . cyborg Minnie. . . Women in drag. . . all will come together Friday.

Analyzing a Parody with characters in Drag through Butler’s lense

• “Is drag the imitation of gender, or does it dramatize the signifying gestures through which gender itself is established” (2489)?
• Hence, as a strategy of survival within compulsory systems, gender is a performance with clearly punitive consequences. Discrete genders are part of what ‘humanizes’ individuals within contemporary culture; indeed, we regularly punish those who fail to do their gender right. (2500)
• “As in other social dramas, the action of gender requires a performance that is repeated” (2500).
• “Significantly, being “outside” the hegemonic order does not signify being “in” a state of filthy and untidy nature” (2494).

In the first bullet, Butler questions the imitative nature of drag, is drag parody or pastiche? For Butler, since there is no inherent gender, all gender performances are a form of pastiche, imitation done without the hopes of getting a laugh.

In the case of the DocuParody, Butler would say that since the script and characters are performing the gender opposite their biological sex in order to make the audience laugh, the drag in this case is parody. Esther’s performance as Karl Marx pimping out Miniborg, screams parody, as does myself who parodies Jean “Bau” Baudrillard. Despite being done for a laugh, the women in drag do confirm the performativity of gender. They simply wear hats, fake mustaches, and signs, and the audience starts to question their gender.

An easy way to understand it is like this: individuals who are transgendered, perform as the gender his or her soul truly is, and this performance is done, not to gain a laugh, but in order for the self (inside, mental) to become synonymous with who they are physically. The women in drag in the DocuParody, do not long to be men, one because their dressing in drag was done in order to make the audience laugh, and two, because outside the realm of the DocuParody, they will not repeat the gender performance of a dude. Gender is solidified through repeated performance, not a one time deal.
Butler would say that by questioning and shedding light on the performativity of gender will help broaden the scope of what society deems acceptable and unacceptable.

Since our society is quick to judge individuals that do not easily align themselves in a gender identity, Butler states, “Significantly, being “outside” the hegemonic order does not signify being “in” a state of filthy and untidy nature.” In other words, “don’t hate the player, hate the game.” Society has forced individuals to select a gender, we do not allow people to perform as they see fit. Therefore, it is society’s fault that some people do not fit into gender categories, because society created categories. Without the categories, there would be less alienation then there is now.

 

MiniBorg:  Kim who gives a stunning performance as a MiniBorg, has a robotic eye and metallic Mickey eats after finding the parts in his car after performing her ahem. .  duty.  Haraway believes in her “Cyborg Manifesto” that the cyborg is a metaphor for the duality that can exist not only in feminism but in the human body, as in the case of women of color. Butler’s belief about the cyborg correlates to Butler’s belief that gender is not inherent.  If Haraway believes that the body can house two binary oppositions, then this could reference transgendered people.  Haraway states: “Identities seem contradictory, partial, and strategic. With the hard-won recognition of their social and historical constitution, gender, race, and class cannot provide the basis for belief in “essential” unity. There is nothing about being “female” that naturally binds women” (2275). Like Butler, Haraway expresses the idea that there is nothing natural about gender to bind all women together.   Identities are contradictory, like a woman suck in a man’s body, or Haraway’s cyborg.  With the MiniBorg a little Fanon creeps in as well, since the MiniBorg makes its “self” known by asserting its self.

 
         I can’t speak for Butler, but if I had to venture a guess, I think she would think that Disneyland is set up to reinforce gender performativity to children. Disney Princesses, Prince Charming, even the mice are confined to gender roles. Butler would say that until institutions like Disneyland stop reinforcing the biological performativity of gender, children will not be allowed to act as the gender he or she feels to be, they will continue to act as the gender society wants them to be, rven a society oppressed by a fat happy mouse. I mean the picture speaks for itself; they’re the same mouse, only one is in drag, but which one?

 

Reading from Haraway’s Holy Book of Holy Cyborg Crap

Donna Haraway “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s”

 Ok. . . I can deal with convoluted texts about decentering the center.  I can deal with Eliot telling me that I have to be sans personality to write poetry.  Hell, I can even deal with Deleuze and  Guattari believing that life is one huge rhizome. 

 But I can not deal with Haraway.  No.  I can’t do it.  Not after writing my critical perspective paper, not after a well balanced breakfast, even after having a Star Trek marathon, I can not deal with Haraway.  I just have that overwhelming feeling like, “I don’t get it.”  And it’s worse than Derrida, and I loathed him. . . but not anymore.  Haraway tops my “I just don’t get you” list.

 “This essay is an effort to build an ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism, and materialism.”  Yeah real ironic Donna. 

 I mean I get some of her ideas but overall I had more fun making fun of Haraway than I did actually reading her.  I mean, if she can write a manifesto, I’m writing a manifesto too.  But mine will make sense.  What I hate about this reading is the fact that I do not easily understand it, I mean Bau and I were on the same page.  I got him, he got me, it was beautiful. 

 “I am making an argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social and bodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruitful couplings.” (2269-2270).  So the cyborg is a fiction that can map our social and bodily reality.  You know what I think H.  I think you were the kid on the playground how ate dirt.  Not only that, you would totally drink the Kool-Aid first H.  I get it, science fiction was for the boys, and now it’s the final frontier for feminists to tackle if they want to be taken seriously.

 “The cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of returning to dust.  Perhaps this is why I want to see if cyborgs can subvert the apocalypse of returning to nuclear dust in the manic compulsion to name the Enemy.” (2271). Way to be different H. because other theorists NEVER diss religion.  You want to see if cyborgs can circumvent the apocalypse. . . are you kidding me?  Ok and if you discover that they can; how does this help me?  Oh come on, I’m waiting. 

 “So my cyborg myth is about transgressed boundaries, potent fusions, and dangerous possibilities which progressive people might explore as one part of needed political work.”  (2274)   So H. is a cyborg-monger because they can exceed the boundaries of our patriarchal society.  I guess there’s some freaky deaky loophole the cyborgs found. 

 

The Bloated Rodent Faux Utopia Apparatus

What did Disneyland ever do to Baudrillard. . .
You know besides showcase the shortcomings of our nation, who pollute the minds of our young into believing that the world is a happy place, with flying elephants. . . no really I have nothing against Disneyland, only against the Disney Princesses, but that’s another blog post.

Simulacrum= is never that which conceals the truth—it is the truth which conceals that there is none. 
hyperreality characterizes the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from fantasy, especially in technologically advanced postmodern cultures.
    While I’m saddened to learn that Baudrillard will not ride the teacups with meL, onto more phantasmagoric fantasticums (totally made that up) of theory! 

 “The real is produced from miniaturized units, from matrices, memory banks and command models—and with these it can be reproduced an indefinite number of times.  It no longer has to be rational, since it is no longer measured against come ideal or negative instance.” (1733) 

So Bau’s whole argument is that nothing is original anymore, we have entered the phase in which everything is a copy of a copy.  We are as he states, “are substituting signs for the real for the real itself.”  And our society can not die because, everything can be duplicated an infinite number of times, so we are condemned to live in the land of perpetual reruns!  I always equate copying and running out of ideas to horror films.  You can relate horror films to everything if you try hard enough.  So, are we doomed to live in the time of the Asian Horror Film Remake?  “The Ring”, The “Grudge”, are signs of the real for the real itself.  How many people watched the originals?  Show of hands please.

Supermodels.  Perfect example of substituting signs of the real for the real itself.  Hell, the whole Hollywood industry does this.  Please see here. . .  So, girls try to live up to what they see in magazines, and what society leads them to believe is beautiful.  The sing becomes the substitute for the real.  Young girls are thrown into this anorexic genocide to achieve a look that’s not even tangible. 

Dissimulate= to feign not to have what one has

To simulate= to feign to have what one hasn’t

 “Their rage to destroy images rose precisely because they sensed this omnipotence of simulacra, this facility they have of effacing God from the consciousness of men, and the overwhelming, destructive truth which they suggest: that ultimately there has never been any God, that only the simulacrum exists, indeed that God himself  has only ever been his own simulacrum.” 1735 Baudrillard on the Iconoclasts

    Well, I can understand why the iconoclasts wanted to destroy the images and icons of religion.  Because people were taking the sign as the real thing?  I wanted to put this in my post because I kind of get it but I kind of don’t get it.  Any help would be great.  I think the iconoclasts destroyed images because they were afraid if the icons did not help people, people would lose their faith, and start to think that there is no God, only icons of God.

 “When the real is no longer what it used to be, nostalgia assumes its full meaning.” (1736)  I had to put this in my blog because it reminded me of Watchmen.  Which I miss terribly.  But when I think about it, the bottle of nostalgia would appear when the world started going to hell.  It was most prevalent when Laurie and Jon were on a distant planet, discussing the fate of the world.  The bottle of Nostalgia was spinning out of control.  The world was no longer real, no it was real, it was just. . . the world seemed to metastasize into this dark cruel place, that Jon didn’t want to save, until Laurie’s tears of destruction changed his mind, the thermo-dynamic miracle or something.  

 “As fact as ethnology in its classical institution collapses, it survives in an anti-ethnology whose task is to reinject fictional difference and Savagery everywhere, in order to conceal the fact that it is this world, our own, which in its way has become savage again, that is to say devastated by difference and death.” 1738.

“Our entire linear and accumulative culture would collapse if we could not stockpile the past in plain view.”  (1739). 

            I found the section about museums interesting, because how are we supposed to learn about the past, without visually seeing it.  Is it wrong to want to stockpile artifacts from periods our generation has not seen, in order to come to terms with it?  I don’t know Bau, I feel some resistance.  In essence yes I understand your argument, we’re totally screwing up tombs that were created to be secretive.  That doesn’t mean I don’t deserve and or want to see it.  What should I do?  Go to Museumholics anonymous, to give up my addiction to know about the past through visualizations?  I’m an addict.

 “Disneyland is the perfect model of all the entangled orders of simulation.” (1740).  “In this imaginary world the only phantasmagoria is in the inherent warmth and affection of the crowd, and in that sufficiently excessive number of gadgets used there to specifically maintain the multitudinous affect.”  (1740)

            I guess Disneyland is not the magical place of dreams for Bau.  Bau loathes Disneyland and for damn good reason (even though I’m probably going to take my kids there and feed into the bloated rodent apparatus).  Disneyland only has warmth and affection inside the park, the part where they take your money.  I like the comparison of the parking lot and the actual park.  It’s a huge, bloated rodent faux utopia.  Let us dive deeper into the BRFU apparatus.  Think of Disney movies.  For children, movies are the signs substituted for the real.  They watch a movie and until a certain age, they think it’s real.  Disney Princesses.  Every little girl wants to be a princess.  Here are your Disney Princesses. 

 

(Only recently have Mulan and Pocahontas been added as Disney Princesses.) And now almost 80 years after creating princesses, Disney has created an African American Princess.  Princess Maddy.   So if young girls see the images as real what do the images tell them?  It tells them that these are the girls who can be princesses.  Where’s the ethnic diversity Disney?  Where’s the biracial, Asian, Middle Eastern (and no Jasmine doesn’t count), Polish, Greek, Italian, Lebanese Princess?  Start writing Disney, you have a plethora of Princesses to create.     

 

Hork-Dorno and the Bloated Pleasure Apparatuses

Gender performance. . . hi my name is gwen. . . foucault, pronounced “fooco”. . . picture. . . add link. . .  do the works cited. . . gender is performative. . . can’t sleep theory will eat me ALIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank god I’m done with the carnival.  I shed tears and blood for that thing.  Seriously,where’s my parade?  What about theory pride? 

 Ok it’s out of my system.  

 General Disclaimer:  I just got done fixing the theory carnival at 9:23 am.  After no sleep, no food, this blog is in utter disarray, and might be fixed sometime within the next day.

 Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, “From The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” 

 First let me start by saying I got this weird “damn the man” vibe from the whole essay.  We’re all going to hell in a hand basket because television is killing our individuality.  

 “Movies and radio need no longer pretend to be art” (1224).  That’s true, look at the music and television scene today.  Everything is the mass produced pile of crap.  One artist becomes popular like. . . Avril Lavigne.  And then all of a sudden the angry chick musicians come wandering out of the woods like, “Oh, it’s our turn now.  Sweet.”  Popular music and reality television pander to the audience like the homeless on the streets of NYC.  If I have to see one more season of “The Bachelor” just so people can watch desperate attention whores fight over a guy they’ve known for one minute, I might vomit, again.

 “The public is catered for with a hierarchical range of mass-produced products of varying quality, thus advancing the rule of complete quantification.  Everybody must behave (as if spontaneously) in accordance with his previously determined and indexed level, and choose the category of mass product turned out for his type.  Consumers appear as statistics on research organization charts, and are divided by income groups into red, green, and blue areas; the technique is that used for any type of propaganda” (1225).  We all statistics on the flow charts of major television studios like Fox and ABC.  They only care about getting the consumers business, not the consumers needs.

 Movie theaters= “bloated pleasure apparatuses” (1230).  These bloated pleasure apparatuses may not add dignity to a man’s life Hork-Dorno, but I enjoy them.  Maybe I get a loophole for being a chick, since whenever they talk about the consumer, it’s always a he.  

 

“It’s influence over the consumers is established by entertainment; that will ultimately be broken not by an outright decree, but by the hostility inherent in the principle entertainment to what is greater than itself.”  This reminded of a new movie that’s coming out with Stone Cold Steve Austin called “The Condemned.”  10 killers are put on an island surrounded by cameras, only one can survive.  Is this where reality tv is headed?  When will enough be enough?  Has reality tv simply taken over the planet, or have screenwriters run out of good ideas for long running television shows?  

 

 

 

“Hi my Name is Gwen and I’m here to WAAAAASH your Vagina”

“They asked you to lose weight, to play yourself.” (body image and hollywood pressure definitely important, didn’t write about it though)

Ok. . . first off let me say that being neither gay/gay male/ or Asian American, I fucking love Margaret Cho. “I’m the One that I Want” was one of the best homework assignments I’ve ever had. I had to preface with that. Margaret Cho is one of my favorite female comedians. I like her sets, I’ve watched a lot of her standup over the years and she just puts it out there. Lisa Lampinelli comes in a close second, but she’s raunchy, even for me.

Margaret Cho impersonating Carl Lagerfeld (described as having white hair, big glasses and fan reminiscent of a Spanish lady): “I am fanning the flames of my faggotry.” Here she brings up the topic of homosexuality which she is certainly not shy about given the set about her experience having sex with a woman. So this brings me to a very complex situation. Is Margaret Cho allowed to say faggot because she is a minority who is not using it offensively? I would have said just because she is a minority but please refer to Isaiah Washington’s outburst. I think she forces her audience to consider that maybe it is no the word, but the inflection put on the word, but even that in most cases doesn’t work. I think slurs don’t work no matter who says them; it’s the new “nigger vs. nigga,” which apparently only black people can say. But if black people try to empower a word that was used to oppress, can the word ever truly become empowered? NO. No one should say the word ESPECIALLY black people. The word keeps black youths in a ghetto prison. The media tries to expose the hardships of life in the ghetto, and in some sick fashion, it ends up becoming glamorized. This is why I love Cho, but I don’t know if her use of the word faggot works. I can see that she is trying to empower the word, but is that really possible? Do they shop at KKKmart, where there’s a white sale everyday?

And I went through this whole thing, you know. I was like: Am I gay? Am I straight? And I realized I’m just slutty.” “I’m heterophobic. A gorgeous straight, single man, is like a unicorn.” “Gay vs. Straight Porn.”
This brings into question the idea of being “bi-curious.” I mean I think it’s possible for someone to have a relationship with someone of the same sex and not be gay, but maybe that’s because I’m naïve. You fall in love with a person, not a sex right? I think that society harps on sexual preference so much, because sex is one of the ways society controls the individual. Society needs people to procreate to keep the machine running. So thus, homosexuality is seen as subversive, and a threat to the machine, so much so that our President actually wanted to change the constitution to say that marriage is between a man and a woman. I always thought the constitution was supposed to grant civil rights not take them away. Again, maybe that’s just me. Yeah um, what happened to all of the straight men? Where did they go because I miss them. We have so many categories for people: gay, straight, bisexual, bi-curious, metrosexual. Stop the insanity! Our society seriously has OCD and we feel the need to shove people into a checkbox. Oh and Ted Haggard, you can not be cured of homosexuality in three days, face it, you’re gay, accept it and move on. I loved the whole straight vs. gay porn star, because guys don’t want any chance of being attracted to the man. That is why gay porn gets Jeff Stryker and straight porn gets Ron Jeremy We make such a big fuss about sexual preference, when it’s not that big of a deal. I don’t care who you love or sleep with, why does it matter, that doesn’t define a person. What defines a person is how they act in the world, not who is in their bed. I’m not all that religious but I feel as though our society should stop attacking homosexuality and start attacking bigotry. A loving God would much rather see his people loving and respecting each other, than damning each other for him. It seems as though we try to surpress homosexuality in women more than in men, yet lesbians are more accepted than gay men, and that makes no sense. Once again, some guys think two girls kissing is “hot.” Yet show them two are men and they’re all freaked out like “C’mon dude.” My motto: Real straight men watch “Brokeback Mountain.” That got turned from what it truly is, an amazing complex story about love, into “that gay cowboy movie.” It’s reflective of the hypocrisy that is our society. Homosexuality is not subversive, homosexuals would not devalue marriage, because heterosexuals do a mighty fine job screwing it up. (Think Britney Spears 24hour drunk marriage). Let’s be honest, gay is the new black.

I wasn’t like any Korean role-model that they had ever seen. I didn’t play violin. I didn’t fuck Woody Allen.” This is something that I find myself thinking about at random times: where are the Asian actors? Why does our media lack Asian American representation? I know that hope for utopia and coalition among all minority groups is probably unachievable, but I notice that there is a hardcore lack of Asian American television shows and actors. The only Asian American actors I can think of off the top of my head are Lucy Liu, Margaret Cho, Sandra Oh, Rick Yune (he’s the hot guy from Fast and the Furious) and Lisa Yang. That’s it. Want to know about how screwed up Hollywood is? When Lucy Liu appeared in the first Charlie’s Angel’s she was paid one million dollars, compared to Drew Barrymore’s nine million and Cameron Diaz’s twelve million. What the hell. Lucy Liu is so much more of a versatile actress than Cameron Diaz, who got paid 12 million dollars to shake her ass in cartoon underwear. Don’t get me wrong, I like Cameron Diaz, what I don’t like is injustice and Lucy Liu getting one million dollars and then later a new car, is quite honestly not enough in my opinion. I think that Margaret Cho does a friggin outstanding job not only being hilarious, but bringing to light issues that are important to all communities. Think about it. We had “My Wife and Kids,” “Full House,” and “The George Lopez Show.” Where’s the Asian family primetime show? I’m still waiting for it.

Can race like gender be performed? The answer is, race can be performed, but it will not change your race. Well Cho did a lot of impersonations in her act. She went from impersonating gay men, to her mother who has a thick accent, to a stereotypical Asian voice, to a Louisiana gay man, to Gwen (whom I never want to meet) and so much more. It’s a race and impersonation fantasicum! “I like my klan all crazy and foaming at the mouth.” I definitely think Margaret Cho thinks race can be performed. Look at her set about “Kung Fu.” “It shouldn’t have been called ‘Kung Fu.’ It should have been called, ‘Hey that Guy’s not Chinese.” I didn’t know that but I looked him up on imdb.com, and he’s so not Asian! I mean they couldn’t even fund an Asian American actor to portray an Asian character on a television show about martial arts. Ridiculous! Utterly ridiculous. Example, Barack Obama may be criticized for “acting white” because he exhibits traits that some attribute to being white: articulate (bad juju), being intelligent, being even tempered. Why are those attributes associated with being white? That’s a damning proclamation. It does more harm than good and quite honestly, it’s rather ridiculous to bash someone for being intelligent, because no matter how intelligent Obama is, he fully understands that he will never be considered white, nor does he want to be.  My final example of performing race: Larry the Cable Guy.  Most of us know and love Larry the Cable Guy, but his whole redneck thing is an act.  Yes, an act.  Larry the Cable Guy is not a simple man, he is fact intelligent enough to bank off of a stereotype.  Here’s proof.  Yes, the redneck thing is a sham, but he’s making money off of it, especially from the very people he is parodying. . . weird.

Other lines I liked (even though one was not funny):

“I can get gay guys to dance in my house for free.”
“There is no such thing as a straight man with visible abdominal muscles.”
“Do you have a sunburn? No I’m just fucked up.”
“For me losing 10 pounds is a fulltime job, and I’m handing in my notice.”“I had to hold on to the mic stand, I was turning into “The Rose.”




 

“What the what is Ladylike”?

Judith Butler’s “From Gender Trouble,” addressed a lot of issues I often find myself wondering about.

“I noted that trouble sometimes euphemized some fundamentally mysterious problem usually related to the alleged mystery of all things feminine” (2488). In this section Butler is talking about society asserts control by threatening one with “trouble.” Trouble has no doubt been associated with the feminine since the beginning of time. Serioulsy. . . who gets blamed for eating the apple first? Eve. Therefore women are perceived as being “trouble.” Even if Eve was hungry, how do we know that’s the absolute truth? Especially since some gospels were not even put into The Bible. So women are associated with trouble, mystery, and unknowability, which kind of makes women sound like Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter, just dark, twisty and scary.

 

“Power seemed to be more than an exchange between subjects or a relation of constant inversion between a subject and an Other; indeed, power appeared to operate in the production of that very binary frame for thinking about gender” (2489). Yes Butler I find myself nodding in agreement to this statement. Power does not only exist between a subject and the other, it also exists in the gender based system (Rubin) that society has constructed. One thing we didn’t discuss in detail but I think is important, is assigning the gender of babies. When a child is born it is told whether or not it is male or female, even in cases in which a child is both. It is fascinating that the mind and body can be complete opposites proving even more, that you are not your body, you are your mind. “If gender attributes and acts, the various ways in which a body shows or produces its cultural signification, are performative, then there is no pre-existing identity by which an act or attribute might be measured; there would be no true or false, real or distorted acts of gender, and the postulation of a true gender identity would be revealed as a regulatory fiction” (2501). I remember reading Woman on the Edge of Time for a Sci Fi class, and one of the practices the society of the future used, was allowing children to go into the forest and choose their name. I can’t remember whether or not they could choose their sex, but it would make sense if they could. Only. . . how would they know if they are male or female? The only way they culd figure this out s to turn back to society’s flawed system and try to sqeeze in wherever they see fit. Then this brings me to the whole biblical aspect of sex; I mean Eve was created from Adam, so therefore we can’t always assume that men are unfeeling brick walls, because they’re not. It’s just some social stigma put on men that they can’t cry or they’re weak, they can’t show emotions or they’re a pussy. It’s all so warped.

 

After seeing Hairspray at Proctor’s two weeks ago, I loved the reference to Divine, which leads into another important part for me, is gender just an impersonation of what we think it is? That’s really sloppy right now, hopefully you can figure out where I am going with this. “Does being female constitute a “natural fact” or a cultural performance, or is “naturalness” constituted through discursively constrained performative acts that produce the body through and within the categories of sex?” (2489) I can’t even begin to phrase this into something that is going to make sense, but that’s ok. Is a woman born female, or constructed into being female because of society. . . is gender performative? To this question I would say yes. I would say that because you are born a woman or a man, that does not make you a woman or a man. Look at the Gwen Araujo story. She was born as a male, but her soul was female, and because of that, she was killed. It’s disgusting how our society is so hell-bent on sticking people in categories. It’s likes some twisted game to ensure that there will always be an other.

 

Prospero, Pimp or Dad. . . Thoughts from the English Symposium

For Eng 370, we performed two scenes: one from Shakespeare’s The Tempest and one from Aime Cesaire’s A Tempest.   The main plot of The Tempest is Prospero is a King or Duke who was banished with his daughter to an island, which was inhabited by Sycorax, a witch whose son is Caliban.  Prospero takes Caliban under his wing and uses him to survive on the island, until Caliban tries to have sex with Miranda, which Prospero views as rape, therefore Caliban is inferior because he does not know right from wrong.  Prospero uses his spirit Ariel to conjure up a tempest and bring his foes to the island: Antonio, Sebastian, and Gonzalo.  Stephano and Trinculo are the comic relief.  There’s a lot more but there’s the gist of it.   
    In order to regain his power, Prospero uses Miranda(the only female character besides Sycorax, Sycorax is only discussed in conversation), as a bargaining chip.  He basically pimps out his daughter to Ferdinand, in order for him to regain fame and fortune.  This is precisely what Gayle Rubin discussed in her “From The Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex” piece.  Rubin states:

            Traditional concerns of anthropology and social science—such as the evolution of          social stratification and the origin of the state – must be reworked to include the      implications of matrilateral cross cousin marriages, surplus extracted in the form        of daughters, the conversion of female labor into male wealth, the conversion of             female lives into marriage alliances, the contribution of marriage to political          power, and the transformations which all of these varied aspects of society have             undergone in the course of time.  (1683). 

conversion of female labor into male wealth: Miranda offers to do Ferdinand’s field work in order to ease his woes, Miranda is Prospero’s key to regain his status of fame and fortune.
the conversion of female lives into marriage alliances: Prospero stands to benefit from Miranda and Ferdinand’s marriage.
the contribution of marriage to political power: Ferdinand and Prospero will gain political respect from Ferdinand and Miranda’s marriage

      Rubin is criticizing the different ways in which women are viewed, used and manhandled.  She is stating that in order for the shortcomings of the sex based gender system to work; we have to go back and rework the social implications which are not getting better just changing forms.  Prospero uses his daughter as a key, a key to regain the old life he was forced to leave behind.  Miranda grew up on an island with only her father, and Caliban.  There was no woman around to “teach” her what it means to be a woman, and even most women are not sure what that means, but I’ll continue.  Miranda grew up on an island in a “society” in which she is the only woman.  Her father has taught her everything, and by doing so, he just teaches her how to correctly fit into a gender based society.  Instead of empowering her, he makes her daft and gives her the tools to survive but not to evolve in my opinion.  Sex/Gender System: “a set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity, and in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied” (1665).  If given a blank slate, a fresh start in a sense, the old world problems would still arise.  Prospero had a chance to break the gender/ sex based system, yet refused to since he stood to profit from using his daughter as a gift.  So what does this say about Shakespeare?  Was he ahead of his time, did he write The Tempest to make the reader purposely look at gender roles, or was it some cosmic coincidence?  Hmmm. . . . I wonder.

 

 

             

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Foucault on Sex Discourse

Well, I have to say that this week’s reading was rather interesting.

 Quotes to ponder from Foucault:
    “It is quite possible that there was an expurgation – and a very rigorous one—of the authorized vocabulary.  It may indeed be true that a whole rhetoric of allusion and metaphor was codified.  Without question, new rules of propriety screened out some words; there was a policing of statements” (1648).
     Foucault talks about the policing of statements about sex in seventeenth century literature.  Writers had to use authorized vocabulary to talk about something as natural as sex.  Sex was censored.  Society used sex as a weapon; men were made to feel powerful and women were made to feel as though their bodies were all they had.  Both genders were oppressed.  Maybe this is why even today, society is still wary of sex.  Look at the Janet Jackson Superbowl fiasco.  Who wasn’t sick of hearing about that for three weeks straight?  Everyone pointed the finger at Janet Jackson, and for good reason, it was her breast.  But Justin Timberlake played a good part in the “Nipplegate” as well.  Now Timberlake is winning Grammy’s and performing on every surface of planet Earth, while Jackson has mysteriously stayed out of the lime light.  And what about “Pantygate”?  I’m sick of these so called Hollywood starlets, exposing their vajayjays like there’s no tomorrow.  Are we to say they are liberated because they are sans panties?  Are they setting the feminist movement back years, or bringing it into 2007.  (They are setting it back, girls need to realize that their value in this world, does not reside in their vaginas. Paris Hilton. . . eww, she’s famous for being rich and a sex tape, there’s something to be proud of.) 

    “It was essential that the state know what was happening with its citizens’ sex, and the use they made of it, but also that each individual be capable of controlling the use he made of it.  Between the state and the individual, sex became an issue, and a public issue no less; a whole web of discourses, special knowledges, analyses, and injunctions settled upon it” (1653).  

             In other words, it’s important that the state have a handle on its citizens’ sex.  Not only did society have to control the use individuals made of sex, they had to make sure that the individual had control of their use of sex.  And when he says individual he means men, hence the “he made use of it.”  Sex then became a public issue with different anecdotes attached to it to understand and use it.

(I’ll write more later, but my sinus infection has caused my whole face to hurt and I’m a little dizzy, but stay tuned.)  

 

 

 

“Mistakes don’t mean a thing, if you don’t regret them” (Silverchair)

 I’m not going to lie, I found the book interesting, but I’m glad that it’s over.

     “What the dog will not be able to work out (not in a month of Sundays! He thinks), what his nose will not tell him, is how one can enter what seems to be an ordinary room and never come out again.  Something happens in this room, something unmentionable: here the soul is yanked out of the body; briefly it hangs about in the air, twisting and contorting; then it is sucked away and is gone.  It will be beyond him, his room that is not a room but a hole where one leaks out of existence” (219). 

(Pollux and Castor.)

    This quote is true for the whole book.  David and Melanie both leave his room different people:  Melanie loses her innocence and David loses his job, name, reputation.  David leaves the bathroom as the victim of a brutal crime, and becomes a more concerned father.  Lucy leaves her room as a woman violated so horribly, that she dies within and becomes a shell of the person she used to be, carrying a child that was conceived in the worst possible way.  Bev Shaw leaves the clinic room floor as an adulterous wife, and David is the one who corrupted her in a sense, (it was consensual and Bev wanted it, but still David knew she was married).  The dogs enter the clinic room and that is the last place they will see, before being killed.  All events in which people enter ordinary rooms and are changed forever.

     Some key quotes about David:

            “Already he is calling it he child when it is no more than a worm in his daughter’s womb.  What kind of child can seed like that give life to, seed driven into the woman  not in love but in hatred, mixed chaotically, meant to soil her, to mark her, like a dog’s urine” (199).  This brings into question the idea of racial identity.  That’s what I got out of it.  To David the child is no only doomed because it was conceived from rape, but it could also be because the father of the baby is a black man.  But it’s mostly because it was conceived through rape. 

     “It began without premeditation on my part.  It began as an adventure, one of those sudden little adventures that men of a certain kind have, that I have, that keep me going.  Excuse me for talking this way.  I am trying to be frank” (166).  No premeditation huh?  Hmm. . . FLASHBACK! 

     “He is mildly smitten with her.  It is no great matter:  barely a term passes when he does not fall for one or other of his charges.  Cape Town: a city prodigal of beauty, of beauties” (12).  Not good enough proof Lurie?  How about this one: “No matter what passes between them now, they will have to meet again as teacher and pupil.  Is he prepared for that?” (12). Yeah, David that sounds like premeditation to me.  Dictionary.com describes premeditation as “sufficient forethought to impute deliberation and intent to commit the act.”  While he may not have “premeditated” making Melanie have sex with him against her will, he damn sure thought about the consequences the two would face their tryst was discovered. 

     I definitely think the whole him going to Melanie’s house for dinner is interesting and frustrating at the same time.  Forgiveness is a good virtue, yet, to invite him over for tea and crumpets, is ridiculous.  However, I do appreciate Mr. Issacs calling him out.  Mr. Issacs, “I will tell you.  You were passing through George, and it occurred to you that your student’s family was from George, and you thought to yourself, Why not? You didn’t plan on it, yet now you find yourself in our home.  That must come as a surprise to  you.  Am I right?” (173)  When I read this I literally wrote in my book, “Burn!”  Then Mr. Issacs goes on to say, “Yes you came to speak to me, you say, but why me? I’m easy to speak to, too easy.  All the children at my school know that.  With Issacs you get off easy—that is what they say” (173).  Unfortunately, this didn’t do it for me.  I’m sorry David is not apologetic enough even though he does apologize; he still goes to see Melanie’s play.  I just think that forgiveness should be given on the grounds that the person truly accepts and understands that he/she has screwed up.  It’s obvious he has learned nothing after he starts lusting after Melanie’s sister Desiree, David is repulsive.

     The opera chapters did nothing for me.  Teresa was at moments like Bev Shaw and then Lucy.  Bev Shaw: “Her years with Byron constitute the apex of her life.  Byron’s love is all that sets her apart.  Without him she is nothing: a woman past her prime, without prospects, living out her days in a dull provincial town, exchanging visits with women-friends, massaging her father’s legs when they give him pain, sleeping alone” (182).

     Lucy is pregnant.  I didn’t think it was going to happen but it did.  I am weirded out by the whole Pollux and Petrus situation.  Pollux is “mentally deficient” as David puts it and Petrus is an opportunistic weasel.  Rubin would puke.  Not only because Lucy decides that marrying Petrus is a good business move, but also because Mrs. Issacs and Petrus’s wife, are described as not meeting David’s eyes.  Is it because of who he is, or because he is a man?  Things to ponder at 8:47 in the morning.

 

When You Start Having Dreams about Rape and Evangelicals

    Ok. . . let me explain the title.  I read Disgrace before going to bed last night (smart move), and I had a horrible nightmare.  I dreamt that after being raped, the Evangelicals were the only group of people willing to accept me.  They brought me into this big room, and the floor was supposed to be the ocean, and the blue green carpet undulated like waves.  The carpet was awesome I was fascinated.  I woke up after they tried to kill me for taking a picture of the carpet.  But at least the Evangelicals were willing to try and that’s all that counts.  But dreaming abuot rape. . . bad juju.

     So there’s my intro into this week’s reading for me.  I must say, this book went to a very dark place.  The whole robbery incident, was intense, I mean, they set David on fire!  Granted he’s a bastard but I didn’t want him set on fire, castration would have sufficed.  Then after the incident his only objective is to figure out how Lucy is feeling.  Immediately I thought of the first sentence of the book.  “For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well.”  I thought about this sentence obsessively for 15 minutes.  David is a man; a man who has solved the problem of sex, the problem for men.  It’s not that a man couldn’t understand rape, I give David credit for trying.  “Well, she [Bev Shaw] is mistaken.  Lucy’s intuition is right after all: he does understand; inhabit them, fill them with the ghost of himself.  The question is, does he have it in him to be the woman?”   He is in a sense thinking back to his whole rape/ not rape scene, or at least that is what I hope he is going to think back to.  The gender role is reversed:  Lucy is handling the situation with some semblance of poise, (even though she’s one exchange away from a mental breakdown), while David is exasperated and wants action now, which only makes sense since his daughter was just raped.  “I think of you as one of the three chimpanzees, the one with his paws over his eyes” (161).  She then goes on to say that if she leaves now she will be defeated, but by not leaving, she is decaying from within.  It doesn’t make any sense.

    I don’t understand why exactly Lucy doesn’t want to tell the police.  It’s as though she thinks by keeping it to herself and not turning in the men who did it, she will right some of the wrongs that minorities have endured.  It’s as if she is saying, “What I went through would be nothing compared to what the men who did this will go through.”  This is ridiculous because telling the police what really happened wouldn’t make her a bad person.  She was assaulted in the worst possible way; it is her right to tell the police.   

     What’s the deal with Petrus?  I thought he was their dependable helper and now he’s on the bottom of the totem pole with David.  David on Petrus: “Depend on Petrus?  Because Petrus has a beard and smokes a pipe and carries a stick, you think Petrus is an old style kaffir.  But it is not like that at all.  Petrus is not an old-style kaffir, much less a good old chap.  Petrus in my opinion, is itching for Lucy to pull out.  If you want proof, look no furtherthan at what happened to Lucy and me.  It may not have been Petrus’s brainchild, but he certainly turned a blind eye, he certainly didn’t warn us, he certainly took care not to be in the vicinity” (140).

Wikipedia:” The word Kaffir was used in English and Dutch, from the 16th century to the early 20th century as a blanket term for several different peoples of southern Africa. Outside this limited historical context, the word is used today only as a derogatory and offensive term of abuse.”  So it’s like the N-Word here, a tool of oppression.  Hmmm. . . . I wonder if black South African youths now empower it by making a term of endearment.  Probably not.   

     Then I picked up on some Biblical references which interested the biggest being when David is talking about being the “Dog incinerator.”  “It operates six days of the week, Monday to Saturday.  On the seventh day it rests” (145).  Compare this to the line in Genesis, “And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.  And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.”  David, you are not God.  Finding sanctity in cremating dogs, does not make you holy; it has in my opinion, made you slightly better than pond scum, but not by that much.