{"id":544,"date":"2009-03-31T16:49:54","date_gmt":"2009-03-31T21:49:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/?p=544"},"modified":"2009-03-31T16:52:33","modified_gmt":"2009-03-31T21:52:33","slug":"you-havent-been-married-until-youve-been-mass-married","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/?p=544","title":{"rendered":"You haven’t been married, until you’ve been mass-married!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Don Delillo’s Mao II<\/em> begins with Karen and Kim’s “mass-marriage” in the center of Yankee Stadium. The event, written in present tense (perhaps to maintain resonance through the text), questions the commodification of human relationships and the consequence of this process on the individual. As the couples walk together in lines of two, they enter into a “sacramental” assembly line. The repetition of act devalues the individuality of each union. One party seems completely interchangeable with another. In fact, from the grand stands, parents, mothers and fathers of the brides and grooms, strain to identify their own child in the crowds. Even “[t]hey [the bridal parties] feel the same, young people from fifty countries, immunized against the language of self” (Delillo 8). The individual internalizes this commodification\u2014embracing or surrendering to it.\u00a0 Moreover, it seems, in many circumstances, it is the individual that improves on it. Though Karen does not immediately return to Unification Church, she continues to consider herself a commodity: “…Didn’t he [Scott] bring me here for you [Bill]?” (84). Her question demonstrates her lack of agency. She did not act, but instead was acted upon. In her mind, she was “gifted” like a toaster or a Saint Bernard.<\/p>\n

In like fashion, other characters participate in commodification (self-commodification and the commodification of others). Scott seems unable or unwilling to separate Bill from his identity as a writer. He discourages Bill to publish his most recent creation, because it will mar his image or perhaps more accurately Scott’s image of Bill. Scott feeds Bill’s image, even if it is to the determent of Bill himself. Bill is an object that may be manipulated and controlled. As Mark Osteen points out, the bonds of commodification are strong. Resistance may thrust you even deeper into its grasp: “Like the real-life Thomas Pynchon or the fictional Bucky Wunderlick, his very resistance to celebrity has made him one. Gray now realizes that his isolation has allowed others to manufacture an aura for him larger than he will ever be” (Osteen 649). Any action, a publication or a picture, can damage the soft-focus of his writerly-persona, precisely because of its lines and detail. Scott, electing himself brand-manager, recruits Karen to join in his game. Soon the entire household is a willing participant. As Brita states to Karen, \u201c\u2018Go back to Scott and stay with him. You people belong together, all three of you. I think it\u2019s a strange and sad way to live in many respects but who am I to say that something is strange and anyway you desperately need each other. I don\u2019t like thinking of Bill being off alone somewhere\u2019\u201d(Delillo 183). Until this point in the text, the characters abstain from commentary. Though all seem to understand that something is going on, that they are a party to something, they are incapable of confronting it. Perhaps it is the postmodern at work, but Delillo offers an observation of a problem and no hint of a solution. The reader must merely observe the happenings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Don Delillo’s Mao II begins with Karen and Kim’s “mass-marriage” in the center of Yankee Stadium. The event, written in present tense (perhaps to maintain resonance through the text), questions the commodification of human relationships and the consequence of this process on the individual. As the couples walk together in lines of two, they enter … Continue reading You haven’t been married, until you’ve been mass-married!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-11-mao-ii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=544"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":546,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544\/revisions\/546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}