Notes Towards Day 20: Re-Reading and Re-writing Superman

A Beginner's Guide to "No Homo"
and That's Gay: No Homo (via Karina)
Camr'on Speaks about NO HOMO (via eshaw)

Prince, Kiss (via holsn39-->
heterosexual but not masculine)
Jim Carey's Mankini (via kjmason)

Ciara, Like a Boy (via holsn39)

also: request today from NYTimes reporter to comment on
"a piece about gender-neutral dressing and the societal trends
it may reflect, especially among the young"

Re-reading and Re-writing the Script of Superman

Terrible2s: masculinity is a performance. But, like all performances, they are nothing
without an appreciative audience. Are we in some way helping the performance?

Howard: masculinity intersects with – and is inherently entangled with – so many other
cultural identifiers including femininity, maleness, femaleness, sexuality, race, and class....
Discussions revolving around issues of masculinity have strong implications
for each one of these other identifiers.

So, today we are going to  think some more together about masculinity,
a category and identity that is as complicated, inflected, constructed,
co-constructed (and as potentially damaging?) as femininity.

In "The Problem of 'Women' as an Analytic Category,"
Sherry Ortner calls attention to the "big man bias"--
applying the privileges of elites to male actors in general,
most of whom are excluded from leadership and public initiative.
 

We're looking, today, at a "little man," a failed super-hero.

WHAT CAN WE DO WITH THIS?

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM IT?

I. But first: a few events!

• Today, 4-5:50 in the London Room, Thomas:
  Gender and Sexuality TEA
  
  

• Tomorrow (Fri, 11/13), 8:00pm in Founders Great Hall, HC:

  Staceyann Chin, The Other Side Of Paradise:
  Spoken word poet, activist, artist and incredibly talented Staceyann Chin is performing. There will be an amazing opportunity to purchase and havesigned her most recent book, "The Other Side of Paradise" (chargeable to your bookstore account!) There will also be a chance to ask questions at a Q & A session tofollow the show. HOT CIDER, other delicious drinks, and deserts provided. It's gonna be a great night!!! Staceyann Chin is a fulltime artist. She identifies as Caribbean and Black, Asian and lesbian, woman and resident of New York City. She has been an "out poet and political activist" since 1998. From the rousing cheers of the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe to one-woman shows Off- Broadway to poetry workshops in Denmark and London to co-writer and performer in the Tony nominated, Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, Chin credits the long list of "things she has done" to her grandmother's hard-working history and the pain of her mother's absence.
  

• Coursekeeping:
  sign in twice
  

  
  

  On Tuesday, we'll have yet! another! visitor to help us go on thinking about masculinities:
  Felice Picano, who will be on campus to give a talk, @ 4 p.m.  in Carpenter 21, 
  on his memoir,  Art and Sex in Greenwich Village: Gay Literary Life After Stonewall,
  

  followed by a book-signing.

  
  Please look @ that volume, and/or
  Bold Strokes...Writing Outside the Box 
  wikipedia
  The Violet Hour: The Violet Quill and the Making of Gay Culture
  Contemporary Authors: Biography
  
  ...and come to class w/ questions
  (would be great to get 'em up first on the forum--hint, hint!--
  Picano's visit should be especially interesting
  in the context of "Masculinity as Homophobia....")
  
  

• The following two classes we'll be discussing videos.
  There is ONLY ONE COPY EACH of 
  Born into Brothels (83 m.) and Live Nude Girls Unite! (70m.)
  on reserve in Canaday,  so please plan ahead for viewing!

II. Some history of  "masculinity" as a category in Gender Studies,
from Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism (1997):
Some readers may feel that...a book called Feminisms should not even concern itself with "men." The semantic difficulties of even asking this question are illustrative. Does it mean 'What place do male critics have in feminism' or 'What place do men as subjects have in feminism'? or could it mean 'What does feminism have to offer toward coming to a clearer understanding of men?'....  

After Elaine Showalter proposed the idea of gynocriticism (the study of female-authored texts and women-centered issues), work on male-authored texts and male-centered issues almost disappeared from feminist criticism. In the last few years, though, we have seen the beginning of 'gender theory'; an analysis that, working from feminist criticism, takes gender as a, if not the, decisive factor in literary meaning. Since feminist critics have argued convincingly that gender differences are constructed differences, the reasoning goes, shouldn't that mean stereotypical masculinity is as constructed--and as deforming--as stereotypical femininity? The result is a new way so examining texts, as a way of looking at 'masculinity' as a product of patriarchy that is potentially as damaging to those subjected to it as is 'femininity.' 'Gender theory' does not see men as simply perpetrators of sexual oppression, but as themselves victims of it....

Skeptical feminist critics ask whether gender studies are not just a way to re-legitimate traditionally male-dominated literary studies. Proponents argue that it is an expansion of feminist criticism that genuinely recognizes the discursive, constructed nature of patriarchal gender norms, a necessary step if we are ever to realign oppressive gender politics....

[For example, male studies] reveal the the real anxiety behind the surface story of Oedipus, "a vulnerable man caught in the middle of a story that he has indeed helped create but cannot control--caught, as it were, with his pants down, his fallacies exposed, his repressive efforts showed for the ineffectual cover-up they are..."

But: are his fallacies particularly MALE?
Is "maleness" the category that counts here?
Or does using it as an analytic category (as per Ortner) just "mystify"?

[Cf. Chris Ware's "Corrigenoa"-->
LONELY: The permanent state of being for all humans,
despite any efforts to the contrary...can be soothed

or subdued...but cannot be solved.]

Robert Hunt, "Oedipus," Alter Ego

 

(Jimmy Corrigan doll, for sale)

 

A la Oedipus, this is very much a generational story:
key to Jimmy's current account is his
grandfather's abusive father & longed-for, absent mother;
cf. contemporary story about absent father, overpresent mother
(w/ lots of repetition: broken leg, horses, black women;
beginning/ending w/ mom's trysts --> "loves" her=fails w/ all women).

It is also very much a "genre" story.
So one way to start getting @ these questions
might be to think together about "genres"
(and their relation to "genders").

GENS
A clan or sept; a number of families united by the ties of a supposed common origin,
a common name, and common religious rites. Hence employed to
designate any similar aggregation of families.

GENRE
Kind; sort; style.
A particular style or category of works of art; esp. a type of
literary work characterized by a particular form, style, or purpose.

GENDER
Kind, sort, class; also, genus as opposed to species.
the general gender: the common sort (of people).

What genre is Jimmy Corrigan?
Is there any relation--if so, what is it?--
between his genre and his gender?
Between his genre-and-gender,
and the generic predilections and
gender positions of his (presumed) readers?

THIS BOOK WAS NOT INTENDED FOR US
(or was it?)

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS.
Exam. Begin.
1. You are a. male. b. female.
If b, you may stop. Put down our booklet. All others continue.

[if male --> miserable, unhappy, suicidal, avoiding]

Metaphor: A tight fitting suit of metal, generally tin,
which entirely encloses the wearer, both impeding free movement
and preventing emotional expression and/or social contact. [??]

Are men more visual/less readerly? Need it laid out?
(cf. Japan, where ALL like comics?)

WHAT WAS YOUR EXPERIENCE OF READING THIS TEXT?
WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION TO JIMMY?
WHICH ROLE DID YOU ASSUME?

Reading instructions:
not equipped to sustain successful linguistic relation w/ pictographic theater
principles and rules intuitive
entirely novel form of imaginative drama
paramount end of aesthetics--> represent rich experience
comic strip highest achievement! --> from cave paintings
look to whenever stimulation/pageantry/distraction/solace is needed
resonance--> empathetic vs. profiteers from business of life

Another "generic" possibility:
Is this graphic novel an "apology" or an "apologue"?
(Is the genre itself self-deprecating?)
Is it speaking in defense or to teach (offensively)?
Do you think we're supposed to be confused (like Jimmy)?

[Fr. apologie, L. apologia, Gr. defence, a speech in defence, f. away, off + - speaking.]
The pleading off from a charge or imputation, whether expressed, implied, or only conceived as possible;  defence of a person, or vindication of an institution, etc., from accusation or aspersion.

Cf. [a. Fr. apologue, ad. L. apologus, a. Gr. account, story, fable, f. off + speech.]
An allegorical story intended to convey a useful lesson; a moral fable.

My Notes, from Gus Stadler's Fall '04 lecture:

problems w/ discussing straight masculinity:
so pervasively present, orients so much of our understanding of the world
appears not different, so harder to analyze
related to Michael Warner's ideas about crafting the self
emotional range: bleak and bleaker

a few framing issues and concerns:
graphic novels (Maus) boom genre, new category
first written, published as comic book, in installments
addressing conventions of superhero comic book:
what is its relation to this tradition?
"Smartest Kind of Earth" satiric re: heroic rhetoric
what is its relation to superhero tradition?
what is it doing to that conventional form?
(tape of Chris Ware accepting an award:
"you can see I'm not very good @ this...why i should stay home...")
packaging of book: sense of humility, self-deprecation
paper bound apologue, whole book act of apology
(vs. allegory: lesson, moral, fable--
what is the moral of the fable?)
inevitable mess that you make when you try to say "I am"
average guy...who is extraordinary
escapism: death of superhero, own escape

nature of putting on a mask
what is Jimmy looking for? to project self onto?
what is he actually in search of?
something Oedipal going on here?
looking to rearrange relation with women?
search for identity: self reflecting, rarely speaking
very passive: active arrival w/ father
identity: no father figure
what keeps him from embracing his dad?
what are obstacles to realizing identity?
grandfather, "it's too late"
36 years old
fantasies; not going to be realized: too much history
bears the burden of a deeper past
what type of father would tell him who he's slept with?
what makes the medium of comics important?
could be done as a novel, film?

angle that comics allow indication of masculinity?
process differently if you see images instead of reading?
(clauses, qualifiers, deferrals, submissive)
self-deprecating: don't take it seriously
genre itself self-deprecating: ironic tension between form and content
bring gender into discussion: is that a gendered gesture of performance?
association of comic books: expectations: tragic, sad
unmasculated man in hero's spot
hopeless
very confusing: what is happening
disconcerting: how to read, not a logical layout
makes reader feels as lost as Jimmy is
male character is not masculine
categories of comic book characters:
children/animals/goofy/superhero
predetermined play w/ stereotypical roles
forces reader to re-live comics you read, associations
why can't this be masculinity?
geared toward experience?

sets him up to perform gender for us, he fails
is that not masculinity?
not stereotypical muscled guy, highlights ideal
is story being presented as one of masculinity?
being disappointed in who you are? as a man?
first scene important, never returned to
really directed toward emasculating failure?

historical narrative:
great grandfather's presence--that narrative of masculine brutality
shapes our impression of how this is about masculinity
earliest Corrigan in story is still present
every generation delineated by his experience
model of difficulty of father-son relations: paternity
fathers teach sons how to be masculine/man
scene of testing/failure
lot about race in both narratives
plays into sense of his being confined, trapped
effect of discovering another child, of different race?
important to talk about daughter, see if there is a superhero narrative
an orphan/ standard plot of redemption
what is plot trying to make us feel?