All of Western literature is but a retelling of Don Quixote

Re-reading Shaw's Arms and the Man, I'm struck by how familiar the story really is. It's the story of the confrontation between an Ideal and Reality.

I've read it in Don Quixote, in Madame Bovary, in Death of a Salesman, in M. Butterfly. I've seen it in Main Street, I've encountered it in Faulkner and Steinbeck. It's in "Dulce Et Decorum Est" and a lot of other war poetry. It's even in The French Lieutenant's Woman, though treated a bit differently. I suppose it pre-dates Cervantes: you can sense it in Chaucer. And if you want, you can add to the list of books about it.

Over and over we see these characters deluded with a fantasy, with an outrageous ideal, with a cherished image. And over and over again, we see the comic and tragic consequences when these characters are forced to face reality. I suppose it's a natural theme for literature, for made up stories.

Loving what you do

Next up in lit class, I get to teach Tony Harrison's "v." (probably my favorite 20th century poem) and David Henry Hwang's "M. Butterfly" (probably my favorite 20th century play).

I always look forward to exposing students to these works, but teaching literature you love can be a challenge. Lit classes thrive on discussion, so I have to resist turning class into a proselytizing lecture ("This is why this poem is so brilliant. Don't you get it!?!").

Nature and Nurture

In "Dolly's Fashion and Louis' Passion," Stephen Jay Gould argues that science is influenced by the whims of fashion, with particular emphasis on the nature/nurture dichotomy. Gould says that at various times, either genetic or environmental explanations for human identity and behavior are in fashion; during certain periods we emphasize genetics, during others we emphasize environment, and the pendulum swings back and forth.

Gould also argues that at the time he's writing (1997), biological explanations are in favor. I always consider this when reading articles about current science. Are we still in a period emphasizing genetics over environment? Generally, I think so: a lot of science articles I read in Time magazine focus on neurology, seeming to imply that all secrets to human identity and behavior are in the biochemistry of the brain. I expected the same when I saw this week's Time cover, featuring a graphic of a human brain, images of Gandhi and Hitler with lines leading to points within the brain image, and the headline "What Makes Us Good/Evil."

But Jeffrey Klugar's cover story "What Makes Us Moral" offers more complexity than that. Certainly there is discussion of parts of the brain. But there is also a section on how the community socially conditions morality onto individuals, and some of the explanations for aspects of human morality seem to stem from deep-rooted environmental influences.

Are we moving away from a period of genetic emphasis, where pharmaceuticals are used to solve our problems and we're all prisoners of our biology? Is the pendulum swinging toward environmental emphasis (where we can perhaps still be recognized as prisoners, but as Rene Gallimard says in M. Butterfly, prisoners of our place and time)?

Hey, one article in Time magazine isn't going to answer that question.

Saying the F word in class

In M. Buttefly, David Henry Hwang shows how stereotypes/fantasies about race, gender, and sex conflate with stereotypes/fantasies about nationality, culture, and imperialism. Today in lit class, I wished to highlight how flawed sexual attitudes/beliefs leads to flawed politics/foreign policy in the play. The key passage is Song's speech on "international rape mentality:"

"The West thinks of itself as masculine--big guns, big industry, big money--so the East is feminine-- [...] Her mouth says no, but her eyes say yes. The West believes the East, deep down, wants to be dominated--because a woman can't think for herself. [...] You expect Oriental countries to submit to your guns, and you expect Oriental women to be submissive to your men."

To illustrate the point, I noted how in our everday language, we often use terms for sex, violent sex, or rape to express something bad happening to us. I gave three examples: "I'm screwed," "You're really fucking me over," and "I'm not going to just bend over and take it." It made sense, contextually, to use the F word itself, as we were explicitly discussing language. To illustrate how common expressions we use include disturbing allusions, it did not seem useful to avoid the word itself.

Later in comp class, we were discussing advertising. We talked about advertising pushing limits, and a student brought up an ad that used words/letters to sound like swear words (to shock, get attention, etc.). I referred to one commercial that used a word and said it sounds like "fucking." In this case, the context made the usage less necessary, yet realizing I had said it earlier made me feel there was no reason to skirt the subject when teaching adults. There was a reason to say it, but it was entirely possible to discuss the matter without actually saying the word.

It's not that I see a reason as a teacher (or as a person) to use the word often, and I'm not up in front of class just flinging profanity about--when discussing it explicitly, in context, it seems acceptable. I've said other swear words in normal lecture/discussion in class ("hell" and "shit" come out very rarely), but the F word seems something different (which is what inspires me to write about it here.

Anyway, it appears I've become the stereotype I always aspired to be: the liberal long-haired anti-war vegetarian professor that says "fuck" in class.

The two most significant plays in American history

"Death of a Salesman," Arthur Miller
"You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away--a man is not a piece of fruit!" Willy Loman cries as he's getting fired. And in this line we see the dehumanization of capitalism. In "Death of a Salesman," Miller explores the marketplace value of humanity, where all that matters is what a man can produce and acquire, where the economic value of the man is seen as the whole value of the man...and what is lost in such a value system.

In various places, I get to see how economists and capitalists think. And I wish for them all to read "Death of a Salesman." I wish for us to see that human dignity matters more than marketplace capitalism, and that humans have value beyond their economic value. In a country where more and more economics define the value of a human, "Death of a Salesman" is the most necessary--and the most tragic--of American plays.

"M. Butterfly," David Henry Hwang
Everything is explored here. Race. Gender. Sex. Nationality. Stereotypes. Assumptions. Image. Perception. Power. No matter how many times I teach it, I still look forward to teaching it again. At one time I was asked what book every college student should read, and I said To Kill a Mockingbird. Today I say "M. Butterfly." There are ideas in this play that simply must be considered.

everything is everything

In M. Butterfly, David Henry Hwang explores power and prejudice of nationality, culture, race, gender, and sex. He never tries to create a hierarchy, order, or separation of these issues: they are constantly interweaving. The West perceives Asian culture as feminine, thus perceives Asian nations as feminine and able to be (even desiring to be) dominated. The West considers Asian men inferior because they are feminine. Asian women are considered submissive because they are women, and because they are Asian. Rene’s sexual “conquest” makes him seem a man of knowledge and power for political “conquest.” Constantly Hwang inverts these prejudices and reverses the power dynamic, but he never separates them.

There is interconnectedness of all things. In our nation, we can’t separate the problems of poverty from the problems of race, we can’t prioritize eliminating sexism over eliminating racism or vice versa, and we can’t separate the nature of power from money, gender, or race.

And I do not make the heavy moral separation between types of violence. I see relationships between terrorism and war, between individual violent acts and terrorism, between war and individual violent acts.

And I don’t see the murders at Virginia Tech as entirely separate from any of these. We must always abhor violence. We should work to eliminate war in any way, in the same way we should work to eliminate domestic violence in any way. We should work to eliminate terrorism and crime and state-sponsored torture and all of it. I do not separate vegetarianism entirely from pacifism: our violence against animals may be tied into our violence against people.

The shootings at Va Tech should rightly fill us with sadness and horror. So too should all violence fill us with horror.

M. Butterfly goes to White Castle

David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly is a masterful post-modern play. Hwang completely inverts the Madame Butterfly myth to subvert, expose, and destroy it.

Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle is a solid companion to Hwang's play. We begin with the inversion: what appears to be a typical white guy buddy movie gets abandoned as we follow the Asian-American "supporting" characters. But this becomes not so much an inversion, as every cliche of the raunchy buddy movie gets screen time, but these cliches are experienced by two Asian Americans (two Asian Americans seeking not something particular to their race, but simply seeking the same things any white, black, or other pot-smoking buddies seek in a buddy film). And as Harold and Kumar make their way to White Castle, they are essentially second-generation immigrants crossing the landscape of America: they confront members of an Asian American club that seem to fit the stereotype of the studious nerds, they deal with racist punks, they deal with the police, they deal with parental pressure. Throughout all sorts of racist and stereotypical words and images are shown...but now we are seeing them from the side of the Asian Americans who don't act remotely like any stereotype. They are simply young, high, hungry males--which is enough to show the ridiculousness of the stereotypes.

Stephen Holden of the NY Times wrote a solid review of the film (the Times has made the review very difficult to link to, so you can search for it yourself under "Reviews" on the Movie page). Holden begins,

The stoner, gross-out comedy ''Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle'' has one foot here and one foot there. The here is a politically savvy universe where the title characters, 22-year-old New Jersey roommates who are Chinese-American and Indian-American, puncture ethnic stereotypes. But the other foot is rutted knee deep in the muck of perpetual puerility according to Hollywood.

Holden's assessment is spot-on. There's subversion of stereotypes...and there's also Neil Patrick Harris sniffing coke off a stripper's ass. You laugh...but then you realize that you are able to laugh with the Asian Americans as they deal with the stereotypes that you may yourself occasionally hold (think Asians are smart? Good at math? Hard working? That Indians run convenience stores, or become doctors, scientists, or computer experts?)

In the end, M. Butterfly is far out of Harold and Kumar's league. Hwang is a first-rate playwright. But Harold and Kumar are reaching an audience that Hwang might not.

Genius in Art

In the Bakhtin post below, I borrowed from Bakhtin's ideas to suggest one of the signs of genius in an artist is the ability to penetrate the souls of others. To examine and understand and show the psyche of one outside the self.

I would suggest another sign of genius in the artist--the ability to interlock themes so closely that to discuss them separately is pointless.

In David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly, Hwang explores the stereotype of submissiveness. When I teach this play, I write that on the board in capital letters: Stereotype of Submissiveness. It could be a simple theme, I suppose. In Hwang's skillful hands, though, it is extremely complicated. You cannot separate issues of sex, gender, race, culture, and nation from a discussion of this stereotype. Hwang develops the relationships between these topics tightly. You cannot in any meaningful way discuss one without the other. Hwang also uses his considerable skill to examine how art, culture, and fantasy contribute to this stereotype of submissiveness, and then shows the devestating effects.

You can't peel a theme away from others in M. Butterfly; Hwang too closely connects them.

I see similar interlocking in Morrison's The Bluest Eye (though a certain level of cause-effect relationships between these themes makes them less interlocking and more, I don't know, cause-effect related).

Perhaps this interlocking is what can make a political or social work of art truly great. To make insightful connections, and present them in a personalized, humanized way (nobody does this better than David Mura in Where the Body Meets Memory: an Odyssey of Race, Sexuality, and Identity, where Mura makes an incredible connection between his own sexual addiction and the Japanese internment camps).