Homoerotics of Orientalism

So I went to Professor Boone's book release event today, and two of the sources that he used really caught my attention. He put an English play about a Christian slave and an Ottoman love story in conversation with each other to examine the history of homoeroticism. Though written 50 years apart, the two have striking parallels. 

In the English play (the name of which completely slipped my mind), a young Christian boy is enslaved by a Turkish man after the boy's ship is captured. The slaveowner had a male steward that was extremely sexually attracted to the slave and propositioned said slave for sex multiple times. The Christian slave refuses and ends up killing the steward. Long story short, the boy is sentenced to death by crucifixion, and after his death his body mysteriously does not rot or attract scavengers like the other death bodies around him.

The Ottoman love story chronicles the tale to two Ottoman males who are enslaved by two different Englishmen after an Ottoman ship wrecks and strands them. The Ottoman males fall in love with their respective masters, who reciprocate the love. English society, however, does not approve of this, and the masters are thrown in jail while the Ottoman men are sentenced to a slave ship. The slave ship is then captured by Ottoman forces (what a coincidence!), and the Ottoman are freed. Meanwhile, the masters escape from jail and are picked up by their lovers, who are now in charge of the slave ship. All four return to Turkey and live joyous, happy lives together.

I found it interesting that both texts included the hierarchical power dynamic in the homosexual relationships (master and servant), a dynamic that reflects that of stereotypical Middle Eastern homoerotic relationships (older and younger male). In addition, one text applauds the removal of homosexuality and grants the individual a beautiful death, while the other grants its characters a beautiful life because they accepted homosexuality. Professor Boone mentions that this reflects the divide between and Middle Eastern and Western values, and suggested that as the West moves toward acceptance of homoeroticism, there is a possibility of bridging the gap between the two cultures, a phenomenon that would have a significant impact on world politics.

Gender: MORE POWER TO YA!

The panel I enjoyed most was 'More Power to You.' Most of the papers were on the politics of gender and sexuality.

One paper examined how yonic imagery in Mrs. Dalloway writes the vagina as a site of fullness and expansion, rather than phallic lack. This was my friend Amanda's paper, so my view of it isn't unbiased. But I thought the writing was exceedingly well written, to the point to where I'd suggest that Amanda take some kind of literature-based honors program--if USC offered such a program that is.

Another essay covered Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat, arguing that the female lead performs gender fluidly and nontraditionally in order to control the men she's marooned with and survive a risky situation. Hitchcock's film, it was clear from the paper, makes this gender performance creepy. The woman, as the film makes her out, is a threat. She's a consummate actor whose 'true' identity will never be clear. While the film (from 1944) makes gender performance a sinister act. This was interesting to me, especially because the film predates Butler's theories on gender- especially that all gender is performative. To Butler and myself, Connie's non-conforming gender is empowered, not sinister.

Reader/Viewer Compliance

On Wednesday I attended Dear Reader and Part of Your World. I would like to say that I thought both panels were fantastic, and the papers were very interesting. I would like to focus on the first panel I saw -- Dear Reader.

As many of the papers in the panel discussed conclusions of their piece, Katie suggested that this panel be renamed "The End of the Rabbit Hole?" I think this name is particularly apt to describe Kara's paper, "Climax: The Power of Indeterminate Ending." Kara's paper discussed the relationship between the Dunnes in Gone Girl, and focused on the unsatisfying/unclear ending of the novel. Kara's paper questioned the finality of narratives, and life, and undermined the notion that closure is inherent in endings. Kara responded to Katie's suggestion of renaming the panel, saying that the end of the rabbit hole would lead to another rabbit hole. I found this answer interesting, yet unsatisfying as the cycle would simply continue. I thought Aaron brought up an excellent point in responding to the same question, stating that even though his subject came with a more definitive ending, no literature truly has an ending because it is always there for us to reexamine.

Another major idea this panel discussed was reader compliance/guilt from watching movies or reading novels. In particular, Nim, John Henry, and Chung's essay all made arguments that the reader was guilty of something when reading the novel. In Nim's essay, the audience was responsible for the scopophilia in Black Swan, and in Taxi Driver, the viewer was guilty of playing the role of the flaneur, a wandering observer of crimes, which he argued aligns the act of watching with moral complicity. I found these essays to be convincing, but I was interested when someone asked if it was possible to not be a compliant viewer/reader. I would like to think one is not made automatically guilty by viewing the movies, and the consensus answer seemed to hinge on the moral approach the reader took to the material. I thought this was an excellent answer, as I don't think everyone who views Black Swan is guilty, and likewise I don't think all the audience of Taxi Driver is a flaneur.

-Andrew T

Reader/Player Agency

This past Wednesday, I attended the panels "It's a Man World" (sic) and "Reality Bites." Both panels really impressed me (along with the grandeur that is University Club and its amazing food), and it's going to be very difficult for me to focus in on one specific paper. I was, however, very drawn to one in particular: Julian's paper about Don DeLillo's Players in the Reality Bites panel was the most thought provoking for me.

Having no prior knowledge of either Players or the literary theory he chose, which was Johan Huizinga's "magic circle," I was captivated by his presentation because I was taken completely off-guard. He essentially used the concept of games to explain the anti-social nature of Players. As he put it, DeLillo's work was "masturbatory." DeLillo sought to write a piece that would challenge the concept of the reader-author relationship, giving the reader more space to interpret the story, but because of how disconnected it was with the reader, it was essentially like playing a game without rules. Usually when an author writes a novel, there's an unspoken rule that the author is supposed to guide the reader, and the reader can gain something from reading the novel. But DeLillo gives no consideration to the reader's understanding of the text, instead writing a completely self-indulgent book.

The paper had some complex ideas, and I wasn't familiar with the works, so I can't say I took full advantage of the presentation, but there was one major takeaway for me: reader agency, like player agency in video games, can be vastly manipulated by the author. With video games, sometimes, there are multiple ways to finish the game (it is open-ended); other times, there's only one. And it's engaging for the player to be able to choose his/her destiny. With DeLillo's book, there was too much agency for the reader, leaving the reader lost in a game that hasn't even started.

-Carrie

The Value of a Human Life

One of the panels I attended was titled "Wish You Were Here," but honestly I would have preferred the title Mind over Matter, because that was the main subject of all the papers presented. Almost coincidentally, three of the papers managed to very interestingly relate the power of the mind as a coping mechanism to femininity and to subversion. My friend Abby's paper on The Handmaid's Tale argued that even though the main character physically complied with all the harsh, demeaning laws of the totalitarian regime she lived in, her mental escapism was a valid way to subvert this regime. Another paper spoke of a novel called Players, in which the main character looks to nature as both a symbol of anarchy and as a place of refuge from postmodern boredom. Lastly, a paper on "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" spoke of Walter's daydreams as stemming from a fundamental dissatisfaction with his homogenized life and a desire to heroize himself. Jen's paper places the blame of Walter's discontentment on the narrow social definition of heroism. 

During the Q&A, one of the question's directed towards Jen's paper prompted an answer of "It all comes down to what Walter believes is a valuable human life." This sentence struck with me, both as relating to all of the papers on the panel but also to our class theme, Losing to Win. In Tyler Dearden's words, self-destruction is a mechanism by which one can entirely and completely give up one life in order to assume another. This definition raises the question for all of the protagonists of this semester: what do they constitute as a valuable human life? Like Walter, they certainly don't think their own life is a valuable one. However, unlike Walter, our characters are constricted to daydreaming; they can go to much greater (and much more dangerous) extents to try and swap out their life for another through the use of drugs, alcohol, and exorbitant amounts of money. 

Nature and the Individual

The two panels I attended include Dear Reader and Part of Your World.  I will discuss the latter for the purpose of this blog post.

The Part of Your World panel examined the effects of environment upon individuals. The five papers presented analyzed the role of environment--urban, semi-urban, and rural--on the main characters. While nature was a constant theme in this panel, at the end of the panel I realized that this panel revealed the age old idea of nature vs nurture; specifically, whether man is a product of his surroundings and his learned traits, or if genetic predisposition and innate qualities control man. This panel lends insight into the dominance of nature over nurture, since almost all of papers argue that environment shapes individuals and their actions and behavior.

I found Sarah Collins’ paper, “Take a Walk on the Wild Side: The Battle of the ‘Id’ in Nature,” interesting in regards to this debate because she uses Freud as a lens to explain the primitive urges of four men while they travel through nature, further distancing themselves from civilization. As the men move further from structure and order, they become more violent and sexual. Her paper reveals that both nature and nurture are responsible for the men’s transformations; innate and primal qualities are suppressed in the men until their environment changes to foster these urges.

-Nim 

Two Thumbs Up for "Down the Rabbit Hole!"

I attended “Making Up is Hard to Do” and “Because I Said So.” I will blog about “Making Up is Hard to Do,” but I want to briefly mention an interesting observation made during the Q&A of the other panel.

Two of the papers in “Because I Said So” presented back to back with completely opposite arguments. One student wrote about Four Lions, a dark comedy about unlucky terrorists; he proposed that ideology is most dangerous when it is brought to life in its most extreme form by a follower’s overzealous, uncompromising belief in it. The next presenter, however, made a case to support ideology’s ability to free its followers from oppression, as demonstrated in Kindred. What we learn from this seeming contradiction is this: what matters is not the vehicle for your experience, but how you use that vehicle that shapes your experience and what you learn from it.

Back to the first panel. Three of the papers proposed interesting ideas about the identities of their respective protagonists. One student wrote about Billy from Slaughterhouse-Five, claiming that he is a Christ-like figure. She believes that he has a high capacity for empathy and many other qualities that Jesus possessed. However, she did not use this comparison as a way to elevate Billy’s character; on the contrary, she used his similarities to Jesus as evidence for Vonnegut’s anti-Christian ideas. That is, if humans only pursue moral action in response to fear and threats, then they are not inherently good. Another student defended the characters in On the Road, suggesting that they are not rebels, but reformers wishing to improve their narrow-minded, nuclear family units. The third student gave an interesting analysis of the use of green and blue colors in The Great Gatsby to signify Fitzgerald’s loss of his Irish identity to the melting pot of America and the clash between Eastern and Western values. I think all three presenters did especially well in offering unique perspectives on well-known, well-analyzed works (yay for alliteration).

--Ly 

More Power to Ya

In addition to my own panel, I attended the Keynote, “Tell It Like It Is”, and “More Power to Ya!” For the blog, I’m going to focus on “More Power to Ya!” because I enjoy unnecessary exclamation points.

“More Power to Ya!” was a gender-themed panel that included a positive assessment of Princess Mononoke as a feminist text, a defense of Jack Kerouac’s gender politics, a Butlerian reading of Hitchcock’s Lifeboat, an examination of/advocacy for powerful yonic imagery that rebels against Freudian thought, and a analysis of the victimhood of female characters in V for Vendetta.

I really liked the presentations for the most part, but a lot of them left me with questions. For example, the presenter of the Lifeboat character seemed to me to imply that the gender representation in the movie was progressive/empowering because the female lead was able to get what she wanted by oscillating on the gender spectrum, becoming more masculine or feminine depending on the situation. However, the author of the paper didn’t address the fact that there is a long-running trope of negatively defined female characters that become more or less feminine to manipulate the men around them. And the author of the Princess Mononoke paper seemed happy with the egalitarian couples in the film wherein which both members behaved in a traditionally masculine way, but didn’t address the problematic aspects of potentially repudiating femininity in the process. The presenter on yonic imagery was a friend of mine and she devoted a whole paragraph to explaining why her paper would only address the needs of cisgender individuals, but I was really curious whether/how a trans* author could use sexual imagery to empower themselves. Of course, my friend is cisgender, so she couldn’t really provide that perspective, but it still left me curious. Which is a good thing.

Anyway, I really enjoyed seeing friends/classmates/acquaintances present at panels.  

- Jack

Anti-Social Novels

This past week, I attended “My Own Worst Enemy” and “Reality Bites.” I am going to blog about the second panel.

I found the papers on this panel extremely interesting. The paper on In Cold Blood especially caught my attention—the idea that nothing can ever be 100% representative of reality is something that I have thought about before, and I was delighted to hear about it in the context of the book. Another paper, on Into The Wild, also interested me. The student who wrote it pointed out that to be able to survive in the wile, Chris McCandles actually had to rely on things produced by society—he is always carrying a backpack full of things and uses cars to get around.

What I found most interesting, though, came in the question portion of the panel. The idea of an anti-social book came up. One student, while talking about his paper—written on DeLillo’s Players—said  that sometimes a book—his in particular—is too busy reflecting on itself that it fails to reflect anything about the outside world, and thus, fails to connect with the reader. He says this makes it “anti-social.” The student concluded that there is little value in this, and wondered why the author bothered to publish it if it was a book written basically only for himself.

--Francesca

The Life of an Individual

The two panels I attended were called “Doomed to Repeat It” and “There Will Be Blood”. The panel I will focus on for my blog post will be There Will Be Blood.

The panel discussed the issue of blood through many different lenses and interestingly enough, finding one common theme was not as apparent as it was in the panel I presented on, and the other panel I attended. Yet, by the end the panel had established a common theme that came from the question of how the characters in each one of films or novels present a skewed reality. One answer that I found particularly interesting came from Isabella who wrote an essay on Bloody Sunday. She discussed the manner in which both the protestors and the military had entered the “battle” with a certain perception of how the protest was going to end. She claimed that due to this preconceived notion of what will/should happen the events transpired in a much more violent way than they could have.

When asked about the skewed reality she responded that if you think about it, it could be argued that every experience and interaction we have as human beings is framed in a somewhat subjective manner. Nothing is truly objective. I tried to think about that in relation to the texts we read this year. In the Virgin Suicides the narrators are completely skewing the events by making the Lisbon Sisters into these hyper-sexualized objects, in Black Swan the camera presents a certain subjectivity and skewing of reality through the use of mirrors and the physical harm that Nina inflicts on herself. We can make these statements about every work we’ve read.

So maybe Isabella was right. And if she is right, is there anything that we’re supposed to do about it? Probably not. You live your life through your own eyes, so your experiences are entirely your own. Nobody else will share the same exact experiences as you, and that’s what makes each experience so unique.  

-Ameet

TO Conference!

I attended Dear Reader and Part of Your World. (Props to Nim and Becca, who were both fantastic!)

I'd like to discuss the latter. The papers in Part of Your World focused on the impact of environment on an individual. Essentially, it addressed the latter part of the infamous "nature vs nurture" debate and analyzed each character with the assumption that they are largely a product of their environment. However, what happens when we make a different assumption and consider them to be driven by their natures? What, if anything changes about our understandings of a character, and is it even possible to analyze one if we just chalk everything up to human nature?

For example, Becca wrote on Eugenidies' work and claims that the Lisbon girls are, "manicured, regulated, and ultimately violated" because of the community's "sense of entitlement to and regulatory power over the area." What if the girls, by their own nature, chose to withdraw from the community because they were not comfortable in it? The narrators do tell us that the girls usually kept to themselves, and the boys' creepy fascination with them began long before any signs of trouble. Could it not be possible that the girls were naturally reclusive and wanted to get away from the attention? However, if we do use this lens, it seems that there is suddenly a whole lot less to analyze.

Similarly, if we consider J. Alfred Prufrock to be driven by his inner nature, then Eliot's poem becomes an almost comical narrative about the unfortunate (and nonexistent)  love life of a very shy, indecisive man, instead of a criticism of modernity, as Lenara argues in her paper. I guess there was a good reason why all five members of this panel chose to focus on "nurture" instead of "nature."

A Scientific Aside

For anyone interested in science, and more specifically brains, this is an idea I thought of during a bio lecture on neuron activity the day after the conference:

So, the basic structure of a neuron is that there are dendrites branching off a nucleus and a long axon extending out of that nucleus and then a synaptic space over which neurotransmitters diffuse, essentially connecting one neuron to the next.

When we have a thought, or idea, or reaction to stimulus, an action potential sprints down the axon and causes the neurotransmitter-carried communication across the synapse. Right after the action potential comes the undershoot, which essentially inhibits another action potential from occurring too soon after the first. But by the same token of ion concentration gradients by which it functions, the undershoot also inhibits the action potential from running backwards to its source. Action potentials may run in one direction, and that is forwards.

Now Prof. Kemp mentioned that in physics, a key concept is that time can also only move in one forward direction. If time is just a construct of our minds (and who is to say it isn't? There are no outside sources of intelligence that can disprove that theory, especially because all machines that could empirically test for opposing evidence would have to be designed by humans, who inherently carry the belief that time is forwards-ly linear, which would affect the design of the instrument), then the undershoot that follows the action potential is the mechanism by which time is prevented from running backwards. And deja vu, when we have the eerie feeling that we have experienced something before, would be a malfunctioning interaction. 

Of course, this is just a theory I hold. There is no research into the subject that I know of (how would anyone even study that concept?), but guys...what if that means the key to time travel is inside our own heads? What if we could figure out how to inhibit that undershoot and control the action potential so that all stimuli run back to the source? What would time even look like?

Sorry. I completely dorked out and I don't even know if any of that is coherent because I got super excited while writing it. But, like, wow. Brains are just the coolest things ever.

-Becca

Circular Reading

I attended the "Doomed to Repeat It" panel and "My Own Worst Enemy." I'm going to discuss the former. 

Narrative style, time travel, and truth in literature. A casual discussion. But really it kind of blew my mind, especially after all the different "worlds" Prof. Kemp drowned us with in the introductory lecture. My mind was already on a metaphysical path; the panel's preoccupation with recursive time and patterns and history (both personal and public) only worsened that trend. I'm going to relate this idea of "circular reading" that Matt brought up to Walter Benjamin's Angel of History. Apologies in advance if it gets sloppily abstract.

A brief synapsis: Matt wrote his paper on A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, wherein the author, Julian Barnes, presents different events of history out of order and narrated from several points of view. Apparently, the result is depressing, and every chapter ends with destruction, death, etc. Except the last; the last advocates that love is the cure for all the mess that happened before. Matt proposed that instead of taking the novel at face value and reading it linearly, it should be read out of order, so that that last message of hope might be dispersed throughout the despair that is the rest of the novel.

Benjamin's angel can only read time linearly because he faces the past and ignores the future. The result is that all that over-quoted "wreckage" gets "piled at his feet." But if he only learned to view things more circularly, considering the future in how it factors into the past, then that wreckage could be alleviated, much as the despair in Barnes' book is lightened by hope. My basic idea I got out of it is that circularity is not just a way to read literature. It is a way to approach all time lines, including our own. But it's damned tricky to do, in my opinion.

-Becca