The Taming Of The Shrew: A Tragedy

February 18th, 2010

The Taming Of The Shrew: A Tragedy

Tragedy: A narrative that details the downfall of an
idealized or romanticized protagonist.

Comedy: A narrative of an often farcical nature which
details an uplifting conclusion often involving
celebrations such as weddings or coronation.

These concise and minimalist definitions of ‘tragedy’ and ‘comedy’ are often used as a metre stick to measure and define the nature of narratives. In the case of the plays attributed to Shakespeare, pieces like: “Macbeth”, “Hamlet”, and “Romeo and Juliet”, are often referred to as ‘tragedies’, while: “A Midsummer’s Night Dream”, “Much Ado About Nothing” and “The Taming Of The Shrew” are often seen as ‘comedies’. But in examining the structure of “The Taming Of The Shrew”, it becomes clear that though some of the scenes within the play may appear to be outwardly farcical in nature, and though the typical celebration (in this case a wedding) that punctuates most comedies is present, the play in all actuality is a ‘tragedy’ in that the protagonist, Kathrina, begins in a position of high esteem as she is reputed to be both cunning and clever, if not also crass with her tongue, placing her on a par intellectually with her male counterparts, while also maintaining a great deal of personal independence not often granted women of her era, only to be beaten down into submission until her will is broken, detailing the fall of the protagonist and completing the archetype of a typical tragic narrative.

After the play’s Induction, the play’s author wastes no time identifying the “Shrew” of the play’s title. Gremio, a potential suitor, first claims that Kathrina is ‘too rough’, while Hortensio, another potential suitor, suggests Kathrina will entice no suitors unless she becomes of a ‘gentler, milder mould’, but in both instances Kathrina displays an ability to outwit her male counter parts, first but commanding Gremio not to speak down of her in front of his friends and then by suggesting that she might ‘comb [Hortensio’s] noodle with a three-legg’d stool’, and use Hortensio ‘like a fool’, outwitting both men. In the same act, when her father gives Kathrina instruction, Kathrina questions even her father, asking: ‘shall I be appointed hours, as though… I knew not what to take…?’, asserting her independence and making clear that she is capable of making her own decisions. Such was not the extent of Kathrina’s wit though, as upon her first meeting with Petruchio, her would-be husband and eventual torturer, Kathrina volleyed a series of retorts that undermined every flirtatious word Petruchio tried to flatter her with, first by correcting him when he referred to her as Kate, noting that he must be ‘something hard of hearing’ because those that knew her called her ‘Kathrina’. Kathrina would go on to refer to Petruchio as a ‘buzzard’, telling him he crowed ‘like a craven’ and warning him to ‘beware [of her] sting’. In each instant Kathrina illustrates that she will neither bend to the will of men, nor that her wit was one not to be casually challenged.

This sharp-witted heroine is not the portrait of Kathrina that is portrayed at the end of the play, and it is Petruchio who serves as her antagonist, and Petruchio’s villainous intent is made clear almost as soon as he enters the play, first by verbally and physically assaulting the manservant Grumio, threatening his ‘knave’s pate’ and calling him a ‘villain’ repeatedly. Such behaviour is repeated when Petruchio stood before the alter as Gremio recounts that Petruchio ‘swore so loud… the priest let’ the Bible fall, and when the priest picked up the Bible, the ‘mad-brain’d bridegroom took him such a cuff’ that the priest fell down. Petruchio also makes clear (before the courtship of Kathrina) that his travel’s intent is to ‘seek… fortunes’ and hopes to find woman ‘rich enough to be Petruchio’s wife’, claiming that he would care not if the woman were; ‘foul… old… curst and shrewd’, so long as she is wealthy, for Petruchio believes if he marries ‘wealthily, then [he marries] happily’, illustrating that his ideal relationship is based on wealth and not love, an idea that stands in stark contradiction to the typical romantic relationships based on love that typically populated traditional comedies. This morally corrupt pattern of behaviour continues when Petruchio meets Baptista, Kathrina’s father (after his first meeting with Kathrina), as Petruchio informs Baptista that he and Kathrina had gotten along ‘so well together’ that the following ‘Sunday [would be] the wedding day’, though no such agreement was made and not a pleasant word was offer to Petruchio from Kathrina’s side of the conversation. Between his verbally and physically abusive nature, his greed and dishonesty, it is clear that Petruchio is not the archetypical groom of a traditional comedy, but rather an ideal villain for a tragedy.

Kathrina’s father, being so eager to marry off his daughters, agreed that Kathrina was to marry Petruchio, and once the two were married, Kathrina’s down fall began as Petruchio takes up the position of torturer full time. Petruchio, though, began laying the ground work for his torturous brainwashing techniques from the very first moment he meets Kathrina as he gives to her a new name, a common practice that slaver owners engaged in when the obtained new slaves, and also a practice adopted by cults who rename new members. Petruchio immediately refers to Kathrina as “Kate” when he sees her, though he had been told her name was Kathrina, and continues to use this abbreviated form of her name even after she corrects him. Petruchio indulges other behaviour that suggests he sees his wife as slave owners from the era viewed ‘their’ slaves by claiming shortly after the marriage, that he will ‘be master of what’ was his own, and that Kathrina was his own ‘goods’, and compared her to other pieces of property such as a ‘house,… barn,… horse,… ox,…[and] ass’. He follows this by indulging in torture techniques such as starvation, refusing her food by making excuses about the food’s quality, claiming it ‘burnt and dried away’, and refusing to allow Kathrina to eat it despite the fact she noted the ‘meat was well’. Petruchio goes on to assert that he would both starve Kathrina and deprive her of sleep, stating: ‘she must not be full-gorged… eat no meat’ and would make sure ‘she slept not’, and ‘if she chance to nod’ he would ‘rail and brawl’, with the aim of breaking her will and ‘taming a shrew’. These torture techniques are not unlike those adopted by slave owners in an attempt to break a person’s will, and also adopted by various militaries with the aim of breaking a prisoner’s will with the aim of extracting information, completing the portrait of Petruchio as villainous torturer.

In her final monologue, Kathrina makes clear the completion of the protagonist’s fall. The independent figure who was independent, strong and unyielding at the commencement of the play, is a broken, compliant, subservient and seemingly domesticated by the play’s completion, claiming that a woman’s husband is her ‘ lord,…life,… keeper,… head,… [and] sovereign”, illustrating the esteem she now holds for her torturer and suggesting that Kathrina has developed a sort of Elizabethan version of Stockholm Syndrome, even going to far to say that her ‘love, fair looks and true obedience’ are too ‘little payment for so great a debt’ as the debt she now feels she owes her husband, and claims that women are ‘bound to serve, love and obey’, drawing on traditional wedding vows to illustrate the obedience she seems to be suggesting women owe to their husbands. This debilitating humility which Kathrina has been tortured into adopting is further highlighted when she states that women are ‘soft and weak’ and unable to ‘toil and trouble in the world’. The Kathrina who appears in the plays final scene seems like a tragically dramatic departure from the independent woman who was termed a ‘shrew’ by the men around her and asserted her independence, instead submitting to the authority of her oppressor.

Though “The Taming Of The Shrew” seems to, on the surface, follow the formulaic structure of a comedy, when one looks beneath the surface of the play’s structure, and examines the morally corrupt nature of Petruchio, the play’s antagonist, and considers the impact that Petruchio has on the play’s protagonist, it becomes clear that the play’s narrative does not project an upward trajectory, but rather a downward spiral in which the play’s protagonist is striped of all the virtues which defined her at the onset of the play. For those whom the decimation of the feminist virtues it too tragic though, there are some interpretations of Kathrina’s final monologue that offers some hope of redemption for the feminist reader. Kathrina is sure to chastise her fellow women, stating that she is ‘ashamed that women are so simple’, a concept that is actually contrariwise to the sentiments she seems to be encouraging women to adopt and is more in keeping with her demeanour at the onset of the play. Kathrina also states that women should offer their obedience to a man ‘that cares for thee’, which is certainly not the case with her own husband since Petruchio married Kathrina for her dowry and not because he cared for her, and since Petruchio does not truly care for Kathrina, he forfeits the right to be her sovereign under the guidelines which Kathrina lays out. Coupled with this Kathrina also notes that a husband is owed a debt because of the ‘painful labour both by sea and land’ that they bear, and the ‘toil and trouble’ they endure, but none of the men present endure ‘painful labour’ or ‘toil and trouble’ since they are members of the ruling class and the concept of labour would only really apply to the working class. Still, Kathrina’s standing at the play’s conclusion rests in a position that seems to be very much in opposition to her standing at the play’s commencement and whether or not her final speech is meant to be taken literally as a sign of her taming, or a cynical parody of the subservient bride her new groom had aimed to stripe her down to, Kathrina, by the play’s end, remains only as free as a slave who runs to the eastern bow of a westbound vessel.

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Literary Ramblings: Inside The Walls Of Existentialism: A Review Of Richard Kelly’s The Box

November 9th, 2009

Literary Ramblings: Inside The Walls Of Existentialism: A Review Of Richard Kelly’s The Box

Yes, Cameron Diaz has a horribly fake accent, and there are allusions to ambiguous alien powers and plots regarding the future of the human race that seem to serve no purpose (other than to perhaps encourage the audience to draws parallels between these ambiguous beings and the Judaeo-Christian God who wiped out Sodom and Gomorrah and brought a great flood to wipe-out the entire known world). But these minors flaws aside, Richard Kelly’s new film, The Box, is both an entertaining and challenging film that creates perpetual and effective suspense while also presenting interesting presentations of existentialist themes.
James Marsden provides a stable and compelling performance as Arthur Lewis, while Frank Langella supplies the audience with a character that is at once eerie and unsettling while also compassionate, endearing and mystifying as Arlington Steward. And though Diaz throws a bit of a wrench into the ensemble as Norma Lewis with a seemingly unnecessary southern accent that provides no apparent value or pragmatic purpose to the film, she holds up in scenes where the film seems to need her most.
There are unexplored mysteries in the film, dealing specifically with the ambiguous beings, so when one of the “employees” of the ambiguous beings walks past the Lewis’s baby sitter, the suspense built in the scene later seems unnecessary and purposeless when it is later revealed that the babysitter herself is an “employee”. In hindsight there are several scenes that seem to work in the same way, but while watching the scenes in the moment these scenes, with the assistance of Hitchcockian scoring that serves to effectively build mood, create and sustain a heightened sense of suspense that should serve to test the nerves of most audience members.
Where the film is most successful though is in its ability to combine a commercially entertaining suspense/thriller with challenging and engaging post modern themes dealing with existentialism through the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, which they seem to be able to do without making seem like the audience is being bludgeoned with the source material. Sartre himself felt that novels and plays were more effective modes of writing than were essays when it came to communicating themes and ideas, and Kelly seems to be very much aware of this in his writing, choosing to delve into the content of Sartre’s plays as opposed to essays on existentialism. Sartre’s concepts of hell, for example, are prevalent in his play Nuis-clos (often translated as “No Exit” in English) where he defines hell as a place where people are exposed to others for who they really are. It is at this point of the film where Diaz’s character is challenged to expose herself, illustrating Sartre’s belief that themes can often be more effectively articulated through a narrative such as a play or novel, rather than through pragmatic prose.
Other existentialist themes are presented through the film’s narrative. Existentialists, for example, believe that we are offered certain freedoms when choices are presented to us, but that we only employ our freedom when we consider our own personal ethics and how they might be applied to the choice. When we don’t consider how our choice might define our morals, we are refusing our freedom and applying to chance. Such is the case with Arthur and Norma Lewis when they are given the choice to push the button on the box that Sterard delivers to them. The pushing of the button, the Lewis’s are told, will result in the death of one person they do not know while also delivering one million dollars to their family, and though the couple do begin to consider how their personal ethics come into play with this decision, they instead question the nature of the device, challenging its legitimacy, as well as the authority of Steward, eventually allowing their decision to be influenced by the doubtfulness of their situation’s authenticity, rather than their own personal morals, and foregoing their freedom in the matter by making a choice without truly consulting their morals. Later in the film though another choice is presented to them at which time both are sure to fully engage their own personal ethics to reach a decision. The changing attitudes of the couple also speaks to another existential principle in that though our past serves to define us to a degree, we are not defined only by our past and are not tied to it, meaning we are free to change the course of our lives. Though the couple did not invoke their freedom when they were first presented with a choice, that pattern of behaviour would not lock them into that behaviour pattern in the future. There is also the idea of the “absurd”, which in existentialism speaks to moments in which events outside of a person’s control appear randomly in one’s life to change who they are, like when Norma loses the toes on her right foot, or is told that the school where she teaches will no longer offer the children of their faculty free tuition. Likewise the Langella character also undergoes a moment of the “absurd” the serves to redefine him. Such themes are woven throughout the film, for the most part seamlessly, and serve to add a depth to what would have otherwise been an effective but conventional suspense film.
While Diaz’s accent may cause some in the audience to cringe, the cast on the whole is held together by Marsden and Langella and other supporting actors like James Rebhorn and Gillian Jacobs. The scoring is effective in its ability to build and maintain the suspense throughout the film, and while certain aspects of the plot seem unnecessarily extravagances (why, for example, is the film set in 1976 when it could have easily taken place in a contemporary setting?), it remains effective in articulating challenging existential themes while also providing an entertaining suspense thriller to general audiences. The Box may not be as extravagant as Kelly’s last effort, Southland Tales, or as appealing to younger audiences as Donnie Darko, but the film illustrates how Kelly is capable of making a film that is broadly entertaining and still capable of stimulating the mind.

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Literary Ramblings: Reading The Absence

November 6th, 2009

Reading the Absence

In his novel Waterland, Graham Swift suggests that history is a means of forgetting, the implication being that history is filled with narratives that are forgotten in favour of those that are recorded. Our history books are missing more than they have, but these absences can often serve to tell as much and sometimes even more than that which is present and it is this mode of reasoning that should always be carefully applied when we engage with the world around. A history of civil rights for example will be emblazoned with images and narratives of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., while the likes of: Ella Baker, the founder of the Student Non-violent Coordination Committee NCC’s (SNCC) and a consultant with the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC), Constance Curry, Diane Nash and Ruby Doris Smith, are all relegated to the metaphoric index pages of history text books. The impact of these women in the civil rights movement is huge, but their absence from covers of history text books is not the least bit perplexing because speaks to and is evidence of the broader biases of the society that produces these text (the biased in this case being the Patriarchal Tradition of the Western World). Without questioning the absence of women in such historical headlines, one might assume that women simply did not play a prominent, or prevalent, or integral part in the civil rights movement, but nothing could be further from the truth and their absence speaks to broad social issues, not the least of which is the Patriarchal bias that poison traditional historical texts. Also missing from the headlines are the masses who made the movement successful. Countless people were arrested during “freedom rides” and “sit ins”, but their names too are missing, or at least dwell in the shadows of Jessie Jacksons and Malcolm Xs, and it is not because they did not contribute as much, but rather because Western history is as poisoned by a hierarchical bias as it is by a patriarchal one, meaning that the leaders, who are often responding to, and/or acting on behalf of the masses, are often given more than their share of the credit for the success of a particular movement. The civil rights movement is just an example. There are always a multiplicity of factors that have helped to bring any given moment to fruition, but not all are represented (indeed a truly comprehensive narrative on any topic is impossible to achieve). In the news headlines, in history books, in novels, and movies, and music and in art, there are always things that people choose to include and things which they choose (consciously or not) to exclude, and that which is excluded can often speak more than that which is included. Artists use negative space just as film makers keep some things off screen and writers are careful as to what to show their readers. A doctor or detective can diagnose or determine a mystery sometimes by noting what is not present in the context of what is present. That which is excluded is that which is absent, and reading the absent, reading the absence, being aware of it, and questioning it, is integral to understanding the world around us. It makes us aware of our own ignorance and that is the first step to gaining enlightenment as we cannot become enlightened until we are aware of our own ignorance. So the next time you read a book, or a news paper, or watch a movie, or the news, listen for all those things that aren’t said.

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Literary Ramblings: Literature Is A Rorschach Test

November 5th, 2009

Literature Is A Rorschach Test

Dr. Hermann Rorschach, essentially working under the premise that everything is a self-portrait, developed his renowned inkblot test which employs ambiguous designs (ambiguous that is with the exception of Card VI which is not the least bit vague) with the aim of engaging, and evoking a response from the subject in order to then analyse the subject’s perceptions of the seemingly indistinct images. Words on the page are not always as ambiguous as Rorschach’s ink blots are meant to be, and in fact truly great writers carefully craft their writing, placing precise intent into each word selection. Though not as ambiguous as the Rorschach ink blots, literature, being expressly dependant on the reader/author relationship, is not dissimilar to the Rorschach test and very much depends on the reader, who is not entirely unlike the subject of the Rorschach test in that both the subject and the reader are expected to have a response, and that the response will be formed and framed by the reader’s/subject’s perceptions. The reader’s responses are not meant to be analyzed of course, but the responses will still be shaded by the individual’s perceptions and will be a reflection of the reader; a self-portrait of sorts. In 1999, for example, when then mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani saw the art exhibit “Sensation”, and claimed that the piece Holy Virgin Mary (a depiction of the Mother Mary that incorporated elephant dung, a traditional Africa method of artistry) was “anti-Catholic”, his statement spoke less to the actual piece and more to Giuliani’s ignorance of art history and culture’s outside of his own. His response was reactionary, weighed down by faulty assumptions and devoid of critical thinking and contemplation. If Giuliani had been an active participant, an active viewer, if he had stopped to ask questions to fill the void left by his ignorance and correct the misperceptions created by his faulty assumptions, then he could have walked away from the piece with a better understanding. Instead his comments illustrated how ignorant he was on such matters. Much as art requires an active viewer, literature requires an active reader. If the reader is to come away from a piece with a strong understanding of a given work, the reader must go past their initial response, the reactionary corollary and consider the implications suggested by the text, the questions it poses, and any possible alternate readings. This means more than simply examining what is present in the text, as the reader must, for example, pay attention to “the absence”, because what an author chooses to exclude from a given work, what remains absent, is as important as what the author chooses to include. Likewise it is important to read “the negative”, to examine the thesis presented and polarize it, consider its antithesis, or negative, because even when the antithesis is not explicitly defined and outlined, it is ever present and in the case of the unreliable narrator, reading “the absence” and considering “the negative reading”, and reflecting on what is not on the page can offer as much insight into a piece as what is on the page. Some works evoke a reactionary response, and while some writers may create a work with the express intent to invoke a reaction, others have purposes other than simple shock when writing on potentially volatile themes. If the reader/subject is not an active participant and does not consider “the absence” and “the negative reading”, they may fail to engage in the key aspects of a given work and their response may speak to their own reactionary tendencies and limits as a reader, rather than the characteristics of the given work.

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Literary Ramblings: The Floating Island Of The Real (a review of The Lonely Islands “I’m On a Boat”)

October 6th, 2009

Literary Ramblings: The Floating Island Of The Real (a review of The Lonely Islands “I’m On a Boat”)

For those who haven’t seen or heard “I’m On a Boat”, you may want to watch the video before reading the proceeding article. Follow the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7yfISlGLNU

In employing aspects of the pastiche, inter-textual play, and bricolage and by indulging in appropriation on a massive scale, it seems that contemporary hip-hop and rap serve as the epitome of post-modern culture, and while such indulgences can serve to enhance the work, there are aspects of the post-modern that also serve to undermine this genre of music. In his work Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard discusses reality in the context of symbols and what they mean to society, while Michel Foucault had compared society to Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon designs, and it is these two aspects of the post-modern world which are so prevalent in contemporary hip-hop and can often serve to undermine the work in this genre as many hip-hop artists ignorantly claim and aim to be and represent the “real”, while at the same time calling on the audience to acknowledge their success in the context of the social panopticon that their success might be substantiated by this recognition. These are the common flaws that serve to act as a retarding weight on many works within the genre and are also the aspects of hip-hop which The Lonely Island choose to satirize in their single “I’m On a Boat”, a brilliant lampoon of the genre which deconstructs the flawed presentation of the “real” in contemporary hip-hop and also question the need to have one’s own success validated by complete strangers.

Artists like Jay-Z have attacked the popular use of the Auto-Tuner, a studio device used to correct the pitch of vocalists and diluting the actual (or “real”) vocals by improving and perfecting them to obtain synthetic sound, a popular practice in many genres of music and most especially in hip-hop where T-Pain, the guest vocalist on The Lonely Island’s single “I’m On a Boat”, is perhaps the most prominent employer of the Auto-Tuner, and it is no accident that T-Pain and his Auto-Tuner are featured predominantly on this track. Throughout the track there are references to the “real”. Akiva Schaffer, for example, states: “this is real as it gets”, while Andy Samberg notes that the “boat is real”. Such references are clearly examples of inter-textual play that draws on habitual “real” references that are so prevalent in hip-hop/rap music. It is common to hear phrases like “keep it real”, but when rhetoric like this is juxtaposed next to a backing vocal that rests so heavily on the synthesized Auto-Tuner effect, like T-Pain’s vocals are, it clearly calls into question the sincerity of claiming to be “real”, and this is authenticity is further questioned when T-Pain calls on the listener to “believe” him when he asserts that he “fucked a mermaid”, a claim that is a clearly an extraordinary fabrication since it indulges in fantasy by referring to the mermaid and diluting the “realness” and sincerity of those who claim they are real.

This questioning of the “real” is not only present in examining the juxtaposition of the Auto-Tuner alongside Schaffer’s and Samberg’s claims of “realness”, but it is also present in examining the juxtapositions expounded in the lyrical content of the song. Schaffer, for example, after Samberg insists that the boat they are on is real, goes onto to say: “Fuck land, I’m on a boat”, rejecting the “real” land, or earth, for the fabricated, manufactured boat, which is an imitation of the real, and then goes onto say; “Fuck trees, I climb buoys”, again rejecting the “real” (in this instance a tree), for a manufactured reality (the buoy). While claiming to be indulging in a life that is “as real as it gets” (which includes fantastic claims like “riding on a dolphin”), Schaffer’s content actually rejects the real in favour of the synthesized and manufactured, just as T-Pain’s actual vocals are put aside in favour of vocals that have been manipulated by an Auto-Tuner, further illustrating the hypocrisy of such claims to reality.

Andy Samberg’s lyrical content also questions the sincerity of what he presents as “real” through inter-textual play. Samberg, for example, aligns his presence on a boat with the film Titanic by claiming that he is “the king of the world, on a boat like Leo”, referencing Leonardo DiCaprio’s infamous line from the aforementioned film, going on to state that his arms are “spread wide on the starboard bow”, again imitating a popular theme form a movie, suggesting that his actions are not his own sincere response to the experience, but an imitation of a learned response he had seen in a movie, diluting that validity of his claim that the situation is “real”. And as T-Pain made the fantastic claim that he had slept with a mermaid, Samberg to makes a fantastic claim, stating that going to “fly this boat to the moon”, and continuing with his inter-textual play, he backs up this fantastic claim by suggesting that like “Kevin Garnett, anything is possible”, referencing a text outside of the song to back up his implausible suggestion. Like Schaffer’s and T-Pain’s lyrical content, Samberg’s content also articulates that though an artist might appeal to the “real”, it does not authenticate the artists claims.

Though the song clearly indulges in the debate about what is real, dipping into arguments presented by Baudrillard, the song is also very much about the effects of the social panopticon which Foucault speaks to. Foucault suggests that society works as a sort panopticon as each person acts like the witnesses of any potential social improprieties or crimes. But this carries with it certain implications, and just as one’s improprieties aren’t realized without witnesses, so to do one’s successes fail to be realized until they are witnessed by others, and this mentality is very much present in many hip-hop/rap songs and is satirized by The Lonely Island in “I’m On a Boat”. Samberg, for example (with T-Pain repeating him), calls out for people to “take a good hard look”, and asking “Everybody [to] look at” him, suggesting that while he may be experiencing some degree of success by being on a boat, this success cannot be realized unless others see it and acknowledge it. Samberg also order the audience to “Take a picture”, suggesting that he not only requires others to witness his success in order for that success to be realized, but also that he needs visual evidence of it for future reference. To further this social recognition Samberg also is sure to juxtapose his own personal experience with others to validate his success, belittling a member of an imagined audience by noting that while Samberg is himself on a boat, others are at “Kinkos… flipping copies”, demeaning the working class and using this social/class-based juxtaposition to validate his own success. T-Pain also indulges in this during the song, combining it with the fantastic by asking “Poseidon [to] take a look at” him so that his success might be validated by a fantastical, omnipotent being, exaggerating this need to have social witnesses to validate one’s own success. The boat itself is of course a status symbol, playing into Baudrillard’s ideas of how society’s perceptions of reality are tied in with certain symbols, and heightening how certain artists rely on such symbols to help validate their success in a social context. Such calls to be recognized are present not only within the content of the lyrics of contemporary hip-hop and rap, but also in the actions of the artists themselves, artists such as Kanye West who has, on more than one occasion, made a scene when certain organizations have chosen to offer awards to acts which he saw as less deserving.

In watching the video for “I’m On a Boat”, its easy to laugh as the base humour presented and be entertained by the simple ridiculousness of its content, but these are not just ridiculous ideas thrown together, this is a carefully crafted work, and intelligent, sharp and effective satire which draws attention to some of the problematic themes that repeatedly arise in hip-hop and rap that serve to undermine the genre and many individual pieces of work. The song of course is not limited to these two aspects as it also mimics the excessive and gratuitous profanity found in contemporary hip-hop, and it also lampoons the tendency of some artists to belittle imagined and real members of the audience with words like “bitch” and “mother fucker”, and there are aspects of hip-hop and rap which are deserving of a satirical skewering that are not present in this work (such as the prevalent homophobic views projected by many artists, and the propensity to objectify women in hip-hop and rap -a thread common in many forms of popular music), but the aspects of post-modern art which The Lonely Island choose to satirise are very much deserving of critical analysis, and the skewering they present is effective, clever and sharp and should not be simply dismissed as ridiculously funny, but rather be seen as an insightful satire that calls into question how we see the “real”, and how we tend to measure ourselves next to others and rely on social recognition to truly realize any level of success.

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Literary Ramblings: Chan Fhiach Buille (A Review of Alistair MacLeod’s “No Great Mischief”)

September 30th, 2009

Chan Fhiach Buille (A Review of Alistair MacLeod’s “No Great Mischief”)

“No Great Mischief” is the first novel by Canadian writer Alistair MacLeod, and if you believe the jacket of the novel you will indulge in the assertion that MacLeod is “the greatest living Canadian author” and that the novel is “one of the best Canadian novels”, but if you read the novel it may be hard to reach either conclusion on your own unless you have a low opinion of Canadian literature on the whole.

In this novel MacLeod presents a family history, indulging in a genealogical survey of the “Clann Chalum Ruaidh”, a name which if you have a hard time remembering at first, you won’t by the novels end since the author manages to mention the familial clan name at least once on every page of the novel. Though history is a major component of the novel, the narrator is a 20th century man who was raised with his twin sister by his paternal grandparents after his own parents (and one sibling) drowned in a tragic accident, while his older brothers were left to raise themselves upon some family property. The novel spirals out from that tragic event to the future and past, cataloguing the family’s journey through the new world, as well as the life of a 20th century mining family, but as interesting as this may sound on paper, the execution leaves much to be desired.

The novel is epic in its presentation in that it falls upon certain choruses through out the work, not the typical choruses, and not the verses of Gaelic song it indulges in, but rather in certain aspects of its plot, which are repeated again and again. The mention of the dog that swims out onto the sea to remain with its master for example, or the wife that died on sea, or battle that took place on the Scottish Highlands. Indeed, these pieces of the narrative crop up again and again, not unlike the choruses of the traditional epic, so much so that the 283 page novel could have been cut to about a 150 pages should the author chose to have limited the number of times the reader had to be reminded that three different Alexander McDonalds worked in the mines, or that the novel’s narrator is also called “’ille bhig ruaidh”. The employment of a chorus can be effective, but in this particular work it seems more like a tool used by an author who is trying to stretch a short story into a novel and is annoying to at least one reader!

In its presentation of the family, MacLeod’s novel romanticises the narrator’s genealogy, painting a picture of a family where there is not one mention of infidelity, not one mention of abuse, and not one hateful or morally corrupt bone in a single body, outside of the love of drinking which is always presented as a well earned vice that occurs only as a reward for an over burdened and often exploited working class family with a ridiculously storng work ethic. The narrator’s family are all hard working, honest, understanding, supportive and loving and the only real sin that occurs in the novel is during an act of self-defence and it of course is punished, tragically, to the fullest extent of the law (a laughable second-degree murder conviction that would have never gotten more than an involuntary manslaughter conviction, and likely would have been excused altogether considering the fact that the perpetrator was being choked to death during the altercation). This romanticised genealogy makes the family unrelatable and detestably perfect, and also indulges in a sort of dangerous nationalistic/clan mentality that is backed up by unbelievable accounts within the narrative (such as the instance when, five provinces away from their home, a car pulls over to ask a kid, based on the fact of his red-headedness, what his mothers maiden name was, and then is rewarded with a fifty dollar bill that is to be sent home to his mother with a greeting from distant descendants of the familial clan). This sub-culture indulgence in nationalistic tendency doesn’t offer any negatives, outside of a fight that culminates between a members of the “Clann Chalum Ruaidh” and some French miners, which of course is initiated by the French and leaves no implication that the nationalistic tendencies of the “Clann Chalum Ruaidh” is flawed, but rather that nationalistic tendencies of the French are, since they are the ones who initiated the conflict.

These romantic presentations are not limited to the “Clann Chalum Ruaidh”, but are also extended to the migrant workers who populate the fields of south-western Ontario each year, as MacLeod presents, what I’m sure to him, is a sympathetic and romantic portrayal of the working-class, migrant workers. The problem is that any time such sympathetic portrayals are offered, they are often implicitly insulting and suggest a simplicity in a people that makes broad stroke generalizations about them. In MacLeod’s novel these undermining sweeping broad strokes and then exploited further as a means to undermine other classes as MacLeod juxtaposes them next to middle and ruling-class people who go strawberry picking in neighbouring fields for their own amusement, and MacLeod’s picture of these people is one that suggests a great deal of laziness and a lack of the work ethic which he himself praises in his own people through the novel’s narrator. Both the illustration of the migrant workers and middle/ruling classes are simple, romanticised, insulting clichés which reaffirm the moral superiority of the “Clann Chalum Ruaidh” and suggest that such dangerously demeaning generalizations of people are romantic. In the context of the novel such presentations seem almost as way to expunge or exercise some sort of warped, class-conscious guilt that both the novel’s narrator and its author feel for not having chained themselves to the working class destiny of the “Clann Chalum Ruaidh”.

Coupled with these problematic issues is the author’s incorporation of Gaelic throughout the novel. In novels where different cultures co-exist, it is often an effective tool to incorporate foreign languages into the text, but the manner in which MacLeod does it seems ineffective. After each passage that appears in Gaelic, the author goes on to translate, either directly by repeating the passage in English, or indirectly by having a character repeat the phrase in English (as if their own Gaelic speaking audience would need an English translation). In instances where there are multiple languages being employed, incorporating the foreign language without translation challenges the reader and demands that they reach out to “the other” in an attempt to better understand, and places the reader very much in the position of the characters, who like the reader often have no immediate means of translating languages that are foreign to them. MacLeod though makes it too easy for the reader by constantly offering translations and doesn’t allow the reader to feel the powerlessness that can occur in such situations and in turn sanitizes the potentially challenging experience and walks the reader through as if they were children incapable of handling the situation. If an author is going to simply translate a foreign dialect or language immediately after it appears in the work, then there is little reason to even have written in the foreign dialect or language to start with.

As for character, there seems to be a lack of depth there as well. The characters often seem to speak in the same voice to each other, with characters often randomly floating out, what I think is supposed to be profound, assessments regarding life, or informing each other of certain histories which appear so often in the novel that it is unbelievable that any character in the novel would find any of the historical anecdotes to be news pass the age of ten, though that doesn’t stop brothers and sisters who are in their 40’s or 50’s from repeating to each other these same, tired historical accounts again and again, and acting as if they were news each time. Such accounts or meditations on life are always presented with the same tone, the same voice, and are never received as random, or clichéd, or melodramatic, or self-indulgent, though 50 pages into novel that is what they seem very much to be. Many times through out the novel the voices seem almost too academic, at one point the narrator, in speaking to a dialogue between him and his siblings refers to his brothers, not by name, but rather by number, saying: my first brother, and; my second brother, where it would seem normal (and certainly more natural) to refer to them by name. Such academic voices crop up throughout the novel as various characters feel the need to outline the various, aforementioned, histories.

Overall, the novel seems to be an imitation of the works laid out by the likes of Cormac McCarthy, William Faulkner and John Steinbeck. MacLeod paints a picture of the working class, and like the aforementioned America writers, romanticises the life experience of the working class, but unlike these authors, he seems to fail to realize how dangerous and insulting such broad stroked generalizations are. Other authors are careful to paint diverse pictures, not only of groups, but of individuals as well, often suggesting not only a duality, but a multiplicity of peoples and persons that is not present in the tragically, one-dimensional, romanticized occupants of MacLeod’s novel, and even the description of the life of a miner was surprisingly vague and void in small details, a shock considering the fact that MacLeod actually worked as a miner in his youth. Writers like McCarthy, Faulkner and Steinbeck often create vivid pictures of the of various working class people, building up the experience of certain occupations with a what seems like a casual and at the same time comprehensive understanding of the various occupations that appear in their respective works, but MacLeod, who himself worked as a miner and as a fisherman, seems to offer little in the way of such details in his own work. Overall the piece seems like an over romanticised genealogical overview that indulges in a dangerous nationalistic views and generalizations, and while the prose itself is well structured (albeit formulaic), and MacLeod would certainly earn top marks for composition in a high-school class, the content is troublesome and makes the work impossible to enjoy.

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Literary Ramblings: A Handmaid’s Tale; The Feminist 1984?

August 18th, 2009

Literary Ramblings: A Handmaid’s Tale; The Feminist 1984?

Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale has oft been referred to a feminist incarnation of George Orwell’s 1984, and the comparison’s are understandable in that the novel’s jacket touts the work as an “Orwellian” vision and is even structured like 1984 in that the narrative within is accompanied by some fictional “historical notes”, much as Orwell’s novel had an appendix which some have argued is part of the narrative which implies that fictional academics from the future are contextualizing the novel for students who exist in the in the post-Oceanic world. Though Atwood’s work deals with many of the same issues, such as censorship, and the power of the perpetual panopticon, and though the novel sold well and received many accolades, Atwood’s work ultimately remains a cheap imitation of a masterpiece that narrows the scope of the original work and fails to expand upon, improve, or add to the Orwellian tradition.

The impact of 1984 cannot be overstated and as evidence one need only look to how the novel, which speaks potently to the power of language, has helped to expand the English language and has contributed to contemporary diction. It is hard to go a day without coming across some sort of Orwellian vocabulary. Terms like “groupthink” that have become prominent in the business world, “doublethink” which speaks to humanity’s ability to compartmentalize, “Big Brother”, which speaks to the perpetual panopticon and has become and important theme in post-modern art, “thought crime” and “thought police” which speaks to how society’s hegemonic tools seek to perpetuate certain ideas, are all important concepts in today’s world and were brilliantly articulated in Orwell’s work by popular arguments such as “freedoms is the freedom to say two plus two make four”, “war is peace”, “sanity is not statistical”, “freedom is slavery”, “ignorance is strength”, and “who controls the past, controls the future”. Each of these concepts cut straight to key themes, they are blunt, simple, potent and perpetually relevant. By introducing such relatable phrases and words to the vocabulary, Orwell has made his work comparable to the works of John Milton and those titles attributed to William Shakespeare whose impact of the language extends into the centuries after their publication. Atwood’s work is not without its own additions to the English language, but her attempts are not so inspired. Atwood draws on common Latin terms like “memento mori” and “nolite te bastardes carborunorum” and adds unoriginal words like “compucount” or “computalk”. Simply adding the abbreviated form of “computer” in front of a common noun is not going to add anything interesting the language or expand and challenge the way people think. Using common Latin and such simply imagined words makes it sound as if the book was written by an undergraduate who has learned three Latin phrases and was told in the early 80’s that computers would be a big part of the future.

Atwood does add something to Orwell’s original text, and that is the idea that changes in society may be propelled by genetic mutations caused by nuclear fallout. Orwell did write his novel in the post-atomic world, but his work was very much focused on the political and class structures of the world, and his work was very much inspired by Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, so Orwell does not speak to the after effects of a nuclear attack. In Atwood’s work though, the men of the ruling class have become sterile, as have many women, which is what serves to propel the nature of the relationship between the novel’s protagonist, “Offred” and her patriarch. Fertile, working class woman are forced to become surrogate wombs for the sterile, ruling-class women and the property of ruling-class patriarchs. This seems to be the only potentially fresh issue which Atwood brings to the conversation as most of the other themes the novel addresses are simply appropriated from 1984. But even in Orwell’s novel women (and men alike) were at the service of the ruling class, so this idea of your body being put to service for the benefit of the ruling class is not so unique. And even the idea of genetic mutations is not so fresh as authors such as Philip K. Dick and Ray Bradbury (among others)  had written short fiction and novels which explore such issues is a dystopian setting, even if Orwell didn’t. Other themes and situational relationships are appropriated from Orwell’s novel. Reading, for example, is forbidden to women, whilst certain reading material is banned to all, so when Offred discovers that her patriarch has reading material which is supposed to have been expelled form society, he explains that material that is “dangerous in the hands of the multitudes… is safe enough for those whose motives are… Beyond reproach.” This mirrors the relationship between Winston and O’Brien in Orwell’s work, as O’Brien has access to literature and is free to indulge in heretical thought. Another example of these paralleled themes is threaded through Atwood’s interpretation of the omnipotent nature of the panopticon. In her novel there is an atmosphere of the perpetual panopticon, where each person is a potential spy, whether they be fellow handmaids, guards, drivers, or the ruling-class family that has taken ownership of the handmaid. This perpetual panopticon though is even more severe in Orwell’s novel as not only are all the individuals around you potential spies, forcing you to live an isolated life, but there are also cameras and microphones that spy and listen in on everything, which intensifies the climate created by the perpetual panopticon, making it more effective in Orwell’s novel.

What Atwood’s novel does offer is a neat narrative which does lend itself to critical thinking, but its characters are often one dimensional and in turn either overtly sympathetic, or overtly unsympathetic, and though it adds a very feminist nature to the Orwellian tradition, it also serves to narrow the scope of Orwell’s novel. It could be argued that Orwell’s novel is very much a Marxist novel in that it suggest the thing which propels history is the relationship between the classes. This is certainly a modernist interpretation that excludes other social influences on history, such as the divisions between various ethnic groups, the division between men and women, and the impact of nature, but that does not mean that Orwell’s novel does not lend itself to a feminist reading. Orwell’s female protagonist, Julia, is certainly more resourceful that her male counter part, more assertive, and equally oppressed as both she and Winston must give their bodies to the ruling class. In Atwood’s work though, even the working-class men seem to be more privileged than the working class women, and this is a skewed view. There is no doubt that the struggles which men and women go through are very different, but likewise they are not completely unalike, and in Orwell’s novel it is clear that Julia and Winston both feel the oppression of the ruling class and are both exploited. Both of their bodies are used the gain the ends of the ruling class, and should a man and a woman on Orwell’s fictional dystopia seek companionship, the pairing is determined by the state and the offspring will come to serve as the ears and eyes of the state in the home. Atwood’s novel narrows the scope of ruling class oppression to women alone, whilst working-class men, like Nick, the lover she takes on, gets to enjoy women, cigarettes and even drink whilst the only work he need to is wash the car or drive it, while the other men presented in the novel carry guns, and with them authority, or are patriarchs that indulge in multiple affairs, drinking and other forms of debauchery. Highlighting the female experience is important, and feminist literature is an important branch of literary theory, but it is not necessary to downplay and make light of the working-class, male experience to highlight the nature of oppression which women endure.

Overall the novel is a fairly well written piece, but also very much conventional, most especially in the “Historical Notes”, but even during sequences which narrative disjunction is employed, as Offred’s narrative floats between her past experiences and memories in the world before, and her present tense. The “Historical Notes” serve to complicate the novel (though it is within the “Historical Notes” that Atwood references a cassette titled “Twisted Sister: Live At Carnegie Hall”, they only laugh-out-loud moment of the novel). In this part of the narrative it is revealed that the text was transcribed from a series of audio tapes, but since the work is written in present-tense, first-person, and Offred never had an audio recorder, this simply confuses the issue as it would not have been possible for Offred to record the narrative. Inconsistencies like this, coupled with the uninspired additions to the English vocabulary, common Latin phrases, and the trivializing of the male, working-class experience, dilute the value of the work overall. No doubt Offred’s actual husband, and her lover Nick, both felt vulnerable and disempowered and though this need not be the central point of the novel, it could have served as an entry point for male readers to relate to the female protagonist. Instead of expanding the Orwellian tradition, Atwood polarizes its flaws, suggesting that it is the feminist struggle against patriarchy that propels history (where Orwell suggests it is the class struggle). Had Atwood, like Orwell, acknowledged that the working-class is oppressed as a whole and then simply focused on the female experience, the novel would have brought a fresh face to the Orwellian tradition, but instead the novel ends up reading like it was written by an undergrad who has recently been introduced to feminism, read an article about the effect of Agent Orange and other weapons of mass destruction on the human reproductive system, learned a little Latin and was told that adding “comp” in front of random nouns to imply they are computerized will prevent the work from sounding dated in the future. That’s not to say its not worth reading, if you are interested in feminist literature, or are a patriotic Canadian who likes to support Canadian born authors, or even if you just like to read a conventional narrative then A Handmaid’s Tale should serve your purpose, but to call it a feminist version of 1984 is an insult to the Orwellian tradition.

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Literary Ramblings: Feminist Fan Fiction (a Review of Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies)

August 4th, 2009

Literary Ramblings: Feminist Fan Fiction (a Review of Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies)

Literary elitists may snub their noses at fan fiction in general, and if you read any of the trash people often post on various blogs and websites, you might understand why. Such fan fiction though is only a sample of the literature that falls under this category and should not define how academia views fan fiction on a whole. In fact, some of the oldest, most highly syllabized literature fit’s the definition of “fan fiction”. Homer is oft attributed for writing both The Iliad and The Odyssey, but critics have often suggested that the later of the two works was not written by the same person at all, making it the first known example of fan fiction. Virgil followed the pattern and penned a Latin epic of his own, which continued the story of the fall of Troy, calling it The Aeneid. Dante then, several centuries later of course, invited The Aeneid’s author to guide him through The Inferno, placing his classic work within the framework of fan fiction. Shakespeare likewise adopted the story of Anthony and Cleopatra and Milton would earn his spot in the annals of the literary canon with his detailed account of the creation story in Paradise Lost. Even the New Testament could be viewed as a piece of fan fiction when juxtaposed next to the Old Testament. The literary merit of these works is not in question, and though defining them as fan fiction may seem insulting to some, the inverse could be argued: these works complement fan fiction and assert its literary merit. Each of the aforementioned authors were inspired by other works and brought their own ideas to the literature which stirred them. Sometimes fan fiction can serve to bring something new to the original material, much as a musician might do by covering a song, or put a fresh face on dated material. Such is the case with Seth Grahame-Smith’s re-imagining of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, which he has titled: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Austen’s original piece carried with it certain feminist overtones which over the passage of time have been dulled by the progress of the feminist movement. Ideas which were forward thinking in Austen’s time seem, to contemporary readers, more than a little conservative and even backward thinking. In Grahame-Smith’s re-imagining of Austen’s novel the many action sequences, though laughable, heighten the feminist overtones of original work and give the female characters even more authority, independence and personal strength than they were offered in the original piece, performing a facelift of sorts on the original text and bringing the intended feminist themes back to the surface and relighting the feminist intent of the original text.

One of the feminist themes that is brought out by the Grahame-Smith’s zombie narrative within the novel is that of conformity to the patriarchal panopticon. In one sequence the novel’s protagonist, Elizabeth, a woman who is fully trained in the ways of the dark art of death, leaves her home in the company of her sisters, armed only with ankle daggers whilst travelling through zombie infested lands, despite the fact that “muskets and Katana swords were a more effective means of protecting one’s self”, and the only reason Elizabeth and her sisters didn’t carry these weapons was because it was “considered unladylike; and having no saddle in which to conceal them, the three sisters yielded to modesty.” Being very much aware their social settings and how people would judge them, the women in the novel feel compelled to conform rather than be able to properly defend themselves, illustrating how conforming to the patriarchal standards is not only on a par with the dangers presented by zombies, but outweighs this life-threatening issue. Such instances of selecting wardrobe never carried such extreme implications in the original text and it is instances like these where Grahame-Smith uses the freedom offered by the fan fiction medium to draw out and highlight the feminist undertones of the original text that have been muted through time.

Grahame-Smith’s reinterpretation of Austen’s novel also transforms Mr. Bennet’s role in the narrative. In the original novel Mr. Bennet is described as a studious intellectual who scoffs at the giddiness and superficial lifestyle his wife has successfully encouraged three of his five daughters indulge in. In the original novel Mr. Bennet served to undermine and mock the shallow and trivial life often indulged in by the ruling class women of the era. In Grahame-Smith’s version though the father takes a more aggressive role in discouraging his daughters from adopting the patriarchal template which women were expected to fulfill. Rather than simply mocking his daughters, he encourages them to become more independent. When Mrs. Bennet begins daydreaming about marriage for her daughters and asks her husband if he would not consider his daughters, Mr. Bennet states that he “would much prefer their minds be engaged in the deadly arts than clouded with dreams of marriage and fortune”. Rather than see his daughters lose their identity by accepting the chain of patriarchy via marriage, Mr. Bennet wishes to see his daughters become independent by being able to physically defend themselves and occupy themselves with study, rather than romance. Mr. Bennet is opposed to the patriarchal definition of what a woman should be in both novels, but in Austen’s original text he offers only a passive mocking of trivial nature of womanhood in Austen’s era , where Grahame-Smith employs the fan fiction format to create a Mr. Bennet that takes a more active role in discouraging his daughters form indulging in pettiness and instead hopes to bring equality for his daughters, and in turn women, as he helps to train them in the “dark arts”.

The novel is peppered with instances such as these, female characters that are bolder and stronger (Lady Catherine for example has a small armada of ninjas to protect her, not that she needs it being fully trained herself) than those who populated the original novel, and though Grahame-Smith’s prose does not blend in with the original text very well (indeed even sticks out like a burqa in a stripe club at times), it add a funs, fresh and jovial nuance to a text that in its original form may seem ,to young contemporary readers at least, laboriously long and drawn out. Grahame-Smith’s zombies are as spoon full of sugar in Austen’s medicinal literature. Older fans of the original text may see Grahame-Smith’s work as vandalism, but it is much more than that. It is a post-modern work that openly indulges in appropriation of Austen’s text and the likes of George A. Romero to create a work that turns an arguably dull piece of classic literature into a feminist piece that entertains at the base level whilst satisfying on a more academic basis as well.

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Literary Ramblings: Siddhartha Meets Jesus And An Argument For The Separation Of Business And State (a review of Upton Sinclair’s Oil!)

August 3rd, 2009

Literary Ramblings: Siddhartha Meets Jesus And An Argument For The Separation Of Business And State (a review of Upton Sinclair’s Oil!)

Upton Sinclair can’t put a sentence together as beautifully as William Faulkner, nor is he what one would call a post-modern writer, and his frequent habit of offering conversation summaries in place of dialogue would have participants in a creative writing workshop calling for the authors to “show, not tell”, but though Oil! is flawed in many respects, such as its portrayal of capitalism as the seemingly only engine of history’s propulsion, and though it is at times laboriously long, it remains a masterpiece that is as important today as it was when it was first published as it illustrates in great details the self-perpetuating, quid-pro-quo nature of the relationship shared between business and state, redefining America’s political system as a capitalist one, not a democratic one, while encouraging the reader to consider their own culpability in the mendacious capitalist system as the herd behaviour that is often defined by passive neutrality toward, and sheepish participation in the capitalist structure is shown to be as integral in maintaining the capitalist status quo as crooked politicians, brutalizing police forces and mobs, and the self-serving business men who Sinclair makes out to be the ringmasters of this oppressive system.

In trying to take hold of a novel’s core message, it is often important to understand the author and its context. Such an investigation is not needed when trying to dissect Oil! as it is quite clear that the author is a passionate socialist at least, and very likely a communist (ideologically speaking). To say the novel is class conscious would be an understatement. Sinclair has had great success in his career whilst writing on class struggles and indeed earned his reputation with The Jungle, a novel which detailed the life of working class and destitute immigrants who found their dwellings and occupation in the meat packing industry of Chicago. In both novels Sinclair tries to solve the problems of the working class and offers hard handed lectures at the novels’ respective conclusions, and though it is often only a literary habit of an author to tie things up neatly in a pretty little bow, this was not the case with Sinclair as he himself was so passionate about changing the class system that he used funds from his novel sales to front the money for a colony within the boundaries of the United States, which was ultimately burned down. Sinclair’s idealistic proposals, within the context of the novel, seem like exactly that, idealist proposals, and though the reader may scoff or even chuckle at the seeming naivety of the suggestions, the issues that stir Sinclair to formulate such proposals are very clearly lined out within the novel. Within the context of the novel Sinclair even acknowledges the simplicity of these suggestions through other characters who note the reasons why independent colonies, like those the Quakers and Mormons have set up, will ultimately fail or end up as insular societies at best. Even amongst socialists and communists there are differences of opinion that seem as extreme as the differences between capitalist and communist ideals, differences that are not unlike those shared by Martin Lurther King Jr. and Malcolm X, people who were fighting ultimately for the same thing, but saw different ways of achieving this. Sinclair seems to illustrate the differences of ideologies within the left by taking the prototypical Christ figure, popular in American literature, and placing him next to an American interpretation of Siddhartha/Buddha.

It is true that American literature is littered with Christ figures, carpenters, or protagonists with the initials “J.C.”, or even carpenters with the initials “J.C.”, and Oil! does offer a carpenter who is given the name of one of Christ’s disciples (Paul) and even rejects the showmanship of contemporary religion much as Jesus denounced the vanity of the Pharisees, and like Christ, takes on no love interest for the sake of travelling around and preaching about his cause before dying in sacrificial form in his early thirties at the hands of a mob that is not unlike the rabble which cheered the Romans on as they crucified Christ. And since Christ himself was one of the earliest communists in the western world (what is more communist ideal that “the meek shall inherit the earth”?), it seems more than fitting for Sinclair’s Christ figure to adopt communism. The novel’s protagonist, James Arnold “Bunny” Ross Jr. though, is Sinclair’s American manifestation of Siddhartha, the sun of a wealthy oil baron (James A. Ross Sr.) who wanted to provide his son (Bunny) with the life of comfort he never had as a youth. Bunny however is wary of the easy path laid out before him and sees numerous moral dilemmas, and though he never rejects all his wealth as Siddhartha had, he does go out on a pilgrimage of sorts to learn from and sample various social ideologies. His first lessons in life are from his father, and then high school teachers before he goes to college falls under the tutelage socialist professor. From there he is torn, much as Siddhartha was torn between his life of indulgences and his subsequent life of minimalism, Bunny though is torn between his father’s way of life and Paul’s high moral code, just as he is torn between the physical pleasures offer by his love interest Viola “Vee” Tracy, Paul’s sister Ruth, and his socialist, Jewess classmate Rachael. Like Siddhartha did before attaining enlightenment, Bunny ultimately seeks to find a middle path and see socialism as his own middle way while capitalism and communism serve as the two extremes on either end. And like Siddhartha, who would come to be known as Buddha, Bunny sought to eliminate the things which he desired in life that he might not be weighed down by desire, which he learns early is the cause of pain. Even while promoting the socialist school he wishes to open toward the end of the novel, he notes that students of his college will have to forgo luxuries like tobacco and fancy clothes, to which some scoff, claiming that no students will wish to give up such things, and thus illustrating one of the essential problems of the communist and socialist movements; that even the people who promote these ideologies desire to indulge in the comforts offered to the wealthy who benefit from the capitalist structure. Bunny’s sympathies for the working class and seemingly romantic feelings for Ruth also seem to suggest that he is not unlike the protagonist of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Freder, whose love for a working class woman compels him to offer his loyalty to the working class and not the privileged life which his father offers him. Both works were realised around the same time and both offer an idyllic synthesis of the working and ruling class, but neither ultimately offer pragmatic solutions.

One might expect the capitalist side of the novel to be presented by a one-dimensional and demonic depiction, but such isn’t the case. J. A. Ross Sr. for example is not shown as a man of excess, but rather as a hard working pragmatist. After his first wife is convinced to leave him for a man of more profitable financial means, Ross decides that if he is to provide a life free from such loss for his children he must provide them with the means to prevent that loss: money. When he begins to see profits in the oil business, he wishes to expand and at every step he sees government bureaucrats holding out their hands in order to grease the political machine that either allow, or prevent Ross from accomplishing his work. When Ross deals with people he is straight forward and honest, and he respects his workers and the sacrifices they make, so much so that even though he is not allowed to pay them wages higher than other oil companies as he is by the nature of his business forced to join a trust of sorts, he would give his employees different job titles that they might be allowed a higher wage. And when the workers go on strike Ross, at the bequest of Bunny, even allows his workers to remain living in their bunkhouses. Ross even defends their position during the strike, which does not make him any friends among his oil baron peers. Though he is a flawed character that does not indulge in socialist ideologies, he is a fair person who supports his son even though their views are at odds, and though he himself doesn’t agree with the system as it is, he, being a pragmatist, simply learns how the system works and then does what is required for him to succeed. Ross Sr. is a sort of predecessor to the “don’t hate the player, hate the game” argument.

Ross Sr.’s partner in the novel however is not so benevolent. Vernon Roscoe is an oil man and seeks to buy the presidency for his own candidate with the help of Ross and succeeds, earning the rights or naval land rich in oil, and pushing out a small, independent oil company to do so. Roscoe seems to have no moral compass, and since Bunny was unwilling to take over the oil business from his father, a partnership with Roscoe was the only option, and it was an option which turned Ross into the very thing he had been fighting against: the big oil companies that seek to push out the small ones. This is another step in Ross’s pragmatic formula, and though he acts based on self survival, his partner seems somewhat malicious in the matter, and later in the novel is very deceitful in matters of the partnership between he and Ross, leading to the Ross family being robbed of much of their fortune.

Sinclair takes a very modernistic view on matters of social reform and seems to believe that all things are motivated by the struggle between the classes, and though there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of feminist though put into the novel, there can still be interesting feminist readings of the novel. Women play a very big role in Bunny’s life, Vee for example, though she too is missing a moral compass, is very strong willed and assertive in nature. Ruth, Paul’s sister, does often defer to her brother’s line of reasoning, but she holds within her a devotion and loyalty shared by few others in the novel, while Rachel is very much her own thinker and one of the strongest characters in the novel. Each are very different but Sinclair offers a Taoist view on all, suggesting at one point that though women seem “gentle and impressionable…it was the pliability of… water- that comes back the way it was before.” Just as Lao Tzu praised strength of the yielding, but erosive nature of water, Sinclair sees this same quality in the women who surround Bunny and praises patience and persistence as powerful and potent virtues.

Religion is also a topic taken up by Sinclair, though it isn’t a dominant part of the novel, Sinclair takes the time to satirize the extreme nature of evangelicalism and how it appeals to a broad base audience that makes its authority all the more scary. Indeed, there was a time when it was state and church that helped to wash each other’s hands and it seems as though Sinclair brought the church into the novel to illustrate the authority it still has, but also to illustrate the changing nature of capitalism, where instead of church and state, it is business and state who help to wash each other’s hands, suggesting through implication that just as there needed to be a separation of church and state, there also needs to be a separation of business and state.

The core of Sinclair’s novel is the concept that America is not a democratic society so much as a capitalist society, and that this capitalist structure is so powerful and influential, that it goes so far as to dictate foreign affairs. Domestically, Ross Sr. and other oil men make a habit of buying the influence of political figures, and when Ross wishes to get moving on a project he has to appeal to non-government officials who holds much in the way of money and influence, illustrating how the real authority in America is not actually held by those chosen by the people. Though the novel starts off by illustrating such graft at a municipal level, it promotes itself to a national scale where at least one presidency is bought (a political system which is better detailed in Sinclair’s novel The Jungle) in order to steal oil lands away from an independent oil contractor. On an international level the tactics are even more troubling. Paul, who is drafted to fight in World War One is forced to stay on for over a year after the war is over that he might to help quell the communist influences of the Russian revolution and restore a capitalist order to some European countries at the request, not of the government, but of business men. Sinclair’s portrayal of the Russian revolution is a little biased and promotes Soviet Russia as an almost utopian idea (an interpretation that seems understandable flawed in hindsight since at the time of publication neither the Great Purge or Gulag had been a reality in Soviet Russia), but this biased view of Russia balances the portrayal of Soviet Russia in the media at the time, a view that was quite biased in the inverse. The post-war exercises of the American military are described as brutal and oppressive and makes the American capitalist structure seem very much like invading tyrants, but Ross Sr. seems to think its justified as he see the oil lands in Europe as very valuable. Later in the novel, whilst Roscoe is vacationing in Europe to avoid being called to take the stand in a senate hearing regarding political bribes, this international application of American, capitalistic foreign policy is employed as Roscoe uses his time in Europe, not only to escape from the American judicial system, but also to lock up oil lands in Europe.

One of Sinclair’s most compelling arguments is his portrayal of the class struggle being in a constant state of war. The American constitution guarantees freedom of assembly, but this right is taken away several times in the novel when strikers, socialists and communists assemble to discuss their views, most notably at the novels tragic conclusion where even innocent young children suffer great injury in the name of capitalism. Likewise due process of law is ignored for these people, but more potent than that is Sinclair’s commentary on the mortality rate of the working class. Even today oil workers indulge in one of the most dangerous professions, but in Sinclair’s time 75% of workers would be injured or killed whilst working in the oil fields. When workers fighting for better wages, fewer hours see their strikes broken by the law and return to the fields only to die or be injured, the militaristic nature of the struggle becomes clear, and Sinclair is efficient in illustrating the brutal nature of the working class struggle. It is not only in the oil fields that the working class suffered and when Oil! is juxtaposed with Sinclair’s The Jungle, where workers in the meat packing industry of Chicago suffered and even higher mortality rate, it becomes clear that the working class was very much fighting for their lives.
Oil! though is not an irrelevant novel that serves merely as an artefact, its themes remain important today. Sinclair’s novel The Jungle inspired the government to address issue in the meat packing industry and eventually lead important changes in that sector, changes that were all for not as companies like Tyson have pushed the clock back and have replaced the European immigrants of Sinclair’s novel with Mexican immigrants of the contemporary era, making that novel very much relevant today, even a century after its first publication. Likewise Oil! is very much relevant today. Instead of Soviet Russia and countries that have fallen under its influence, America is sending troops to Iraq and seeking to gain control over the land in the Middle East, all in the name for oil. It is still the American military moving in the name of capitalism. As for domestic concerns, the working class may not for the most part work in the same conditions that they once did, and the working class has made important progress, but immigrant workers still suffer through unsafe working conditions for low wages in areas like the fishing industry and others. Coupled with that, working class workers in America still have to fight for things that should be fundamental rights, medical care, prescription coverage and education. Oil! may seem stylistically dated, and plodding, and formal, but it is an important work none the less that resonates still today and illustrates how our actions carry implications that can be applied on an international scale and that even on a minute scale we are culpable for helping to grease the wheels of capitalism. Sinclair was speaking to a nation which widely indulged in Christianity at the time of the book’s publication and asked them to consider how Christian ideals have been corrupted by manipulative evangelicalisms and to see the contrast between capitalism and Christian ideals which are actually more inline with communism, and suggesting that the first step in America’s progression to a system that is fair to all, is to consider the middle way offer by Siddhartha. An approach that, in America at least, remains fresh close to a century later as many Americans prefer to spell “socialism” with four letters as Republican pundit and supporters are fighting tooth and nail to prevent working class people from receiving the same medical care as those in the ruling class, and is doing a good job of convincing the working class that socialism is not in their best interest vie the media, just as the newspapers in Sinclair’s Oil! portrayed socialism as a determent to society at the request of the capitalist businessmen.

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Literary Ramblings: A Capitalist Anthem (a review of Ayn Rand’s Anthem)

August 2nd, 2009

Literary Ramblings: A Capitalist Anthem (a review of Ayn Rand’s Anthem)

In the introduction to Ayn Rand’s Anthem, it is noted that the Macmillan publishing company turned down the manuscript claiming that the author did “not understand socialism”, and upon reading the novella it seems that Rand, whilst also borrowing heavily from other authors to create contradictory characters and claims concerning communism, does indeed fail to understand socialism, as well as the history which supports capitalism, and in turn undermines the suffering of the working class and women and the value of her novella.

Understanding the context of Rand’s life offers some insight to her position on socialism. She was herself the daughter of a middle-class family in Russia before the revolution, and saw her family lose what comforts they had in the name of the working class, eventually abandoning Soviet Russia to move to capitalist America. Guessing how Rand came to develop her opposition against socialism is only about as hard as guessing how she developed the concept for Anthem once one has read Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Throughout the novel Rand works hard to shout down socialism whilst rehashing concepts that had already been explored, and to little if any effect since she offers nothing new to either.

Like Zamyatin’s novel, characters are given numbers as names and refer to themselves in the plural “we”, and also like Zamyatin’s novel, Rand’s novella focuses on a protagonist who discovers his own individuality. This self-realization is also the focus of Huxley’s novel, as is the concept of having children raised by the state and enter their occupation at the bequest of the state, while offering satirical interpretations of Freudian and Fordian ideals. Neither Huxely’s, nor Zamyatin’s novels though seem like one-sided, incomplete, reasonless rants against socialism, but rather they offer thoughtful criticism on Taylorism, Fordisms, industrialization and the political ideals of Russia’s post revolution government. Rand’s novel only serves to recycle the set-up and general plot of the wroks by Huxley and Zamyatin, while neglecting the impact of industrial minds and attacking socialism, communism and collectivism on a whole, rather than the Russian interpretation of such political ideals.

The problems with Rand’s novella aren’t that the material is so blatantly lifted from Huxley and Zamyatin, as George Orwell also borrowed from both novels to create his masterpiece, and one of the best novels of the 20th century: 1984. The problem lays more within the novella’s structure and its characters. In his novella Animal Farm for example, Orwell attacks the Russian interpretation of communism specifically, illustrating how it was corrupted and transformed until it resembled the political structure that existed in Tsarist Russia. Rand though doesn’t only attack Russia’s interpretation of communism, but rather Rand argues against socialism altogether, presenting misleading representations of socialist ideals, displaying inherent contradictions in her own suggestions whilst also painting a disparaging portrayal of women.

The only woman who appears in the novel is the love interest of the novella’s protagonist. The name given to hear by the state is Liberty 5-3000, a name which the protagonist, Equality 7-2521, replaces with “The Golden One”. While it might seem to suggest that women in this society are equally likely to be independent enough to seek self-awareness, the novel only presents one woman who does so, whilst it suggests there are several men at least who are like Equality 7-2521, and after the two lovers escape in the forbidden area, Rand presents a Miltonic portrayal of the male/female relationship. In Milton’s Paradise Lost the angel Michael puts Eve to sleep before speaking to Adam, leaving him to rely God’s message to Eve with a wording which she might understand. Orwell adopts this archetype in 1984 and his protagonist, Winston, shares a book with his love interest, but has to “read it aloud… and explain it” as well. Rand creates a similar structure for relationships between men and women as Equality 7-2521 read many books and then claims to have “called the Golden One… told her what I had read and what I had learned”. The female is subservient to the male and is incapable of learning on her own and therefore needs the male figure to explain things to her. Earlier in the novella, when the Golden One joins Equality 7-2521 in the forbidden forest, she does not insist on her own independence, but rather she tells Equality 7-2521 to do as he pleases with her and responds with “your will be done” when Equality 7-2521 makes a suggestion, further illustrating the female as a subservient being.

This relationship between the Golden One and Equality 7-2521 contains within it the inherent contradiction of Rand’s work. Rand suggests that people should work to serve themselves, but her novella’s heroine lives to serve another, and when Equality 7-2521 find self-realization the first thing he wants to do is bring that gift of self-realization to his comrades, illustrating that living to serve oneself is not fulfilling and that only when you can share with others can one feel fulfilled. The creation of her novella is indeed part of the contradiction. The work does not come alive until it is read, meaning that Rand’s work is empty until others read it, suggesting the purpose of the work it to reach others, to share her own ideas with others, not just herself. If such self-serving views were sincerely held by Rand, she wouldn’t have published a word of her writing. Rand may have been writing her own views, but she was sharing them in the process of writing and therefore creating for her fellow humans, not only for herself.

One of the other contradictions lays within Rand’s evaluation of human nature. Rand seems to suggest that in serving others, human nature will become so corrupt that a socialist state’s government will seek to impose its will on the people in tyrannical fashion. Instead Rand suggests individualism, people who serve themselves, claiming that a socialist order will eventually lead serfdom or plebeian life. The irony is that it was the system she is condoning that birthed slavery, and serfdom. If Rand believes society will become so corrupted by human nature that it will rob every soul of self-awareness, I’m not sure how she could possibly believe that individualism would serve society better on a whole, especially considering the fact that the laissez-faire approach which she condones is historically linked with the serfdom and slavery which she denounces in the novella. And despite the fact that capitalism is the system that is linked with slavery and serfdom, Rand suggests socialism will turn free persons into plebs. It seems one must do a great deal of compartmentalising to hold these opposing beliefs and facts at once, a task any reader with even the slightest ability to reason will not be able to do.

Rand’s misrepresentation of socialism seems to be a heavy weight on the novella as well. In Anthem Rand portrays socialist society as one that discourages education, which is fundamentally opposed to one of the core concepts of socialism. In socialism and communism alike, education is supposed to be brought to all. Even in Soviet Russia, where communist ideals were eventually corrupted so much that the government became communist in name only and fascists in all practicality, education was a key component. Literacy rates went soaring in Russia once the communist regime came into power. Likewise communist Cuba has one of the highest literacy rates in the world (even higher the America). Indeed, socialist countries have offered equal education to all, even through university. The system which Rand encourages is actually the one which discourages education. In a capitalist society those who are born rich, most often stay rich, and their children are the ones who have the time and money to invest in their own education whilst the children of the working-class have neither the time, nor the money to pay for an education.

The flaws in Rand’s work are too plentiful to enjoy the novella. It is not a necessarily poorly written novel, but neither is it particularly well written. Its employment of the term “we” to describe the individual is an interesting tact, but one that was already used by Zamyatin, while the core ideas of the book seem to read as sketches of several other, more complete works. Rand’s personal biases and beliefs weigh heavily on this work, and though it is fair to expect an author to put themselves into their work, when their reasoning is flawed, their understanding of history incomplete and the perceptions regarding certain political ideals are flawed, it exposes the author’s ignorance and takes away from the work, and these are the flaws of Rand’s work that cause it to suffer. After reading this work, it is clear why Rand has such a loyal following among conservative capitalists, but it is no surprise that I have not seen her works so widely syllabized in the more liberally mind academic world.

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