Author: kiraprater

It seems that when something traumatic happens, time is automatically divided into Before and After. I think this must mean that history – not just the future – is altered in some way. A person might never be able to look back, to Before, without looking through the filter of the event. For example, I seem to always find myself thinking about pre-9/11 events by saying, "Oh, that was four months before 9/11…that was one year and a half before 9/11…" It seems that one’s own history could be re-written that way. Then, of course, the future is partially scripted already (with the "Where were you when…?" stories that Josh and Ada mentioned in their blogs). I think that Art Spiegelman may have been getting at this a little bit in In the Shadow of No Towers.

On the subject of Before, Don DeLillo mentions in his article, "In the Ruins of the Future": " The terrorists of September 11 want to bring back the past." I got the same impression with Spiegelman, and perhaps that this why he included the century-old newspaper articles and comics (sort of like what Jarrod said about how he might want to align himself with the radical voices of the past). Perhaps this is why he says, at one point, that "Nothing changed on 9/11".

Certainly no disrespect about the 9/11 tragedy is meant when I say this, but reading this comic reminded me of a line from White Noise, when Stompanato, the head of the New York emigres, tells Jack that being successful in New York is mostly about expressing dissatisfaction in an interesting way…

After reading the book, seeing the film version of Fight Club, and reading Henry Giroux’s article on Fight Club, I definitely had a lot to ponder. Giroux frowns on director David Fincher’s comments that the movie is a "coming-of-age narrative" (21), but I don’t think that aspect of the book and film should be ignored.

Obviously, the narrator craves an identity. He is, as Giroux points out, he is: ". . . a neoliberal Everyman: an emasculated, repressed corporate drone whose life is simply an extension of a reified and commodified culture" (8). He believes he can get an identify from death, or dying: "This is why I loved the support groups so much, if people thought you were dying, they gave you their full attention. If this might be the last time they saw you, they really saw you" (98). Later on, he says: "And the fight goes on and on because I want to be dead. Because only in death do we have names" (192).

However, it is ironic that the narrator longs for an identity available only in death because, in creating Tyler Durden, he created a sort of eternal life (or identity) for himself. In keeping with the scripture (King James Bible, John 11:26), "And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die", the narrator created a God/Father for lots of men, one that would never die.

I suppose it could work both ways – that the narrator is both the creator and the created (both Victor Frankenstein and the Monster). The narrator and others talk about being freed from the workyday life – "As long as you’re at fight club, you’re not how much money you’ve got in the bank. You’re not your job" (135), but ultimately the members of fight club are not freed. They are merely enslaved by something new. After all, the God/Father narrator ends up making his disciples in his image, with black pants, etc. The disciples are "a copy of a copy of a copy".  This all reminds me of Giroux’s mention of fascism: "Jack is shocked by the killing, which in turn enables him to recognize that Tyler has become a demagogue and that Fight Club has evolved into a fascist paramilitary group. . ." (11). The narrator is not freed, either – he may no longer be enslaved by his recall campaign coordinating, Audi-driving, IKEA-furnished life, but he is enslaved by his creation, his Tyler Durden-demagogue identity.

I suppose that the narrator does "hit bottom" at the end, but I’m not sure he is "saved" by the God/Father of the mental hospital. But I wonder why Chuck Palahniuk did not name the narrator, not even at the end?

There are a lot of outcasts in the movie, and a lot of people being cast out. Karen, the teacher, is cast out of the school because of her teaching methods. Cherita, as Ada pointed out, is often alone and left out. And then there is Roberta Sparrow, the town eccentric, and of course, Donnie himself.

These outcasts made me think, once again, about truth, and here, about how you have to go off the beaten path to find it. Like with the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland (as Julie G. mentioned), or, more specifically, in The Matrix. There, Neo also has to choose to follow the rabbit, in order to fulfill his destiny, just as Donnie follows Frank, seeks out Roberta, and learns the "cellar door" from Karen. It reminded something that Roberta said to Donnie: "Every living thing dies alone". Everyone’s going to have to go off the main path for the big choices – and Donnie is no exception. In truth, Donnie did die alone.

Julie’s blog also made me think about destroying and creating, and about how much power being a destroyer/creator allows a person. Donnie is given enormous power in the movie – he burns down houses and shoots people in the head. Yet, he also sacrifices himself so that other can live. If this last sacrifice is his destiny, I’m wondering if a destiny is a destiny if one chooses it (I think one of the characters in the movie talks about this). The word seems to indicate that one is pulled to such a place irrevocably, and if that is true, then there really is no choice. How much choice do you really have in your own destiny?

I’m planning something totally different for my presentation on White Noise, but I did come across one interesting motif in my research. I wanted to share it here because I didn’t know if I could work it in.

There seems to be a water motif in White Noise. I think this is most obvious at the end, when Jack sets out to kill Mr. Gray, or Willie Minks. There are several lines about what the rain is doing outside: "Water fell to [the] earth in drops" (304) and "Water fell in drops, surfaces gleamed" (305). Additionally: "Water struck the roof in spherical masses, globules, splashing drams" (307) and "Water struck the roof in elongated orbs, splashing drams" (310). These passages struck me, as I found some coincidental information in my research.

On a lark, I typed in "white noise" on Google. Among the references to the novel, I also found a good number of links that discussed actual white noise, or white sound. One website in particular,www.purewhitenoise.com, interested me the most. This website describes white noise as: "White noise is actually a sound frequency or a signal that one hears as a gentle hiss, similar to the sound of wind rustling through trees, a waterfall, radio static or the ocean surf". Their examples of a waterfall and ocean surf definitely tie in with the type of merchandise they sell – white noise CDs, and a fair number of them leaning towards water sounds. A few examples are: Wonderful Rain, Restful Waves, Distant Thunderstorm, Soothing Shower, and Sea of Serenity. 

The water-related passages didn’t surprise me then, considering what else the website had to say about white noise: "To use a simple analogy, the color white contains the whole spectrum of colors of light. Similarly, white noise is created by using the entire spectrum of frequencies the human ear can hear". This goes along with what Babette postulates in the novel, when she is relating to Jack the story of the Dylar and Mr. Gray: "What if death is nothing but sound?" (198), to which Jack responds: "Electrical noise" (198).

The Google search on "white noise" also provided some links on a movie that came out this year, called White Noise (www.imdb.com/title/tt0375210/). In this movie, Michael Keaton’s wife goes missing. While she is missing, he experiences peculiar phenomenons, like radios coming on (much like in the novel White Noise, on page 195) and issuing blasts of static. Eventually, a creepy man helps him understand that his wife, through various technology, is trying to contact him from "the other side" using EVP, or electronic voice phenomena. One individual, in commenting on this movie, pointed out that there was a water motif in this film (a waterfall near Michael Keaton’s house, etc.). 

There are many, many other themes/motifs to explore in the novel, but I hope that this one has provided some food for thought. I’ll look forward to an interesting discussion on Tuesday.

I decided to experience Hegirascope and Pax in a very stodgy, un-postmodern way: I read the instructions first.

I read the introduction to Hegirascope. I marked the index page as the text told me to.  Then I clicked "begin". After a few minutes, I gave up trying to come up with some erudite opinions on it, and just noticed how I felt. Sometimes I wanted control, and sometimes I didn’t. At times, I let the model take me where it wanted me to go, and at times, I steered myself. What I realized after I was "finished" was that no two people could really play either of the models the same way. No two people would make the same choices at all times. So, each time a person played, a creation was born. The user changed the game, and the game changed the user. Each time, something unique was created.

I think that Poster touches on this in his article, "The Mode of Information and Postmodernity". In talking about TV ads, he writes: "The viewer is the absent hero or heroine of the ad. The viewer is solicited to displace him or herself into the ad and become one with the meanings associated with the product" (62). It’s not an exact parallel, but it reminded me of playing Hegirascope and Pax – the user adds him/herself, the model adds itself to the user, and somehow something new, something separate, is created.

Although the models are not meant to be narrative (as Stuart Moultroup himself points out in Pax), I did come away with the sense that I went on a "journey", as one might experience when reading a novel. I felt that there was absence as presence – because, when a user begins the models, what we don’t know is bigger than what we do know. The user slowly chips away at the information, making something out of fragments. Perhaps it is a bit like making one’s own "dream-dump", or mash-up, or some such.

Playing the models also made me think about choices. There seemed to be an infinite number of choices in the two models – you could choose to go to another screen in Hegirascope, or choose to interact with another character in Pax. Or you could choose not to choose. I’m not sure what this all has to do with postmodernism, but I think I still like narratives, though. When I read something, or do something, I have decided to give up my control and let the author lead me. Plus, I think I still like reading/experiencing things from beginning to end – I still prefer the journey that way.

I thought it was interesting that Kwame Anthony Appiah said, in his essay: "It is an important question why this distancing of our ancestors should have become so central a feature of our cultural lives" (342). This made me think of how, in Dream Jungle, many of the characters escape or distance themselves from their families (and perhaps their ancestors).

Rizalina escapes her family first when her father and brothers are drowned, and then escapes her mother by running away. Vincent also escapes his family – his girlfriend and son in L.A. – and comes to the Philippines. Paz moves on to live in New York and L.A., and Ilse manages to escape from Zamora in divorce (although her children are ultimately returned to him). I’m not entirely sure what this all means – perhaps it’s just the theme that one can escape one’s own history, heritage, and ancestors. Or can you?

I like how Ada pointed out the issue of translation in the novel. There were a lot of untranslated words in the novel, and a lot of the time the characters couldn’t understand each other. This creates barriers between the characters, but also with the audience. I also wondered if this means that there is room for our own translation, our own interpretation? Meaning, that perhaps without a translation, the truth of something is ever elusive and ever open to interpretation, as we have sometimes discussed in class?

I think that what struck me most while reading Song of Solomon was how many different kinds of slavery there are in the novel. There is, of course, the slavery from which Milkman’s ancestors are freed. But his father, Macon, who was not a slave himself, enslaves other black people. Guitar’s grandmother observes this in the beginning of the book, when Macon demands money from her, even in her impoverished state: "A nigger in business is a terrible thing to see. A terrible, terrible thing to see" (22). In a way, Milkman enslaves his sisters and his mother, or "pees" on them, as Lena points out. "Our girlhood was spent like a found nickel on you. When you slept, we were quiet; when you were hungry, we cooked; when you wanted to play, we entertained you; and when you got grown enough to know the difference between a women and a two-toned Ford, everything in this house stopped for you" (215).

It seems that the enslaver is always enslaved. Macon becomes a slave to his own greed, as he feels the need to own. He tells Milkman: "Let me tell you right now the one important thing you’ll ever need to know: Own things. And let the things you own own other things. Then you’ll own yourself and other people too" (55). Milkman becomes a slave to greed as well, or hunger, as he calls it, for money (at least in the beginning). When he goes looking for the gold in Shalimar, he thinks: "The fact was he wanted the gold because it was gold and he wanted to own it. Free" (257).

I also saw, in the novel, how many prisons can exist for people. There is the obvious one, the Butlers’ house, where the killers of Jake/Macon Dead Sr. lived and where Macon and Pilate hid after their father’s death (and which just might look like the witch’s house – another prison – in Hansel and Gretel): "They couldn’t bear the stillness, the walls, the boredom of having nothing to do but wait for the day’s excitement of eating and going to the toilet. Anything was better than walking all day on carpeting, than eating the soft bland food that white people ate…" (166). There is also Milkman’s parents’ house on Not Doctor Street, from which Milkman could not seem to pry himself. But the characters imprison themselves. They allude to freedom, but they shackle themselves – Milkman with sex and liquor, Guitar with hate (although he calls it love), and Hagar with her obsession.

There is also an obvious connection between freedom and flying. All through his travels, Milkman’s old skin is peeling away, gradually freeing him from his former life – he loses his possessions, his suit is torn away, his shoes come apart, and his fine watch is splintered. It is in Shalimar, where Milkman finally has nothing, that he gains freedom: "So the thoughts came, unobstructed by other people, by things, even by the sight of himself. There was nothing here to help him – not his money, his car, his father’s reputation, his suit, or his shoes. In fact they hampered him" (277).  When he is finally free, he truly gains the ability to fly, which is what he longed for, even as a little boy looking out the window: "For now he knew what Shalimar knew: If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it" (337). I struggled a little bit with the freedom/flying/Byrd connection – perhaps it is that true freedom is always available, but that one must take it to have it? Like taking flight?

I looked up the Song of Solomon verses in the King James bible, but I made little headway in relating them to this novel (if there is even a connection). I wonder if anyone else saw anything in them?

Someone once told me that I often have an emotional reaction to literature than an analytical one. At the time, this was a huge illumination on my character and thus explained why, as an English major in undergrad and now as an English graduate student, I am sometimes unable to produce immediate analytic feedback. Unfortunately, this is ringing true for me after reading The Female Man – my analytical skills are temporarily stunned into silence by the challenging, fragmented novel. For now, I’ll have to go with my emotional reaction to the article in the course reader for this blog.  

I was particularly disturbed by a passage at the end: "…and the possibilities for our reconstitution include the utopian dream of the hope for a monstrous world without gender" (181). After reading this, I was immediately reminded of the instance in The Lathe of Heaven, where George Orr devises, through Dr. Haber, a solution to racial tension. The doctor, of course, thought that this was a cure-all – however, we quickly see race’s lack in the new reality. George is profoundly devastated by the lack of color – most especially, he misses Heather being "brown". Further, we also find that although racial tension no longer exists, other prejudice does – a man was assaulted on the street for having cancer. Would a monstrous world without gender really be a utopia? Would it really be a solution to anything? Would I want to live there? What would happen to the identity that I have now, as a woman? I suppose I would no longer be a woman? I would also argue that, considering Janet and Joanna’s reactions to Jael’s proposition at the end of The Female Man, they were skeptical about a world without gender (or with just one gender) as well. 

The article continues: "Cyborg imagery can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves" (181). I could be coming off as extreme here, but I think I might want to hang on to some dualisms. I’m not saying that everything in the world needs to be dichotomized and split into neat little boxes, but the idea of being in some kind of "monstrous" limbo-land, where "One is too few, but two are too many" (171) seems rather frighteningly amorphous. Further, I thought that jmonte had a great point about the "ambiguity of self" (I’m so sorry to use your handle – I am usually very good with names) – where is the self? Is there room for a self in this world? Can you even define a self if so few things are finite? Maybe that’s not what the author is getting at, but, in addition to liking an ultimate truth, sometimes I like some definite boundaries, too.  

In keeping with this thinking, I was frustrated with the very last statement: "…I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess" (181). Obviously, the author is stating her preference, but again, I’m saying I see nothing wrong with the parameters that "be[ing] a goddess" could offer. I don’t necessarily think that the definition of something takes away from its identity, or takes away from its’ difference or otherness.

In the spirit of fragmentation, I will now veer off onto a completely different train of thought. I was reminded strongly of Jeannette Winterson’s work (Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, The Passion, Sexing The Cherry) while reading The Female Man. I wonder if anyone else noted some similarities?