tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57559969976921162212024-03-12T22:44:52.638-07:00Theoretically, LiteraryDesi Bradleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12811905079182711375noreply@blogger.comBlogger27125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5755996997692116221.post-68187906684268602042011-01-31T21:47:00.001-08:002011-01-31T21:47:39.441-08:00lila 4 sepia<div class="sflyProductPreviewWidget" style="width:425px; height:494px;"><div class="sflyProductPreviewWidgetTop" style="height:6px; background-image:url(http://cdn.staticsfly.com/img_/share/preview/msc/widget/top.gif);"></div><div class="sflyProductPreviewWidgetCenter" style="height:482px; padding: 0 6px 0 6px; background-image:url(http://cdn.staticsfly.com/img_/share/preview/msc/widget/bg.gif); background-repeat:repeat-y;"><div class="sflyProductPreviewLogo" style="width: 105px; height: 34px; padding: 14px 0 0 14px;"><img src="http://cdn.staticsfly.com/img_/share/preview/msc/widget/logo.gif"></div><div class="sflyProductPreviewContainer" style="height:350px; text-align:center; padding: 0;"><a href="http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery"><img src="http://images-community.shutterfly.com/prs/v1/8IbOGTNm0aC/8IbOGTNm0aC9a/p/67b0de21b3127d902548/JPEG/1296539239000/0/"></a></div><div class="sflyProductPreviewMessageContainer" style="height:55px; background-color:#f4f4e9; text-align:center; padding: 15px 0 15px 0; line-height: 19px;"><div class="sflyProductPreviewTitle" style="font-family: arial, sans-seris; font-size: 15px; color: #333333; font-weight: bold;"><span>Baby Chic Pink Birth Announcement</span></div><div class="sflyProductPreviewSEOText" style="font-family: arial, sans-seris; font-size: 13px; color: #333333;"><span><a href="http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/birth-announcements" style="color: #6666cc;">Shutterfly</a> has personalized baby announcements.</span></div><div class="sflyProductPreviewViewCollection" style="font-family: arial, sans-seris; font-size: 13px; color: #333333;"><span>View the entire <a href="http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery" style="color: #6666cc;">collection</a> of cards.</span></div><img width="1" height="1" border="0" src="https://os.shutterfly.com/b/ss/sflyshareprod/1/H.15/111?pageName=sharekey&c1=msc&c2=blogger" /></div></div><div class="sflyProductPreviewWidgetBottom" style="height:6px; background-image:url(http://cdn.staticsfly.com/img_/share/preview/msc/widget/bottom.gif);"></div></div>Desi Bradleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12811905079182711375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5755996997692116221.post-44854151745479141922011-01-25T09:22:00.000-08:002011-01-25T09:22:44.527-08:00(early draft) Hostile Tolerance: Gendered Mythologies and the Performance of Identity in Showtime’s United States of Tara<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">Desi Bradley<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">May 7, 2009<o:p></o:p></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;">Hostile Tolerance: Gendered Mythologies and the Performance of Identity <o:p></o:p></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;">in Showtime’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">United States of Tara<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">It is commonplace, even expected, for competing perspectives to dominate contemporary discourse communities across the disciplines in America, as well as in our popular culture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>American society has developed a strong cultural mythology around the notion of inclusivity, tolerance, and acceptance of difference, which roots itself deeply in the American ideals of freedom, acceptance, and the notion of equality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An uneasy tension accompanies this tolerance of difference, however, especially in the areas of religion, race, gender, and disability.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Furthermore, the cultural mythologies that inform how this discourse “plays out” in the consumption of mass culture are largely invisible, and the individuals who consume and replicate the value systems inherent in the artifacts of popular culture subconsciously accomplish an ideological hegemony.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">Sometimes, the cultural mythologies that inform a particular discourse actually work to undermine the merit and importance ostensibly accorded by this very act of entertaining the topic in discourse or representation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other words, sometimes what seems to be the case in a particular representation, on closer inspection, is not the case at all—and the discourse of tolerance may prove to be damaging to the discourse being tolerated in the first place: a phenomenon I term “hostile tolerance”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">Hostile tolerance is particularly notable in representations of gender on contemporary television series, as observed in the work by several pop culture essayists in recent years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In her essay “Signs of Intelligent Life on TV”, for example, columnist Susan Douglas reflects on three popular TV shows: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ER, NYPD Blue,</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chicago Hope</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Douglas identifies herself as among the target audience for these shows because of their ostensibly positive and empowering representations of women, but concludes that, although the surface message seems to empower women, on all three shows women “take a backseat to the boys” and ultimately, their entry into traditionally masculine domains causes damage to heteronormative structures, such as the family and male/female relationships.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftn1" name="_ftnref" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[1]</span></span></a><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">Marisa Connolly mounts a similar argument in her essay “Homosexuality on Television,” about the long-running, popular series <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Will and Grace</i>: a show that, purportedly, represents a divergence from compulsory heteronormativity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As Connolly demonstrates, however, the show systematically “heteronormalizes” Will and Grace’s relationship, undermining its theme of difference in sexual relationships.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this show, then, there is another incidence of the tolerance of discourse—the realistic and normalized representation of non-normative sexuality—which proves hostile to the discourse of homosexuality itself.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftn2" name="_ftnref" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[2]</span></span></a><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">My analysis of Showtime’s new show <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">United States of Tara</i> joins these authors in the discourse about what is, ultimately, a tolerant narrative in popular culture that proves hostile to its apparent discourse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The comic/dramatic series follows the life of Tara, who suffers from DID—dissociative identity disorder—more commonly known as “multiple personalities.” Tara is a professional muralist, wife to Max, and mother to two teens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The show centers on Tara’s various identities, how they interact in the family and the community, and Tara as a patient in treatment for a psychiatric disorder.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">United States of Tara</i> encompasses two theoretical strands that are important to consider: that of mental illness (disability) and that of gender, particularly the cache of gendered characteristics ascribed to maternity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Appealing primarily to an audience of postmodern mothers—mothers who struggle with competing demands from the workplace, the family, and their own personal needs for care and self-actualization—the show entertains the possibility for alternative manifestations of identity in the mother’s body.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">In the end, however, deviation from the heteronormative gender roles is pathologized and censured, metatextually, by Tara’s family and community.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More significantly, deviation is marked and censured by the audience itself through cultural interpretation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ultimately, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">United States of Tara</i> reifies heteronormative values.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Furthermore, by using DID and the behavior of Tara’s alters as a trope to signify the performance of alternatively gendered identity, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">United States of Tara</i> participates in a long tradition in artistic representations of pathologizing, diminishing, and demonizing difference by casting it as mad, grotesque, or monstrous. Consumption of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">United States of Tara</i> by a mass audience signifies two interdependent aspects of the cultural mythology of normativity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It demonstrates the audience’s receptiveness to the normative perspective that is implicit in the program, and it also signifies the audience’s perpetuation of the mythologies that inform the normative perspective.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">Historically, the mentally ill characters on television programs have been ancillary characters who serve the narrative by providing a locus for such tropes as evil, disorder, or unruliness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are cast as violent, dangerous, and unpredictable, providing dramatic tension, and acting as foils to mentally able characters, who, in turn, interact with them toward a resolution that restores a normative status quo: goodness, order, and rule-of-law.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">Another historical function that the representation of madness serves is that of the spectacle, which inspires pity and loathing while at the same time it expresses a cathartic, temporary release from the normative status quo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Several Hollywood films have capitalized on the spectacle of mental illness in a range of genres: from those claiming verisimilitude to those of pure fantasy; this madness often serving the demonizing function at the same time as it fascinates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Entertainment by the spectacle is a longstanding tradition that epitomizes the concept of hostile tolerance as I am using it:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>it represents a temporary relaxation of normative boundaries, a release from convention that alleviates ideological tension implicit in oppression that is, nonetheless, temporary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At carnivale’s end, rule and order are duly restored and the king of the festival is sacrificed to the catharsis.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">A more recent trend in the treatment of mental illness on television is toward normalizing the mentally ill protagonist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">House MD</i>, for example, features a protagonist who suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dr. House’s mental illness is openly acknowledged and treated as part of the subject matter of the show.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is shown to be a productive, quite valuable, member of society—a huge step toward normalizing the condition of mental illness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An HBO series entitled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In Treatment</i>, focuses on individuals <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in the midst of long-term therapy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The range of personalities, their realism, believability, and identifiability all point toward a trend of normalizing the representation of mental illness on television.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Reality shows that center on rehabilitation and therapy highlight its being more commonplace than demonic as well.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">The popularity of mental illness as a theme in contemporary television shows suggests a few things about the target demographic for these shows, i.e. consumers of American mass culture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One thing that is apparent is that the craving for the spectacle – the curiosity, voyeurism, and catharsis – are persistent strands in popular entertainment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Furthermore, it suggests a destigmatization of mental illness in the popular imagination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This destigmatization means that, now, it might be acceptable to identify with a mentally ill character—where historically that would have been a monstrous or grotesque identification. Identifying with the mentally ill suggests the ambiguous relationship the audience has with postmodern reality, its inconsistency and fragmented worldview.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It reflects anxieties about appropriate behavioral roles and identity politics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally, television functions as a medium which both explains cultural phenomenon and acts as a refuge from cultural reality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mental illness provides a device to facilitate a disconnection from cultural reality—which is, in fact, comprised<span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 8.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_msocom_2" id="_anchor_2" language="JavaScript" name="_msoanchor_2">[k2]</a><span style="mso-special-character: comment;"> </span></span></span> of and shored up with cultural <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mythology</i>, not reality.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">United States of Tara</i> is juxtaposed with other contemporary representations of mental illness that seem to normalize psychiatric conditions and invite viewers to identify with those mentally ill characters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The show also collides with the genre of “family comedy” with a female foil in the lead (think <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I Love Lucy</i>,or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Roseanne</i>). Tara is cast as a believable wife, mother, sister, and daughter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As herself, the target audience (recall, postmodern working mothers) can readily identify with Tara.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, as analysis of the treatment of gendered performances exhibited by Tara’s alters will show, Tara’s DID isn’t normalized through the semiotic discourse in the show at all. In fact, quite the opposite occurs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tara’s DID becomes a trope by which a semiotic deconstruction of the fluidity of gender performance takes place, heteronormative mores are reinforced, and deviance is pathologized, which links it more closely to early representations of deviance as monstrous and fearsome than it does to postmodern acceptance.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">The choice of mental illness, and specifically DID, is a complex signifier in terms of contemporary popular culture as well as one of the reasons that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">United States of Tara</i> attracts a broad audience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>DID, as a device, specifically speaks to the notion of postmodern indeterminacy and polysemy<span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 8.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_msocom_3" id="_anchor_3" language="JavaScript" name="_msoanchor_3">[k3]</a><span style="mso-special-character: comment;"> </span></span></span> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(or the possibility for multiple meanings to exist in a single sign, word, action, or person) in the cultural imagination. In “Television as a Deep Metaphor in Deconstruction,” Raymond Gozzi Jr. demonstrates that indeterminacy is and must be a primary motive for media programmers trying to attract a mass audience in today’s popular culture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The more indeterminate the message, he argues, the more likely the broader audience is to interpret that message in a way that is consistent with their multifaceted set of independent values.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Vagueness, in other words, guarantees that more people will find a way to identify with the vaguely conveyed notion, and more people identifying with the message translates, for network programmers, to a larger share of the audience.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftn3" name="_ftnref" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[3]</span></span></a><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">The phenomenon of multiple personalities also appeals to the audience’s anxiety about postmodern identity politics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Competition from oppositional discourses and the illusion of choice—which is in reality dissonant with the larger cultural discourse—cause anxiety in many individuals. The target audience for a show like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">United States of Tara</i> shares much with the audience for a show like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Desperate Housewives</i>—specifically, the shows target working mothers, who feel compelled to navigate a labyrinth of complex and incompatible possibilities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To put it simply: embracing one possibility necessarily precludes another possibility.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, this is dissonant with the American myths of meritocracy and choice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Entertaining the notion of multiple personalities provides a framework for dissociating <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and</i> embracing conflicting possibilities simultaneously.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The logical extension of this play within the context of identity is the appeal that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">United States of Tara</i> has for wish fulfillment. Like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Desperate Housewives</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">United States of Tara</i> explores the complexity of female identity in a postmodern context.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And like the spectacle of carnivale, identifying with Tara enables the audience to play with multiple manifestations of identity and to contest the dominant gender narrative, at least temporarily.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">Tara performs four semiotically constructed identities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>According to Umberto Eco, semiotic theory is implicit in all systems of interpretation, which is salient being that interpretation itself is <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the</i></b> pivotal point on which semiotic analysis rests.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other theories and critical viewpoints, however, provide the ideological lens by which an interpretation is made. The framework for this semiotic analysis of gendered ideology and performative identity in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">United States of Tara</i> rests on the foundational semiotic theory of Samuel Peirce, the body theories of Judith Butler, and Roland Barthes’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mythologies</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">Peirce’s semiotic theory establishes the framework of sign systems, whereby a “signifier”—arbitrary in and of itself—suggests a “signified,” or an endowment of meaning; together, they constitute a complete sign<span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 8.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_msocom_4" id="_anchor_4" language="JavaScript" name="_msoanchor_4">[k4]</a><span style="mso-special-character: comment;"> </span></span></span>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Signs, then, accumulate to construct “sign systems,” which, in turn, compromise meaningful units of knowledge about larger concepts, phenomena, and so on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One very significant aspect of Peircian semiotic theory is the notion that signfication, or the creation of meaning, is simultaneously interpretive, subconscious, and instantaneous. Peirce also gives us the notion that interpretation is accomplished through accessing the larger cultural consciousness, thus resulting in the creation of “knowledge” that is socially agreed upon. While important, this notion alone is problematic insofar as the phenomenon of interpretation is ambiguous and vague.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The “how” and “why” of that instantaneous interpretation remains largely evasive.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftn4" name="_ftnref" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[4]</span></span></a><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">Judith Butler’s “Gender Trouble” intersects with Peircian semiotics by applying the interpretive framework of socially constructed sign systems to the concept of gender.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Butler shows how gender is different than sex and encompasses a moray of social mores, behaviors and values that are constructed as masculine or feminine and enacted through the performance of socially agreed upon signifiers of masculinity and femininity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her work separates the concept of gender—a significant aspect of identity—from the body and deconstructs it, showing how gender itself is a semiotic construction reflecting communally agreed upon social signifiers.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftn5" name="_ftnref" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[5]</span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still, Butler’s theory doesn’t explore in-depth the mechanism by which the interpretation of social signifiers occurs.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">Roland Barthes’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mythologies</i> provides the link that explores the mechanism by which instantaneous, subconscious, and socially agreed upon judgments—in Barthes’s words, the “what-goes-without-saying”—that occurs in the interpretive process.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftn6" name="_ftnref" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[6]</span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These mythologies represent the cultural narrative constructed upon unspoken assumptions that are both the foundation for and the cause of the interpretations they produce.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They both constitute and enable a socially constructed interpretation of signifiers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally, they embody the corpus of signifiers called upon to perform identity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mythology, perception, and performance interact perpetually to produce meaning.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">Tara performs four semiotically constructed identities that explore alternative possibilities that are largely gendered and centered around the feminine ethic of care and the role of the mother. According to the premise of the show, Tara’s other personalities, or alters, compensate for Tara’s perceived deficiencies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Clinically, the development of dissociative personalities is theorized to derive from trauma, particularly violent or sexual trauma.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The audience’s ready identification with a dissociative protagonist implies the correllation of trauma with socially imposed behavioral mores and proscribed roles—specifically those associated with gender and maternity. <span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 8.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_msocom_5" id="_anchor_5" language="JavaScript" name="_msoanchor_5">[k5]</a><span style="mso-special-character: comment;"> </span></span></span><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">The ethic of care itself is a hotly contested issue deriving from second wave feminism in the United States, particularly in Betty Friedan’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Feminine Mystique</i>. However, debate around this issue seems to center on whether or not caring should be a compulsory role for women and whether the choice to embrace a feminine ethic of care can be cast as a feminist position.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The discourse fails to interrogate the notion of a care ethic itself, and whether or not the domestic tasks and chores associated with that ethic should be so firmly entrenched in the notion of femininity and motherhood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The question seems to have been all but abandoned in contemporary feminist discourse—eclipsed, as it were, by the notion of “choice”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A contemporary woman has the power to “opt out” of marriage and maternity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The problem with the assumption that choice offsets the negative implications in a feminine care ethic is that it obscures the very real fact that that choice is not unmarked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Contemporary popular imagination still associates femininity with the ethic of care.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">The choice to opt out of a domestic ethic of care marks a woman as unfeminine in many ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And women who choose to pursue family as well as career are represented in popular culture as undermining traditional gender values <a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftn7" name="_ftnref" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[7]</span></span></a> Furthermore, these women are largely expected to embrace the feminine ethic of care by taking on the domestic and emotional tasks of nurturing the family at the same time that they pursue professional goals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems that accepting women in the public realm isn’t an accommodation of the multiplicity of women’s roles, but rather another hostile tolerance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">The fact that this is still true in the popular imagination is evidenced by the advertisements that support <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">United States of Tara</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Aired on Showtime, Tara is not subject to commercial interruption.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, the website for the show is primarily sponsored by Albertson’s grocery chain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The advertisement run on the site shows a working mom desperate to find a way to replace fast food with home cooked food in the “15 minutes” she has available.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Incredulously, she says to the audience “I’m a nurturing mom! I can make a nurturing meal!” signifying both her anxiety about possibly not being an adequate nurturer, as well as conflating the notion of nourishing with nurturing: all of which are combined as maternal responsibility in the sentimental imagination.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">The protagonist of this show, then, performs four different personalities as a way of contesting the narrow role ascribed to her (host) character as a working mother in postmodern American society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The four <span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 8.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_msocom_6" id="_anchor_6" language="JavaScript" name="_msoanchor_6">[k6]</a><span style="mso-special-character: comment;"> </span></span></span>personalities performed by Tara are semiotically constructed via a complex set of signifiers, including appearance, demeanor, <span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 8.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_msocom_7" id="_anchor_7" language="JavaScript" name="_msoanchor_7">[k7]</a><span style="mso-special-character: comment;"> </span></span></span>and history.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">Tara, as herself, represents the target audience: a contemporary working mother, struggling to navigate the complex labyrinth of possibilities and obligations to herself, her family, and her profession.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And she is portrayed as failing miserably at it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her husband manages the household and the family.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her son does the cooking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her sister stands in as surrogate mother.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her parents even try to take custody of her children.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftn8" name="_ftnref" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[8]</span></span></a> However, Tara doesn’t get a lot of “air time” as herself, and is eclipsed by her alters, signifying also the eclipse of the mother’s identity into her compulsory ethic of care. In keeping with this erasure, Tara’s appearance is nondescript.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She wears little makeup, and casual, plain clothing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most significantly, she has a fragmented access to her own history, presence, and desire.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">It is not surprising that as a working mother, Tara’s host identity is positioned in opposition to her dominant alter: Alice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Alice is the quintessential vintage housewife circa 1950.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She embodies the semiotic construction of the feminine ethic of care.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She wears vintage dresses, and is always impeccably made-up and fully accessorized.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She is prim and conservative, eager to please and dependable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She subverts her own identity to accommodate masculinity—even cleaning the house in high heels. She is also in command in the domestic realm: attending parent-teacher conferences,<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftn9" name="_ftnref" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[9]</span></span></a> baking for the school bake sale,<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftn10" name="_ftnref" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[10]</span></span></a> and educating Tara’s daughter in the proper performance of femininity.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftn11" name="_ftnref" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[11]</span></span></a> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although Alice is unpopular with the children, the amount of agency she exerts suggests that the overall ideology of the show supports Alice’s character<span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 8.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_msocom_8" id="_anchor_8" language="JavaScript" name="_msoanchor_8">[k8]</a><span style="mso-special-character: comment;"> </span></span></span>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, she is the only alter who is openly embraced by the husband on the show.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftn12" name="_ftnref" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[12]</span></span></a> Alice manifests the greatest agency of all of Tara’s personalities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She is “in charge” of the alters, and to a certain degree, Tara’s access to these aspects of herself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And while it may be true that many TV shows will afford a great deal of agency to unpopular characters, or those who provide ideological counterpoints, those shows will typically also “punish” those characters with judgment or comeuppance. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, at the end of Season 1 at least, Alice sits above reprieve.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">Tara’s other two alters, Buck and T, overtly challenge gender norms. Aaron Devor’s 1989 essay “Gender Role Behaviors and Attitudes” elaborates on the performance of masculinity in popular culture emphasizing that “ideal maleness must remain untainted by female pollutants”.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftn13" name="_ftnref" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[13]</span></span></a> Tara’s male alter, Buck, most explicitly accomplishes this with his blatant refusal of any and all signifiers of femininity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Buck’s identity is an appropriated identity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He gets his clothing from Max’s closet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He has borrowed his history from a mélange of war movies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His body language is large and intrusive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He embodies violence, crudeness, and ignorance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is irreverent, loud, judgmental, and self-serving.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Buck rejects the maternal ethic in the extreme: not only does he disclaim the two teenagers as his offspring, he openly rejects them as individuals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">However, recall that, as DID is understood, Buck must embody advantages for Tara that compensate for her perceived deficiencies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, he enacts a masculine version of caring when he fights her daughter’s abusive boyfriend,<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftn14" name="_ftnref" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[14]</span></span></a> or when he serves as a sort of gatekeeper between Tara and her new therapist,<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftn15" name="_ftnref" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[15]</span></span></a> or when he teaches the kids how to bowl,<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftn16" name="_ftnref" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[16]</span></span></a> or drive.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftn17" name="_ftnref" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[17]</span></span></a> Women in the audience are attracted to Buck because he allows them to entertain the notion of being able to embody these attributes that are, perhaps, attractive about performing masculinity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One might even argue that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">United States of Tara</i>, through the use of DID as a trope, is trying to signify the notion that women should be able to perform these attributes without compromising their status as women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, the fact remains that the notion “status as women” roughly correlates with the term “femininity”—an identity that Buck strictly refuses to perform.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Buck also represents a negative parody of the butch lesbian—a semiotic signifier that goes uninterrogated on the show.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the main, Buck is largely an embarrassment to Tara.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">T represents another “embarrassment,” although it is not initially clear how her identity violates the heteronormative ethic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>T is a 15-year-old girl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She is bold, loud, and intentionally shocking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She dresses in revealing, even trampy, clothes, wears bright, bold makeup, and wild hairstyles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>T enacts Tara’s taboo impulses toward sexuality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On premise, T provides the locus for Tara’s shame over some obscure and unremembered sexual trauma/rape.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Semiotically, T suggests that her sort of bold and uninhibited sexuality is inappropriate in the maternal body. This is reinforced by the fact that Tara has asked Max not to have sex with her while she is T. The suggestion in the show is that having sex with the alters is cheating, but semiotically it also signifies something about whether sex with these various alternative personalities is appropriate or not in the sentimental imagination.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">Furthermore, T also rejects her maternal role and is often at cross-purposes with Tara’s teens. T’s relationship with the kids is cast as something of a sibling rivalry, like when she borrows Kate’s clothes without asking.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftn18" name="_ftnref" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[18]</span></span></a> As a signifier of wish fulfillment, T attracts women in the audience by enjoying her sexuality, and flaunting it in such an overt way. Working mothers can be vicariously liberated from the fully developed care ethic and vicariously experience her carefree and expressive identity. It is partly spectacle as well, as her behavior is simultaneously titillating and embarrassing. However, the existence of T reflects on the ethic of maternal care in a very significant way which undermines her representation of carefree, youthful joy.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">T has a complete lack of empathy: for her family, for her community, for Tara, even. This is most apparent when she gets caught making out with Marshall’s boyfriend.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftn19" name="_ftnref" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[19]</span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>T is stuck at a developmental stage short of empathy, and is therefore unwilling and/or inappropriate to the task of domestic and emotional nurturing. The notion of T’s rejection of the role of motherhood <span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 8.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a class="msocomanchor" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_msocom_9" id="_anchor_9" language="JavaScript" name="_msoanchor_9">[k9]</a><span style="mso-special-character: comment;"> </span></span></span>gets lost in the spectacle of T’s behavior, though, and so another complex signifier goes unnoticed and uninterrogated in the narrative of the series.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">So, Tara’s four identities enact four permutations on the feminine ethic of care implicit in gendered mythologies in contemporary American popular culture. The host personality is conceived of as “broken” by some sort of trauma. Each alter presents an alternative response to trauma, but each alternative is quietly undermined by the overall narrative of the series. This censorship occurs textually and metatextually:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>within the fictional community and echoed by the audience. Buck is censored for his inappropriate masculinity. T is censored for her inappropriate sexuality. Alice is censored for her lack of verisimilitude. And Tara is censored the most for her lack of identity, for the imperfections and deficiencies that manifest themselves in her need for alters to act on her behalf. As a protagonist, Tara evokes pity—there is an emphasis on finding a cause, and a cure. However, Tara is portrayed as unsuccessful in both domestic and professional roles. The semiotic message is that perhaps it’s too much to have both. As the show is in its first season, it will be noteworthy to see how they continue with this implication. It is certain to say that the feminine/maternal care ethic is valued in the show, albeit there is clearly tension as to how it should be embodied.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">The social sanctions implied in the semiotic construction and response to all four identities undermine any liberal feminist imperative in wish fulfillment enacted by watching Tara. Simultaneously, the show allows for play within the treatment of gendered norms and their underlying mythology. Viewers get a vicarious trial run at performing alternative manifestations of identity. Still, since the inherent judgment in socially sanctioning Tara’s alters both reveals and reifies heteronormative value systems, the show demonstrates a strong case of how tolerance of an idea in discourse, such as the performative potential in gendered identities, can be hostile to the actual subversive discourse.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">In closing, I chose this series for analysis because I am a fan of the show, and had an early insight into the notion of wish fulfillment as an explanation for its popular appeal. I fancied myself as liberated by watching a show that normalized mental illness and valued an alternative embodiment of motherhood. I somehow expected that the evidence would support how smart and witty the interrogation of gender roles was played in the series. I expected to prove <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">United States of Tara</i> to be a subversive text in the discourse on mental illness, motherhood, and the feminine ethic of care. In sum, I expected to corroborate my current ideas in the research. I did not mean to violate my own intellectual stance.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">However, the argument shows that while appearing as subversive commentary, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">United States of Tara</i> in fact reifies the heteronormative care ethic. It doesn’t interrogate mental illness as a logical response to normativity. It pathologizes deviance from the norm. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It doesn’t deconstruct the feminine/maternal ethic of care, and doesn’t make evident the need to redistribute the burden of bodily and emotional care in the family. And still, I like the show. Why?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And why do so many others?<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">I posit that this is because the concessions that we make in accepting the show mirror the choices that we make when we accept and carry out the feminine care ethic in our daily lives. This is contrary to what feminist theory tells us is currently the case. It is dissonant with the notion of “choice” as an empowerment for working women who are still burdened with the myth of feminine mystique and motherhood. It is probably different from the life narrative you would get were you to ask the average fan of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">United States of Tara</i>. Nonetheless, it represents a pervasive mythology that is represented in the most current of popular culture artifacts.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">As fans of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">United States of Tara</i> we have a chance to acknowledge and experience our cognitive dissonance. We vicariously act out on our impulses to do or to be something other than what we are perceived to be. We witness the spectacle of Tara’s multiplicity and the fear and loathing that it elicits. We are treated to a catharsis through this vicarious experience. All this, and then the show quietly restores the status quo, thereby reinforcing the decisions we are already making in our daily lives. I had thought the show a subversive text that would undermine the persistent gender inequities in the American sentimental imagination. But that would be too aggressive to attract a mass audience. Rather than undermining the choices we make to perpetuate inequity, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">United States of Tara</i> reinforces our choices, and thus the status quo. And, of course, it also ensures that its viewers will be back again next week.<o:p></o:p></div><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br clear="ALL" style="page-break-before: always;" /> </span> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: center; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Bibliography<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Bergman, Mats. "Representationism and Presentationism." <i>Transactions of the Charles S. 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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Eco, Umberto. "The Theory of Signs and the Role of the Reader." <i>The Bulletin of the Midwest Modern Language Association</i> 14, no. 1 (1981): 35-45. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; mso-prop-change: "Desi Bradley" 20100129T0944; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Gozzi, Raymond. "Television of a Deep Metaphor in Deconstruction." <i>ETC</i>, Summer (2001): 211-12. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; mso-prop-change: "Desi Bradley" 20100129T0944; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Kaplan, Rachel. "Dissociative Identity Disorder." Serendip. http://www.serendip.brynmawr.edu (accessed April 21, 2009). <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; mso-prop-change: "Desi Bradley" 20100129T0944; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Magada-Ward, Mary. "Transformative Criticism, Virtual Meaning, and Community: Peirce on Signs and Experience." <i>Journal of Speculative Philosophy</i> 22, no. 2 (2008): 127-35. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; mso-prop-change: "Desi Bradley" 20100129T0944; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Maron, Dina F. "TV's Split Personality." <i>Newsweek</i>, January 26, 2009. http://www.newsweek.com (accessed April 25, 2009). <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; mso-prop-change: "Desi Bradley" 20100129T0944; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Nicki, Andrea. "The Abused Mind: Feminist Theory, Psychiatric Disability, and Trauma." <i>Hypatia</i> 16, no. 4 (2001): 80-103. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; mso-prop-change: "Desi Bradley" 20100129T0944; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Roland, Barthes. <i>Mythologies</i>. New York: Hill and Wang, 1972. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; mso-prop-change: "Desi Bradley" 20100129T0944; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Shapiro, Michael. "Is an Icon Iconic?" <i>Language</i> 84, no. 4 (2008): 815-19. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; mso-prop-change: "Desi Bradley" 20100129T0944; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Weber, Eric T. "Proper Names and Persons: Peirce's Semiotic Consideration of Proper Names." <i>Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society</i> 44, no. 2 (2008): 346-62.</span><o:p></o:p></div><div style="mso-element: footnote-list;"><br clear="all" /> <hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" /> <div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;"> <div class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftnref" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-28T10:17"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[1]</span></ins></span></span></a><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-28T10:17"> </ins></span><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-28T10:20">Douglas, <span style="font-style: normal !msorm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-prop-change: "Desi Bradley" 20100129T0923;">Signs of Intelligent Life</span></i></span>, 308.</ins></span></div></div><div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;"> <div class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftnref" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-28T10:21"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[2]</span></ins></span></span></a><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-28T10:21"> Connolly, <span style="font-style: normal !msorm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-prop-change: "Desi Bradley" 20100129T0923;">Homosexuality on Television</span></i></span>, </ins></span><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-28T10:22">325.</ins></span></div></div><div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;"> <div class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftnref" name="_ftn3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T08:18"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[3]</span></ins></span></span></a><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T08:18"> </ins></span><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T08:19">Gozzi, <span style="font-style: normal !msorm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-prop-change: "Desi Bradley" 20100129T0922;">Television as a Deep Metaphor</span></i></span>, </ins></span><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T08:20">211</ins></span></div></div><div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;"> <div class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftnref" name="_ftn4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T08:22"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[4]</span></ins></span></span></a><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T08:22"> </ins></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:21">Bergman, <span style="font-style: normal !msorm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-prop-change: "Desi Bradley" 20100129T0922;">Representationism and Presentationism</span></i></span></ins></span></span></div></div><div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;"> <div class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftnref" name="_ftn5" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:24"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[5]</span></ins></span></span></a><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:24"> Butler, <span style="font-style: normal !msorm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-prop-change: "Desi Bradley" 20100129T0924;">Gen</span></i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">d<span style="font-style: normal !msorm;"><span style="mso-prop-change: "Desi Bradley" 20100129T0924;">er Trouble</span></span></i></ins></span></div></div><div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;"> <div class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftnref" name="_ftn6" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:25"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[6]</span></ins></span></span></a><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:25"> Barthes, <span style="font-style: normal !msorm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-prop-change: "Desi Bradley" 20100129T0925;">Mythologies</span></i></span>, 11</ins></span></div></div><div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;"> <div class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftnref" name="_ftn7" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:26"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[7]</span></ins></span></span></a><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:26"> </ins></span><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:27">Douglas, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Signs of Intelligent Life on TV</i></ins></span></div></div><div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;"> <div class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftnref" name="_ftn8" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:29"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[8]</span></ins></span></span></a><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:29"> <span style="font-style: normal !msorm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-prop-change: "Desi Bradley" 20100129T0929;">United States of Tara</span></i></span>, Season 1, Episode 6</ins></span></div></div><div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;"> <div class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftnref" name="_ftn9" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:30"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[9]</span></ins></span></span></a><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:30"> <span style="font-style: normal !msorm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-prop-change: "Desi Bradley" 20100129T0930;">Ibid</span></i></span>, Season 1, Episode 3</ins></span></div></div><div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;"> <div class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftnref" name="_ftn10" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:31"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[10]</span></ins></span></span></a><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:31"> <span style="font-style: normal !msorm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-prop-change: "Desi Bradley" 20100129T0931;">Ibid</span></i></span>, Season 1, Episode 2</ins></span></div></div><div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;"> <div class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftnref" name="_ftn11" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:32"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[11]</span></ins></span></span></a><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:32"> <span style="font-style: normal !msorm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-prop-change: "Desi Bradley" 20100129T0932;">Ibid</span></i></span>, Season 1, Episodes 2, 4, 7</ins></span></div></div><div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;"> <div class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftnref" name="_ftn12" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:32"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[12]</span></ins></span></span></a><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:32"> <span style="font-style: normal !msorm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-prop-change: "Desi Bradley" 20100129T0932;">Ibid</span></i></span>, Season 1, Episode 8</ins></span></div></div><div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;"> <div class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftnref" name="_ftn13" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:33"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[13]</span></ins></span></span></a><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:33"> Devor, <span style="font-style: normal !msorm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-prop-change: "Desi Bradley" 20100129T0934;">Gender Role Behaviors</span></i></span>, 570</ins></span></div></div><div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;"> <div class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftnref" name="_ftn14" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:35"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[14]</span></ins></span></span></a><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:35"> <span style="font-style: normal !msorm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-prop-change: "Desi Bradley" 20100129T0935;">United States of Tara</span></i></span>, Season 1, Episode 1</ins></span></div></div><div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;"> <div class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftnref" name="_ftn15" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:36"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[15]</span></ins></span></span></a><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:36"> <span style="font-style: normal !msorm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-prop-change: "Desi Bradley" 20100129T0936;">Ibid</span></i></span>, Season 1, Episode 11</ins></span></div></div><div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;"> <div class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftnref" name="_ftn16" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:36"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[16]</span></ins></span></span></a><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:36"> <span style="font-style: normal !msorm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-prop-change: "Desi Bradley" 20100129T0936;">Ibid,</span></i></span> Season 1, Episode 10, 12</ins></span></div></div><div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;"> <div class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftnref" name="_ftn17" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:37"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[17]</span></ins></span></span></a><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:37"> <span style="font-style: normal !msorm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-prop-change: "Desi Bradley" 20100129T0937;">Ibid</span></i></span>, Season 1, Episode 9</ins></span></div></div><div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;"> <div class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftnref" name="_ftn18" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:39"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[18]</span></ins></span></span></a><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:39"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-style: normal !msorm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-prop-change: "Desi Bradley" 20100129T0939;">United States of Tara</span></i></span>, Season 1, Episode 1</ins></span></div></div><div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;"> <div class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftnref" name="_ftn19" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;">[19]</span></span></a><span style="font-style: normal !msorm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-prop-change: "Desi Bradley" 20100129T0940;"><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:40">United States of Tara</ins></span></span></i></span><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:40">, Season 1, Episode 10.</ins></span> This episode is<span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:40"> also</ins></span> a complex signifier in terms of Marshall’s homosexuality—a tangential but relevant gender signifier in this text as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Buck’s reaction and T’s reaction<span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:40"> to Marshall’s homosexuality</ins></span> undermine Tara’s.</div></div></div><div style="mso-element: comment-list;"><div style="mso-element: comment;"><div class="msocomtxt" id="_com_9" language="JavaScript"> </div></div></div><!--EndFragment-->Desi Bradleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12811905079182711375noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5755996997692116221.post-43945391619660818972010-12-14T15:51:00.000-08:002010-12-14T15:51:17.781-08:00holiday card drafts: from shutterfly.comwhich do y'all think we should order?<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Desi Bradley</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Professor Steven Wexler</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">English 638</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">May 17, 2010</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">To Tickle or To Skewer? or</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Poking Fun versus Driving Home the Point:</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Merits of Humor as a Didactic Strategy</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><br />
</span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">The inspiration for this work derives from the now-hackneyed Horatian maxim that literature should strive to “delight and instruct”.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Noting that Upton Sinclair’s intended didactic subject in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">The Jungle</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">—namely the perils of capitalism versus the merits of socialism—failed to garner the sort of class-consciousness that Sinclair perhaps hoped to elicit, this work begs the question of whether the tone of the novel had something to do with the diversion in response.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">To wit: </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">if Sinclair's efforts with </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">The Jungle</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> fell on deaf ears, maybe it was because the novel was so graphic and horrifying. Maybe, as a collective, the American public simply resists casting itself as responsible in any way, for the exploitation of an entire class of working immigrants. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">As a tangent, it's also possible that the didactic lessons on Socialism were too indirect for the mass public to see its own role, as consumers, in perpetuating the cycle of capital's exploitation of labor. In other words, Joe the Plumber doesn't really see himself as having a role at all in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">The Jungle</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">.</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">This being the case, however, this work focuses on the role of Sinclair's tone in the novel—which, of course, begs the question of whether or not a different tone might be more effective. A lighter tone, perhaps. Maybe even a humorous one? One might conjecture that to shed light on the issues of wage slavery in a humorous tone it might be necessary to be somewhat opaque as opposed to outright didacticism.</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">In line with this thinking, then, this work examines Tom Robbins’ </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> through a Marxist lens. Robbins’s novel falls under the rubric of popular culture, with potential to reach a mass public. It's certainly written in a playful tone, but not without complex theoretical discourse. And the notion of work—cheating at work, lack of work, the need to work (or not,) compensation for work, and satisfaction with work, or lack thereof—plays a huge role in the theme of the narrative.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">In their book </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Tom Robbins: a Critical Companion</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">, the only published criticism of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">, Catherine Hoyser and Lorena Stookey recognize that it “seems appropriate to consider </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Frog Pajamas’</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> vision of the contemporary working world in the light of Marx’s insights,” (154) and indeed, they do pay lip service to such a reading with a cursory overview of the topics I explore in detail with this paper.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">These include the diminishing power and numbers of the American middle class, the widening gap between the super-rich and the poor, the value of work and workers’ alienation from the products of their labor, and workers’ (dis)satisfaction with labor itself.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Working with a substantial body of foundational political criticism, including Marx, Gramsci, and Althusser, while integrating these political ideas with contemporary research into the effect of humor on communication, comprehension, emotion and learning, this work joins in an ongoing conversation, and contributes to the discourse surrounding the intersection of these two ideas.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">The theoretical conversation that links humor with political critique extends back to the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, and his analysis of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Rabelais and His World</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">, in which Bakhtin explicates Rabelais’s use of scatological humor as a device to explore sociopolitical topics inherent in the ritual of carnivale.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">However, theoretical work addressing the use of humor as a didactic strategy in literature is thin, and two of the major contributions to the conversation in this paper are not journal articles or book chapters, but doctoral dissertations.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Furthermore, those dissertations have a gap of almost 30 years between them. In 1976</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">, Helen Marie</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Whall-Seligman completed her doctoral dissertation exploring the use of humor as a didactic device in Tudor drama, and it wasn</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">’</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">t until 2003 that Sandra Eileen Van Pelt published her dissertation, which examines the use of scatological humor in Juvenalian satirists Taylor and Swift.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Van Pelt</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">’</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">s work is more closely aligned with Bakhtin</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">’</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">s analysis and also this analysis of Tom Robbins</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">’</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> work.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">However, the academy has largely ignored a vast corpus of satirical work, particularly that produced in the postmodern epoch.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">The work done so far in this area both opens a space and points to the need for further research into the intersection of humor with political didacticism in literature.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Louis Althusser’s </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatuses</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> provides one of the most significant foundational premises for an argument supporting the use of humor as a strategic device to communicate a subversive message to its reading public.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Building on the notion of political hegemony as put forth in Antonio Gramsci’s manifesto, Althusser’s discussion of hegemony begins to illustrate its recursive, almost tautological quality.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">To illustrate, Althusser explains that men’s interpretations of their conditions “take literally the thesis which they presuppose, and on which they depend, i.e. that what is reflected in the imaginary representation of the world in an ideology is the conditions of the existence of men, i.e. their real world” (694).</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">In other words, what Althusser is describing is the invisibility of a naturalized ideology, which is instituted at maintained, according to Althusser, by the state apparatuses such as school, churches, and government.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Ideologies are so instilled and maintained that the citizen who is educated—or “indoctrinated,” as Althusser would say—within that ideology is unaware of its ideological quality and, rather, takes the ideology for granted as “the way things are”.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">For Gramsci and Althusser the discourse surrounding hegemony and ideologies are firmly entrenched in Karl Marx’s capitalist critique, wherein they are necessary to reconcile the alienated labor pool with the conditions of their existence (Althusser 695).</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">The notion of political hegemony and the ideological state apparatuses collides with the notion of humor as a dissident strategy where humor theory asserts that one of the most prominent forms of humor and humor response occurs when the joke violates a social norm, prohibition, or taboo.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Recognition of the transgression, combined with an appreciation or affinity for the worldview that transgresses whatever social norm or taboo that is violated, produces the humor response, that the humor response—or appreciation of the joke—provides a bridge that enables for the serious entertainment of subversive ideas. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Two studies in the field of humor theory lend credence and support to the thesis that humor serves as such a bridge.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Christophe Harbsmeier’s exploration of Chinese ancient texts, "Confucius Ridens: Humor in The Analects" argues that Confucius utilized often self-deprecating humor as a political strategy for diffusing hostilities, and obscuring his own uncertainties.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">In 2002, Ronald A. Berk’s "Does Humor in Course Tests Reduce Anxiety and Improve Performance?" suggests that the experience of humor is likely to reduce anxiety and enable students to reduce focus on themselves and appropriate behavior.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Humor itself is enjoyable or cathartic in the sense that it permits the participant to transgress or violate social taboo under the rubric of a sense of “fun” or “falseness” much like the ritual of carnivale as elaborated by Mikhail Bakhtin, and, as I suggested earlier, Bakhtin’s work with Rabelais’s novels is foundational in this respect.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">“Laughter,” for Bakhtin, is “linked with the bodily lower stratum…[it] degrades and materializes”.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">However, degradation as Bakhtin employs the term should not be misconstrued as a diminutizing or dismissive term.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Degradation, in Bakhtin’s analysis means “coming down to earth, the contact with earth…in order to bring forth something more and better” (688).</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">In the case of Rabelais’s work, this means laughter that is concerned with base bodily functions—with defecation, sex, and birth.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">For Robbins, in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Frog Pajamas</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">, this degradation through humor also locates itself in base bodily functions such as urination, defication, sex, and rectal cancer. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Following in the tradition of scatological humor Robbins connects the rubric of elimination with that of procreation—in fact one of the earliest sexual innuendos made in the novel is the suggestion that when the main character urinates she will be reminded of her new love-interest, as they have both eaten asparagus and will therefore have matching urinary odor. Furthermore, Robbins infuses this scatological romp with a dose of class-consciousness by conflating the reproductive functions of the lower body with the rhetoric of capitol.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Gwen doesn’t long to bear children, Robbins writes, but rather longs to “swell with a pregnancy of moola” (83).</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">In the world of Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas, late monolopoly American capitalism takes center stage.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Althusser’s state apparatuses are seen as operating in full force, indoctrinating the culture with an ideology that privileges the work ethic in and of itself as its own end.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Value is measured in dollars. Even religion is being supplanted by capital: which is not to say that “faith” is supplanted.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Faith, rather, is diverted—for many.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Gwen herself has displaced faith from religion into the commodities market, as have many of her colleagues.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">After the market crashes in the novel’s opening pages, Gwen reflects that “the market’s been chugging along on faith alone…and [when the market crashed] that faith was badly strained” (42).</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Significantly, not everyone has displaced their faith into financial markets—but that is a significant source of tension in the novel.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Those who still exercise a religious faith (Belford Dunn, for example) serve as comic dupes in the novel.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">And those who signify wisdom or transcendence place their faith in an entirely different, mystical and mysterious sphere.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Larry Diamond, who serves as the voice of the Fool, signifying enlightenment, states the conflation of faith with finance quite simply when he asks, sardonically, “did you really expect that a culture that believes the Second Coming is right around the corner could have the long-range vision or long-term will to sustain a superpower economy?” (122).</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Clearly, Larry Diamond does not.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">What’s more, it is apparent that, to Larry Diamond, the wherewithal to sustain a superpower economy is neither here nor there—it’s a diversion from what is truly important.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">The important players in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Frog Pajamas</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> include the novel’s protagonist, Gwendolyn Mati—a struggling commodities broker, Belford Dunn—her boyfriend, Q-Jo Huffington—Gwen’s best friend and the local mystic/tarot reader, Larry Diamond—a new love interest, guru, and former commodities broker, the “Rich Boys,”—a gang of independently wealthy hoodlems, the growing class of Seattleite homeless/destitute, and Dr. Yamaguchi—who seems to have discovered a cure for colon cancer and is giving it away for free. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Each character represents a different ideology within the matrix of late capitalism, and also a different status with regard to the alienation of labor. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Gwen has a less-than-middle-class background: her father a bongo-drummer with a penchant for hallucinogenic drugs, her mother a poet and suicide in the fashion of her idol, Sylvia Plath.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">She suffers anxiety over her Filipina heritage, her second-rate university degree, her tenuous middle class status, her mediocre job performance, etc. etc.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">She is characterized mainly by way of her narcissism and ambition.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Gwen’s boyfriend and best friend each serve as a sort of foil to Gwen’s ambition.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Belford exemplifies the sort of arbitrary quality that is associated with financial success in the contemporary climate of late monopoly capitalism.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">That he has earned his substantial nest egg as a real estate agent by virtue of naïve, boyish charm and serendipitous connections is an irony not lost on readers fresh out of the 2009 collapse of the American real estate bubble.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Gwen suffers extreme envy of Belford, whom she perceives as having achieved the American Dream “without ever dreaming it” (35).</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">And while she claims no attraction to Belford, and consistently reveals his foolishness, naiveté, and simple-mindedness, she has been dating him for 3 years at the novel’s opening, and frequently considers settling on a marriage of convenience for the financial security he provides. Although Belford is a foil to Gwen’s ambition, he is treated as a dupe in the novel—often missing the fact the he is the butt of the joke, and firmly entrenched in a born-again Christian ideology that illustrates Althusser’s concept of indoctrination by way of the state apparatus.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Q-Jo Huffington, on the other hand, serves as a foil representing an enlightened point of view.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Q-Jo is the only main character in Frog Pajamas who is not alienated from the form and product of her labor.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">In fact, Q-Jo is firmly grounded in her work, reaping emotional and spiritual rewards as well as a modest stipend for her tarot readings and for serving as a one woman audience for lonely citizen’s vacation memorabilia.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Q-Jo has insight into Gwen’s character that (apparently) exceeds her own, as afforded by the unique second person narration Robbin’s uses.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">She serves as a spirital guide and emotional ground for Gwen. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Larry Diamond, as alluded to already, serves as the voice of enlightenment of this narrative.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">A former super-star as a commodities broker, Diamond is alienated from the worker of the brokerage and disillusioned with the (vast amounts) of money it earned him.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">In Diamond’s own words “no matter how sweet the scores, they never added up to anything.”</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Aware that his point is ambiguous, Larry sighs, “I suppose you don’t [know what I mean]” (162).</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">The way Larry Diamond sees things, the possibility that the stock market may not recover from the crash is a good thing, the end of the “Big Lie”.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">So far, Robbins commentary seems fairly obvious and straightforward—greed is bad, religion a bit foolish but harmlessly so, and the real happiness is found by engaging with one’s work in a spiritually rewarding way, free from greed.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">And once seen in this light, the rest of the narrative does fall into place in a similarly straightforward way.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Perhaps this is the reason that Hoyser and Stookey devote a mere 2 pages of their 160-page volume to a Marxist reading of</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> Frog Pajamas</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">However, the message is not completely uncomplicated.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">For example, Larry Diamond is the one character suffering from fatal colon cancer.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">And, contrary to what one might expect, given Robbins’s mystic agenda, Diamond doesn’t embrace the end of his life and the promise of the hereafter.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Clearly, enlightenment doesn’t solve everything.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Furthermore, what is more interesting about the didactic message in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Frog Pajamas</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> isn’t so much the message itself, but the method of delivery.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">In his essay </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">"Political Satire and Hegemony: A Case of </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">“</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Passive Revolution</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">”</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> during Mussolini</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">’</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">s Ascendance to Power 1919-1925" Efharis Mascha examines the critical role that humor played in the establishment of what he refers to as a counter-hegemony during Mussolini</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">’</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">s rise to power.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">According to Mascha, the subtle uses of satire increase inversely with the rise of censorship.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">What Mascha illustrates is the efficacy of humor as opposed to explicit didacticism in communicating a counter-hegemonic message.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Mascha is careful to distinguish between </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">“</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">anti-hegemony</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">”</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> and </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">“</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">counter-hegemony</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">”—</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">an important part given that all teaching (or indoctrination, according to Althusser) is inherently ideologically driven.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">A counter-hegemony, however, is driven by socially prohibited or taboo ideology.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Humor provides a critical device that enables transmission and response to the counter-hegemonic message.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">This essay argues that Tom Robbins</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">’</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Frog Pajamas,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> taken in opposition to Upton Sinclair</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">’</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">s </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">The Jungle</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">, suggests strong support for the thesis adapted from the foundational work of Mikail Bakhtin, and advanced by Mascha, Seligman, and Van Pelt, that humor provides a platform for dissenting discourse, alternative ideologies, and counter-hegemonies.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><u><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Works Cited</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Robbins, Tom. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">“</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">”</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> Bantam: New York.1994. Print.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Hoyser, Catherine E., and Lorena L. Stookey. "Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas." </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Tom Robbins: a Critical Companion</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">. Westport: Greenwood, 1997. 139-56. Print.</span></span><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Political Criticism:</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Althusser, Louis. "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses." </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Literary Theory: an Anthology</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Second ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub. 2004. 693-702. Print. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Gramsci, Antonio. "Hegemony." </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Literary Theory: an Anthology</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Second ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2004. 673-74. Print. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Marx, Karl. "Labor and Capital." </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Literary Theory: an Anthology</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Second ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2004. 659-64. Print. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><u><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Humor Theory:</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Berk, Ronald A. "Does Humor in Course Tests Reduce Anxiety and Improve Performance?" </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">College Teaching</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> 48.4 (2000): 151-58. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">JStor</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">. Web. 7 Apr. 2010. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Harbsmeier, Christophe. "Confucius Ridens: Humor in The Analects." </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> 50.1 (1990): 131-61. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">JStor</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">. Web. 17 Apr. 2010. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><u><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Political and/or Didacticism and Humor Theory Combined:</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Mascha, Efharis. "Political Satire and Hegemony: A Case of </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">“</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Passive Revolution</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">”</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> during Mussolini</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">’</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">s Ascendance to Power 1919-1925." </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Humor: International Journal of Humor Research</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> 21.1 (2008): 61-98. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Academic Search Elite</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">. Web. 14 Apr. 2010. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Bakhtin, Mikhail. "Rabelais and His World." </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Literary Theory: an Anthology</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Second ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub. 2004. 686-92. Print. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Van Pelt, Sandra Eileen Body. "Excremental Recycling in Selected Writings of Edward Taylor and Jonathan Swift: A Structuralist Study in Scatological Humor and Didactic Accommodation." Diss. University of Mississippi, 2003. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Digital Dissertations and Theses</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"> (2003). </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">ProQuest</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">. Web. 23 Apr. 2010. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Whall-Seligman, Helen Marie. "To Instruct and Delight: Didactic Method in Five Tudor Dramas." Diss. Yale University, 1976. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">Digital Dissertations and Theses</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">ProQuest</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;">. Web. 23 Apr. 2010. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><br />
</div>Desi Bradleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12811905079182711375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5755996997692116221.post-38786781885986569212010-05-17T14:57:00.001-07:002014-01-08T12:38:46.924-08:00Merits of Humor as a Didactic Strategy<p><!--StartFragment--> <br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Desi Bradley<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Professor Steven Wexler<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman";">English 638<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman";">April 26, 2010<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman";">To Tickle or To Skewer? or<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Poking Fun versus Driving Home the Point:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Merits of Humor as a Didactic Strategy<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman";">The inspiration for this work derives from the now-hackneyed Horatian maxim that literature should strive to “delight and instruct”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Noting that Upton Sinclair’s intended didactic subject in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Jungle</em>—namely the perils of capitalism versus the merits of socialism—failed to garner the sort of class-consciousness that Sinclair perhaps hoped to elicit, this work begs the question of whether the tone of the novel had something to do with the diversion in response.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To wit: </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">if Sinclair's efforts with <em>The Jungle</em> fell on deaf ears, maybe it was because the novel was so graphic and horrifying. Maybe, as a collective, the American public simply resists casting itself as responsible in any way, for the exploitation of an entire class of working immigrants. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">As a tangent, it's also possible that the didactic lessons on Socialism were too indirect for the mass public to see its own role, as consumers, in perpetuating the cycle of capital's exploitation of labor. In other words, Joe the Plumber doesn't really see himself as having a role at all in <em>The Jungle</em>.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">This being the case, however, this work focuses on the role of Sinclair's tone in the novel—which, of course, begs the question of whether or not a different tone might be more effective. A lighter tone, perhaps. Maybe even a humorous one? One might conjecture that to shed light on the issues of wage slavery in a humorous tone it might be necessary to be somewhat opaque as opposed to outright didacticism.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">In line with this thinking, then, this work examines Tom Robbins’ <em>Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas</em> through a Marxist lens. Robbins’s novel falls under the rubric of popular culture, with potential to reach a mass public. It's certainly written in a playful tone, but not without complex theoretical discourse. And the notion of work—cheating at work, lack of work, the need to work (or not,) compensation for work, and satisfaction with work, or lack thereof—plays a huge role in the theme of the narrative.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman";">In their book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tom Robbins: a Critical Companion</em>, the only published criticism of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas</em>, Catherine Hoyser and Lorena Stookey recognize that it “seems appropriate to consider <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frog Pajamas’</em> vision of the contemporary working world in the light of Marx’s insights,” (154) and indeed, they do pay lip service to such a reading with a cursory overview of the topics I explore in detail with this paper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These include the diminishing power and numbers of the American middle class, the widening gap between the super-rich and the poor, the value of work and workers’ alienation from the products of their labor, and workers’ (dis)satisfaction with labor itself.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Working with a substantial body of foundational political criticism, including Marx, Gramsci, and Althusser, while integrating these political ideas with contemporary research into the effect of humor on communication, comprehension, emotion and learning, this work joins in an ongoing conversation, and contributes to the discourse surrounding the intersection of these two ideas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The theoretical conversation that links humor with political critique extends back to the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, and his analysis of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rabelais and His World</em>, in which Bakhtin explicates Rabelais’s use of scatological humor as a device to explore sociopolitical topics inherent in the ritual of carnivale.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, theoretical work addressing the use of humor as a didactic strategy in literature is thin, and two of the major contributions to the conversation in this paper are not journal articles or book chapters, but doctoral dissertations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Furthermore, those dissertations have a gap of almost 30 years between them. In 1976</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">, Helen Marie</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Whall-Seligman completed her doctoral dissertation exploring the use of humor as a didactic device in Tudor drama, and it wasn</span><span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">t until 2003 that Sandra Eileen Van Pelt published her dissertation, which examines the use of scatological humor in Juvenalian satirists Taylor and Swift.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Van Pelt</span><span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">s work is more closely aligned with Bakhtin</span><span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">s analysis and also this analysis of Tom Robbins</span><span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, the academy has largely ignored a vast corpus of satirical work, particularly that produced in the postmodern epoch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman";">The work done so far in this area both opens a space and points to the need for further research into the intersection of humor with political didacticism in literature.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Louis Althusser’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatuses</em> provides one of the most significant foundational premises for an argument supporting the use of humor as a strategic device to communicate a subversive message to its reading public.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Building on the notion of political hegemony as put forth in Antonio Gramsci’s manifesto, Althusser’s discussion of hegemony begins to illustrate its recursive, almost tautological quality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To illustrate, Althusser explains that men’s interpretations of their conditions “take literally the thesis which they presuppose, and on which they depend, i.e. that what is reflected in the imaginary representation of the world in an ideology is the conditions of the existence of men, i.e. their real world” (694).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other words, what Althusser is describing is the invisibility of a naturalized ideology, which is instituted at maintained, according to Althusser, by the state apparatuses such as school, churches, and government.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ideologies are so instilled and maintained that the citizen who is educated—or “indoctrinated,” as Althusser would say—within that ideology is unaware of its ideological quality and, rather, takes the ideology for granted as “the way things are”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For Gramsci and Althusser the discourse surrounding hegemony and ideologies are firmly entrenched in Karl Marx’s capitalist critique, wherein they are necessary to reconcile the alienated labor pool with the conditions of their existence (Althusser 695).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman";">The notion of political hegemony and the ideological state apparatuses collides with the notion of humor as a dissident strategy where humor theory asserts that one of the most prominent forms of humor and humor response occurs when the joke violates a social norm, prohibition, or taboo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Recognition of the transgression, combined with an appreciation or affinity for the worldview that transgresses whatever social norm or taboo that is violated, produces the humor response, that the humor response—or appreciation of the joke—provides a bridge that enables for the serious entertainment of subversive ideas. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Two studies in the field of humor theory lend credence and support to the thesis that humor serves as such a bridge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Christophe Harbsmeier’s exploration of Chinese ancient texts, "Confucius Ridens: Humor in The Analects" argues that Confucius utilized often self-deprecating humor as a political strategy for diffusing hostilities, and obscuring his own uncertainties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 2002, Ronald A. Berk’s "Does Humor in Course Tests Reduce Anxiety and Improve Performance?" suggests that the experience of humor is likely to reduce anxiety and enable students to reduce focus on themselves and appropriate behavior.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Humor itself is enjoyable or cathartic in the sense that it permits the participant to transgress or violate social taboo under the rubric of a sense of “fun” or “falseness” much like the ritual of carnivale as elaborated by Mikhail Bakhtin, and, as I suggested earlier, Bakhtin’s work with Rabelais’s novels is foundational in this respect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Laughter,” for Bakhtin, is “linked with the bodily lower stratum…[it] degrades and materializes”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, degradation as Bakhtin employs the term should not be misconstrued as a diminutizing or dismissive term.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Degradation, in Bakhtin’s analysis means “coming down to earth, the contact with earth…in order to bring forth something more and better” (688).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the case of Rabelais’s work, this means laughter that is concerned with base bodily functions—with defecation, sex, and birth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For Robbins, in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frog Pajamas</em>, this degradation through humor also locates itself in base bodily functions such as urination, defication, sex, and rectal cancer. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Following in the tradition of scatological humor Robbins connects the rubric of elimination with that of procreation—in fact one of the earliest sexual innuendos made in the novel is the suggestion that when the main character urinates she will be reminded of her new love-interest, as they have both eaten asparagus and will therefore have matching urinary odor. Furthermore, Robbins infuses this scatological romp with a dose of class-consciousness by conflating the reproductive functions of the lower body with the rhetoric of capitol.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gwen doesn’t long to bear children, Robbins writes, but rather longs to “swell with a pregnancy of moola” (83).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman";">In the world of Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas, late monolopoly American capitalism takes center stage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Althusser’s state apparatuses are seen as operating in full force, indoctrinating the culture with an ideology that privileges the work ethic in and of itself as its own end.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Value is measured in dollars. Even religion is being supplanted by capital: which is not to say that “faith” is supplanted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Faith, rather, is diverted—for many.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gwen herself has displaced faith from religion into the commodities market, as have many of her colleagues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After the market crashes in the novel’s opening pages, Gwen reflects that “the market’s been chugging along on faith alone…and [when the market crashed] that faith was badly strained” (42).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Significantly, not everyone has displaced their faith into financial markets—but that is a significant source of tension in the novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those who still exercise a religious faith (Belford Dunn, for example) serve as comic dupes in the novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And those who signify wisdom or transcendence place their faith in an entirely different, mystical and mysterious sphere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Larry Diamond, who serves as the voice of the Fool, signifying enlightenment, states the conflation of faith with finance quite simply when he asks, sardonically, “did you really expect that a culture that believes the Second Coming is right around the corner could have the long-range vision or long-term will to sustain a superpower economy?” (122).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Clearly, Larry Diamond does not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What’s more, it is apparent that, to Larry Diamond, the wherewithal to sustain a superpower economy is neither here nor there—it’s a diversion from what is truly important.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman";">The important players in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frog Pajamas</em> include the novel’s protagonist, Gwendolyn Mati—a struggling commodities broker, Belford Dunn—her boyfriend, Q-Jo Huffington—Gwen’s best friend and the local mystic/tarot reader, Larry Diamond—a new love interest, guru, and former commodities broker, the “Rich Boys,”—a gang of independently wealthy hoodlems, the growing class of Seattleite homeless/destitute, and Dr. Yamaguchi—who seems to have discovered a cure for colon cancer and is giving it away for free. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each character represents a different ideology within the matrix of late capitalism, and also a different status with regard to the alienation of labor. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Gwen has a less-than-middle-class background: her father a bongo-drummer with a penchant for hallucinogenic drugs, her mother a poet and suicide in the fashion of her idol, Sylvia Plath.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She suffers anxiety over her Filipina heritage, her second-rate university degree, her tenuous middle class status, her mediocre job performance, etc. etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She is characterized mainly by way of her narcissism and ambition.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Gwen’s boyfriend and best friend each serve as a sort of foil to Gwen’s ambition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Belford exemplifies the sort of arbitrary quality that is associated with financial success in the contemporary climate of late monopoly capitalism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That he has earned his substantial nest egg as a real estate agent by virtue of naïve, boyish charm and serendipitous connections is an irony not lost on readers fresh out of the 2009 collapse of the American real estate bubble.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gwen suffers extreme envy of Belford, whom she perceives as having achieved the American Dream “without ever dreaming it” (35).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And while she claims no attraction to Belford, and consistently reveals his foolishness, naiveté, and simple-mindedness, she has been dating him for 3 years at the novel’s opening, and frequently considers settling on a marriage of convenience for the financial security he provides. Although Belford is a foil to Gwen’s ambition, he is treated as a dupe in the novel—often missing the fact the he is the butt of the joke, and firmly entrenched in a born-again Christian ideology that illustrates Althusser’s concept of indoctrination by way of the state apparatus.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Q-Jo Huffington, on the other hand, serves as a foil representing an enlightened point of view.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Q-Jo is the only main character in Frog Pajamas who is not alienated from the form and product of her labor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, Q-Jo is firmly grounded in her work, reaping emotional and spiritual rewards as well as a modest stipend for her tarot readings and for serving as a one woman audience for lonely citizen’s vacation memorabilia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Q-Jo has insight into Gwen’s character that (apparently) exceeds her own, as afforded by the unique second person narration Robbin’s uses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She serves as a spirital guide and emotional ground for Gwen. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Larry Diamond, as alluded to already, serves as the voice of enlightenment of this narrative.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A former super-star as a commodities broker, Diamond is alienated from the worker of the brokerage and disillusioned with the (vast amounts) of money it earned him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Diamond’s own words “no matter how sweet the scores, they never added up to anything.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Aware that his point is ambiguous, Larry sighs, “I suppose you don’t [know what I mean]” (162).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The way Larry Diamond sees things, the possibility that the stock market may not recover from the crash is a good thing, the end of the “Big Lie”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman";">So far, Robbins commentary seems fairly obvious and straightforward—greed is bad, religion a bit foolish but harmlessly so, and the real happiness is found by engaging with one’s work in a spiritually rewarding way, free from greed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And once seen in this light, the rest of the narrative does fall into place in a similarly straightforward way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps this is the reason that Hoyser and Stookey devote a mere 2 pages of their 160-page volume to a Marxist reading of<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Frog Pajamas</em>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, the message is not completely uncomplicated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, Larry Diamond is the one character suffering from fatal colon cancer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, contrary to what one might expect, given Robbins’s mystic agenda, Diamond doesn’t embrace the end of his life and the promise of the hereafter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Clearly, enlightenment doesn’t solve everything.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Furthermore, what is more interesting about the didactic message in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frog Pajamas</em> isn’t so much the message itself, but the method of delivery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In his essay </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">"Political Satire and Hegemony: A Case of </span><span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Passive Revolution</span><span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> during Mussolini</span><span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">s Ascendance to Power 1919-1925" Efharis Mascha examines the critical role that humor played in the establishment of what he refers to as a counter-hegemony during Mussolini</span><span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">s rise to power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>According to Mascha, the subtle uses of satire increase inversely with the rise of censorship.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What Mascha illustrates is the efficacy of humor as opposed to explicit didacticism in communicating a counter-hegemonic message.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mascha is careful to distinguish between </span><span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">anti-hegemony</span><span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> and </span><span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">counter-hegemony</span><span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">”—</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">an important part given that all teaching (or indoctrination, according to Althusser) is inherently ideologically driven.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A counter-hegemony, however, is driven by socially prohibited or taboo ideology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Humor provides a critical device that enables transmission and response to the counter-hegemonic message.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">This essay argues that Tom Robbins</span><span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frog Pajamas,</em> taken in opposition to Upton Sinclair</span><span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Jungle</em>, suggests strong support for the thesis adapted from the foundational work of Mikail Bakhtin, and advanced by Mascha, Seligman, and Van Pelt, that humor provides a platform for dissenting discourse, alternative ideologies, and counter-hegemonies.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Works Cited<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Robbins, Tom. </span><span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas.</span><span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> Bantam: New York.1994. Print.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Hoyser, Catherine E., and Lorena L. Stookey. "Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas." <em>Tom Robbins: a Critical Companion</em>. Westport: Greenwood, 1997. 139-56. Print.</span><u><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><u><span style="color: black;">Political Criticism:<o:p></o:p></span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Althusser, Louis. "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses." <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Literary Theory: an Anthology</em>. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Second ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub. 2004. 693-702. Print. </span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Gramsci, Antonio. "Hegemony." <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Literary Theory: an Anthology</em>. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Second ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2004. 673-74. Print. </span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Marx, Karl. "Labor and Capital." <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Literary Theory: an Anthology</em>. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Second ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2004. 659-64. Print. </span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><u><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Humor Theory:<o:p></o:p></span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Berk, Ronald A. "Does Humor in Course Tests Reduce Anxiety and Improve Performance?" <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">College Teaching</em> 48.4 (2000): 151-58. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">JStor</em>. Web. 7 Apr. 2010. </span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Harbsmeier, Christophe. "Confucius Ridens: Humor in The Analects." <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies</em> 50.1 (1990): 131-61. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">JStor</em>. Web. 17 Apr. 2010. </span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><u><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Political and/or Didacticism and Humor Theory Combined:<o:p></o:p></span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Mascha, Efharis. "Political Satire and Hegemony: A Case of </span><span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Passive Revolution</span><span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> during Mussolini</span><span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">s Ascendance to Power 1919-1925." <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Humor: International Journal of Humor Research</em> 21.1 (2008): 61-98. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Academic Search Elite</em>. Web. 14 Apr. 2010. </span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Bakhtin, Mikhail. "Rabelais and His World." <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Literary Theory: an Anthology</em>. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Second ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub. 2004. 686-92. Print. </span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Van Pelt, Sandra Eileen Body. "Excremental Recycling in Selected Writings of Edward Taylor and Jonathan Swift: A Structuralist Study in Scatological Humor and Didactic Accommodation." Diss. University of Mississippi, 2003. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Digital Dissertations and Theses</em> (2003). <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ProQuest</em>. Web. 23 Apr. 2010. </span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 40.5pt; text-indent: -40.5pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Whall-Seligman, Helen Marie. "To Instruct and Delight: Didactic Method in Five Tudor Dramas." Diss. Yale University, 1976. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Digital Dissertations and Theses</em>. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ProQuest</em>. Web. 23 Apr. 2010. </span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p> </p><div style="text-align: right; font-size: small; clear: both;" id="blogsy_footer"><a href="http://blogsyapp.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://blogsyapp.com/images/blogsy_footer_icon.png" alt="Posted with Blogsy" style="vertical-align: middle; margin-right: 5px;" width="20" height="20" />Posted with Blogsy</a></div>Desi Bradleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12811905079182711375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5755996997692116221.post-34348903895086397212010-04-30T12:40:00.000-07:002010-04-30T12:41:13.243-07:00Positioning the Project: Humorous Didacticism in TR's *Frog Pajamas*<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Working with a substantial body of foundational political criticism, including Marx, Gramsci, and Althusser, while integrating these political ideas with contemporary research into the effect of humor on communication, comprehension, emotion and learning, this work joins in an ongoing conversation, and contributes to the discourse surrounding the intersection of these two ideas.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The theoretical conversation that links humor with political critique extends back to the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, and his analysis of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rabalais and His World</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> [[which contributes xyz foundational premise???.]]</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, theoretical work addressing the use of humor as a didactic strategy in literature is thin, and two of the major contributions to the conversation in this paper are not journal articles or book chapters, but doctoral dissertations.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Furthermore, those dissertations have a gap of almost 30 years between them. The work done so far in this area both opens a space and points to the need for further research into the intersection of humor with political didacticism in literature.</span><o:p></o:p></div>Desi Bradleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12811905079182711375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5755996997692116221.post-80554765317411164802010-04-30T10:18:00.000-07:002010-05-17T13:27:46.584-07:00Tom Robbins Project: Working BibliographyI'm recording the sources I've located and *skimmed and/or *read the abstract of and/or *partially read. I'm calling this a "working bibliography" because I'm pretty sure I won't end up citing everything on this list. It is, after all, only an 8-10 page paper. I'd use up 10 pages just annotating these! But I'd like to keep this recorded for future reference. Especially if I ever decide to expand my analysis into something broader than I'm doing for this 638 paper. I've separated the sources into three categories--political criticism, humor theory, and the intersection of the two--to make the list more coherent. Ergo:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">Working Bibliography</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div>Hoyser, Catherine E., and Lorena L. Stookey. "Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas." Tom Robbins: a Critical Companion. Westport: Greenwood, 1997. 139-56. Print.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;">Political Criticism:</span><br />
Althusser, Louis. "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses." Literary Theory: an Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Second ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub. 2004. 693-702. Print. <br />
<br />
Emerson, Caryl. "On the Generation That Squandered Its Philosophers (Losev, Bakhtin, and Classical Thought as Equipment for Living)." Studies in East European Thought 56.2/3 (2004): 95-117. JStor. Web. 17 Apr. 2010. <br />
<br />
Gitlin, Todd. "After the Failed Faiths: Beyond Individualism, Marxism, and Multiculturalism." World Policy Journal 12.1 (1995): 61-68. JStor. Web. 5 Apr. 2010. <br />
<br />
Gramsci, Antonio. "Hegemony." Literary Theory: an Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Second ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2004. 673-74. Print. <br />
<br />
Marx, Karl. "Labor and Capital." Literary Theory: an Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Second ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2004. 659-64. Print. <br />
<br />
Novak, Estelle G. ""Dynamo" School of Poets." Contemporary Literature 11.4 (1970): 526-39. JStor. Web. 17 Apr. 2010. <br />
<br />
Rikowski, Glenn. "Left Alone: End Time for Marxist Educational Theory?" British Journal of Sociology of Education 17.4 (1996): 415-51. JStor. Web. 17 Apr. 2010. <br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;">Humor Theory:</span><br />
Bell, Nancy D. "Humor Comprehension: Lessons Learned from Cross-Cultural Communication." Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 20.4 (2007): 367-87. Academic Search Elite. Web. 14 Apr. 2010. <br />
<br />
Berk, Ronald A. "Does Humor in Course Tests Reduce Anxiety and Improve Performance?" College Teaching 48.4 (2000): 151-58. JStor. Web. 7 Apr. 2010. <br />
<br />
Harbsmeier, Christophe. "Confucius Ridens: Humor in The Analects." Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 50.1 (1990): 131-61. JStor. Web. 17 Apr. 2010. <br />
<br />
Mason, Jeffrey D. "Arthur Miller's Ironic Resurrection." Theatre Journal 5.4 (2003): 657-77. JStor. Web. 9 Apr. 2010. <br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;">Political and/or Didacticism and Humor Theory Combined:</span><br />
Mascha, Efharis. "Political Satire and Hegemony: A Case of “Passive Revolution” during Mussolini’s Ascendance to Power 1919-1925." Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 21.1 (2008): 61-98. Academic Search Elite. Web. 14 Apr. 2010. <br />
<br />
Bakhtin, Mikhail. "Rabelais and His World." Literary Theory: an Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Second ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub. 2004. 686-92. Print. <br />
<br />
Thorne, Christian. "Thumbing Our Nose at the Public Sphere: Satire, the Market, and the Invention of Literature." PMLA 116.3 (2001): 531-44. JStor. Web. 17 Apr. 2010. <br />
<br />
Van Pelt, Sandra Eileen Body. "Excremental Recycling in Selected Writings of Edward Taylor and Jonathan Swift: A Structuralist Study in Scatological Humor and Didactic Accommodation." Diss. University of Mississippi, 2003. Digital Dissertations and Theses (2003). ProQuest. Web. 23 Apr. 2010. <br />
<br />
Whall-Seligman, Helen Marie. "To Instruct and Delight: Didactic Method in Five Tudor Dramas." Diss. Yale University, 1976. Digital Dissertations and Theses. ProQuest. Web. 23 Apr. 2010.Desi Bradleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12811905079182711375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5755996997692116221.post-50841874710921289202010-04-25T18:00:00.000-07:002010-04-25T18:00:46.102-07:00Woman Warrior and Princess Valhallamore fragments hastily recorded herein because i cannot be counted on to remember my own middle name!!!<br />
<br />
ok. i'd like to compare the dream sequence in the beginning of woman warrior with the princess valhalla video. i'll also need to include some of the backstory (for valhalla) in order to make the connection.<br />
<br />
some thoughts on the two compared/contrasted:<br />
*both seek to undermine feminine inferiority by positioning the woman as a warrior. the princess valhalla video is clearly ironic. can the dream sequence in woman warrior also be read as ironic?<br />
*princess valhalla is the first woman in her kingdom to reach sexual maturity. this is both a position of power and a cause of danger. she seeks to make herself "unnattractive to the prince" and evade his sexual advances. compare this with kingston's response to sexual maturity in the dream sequence. she embraces her mate (whom she has foreseen) but in many ways rejects motherhood.<br />
*princess valhalla, in the video, is an incompetent warrior. if she has power--if, in fact "might wins" then her power lies somewhere beyond strength as a warrior. perhaps it is the kind of power that camille paglia reads into a woman's sexuality. she certainly commands the gaze... kingston's woman warrior, on the other hand, is a virtually perfect (for lack of a better word) mimesis of the male version of a warrior. if her version of power is indeed ironic, then, the irony must lie in somehow undermining the male version of strength, virility, honor, and so on as represented in the icon of warrior.<br />
*princess valhalla comes from a society that values her for her femininity and fecundity. in the chinese culture, these are devalued. yet both women seek to escape being pigeonholed into a role inscribed by gender. in what ways are their responses to gender roles similar/different?<br />
<br />
other random insights:<br />
*the dream sequence, if it were told to another, is a sort of "talk-story". in fact, it is being told to us though through the written medium. (discuss.)<br />
*kingston ascribes a tremendous power to language, voice, and naming. talk-story is only one--significant, but singular--aspect of the power of words. throughout the memoirs, this remains a powerful and vividly present trope. (discuss.)<br />
*asian languages provide a rich example of the conflation of visual with verbal rhetoric. on several occassions, kingston comments on the difference between the western "meaning" of a given word when contrasted with the visual connotations implicit in the ideographs. (look up references. discuss. essays from hill's defining visual rhetoric are relevant.)Desi Bradleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12811905079182711375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5755996997692116221.post-20950439723580021332010-04-20T08:26:00.000-07:002010-04-20T08:29:47.426-07:00Princess Valhalla Hawkwind<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; white-space: pre;">This video just BEGS to be read through a feminist and/or orientalist lens. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; white-space: pre;">I'm preserving the idea here in my blog. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; white-space: pre;">Maybe this week I'll think of a way to connect it with <i>Woman Warrior</i>. (!!!)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; white-space: pre;"> </span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; white-space: pre;"><object height="231" width="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/WHTb_pMMQ94&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/WHTb_pMMQ94&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="385" height="231"></embed></object></span>Desi Bradleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12811905079182711375noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5755996997692116221.post-37541104532572463692010-04-17T17:46:00.000-07:002010-04-17T17:54:54.573-07:00Oh, right: 'to DELIGHT and Instruct!' (Perhaps Sinclair read "Disgust"?)Some raw thoughts here follow:<br />
<br />
If Sinclair's efforts with <i>The Jungle</i> fell on deaf ears, maybe it was because the novel was so graphic and horrifying. Maybe, as a collective, the American public simply resists casting itself as responsible in any way, for the exploitation of an entire class of working immigrants. As a tangent, it's also possible that the didactic lessons on Socialism were too indirect for the mass public to see its own role, as consumers, in perpetuating the cycle of capital's exploitation of labor. In other words, Joe the Plumber doesn't really see himself as having a role at all in <i>The Jungle</i>.<br />
<br />
But, for now, I want to focus on the role of Sinclair's tone in the novel. Which, of course, begs the question of whether or not a different tone might be more effective. A lighter tone, perhaps. Maybe even a humorous one? I'm imagining that to shed light on the issues of wage slavery in a humorous tone it might be necessary to be somewhat opaque as opposed to outright didacticism... Maybe not.<br />
<br />
In line with this thinking, then, I'd like to look at Tom Robbins <i>Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas</i> through a Marxist lens. Its falls under the rubric of popular culture--so it has the potential to reach a mass public. It's certainly written in a playful tone, but not without complex theoretical discourse. And the notion of work--cheating at work, lack of work, the need to work (or not,) compensation for work, and satisfaction with work, or lack thereof--plays a huge role in the theme of the narrative.<br />
<br />
For such an analysis, I think I'll use Marx (duh,) Bahktin, Husserl, and Althusser. Robbins, of course. Also, I'll search the databases for other work about parody or irony, and/or humor, with regard to Marxism and any literature. I don't think I'll find much scholarship about Robbins to work with, so I'll have to go with mostly theory for secondary resources. And I'll find out whether or not I think the Marxist agenda is: 1) actually present in <i>Frog Pajamas</i>; and 2) more palatable given Robbins' tone.Desi Bradleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12811905079182711375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5755996997692116221.post-24870456971864127452010-04-17T15:45:00.000-07:002010-04-17T16:04:05.294-07:00Are We Essentially Performing, Then?Judith Butler's theory of gender as a social construction constituted by performance of gendered characteristics has been challenged by theorists and activists working on behalf of intersexed individuals, particularly in opposition to the traditional OGR (optimum gender of rearing) model, which held that gender assignment should be surgically accomplished in infancy. This model was founded on the assumption that children are born with a sort of <i>tabula rasa</i> with regard to gender, and that gender is (or can be) socially constructed, as long as indoctrination begins before the age of about 2. Adherents to the OGR cite the relative scarcity of documented gender switching or homosexuality in adult patients who were surgically assigned at birth as evidence of its success. However, this model is undermined by the testimony of actual intersexed adults, and has been challenged by recent oppositional medical protocol issued by the DSD (disorders of sex development) Coalition.<br />
<div><br />
</div><div>These thoughts are still incubating, but I think I want to say that even if there are certain biological differences between genders, and that those differences are both intrinsic to sex/sex development and significant in terms of medical prognosis for the treatment of disorders of sex development--even if those things hold true--this fact does not undermine the performative aspects of gender identity. Science, particularly molecular biology, proves that there are innate biological differences between the sexes . Yet even in the field of molecular biology, concessions are made for external and environmental contributors to the expression of genetic differences (Rosario). I find it difficult to accept that there is no culturally constructed performance of characteristics that recursively inscribe and express gender (Butler).</div><div><br />
</div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Works Cited:</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Butler, Judith. "Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions." </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Judith Butler Reader</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. Ed. Judith Butler and Sara Salih. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004. 90-118. Print.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Rosario, Vernon A. "Quantum Sex: Intersex and the Molecular Deconstruction of Sex." </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">GLQ: of Lesbian and Gay Studies</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> 15.2 (2009): 267-84. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Project Muse</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. Web. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div></div>Desi Bradleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12811905079182711375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5755996997692116221.post-55020707995978093512010-04-16T18:29:00.000-07:002010-04-17T15:57:12.088-07:00Pathologies of Sex and Gender<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhInXHIUkXXj8xE_uXJxGA0-c7r78iscXUIP9I8ULbh__PITgOz80c3lUvpVaQIKzk3_hQyy1CjKjH9_jxi3Vi818kleu5PL4ZFSzwX1xPifH2DO7l9YD_b8JFu55MMThgqsg9vhCeMrZZF/s1600/Del+LaGrace.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhInXHIUkXXj8xE_uXJxGA0-c7r78iscXUIP9I8ULbh__PITgOz80c3lUvpVaQIKzk3_hQyy1CjKjH9_jxi3Vi818kleu5PL4ZFSzwX1xPifH2DO7l9YD_b8JFu55MMThgqsg9vhCeMrZZF/s320/Del+LaGrace.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">Photographed here is Del LaGrace Volcano, who identifies "hermself" as intersex--neither male, nor female. Herm was born female, but upon puberty began to develop sexually ambiguous characteristics, including uneven breast development, masculine musculature, and male-patterned facial and body hair. Herm has not had gender reassignment.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
Volcano is well known in the Queer community for herm's photojournalism. Herm's work may be found online at: <a href="http://www.dellagracevolcano.com/">http://www.dellagracevolcano.com/</a><br />
<br />
In the introductory volume of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The History of Sexuality</i>, Michel Foucault explores the ways in which (so-called) “deviant” sexuality has been historically criminalized, pathologized, and demonized. This text is commonly considered as foundational to contemporary Queer Theory, and it is certainly groundbreaking and pivotal in terms of exploring alternative manifestations of sexuality and sensuality in the field of Queer studies. However, Foucault’s text has implications beyond sexuality for people of clinically ambiguous gender—historically known as hermaphrodite, intersex, and most recently reclassified in the DSM-IV as “disorders of sex development”. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">As Foucault himself relates, people of ambiguous gender signify deviance of sexuality in the common imaginary. And during the historical period when sexuality was becoming inscribed as representative of the order of society—and deviance regulated by legal policy—the treatment of ambiguous sexuality was telling. “For a long time,” Foucault observes, “hermaphrodites were criminals, or crime’s offspring, since their anatomic disposition, their very being, confounded the law that distinguished the sexes and prescribed their union” (893). This ostensibly “natural” law was interpreted and enforced in Christian terms via sexuality’s generative, or reproductive capacity. In this way, the policing of sexuality can be seen as intersecting with a capitalist agenda, insofar is the control of sexuality both regulates and channels excessive public energies toward productive avenues and reproduces and increases labor power (Foucault 894).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">However, in America, where the mythologies of freedom and tolerance hold sway, particularly in the late 20<sup>th</sup> century and beyond, the legal censure of sexual practice has diminishing authority. Accordingly, sexual deviance is pathologized as mental illness or even chromosomal abnormality. In Foucault’s construction, the medicalization of sexuality is a form of power and, while it may be construed as sympathetic, medicalization (as opposed to criminalization) does NOT imply acceptance. Furthermore, medical pathology has slippery slope implications that could turn toward things like selective termination (chromosomal eugenics.)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">All of this history is particularly relevant to the recent reclassification of intersex individuals as patients suffering from “disorders of sex development”. From a theoretical standpoint, this reclassification is disturbing—stigmatizing and perhaps a backward step in terms of sociological integration of “deviant” individuals. However, from a more pragmatic (and experiential) standpoint, this reclassification portends an innovation in terms of the medical treatment of intersex people: specifically with regard to gender assignment, hormonal replacement therapy, and cosmetic surgical procedures. This debate merits further investigation.<br />
<br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Works Cited:</span></i><br />
<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, An Introduction. Vol. 1. New York: Vintage, 1990. P</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">rint.</span></i><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i> <!--StartFragment--> </i></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><i><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Volcano, Del LaGrace. "Del LaGrace Volcano--Intersex Artist/Activist." Web. <http://www.dellagracevolcano.com>. </http://www.dellagracevolcano.com></span></div><!--EndFragment--> </i></span><br />
<!--EndFragment--> </div>Desi Bradleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12811905079182711375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5755996997692116221.post-40410417679172165652010-04-14T11:15:00.000-07:002010-04-17T16:00:37.439-07:00Monopoly Capitalism, the American Dream, and Class Consciousness<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSMlU6ActcpLe_VuEODq7QKga-wuw6sCrMvgR5RAM2QZ7MiLsXxRiwuFrRT6CjHNr_k7xdOl23-3QtvjrnvkKnl5ZzwPBQUQa43bmmuF3XqOtssBSKdxvwYRczh76ThD7kjM7rMBa7TaTk/s1600/be-a-happy-worker-f.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="154" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSMlU6ActcpLe_VuEODq7QKga-wuw6sCrMvgR5RAM2QZ7MiLsXxRiwuFrRT6CjHNr_k7xdOl23-3QtvjrnvkKnl5ZzwPBQUQa43bmmuF3XqOtssBSKdxvwYRczh76ThD7kjM7rMBa7TaTk/s200/be-a-happy-worker-f.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br />
Factory farming today isn’t the only way in which our current climate resembles the world Sinclair portrays in <i>The Jungle</i>. Today’s monopoly capitalism, dominated by transnational corporations, makes wage-slaves out of a vast population of workers, worldwide. This is complicated by the prevailing rhetoric that continues to convince the majority of Americans of the mythology of the American Dream. Moreover, rhetorics of tolerance and equality—regarding such issues as religion, gender, and race—complicate the discourse so that the actual conditions of labor are obscured. <br />
<br />
In <i>The Jungle</i>, Sinclair uses Jurgis and Ona and their extended family as a kind of synecdoche for an entire population of wage-slaves—at the time, the majority of them were immigrants. The entire family, and particularly Jurgis, are necessarily drawn in a sympathetic light in order to elicit public sympathy for their plight. Their faults, then, are perceived as inevitable response to their lives. Jurgis's drinking and violence, for example, can be interpreted as an escapist reaction to Ona's rape by Phil Connor, and especially to Antanas death. Marija's prostitution is perhaps even more forgivable, being as her value as a laborer in the factory couldn't possibly support the family with Jurgis absent. Her drug addiction is a critique of management and its control over labor. Moreover, it symbolizes the bound-ness of Marija's labor as a wage-slave.<br />
<br />
Packingtown symbolizes the horrific working conditions; the idea of the jungle represents the sort of social Darwinism inherent in any capitalist system where “the mass of the people were always in a life-and-death struggle with poverty. That was ‘competition,’ so far as it concerned the wage earner, the man who had only his labor to sell; to those on top, the exploiters, it appeared very differently, of course—there were few of them, and they could combine and dominate, and their power would be unbreakable” (357). The fact that Jurgis is sent to jail for his violence against Phil Connor, and also the system of "mortaging" slumhouses, are both symptomatic of a larger corruption that Sinclair sees in the capitalist economy.<br />
<br />
Through the rhetoric of socialism, however, Sinclair means to make it clear that if workers were to combine that they, too, could dominate. As Ostrinski explains the socialist movement to Jurgis, Sinclair distributes socialist propaganda to the reader. This objective provides the exigence for drawing Jurgis and his family is such a pathetic yet sympathetic light. Sinclair's rhetoric suggests that the control of the means of production is undermined when there is no labor to accomplish that production. Were this rhetoric to be successful in communicating to the masses, then they may realize the implicit necessity for a vast underclass to serve as labor in the capitalist system in order to generate the surplus value that enables profit. Were this rhetoric successful, the majority of American wage-slaves who read <i>The Jungle</i> might, as Jurgis does, recognize the value in labor coalition. <br />
<br />
However, it seems that the opposite has occurred, as demonstrated by Barbara Ehrenreich’s 2001 expose <i>Nickel and Dimed</i>, an undercover journalistic exploration of the lives of the American working poor, arguing the idea that it is virtually impossible to survive in America by working for a minimum wage. Socialist rhetoric has been denigrated in the eyes of the typical American citizen—many of whom still live as laborers bound by the shackles of wage-slavery. Labor unions have been systematically stripped of negotiating power while popular opinion has turned against the notion of coalition. And the typical American citizen still lacks “class consciousness”.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i>Works Cited:</i></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Ehrenreich, Barbara. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Nickel and Dimed: on (Not) Getting by in America</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. New York: Metropolitan, 2001. Print.</span></span></div><!--EndFragment--> <br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 32px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Sinclair, Upton. </span><i style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Jungle</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. Cambridge, Mass.: R. Bentley, 1971. Print.</span></span>Desi Bradleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12811905079182711375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5755996997692116221.post-63964727274345486232010-04-08T18:32:00.000-07:002010-04-08T19:07:55.535-07:00I've read that Upton Sinclaire's intent in writing <i>The Jungle</i> was to draw attention to the immigrant labor pool, and the horrific working conditions under which they labored, and the hobbling poverty that held them bonded to such wage-slavery. Instead, the public's outrage turned against the meatpacking industry--perhaps rightly so. Ergo, we have the creation of the FDA. All of this is general public knowledge, nothing insightful or innovative. <br />
<br />
What is surprising to me is how closely today's factory farms mirror the conditions that President Roosevelt responded to when <i>The Jungle</i> was published. And I continue to be amazed at how the profit motive supercedes any humanitarian imperative when it comes to publicizing and/or regulating industry. To illustrate, consider the viewer response to the following YouTube clip from a cruelty-free dairy farm, in which the (friendly) audience laments the fact that cruelty-free farming is just "too expensive":<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; white-space: pre;"><object height="384" width="320"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/l3UFUqYKv2c&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/l3UFUqYKv2c&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="312" height="384"></embed></object></span><br />
<br />
Furthermore, I'm dumbstruck at the willful ignorance and antagonism from many in the public sphere. The vitriol with which Joe (carnivorous) Citizen responds to some of the animal rights videos posted on YouTube illustrates my point while begging the question: why such an intense and violent reaction? For example, the following 5 minute clip is accompanied by 7 pages of lowbrow "debate" about the merits of eating or not eating meat. It's true that this particular clip is heavy on the pathos, perhaps eliciting the violence in response. But this is only one of many, many examples I could have chosen.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; white-space: pre;"><object height="312" width="384"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/KzjRNboorBo&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/KzjRNboorBo&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="312" height="384"></embed></object></span>Desi Bradleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12811905079182711375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5755996997692116221.post-64695228131234854382010-03-21T14:27:00.000-07:002010-03-26T08:42:57.472-07:00Midterm Essay (aka "TL-DR")<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">“We Were Girls Together”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.5in; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">-Tony Morrison, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Sula</span></i><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgap3w5LlHt3ekdI2X1jg3oVh3CilFFbdk-KucP-Z88R7_hh1ntp1rNsYKe6L5ltcE3G9ZOn10LyMHaOEj2c6IAmHR6Z4yU-cODSWTA-P0EIZF_RDNgHX7Xf55RP-wi44PieLxC8Di6GZLN/s1600/girls+in+peril.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgap3w5LlHt3ekdI2X1jg3oVh3CilFFbdk-KucP-Z88R7_hh1ntp1rNsYKe6L5ltcE3G9ZOn10LyMHaOEj2c6IAmHR6Z4yU-cODSWTA-P0EIZF_RDNgHX7Xf55RP-wi44PieLxC8Di6GZLN/s320/girls+in+peril.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">The collective “we” who tells the story of Karen Lee Boren’s debut novella <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Girls in Peril</i> stands out as a curious defining feature, begging the critical reader to explain, interpret, and justify its unusual mode of narration. The “we” in question refers to the story’s main character(s), a group of five young neighborhood girls aged 11 to 13. The use of the collective first person serves to obscure the identity of the narrator, while blurring the boundary between subject positions of the five girls. Narrative cues throughout the novella distance the role of the narrator from the individual identity of each girl in turn, as Jeanne, Donna, Lauren, Stacey, and Corrine are each referenced in the third person, and the reader is never offered an intimate, detailed view into any character’s innermost thoughts or perspective. In this way, the story achieves ambiguity and coalition in its narrative subject. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> Competing with the narrative point of view for center stage is the curious spectacle of one of the girls’s, Jeanne Macek’s, “extra” thumb: a birth defect. Remarkably, rather than ostracize Jeanne for this oddity, the group of girls fetishizes the extra thumb, worships it, “court[s] Jeanne’s favor for the chance to pet it” (1). The girls envy the extra thumb, and see that it confers on Jeanne a number of (traditionally male) privileges, for example, exclusion from childcare, housekeeping, and personal hygiene responsibilities. The thumb is also obscurely and ironically credited for Jeanne’s exceptional athletic and strategic prowess, and “when she won, she treated her thumb like a teammate who had helped her out” (3). In short, the thumb stands in as a sort of phallus, a transcendental signifier of sorts. And in fact, despite the ambiguity of the narrator, it is apparent from the early lines of the novella that Jeanne centers and directs the group of five girls.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">In her critical essay on the use of the collective first person in French literature, "’Romans Des Nous’: The First Person Plural and Collective Identity in Martinique," Dawn Fulton advances the claim that the use of the collective identity—for example as in the “royal ‘we’”—has historically functioned as a discursive strategy conferring legitimacy and power upon a line of discourse. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Girls in Peril,</i> the use of the collective first person is significant in this respect, because the gang of girls achieves legitimacy and power through use of collective identity. In fact, they are acutely aware of the fact that coalition confers power as they negotiate their interactions with adult authority figures. “Alone we were vulnerable,” they reason. “We felt more comfortable as a group…together, we had a firmly fixed identity” (6). In the comfort of this firmly fixed collective identity, the girls garner confidence in their collective action. Also, the narrative voice achieves greater authority to tell its story.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Furthermore, the girls achieve an even greater measure of authority through their association with Jeanne, who possesses the transcendental signifier in the third thumb. Laura Kipnis explores the nature of the phallus as the marker of entitlement (to authority and power) in her 2006 article “Something’s Missing”. Historically, she claims, it is inexplicably and invariably true that authority and power coincide with the phallus—which is why Lacan refers to it as the transcendental signifier—what is transcended, in this case, is the physical body. Power is entitled by virtue of anatomy but extends beyond anatomy. The female response, according to Kipnis, is to choose between feminism, constituted by social activism opposing male entitlement in the first place, and femininity—by which the female can obtain access to the phallus on a “time-share basis” through pair bonding/marriage (23). In the case of the girls of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Girls in Peril</i>, however, association with the transcendental signifier is appropriated though the use of collective identity as opposed to marriage. By forming a coalition with Jeanne, in other words, Donna, Lauren, Corrine and Stacey all attain a share of the collective power conferred by the phallus.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Jeanne Macek’s third thumb may also be read as a symbolic clitoris. In this scenario, collective identity is associated with youth and sexual immaturity. As long as the group remains sexually immature their collective identity is secure. Reading Jeanne’s thumb as a clitoris, however, is not inconsistent with reading it as a phallus if it is also read through the lens of sexual immaturity, and therefore the thumb still symbolically confers upon Jeanne the status of transcendental signifier. This is because, according to Freudian psychoanalysis, the preadolescent girl’s clitoris functions much in the same way that the preadolescent boy’s phallus does. It is, in essence, a substitute—or inferior—phallus. According to Jane Gerhard, in her <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Feminist Studies</i> article "Revisiting "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm": The Female Orgasm in American Sexual Thought and Second Wave Feminism," Freud maintains that until the transfer phase, in which an adolescent girl transfers her libidinal center to the vagina, it is located in the clitoris. During this pre-transfer phase the girl is gender and sexually ambiguous—being neither masculine nor feminine, neither heterosexual nor homosexual, but somehow all of these at once (452-3). This description of the adolescent girl as androgynous seems well-suited to Jeanne Macek, who navigates the sphere of preadolescent girlhood as well as dabbling the in the sphere of male privilege.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> Furthermore, as Gerhard elaborates, Freudian psychoanalytic theory holds that failure on the part of the adolescent girl to successfully navigate the transfer phase, reassign her libidinal center to the vagina, and achieve sexual maturity can result in penis envy, hysteria, and neurotic discontent. This is relevant to a reading of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Girls in Peril</i> insofar as the amputation of Jeanne’s thumb can be read as a forced transfer via clitorectomy, and her resulting hysteria evidence of its failure. The amputation signals a move toward sexual maturity in alignment with Freud’s transfer phase. This is reinforced in the text by Jeanne’s escalated role in the domestic sphere. “As her hand healed,” the narrative voice recounts, “Jeanne’s chores increased and we saw less and less of her than ever” (61). The idea that the amputation corresponds with sexual maturity is also reinforced by the shift in dominant personality from Jeanne (whose sexuality is rooted in the third thumb as clitoral symbol) to Lauren, who represents a traditionally feminine (vaginal) sexuality. What is problematic about this sexual maturation is the fact that it is enforced upon Jeanne, without her consent, via the authority of the medical community. Furthermore, it accompanies her rapid disappearance from the public sphere, and ultimately her silence and the dismantling of the group identity. These events signify a feminist critique of assigned gender roles and the authority conferred upon the owner of the transcendental signifier (see Cicoux and Kuhn, and Lindenmeyer.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Moreover, the group’s collective identity breaks down after Jeanne’s amputation. The loss of the thumb signifies a disconnection from the phallus and its conferred privileges, among which may be included the discursive authority that also accompanies the collective first person (i.e. “royal we”.) However, this also can fall within the purview of reading the third thumb as clitoral symbol, the amputation read as a clitorectomy forcing Jeanne into the transfer phase. The loss of collective identity here is associated with sexual maturity and the traditional feminine domestic role, which forces her out of the public sphere and into the private sphere. The implication is that women in the home—in the private sphere—are disconnected from each other and from society; therefore the group sacrifices its collective identity.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">The climax of the feminist critique in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Girl’s in Peril</i> is signified by Jeanne’s breakdown at the end of the story, whereby her brother Joey’s attempted murder and successful suicide trigger Jeanne’s (apparent) hysteria. However, the hysterical reading is contestable by way of feminist theorizing. Hysteria is typically derived from psychoanalytic readings of failed transfer, mislaid gender association, and/or penis envy. This helps to explicate the implied association between Jeanne and Joey, whether Jeanne’s amputation is read as a castration or clitorectomy. In fact, clitorectomy is rather analogous to castration in Freud’s construction, as the clitoris functions as a stand in for the penis up until the transfer phase where the adolescent girl is forced to abandon it. Jeanne’s “hysteria,” then, is read as the psychoanalytic diagnosis that is criticized in this text. On the one hand, Jeanne’s response to Joey’s violence and death is understandable. On the other hand, it can be read as hysterical due to its extremity. Finally, however, Jeanne is simply silenced by her elimination from the family. This is in accordance with traditional methods of dealing with vocal women (who perhaps transgress gender boundaries) by silencing them. Here the notion of medicalizing/pathologizing female behaviors is relevant. Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Yellow Wallpaper</i> and Virginia Woolf’s lived experience provide both textual and material examples of this phenomenon.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> Karen Lee Boren’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Girls in Peril</i> utilizes the collective first person in conjunction with the central metaphor of the transcendental signifier to perform a feminist critique of traditional female roles in postmodern society. The critique is particularly salient in this context because it foregrounds the dissonance between the traditional role expected of mature women, (even, as Kipnis explores in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Female Thing</i>, in contemporary American society) and the possibilities they are taught to entertain in adolescence. As Jeanne’s emotional breakdown demonstrates, the dissonance can prove psychologically crippling.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Works Cited<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: left; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Cixous, Helen, and Annette Kuhn. "Castration or Decapitation?" <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Signs</i> 7.1 (1981): 41-55. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">JStor</i>. Web. 7 Mar. 2010.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: left; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Fulton, Dawn. ""Romans Des Nous": The First Person Plural and Collective Identity in Martinique." <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The French Review</i> 76.6 (2003): 1104-114. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">JStor</i>. Web. 9 Mar. 2010. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: left; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Gerhard, Jane. "Revisiting "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm": The Female Orgasm in American Sexual Thought and Second Wave Feminism." <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Feminist Studies</i> 26.2 (2000): 449-76. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">JStor</i>. Web. 7 Mar. 2010.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: left; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Kipnis, Laura. "Something's Missing." <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Women's Studies Quarterly</i> 34.3/4 (2006): 22-42. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">JStor</i>. Web. 8 Mar. 2010. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: left; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Kipnis, Laura. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability</i>. New York: Pantheon, 2006. Print.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: left; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Lee Boren, Karen. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Girls in Peril</i>. Portland: Tin House, 2006. Print.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: left; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Lindenmeyer, Antje. "Postmodern Concepts of the Body in Jeanette Winterson's "Written on the Body"" <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Feminist Review</i> 63 (1999): 48-63. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">JStor</i>. Web. 6 Mar. 2010. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: left; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Morris, Adalaide. "First Persons Plural in Contemporary Feminist Fiction." <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature</i> 11.1 (1992): 11-29. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">JStor</i>. Web. 8 Mar. 2010. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: left; text-indent: -0.5in;"><br />
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</span></span>Desi Bradleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12811905079182711375noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5755996997692116221.post-33965888498179240172010-03-20T13:29:00.000-07:002010-03-20T13:29:35.395-07:00Gramsci, Marx, Althusser: and Single-Payer Healthcare?What do hegemony, capital and the wage-laborer, & ideology and the state apparatus have to do with single-payer healthcare? Answer: lots. Lots to unpack here.<br />
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Hegemony: right-wing wingnuts, talking point mouthpieces, religious institutions, and public schools. FOX News, CNN, NY Times, and The Huffington Post. Press releases, press conferences, sound bytes and photo ops. And so on...<br />
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Capital and the wage laborer: the very foundation upon which the US economy functions (disfunctionally). Why is it that as a population we are so very willing to ignore the fact that a capitalist economy is structured upon the necessity for the working class to exist simply in order to create excess value via the exchange--or rather sale---of labor, which value in turn creates excess value in the commodities that are fetishized and purchased as a false representation of the wealth that they create?<br />
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Why, rather, do I need to phrase this very fact in such convoluted terms so that the proletarian that probably never will, but should possibly be influenced by this idea if she read this, will NEVER understand and so continue to elide the fact that class dissonance is a necessary condition for capitalism to exist?!?<br />
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Ideology and the state apparatus: well, one things bears mentioning. Althusser has a wicked sense of humor. And good thing, because what he has to say is fairly dismal. So, ideology is the substance upon which hegemony perpetuates itself. Invisible, insidious, yes. Odious, impenetrable, perhaps? Perhaps not. Marx alludes to the notion that a radical discourse is possible--presupposing, of course, the existence of a radical class. And it follows, necessarily, that the penetration of hegemonic ideology is possible by virtue of this radical discourse.<br />
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But, man, it looks difficult! Ideology is the sum total of the function of naturalization of itself, and perpetuation through the transmission of "obviousnesses" (Althusser 698) or, as the Flobots claim in their song <i>Fight With Tools</i>: "spread like a virus through accepted thoughts and proper manners". Ideology is at it worst the farcical appearance of free choice, even when it perpetuates contradictory claims.<br />
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There...I have arrived at the transition to the main point: Single Payer healthcare. Which, it would seem, would be consistent with the ideology inherent in a supposedly "christian" nation. I guess the ideology of christianity is at odds, however, with the ideology of capitalism. And the goals of capital are at odds with the materials conditions of the lives of wage-laborers. And yet, those very same professed christian wage-laborers parrot and promote the agenda of capital, which is completely inconsistent with the spirital agenda promoted by Christ.<br />
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hmmm... yes. these thoughts are fragmented and incomplete. but the skeleton is there.Desi Bradleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12811905079182711375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5755996997692116221.post-5137018556377382912010-03-15T14:47:00.000-07:002010-03-21T08:50:31.880-07:00Displaced Sexual Objects/Horse-y Toys/and the Tagmemic GridHere I am supposed to blog about my contribution to this week's group presentation on Peter Shaffer's Equus. Our group posted a group-authored blog here:<br />
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http://equus638.blogspot.com/<br />
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That chronicles our follies and foibles as we mucked through mountains of literary theory and one small two-act play.<br />
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My primary contributions are named in the post's title: the Tagmemic grid being the most significant. Also, props. And I'd like to think a bit of perspective/sanity/direction. Ha! Like being the operative word.<br />
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More to say on this after this evening's shenanigans.<br />
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OK....the evening's shenanigans long since passed, and here are my reflections. <br />
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The tagmemic grid...hmmm... I still like the grid. However, due to my lateness and our group momentum I'm not sure it was adequately explained to the class. In theory it would have helped groups to explore the issues in <i>Equus</i> on an escalating scale of complexity to arrive at certain conclusions. In practice...I'm pretty sure it just served as a decoration-a garnish if you will-augmenting the "presentation" of our presentation. I believe that some found it too complex.<br />
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And the horses...well, they were garnishes to begin with. So perhaps I was the set decorator.<br />
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In terms of discussion I am happy with what happened. I feel pretty strongly that our group distributed the task of analysis equally. We were each very knowledgeable about the text of <i>Equus</i> and the application of a variety of theoretical approaches to the text. My own analysis applied mostly psychoanalytic theory and poststructural theory to <i>Equus</i>. I especially focused on the play as Dysart's narrative, wherein he arrives at certain conclusions about the erroneous nature of normativity and his role as an enforcer of social norms.Desi Bradleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12811905079182711375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5755996997692116221.post-7713217746185564142010-03-08T18:28:00.000-08:002010-04-08T19:04:28.083-07:00The Simpsons spoofs Trouble in River City<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; white-space: pre;"><object height="270" width="336"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/AEZjzsnPhnw&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/AEZjzsnPhnw&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="336" height="270"></embed></object></span>Desi Bradleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12811905079182711375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5755996997692116221.post-35497260112502640902010-03-08T14:32:00.000-08:002010-03-08T14:38:33.236-08:00What If It Were Agreed that "Proper" Meant Wearing a Codfish on Your Head?"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM5s5ubtuCPCW8l3DNqzKM5DdE2pgvq836QQFhfktaFVzoNYLUF2URIO1qDbIFgMLS233uRM09L0uveerbaWEM0nuJeBFIT7HFGJ_1PooegjIVAVB9EBM2xHVkkMIr89K4L5Y_NV417kXV/s1600-h/ALICEARMOUR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM5s5ubtuCPCW8l3DNqzKM5DdE2pgvq836QQFhfktaFVzoNYLUF2URIO1qDbIFgMLS233uRM09L0uveerbaWEM0nuJeBFIT7HFGJ_1PooegjIVAVB9EBM2xHVkkMIr89K4L5Y_NV417kXV/s320/ALICEARMOUR.jpg" /></a></div><br />
In their essay "Introductory Deconstruction" from <span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;">Literary Theory, An Anthology</span>, Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan explain that one implication of Jacques Derrida's concept of differance is that it becomes very difficult to ground the notion of "truth" in any authority. In Derrida's construction then, truth, as the authors explain, is a deferred presence grounded in representations. Furthermore, its presence is "shaped by conventions regarding how those acts of representation work. It must be haggled over and settled on through agreements" (261).<br />
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Tim Burton's recent adaptation of Lewis Caroll's <span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;">Alice in Wonderland</span> and <span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;">Through the Looking Glass</span> finds Alice pensively posing this post's titular question to her mother, while en route to a formal engagement party. Alice's mother discovers that she (Alice) has failed to don the appropriate undergarments. Angrily, she exclaims: "but you're not properly dressed!"<br />
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"What if were agreed" retorts Alice, "that 'proper' meant wearing a codfish on your head? Would you wear it?" Pleased at her mother's befuddled nonresponse, Alice demurs "to me, stockings are like a codfish."<br />
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Burton's reproduction of Alice in Wonderland casts Alice in a role that contests the notion of what is proper and who has the authority to make such conventional agreements. As such, she is a classically poststructuralist heroine who resists the meta-narrative of her proper gender role in three different but parallel strings. First, there is the question of marriage--whether or not she will marry "Hamish," the effete aristocrat who proposes in the first scene. Second, the notion of heroes and damsels in distress, which is turned completely on its head as Alice is called upon to be the White Queen's champion in battle against the Jabberwocky. Finally, there is her deceased father's business which has been purchased by her would-be fiance's family.<br />
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Furthermore, there is the allusion to what amounts to a very queer, (albeit heterosexual) attraction between the Mad Hatter and Alice. Also Absolom seems somehow meant to signify Alice herself in her state of always "becoming". This conflation of identities queers the gender narrative in the movie as well.<br />
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[Still in progress. Seems lately I finish nothing.]Desi Bradleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12811905079182711375noreply@blogger.com51tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5755996997692116221.post-82575849768679317172010-02-22T12:22:00.000-08:002010-04-08T19:06:07.695-07:00Multiplicity and Semiotics: Testing Boundaries of Cultural Mythology.<div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 32px;">This post combines some old work with some new work for me with semiotics. In the older stuff I'm using a Peircian model rather than Saussure. Although the two kind of blur and blend for me. What was the difference again? Someone thinks that there is no objective reality beyond the sign...Saussure, I think. To be honest, I'm pretty vague on that notion myself. Language is pretty darned powerful but I'm loath to make the broad claim that it is ultimately deterministic. At any rate...about Tara:</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><div style="text-align: left;">The following clip represents the opening credits of Showtime's award winning original series <i>United States of Tara</i>. Although Saussure's <i>Course on General Linguistics</i> delimits the signifying medium as purely linguistic and thus temporally linear, I would suggest that the visual medium both signifies in a comparable manner to the linguistic, and expands the possibilities for semiotic analysis of the complex signifiers taking place in the show. The use of a series of graphic images to introduce the show's foundational concepts illustrates this point nicely. </div><div style="text-align: left;">As you will see, the show's title character, Tara, suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder (more commonly known as multiple personalities.) What is interesting about this disorder as represented in the show, semiotically speaking, are the ways in which Tara's various identities are constructed and performed by way of a complex of social signifiers. These signifiers include dress, vocabulary, behavior, and so on, and are simultaneously interpreted and judged both by the textual/fictional community in which Tara and her family are constructed, and meta-textually, by us, the viewing audience.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; line-height: normal; white-space: pre;"><object height="238" width="392"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/1zlBBkKyM_g&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/1zlBBkKyM_g&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="392" height="238"></embed></object></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><div style="text-align: left;">As the opening theme to <i>United States of Tara</i> suggests, Tara performs four semiotically constructed identities. According to Umberto Eco, semiotic theory is implicit in all systems of interpretation, which is salient being that interpretation itself is <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the</i></b> pivotal point on which semiotic analysis rests. Other theories and critical viewpoints, however, provide the ideological lens by which an interpretation is made. The framework for this semiotic analysis of gendered ideology and performative identity in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">United States of Tara</i> rests on the foundational semiotic theory of Charles Peirce, the body theories of Judith Butler, and Roland Barthes’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mythologies</i>. <o:p></o:p></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">Peirce’s semiotic theory establishes the framework of sign systems, whereby a “signifier”—arbitrary in and of itself—suggests a “signified,” or an endowment of meaning; together, they constitute a complete sign. Signs, then, accumulate to construct “sign systems,” which, in turn, compromise meaningful units of knowledge about larger concepts, phenomena, and so on. One very significant aspect of Peircian semiotic theory is the notion that signfication, or the creation of meaning, is simultaneously interpretive, subconscious, and instantaneous. Peirce also gives us the notion that interpretation is accomplished through accessing the larger cultural consciousness, thus resulting in the creation of “knowledge” that is socially agreed upon. While important, this notion alone is problematic insofar as the phenomenon of interpretation is ambiguous and vague. The “how” and “why” of that instantaneous interpretation remains largely evasive.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftn1" name="_ftnref" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[1]</span></a><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">Judith Butler’s “Gender Trouble” intersects with Peircian semiotics by applying the interpretive framework of socially constructed sign systems to the concept of gender. Butler shows how gender is different than sex and encompasses a moray of social mores, behaviors and values that are constructed as masculine or feminine and enacted through the performance of socially agreed upon signifiers of masculinity and femininity. Her work separates the concept of gender—a significant aspect of identity—from the body and deconstructs it, showing how gender itself is a semiotic construction reflecting communally agreed upon social signifiers.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftn2" name="_ftnref" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[2]</span></a> Still, Butler’s theory doesn’t explore in-depth the mechanism by which the interpretation of social signifiers occurs.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">Roland Barthes’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mythologies</i> provides the link that explores the mechanism by which instantaneous, subconscious, and socially agreed upon judgments—in Barthes’s words, the “what-goes-without-saying”—that occurs in the interpretive process.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftn3" name="_ftnref" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">[3]</span></a> These mythologies represent the cultural narrative constructed upon unspoken assumptions that are both the foundation for and the cause of the interpretations they produce. They both constitute and enable a socially constructed interpretation of signifiers. Finally, they embody the corpus of signifiers called upon to perform identity. Mythology, perception, and performance interact perpetually to produce meaning.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">Tara performs four semiotically constructed identities that explore alternative possibilities that are largely gendered and centered around the feminine ethic of care and the role of the mother. According to the premise of the show, Tara’s other personalities, or alters, compensate for Tara’s perceived deficiencies. Clinically, the development of dissociative personalities is theorized to derive from trauma, particularly violent or sexual trauma. The audience’s ready identification with a dissociative protagonist implies the correllation of trauma with socially imposed behavioral mores and proscribed roles—specifically those associated with gender and maternity. <o:p></o:p></div><div style="mso-element: footnote-list;"><br />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" /><div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftnref" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T08:22"></ins></span></span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftnref" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="msoIns">[1]</span></span></a><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T08:22"></ins></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:21"></ins></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span class="msoIns">Bergman, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Representationism and Presentationism</i></span></span></div></div><div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftnref" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:24"></ins></span></span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftnref" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="msoIns">[2]</span></span></a><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:24"></ins></span><br />
<span class="msoIns">Butler, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gen</i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">der Trouble</i></span></div></div><div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftnref" name="_ftn3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:25"></ins></span></span></a><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5755996997692116221#_ftnref" name="_ftn3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="msoIns">[3]</span></span></a><span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Desi%20Bradley" datetime="2010-01-29T09:25"></ins></span><br />
<span class="msoIns">Barthes, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mythologies</i>, 11</span></div></div></div><div style="mso-element: comment-list;"><hr align="left" class="msocomoff" size="1" width="33%" /><div style="mso-element: comment;"><div class="msocomtxt" id="_com_1" language="JavaScript" onmouseout="msoCommentHide('_com_1')" onmouseover="msoCommentShow('_anchor_1','_com_1')"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=5755996997692116221&postID=8257584976867931717" name="_msocom_1"></a> <br />
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</span></span></div></div></div><div style="mso-element: comment;"><div class="msocomtxt" id="_com_2" language="JavaScript" onmouseout="msoCommentHide('_com_2')" onmouseover="msoCommentShow('_anchor_2','_com_2')"></div></div></div>Desi Bradleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12811905079182711375noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5755996997692116221.post-35464044511831238952010-02-22T10:35:00.000-08:002010-03-08T14:13:12.124-08:00Nothing either good or bad, but Thinking makes it so...this post is currently a placeholder. holding spot for ingenious theorizing. whence stricken by the muse. <br />
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(me: "oh, muuuu--uuuse...!!!! masochistic student awaiting your puuuun-ish-meeent!!!!")<br />
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just to remind myself. ingenious blogging was in reference to phenomenology. as a reaction to war, uncertainties and fear of dis-unity. if a ghost visits the castle and demands vengeance from his son who vicariously then avenges his own oedipal urges...but that son isn't there to see it...does the ghost really appear?Desi Bradleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12811905079182711375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5755996997692116221.post-24005486249026395542010-02-10T20:38:00.001-08:002010-02-10T20:38:22.314-08:00mimetic musing: how far removed from reality<br>is a text-messaged blog post?Desi Bradleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12811905079182711375noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5755996997692116221.post-39013184353429342812010-01-30T11:11:00.000-08:002010-02-11T09:19:10.637-08:00If Residency is Optional...Perhaps I'll Choose Exile<div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Something tells me that Plato would've seriously objected to these guys hanging out up</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">in the Republic. Commentary in progress...</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">What I'm interested in here--beyond the obvious coolness of Bad Religion in general-are the following lines:</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">"So have the told you how to think</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Cleansed your mind of sepsis and autonomy?</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Or have you escaped from scrutiny</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">And regaled yourself with depravity?"</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I realize that Plato's Republic isn't so much about religion, </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">per se</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, as it is a sort of military complex-y type thing. But Plato may just be the original instigator of this notion of religion being the opiate of the masses, what with his certainty that all the stories one young citizen will hear about the gods will irrevocably shape his/her worldview and morality. Can't have any contaminating elements in the mix. And no autonomy. A citizen couldn't possibly make an intelligent and well-considered evaluation of some fictional mimesis about the gods. The solution? Revisionist poesy, of course! </span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; white-space: pre;"><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/u9SSP7e-eqg&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/u9SSP7e-eqg&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></span>Desi Bradleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12811905079182711375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5755996997692116221.post-34215520174896960862010-01-29T11:32:00.001-08:002010-01-29T11:38:29.898-08:00Mobile BloggingMobile Blogging...test 1 was a success. But it lacks one feature that I, personally, find Very Important: the ability to title one's posts! I must admit, I'm a bit of a title-whore. Titles are a little peepshow preview into the mind of the text. An opportunity to seduce the reader with promise of wit and wisdom. The place for a proper bit of word(fore)play. Like I said: Very Important. So I'm not sure I'll be doing very much Mobile Blogging.<br />
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By the way, this post was <i>originally</i> posted via my iPhone. I edited it later. To compensate for aforementioned shortcomings.Desi Bradleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12811905079182711375noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5755996997692116221.post-19150981704446901012010-01-28T18:39:00.000-08:002010-01-29T11:39:44.886-08:00And the Supercilious Conceit Award goes to...???Which is worse: Ion's naive hubris, or Socrates's passive-aggressive antagonism? They're both arrogant jerks, IMHO.<br />
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P.S. Yes, I get the point, Plato. The ability to either create or interpret poetry is a divine intervention, a gift from the Muse...not a skill. Was the whole song-and-dance <i><b>really</b></i> necessary?Desi Bradleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12811905079182711375noreply@blogger.com0