Rhetoric in Popular Culture

Oftentimes when we think of the term “rhetoric” we envision a politician giving a speech trying to persuade us of something. Though we are correct to connect the term rhetoric with an effort to persuade us of something, this view of rhetorical speaking can be extremely limiting. Examples of rhetorical speech abound in our everyday lives and may be found in everything from newspaper editorials to product advertisements to eulogies. Familiarizing ourselves with the objectives and technicalities of rhetoric can assist us in being more able to spot rhetoric, allowing us deliberate more carefully issues presented for our consideration.
In the classic tome Rhetoric, Aristotle defines rhetoric as “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion’ (Bizzell 181.) Within this theory he distinguishes the various types of rhetorical speaking into three distinct classifications 1) forensic (attacking or defending someone for a past deed), 2) deliberative/political (arguing for or against a future action to be pursued) and 3) ceremonial (presently praising or censuring someone). Aristotle also indicates that there are three general types of appeals by which a rhetor may persuade their audience, by relying on the ethos or credibility of the speaker, logos, an appeal to the audience’s logic and pathos an appeal to the audience’s emotion.
The final scene of the film version of “The Taming of the Shrew” offers many layers of rhetorical speech, a few of which will be highlighted for this discussion. Katherine speaks to the congregants of the royal banquet hall on the subject of female obedience by using forensic, political and ceremonial speech to make her case and reach the varied stations of the assembled audience within the hall. She uses forensic speech to shame the other wives for their inappropriate behavior and ceremonial speech to promote the character of the husband – hers specifically, but the ideal of husband in general. She also uses political or deliberative speech to promote the cause of wifely subservience. This public shaming by Kate reveals her ethos or credibility to the audience by reminding them of her own past behavior. This is reinforced when she describes how she has had a change of heart, that she has finally stopped acting against her soft nature. She publicly demonstrates her husband’s dominance over her by allowing him to place his foot on her hand. These acts may be read as sincere or exaggerated – dependent upon the audience.
Kate’s appeal to logos, or the logic of her audience is significant for the use of language. She uses terminology and examples that relate to war and weaponry. The character also compares the marital relationship to the interchange between a monarch and his subjects, saying “Such duty the subject owes the prince, even such a woman owes her husband.” This analogy is effective for two reasons – it is relatable to the audience who are participants in the relationship between subject and monarch, but also because it uses the enthymeme. By definition an enthymeme is a three part deductive argument in which one part of the argument is left unstated but assumed to be true. Though Kate does not refer to it in her speech it was the belief that God had created people and their institutions, both personal and governmental. Kings were placed upon the throne by “divine right” - that they had been chosen by God and that their earthly authority was the will of God. Though not directly addressed in this speech is the assumption that the institution of marriage was also designed by god, and that husbands were given the same responsibility and authority over wives that monarchs were granted over their subjects. It also relates the seriousness of wifely disobedience to a criminal offense by making it comparable to treason.
Casablanca is another film which illustrates many of the ideals of rhetoric outlined by Aristotle. In the scene, Rick is trying to convince Ilsa to board the plane for Lisbon with her husband. He uses several Aristotelian devices in his attempt to persuade her. In the very first lines of the scene he reminds her “Last night you said I was to do the thinking for both of us.” This line establishes Rick as the voice of Ethos, because Ilsa has already given him the authority as decision maker. He then appeals to her logic by reminding her that if they stayed “9 chances out of 10 they would end up in a concentration camp”. This assertion is corroborated by a peripheral character, Louis – which again helps to reinforce Rick’s credibility and correctness in judgment. He further appeals to Ilsa’s pathos by reminding her of her responsibility to stay with her husband “to keep him going,” as well as introducing the sentiment of regret if she fails to go with her husband. Rick again emphasizes his nobility and sincerity by refusing to compare the romatic trivialities of three people to the tumult of a war torn world.
These two examples from classic films illustrate rhetorical speech, sharing the objective of persuasion. The rhetors portrayed attempt to demonstrate (the appearance of) sincerity and tailor their arguments to their specific audience, whether to a roomful of hearers or a single judge. Both characters called upon proofs that were suitable and relatable to those they were trying to convince. Aristotle’s model of rhetorical theory has been satisfied in distinctly different ways, relying upon the nuances of language and delivery to reach the ultimate goal of persuasion.

Formalist Influence on American Modernism and Modern America

American writers in the first half of the twentieth century were faced with a world of uncertainty, alienation and a departure from traditional belief systems. They literally lived within a social and economic “Wasteland” brought on by an era of rapid industrialization and shifting social and political conventions. They were impacted by philosophical questioning and reframing of fundamental belief systems in every field by people like Nietzsche, Darwin and Marx. These modernist writers struggled to confront this rapidly changing landscape, which was marked by these radical shifts in thought and behavior, but also by the profoundly shaping events of two world wars and a depression. These devastating events and intense social and cultural shifts left writers to chronicle the despair and alienation which was experienced as a result. Authors and poets were equally challenged to rethink or reconsider the purpose and significance of their field of discipline as well. Writers of this era began to experiment with the use of language with a two fold mission: to carefully consider the purposeof their art, not only in using it to entertain or creating a cathartic experience, but using their texts as active agents to effect change and renew optimism, by shaping readers ability to perceive or experience.
In the 1930’s American author John Dos Passos authored a series of novels which would become know as the U.S.A. Trilogy in which he explored social and political ideas and conventions, but he did so while using the words and the various styles of language to actively engage the reader, forcing the reader’s attentiveness to the details of both the technicalities of the written word presented on the page, while prompting the reader to consider the intent and veracity of those very words.
The very first page of the novel The Big Money suggests to the reader that they must be observant of the use of language in this novel, as in the sentence “He began to feel cold and sick and got back to the bunk and pulled the stillwarm covers up to his chin” (Dos Passos 1). Throughout the novels in the trilogy, Dos Passos regularly uses this form of collapsing language – compounding words that are not traditionally combined - to draw attention to the actual words and highlight their meanings and implications. In his essay, “Art as Technique” Viktor Shklovsky argued against the ease with which people pass over words and the concepts that they convey. He pointed that the problem was “Complete words are not expressed in rapid speech; their initial sounds are barely perceived” (Shklovsky 15) The casual ease of dismissal of language and the ideas it represents was troubling to the group of literary critics known as the Russian School on Formalism. They recognized the danger in becoming immune to language through overexposure. Shklovsky wrote that “Habitualization devours work, clothes, furniture, one’s wife and fear of war” (Shklovsky). He implied the danger of losing the experience of perception is not limited to small objects or trivial concerns, but is an all encompassing threat which distorts the reader’s ability to receive and process. He promoted the technique of “defamiliarization” or making a familiar object seem new and strange. He suggested that “A work is created “artisitically” so that its perception is impeded and the greatest possible effect is produced through the slowness of the perception” (Shklovsky 19).
By collapsing words Dos Passos aimed to slow the reader’s sense of perception, causing them to focus more carefully on the individual words and their implications –emphasizing the importance of what they represent. In the example of word collapsing from page one of the novel, the significance of the words collapsed is not great, but serves to prepare the reader for the use of experimentation in language present throughout the body of the series. Other examples within the trilogy indicate a desire to draw attention not only to the subject of the passage, but also the mode of representation. In the excerpt “The Body of an American” Dos Passos collapses longer grouping of words and the frequency of collapsed words is so densely employed in the passage as to foreground the language. He successfully draws the reader’s eye to the page and pricks the consciousness. The passage reads:
“Whereasthe Congressoftheunitedstates by aconcurrentresolutioadoptedon
the4thdayofmarch lastauthorizedthe Secretaryofwar to cause to be
brought to the unitedstatesthe bodyofan
americanwhowasamemberoftheamericanexpeditionaryforcesineuropre
wholosthislifeduringtheworldwarandhisidentityhas
notbeenestablished for burial in the memorialampitheatreofthenational-cemetaryatarlingtonvirginia.” (Dos Passos, Heath 1676).
This section is very difficult to cipher and requires concerted effort on the part of the reader to separate words to reveal the meaning. The fluidity of the phrases also indicates an automatism and callousness of an announcement of this nature devoid of emotion or respectful personalization. Shklovsky made a point of indicating how people can become defamiliarized from the trivial to the profound like the “fear of war” and its horrific results, and these lines certainly convey that.
The segment from “The Body of an American” is also a helpful example in illustrating the stratification of language used by different segments of society. The language is identifiable as a professional stratification, but even within the designation of professional, the jargon is specifically characteristic of “officialese.” Officialese is defined as “the pompous, wordy, and involved language typical of official communications and reports.” (officialese, 1). Another use of professional language within the text is the term “Taylorism” which is the scientific management of engineering production which achieves the optimum level of efficiency possible. This use of language is impactful within the body of the novel because it effects characters and plots in pursuit of the capitalistic ideal.
The format of the novels is broken up into four types: narratives, biographies, Camera Eye and Newsreels. Dos Passos demonstrated the heteroglossia which Mikhail Bakhtin discussed in “Discourse in the Novel”, by expressing several different types of language coexisisting within the novel as spoken by various characters through their narratives. Dividing the novel in this way allowed Dos Passos to explore a multitude of language styles and varied forms of professional language (which has been discussed), journalistic, stream of conciousness, and slang. Dos Passos uses each of these varied forms to critique social ideology with which he disagreed.
The portions of the novel entitled “Camera Eye” employ stream of consciousness, which was a fairly new literary technique in the 1930’s. The first examples of this type of writing appear around 1915 in a series of novels by Dorothy Richardson, and the technique was also used by writers like Joyce, Woolf and Faulkner. It is clear though, that Dos Passos pioneering use of this technique was meant as yet another method of defamiliarizing or revisioning events and ideologies to help the reader gain a different perspective. Stream of consciousness method was presented in concert with the narratives and biographies to emphasize elements within the novel. But the stream of consciousness episodes also “implicate the narrator in the narrative, serving to underscore his moral commitment to the act of writing” (Doctorow X).
The Newsreels, as mentioned above helped set the tone, incorporating events significant to the live of the characters or the propulsion of the plot line. The story line of Charley Anderson who is involved in Florida real estate is validated, as the headlines from Newsreel LXI tout “TOWN SITE OF JUPITER SOLD FOR TEN MILLION DOLLARS” AND “like Alladin with his magic lamp, the Capitalist, the Investor and the Builder converted what was once a desolate swamp into a wonderful city with a network of glistening boulevards” (Dos Passos 272). These headlines take on special meaning for the reader who has learned that these real estate dealings are tainted by political corruption and price manipulation. He used lyrics from songs or advertisements to chronicle shifting social attitudes and set the tone for the text. They were also used by Dos Passos as indicative of the sensationalistic and sometimes false information which was disseminated as credible news. Again the various sections of the novel work together to help the reader gain knowledge which enables them to realize a sense of unreliability and artifice which is present in the newspapers, forcing the reader to question what certain images or words signify to them rather than simply accepting what they are exposed to.
The ideas which Shklovsky posited, which had an incredible impact on the writing of modernist writers including Dos Passos are still pertinent today. The modern equivalent of habitualization could be desensitization. It is common to hear people complaining about the children being desensitized to violence on television and through exposure to television programming, but we find these effects everywhere in our day to day lives. In “The Body of an American” Dos Passos chose to explore a most significant and grievous situation, the death of a soldier protecting his country. Today, as our country is involved in wars in two different countries we face similar situations of returning fallen soldiers. During the administration of President George W. Bush photographic images of the returning coffins were banned. There was a great outcry by many Americans who argued that failing to make these images available made the deaths of these soldiers an abstract concept, making it difficult to understand the ultimate price of war quantified by. The issue was revisited when President Obama assumed the presidency in 2009, and the ban was repealed. Media outlets clamored to photograph and publish the first images of the coffins carrying the bodies of Americans, but as the weeks went by the demand for and publication of such photos has diminished greatly.
It is necessary in defamiliariztion to continually innovate new techniques or develop new methods which will again heighten the perceptive ability of the reader or audience. This progression is evident especially in the entertainment industry which has continually pushed against standards in television, feature films and publishing, We are a media and information based society which is constantly exposed to ever increasing methods intended to shock and unsettle. This ratcheting up of images and actions with the intent of capturing attention can be seen all around us from clothing advertisements to music lyrics advocating sexual experimentation. The most extreme image of this intentionally provocative and unsettling in recent memory was the videotaped beheading of American of a young American man in 2004. Despite its shocking nature and profoundly disturbing nature, this incredibly heinous act is something that easily passes out of our consciousness as we move on with our day today routines. Just as the body of the young soldier described in “The Body of an American” the young man’s experience and his identity is lost to us. Do you remember his name?

Did it prick your conciousness?

Nick Berg - Murdered May 7 2004

Works Cited
Bakhtin, Mikhail. “Discourse in the Novel.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Rivkin. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. 674-685.
Dos Pasosos, John. The Big Money. Boston: Mariner Books. 1933.

Dos Passos, John. “The Body of an American.” The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Vol. D. Ed. Paul Lauter. Boston: Houghton, 2006. 1676-1680.
“Officialese” . 11 May 2009.
Shklovsky, Viktor. “Art as Technique.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Rivkin. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. 15-21.

Formalism in American Modernism and Modern America

American writers in the first half of the twentieth century were faced with a world of uncertainty, alienation and a departure from traditional belief systems. They literally lived within a social and economic “Wasteland” brought on by an era of rapid industrialization and shifting social and political conventions. They were impacted by philosophical questioning and reframing of fundamental belief systems in every field by people like Nietzsche, Darwin and Marx. These modernist writers struggled to confront this rapidly changing landscape, which was marked by these radical shifts in thought and behavior, but also by the profoundly shaping events of two world wars and a depression. These devastating events and intense social and cultural shifts left writers to chronicle the despair and alienation which was experienced as a result. Authors and poets were equally challenged to rethink or reconsider the purpose and significance of their field of discipline as well. Writers of this era began to experiment with the use of language with a two fold mission: to carefully consider the purposeof their art, not only in using it to entertain or creating a cathartic experience, but using their texts as active agents to effect change and renew optimism, by shaping readers ability to perceive or experience.
In the 1930’s American author John Dos Passos authored a series of novels which would become know as the U.S.A. Trilogy in which he explored social and political ideas and conventions, but he did so while using the words and the various styles of language to actively engage the reader, forcing the reader’s attentiveness to the details of both the technicalities of the written word presented on the page, while prompting the reader to consider the intent and veracity of those very words.
The very first page of the novel The Big Money suggests to the reader that they must be observant of the use of language in this novel, as in the sentence “He began to feel cold and sick and got back to the bunk and pulled the stillwarm covers up to his chin” (Dos Passos 1). Throughout the novels in the trilogy, Dos Passos regularly uses this form of collapsing language – compounding words that are not traditionally combined - to draw attention to the actual words and highlight their meanings and implications. In his essay, “Art as Technique” Viktor Shklovsky argued against the ease with which people pass over words and the concepts that they convey. He pointed that the problem was “Complete words are not expressed in rapid speech; their initial sounds are barely perceived” (Shklovsky 15) The casual ease of dismissal of language and the ideas it represents was troubling to the group of literary critics known as the Russian School on Formalism. They recognized the danger in becoming immune to language through overexposure. Shklovsky wrote that “Habitualization devours work, clothes, furniture, one’s wife and fear of war” (Shklovsky). He implied the danger of losing the experience of perception is not limited to small objects or trivial concerns, but is an all encompassing threat which distorts the reader’s ability to receive and process. He promoted the technique of “defamiliarization” or making a familiar object seem new and strange. He suggested that “A work is created “artisitically” so that its perception is impeded and the greatest possible effect is produced through the slowness of the perception” (Shklovsky 19).
By collapsing words Dos Passos aimed to slow the reader’s sense of perception, causing them to focus more carefully on the individual words and their implications –emphasizing the importance of what they represent. In the example of word collapsing from page one of the novel, the significance of the words collapsed is not great, but serves to prepare the reader for the use of experimentation in language present throughout the body of the series. Other examples within the trilogy indicate a desire to draw attention not only to the subject of the passage, but also the mode of representation. In the excerpt “The Body of an American” Dos Passos collapses longer grouping of words and the frequency of collapsed words is so densely employed in the passage as to foreground the language. He successfully draws the reader’s eye to the page and pricks the consciousness. The passage reads:
“Whereasthe Congressoftheunitedstates by aconcurrentresolutioadoptedon
the4thdayofmarch lastauthorizedthe Secretaryofwar to cause to be
brought to the unitedstatesthe bodyofan
americanwhowasamemberoftheamericanexpeditionaryforcesineuropre
wholosthislifeduringtheworldwarandhisidentityhas
notbeenestablished for burial in the memorialampitheatreofthenational-cemetaryatarlingtonvirginia.” (Dos Passos, Heath 1676).
This section is very difficult to cipher and requires concerted effort on the part of the reader to separate words to reveal the meaning. The fluidity of the phrases also indicates an automatism and callousness of an announcement of this nature devoid of emotion or respectful personalization. Shklovsky made a point of indicating how people can become defamiliarized from the trivial to the profound like the “fear of war” and its horrific results, and these lines certainly convey that.
The segment from “The Body of an American” is also a helpful example in illustrating the stratification of language used by different segments of society. The language is identifiable as a professional stratification, but even within the designation of professional, the jargon is specifically characteristic of “officialese.” Officialese is defined as “the pompous, wordy, and involved language typical of official communications and reports.” (officialese, 1). Another use of professional language within the text is the term “Taylorism” which is the scientific management of engineering production which achieves the optimum level of efficiency possible. This use of language is impactful within the body of the novel because it effects characters and plots in pursuit of the capitalistic ideal.
The format of the novels is broken up into four types: narratives, biographies, Camera Eye and Newsreels. Dos Passos demonstrated the heteroglossia which Mikhail Bakhtin discussed in “Discourse in the Novel”, by expressing several different types of language coexisisting within the novel as spoken by various characters through their narratives. Dividing the novel in this way allowed Dos Passos to explore a multitude of language styles and varied forms of professional language (which has been discussed), journalistic, stream of conciousness, and slang. Dos Passos uses each of these varied forms to critique social ideology with which he disagreed.
The portions of the novel entitled “Camera Eye” employ stream of consciousness, which was a fairly new literary technique in the 1930’s. The first examples of this type of writing appear around 1915 in a series of novels by Dorothy Richardson, and the technique was also used by writers like Joyce, Woolf and Faulkner. It is clear though, that Dos Passos pioneering use of this technique was meant as yet another method of defamiliarizing or revisioning events and ideologies to help the reader gain a different perspective. Stream of consciousness method was presented in concert with the narratives and biographies to emphasize elements within the novel. But the stream of consciousness episodes also “implicate the narrator in the narrative, serving to underscore his moral commitment to the act of writing” (Doctorow X).
The Newsreels, as mentioned above helped set the tone, incorporating events significant to the live of the characters or the propulsion of the plot line. The story line of Charley Anderson who is involved in Florida real estate is validated, as the headlines from Newsreel LXI tout “TOWN SITE OF JUPITER SOLD FOR TEN MILLION DOLLARS” AND “like Alladin with his magic lamp, the Capitalist, the Investor and the Builder converted what was once a desolate swamp into a wonderful city with a network of glistening boulevards” (Dos Passos 272). These headlines take on special meaning for the reader who has learned that these real estate dealings are tainted by political corruption and price manipulation. He used lyrics from songs or advertisements to chronicle shifting social attitudes and set the tone for the text. They were also used by Dos Passos as indicative of the sensationalistic and sometimes false information which was disseminated as credible news. Again the various sections of the novel work together to help the reader gain knowledge which enables them to realize a sense of unreliability and artifice which is present in the newspapers, forcing the reader to question what certain images or words signify to them rather than simply accepting what they are exposed to.
The ideas which Shklovsky posited, which had an incredible impact on the writing of modernist writers including Dos Passos are still pertinent today. The modern equivalent of habitualization could be desensitization. It is common to hear people complaining about the children being desensitized to violence on television and through exposure to television programming, but we find these effects everywhere in our day to day lives. In “The Body of an American” Dos Passos chose to explore a most significant and grievous situation, the death of a soldier protecting his country. Today, as our country is involved in wars in two different countries we face similar situations of returning fallen soldiers. During the administration of President George W. Bush photographic images of the returning coffins were banned. There was a great outcry by many Americans who argued that failing to make these images available made the deaths of these soldiers an abstract concept, making it difficult to understand the ultimate price of war quantified by. The issue was revisited when President Obama assumed the presidency in 2009, and the ban was repealed. Media outlets clamored to photograph and publish the first images of the coffins carrying the bodies of Americans, but as the weeks went by the demand for and publication of such photos has diminished greatly.
It is necessary in defamiliariztion to continually innovate new techniques or develop new methods which will again heighten the perceptive ability of the reader or audience. This progression is evident especially in the entertainment industry which has continually pushed against standards in television, feature films and publishing, We are a media and information based society which is constantly exposed to ever increasing methods intended to shock and unsettle. This ratcheting up of images and actions with the intent of capturing attention can be seen all around us from clothing advertisements to music lyrics advocating sexual experimentation. The most extreme image of this intentionally provocative and unsettling in recent memory was the videotaped beheading of American of a young American man in 2004. Despite its shocking nature and profoundly disturbing nature, this incredibly heinous act is something that easily passes out of our consciousness as we move on with our day today routines. Just as the body of the young soldier described in “The Body of an American” the young man’s experience and his identity is lost to us. Do you remember his name?

Works Cited
Bakhtin, Mikhail. “Discourse in the Novel.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Rivkin. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. 674-685.
Dos Pasosos, John. The Big Money. Boston: Mariner Books. 1933.

Dos Passos, John. “The Body of an American.” The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Vol. D. Ed. Paul Lauter. Boston: Houghton, 2006. 1676-1680.
“Officialese” . 11 May 2009.
Shklovsky, Viktor. “Art as Technique.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Rivkin. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. 15-21.

"Yep, I'm Gay" Sexuality Identity and Confession

In “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” Judith Butler explores the notion of sexuality, by stating that “compulsory heterosexuality sets itself up as the original, the true, the authentic” (Rivkin and Ryan 722). In 1987 the television sitcom “Ellen” starring Ellen Degeneres featured the character of Ellen Morgan. Morgan was a likable young woman struggling to define herself in many aspects of her life. The show regularly focused on social relationships and workplace experiences. One element featured in the show were the regular pressures the character faced to date, “find a good man,” and become involved in a romantic relationship. This sense of “compulsory heterosexuality” was resultant from societal and familial pressures upon the title character – but also from within herself. Butler’s assertion that sexuality is performative was reflected by the character’s earliest presentation in the series which featured her wearing make-up, a softer hairstyle and more feminine clothing choices.
Throughout the course of the show, Ellen Morgan became more frustrated with the challenge of trying to find a relationship, and more overwhelmed and by the constant pressure to meet up to societal ideals. Butler would argue that the Ellen’s attempt to fit into the heterosexual ideal “is always the process of imitating and approximating its own phantasmic idealization of self-and failing” (Wexler 2) Ellen’s romantic relationships were bound to fail because she was not being true to herself, and was allowing socially constructed ideas of normative behavior to define her identity.
In History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault examined the different cultural perceptions of sexuality and how they were framed in both religious and scientific terms. Foucault discussed the notion of “unnatural” sexuality being sinful, and later the need to confess evolving out of a religious act into a need for processing identity through speech and self acknowledgement. In the following scene from season four, Ellen is recalling a dream she had in which the lesbian references and stereotypes are abundant. Her desire to conform is so strong that she is only able to access her true identity during a subconscious dream state. Though the scene is constructed in an entertaining way, Foucault would recognize this as Ellen’s desire to not only hide her true desires from society, but also – more poignantly, from herself.

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Several times during the scene Ellen is referred to as a gay woman or lesbian. As she begins to take on this identity, she is no longer described as simply a person or a woman, but as a gay woman or lesbian. Foucault wrote that those who assumed or declared their identity as anything disparate from the norm, became the other – “The ‘perverse’ became a group, instead of an attribute,” (Wexler 2) in fact, Foucault went so far as to say that these “others” were so separate that they were actually viewed as a separate “species.”
The scene concludes with Ellen turning to the mental health provider for clarification or validation of her obvious desires. Foucault believed that the science of sexuality was instituted as a way of ordering or regulating “other” sexual behavior. But in this process, the individual who struggles with their sexual identity may finally voice or confess their true desires, and in doing so, the dirty shameful secret of “other” sexuality loses its taboo and stigma.

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The notion that talking about sexuality causes it to lose its power is validated by the groundbreaking decision of the writers of the comedy series to confront the struggles of a featured character not only being gay, but inviting the viewer to accompany the character along on the search for identity. In 1987, homosexuality was rarely referenced on episodic television, and no regular featured characters were depicted as gay, and in little over twenty years it is easy to point to multiple examples of gay characters and exploration of homosexual issues on shows like Friends, Brothers and Sisters, Will and Grace and Grey’s Anatomy. This representation of homosexuality in a more personalized form helped many viewers to challenge their constructed views of lesbian and gay men as something more that "other", allowing them to challenge their own ideas about identity and sexuality.

Works cited - under construction.

Michel Foucault and Self Imprisonment in The Handmaid's Tale

Michel Foucault’s “Discipline and Punish” provides an example of a city whose viability has been challenged by a natural disaster (plague). This situation, which could potentially result in chaos and disorder, offers agency for the government to assume total control of its populous – while acting in the guise of protector. This scenario is similar in many ways to the systemic domination and subjugation of the citizenry described in Margaret Atwood’s novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale.” In this story, governmental chaos and natural catastrophes serve as a catalyst for a group of extreme religious fundamentalists to overtake the United States government. The newly formed government then makes sweeping changes to law and effects societal conventions.
Foucault’s text examined the power structure in society. In his Panopticon example he outlined the necessary modalities for effecting individuals to become prisoners internally, monitored and controlled by their own sense of control and discipline. He described four practices –establishment of a power hierarchy segregation, training, and military surveillance which may be seen illustrated in The Handmaid’s Tale. In the novel, the citizenry is divided into hierarchical groups and labeled – Wives, Commanders, Guardians, Handmaids, etc. These characters are designated by title and also by specific wardrobe which serve as constant reminders of their position and power level in the society envisioned in the fictional Republic of Gilead. The handmaid, who serves as narrator in the novel, describes the practice of separating the segment of society to which she belongs – essentially alienating them. The women, proven childbearers, are culled and then taken to “Red Centers” where they are then indoctrinated into their new purpose. These practices provide “the great confinement on the one hand; the correct training on the other” (Foucault 553). The handmaids are then subject to regular medical examinations and rituals which regularly reinforce their position in the new society and insinuate a global control over the lives of the handmaids. The handmaid’s are also aware of the ever-present “Eyes,” governmental spies, whose purpose is to reveal illicit behavior which is punishable by torture or death. This constant state of fear reaffirms the notion that “each individual is fixed in his place. And, if he moves, he does so at the risk of his life…or punishment” (Foucault 551).
The layered control and loss of individuality by those who are controlled by such a power structure lose any sense of agency and therefore lose any internal drive to fight against the oppressive structure or control. Foucault wrote that “he who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power… becomes the principle of his own subjection.” This notion of inability to effect control can be seen in the character of handmaid Offred who has several opportunities to shape her outcome (by spying for the resistance movement, stealing a weapon and using it to defend herself or escape, etc.), but her sense of self and power has been so meticulously diminished that she becomes complicit in her subjugation.

Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale. New York: Random, 1986.

Foucault, Michel. “Discipline and Punish.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Rivkin. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. 549-565

Marxism in The Hairy Ape

In the play, “The Hairy Ape,” Eugene O’Neill presents a sharp division among social classes, which he illustrates by presenting strong contrasts between the world of the ship workers (proletariat) and that of the cruise-goer (bourgeoisie). In Gundrisse, Karl Marx wrote of the necessity to fully understand the significance and impact of the class delineations, he posited that “classes, again are but an empty word unless we know what are the elements on which they are based, such as wage-labor, capital, etc.” (Grundisse, 650). All of the characters representative of wage earners are depicted as base and dirty and struggling with their identity in the shifting modernity of the world in which they find themselves. Initially the character of Yank glories in his role in society, though uneducated and unsophisticated, he realizes that the cruise goers (bourgeoisie) require his labor to continue their pleasure or artificially created world. He takes pride in his role in society and identifies with the material – steel – which gives him both his identity and his value, saying “ I’m de ting in gold dat makes it money! And I’m what makes iron into steel!....And I’m steel-steel-steel! I’m muscles in steel, de punch behind it! (Hairy, 1183) In this passage Yank is giving voice to Marx’s notion that the “the productive activity of the worker, the creative power whereby the worker not only replaces what he consumes, but gives to the accumulated labor a greater value than it previously possessed” (Wage, 663). O’Neill creates a dark and grimy world below the decks of the cruise ship which is portrayed as a prison where the workers are confined not by bars but by the steel that they make . Their workplace is likened to a prison or a cage (confining spaces generally made of steel) from which the workers are unable to escape.
Yank’s character is transformed by an encounter with a representative of the bourgeoise, Mildred Douglas. She represents the artificial, clean and smooth running world above the ship deck, which Yank’s labor benefits on two levels. Mildred literally profits from Yank’s labor while on the ship, but the reader also learns that the ship belongs to the company which Mildred’s family owns - and therefore she (by extension) owns Yank’s labor.
The position of the cruise goers is highly contrasted with against that of the laborer. A key figure representative of the bourgeoisie is Mildred Douglas. She expresses a need to tour the workings of the ship, and it is during Scene III that she (dressed in a clean white dress) descends to the ship’s bulks and encounters Yank and the barbarity of his conditions and role that her style of living necessitates. Her repulsion of the image of the laborer nearly causes her faint and she is quickly removed from the hellish stokehole. She is horrified by his animal like face, her reaction is shocking to hurtful to him and he lashes out at her angrily. As she is being taken away she likens him to a filthy beast. The final scene of the play reveals Yank at the zoo in front of the gorilla exhibit. He feels akin to these creatures who are brutish and wild and are confined because of the very characteristics which are essential to their identity. Yank concludes that he is truly like them, beast like -a “hairy ape” - who must be caged. Yank’s ideology of being bound by the characteristics of your identity is an ideology which “only need to be ‘interpreted’ to discover the reality of the world behind their imaginary representation of that world (ideology=illusion/allusion)” (Althusser, 693).
According to Marxist philosophy, Yank’s belief referenced early in the play, that “we run de whole woiks. All de rich guys dat tink dey’re somep’n, dey ain’t nothing!” would be viewed as partially true. Marx believed in the notion that there was a reciprocal relationship between the proletariat and the bourgeois, in which the worker produced for the benefit of the owner, but the owner gave the wage earner identity and value through their work. Marx would also argue that the worker would not be able to produce anything without the raw materials provided to him by the owner. The owner owned all of the laborers hourly production, the resources used in production and therefore was the sole beneficiary of the finished product. But Yank’s character grasped a fundamental Marxist ideal that the bourgeois class is only able to exisist because of the labor base which provides its wealth. Yank is correct in his belief that without the production and symbiosis of the relationship between the two classes, both fail.

Works Cited
Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Rivkin. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. 693-702

O’Neill, Eugene. “The Hairy Ape.” The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Vol. D. Ed. Lauter, Paul. Boston: Houghton, 2006. 1177-1208.

Marx, Karl. “Grundisse.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Rivkin. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. 650-652.

Marx, Karl. “Wage Labor and Capital” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Rivkin. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. 659-664

Disrupted Formation of I: Deafening the World

Freud believed that the primary years were the most crucial to the normative development of an individual. He concluded that any interruption or disruption of this process would cause serious neurosis. An example of this of symptom manifestation would be the child whose discovery of the pleasure of the genitals might later become extremely repressive or alternately extremely promiscuous. Freud believed that children were sexual beings from birth and that these stages, oral, anal and genital, were necessary for normal development. Freud theorized that children initially identified with the mother(er) figure and that the child’s sense of identity was intertwined with this figure. The child typically finds their physical and emotional needs met by this figure in the earliest phases of development. Because the mother is attentive to the father the child may either fear the father, or in most cases the young male child will eventually shift their attention seeking to their father who they emulate. This theory is known as the Oedipal Complex and Freud believed that it was a rite of passage in development and a necessary segue to establishing an adult identity.

The song "Jeremy" by Pearl Jam explores the issues of Freud's Oedipal Complex and Lacan's theories of the formation of I by exploring the story of a child' whose passage through these stages has been disrupted. The lines: "Daddy didn’t give affection/And that boy was something mommy wouldn’t wear” speaks directly to ideas Freud posited in the Oedipal Complex. In the song, Jeremy seeks attention/physical comfort from the mother figure, but is rejected. Jeremy then tries to gain attention from his father who also rejects him. In Introduction: Strangers to Ourselves: Psychoanalyses, Rivkin and Ryan document the importance of the creation of the identity by writing that “as each child grows and enters first family then society, he or she learns to repress those sexual impulses as well as an initially grandiose sense of self to the demands of life with others. (Rivkin 381).” This inability to bond appropriately with the parent figures in Freud’s proscribed stages causes an inability to relate and his eventual lashing (failure to repress sexual and aggressive impulses) out against society. The songs direct reference to the child’s action, “gnashed his teeth/and bit the recess lady’s breast” would indicate that the mother/child fractured or reached the ultimate disconnect resulting in the child’s oral fixation and misplaced sexual and aggressive impulses by way of gnashing the teeth and biting. The object of the biting further corroborates the idea that there is reaction formation in the very act of lashing out at the physical comfort of the breast which is what he ultimately desires.
Jeremy’s disrupted development is also apparent in his distorted, yet grandiose, image of himself as demonstrated by the child produced artwork – Jeremy’s artwork – self imagining himself as a victorious “King Jeremy” bathed in sunlight and master of all he surveys. In “The Mirror Stage” Lacan discusses the stagesof development for the perception of image – which begins as an extension of the motherer figure and gradually transforms from the specular I to the social I. Lacan states that the signifigance of the “moment that decisively tips the whole of human knowledge into mediatization through the desire of the other, constitutes its objects in an “abstract” which every instinctual thrust constitutes a danger, even though it should correspond to a natural maturation.” (Lacan, 445). Essentially Lacan argues that the child begins as a mirror image that mimics the mother, and morphs later into the Social I and later a Symbolic I figure. In the sogn Jeremy we can clearly see that the child’s development has been disrupted resulting in a fractured image or sense of identity. Socially Jeremy is viewed by peers as a “harmless little fuck” who has no ability to assert himself or makes needs and demands known. It is only when Jeremy is pushed through taunting and abuse into his symbolic vision of himself as “King Jeremy” regresses to the state of responding to the id exclusively, losing restraint and acting on primitive, instinctual desires and revealing the “madenss that deafens the world with its sound and fury” (Lacan, 445).

Works Cited


Rivkin, Julie and Ryan, Michael. "Introduction: Strangers to Ourselves: Psychoanalysis." Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd Ed. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 2004.


Lacan, Jacques. "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytical Experience." Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd Ed. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 2004.



Title: Pearl Jam - Jeremy lyrics


At home
Drawing pictures
Of mountain tops
With him on top
Lemon yellow sun
Arms raised in a V
Dead lay in pools of maroon below
Daddy didn't give attention
To the fact that mommy didn't care
King Jeremy the wicked
Ruled his world
Jeremy spoke in class today
Jeremy spoke in class today
Clearly I remember
Pickin' on the boy
Seemed a harmless little fuck
But we unleashed a lion
Gnashed his teeth
And bit the recess lady's breast
How could i forget
He hit me with a surprise left
My jaw left hurtin
Dropped wide open
Just like the day
Like the day i heard
Daddy didn't give affection
And the boy was something mommy wouldn't wear
King jeremy the wicked
Ruled his world
Jeremy spoke in class today
Jeremy spoke in class today
Try to forget this...
Try to erase this...
From the blackboard.

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