Category: Reflections

In Memento, there was a fluidity that I sensed between the black and white scenes and those filmed in color.  I considered these variations in color and these switching backs of scenes in a backward but linear order a metaphor for the imperfect human memory, which is intensified in the character Leonard.  Because Leonard believes he is unable to recall anything that has happened since the night of his wife’s murder/rape and at the same time insists that he will not give up the structure of living each moment in a linear, progressing order, he suffers from his desire to control his mind and get revenge on his wife’s supposed offender.  The possibility, however, that Leonard is responsible for his wife’s death makes him a tragic character—someone unable of letting go and incapable of letting go (his last memory being his wife’s death).

          

Then there is Teddy.  On some level, Teddy reminded me of Orr’s doctor in the Lathe of Dreams.  Of course, Teddy is and isn’t who he says he is, but what are we to believe since we’re viewing this reality from the perspective of someone with a memory disability?  Anyway, Teddy behaves parallel to Leonard.  He too wants to be in control, reduced to taking advantage of Leonard’s disability by setting him up as a hit man.  Again, I circled back, the way Memento wants us to, and considered how Leonard unknowingly overdosed his wife with insulin and that he’s already avenged her rape at some time prior to the action in the film.  This is what Teddy tells us, so his death at the beginning of the movie seemed unjustified.  But Memento made me think about whether it matters why Teddy got shot; the outcome for Teddy is having his disabled hit man turn around and destroy him (in a Frankenstein fashion).  Does Teddy deserve death?  Maybe not, though it could be that things work as they must in the long run.  Teddy was behind a lot of other deaths, Leonard was his paranoid weapon.  I wondered what would happen to Leonard after his “master” is no longer setting up his days—but then there’s that little flicker where Leonard’s the man sitting in Sammy’s seat at the asylum.  So, could that be what our writer and director suggest awaits the unchanged modernist?  Living our days around a bunch of other crazy people.  Well, that doesn’t sound so different.

Mr. Pearce may be hot, but he’s a bad actor.  I’ve seen the movie about six or seven times, and his acting gradually gets worse with each viewing.  Nonetheless, I love the movie and I think Chris Nolan is an amazing director.  He splices a few split-second shots that are extremely hard to notice – especially during the first viewing – but which are very important in foreshadowing the plot.  For example, there’s a scene where Sammy Jankis is sitting in a chair at the mental institution.  At 1:29:55, the film cuts to a split-second black-and-white shot of Leonard sitting in the same chair at the mental institution and he’s in Sammy’s clothes.  This minor but meticulous detail is one of the things that makes Nolan such an awesome director…and this leads me to a book Dr. Sample talked briefly about in class.  In Steven Johnson’s Everything Bad is Good For You (or, rather, the article excerpt I read in the NYT Magazine), he argues that movies have become more and more complex as a result of VHS and now DVDs.  Movies now have to stand up over multiple viewings, and this has induced movie-makers to create more complicated films.  I think Memento is a wonderful example, because as anyone who watches the movie more than once realizes, there are so many things one misses during the first viewing.  So, I guess this is one of the ways in which evolving media have substantially changed film as an art form.

Anyway, one of the little details in the film that I think is postmodern takes place when Leonard’s wife is reading her favorite book and he says, “I always thought the pleasure of the book was in wanting to know what happens next.”  This is a self-referential joke, obviously:  the pleasure in this particular film is in wanting to know what happened before.  This is not only a self-referential joke about the chronology used in Memento, but also to the way in which Nolan’s film challenges traditional story-telling (where "the novel" is perhaps analogous to the traditional structure of a film).  This reminds me of a scene in Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five in which Billy Pilgrim listens to a radio program where they discuss the purpose of the novel (or whether or not it’s dead; I can’t remember exactly).  Both texts – Vonnegut’s and Nolan’s – depart radically from the story-telling structure used by those texts that have preceded them, and they both joke about that departure within the text itself.

Also, not to get nitpicky, but Chris Nolan wrote and directed this movie, and he’s British.  (Guy Pearce is British/Australian, and Carrie-Anne Moss in Canadian.)  Is the text still American?  I guess it took place and was shot in America, but I’m not so sure that makes it American.

It had been some time since I viewed this film; however, upon seeing it last week, I was struck by the same thought that occurred to me the first time I watched it:  “Can a Hollywood film ever escape the 3 act structure?”  How is it that a story told backwards adheres to a traditional narrative structure and character with no memory still manages a significant arc?  It seems to me that with the incredibly experimental nature of contemporary novels, there should be some room for similar creativity in feature films.  What we need is “Aqua Teen Hunger Force: The Movie.” 

 
Kiraprater (sorry I had to use your handle, your identity is a mystery to me), I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss truth.  In the universe of Memento, there are things that actually happen.  For instance, the audience is well informed about the nature of Leonard and Natalie’s relationship.  There is a “truth” that we witness, and then a false memory that is juxtaposed against it.  I have trouble with the idea that Leonard’s “memories” are just as valid as the other characters.  For one thing, it seems to undercut the premise of the entire film.  You are absolutely right in the case of the scene you mention in your blog, Leonard is just as unreliable as Teddy; yet, I think this speaks to the unreliability of human perception (or memory if you would rather), not the absence of truth.
 

I am reminded of Jorge Luis Borges’s short fiction “The Library of Babel,” which describes a library (one that holds more book than there are atoms in the universe) that contains every conceivable variation of a book that is 410 pages in length.  Therefore, this library holds every sentence that has ever or will ever be written.  Therefore, it must contain, within its walls, the meaning of life and the answer to every question ever asked.  However, for every book that holds an answer, there are millions of counterfeit books that are similar, but contain minor variations.  Borges describes “librarians” who waste their lives searching through the volumes in the hope of finding meaning within the seemingly infinite number of book variations.

 
The reason I recounted this story was not to reach my 300-word minimum, but rather to argue that there is a truth, we just have no hope of ever knowing it.  In the universe of the text, Leonard did, or did not kill his wife.  There is an answer… a truth.  Yet, the truth is lost in the fallibility of the human mind and unreliability of the signifying chain.  Either way, I am sure it will lead to a good discussion in class.

In my second viewing of the film Memento, I was struck as to how many of the details in my first viewing I had glossed over, in order to make sense of the plot.  I blame this entirely on Guy Pearce’s hotness and my inability to focus, because he is so hot.  But I digress.  I would like to explore the elements of film noir echoed in Memento.  In the spirit of postmodern intertexuality and self-referentiality, Memento draws from the noir genre and reworks the elements to create a unique story.  The noir trope of the flawed protagonist is reflected in Leonard’s character.  Though, in this case, the flaw seems overwhelming, as Leonard’s auterograde amnesia, his inability to retain short-term memory, makes him a highly unreliable narrator.  This in turn complicates all of the relationships in the film.  I am reminded of Double Indemnity (1944), directed by Billy Wilder, both in terms of character types and mode of storytelling, and also in cinematographic details.  The narrative form of Double Indemnity is the real time confessions of Walter Neff, played by Fred MacMurray, played out with the flashback narrative, which tells the story.  The scenes when Walter Neff is talking into a dictaphone, confessing his crime, telling his side, seems to reappear again, reworked in the scenes when Leonard is on the phone in the hotel room, telling his own story.  These flashbacks are set off in Memento by black and white filming, setting this narration apart from the rest of the story.  These scenes also hearken back to noir, in cinematographic details, particularly having to do with light.  Leonard is in a hotel room, the scene is shot in black and white, and the play of light both off his face and in the room is reflective of concerns with light patterns in noir film, particularly ones cause by Venetian blinds.  This partial obscurity, caused by streams of light, emphasize the theme of noir film, that nothing is what it seems, that there are facts obscured and unseen by the characters and also the audience.  In Memento, the way that the light streams into the room, when Leonard is on the phone, casting shadows and illuminations, suggests that even this moment of confession, or telling, is somehow partially obscured.  Another element of film noir is the femme fatale- in Double Indemnity she is Phyllis Dietrichson, played by Barbara Stanwyck, who plots with Walter Neff to kill off her husband and collect insurance money on the double indemnity clause.  This character type is reflected in Natalie, who like Phyllis, is not entirely who she makes herself out to be, and in some way manipulates the protagonist.  Though, again, Memento, in its modern day reworking of the genre, complicates the already complicated by the unsteadiness and shaky ground established by Leonard’s inability to create short-term memories, and his sheer vulnerability to manipulation by strangers, from Burt issuing two hotel rooms, to Teddy’s murder-for-hire plots.  The intertextual details and unique plot sequencing make for an intriguing film.  The concern with seeking out the truth, the truth that is so sublimated and obscured, so seemingly unattainable, is offset by Memento’s depictions of the process of finding truth (even if it doesn’t exist), an equally important venture. 

I remember saying in an earlier blog post that I was a person who believed that there was a definite truth out there. Now I find my thoughts headed in a truly postmodern direction. The movie Memento seems to align itself with the postmodernist tenet of "no ultimate truth", and I might be ready to believe that myself. I see this because Leonard, the main character, makes so many choices about what will be the ultimate truth for him.

Leonard is able to create his own truth – he doctors the police file on his case and allows himself to not record facts. However, I moved away from the ultimate truth viewpoint because of a conversation that Leonard and Teddy have about memory and facts. Leonard says that memory is unreliable, but Teddy says that facts are unreliable (this is definitely underscored by Leonard’s selective recording of his so-called facts). Teddy tells Leonard what "really happened" – that he killed his wife’s rapists. However, it is merely Teddy’s word against Leonard’s – the audience cannot say for sure what "really happened". Where is the ultimate truth? It seems there is none – only what happened for one person, and what happened for another person.

I’m inclined to move even farther away from thinking about ultimate truth because of the circular journey I saw in the movie. Leonard re-writes his own history to keep the carrot dangling in front of him, to keep himself going in circles. He says at one point in the movie: "How can I heal if I can’t feel time?" This is true – it counteracts the old adage "time heals all wounds". Leonard is stuck in the present, and his condition will always keep him there. His choices keep him there, as well. Leonard talks about his "condition" and his "conditioning" of himself. The "condition" implies a state of being. However, the "conditioning" implies progress – which we know is impossible for Leonard – not only because of his condition, but because he chooses not to move forward. He kills his wife’s rapists but he circles back to the beginning of his journey. He chooses not to heal. Leonard wants to blame his condition. At one point, he says that the rapists "took away my ability to live". But as Teddy points out, he is still living. Certainly, Leonard’s condition is in no way enviable, but he does choose the easy way to keep living. He chooses to create his own reality – he literally takes advantage of himself to keep himself in the self-created circle. Teddy says that Leonard doesn’t know who he is – but Leonard chooses who he is – again and again. He chooses to be the mentally handicapped bereaved widower searching for his wife’s rapists rather than a Sammy Jenkis in a home. If experiences are what change a person, and Leonard not only has no memory of those, but also chooses not to record them, he will never move forward or backward. He will stay in his circle for forever.

Leonard has no future, because he cannot make a past for himself – either through his memory or through his choices. This makes me think of another postmodernist viewpoint, the question of history. Leonard chooses not to make any history of his own.

I guess what I’m saying is that it’s hard for me to like Leonard’s character because I believe what he chooses is a complete cop-out. After watching the movie again, I’m wondering if there really is an ultimate truth, or perhaps just a bunch of circles. Even if the latter is correct, I’m more inclined to appreciate someone’s search (like Oedipa’s in The Crying of Lot 49) in his or her own circle, rather than Leonard’s hopping on the merry-go-round for one more ride.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the meanings of the word Memento include "one’s thoughts in relation to memory," "a reminder, warning, hint as to future events," "a reminder of a past event or condition, of an absent person, or something that once existed," and a number of other connotations that are not strikingly relevant to the film.

The protagonist’s entire body is a memento, a blurred, ‘freakish’ hypertext of tatoos that function as reminders of ‘truths’ or clues he’s constructed under the limitation of short term memory loss. Who he is, as Lenny "reminds’ him, is something he can’t understand. Even his long term memories are possibly forged constructs, lies the protagonist allegedly tells himself "to be happy." The mementos of his previous identity, his life as defined by the memory of his relationship to his wife and her brutal murder, may not be ‘real.’ Whether we are to believe the testimony of a corrupt cop, who uses the noir protagonist in order to further his profit, seems to be as murky as the credibility of the long and short term memory of the protagonist. However corrupt, the cop seems to be more genuine in his soothsaying by the end, or rather the beginning of the film’s sequence of events, than the suggested protagonist. Is there any element or circumstance in the film that can be trusted? I believe that there isn’t.

The memory he has of his wife’s rape and murder, a graphic recollection of her blood and suffocation in the bathroom, is the one defining element about the protagonist’s current character. If this memory is a ‘fake reminder,’ meaning it does not document an actual or ‘real’ event, person, place, or thing, than his current identity is predicated upon the meaninglessness the protagonist is most afraid of. Even when he believes that he can remember something, it could be all wrong, subjective, and  incomplete. Memory is a conscious and cognitive design of how one wants to remember something as opposed to what actually happened, and its easy to ‘remember what one wants’ since we can’t recall every last detail of an event, person, place, and time. Furthermore, our vagrant hero wants to believe that ‘the world is still here’ and his ‘actions still have meaning,’ even if that meaning is constructed on false pretenses rather than none at all.

He continuously claims that "he knows who he is" since he believes he can remember who he was before his "condition," and yet he contradicts himself in the film following Lenny’s exposition of the multiple truths or nontruths about the protagonist. Although he should probably trust the cop more than himself, he writes "do not believe his lies" on the back of his picture simply because he doesn’t like what "Lenny" tells him about himself. The protagonist purposefully lies to himself at certain moments throughout the film, just as he confesses in the end, or rather at the beginning of the journey to avenge his wife: "maybe I do lie to myself to be happy." 

According to Lenny, one history of the protagonist suggests that he killed the man who he believes murdered his wife several times, including the man he kills at the conclusion of the movie. In yet another alternative reality, "the memory guy" potentially killed his diabetic wife. In Freudian terms, he thoroughly dissociated with his fatal mistake and replaced the memory of the actual occurence with a "fake" memory:Sammy Jenkis.

Sammy plays the role, in the protagonist’s mind, of the innocent amnesiac who shoots his wife up with too much insulin. The protagonist (I can’t remember his name- speaking of short-term synapse failure) exhibits such clear and unequivocal insight when he’s talking about Sammy over the phone because he is psychologically distanced from the experience of killing his wife since he remembers Sammy as the one that unknowingly committed murder. If what Lenny says is even partially true of the protagonists history since his wife’s death, the protagonist is a killer equivalent Jenkis. Both kill or continue to kill because they cannot remember what they’ve just done. Since the events do not imprint in the memory of the short-term impaired, the actions and events in the amnesiac’s life cannot shape his/her identity. Instead, the protagonists actions bear no meaning on who he is. Meaninglessness abounds. Since he cannot remember the immmediate experiences of killing his wife and the perpetrater’s he’s framed as responsible in his long term memory, they are no longer a part of his identity according to his reality and self-awareness.

Time is also of the essence in the film. Beyond the reverse sequential order of events, ‘the backwardness’ in which the film is structured, which is actually the most progressive in terms of the plot’s revelation, the protagonist wonders, "how am I supposed to heal if I can’t remember tim?" The memory he can’t forget is the one he wants to forget, his wife’s murder. Whether it acutually happened or he made it up, it overwhelmes everything else about the protagonist. He is his wife’s avenger and lives for no other reason. That is who he believes he is. While he forgets himself and all of the things he’s done since among the misinformation of tatoos, potentially of his own device, he can’t forget the memory of his dieing wife. Was the memory forged? Did she die in the way that the protagonist remembers or the way in which Lenny describes? Does it even matter?

"We have too long had imposed upon us, both from inside and outside, a narrow constricting notion of blackness." (hooks, par 10)

At the risk of sounding cantankerous, I feel as though I should re-clarify my argument.  I stated in both the blog and in class, that The Intuitionist is not entirely an essentialist novel.  I also agree fully that it is possible to have a novel populated with black characters that is entirely nominalistic, as described in the hooks quote cited in Dr. Sample’s previous blog entry.  However, it is still my contention that Whitehead has done little to progress the "black novel" towards the nominalistic ideal presented in hook’s essay. 

Dr. Sample wrote, "To use a word that came up in class, it doesn’t necessarily equal a cliche to present a black man whose aspirations have been foreclosed because of the color of his skin. What looks like a cliche, others would call the truth, steeped in lived history."  I agree that cliche may have been an unfortunate choice of words (not because it is inaccurate, but rather due to its critical connotation); perhaps "trope" would be more appropriate.  However, Lila Mae’s father is a trope not because he is a "a black man whose aspirations have been foreclosed because of the color of his skin," but rather due to the fact that this is all we know of him.  If we look at the second definition of cliche (the one that does not concentrate on the triteness of a subject), we get, "A person or character whose behavior is predictable or superficial." ((dictionary.com) I know that the OED would have been more impressive, but I’m just lazy). It seems to me that each of the black characters in the novel, with the exception of Lila Mae, are structured in the same manner as a host of characters that came before them.  For evidence of this, I need go no further than our class discussion.  A number of students spoke of Lila Mae’s father as a complex, developed character, even though Whitehead dedicated only a few paragraphs to his description.  The connection was made, not through the text, but rather through the history of this trope, one that has been reinforced through countless descriptions from slave narratives through contemporary rap lyrics.

I do not feel as though this is a trite novel, in fact I think it was excellent.  Nevertheless, I would argue that it falls short of the hooks quote mentioned in Dr. Sample’s blog entry.  For the sake of summation, I ask the following question:  What has The Intuitionist done for the black novel?  Will future "nominalistic-black" writers cite it as a genre changing text?  I realize that I may be asking too much of Whitehead, but at this point, I am responding to the claims made in class as well as online.

Anyhoo, I’m glad for this opportunity to restart the debate via blog, as I’m still working to wrap my head around this text.

Without a doubt, we didn’t come even close tonight to saying everything that could be said about the bell hooks article and its relationship to The Intuitionist. Keeping in mind that I didn’t pair these two texts to be read as a call and response, I still think they speak volumes to each other, even if only implicitly.

One of hooks’ most salient observations is that "there is a radical difference between a repudiation of the idea that there is a black ‘essence’ and recognition of the way black identity has been specifically constituted in the experience of exile and struggle" (par 11).

In other words, recognizing the common lived experience and shared history of a group of people (in this case, a shared history of slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, discrimination, profiling) does not necessarily equal "essentializing" these people or their experiences. To use a word that came up in class, it doesn’t necessarily equal a cliche to present a black man whose aspirations have been foreclosed because of the color of his skin. What looks like a cliche, others would call the truth, steeped in lived history.

The more I think about it, the more I think that The Intuitionist does honor the widely varied experiences of blacks without resorting to essentialism. (This is not to say that I don’t think the novel doesn’t fail in other regards.) Part of my thinking here has been influenced by another book I’m reading, An Education in Georgia, by Calvin Trillin. This book is a firsthand account, published in 1963, of the integration of the University of Georgia in 1961. In Trillin’s book the first two black women to attend the University of Georgia recall instances of isolation, rejection, and invisibility that sound eerily like Lila Mae’s experiences at the Institute.

Of course, we have to recognize that even if Lila Mae undergoes struggles that mirror the real world, she is ultimately only a character in a heavily allegorical novel and not a real person. She is a literary representation. This recognition calls for nuance and perhaps a slight tweaking of our vocabulary. To this end I want to draw your attention to the two different meanings of the word "representation." The postcolonial theorist Gayatri Spivak points out in "Can the Subaltern Speak" that representation can mean both speaking for someone (as in politics) and re-presenting something (as in art or literature). Spivak uses two German terms (because the meanings have separate words in German) to distinguish between the two: vertreten (speaking for someone) and darstellen (re-presenting something). It’s the difference between proxy versus portrait, between presuming to speak for someone and presuming to depict something artistically.

As we consider The Intuitionist (and any text in which voice, identity, and authenticity are at stake), we should keep in mind this critical difference between the two types of representation, examining how literarily rendered (or cinematically rendered) "voices" both do and do not "speak" for the experiences behind the voices.

A few aspects of The Intuitionist caught my attention this week.  After getting past the excessively overt issue of racial inequality, the part I related most to what we have been talking about with Post-modernism is the “new literacy” Lila Mae discovers during her investigation.  Granted, the new literacy to which she refers is based in the fact that she is (at the end of the book) able to “read” Fulton as a “colored” writer and thinker and shaper of society, one of her own, a voice she understands, rather than the same white voice she has had towering over her entire life; however, in light of our discussions of post-modernism, it seems like the idea of “new literacy” or reading something from a new angle/perspective or even accepting a new form of reading (through such media as television, film, music, the internet, etc.) may be able to reach beyond the obvious racial association.  Perhaps the fact that Lila Mae is able to “understand [a] luminous truth . . . made plain by her new literacy” (230), is suggestive of the possibility of accepting truths in our own world through alternative media, through new literacy – through a new “reading” of the world we know.  Perhaps, in a post-modern effort, Whitehead is using an individual’s racial revelation (something we can understand and to which we can relate because we are not fully removed from it) to represent the possibility for us to find new truths in our own world, by “reading” it from a different perspective.  As Fulton has written himself, “There is another world beyond this one,” and as Lila Mae explains, “He was trying to tell them and they wouldn’t hear it.  Don’t believe your eyes” (240).  Again, this brings us back to the perpetual post-modernism question of truth.  Is there a truth, and is it attainable?  Lila Mae seems to think, at first and then again by the end of the story, that there is; it’s just that humankind is not ready for the full “truth” (elevator metaphors aside) or won’t (as happened throughout Fulton’s career and life and as will likely happen throughout hers) understand the “truth,” even when it stands directly in front of them.  That sounds like the start of some post-modern cynicism boiling, and yet ultimately we, along with Lila Mae, are left with a sense of hopefulness at the task she has before her.

On a second note, what’s up with the role of women in post-modern literature??  That’s a subject for an entirely different post!

in addition to these fine comments below, let me add that what struck me about whitehead’s novel was, like pynchon’s, the critique of american capitalism around the year 1960. besides hooks, i felt like the works of the frankfurt school, especially adorno and benjamin, would be beneficial. later, jameson, too, seems pertinent. the difference is, of course, that the author is writing today looking back in history. i got the feeling at the end of the novel that lila mae had an omniscient view of the inner workings of society, and i felt the reader was always looking at new york aerially, as if we had already acheived this new portentous elevator technology. arbo, a corporation that seemingly had everything within their monopolistic grasp, in reality operated on the whims of an obscure, bath-robed, inventor. it doesn’t seem that whitehead offers a ‘blueprint’ for radical change coming from a collective underclass as hooks envisions, rather, change will proceed from a single person endowed with special knowledge. whitehead’s text then, is homologous to w.e.b dubois ‘souls of black folk’ rather than a postmodern pluralist tract like hooks’.

the other aspect (which were so many and i don’t know how we’re going to cover them all in class) that interested me was the author’s treatment of the white nyc population, specifically the irish. im not sure iv’e read anything so stereotypical of irish men on my life, and im sure whiteheads motives are satirical, im just not sure how, and its a topic i hope to get to in class. certainly, the black and irish population of nyc has had a ‘colored’ history; they represent the bottom rungs of the economic and social ladder. the irish famous for their fierce xenophobia and rascist attitudes towards blacks. bell hooks, in her other writings, comments on how surprised white people are when they hear blacks’ negative descriptions of whites’ appearances and manners. as if blacks were not capable, in their perceived status as object, ‘the watched’, as having judgements of their own. it is interesting how whitehead works with this unique perspective, but i would like to maybe or maybe not discuss further how this counter-stereotyping operates in the novel.

i was struck, generally, how this novel seemed to occupy, like hooks’ criticism, a place between modernist and postmodernist categories. i did catch much postmodern elements, such as chancre’s simulacra of otis’s first elevator, which served to bolster the appearance of empiricist power, but other moments, especially the ending, evoked moderninst tendencies. 

I think what’s most interesting about this book, and Whitehead’s approach to it, comes from both his deep knowledge of form and media-laden familiarity with critical approaches (before completing this book, he was a television critic for the Villiage Voice, as well as an accomplished freelance journalist). The somewhat optimistic ending to this book (aside from the elevator allusion) proves an evolution in postmodernist literature that may have been one of his driving intentions behind writing it. The Intuitionist is clearly an African-American-themed take on Lot 49, but more interestingly it’s an extension of the postmodern literary style that benefits from Pynchon’s foundation, yet takes it a different direction almost entirely. NY Times critic Gary Krist wrote in his review of The Intuitionist:

"The idea of physical elevation, of course, has obvious metaphorical significance in this context, and Whitehead makes much of it, framing his subject as a contest between warring conceptions of how best to lift people from one level of being to the next. And since any attempt to replace ‘the robust edifices of the old order’ is likely to spawn a thicket of deceptions and betrayals, his use of the film noir idiom proves cunningly apt."

Whitehead’s framework and stylistic influences for the book are steeped in film noir, and he uses the construct to build his story, and I think this approach adopts post-modernity in a completely different way than we’ve been studying that allows for more positive resolution, but still stays within the rubric of post-modernity. The reliance on a film construct to greatly inform a literary novel such as this was a tremendously interesting choice (a nice way to approach using the simulacrum), and one I hope we will discuss tomorrow.

Further, I’m hoping to discuss issues of subculture with regards to this book and how its similar and different to that approach taken in Lot 49. While Pynchon used the possibility of the Trystero mail culture as ultimately a red herring, something that may have been constructed only for the torture of Oedipa, it’s interesting to see what Whitehead does with the same idea. Fulton’s works, while misinterpreted on a mass scale, gave way to a fully functioning underculture of Intuitionists, which has a ring of authorial conviction to it that we didn’t get to really see in Lot 49. Given the books’ undeniable similarities, why do you think Whitehead made this choice?

Bell hooks talks about the sense of identity in postmodern criticism, calling for it to be revised so that marginalized voices may be heard, and that the “narrow constricting notion of blackness” may be removed.  She knows that there is a gap in the literature as well as the criticism, and motivates her readers to fill that niche by critiquing the standard so that “new possibilities for the construction of the self and the assertion of agency” can be realized.  Her article brings up the point that we may think that we have progressed as a literary society beyond the standard works by dead white men, but it is not enough.  There are different points of view that need to be expressed, but they need to be able to have an audience willing to read what is written.  On this note, I wonder if any niche press has published anything along these lines?  Since the article was written fifteen years ago, I am interested to know if there have been any gains along this end.

Moving on to The Intuitionist, I thought the novel’s structure and scattered choice sentences were highly effective ways to keep the reader turning the pages and also uncovering what was behind the incident with the elevator crash.  The first line of the book tells the reader what the inciting incident is: “It’s a new elevator, freshly pressed to the rails, and it’s not built to fall this fast” (1). The narrator becomes almost protective of Lila Mae and says “She doesn’t know yet” on page nine, and again on page 15.  Whitehead builds up suspense to suggest the magnitude of the elevator accident.

I thought the ending of the novel seemed a bit optimistic, compared to the no-resolution postmodernism style of Crying of Lot 49.  Fulton randomly writes Lila Mae’s name down in his notebook, yet this chance action to a series of events that will result in his notebooks being uncovered, and she will be able to reveal Fulton’s true dream when the time is right.  I did like that the novel ended with the promise of change, and I thought that having the elevator compared to Lila Mae, giving her permission to be human.

I, too, noticed that this book in written in an interesting tense. It’s present tense for all characters in all times unless they are thinking in the present about a past event. Not only is it written in present tense, but it also seems to follow no linear timeline in relating events. Well, that’s not true, Lila Mae’s basic story line is followed mostly chronologically; however, there are still many interruptions from the past (Lila Mae’s college years, Otis’ invention of the elevator, Fulton’s early life).  Because he writes in present tense, Whitehead seems to make all the plotlines converge into one single point in time.

There is a fragmented feel to this narrative not only because of the breaking up of the basic plotline, but also because Whitehead actually communicates through a lot of fragments instead of complete sentences. A bit choppy, but also more like train of thought than more classic narratives.  I wonder if it goes along with the fact that Whitehead does not name the city nor does he seem to give any of the smaller characters significant traits. Is he trying to suggest through his lack of detail and present tense narrative that this could happen anywhere at any time? That although it seems like it only happened in the past (or when this story takes place…60’s??) it is, in fact, still present tense?

This leads me to my second point, which stems from the scene in which Lila Mae is taking her first “Intuitionist” college course. Their discussion over theoretical elevators and the “phantom passenger” seemed to imply that the elevator stands for race relations in the United States. The intuitionists purport that unless someone is waiting for the elevator, or expecting it, it is not really there at all. In other words, race (and therefore prejudice?) is only in our minds. We are deceived by our senses into a false sense of reality—believing that identity lies in appearances. A prime example of this, of course, would be Fulton and the fact that no one realizes they are worshipping the philosophy of a “colored” man. And does it matter what race he is (in our reality or the book’s)? The empiricist in the class, however, believes that “just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there” (102).  I’m not sure if this means that he’s insisting race is inherent OR if this means that just because in today’s society we don’t always see overt racial tensions doesn’t mean it doesn’t still exist in American life.  The elevator itself is often referred to as a coffin leaving earth and heading towards heaven. I’m not sure what this means yet…that the hope for equality is futile? This also brings to mind the “glass ceiling” that minorites (in this case blacks and women) are said to face in the work place. Maybe that’s really obvious and you’ve already figured that out though…

On another note, I really enjoyed/was irritated by Whitehead’s style of writing. He had an interesting (yet sometimes aggravating) way of repeating words and phrases within one sentence. For example, “It has rained too long, the city slept in mercury light for too long” where he repeats “too long” at the end of the sentence (163).  I would be inclined to simply dismiss this; however, he does this quite often. Perhaps the ups and downs of an elevator’s repetitious path? I don’t know if this is for effect or if it’s just his writing style. He also mentions “teeth” a lot. Am still not sure if that is pertinent.

One of the recurring themes that I’ve noticed throughout the three novels we’ve read so far is the idea that these characters are at the center of the story’s “world.” I’m having a difficult time putting this into words, because naturally the main character is the center of every plot sequence… but what I mean is that they are not only the center of the plot, but also of the entire “world” around them. As in the depiction of W.A.S.T.E being this huge, underground thing that practically all of California (and the rest of the country?) was in on. Little Oedipa was running around, attempting to unearth the entire secret society that everyone seemed to know about but her. She was actively molding and shaping something that in a larger sense, was very, very big.

And then Orr being at the center of his “world”-changing phenomenon. He was actively manipulating the entire world’s sense of reality. This is very obvious to see how he was the center of not only the plot, but of the fictional “world.”

Now we have these elevator inspectors that seem to be a very serious and important facet in the city. So much so that the mob and the media are involved (the head of the department’s photograph plastered on city billboards?) Lila Mae is, once again, at the center of something that could potentially alter everyone’s lives with the “black box.” Her actions, her discoveries, her involvement, are all key to the development of the story, which therefore are key to the altering of this huge reality around her.

If you think about it, in each of these stories, the alternate, fictional reality revolved around whatever the main characters were involved in. Be it secret postal systems, reality-altering dreams or some sort of exaggerated significantly important Department of Elevator Inspectors. So then I was thinking about our reading from last week and how we discussed technology and scientific advancements effecting the development of postmodernism. One of the things that such advancements have achieved is giving the average individual universal access. For example, blogging, personal Internet sites, etc. (That annoying Tucker Carlson show on MSNBC comes to mind) One person can now speak to millions when before that was virtually impossible and probably realistically unimaginable. Therefore the similar concept found in all three novels thus far that one person can alter or effect the “world” seems to be yet another aspect of postmodernism.

One of the things we talked about with the Hassan chart was distance versus participation. Unlike having a character/narrator/point-of-view that is merely describing occurrences, perhaps actively involved in the plot but still being told from a distance, in these novels the characters that the novels are primarily written through are right down in the thick of everything. They are more than simple detectives directing a mystery, they have much more significance because the landscape itself is much more important. Everything is exaggerated and the elements of the story itself are deeply involved and significant to every development of the story. And THEN I was thinking of intuition versus empiricism/going on feelings, instinct versus facts and observation, and I noticed the type/mutant comparison in the Hassan chart. The Empiricists being type. They went by the standard, the old fashion way and thus held on to old fashion ideals. Then the Intuitionists changed things, found a new way, modified the old way, and are therefore the mutant. The old versus new theme that ran rampantly through The Intuitionist; the old being racist, unwelcoming and the new being more-so open-minded, inclusive – also being ignored by the old, although not exactly invisible. I think it was more of a conscious effort on the part of the “old” to ignore and make invisible the “new.”

There’s debate among postcolonial theorists and writers about whether to use the colonizer’s language so as to widen the potential audience for their material (this debate is mainly among African writers, as most of them speak a native language as well as the language of the colonizing country).  If one analyzes The Intuitionist from a postcolonial perspective, Whitehead seems to be using the language (or, perhaps more accurately, the dialect) of the colonizer:  bourgeois American English.  He uses an elaborate vocabulary (I found myself consulting a dictionary more for this novel than for the two previous two) as well as a 1950s noir-ish detective style – not a genre especially popular among African Americans.  Furthermore, The Intuitionist presents an alternate universe revolving around the elevator industry; however lofty the metaphor might be, I’m willing to bet it doesn’t exactly resonate with the black youth underclass hooks talks about.  I’m inclined to agree with Jarrod.  The Intuitionist doesn’t exactly complement hooks’ call for a critical voice for underclass black youth.  hooks says, “If radical postmodernist thinking is to have a transformative impact then a critical break with the notion of ‘authority’ as ‘mastery over’ must not simply be a rhetorical device, it must be reflected in habits of being, including styles of writing as well as chosen subject matter.”  However, from what I’ve said before, it doesn’t appear that Whitehead has adopted this “habit of being” hooks calls for.

The pervasive theme of contemporary politics in Whitehead’s The Intuitionist is all the more accentuated while reading Bell Hook’s "Postmodern Blackness" in tandem with the novel. Hooks’ article argues for the validity of postmodern discourse as a transformative device to alter and improve the lives of the "nihilistic" mass, black culture in America, in which all blacks engage in "the intellectual work," such as critical theory and cultural production of arts, literature, music, and so on, to advance a black identity of diversity, and yet, maintain connected to the source, the black community en masse. In other words, black intellectuals or "elitists" need to break from the ideological myth that their work, which include theories, criticism, literary and artistic contributions to the postmodern discourse of the academy, is too difficult for the displaced masses to understand or contribute to effectively. Hooks insists that there needs to be a continuous and dynamic interchange between the African American intellectuals and the body of people they represent in the academy and in mass culture. One should not write about the "exhile and suffering" of his/her race if one is not connected to it, meaning living it as well as knowing it. Hooks is optimistic with the postmodern era insofar as the vocality of knowledge of shared experience and cultural production can constitute a forum for radical resistance against the legacy of colonial stereotypes that black "essentialism" propagates even today. Essentialist theory argues for a fictitious cultural divide between black "Nationalists" and "Assimilationists," an outmoded classification system of the modern era. If African Americans in the intellectual, middle class, and "underclass" are willing to participate in the postmodern discourse with one another, in the academy and in life, black America will forge an identity in the postmodern discourse as the truly "other and different" that can leave its distinguishable legacy on the postmodern fabric of America. I respect her positivism, even though such a theory is difficult to implement in the political sphere of contemporary America. The Two-Party system, or the two-headed one-party system, makes it difficult for such a distinct referendum to maintain its purity since politics consumes all causes to inevitably dillute them for the consumption of mass culture.

Contemporary politics in the postmodern world is a continual theme in The Intuitionist that distinquishes the novel from The Crying of Lot 49 and Leguin’s The Lathe of Heaven. While the novels we read previously seem to sublimate the issue of politics, Whitehead confronts ‘the art of politricking’ head on. Political factions will appropriate anything and anyone to either further their own agendas or dismantle the oppostional faction, without regard, it seems, to the individuals, groups, and the consequences of such dehumanizing tactics. For instance, the two candidates for the Guild Chair, Chancre and Orville Lever, introduce the themes of political or "election year ploys," a willingness to do anything and everything to please their targetted supporters. "Chancre lost among the Old Dogs of the Guild was more than compensated for by the goodwill generated by the raise and the new mother-of-pearl jackknife screwdrivers." Chancre’s actions are not manifestations of his good will and passion for the humanity he governs, but are simply rhetorical tactics he can use to secure his own success, power, and entitlement to authority. He is not rooted in or connected to the Guild members that support him or that he claims to represent. He is detached from them, and the narrator implies through the character, Chuck, that Chancre is an encumbant politician willing to hold onto his "cushy leather chair for dear life" regardless if he’s reelected. Hooks cites this divide between the intellectual/political elite and the masses they represent as problematic, and I believe the politicians that I am forced to nominate and elect neither represent my perspectives nor my values. I will no be lumped into the two-party categories of Democrat or Republican, since I am neither.  

Chancre appropriates Leila Mae for political gain as well. At first he uses her black, female, intutionist cultural identity to bolster his reputation as an even keeled, open minded politician, but he of course ultimately sets her up to fall from the grace of white, male American perception since she is these things. He uses her specific identity initially to support his claim to open mindedness, and then uses them against her when the neoconservative political wind picks up after the elevator crash at the Fanny Brigg’s building occurs. She is the perfect candidate to secure Chancre’s neoconservative base because she is made to look responsible for the Brigg’s elevator collapse. She’s a black woman, dually alienated, and according to the white supremacist notions Hook’s argue’s still dominate the American, postmodern political arena, Leila Mae is all the more incompetent because she is an Intuitionist, an advocate of a new way of thinking, of being, of understanding.

Chancre’s opponent, Lever, "the liberal," "apparently thinks that only Intuitionists are capable of building coalition’sm shaking hands with fundamentally different people." Lever is no less a politician than Chancre, and therefore, no more benevolent. He appropriates Leila Mae by pitting her against her boss and accuser, Chancre. The Democratic Party in the U.S., is supposedly more "liberal" than The Elephant, and it is infamous for taking possession of the myriad of human, social, and civil rights that The Right disregards altogether. However, through this appropriation, the urgency of such causes, such as Hook’s passionate message to the black community to engage in postmodern discourse and ownership of their cultural and artistic production, becomes dilluted under the liberal flag. It becomes ‘just another cause’ that one feels he/she can do little about because there are so many and because there is such disunity and infighting between groups such as "the black liberationists" and "the environmental fanatics." One would hardly see the connection between such divergent "liberal" groups if it weren’t for the word liberal. Any and all of these disconnected, politically charged groups are used by The Left, in many cases, to further its own course of political power without truly addressing and improving the plight of the groups it deems as its "liberal" fledglings. 

"As it is in politics, the only victor in the end was ugly comprimise." Hook’s argues that "the ugly comprimise" blacks face in postmodern society pertains to identity politics. The masternarrative of modern society categorized blacks as either "nationalist" or "assimilationists," a comprimise that glosses over the diversity truly prevalent in the African American community. In the same way, Leila Mae is made to comprimise her identity in the political world. She has to "play the game," put on her game face and a rigid uniform with wing tip shoes that signifies her membership to a group that she shares little common experience with. She studied elevators and so did the rest, but this is no foundation for unity and acceptance, especially since she is of "the voodoo" orientation in the field. She, however, must conform to a standard, a white, male American standard, that isn’t hers, in order to pursue her career. In the starkly Empericist world of white men, she has to comprimise her identity because she is not only alienated by her white counterparts at the Guild, but she is alienated from the black culture in postmodern New York city. She is not connected to the black community, as exemplified in her encounter with Mrs. Roger’s and in the prevailing hostility between herself and Pompey. Leila Mae feels that she is in her own group, and not akin to the black slums of the city or the impoverished, uneducated African Americans emboddied by her father. Hook’s argues that continuity and knowledge between the black classes of shared experience in an alienating white world is a necessity. Moreover, Leila Mae is not accepted by the status quo or the politicians that seek to permanently ostricize her from any real world connections. She is alone as "the other" and "the different" because she is the postmodern African American woman who can not longer be labeled as only this or only that. She is a combination of differences and otherness that can no longer be classified by the archaic modernist system, and is therefore, cannot effectively represented in a transformative way in the political world.

 I must digress and take issue with Bell Hook’s open armed embrace of rap. As an African American woman, a cultural constituent Hooks is a member of and believes to be cut off from postmodern cultural production, I assumed she would be disappointed, if not outraged, by the overt sexism in the majority of mainstream rap. The genre glorifies black men, representatives of the "underclass," who revel in the mistreatment and degredation of their women, a cruel practice, which doubly binds the African American woman to a marginalized status of the lowest order, since she is not only black, but a woman also. Although Hooks declares the legitimacy of rap because it signifies and expresses "the yearning" of the black youth of the "underclass," and therefore, provides empowerment through vocality to defeat the infectious nihilism that blacks face in postmodern society, I do not agree that it communicates the yearnings of equality that African American women desire in American society, Queen Latiffa and a few other choice female/male rappers aside. On the contrary, I believe the mainstream undertone of the music as a whole, in its most derrogatory form, is counterproductive since it directly degrades the race it proportedly advocates by misongynistically denegrating its women.