Following Judith Butler down the Rabbit Hole

I’m a big fan of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I’m a big fan of Judith Butler. And I think there’s some thematic overlap between the two.

The rabbit hole to Wonderland is a frightening prospect. It’s an object of curiosity that causes Alice to plummet into a world in which her expectations are undermined and traditional forms of Western logic are turned on their head, with phrases often taken literally when they are traditionally taken figuratively and vice versa, forcing Alice and the reader to question the linguistic function of these phrases and the supposed rationality behind manners, mathematics, and more. And, of course, this is a journey led by the white rabbit, an arguably uptight academic-type, traditionally depicted in a waistcoat with glasses and a stopwatch.

I think Judith Butler functions as a white rabbit. In her work on gender and sexuality, she attempts to pique the curiosity of the reader before plummeting them forward into an infinitely regressive Wonderland that forces them to question the basis and coherence of the system of compulsory heterosexuality which we all inhabit. Unfortunately, as I argued in my A2 essay on Black Swan, I think the method with which she encourages us to plunge down the rabbit whole can be co-opted, causing us to get spit back out scared and ready to seek safety in the world we already knew.

For my conference paper, I really want to use Butler to examine two different films as texts that prove both the potential subversion and the potential danger offered by Butler’s suggestion that we embrace spectral sexual identities. The first would be Black Swan, a narrative that plays with lesbianism before re-embracing heterosexuality. The second would be Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a fictional punk rock singer’s story of how they were pressured into a sex change that was then botched, leaving them unsure of their own identity. I think putting these two films in conversation with one another will illuminate just how we can best benefit from Butler and the path she draws down the rabbit hole.

by Jack Flynn

Let's Just Chill Out For a Second

For my A3 I'd like to focus on Shostak's "'A Story We Could Live With': Narrative Voice, the Reader, and Jeffrey Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides." While I'm not a avid proponent of the idea of the "male gaze" or really any of the gender/sexuality theory we've discussed so far in class, I found this article fascinating in its implications of the significance of Eugenides's choice of narrative style.

I must admit, while I found the point of view slightly jarring and unconsciously unsettling, I hadn't really thought much about why Eugenides chose to write in this way. But as I read the article I found that the idea not only excited my curiosity, but spoke to several of the frustrations I had felt when writing my last blog post.

I have always felt that the act of narration is oversimplified by many people. It is the reason that many incredible works of literature are banned throughout the United States. It is the reason that moral street sweepers condemn To Kill a Mockingbird for being racist. There is a fallacy that is used by an upsettingly significant number of people in our country that suggests that just because something is featured in a work of fiction means the author is supporting it. In the case of To Kill A Mockingbird, the mistake is obvious; by including racism in the novel, Harper Lee does not support racism but condemns it. In order to have an open discussion about racism, racism must be addressed. It is inherent to the process of argumentation that an issue be brought up in order to be argued.

There are less mind-numbingly obvious examples of this fallacy, one being the way one could look at The Virgin Suicides. The following passage from page two of Shostak's article brought this possible mistake to my immediate attention:

An  

offhand  

comment  

a  

colleague  

 made  

to  

me,  

to  

the  

effect  

that  

The Virgin Suicides  

is  

a  

misogynistic  

 work,  

makes  

the  

novel's  

challenge  

plain:  

to  

explore  

one's  

relation  

as  

 a  

reader  

to  

the  

narrators'  

control  

of  

perspective—to  

the  

vision  

these  

 men  

possess  

and  

the  

story  

they  

choose  

to  

live  

with.  

In  

doing  

so,  

I  

 would  

argue,  

one  

may  

conclude  

that  

The Virgin Suicides  

is  

anything  

 but  

 misogynistic;    

 that  

 conclusion  

 hinges,  

 however,  

 on  

 Eugenides's  

 complicated  

use  

of  

the  

"we."  

 

I would argue that just because Eugenides tells a story from a certain perspective doesn't mean he supports that perspective. I think that if people find themselves disgusted with the way in which the girls are described, they should resist contempt for the author and instead divulge in an academic investigation of the voice Eugenides has chosen to use, and what it is about this voice that inspires a moral qualm.

I also enjoyed Shostak's discussion of the indeterminacy of the text, and how rather than the use of "we" suggesting an authoritative certainty on the matters at hand, "the authority conferred by numbers is undermined by the narrators' confession of their own common puzzlement" (2). I feel as if this novel, like much of the fiction I enjoy, is an exploration rather than a pedantic "this is how to feel about [insert issue here]" statement. I think we should enjoy it as such. Rather than inciting us to fury, let the text serve as a space in which we can bring up our own personal views on the subject at hand and engage in a friendly, intelligent academic discourse from which all can benefit.

"Twin Krishnas"

“Ugh.” has become the most common margin note that I make in the book, sometimes even arriving twice on the same page. And like last week, I still really want to talk about racial representation in the book.

My last post mainly criticized Dines for focusing on Eastern European immigrants as a site of racial otherness instead of black Americans. (I mean, it didn’t even have to be an either/or. He could have discussed both.) But this week I want to add another element to the mix: the bizarre invocation of Orientalism in the descriptions of Trip Fontaine and his father. (Side note: I’m still salty about the narrators unquestioned use of the word “iffiness” to describe the dad’s sexuality, especially since the only other gay character expresses visible inappropriate attraction to a minor).

Anyway, I think Dines really, really missed an opportunity to discuss how Trip and his father get exoticized and eroticized through a comparison to weird orientalist caricatures. It starts with the narrator’s obsession with their skin color. Their deep tan is constantly referenced, reminding the reader again and again how they stand in contrast to the other boys and men in the school and in the area who have pale skin. And this obsession then manifests a bizarre racial comment when the narrator states, “At dusk, Mr. Fontaine’s and Trip’s skins appeared almost bluish, and, putting on their towel turbans, they looked like twin Krishnas.” Ugh. I get that this whole book is about mythologizing and exoticizing people, but really? Haven’t spectral racial references been exploited as a method of exoticizing white people enough? This seems like the literary equivalent of Katy Perry’s new Dark Horse video (which you should watch with a barf bag handy).

The narrator doesn’t leave it there, though. Instead, he keeps going and turns it into a motif by referencing Trip’s car as an “aerodynamic scarab.” Again, ugh. I get it, Eugenides. You like imagery. But the repeated use of racial icons to exoticize and mythologize white characters isn’t something you should be doing, especially in a work that is already painfully white and unquestioning of its characters’ less-than-subtle racism.

Just ugh. Ugh. Lots of ugh.

These "ughs" have been brought to you by Jack Flynn.

The Myth of the Lisbon Girls

Shostak talks extensively about the mysticism that surrounds the Lisbon girls for the boys who watch them. She says that, to the boys, the girls “remain impenetrable, but that is what fascinates the boys, making the sisters a suitable subject for the mythic imagination" (9). She goes on to mention that the reality of the girls and their situation comes into stark contrast with the romanticized image the boys have of them—notably shown at Cecilia’s party, when the boys’ expectations of the home do not match its reality.

These ruminations led me to find an interesting irony in the life-long search of the boys to find an explanation for the Lisbon girls—their lives and their suicides. It is as if the very inability of an answer to be found makes the boys search all the harder. It is as if the Lisbon girls’ “impenetrability,” make the boys want to penetrate them all the more. It seems that if the boys were able to come to some sort of conclusion regarding the Lisbon girls, the mystery would be lost and the story would become altogether irrelevant to them. Rather, the boys seem almost content teasing themselves with bits of a puzzle they will never be able to put together.

Maybe, then, while the boys yearn to be near the Lisbon girls—both when they were alive and after they die—they are also sure to keep a safe distance that allows them to keep the Lisbon girls mythical and not real. This is a distance they keep through reliance on second-hand accounts and interpretations of “exhibits” and instances that suit a story they have created in their minds.

--Francesca

What's with the fences and trees?

Long’s article on the Energy Crisis of the 1970’s reminded me of the Broken Window Theory, namely the idea that removing pieces reminiscent of evil or immoral actions can improve a neighborhood’s outlook. However, actions that run counter to this theory are taken in the Lisbon’s case.

The fence that Cecilia jumped on and the diseased elm tree in the Lisbon’s yard are all commonplace in suburbia. They are symbols of happiness and homogeneity throughout suburbs in America. When Cecilia jumps on a fence, only the fence in the Lisbon yard is removed, all the other fences in their suburb remain. If fences prove to be so dangerous, why doesn’t the neighborhood remove all the fences? Likewise, they are one of the few families that lose their elm tree to disease.    

The removal of the elm tree and fence accelerate the Lisbon’s emotional and physical decline. As their immediate environment becomes dissimilar to their neighbors, the family faces more and more tragedy, namely the girls’ suicides. While a picket fence and elm tree typify suburban America, the Lisbon’s gradually become removed from suburbia as they lose these symbolic objects. 

Another Post on Male Gaziness, So Let's Up the Creepy Factor by 10000

Amidst the suicide, the voyeurism, and the thirty years of obsession and fetishization of the Lisbon girls by the narrators, the creepiest part of the novel, I found, was the narrators' initial description of the girls. After Cecilia had slit her wrists, they described her as having "the odor of a mature woman" and spoke of her "budding chest." Peter Sissen ignores the strewn underpants and bras and is fascinated by the girls' tampons. These images don't describe the girls as  pretty or even sexy, but show that the narrators see them as fertile; the creepiest of the images being of the girls going to church "bursting with their fructifying flesh." (This brings in a third aspect to the idealized woman that was not present in our analysis of Black Swan; instead of the virgin/whore dichotomy we now have a gender trinity of virgin, whore, and baby-maker. Not related to my blog post but interesting).

In constructing "a story they could live with" the boys never give an explicit psychoanalytic reason that the girls committed suicide, but Shostak argues that the implicit reason they give, the one that fits in with their sexual (and apparently baby-making) desire of the girls, is that sexual repression ultimately did the girls in. This is stated after Cecilia's death both from Dr. Hornicker's report and the widely believed rumor that she killed herself out of love for Dominic. This misinterpretation of the girls is epitomized during their conversation through music; the boys predominantly played love songs whereas the girls were much more morbid in content. Nevertheless, the boys fully believed they were having a fluid conversation, and that the morbidness of the music resulted from the girls' repressed desire for them. Superimposing that on the previous point, the fact that the boys see the girls as fertile stems from their own budding sexuality, and has a consequence in the boys truly believing that, like them, the girls don't really have anything else on their mind besides sex, because of their physical fertility. This is what leads to the tragic misconstruing of the girls' life and death.

That, in essence, is what makes the novel so tragic. The boys, even in adulthood, are so sure that it's a sex thing and what little shreds of unbiased, un-narrated evidence we get show that it's so not.

Responsibility and Proximity

Shostak brings up an excellent point that the proximity of the boys implies some level of responsibility for Cecilia's suicide while more explicitly signifying violence against her:

"Although the novel in no way represents the boys as directly responsible for Cecilia's death, their proximity--and thus the pressure of a construction of her as an object of desire--signifies violence against her. If nothing else, the boys' entrance across the threshold of the house that otherwise closes off the Lisbon girls seems, by the fallacious logic of narrative sequence, to provoke Cecilia to violence against herself."

Yet, I would have liked to see her expand on this idea. There are other, possibly more significant, instances when the involvement of the boys in the girls presence coincides with the Lisbon girls' harm. Almost every time something significantly bad happens, at least one of the boys is close by. Cecilia's first suicide attempt is discovered by Paul Baldino stumbling onto her in the bathroom not shortly after she slit her wrists. In this instance, it seems hard to directly place any responsibility on Paul's presence. But in the first instance of suicide (attempted or successful), it seems important that one of the boys is present.

When Mrs. Lisbon withdraws the girls from school and begins their imprisonment because Lux returns home past curfew, the boys are more directly involved. Spearheaded by Trip, the Lisbon parents are convinced to let the boys take their daughters to Homecoming which leads to their confinement. Like the party before Cecilia's death, the boys cross the threshold into the Lisbon house, and yet this time they seem to play a more explicit role. Once again, the proximity and involvement of the boys coincides with a major negative event for the Lisbon girls. In what seems to be a significant factor leading to the girls' suicides, the boys are not only involved, but seem responsible.

The boys are also present when the remaining Lisbon girls collectively commit suicide. After Lux distracts the boys, they discover the other girls' suicide attempts. It is harder to pinpoint direct responsibility in this instance, but just like Cecilia's suicide the boys cross the threshold of the Lisbon household, projecting their view of the girls as objects of desire. Once again, the boys' presence is marred with misfortune for the Lisbon girls.

Many criticize the boys for their lack of involvement, but whenever they are involved things seem to go horribly wrong. In Cecilia's successful suicide attempt and the punishment after homecoming, the boy's proximity precedes the girls' misfortune. As Shostak points out, it would be fallacious logic to say that because the boys were present, the girls then committed suicide. In the discoveries of Cecilia's suicide, and the girls' collective suicide however, the boys arrive either during or shortly after the event. Yet, their proximity seems more than coincidence.

-Andrew T

The Virgin Suicides Are Not Funny

I'd like to rescind my earlier blog post wherein I supported the boys' round-about method of narration. After reading everyone else's blog posts and Shostak's "A Story We Could Live With," I've realized I wasn't a careful enough reader, and fell far too easily into the trap of "uncomplicated, objectifying distance" that Shoshtak mentions. I took what the narrators related at face value-which says much to their sympathetic and persuasive element-and failed to note underlying messages of the novel.

One thing I did not see until it dawned onto me to look is the selfishness of the boys, an egocentrism I believe is inherent to the concept of the male gaze. So preoccupied were they in achieving their desire of being close to the Lisbon girls in any way possible that they overlooked the desire the girls communicated back: an overwhelming, claustrophobic need to escape. Not only did the boys overlook the girls' opposing desire, they violated it. The girls realize this and punish them by inviting the boys over to help them run away and then hoodwinking them into being witness to a mass-suicide. Thus they prevent the boys' desire from ever being realized by forever removing themselves from their grasp.

I think the boys themselves realize their blinding selfishness, though they won't admit it because this story they're telling is the one "they choose to believe" (Shoshtak). So instead they accuse the girls of being selfish, for "the outrageousness of a human being thinking only of herself" (248). The ironic thing is usually that's a strategy for survival.

So the boys didn't understand the Lisbon daughters, and I didn't even understand the boys...I think this says a lot about my role as a reader. In a sense I am just as guilty as either of them of egocentrism-not to make this whole blog about me, sorry about that.

Side note: watched the movie, kept pretty darn true to the book. Also was alarming how similar some of the shooting was to how I imagined things playing out. And there was some pretty solid rock in the soundtrack. I dug it.

Becca Weber

The Long-Term Danger Lies in Stagnancy

The Virgin Suicides was, in a nutshell, eerie and morally upsetting (as many of my peers have expressed in last week’s posts). There were a few somewhat sweet moments that temporarily fooled me into feeling dreamy and quixotic with the narrators over the Lisbon girls. For instance, the boys’ musical conversations with the sisters seemed endearing, like a testament to their undying devotion to the girls. Then again, the clash between the boys’ overly cheesy love songs and the girls’ darker songs of angst demonstrated that they were blind to the cries for help embedded in the songs the girls played to them over the phone. 

 

I think a bigger reason why no one tries to really help these girls is because of the dreamy apathy that results from a comfortable, predictable lifestyle. Middle-class suburbia serves as the backdrop for a host of lost people who revolve lazily around the most lost of them all, the Lisbons. The Lisbon girls spend a lot of their time frivolously, sitting on the lawn doing little because of their parents’ restrictions. However, everyone else in the neighborhood sits around, too, and they don’t have demented parents monitoring their every move. There’s a lot of watching each other rot away their days; no one is able to break out of their stupor and find a higher goal beyond this bubble of bourgeoisie boredom. 

The girls may have become disillusioned with the lost paradise they lived in, to the point where their apathy and lack of drive drove them to the ultimate escape. Meanwhile, all the other children didn’t consider what they were given, which might be what the boys were referencing near the beginning when they muse on the girls’ ageless wisdom. We all find out that the boys grow up to be middling middle-aged men or worse (I’m looking at you, washed-up Trip Fontaine). Perhaps this is the more obscure takeaway of this novel: having enough and mindlessly accepting it will get you nowhere. 

-Ly

The Virgin Suicides are Funny

The tone of The Virgin Suicides is jarring. What could be more serious than adolescent suicide, and yet Eugenides writes almost flippantly, so funny at times that I forgot this was a tragedy, not a soap opera. The story itself is composed through word of mouth-what in layman's terms would be called "gossip"-and thus brings with it all the prejudiced perspective of each member of the community. But I like that because maybe that's the best, possibly only, way to consider suicide.

Though the people creating the storyline are middle-aged and balding, it is written from the point of view of a bunch of teenage boys who don't yet even know the life-giving potential of their bodies, let alone understand how that potential can warp into a drive to destruction. The flippancy is necessary, a way for the boys to cope with ideas (i.e. Death) too big for them to handle. But it also shows a respect and value for life as the boys note all the delicate details of the Lisbon girls' lives, and how what they wear and what they do points towards a grave disruption of teenage girl normalcy.

By proxy, this juxtaposition of serious and slight helps us understand the nuances of tension within the community, the murky birthings of suicidal intent, and how the preoccupations of young boys dog them into manhood to resolve into grave (no pun intended) issues such as addiction and divorce.

I haven't finished the book but it's the tone and turn of phrase that pulls me inexorably forwards, wraps me up in each successive death and reels me in to an end I can't yet fathom.

Becca Weber