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