Page 27 of the October 26th edition of Willamette Week
I don’t remember this picture being taken! It’s from late summer and has to be a few months old. And I’m well aware this just paints me as another insufferable Portland type but any press is good press, right? (or so the collective wisdom goes?)
I have a deeply profound love affair with Cindy Sherman and it’s only partially because we share the same last name. MAC Cosmetics, who has partnered with people like Elton John and RuPaul to showcase their make-up, is never satisfied with conventions. I was so ecstatic when I walked by the store front and saw these grotesque, disconcerting images in the window. I mean, what a ballsy way to sell make-up…make it look as unappealing, once-applied, as possible.
Awesome? I think so.
The Sartorialist , as always, finds gems. I dig the mix of texture and pattern, the rope sandals, the hint of the leggings from under the shorts. Overall, it’s not something I’d wear but it’s definitely something I can admire.
Foucault’s critique of the repressive hypothesis and subsequent analysis of discourse and sexuality will always be engrossing and difficult for me. Throughout this reading, I was fixated on what silence meant. Repression is dependent upon the idea of silence; yet silence, in regards to sexuality, does not somehow mean that it is repressed and therefore something that is intangible or not happening. Foucault forwards that our society that emerged in the 18th-20th century, “did not confront sex with a fundamental refusal of recognition” (69). And furthermore, as our readings through Katz and Umphrey show, it is not as if people were not discussing the sexuality of others, people, society, government were attempting to, “formulate the uniform truth of sex” (69). Thus far, this is the goal of the modern discourse, a propagation of, “the economy of pleasure” (69) so that everyone can and will experience it to their highest capacity in ways that are acceptable and spoken about and therefore entered into “an ordered system of knowledge” (69).
To Foucault, this system of discourse is just another form of entrapment and control because we: societies, people…what have you, are subordinate to the mechanisms and jargon forwarded by the discourses. So that, as Foucault sarcastically states, we may find “the deeply buried truth about ourselves which we think we possess in our immediate consciousness” (69). My desires are not someone else’s desires nor is my identity identical to someone else’s. However, I am asked, incited to apply an ever expanding amount of labels to describe my desires and my identity. If I refuse, someone else applies labels, forwards a discourse in my place. Someone else will discover my essential, secret being for me. And through my refusal, I am still participating in the system, simply by rejecting it. These ideas are completely confounding.
It was difficult to find a sexual deviant that was punished as such simply because the terminology used today to describe someone like that did not exist. Even the term deviant was not used. I landed upon Oscar Wilde as a last resort, since he is so well known and visible in the “gay canon”. Nonetheless, considering he comes from the late Victorian Era, he makes a nice case-study in regards to Foucault. The fact that Wilde and later, his prosecutors, was able to even find a “Victorian Underground” of male prostitutes shows that the idea that same-sex sex was not happening is foolish. Wilde engaged in sexual acts with numerous males, prostitutes and most importantly Lord Alfred, son of the Marquess of Queensbury (Wikipedia.org)
Furthering Foucault’s point is Wilde’s trial, in which he was made to answer for his crimes of “sodomy”. Wild would not confess to any subversion of the law, often rejecting questions about the “moral content of his work” as foolish and illiterate (Wikipedia.org). The court demanded a confession of sexuality and sex acts so that Wilde could be punished for them. This was not repression, which would have attempted to silence, permanently the mere idea of the wrong doing. The power of his confession was to announce, publically, his deviant behavior and then illustrate the consequences that come with such behavior. In this way, the governing body that oversaw Wilde’s trial does not attempt to quiet the acts, but instead, broadcast them.
Wilde then could be punished, even if he was not imprisoned, by society for his transgression against the law. The power of what Foucault calls “discourse” is that it employs a sense of social nakedness—in which you are laid bare for scrutiny. It wouldn’t have mattered if Wilde had been found guilty or innocent because his confession showed his “true self” had been “hiding” from society.
And what’s most interesting is that because of the way Wilde acted, dressed, and behaved, most claimed to already know his “true self” anyway. Queensbury confronts Wilde and accuses that he does “not say that [Wilde] is it but [he] looks it, and pose at it, which is just as bad” (Wikipedia.org). Wilde was viewed as flamboyant and self-indulgent and that was evidence enough of his inherent homosexuality. He liked peacock feathers and verbose, opulent language and attire. That’s gay—or at least nowadays, we would say it is. I know Oscar Wilde is gay because he liked to dress nice and admired fine China.
I wonder how contemporary American gay identity hinges upon conceptions of men like Oscar Wilde, he is from the “Gay Nineties” after all. Did concepts of the emasculate, fey and ostentatious as synonyms with men who slept with men owe their application to that era?
“Oscar Wilde” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. October, 2011. WEB. wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oscar_Wilde
Wilchins provides an excellent overview of the questions, critiques, and theories that Queer Studies asks, forwards, and espouses. I thought he summarized these ideas in a way that made them accessible but engaging. I particularly liked his statement on gender conformity and how it is, “made possible through a sense of permanent visibility, a strong consciousness of shame before others, a rock-solid belief in what our bodies mean and that meaning’s utter transparency, and the continuous dance of gender that attaches binary meaning to every facet of our waking lives” (Wilchins 69). This stuck out to me because gender has been such a visible political debate lately.
I remember a few months back, J.Crew was accused of promoting gender confusion because the catalogue featured one of the designers painting her son’s toenails pink (foxnews.com). It appeared, to me, so contrived for people to be upset by something as banal as a boy with pink toenails. However, to some, it’s a radical assault on their conception of what gender is; a proliferation of an agenda that questions their own assumptions of who they are. Psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow embodies this belief when he says that this exemplifies how “our culture is being encouraged to abandon all trappings of gender identity” (foxnews.com). But more so, I think it exemplifies how the discourse about gender in American culture functions in regards to gender identity.
A picture of a boy, otherwise dressed as a boy, having pink nail polish applied by his mother is really not all that queer; it narrates that she still thinks of her son as a boy. And therein, to some degree he thinks of himself as a boy because of this, whether or not he actually considers himself a boy is unknown, sure. For all intents and purposes, the identity is “intact”. And while there is something charmingly queer about a little boy with pink toenails, it’s not an identity-shattering transgression. What Dr. Ablow “PHD” (so an “authority”) and for argument’s sake, a great deal of Americans, fail to understand about this little boy is that perhaps his pink toenails are fundamentally a part of his gender identity. The act is not an “abandonment” of gendered identity, so much as a re-definition. Which, I guess, is just as terrifying to some people. It’s a sort of self-determination in action. But through a queer lens, I can look at this event and observe the discourses conspiring to define his gender for him.
This discussion of a child’s sexuality dovetails nicely with the chapter on intersexuality. So important is the narrative of gender binary and the opposite sexes, that Americans assign gender at birth. If the genitalia are sufficiently “ambiguous”, a sex is assigned surgically. I thought it was extremely powerful when Wilchins framed contemporary American conception of intersexuality’s utility or acceptance as “a logical impossibility” (75). I had never quite heard it argued that way before. But it is almost bizarre that it is, without any real consideration, something medicine just “fixes”. The idea is that it is inherently bad to not participate in the binary from birth. These “small, impersonal judgments and practices that involved myriad individuals, power that was held by no one in particular but exercised by practically everyone” (77) are, currently infused with culture. I think this is why I am so drawn to Queer Studies; it acts more as an anti-philosophy than philosophy, by deconstructing these machinations that are imbedded into American and, by proxy—global, culture.
We want to know who we are and are, as a society, egotistical enough to believe that our identities are so well formed and thought out that those who deviate from our perceived sense of normality are diseased, without value, or wrong. And there’s a steep irony that we desire to know so much about something considered as private and personal as someone’s sexuality.
For reasons unknown to me, who I sleep with, or don’t, can be central to the formation of another’s identity. For example, my mother was furious when I didn’t come out to her on my own. She had to forcibly make me admit that I wanted to engage in sex with men. This information was important to her because it re-defined who she was, apparently. Life was fundamentally different as the parent of a gay son. She wanted to know how long I had known, which I had no idea how to answer that question. She wanted to know why I didn’t tell her sooner, why I hadn’t “come out” in high school.
But those details weren’t necessary to who I was in high school, I think I may have been one of the few high-schoolers who wasn’t all that concerned with my sexual desires at the time. They just weren’t part of my identity, I snuck glances of guys in the locker rooms, attempted intimate advances with certain friends (and was rejected), and was called “faggot” plenty of times. But I didn’t feel “gay”; that feeling now seems to make sense. “Gay” was an identity I had to adopt because it’s culturally embedded for someone like me to do so. And now that I realize that, I can reject it. But to some extent, I can never fully shed that identity, nor do I necessarily want to. The victory, for me, lies in the simple realization that these omnipresent discursive forces conspire to form identity for everyone and the empowerment to examine and critique them.
Wilchins, Riki. Queer Theory, Gender Theory – An Instant Primer. Los Angeles. Print.
Michael Winterbottom’s “In This World” is a film that adopts the conventions of several film and literary genres as it toys with expectations in order to invite analysis upon their formats and the story told. “In This World” is a road movie, a genre common to both American and European canon and a format that evokes comparison to the Ancient Greek “Epic Journey” in the vein of The Odyssey. This, compounded with the employment of a documentary filming style, using a single, hand-held camera, that centers on the protagonists and leaves little room for stylistic embellishment, provides the recognition of conventions and then immediately begins to alter expectations.
Winterbottom begins the film in the typical form of a documentary, citing statistics on the circumstances of refugees in a camp near Peshwar, Pakistan. It is not until this convention is in place that the protagonist of the story, Jamal is introduced. He is framed as just one of many and an individual whose story is common-place and unremarkable in the camp. This disrupts the format of a typical Epic Journey or Road Movie because the protagonist is not slated as heroic or exceptional; he is simply one boy, like many others. Often in journey epics, the hero is a hero de facto; in the case of the Greek Poem, they are demi-gods and their hero-ness is essential (merriam-webster.com). The viewer is left to interpret whether or not the two protagonists, Jamal and Enyat, are heroes. This acts to universalize the characters as someone that circumstance, and not their own character, had pushed into the story and this asks for their actions to be scrutinized for heroism. This is underlined once Jamal is enlisted to help Enyat travel to England, simply because he is able to speak English and Enyat is not. While Jamal’s ability to speak English is unique and helpful, it is not exceptional and is framed as supplemental.
Throughout “In This World”, Jamal, specifically, acts in ways that are adaptive and resourceful but often extremely un-heroic. Jamal’s loss of moral character is exemplified by his desertion of baby Mehdi; which acts as a grotesque metaphor for the innocence Jamal flees from. The now parentless Mehdi was abandoned by Jamal in a moment of shock, terror and disbelief. Jamal runs from the shipping container and abdicates responsibility over the only other survivor. Jamal’s flight is a selfish act but one that is justified by circumstance and is too confusing and emotional to criticize. However, by abandoning Mehdi, an infant, and Enyat’s corpse he is symbolically abandoning innocence and his ties to his home. He soon turns to theft in France which, though necessary, is still a morally dubious act which further illustrates his loss of virtue.
Finally, Jamal’s arrival in London frames these actions into the greater question of his journey and if the moral and social sacrifice justified the achievement of the destination. Since it was not necessarily Jamal’s journey to begin with and he was simply an accessory to Enyat, a questioning of the value of the trip foregrounds itself. Jamal ends up in a bleak, drab London, filled with gray skies and dreary surroundings. Contrasted by the intercutting scenes of a vibrant Peshwar, full of guiltless, smiling children, the comparison is poignant. Neither situation is ideal but the question remains: what has Jamal gained and lost through his sojourn? This is not a critique on the desire to escape but it is an illustration of the adversity and sacrifice endured by those who chose to better their situation. While Jamal made the journey—which is heroic in and of itself—he does not appear to be changed for the better and his arrival in London is not triumphant. Unlike an Epic, the growth he achieves is sorrowful and evokes despair instead of success; instead of celebrating what was achieved, Jamal, and the viewer, mourns what was lost.
However, the framing question of Jamal and Enyat’s heroism of any sort itself, confronts the typical narrative of a documentary. Typically, the genre follows individuals and listens to their stories but does not find a central account of character development in this style.
The film continues to toy with documentary conventions by following Jamal and Enyat in conventional manners through staged situations meant to mimic reality. This employment of fiction is necessary and according to Winterbottom, something that “has always been the case” in regards to the refugee experience (Winter 61). Blurring the lines between a non-fiction documentary and a fictional narrative again enfranchises the viewer to interpret the story themselves. By disallowing the viewer to accept it as a factual account but simultaneously framing it as one, the viewer is forced into a sense of confusion and evaluation. No account is inherently factual and all are embellished or censored by the person reciting it, often unintentionally. According to Tony Grissoni, refugee experiences are “something to get over and forget” and only “in the next generation…become romantic” (61). The attempt then is to tell the truth of the story; this is the dilemma Winterbottom is illustrating through his subversion of genre. The journey Jamal and Enyat is true because it is a compilation of smaller realities and truisms faced by refugees world-wide but no one experience is factual.
The universal truth of their experience lends credibility to the viewer’s conception of Jamal as a hero, or not, and ultimately forms a genre-bending mélange that coalesques into a narrative that is both epic and challenging. The film confounds and provides numerous ambiguities in style and narrative to invite analysis into the journey Jamal and Enyat embark upon.
Works Cited:
MacFarlane, Brian and Deane Williams. Michael Winterbottom. Manchester, UK, 2009. Print.
Merriam Webster Free Online Dictionary. “Hero”. Web. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hero
Winter, Jessica. “World in Motion.” Michael Winterbottom – Interviews. Ed. Damon Smith. Mississippi, 2011. Print.
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