Summary for Post 2

Greetings, all--

I'm so pleased with all the posts this round. Here's a digest:

Dharmik mentions Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling for the national anthem (an act that perhaps recalls and plays on Tim Tebow’s kneeling). I think that’s an excellent example. Kaepernick apparently got the idea from a war vet, who suggested kneeling as a respectful mode of dissent. In this light, kneeling is still a gesture of homage—but with a slant, a marked difference from the norm. You could certainly frame the huge debate/conversation/movement that sprang up in response as a performative result of Kaepernick’s gesture. Dharmik also poses some ethical questions about how we as actors rely on and play into gender norms. Check it out.

Mark relates an act of minor defacement of a stop-sign (from “STOP” to “STOP eating animals”), one that with subsequent modifications became a mini-conversation about social messages, vandalism, and parody. (As you’ll see the theme of parody and ironic commentary is a running theme across many posts.) Fun stuff. Also we learn that Mark has a thing against bran muffins.

Erica shares an awesome story (with pics and videos) of her mom protesting Vice-President Pence. She’s part of a protest where participants wear costumes from the television adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale. A dystopian scenario of a near-future where fertile women are enslaved and their reproductive freedom denied, Handmaid’s Tale gets invoked in this protest as both warning (this is what could happen here) and denunciation (it better not happen here). I mean, this isn’t LARP-ing, right? The protesters aren’t doing cosplay as fans; they’re occupying and re-directing the signifier of “handmaiden” as a loud, rambunctious (scholar Sara Ahmed would call it “willful”) protest. Awesome!

Mike gives us a couple of different examples from pop culture—Dos Equis commercials to Spaceballs, with Adam Sandler in between. The Sandler, of course, is the movie I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, where Sandler and Kevin James play uber-straight guys who get married to reap the benefits of marriage—all while maintaining the stereotypical straight male’s disgust/fear of being seen as gay (or “like a woman,” really—there’s a famous saying to the effect of “homophobia = misogyny in drag”). So—on the one hand this is a film that plays on gay panic, i.e., the dramatic irony of “people think they’re gay—but they’re totally not!!! HILARIOUS.” It likely does so while also insisting that it’s really about tolerance (we’re just being ironic, we have sympathetic gay characters, the protagonists learn to be accepting, the comedy pokes fun at “real” homophobes, etc.). But in another way, the plot also unintentionally echoes some critiques launched by various queer theorists (including Butler) about what we gain and lose when “gay marriage” becomes the be-all/end-all for LGBTQ political action. Legal marriage in the USA confers a great many benefits (insurance, tax breaks, green cards, etc.). That is, a great many life-enhancing benefits in the USA require that you be married in order to access them easily. If I have a chronic illness but crappy health insurance, why wouldn’t I want to get fake-married to a willing spouse with excellent insurance and spousal benefits? Or, more deeply, why should legal marriage be a prerequisite for life-and-death things like health care, citizenship, pension, and so forth? In presenting marriage as a cynical ploy for benefits, in other words, the movie could be seen as criticizing why the state sees fit to restrict multiple life-enhancing benefits to those who get married. Chuck and Larry aren’t misusing marriage. By turning marriage into an entry ticket for a world of benefits (benefits that, in a better society, everyone would enjoy), the US has already turned marriage into a cynical affair of elite privilege. At least—that’d be a possible queer reading of the film.

Andréa gives a cool, informed reading of a famous statue commemorating the “foot soldiers” of the civil rights era. The subject of the photograph on whom the statue is based objects to the way he and his image have been mythologized into something he’s not. Andréa links this artistic mythologization to Suzan-Lori Park’s description of her historical plays as “re-membering” history, making the past live and breathe in the present. Yet no representation of the past—on stage, on the page, or in art—is a perfect recreation. “History” is the story (the plot, really) we tell about past events, not the past events themselves. That’s not to say that there are some histories more accurate/reliable than others or that the actual past doesn’t matter. But it is to point out that every historian or artist who re-members the past has a filter operating about what to include, what to exclude, what to focus on, and how to arrange/present it. The writing of history (historiography) is a performative act. As such, it reiterates the past in ways that alter slightly (or greatly) the “actual” past. Think about that whenever you encounter a play about the past.

In a similar vein, I highly recommend Sarah’s post about past and present moments of protest, oppression, and freedom in Uganda and South Africa. She combines a reading of her relative’s nostalgia for a past (even though, from a present POV that past was defined by oppressive/colonialist dynamics) with a reading of some present-day students’ dissatisfaction with how the present has failed to live up to past revolutionary promises. Sarah writes, “Butler makes the observation that freedom is created and exists within the moment of its manifestation – but this does not mean that a manifested freedom is a successful one.” It’s complicated to try to summarize; read it for yourself.

Lisa solidifies the popularity of Spaceballs among this MFA class, providing an in-depth reading of how Mel Brooks tweaks various archetypes in George Lucas’s original. Given that Lucas intends many of his images to invoke/recall specific historical/cultural realities, Brooks’s tweaking necessarily tweaks those realities. Brooks, of course, is no stranger to tweaking cultural/historical icons; witness Springtime for Hitler. Lisa makes me curious, though, about what it might mean to bypass Star Wars iconography in favor of Spaceballs when painting, say, our current president as an evil overlord. Presenting Trump (or any sitting President) as Darth Vader is one thing; presenting a president as Dark Helmet is another.

Emily relates a different kind of tweak—Monty Python’s tweak of the passion narrative in The Life of Bryan. I hadn’t known about the movie’s history or its subsequent controversy. Fascinating. If you’re interested, scholar Henry Bial recently wrote a book called Playing God (available online from our library). There he chronicles the surprisingly dicey history of Broadway plays that portray God as a character. It used to be flat-out illegal to do so and still remains a vexed gesture. He points out that, in presenting a God (or Jesus), you’re not just making a joke; you’re making a theological statement. I wonder, is this can’t-help-but-be-bigger-than-you-intend quality present in other kinds of representation?

Austin references Borat, specifically the part where Sacha Baron Cohen’s character attends a rodeo and sings—not “The Star-Spangled Banner” but—what the movie portrays as the Kazakh national anthem (a parody creation, of course, with lyrics about how much potassium the nation produces and how clean its prostitutes are). The movie was widely praised (91% on Rotten Tomatoes); most of the lawsuits against it by duped parties portrayed in the film were dismissed. It’s worth noting, however, that in his pursuit of a sly critique of USAmerican culture/views/values (including racism, homophobia, and xenophobia), Cohen angered not just Americans but also actual people from Kazakhstan. Now, I’m sure the creators of Borat did not intend any real offense. But, as we’ve discussed, representation’s effects don’t always align with our best intentions. In 2012, a Kazakh woman, Mariya Dmitriyenko, won the Amir of Kuwait International Shooting Grand Prix (a sports shooting event). Standing on the platform during the ceremony, she was dismayed to hear not her country’s anthem but the Borat parody (which the event’s organizers had accidentally downloaded). The ceremony was restaged with the right anthem. As we’ve seen with the other parodic tweaks, irony’s a tricky animal. It always runs the risk of being missed, taken at face value rather than as a tongue-in-cheek gesture.  

That's it for this week! Keep the posts and comments comin'.

John