attemptsonherlifepdf

[attemptsonherlifepdf]

army dreamers, kate bush / fantastic mr fox, wes anderson / fantastic mr fox: humanising animals, animalising men, and an exploration of masculine identity, india k.b

[attemptsonherlifepdf]

a streetcar named marge: a character study of marge simpson through the lens of tennessee williams

trigger warning for brief but not graphic mentions of assault & abusive behaviour throughout

wacky, absurd comedy ‘the simpsons’ has been airing since 1989 and remains an integral part of the pop culture ecosystem. its self-referential humour and parody structure work in conjunction with one another to effectively satirise the lives of lower-middle class america. set in the town of springfield, that shares its name with approximately thirty other towns across the states, the simpsons strikes the balance between relatable and outright absurd that keeps the show entertaining. the show slots neatly into the cultural zeitgeist of the 1990s and 2000s, and has constructed spoof after spoof of the significant political, social and pop culture moments of each season’s respective time period. most notably, the second episode of the fourth season titled ‘a streetcar named marge’ draws on tennessee williams’ ‘a streetcar named desire’, using the histrionic character of blanche dubois to create commentary on marge’s role in her relationship with her husband, homer. the episode’s main plot follows marge auditioning for and starring as blanche in springfield’s local production of ‘a streetcar named desire’ and depicts parallels between blanche and marge’s romantic lives. homer is likened to stanley kowalski, famously portrayed by marlon brando in the 1951 film adaptation of the play; a brutish, loud ‘uncouth lout’ who dominates both his wife and delicate sister-in-law. the core themes this comparison explores include the notion of animalised masculinity, marge’s passiveness and invisibility, and the idea that the character of blanche is used as a vehicle for marge’s unexpressed feelings regarding her husband.

williams’ descriptions of stanley throughout the play draw on a notion of animal masculinity; stanley is described upon his introduction to the audience as having ‘animal joy his being [which] is implicit in all his movements & attitudes…his heartiness with men, his appreciation of rough humour, his love of good drink and food and games…’ this description paired with blanche’s comment that he is ‘a little bit on the primitive side’ demonstrates the beginnings of a semantic field of animalism, characterising stanley’s masculinity as almost being below humanity, simply base and primal in comparison to his more humanised counterparts such as mitch and steve. we can also see these traits, particularly ‘rough humour…love of good drink and food’ echoed in homer simpson’s characteristic obsessions with food and beer that are consistent throughout the entire shows run so far. similarly, ‘a streetcar named marge’ has lewellyn sinclair, the director of springfield’s ‘a streetcar named desire’ production, aim to depict that ‘blanche…is a delicate flower being trampled by an uncouth lout-’. additionally, lewellyn gives ned flanders (who plays stanley) the direction that he is ‘pulsing with animal lust’, again referencing williams’ construction of animal masculinity that encourages the audience to view stanley’s desire as less than human.

to add to this semantic field that both the original play and simpsons episode share, ‘a streetcar named marge’ recreates the infamous ‘stella!’ scene wherein stanley screams his wife stella’s name from below her balcony in a desperate attempt to win her back after physically assaulting her. the simpsons replaces the original incident of domestic abuse with an example of homer’s weaponised incompetence instead, where he fails to pull the lid off his can of pudding in marge’s absence as she rehearses next door with flanders: ‘[screeches] oh no! …so i can open my own can of pudding, can i? shows what you know, marge.’ he then shouts ‘marge! hey marge!’ in the garden while marge looks on from flanders’ bedroom window, referencing stanley screaming for stella below her balcony. marge comments dryly, ‘keep yelling, you big ape.’ the use of the insult ‘ape’ serves to contribute further to the characterisation of homer / stanley as animalistic and dehumanised. both the simpsons and williams animalise masculinity to demonstrate the danger of it, presenting it as uncontrolled and wild in comparison to the average male. in this moment, the simpsons subverts the narrative of the original play. in williams’ original, stanley’s screams draw stella downstairs to him and they embrace as she ‘forgives’ his abuse. in the simpsons’ version, marge instead responds with contempt for her husband and appears disgusted and unforgiving. in the wider context of the show, marge is largely portrayed as a very passive housewife character, including in this episode. in the opening scene of this episode, the following exchange takes place:

HOMER

and where exactly are you going?

MARGE

i’m auditioning for a play.

HOMER

well, this is the first i’ve heard about it.

MARGE

i’ve told you several times. it’s a musical version of a streetcar na-

HOMER

excuse me, marge! i think if you told me, i would remember. i mean, i’m not an idiot!

MARGE

hm. well, i-i thought i told you. i’m sorry honey.

HOMER

it’s okay. we’re none of us perfect.

the audience is shown marge informing homer of the play multiple times before this exchange, to which he repeatedly and absentmindedly replies ‘sounds interesting.’ despite being in the right, marge timidly apologises to homer and accepts blame she does not deserve. this interaction contrasted with her later contempt for him demonstrates how the role of blanche has encouraged marge to see her husband’s flaws rather than ignoring or tolerating them as she usually does. additionally, marge’s initially failed audition again presents her as passive and defeated by her husband’s lack of support. lewellyn witnesses marge’s phone call to homer and recognises blanche’s delicateness and defeat in her:

MARGE 

(into the phone)

homie, i didn’t get the part. you were right. outside interests are stupid.

LEWELLYN

wait a minute.

MARGE

(into the phone)

[groans] i’ll come home right away. alright, i'll pick up a bucket of fried chicken, extra skin…rolls, chocolate cream parfait-

LEWELLYN

[snatches phone from marge]

stop bothering my blanche!

marge’s admission, ‘you were right. outside interests are stupid’, shows her beaten down by homer’s lack of support for her interests and suggests that she was ‘stupid’ for branching out outside of her duties as a parent and housewife. this echoes blanche’s eventual exhaustion and ‘defeat’ after stanley’s aggressive, dismissive and abusive treatment of her.

marge’s attitude towards abusive behaviour in general is notably submissive: when rehearing the scene where blanche breaks a bottle in order to attack stanley and defend herself, she struggles to get into character and gives a lacklustre performance. lewellyn encourages her, ‘passion, mrs simpsons, this man disgusts you.’ in a later rehearsal a few scenes later, marge argues, ‘i just don’t see why blanche should shove a broken bottle in stanley’s face. couldn’t she just take his abuse with gentle good humour?...i just don’t see what’s so bad about stanley.’ this is a clear reference to her relationship with homer, wherein she has consistently, throughout the show so far, responded to his boorish behaviour with passive disapproval, attempting to make light of the ridiculous or unkind situations that homer creates with his behaviour. lewellyn retorts with ‘stanley is thoughtless, violent and loud. marge, every second you spend with this man…he is crushing your fragile spirit.’ lewellyn’s description of stanley is interposed with homer’s comedic but frustrating attempts to use a vending machine wherein he screams and charges at the machine, and proceeds to honk repeatedly at marge from the car to rush her into leaving. this pushes marge to a breakthrough where she suddenly becomes genuinely angry at ‘stanley’ / homer, directing that fury at her stanley (flanders), who’s face morphs into homer’s:

[car horn honking]

HOMER

marge, move it or lose it!

MARGE

[lunging at flanders]

♪ i'll twist this bottle in your face ♪

LEWELLYN

hallelujah! i’ve done it again!

ned, you’re supposed to overpower her.

FLANDERS

[straining]

i’m trying, im trying!

this scene exemplifies the extent to which marge is usually subdued and quiet, by creating a stark contrast with the outburst she has here. lewlleyn’s reminder that blanche is ‘disgusted’ by stanley is reminiscent of marge’s very real but very repressed disgust at her husband. marge’s demeanour in the episodes leading up to ‘a streetcar named marge’ is largely resigned to homer’s typically thoughtless behaviour. comparing her usual quiet disapproval with her strong reaction to homer in this scene demonstrates the extent to which she usually fits the descriptions of blanche so far in the episode - that of a ‘delicate flower’ with a ‘fragile spirit.’ these comments on blanche’s character oppose those of stanley and paint the two as contradictory. stanley is a brutish ape whilst blanche is the flimsy rag doll in his grip. ‘a streetcar named marge’ relies upon this contrast to illustrate that marge and homer’s relationship is dominated by homer’s careless masculinity which serves to leave marge feeling resigned, defeated and unheard. however, while blanche becomes weaker over the course of the play and becomes less like herself due to stanley’s behaviour towards her, marge also becomes less like her usual self due to homer but becomes stronger and more assertive instead. the character of blanche serves as a vehicle for marge’s repressed resentments and frustrations and facilitates both her and homer’s understanding of their relationship.

homer’s eventual understanding of marge is illustrated by the final scene of the episode; homer congratulates marge on her performance as blanche and explains, ‘it really got to me how…blanche was sad, and how that guy stanley should have been nice to her…the poor thing ends up being hauled to the nuthouse…when all she needed was for that big slob to show her some respect.’ marge’s demeanour shifts and she reacts with ‘...homer, you got it just right.’ homer muses, ‘hey, you know, i’m a lot like that guy…like when i pick my teeth with the mail and stuff.’ the classic structure of a sitcom like the simpsons requires that things are resolved or return to the status quo by the end of each episode, and while marge and homer’s relationship becomes peaceful once again due to homer’s realisation, it is not necessarily returning to its previous state; if it did, their relationship would be strained due to homer’s lack of consideration for marge’s feelings. instead, marge finally feels seen. marge is understood and has asserted herself. as is suggested by the play’s title, ‘a streetcar named desire’ has desire itself as its core and central theme. the audience are shown stanley’s desire for sex and power, blanche’s desire for validation of her beauty, stella’s desire to have stanley’s baby. these desires are what drive the plot of the play and motivate each character to act in ways that push their desires into being realised. similarly, in ‘a streetcar named marge’, the audience are shown homer’s desire for food, drink and so on but more significantly, marge’s inherent desire to be seen. she makes repeated attempts for her family, particularly her husband, to notice her and take an interest in her endeavours which is consistently ignored until the end of the episode. the opening scene exemplifies this:

MARGE

i haven’t been in a play since high school…and i thought it would be a good chance to meet some other adults.

HOMER

(not looking away from the television)

sounds interesting.

MARGE

you know, i spend all day alone with maggie…and sometimes it’s like i don’t even exist.

HOMER

(still looking at the television)

sounds interesting.

marge’s invisibility within her family and within the wider context of springfield is interestingly addressed in raphael bob-waksberg’s fifteen-tweet poem entitled ‘does marge have friends?’ the poem explores marge’s role in the show via the lens of her relations to other people, e.g ‘who are marge’s friends? is helen lovejoy a friend? sarah wiggum? agnes skinner?’ the third stanza questions ‘who tells marge to leave the brute, knowing she won’t? ‘you don’t have to stay. you deserve so much more.’’ the use of ‘brute’ to describe homer is a sentiment that ‘a streetcar named marge’ hones in on, and is a descriptor that we can again see paralleled with the original ‘a streetcar named desire.’ as previously explored, stanley is described as ‘primitive’, a familiar adjective in the context of homer. additionally, bob-waksberg uses a hypothetical voice to tell marge ‘you deserve so much more’ to illustrate that there is no real friend in marge’s life to tell her this themselves. in williams’ original play, blanche’s isolation is also addressed and it is shown to make her an easier victim for stanley’s abuse; eunice reassures stella in the final act ‘she couldn’t stay here; there wasn’t no other place for her to go.’ blanche is alone aside from stella, who has her institutionalised, and this makes her all the more vulnerable as she has nobody to tell her not to accept abuse. this is another way in which ‘a streetcar named marge’ subverts source of its parody; where blanche is abandoned and becomes weak and ‘mad’ from stanley’s abusive behaviour, marge is empowered by the character of blanche and experiences the opposite of abandonment - she is finally seen and acknowledged. 

‘does marge have friends’ also touches on another moment where marge can be likened to blanche in a more roundabout way. as a succinct character study of marge, the poem alludes to her relationship with maude flanders. stanzas six to ten speculate on the nature of their relationship, asking ‘does she [marge] see in her late neighbour a cautionary tale? seldom-remembered, semi-anonymous maude - could this fate too befall marge?’ this is vaguely reminiscent of blanche’s relationship with stella in the sense that marge mourns maude and blanche mourns stella and while their respective reasonings are different, the central theme here is the mourning of a fellow woman for her ‘smallness.’ while marge mourns maude’s invisibility and sees the same in herself, blanche mourns stella for being dominated by stanley, a ‘common…animal’ and mourns stella’s insistence on forgiving his abusive behaviour as she does in the infamous ‘stella!’ scene. blanche says to her ‘you go out with a man like that once, twice, three times when the devil is in you, but to live with and to have a child by? well then i tremble for you…’ to blanche, stella is a cautionary tale of the consequences of accepting abusive behaviour from a ‘rough’ man, and as bob-waksberg puts it, ‘could this fate too befall’ blanche? it can and it does, as she concludes the play having been assaulted by stanley herself. it can be argued that blanche’s mourning of stella matches the way a hypothetical friend would mourn marge’s relationship with homer, worrying about her wellbeing in the face of his carelessness and strong personality. furthermore, bob-waksberg describes a hypothetical scenario between marge and maude that echoes blanche’s encounter with the local paperboy: ‘perhaps, once at a summer barbecue, when both were still alive, maude grabbed marge's hand under the table and held tight. what prompted this sudden connection, this sudden expression of— what was it, warmth? the two weren't close— acquaintances, sure, had they ever even hugged? and yet here they were, holding hands, silently, secretly, while their children shrieked and their husbands grilled the hot dogs.’ this moment depicted in the poem is soft, mundane and warm. in ‘a streetcar named desire’, scene five demonstrates these same themes, wherein blanche says to the paperboy ‘i want to kiss you - just once - softly and sweetly on your mouth.’ the direction then follows, ‘[without waiting for him to accept, she crosses quickly to him and presses her lips to his.]’ this exchange shows blanche seeking the same ‘sudden expression of…warmth’ that bob-waksberg discusses, echoing the same principle that in this interaction, ‘the two weren’t close.’ it must, however, be acknowledged that blanche’s advances on the young paperboy, while seeking warmth, were arguably predatory where marge and maude’s interaction is less romantically charged and more platonic and equal.

the final parallel to be noted between ‘a streetcar named marge’ and ‘does marge have friends?’ lies in the final five stanzas of the poem. bob-waksberg describes marge in her garden on a sleepless night, encountering maude over the fence: ‘maude, pale as a sheet, her eyes wet with tears.’ she goes on to say to marge ‘it’s not the calm before the storm that frightens me, it’s the calm that follows.’ this is evocative of blanche’s rise and fall through the play; the ‘storm’ in question being the assault carried out by stanley and the ‘calm that follows’ being her subdued but also hysterical, dreamlike-state in reaction to the assault that results in her being institutionalised. ‘a streetcar named marge’ depicts this ‘descent into madness’ by having marge / blanche fly around the stage on a harness with flashing lights and a smoke machine in the background, in typical overexaggerated simpsons fashion.

at its core, the simpsons is about dysfunctional american families. homer is both a ridiculous and exaggerated buffoon character but circumstantially lives the life of the average working class / lower middle class american man that stanley kowalski also lives. while homer’s unsupportive behaviour towards marge is often played off humorously throughout the show’s run, ‘a streetcar named marge’ uses the intensity of williams’ play to construct a legitimate criticism of homer’s actions and a commentary on marge’s invisibility, unexpressed resentments and her experiences of marital dysfunction. as the title suggests, ‘desire’ itself is at the core of both williams’ play and the simpsons episode based upon it, and marge’s inherently repressed desire to be seen and appreciated is finally realised via the adoption and subversion of williams’ classic play and its connotations regarding the transfer of power between characters. marge is finally seen by homer, and she no longer has to depend on the kindness of strangers.

[attemptsonherlifepdf]

tips on writing a good analytical essay?

hi, thanks for the question!

I usually start with a core theme i want to explore. i typically do a brain dump and write out all of my current knowledge and examples of the theme that come to mind and then separate the bullet points into cohesive paragraphs. usually once ive started writing with the paragraph that interests me the most, other ideas kinda just click or fall into place. the one big thing id say is to use your brain dump to research lots of small niche things rather than one big thing and you’re more likely to come across something that sparks off new ideas.

in terms of actually writing the essay, i use the basic structure of: point —> core example —> specific textual evidence and how it relates to the core themes —> sum up what your example shows about the theme —> link that example with another theme and then repeat the process with the next paragraph. i know it’s essentially the basic structure you’re taught at school but it really does work to organise concepts in a cohesive way.

my best piece of advice is that if an idea comes to you and you don’t know how to fit it into the essay, don’t be afraid to use the most ridiculous or convoluted segues and tangents. in my opinion, my best pieces of work lie in the weird tangents i write because it’s usually the most original or thought-provoking part of the whole essay. if you don’t think it fits in the essay, make it fit!! there are no bad ideas as long as you can back it up and make it clear where the idea links into the rest of the essay content. for example (not to toot my own horn) in my a-level final piece on angela carter and the gothic, i managed to sneak in a tangent about how the matrix is a trans allegory using gothic themes and that got me an A*. again, im not saying that to brag but to show that ur ‘unrelated’ ideas are usually the best and most interesting!

i hope this helped, happy writing!! <3

[attemptsonherlifepdf]

in relation to the sci-fi essay, do you think that any other movies or books show the parallels between the sci-fi and gothic genres in a similar sort of way? and with the matrix being the most widely popular movie to argue the points it does showing support for trans people and opposing capitalism and do you think it lead to the ability for more media to bridge the gap between sci-fi and the gothic, but also to openly criticise social systems without fear of it being less popular due to opposing lots of peoples beliefs at the time, or do you think the matrix was done in a way where it allowed for people to ignore the crucial points for their own comfort and not challenge their beliefs?

hi, thanks for the question!! historically, the biggest (and first / most popular) example of a text that bridges the gap between sci fi and the gothic is mary shelley’s frankenstein. the gothic, and by natural extension sci fi, inherently criticises social systems as a part of the narrative structure of the genre. it takes a societal fear such as the fear of people playing god and pairs it with a supernatural being such as frankenstein’s monster in order to create commentary on society’s fears. frankenstein is the most salient example of the gothic and sci fi morphing together, and is definitely the most well known text that bridges the gap between genres. there are many film and stage iterations of the text that are structured in various styles that take different aspects of the text’s social commentary to focus on. sci fi itself is inherently political.

to answer the second part of the question, many gothic and sci fi texts gain popularity years after initial release, when the meaning of these texts is finally understood and the become cult classics. straying slightly from the gothic and sci fi for a second, chuck palahnuik’s fight club is a prime example of a text / movie that wasn’t well received upon release but later became popular - it is a political text that comments on the radicalisation of young disenfranchised men and the commentary is made explicit but it still remains widely misunderstood due to the male dominated fanbase wanting the piece to validate their violence. like your question poses, audiences often ignore the real meaning for the sake of their own comfort. fight club and the matrix show that a text’s criticism of societal norms can be as explicit as possible, but audiences will misinterpret it if they intend to use the text to validate their own ideals. media already has the ability to openly criticise social systems but the question is whether audiences will be receptive to it. authors and directors and playwrights will always be making some commentary on the topic of their piece of media, because media itself is a vehicle for meaning and no media is made without an inherent meaning or without making a statement on its chosen topic. with every piece of media there will always be a portion of the audience that ignores the crucial points for the sake of their own comfort and reinforcing their own beliefs but that doesn’t take away from the meaning itself.

psychologically we can assess the effectiveness of media in conveying its message. there are two systems of persuasion in social psychology: system 1 and system 2. system 1 is fast acting and functions by reinforcing the beliefs individuals already hold, for instance an advert for a product that is already well liked. system 2 is slower and functions by trying to change the beliefs individuals already hold, for instance greta thunberg’s speech to the un. system 2 is more complex and difficult to execute and media like the matrix attempts to execute system 2, aiming to alter the audience’s generally held belief that governments have our best interests in mind and can be trusted, and also implicitly advocating for trans identities to be respected. the reason the movie has become understood decades after its release is because system 2 persuasion is slow and less effective than system one.

this was a very long answer sorry but i hope this has answered your question!! <3

[attemptsonherlifepdf]

in the sci-fi essay, do you think that the use of the character switch to as closely as possible resemble a trans person and denying the name mr anderson so openly could have positively altered people's view of trans people and the lgbt community as a whole when it was a time of tension, or do you think that people who opposed those communities at the time wouldnt have picked up on the subtext even though it was conveyed as explicitly as possible? and do you think that agent smith saying ‘one of these lives has a future, and one of them does not’ could have made the oppression clearer to those people and show that the same person can lack a future due to their identity, and show them more clearly the difficulties that trans people face?

hi, thanks for the question! i think that lots of the audience at the time didn’t pick up on the trans allegory used in the movie, particularly as the wachowski sisters were not out as trans at the time of release. it was only years after it’s release when both directors came out that they themselves admitted that the trans allegory in the movie was present. at the time of release they did not have the creative freedom to have an explicitly trans character. in modern interpretations of the matrix, people tend to understand the allegory but the movie was first and foremost anti-capitalist which is the most clear messaging the movie offers, which is generally accepted and understood by audiences. the movie is definitely a vehicle for promoting understanding and acceptance of trans identities but it is more implicit and has only recently in the last decade become clearer to audiences. the plight of trans people in a cisgender majority society is an undercurrent running through the movie and is for sure a significant aspect of the movie’s messaging. i hope this answers your question!! <3

[attemptsonherlifepdf]

in your sci-fi essay where you say 'what is perceived as a social threat is often based upon what is uncomfortable rather than what is actually dangerous' relating to the bloody chamber, do you think those social threats are attempted to be hidden in the matrix because of the perception of danger, or just the fact that the actions could be perceived as a social threat entirely? do you think theyre hidden because of the potential view of danger or just to remove possible discomfort?

thanks for the question!! i think it’s a mix of both, but largely in the matrix the ‘social threat’ of freedom and knowledge about the reality of what’s happened to society is hidden as a form of oppression and control. it’s inherently a means of controlling the population and sheltering them from the truth in order to maintain the illusion of free will and keep society ‘functioning’ the way the agents want. in the instance of the matrix, the perceived ‘danger’ isn’t on the part of society but on the part of the agents. society itself isn’t aware of any danger or discomfort because they’re kept in the dark, the agents see the truth as dangerous as it threatens their carefully balanced system which is why neo and his team are such a threat that need to be eliminated. i hope that answers your question! <3

[attemptsonherlifepdf]

fantastic mr fox: humanising animals, animalising men and an exploration of masculine identity. part 2

in commenting on masculinity, the narrative of fantastic mr fox also then must comment on femininity as the two are bedfellows. while mr fox’s interactions between animalism and masculinity function as the guise of control, mrs fox’s interactions between animalism and femininity function as a form of legitimate control. mr fox may have his master plans and blueprints, but he cannot resist the urge to steal chickens and flaunt what he believes to be a display of his masculinity; in contrast, mrs fox maintains her composure until her animalism becomes a necessary tool to protect herself or her family. examples of this include when she snarls and scratches her husband, and when she attacks the rat with a chain in order to save ash. outside of these instances, felicity remains calm, level-headed and controlled. this can serve as commentary on femininity itself, as women are often expected to control their desires, emotions and outbursts for the sake of appearances; control is intertwined with femininity. it could be argued that mr fox is in fact jealous of his wife’s animalism because while he seeks control himself, it is a facade and he cannot resist giving in to his urges due to his need for validation. felicity has the control he fantasises about, and this may explain part of their dynamic, and why mr fox makes such an effort to be suave and charming in order to compensate for his uncontrolled animalism.

mr fox’s masculinity is constantly compared to other instances of masculinity both in the movie and the original book. as previously mentioned in part one, the ‘canis lupus’ scene serves to compare mr fox, standing on his hind legs, wearing a corduroy suit and speaking french and latin, with an unclothed, non-verbal wolf. mr fox realises that while he initially saw his masculinity as tied up in his animalism, it’s really tied up in the human-style life he’s carefully constructed for himself. he used to view family, employment, suburbia, etc as limiting his masculinity when in reality it is the core to the framework of his identity, rather than beng a fence around it. while he did not chose to be a father, he made the active decision to buy an expensive house, write for the local newspaper, construct elaborate plans of chicken theft, wear corduroy suits. these decisions were not forced upon him by circumstance, they don’t inhibit his ability to be an animal. if felicity can be an animal leading the same humanised life, so can mr fox, and if the wolf can possess masculinity without clothes or a house, so can mr fox. he stops understanding animalism as a monolith and begins to see it as a facet of individual identity. it takes exposure to the contrast between extremes (the wolf and felicity) to show him all the possibilities his identity and masculinity can be.

the fact that felicity is also animalistic is significant; usually animalism and masculinity are conflated, but she demonstrates how femininity can be just as wild, but also shows how a feminine response to wildness is to control it. this is because aggression is perceived as an inherently masculine trait, and control and restraint are seen as inherently feminine. this ties in to the notion of ‘male fears’ versus ‘female fears’ in media. female characters are often motivated by the fear of being used, while male characters are often motivated by the fear of being useless. mr fox is no exception to this, as he strives to prove his use as a man through the means of his elaborate chicken heists which provide food for his family. he admits after his plans fail that he wants everyone to think he’s the ‘fantastic mr fox…otherwise [i] don’t feel good about myself.’ this fits the mould of the ‘masculine fear’ of being useless as he conflates being liked with being needed. to be seen a smart and reliable, he aims to think of a ‘master plan’ to save everyone, every time. mrs fox unleashing her animal responses in order to protect herself or her family from being used either by the farmers or mr fox himself, also aligns with this concept. mr fox begins to evolve when his fear is addressed and rationalised. he begins to understand that being a father and husband is it’s own source of usefulness, and that as long as he values his family, he is not useless. he transitions from attempting to do tasks of ‘inherent’ value to attributing value to the tasks he already does naturally, learning to self-validate. felicity acts as a static contrast to this; she does not require this evolution of personality in the same manner as her sense of validation seems to already be grounded and stable.

the way that fantastic mr fox compares masculinity and femininity through the lens of animalism serves to divide animalism into controlled and uncontrolled categories. both core depictions of animalism work in conjunction with that of smaller side characters. the non-protagonists of fantastic mr fox all demonstrate a common trait; the fear of humans and the sensibility to steer clear of farmers. mr fox is warned of the dangers of the farmers by badger:

BADGER

don’t buy this tree, foxy…we’re talking about three of the meanest, nastiest, ugliest farmers in the history of this valley.

mr fox’s arrogance gets in the way and he takes this warning as a challenge, rather than a piece of advice. thus far, being distanced from humans has been a vital trait of animalism but it is at this moment where mr fox’s masculine fear overrides his inherent animalism and he ventures into the human sphere. it could be argued that badger warning him not to makes him feel as though badger is telling him he is not capable, or that he is undermining his judgement, thus causing him to insist upon purchasing the tree in human territory. mr fox’s core issue stem from the separation between his animalism and masculinity, as is demonstrated in this scene, and it is when these are once again aligned that he begins to heal himself.

fantastic mr fox establishes the human and animal social spheres and depicts a messy convergence of the two. at the centre of this is a sense of competing masculinity, between mr fox and the farmers. masculinity is examined through multiple lenses such as that of animalism, violence, in comparison to femininity, and fear. all of this coalesces into one point: that one’s sense of identity and value cannot sustainably be derived from external validation. the farmers reach the end of the narrative still waiting to outwit mr fox, relying on that external situation to validate their masculinity, and they are unhappy. mr fox, in contrast, has come to internally validate and actively places value on his actions rather than striving for an impossible standard. his ‘fantasticness’ comes from him being authentic, not performative.

fantastic mr fox: humanising animals, animalising men, and an exploration of masculine identity

‘this story is too predictable.’ / ‘predictable? really? what happens in the end?’ / ‘in the end, we all die. unless you change.’

mr fox, the titular character of wes anderson’s 2009 stop-motion adaptation of roald dahl’s children’s book, is a portrait of two conflicting manifestations of masculinity. he is built to demonstrate the crossover between tradition and modernity, between wild and civilised. characterised as a charming gentleman, almost renowned for his recklessness, mr fox combines his undomesticated instincts with a carefully crafted domestic life. he appears to spend more time manufacturing a perfect home and family than he does actually participating in it. the events of the movie serve to strip away his facade and present both the audience and protagonist with a harsh reality to deal with: the juxtaposing aspects of his identity that he must contend with in order to survive his situation. these aspects are demonstrated through the use of anthropomorphic animals. in essence, the text attempts to convey the message that while you can associate your actions with animal or human traits in order to characterise and frame them, you cannot change their value and their consequences. it serves as a critique of how the nature of male identity is exploited to shunt responsibility, and the movie specifically promotes a more collectivist mentality.

there are four key scenes that mark mr fox’s journey in terms of his identity. initially, we first see his identity openly questioned once he has moved into a new home (a large and expensive tree), just prior to him revealing his ‘master plan’ to kylie, who becomes his assistant of sorts. he asks, ‘why a fox? why not a horse, or a beetle, or a bald eagle? i’m saying this more as, like, existentialism, you know? who am i? and how can a fox ever be happy without, you’ll forgive the expression, a chicken in its teeth?’ he attributes his identity with the ability to fulfil his base desires, like he could in his youth. aspects of his later life such as employment, family, and safety restrict his ability and leaves him feeling untethered from himself. the movie opens with his youthful vibrance and recklessness, and is quickly contrasted with his dissatisfaction with his job, home, and life in general.

MR FOX

i dont want to live in a hole anymore. it makes me feel poor.

MRS FOX

we are poor, but we’re happy.

MR FOX

comme ci, come ca...

does anyone actually read my column?

having been moved out of the hole and into an expensive tree, mrs fox asks her husband:

MRS FOX

do you still feel poor?

MR FOX

less so.

constructing the ideal domestic space for himself and his family does not satisfy mr fox and he yearns for more, which is where is existentialism and ‘master plan’ come into play. domesticity was never going to satisfy mr fox, as he yearns for something youthful and risky and dazzling, adjectives not usually applied to a quiet and content home life. the consequences of this dissatisfaction are drastic and almost immediate.

soon, having been forced out of his new home and underground by an attack from the farmers, mr fox is faced with a situation he cannot charm his way out of. he attempts to apologise to his son and recite a speech to raise the morale of his family, and both of these attempts are shut down by those around him. the facade of his elaborate home, his monologues, even his suits, are abruptly stripped away leaving him with only his actions which he cannot charm his way out of. the reality is that he and his family, his neighbourhood, is stuck underground with no means of food as a result of his selfish actions. this prompts yet another key scene; his argument with felicity, which begins with her viciously hissing and scratching his face.

MRS FOX

why did you lie to me?

MR FOX

because im a wild animal.

MRS FOX

you are also a husband, and a father.

MR FOX

im trying to tell you the truth about myself.

MRS FOX

i dont care about the truth about yourself. this story is too predictable.

MR FOX

predictable? really? what happens in the end?

MRS FOX

in the end, we all die. unless you change.

mrs fox’s physical attack on her husbands face serves as a display of genuine animal ferocity, making mr fox’s claim to being a ‘wild animal’ appear as a flimsy excuse for his behaviour. his chicken theft, which he was insistent upon regardless of the consequences, was motivated not by animal instincts but a selfish desire to feel a particular version of his own masculinity. disregarding the safety of his family actually seems like a natural byproduct of his master plans because he is trying to reclaim his masculinity from a time before his family existed, and in his eyes, restricted him. the very recent loss of his tail, combined with this conversation with his wife, is a harsh reality check for mr fox in terms of the dangers of his masculinity.

the audience sees the outcome of this conversation later on, in the waterfall scene. here mr fox admits to his insecurities and suggests sacrificing himself to the farmers to save the local community.

MR FOX

darling, maybe they’ll let everyone else live!

…

MR FOX

foxes traditionally like to court danger, hunt prey and outsmart predators, and that’s what im actually good at…i guess at the end of the day im just-

MRS FOX

i know. we’re wild animals.

the difference between this admission to animalism and the one from his argument with felicity is that here, both parties gain some acceptance of their animalism without using it as an excuse for their behaviour. the inclusion of others in animalism – ‘we’re’ wild animals, rather than ‘i am’ a wild animal – contributes to illustrate how wildness is not specific to masculinity. it is not femininity vs masculinity but animals vs man.

the movie also questions the nature of an animal in the final key scene known as ‘canis lupus.’ wes Anderson referred to this scene as ‘the reason im making this movie.’ throughout the movie, mr fox alludes to his ‘phobia of wolves’ and shuts down any conversation surrounding them:

MR FOX

scared? no, i have a phobia of them!...a wolf? what’s with all the wolf talk? can we give it a rest for once?

arguably, these reactions are representative of mr fox’s aversion to competitive masculinity. he shuts down any opportunity for those around him to discuss something he sees as more masculine than himself in order to feel secure in his own masculinity. critic shana mlawski argues that ‘the wolf is described as the wildest, most frightening, and yet most beautiful creature in the world. mr fox fears the wolf and yet wants to be exactly like him. we can thus say that mr fox fears pure, wild masculinity yet also yearns to own it himself.’ the scene holds an eerie familiarity to it; mr fox is recognising something that he thought would be a reflection of himself, but the wild animal is no longer familiar to him anymore. he now accepts his role as a husband and a father and no longer fights to overtly express his animalism in the same way as the wolf. the most he can offer the wolf is raising his fist in solidarity. he calls out to the wolf, ‘i have a phobia of wolves!’, which is an interesting moment to admit this in. it’s his acceptance that allows him to admit this. the scene is entirely compromised of male characters: mr fox, kristofferson, ash, kylie and the wolf. mr fox’s admission to his fear allows him to be vulnerable in front of these people he cares about, and to use this as a teaching moment for the young boys.

MR FOX

what a beautiful creature. wish him luck out there, boys.

here mr fox openly admits his admiration for someone else’s masculinity in front of others without showing signs of his own insecurity. he can admire the wolf for what he is without seeing him as competition. the scene allows the audience to see and directly compare two forms of masculinity and animalism, and to understand that there is no one true expression of either of those traits. the wolf has connotations of violence and ferocity, whereas mr fox and his suit and display of multilingualism are entirely modern, but both are masculine animals who are valid in their own right. either way, both animals rely on violence for survival at times.

kupfer frames violence in three ways: symbolically, structurally and as a narrative essential. there are various forms of violence within this narrative, namely mr fox killing chickens and squabs, and the three farmers’ attack on the animal community. symbolically, mr fox’s chicken theft is attributed to his masculinity. while it is often presented as thought-out ‘master plans’, his desire to enact this violence in the first place supposedly stems from his ‘wild animal’ instincts. he associates a time where he felt secure in his masculinity with his actions at the time (violence). structurally, we see the potential for this violence in the opening scene, where mr fox takes his wife chicken-stealing and they become trapped. he is stuck in a fox trap with his wife when he receives the news of his impending fatherhood, a relatively obvious symbol for his view of fatherhood in general. the news of his wife’s pregnancy disrupts his ability to continue stealing chickens, not just on this specific occasion but through the coming years as well. mr fox appears to view family life as an unfulfilling, less raw expression of his masculinity, and is shown to be wholly dissatisfied with his life.

the violence on the farmers’ behalf is almost always in reaction to mr fox’s violence, already giving it a structural framing. boggis, bunch and bean are referred to early on in the film as the ‘meanest, nastiest and ugliest farmers on the side of the river.’ their violence against mr fox and subsequently the local animal community is an attempt to gain back power and status. mr fox’s actions are “humiliating’ and the local news coverage of this exchange between the farmers and animals raises the stakes as now the reputation of these farmers is on the line as well as their power. violence here serves as a narrative essential because it drives mr fox into a situation that forces him to confront his issues with masculinity and splitting between his animal and human traits, giving the text/movie a fulfilling arc. violence is

introduced as inherently masculine, but is decoupled from masculinity by the ending. mrs fox also plays a small but significant role in this; at various moments in the movie she exhibits her own displays of aggression equal in intensity to the men around her, suggesting to the audience that forms of violence should be categorised as human vs animal rather than male vs female. examples of this behaviour include her clawing at her husband’s face, and a parallel between her and a male human character wherein they both connect two wires and shout ‘contact!’, causing an explosion. while this moment is brief, it highlights a distinct difference between animals being violent and men. humans’ aggression is driven by the need for power, whereas that of animals is driven by the need for survival. the man paralleled with felicity only sparked the explosion to destroy mr fox’s home and assert the dominance of the three farmers, while mrs fox used the same form of violence to enact a plan to save her nephew’s life. petey’s song even alludes to this sentiment: ‘well he stole, and he cheated, and he lied just to survive.’

mr fox’s tail becomes a symbol of power; bean wears it as a necktie, and mr fox feels emasculated by his loss.

MR FOX

one of those slovenly farmers is probably wearing my tail as a necktie right now.

…

BADGER

i cant even imagine how painful, even just emotionally, that must be for you… oh but foxy how humiliating, having your tail blown clean off by-

MR FOX

can we drop it?

the use of the tail as a necktie is a symbol of the power that mr fox and the farmers end up jostling to achieve: at first it belongs to mr fox, then to the farmers, and is eventually reclaimed once more by the fox.

MR FOX

you shot off my tail.

[through gritted teeth] i’m not leaving here without that necktie.

when he reclaims his tail towards the end of the movie, it has been torn to shreds and needs ‘dry cleaning twice a week’ to maintain itself. this can be interpreted as a symbol for his evolved definitions of masculinity and power: his masculinity is no longer defined by impressing people or stealing or killing chickens, but in the quiet satisfaction of having a family. the final scene reveals that mrs fox is pregnant again, and instead of her glowing and her husband giving an awkward grin like in the opening scene, both of the spouses ‘glow.’ the structural framing of these pregnancy reveals bookending the events of the movie allows anderson to demonstrate mr fox’s growth and change in his priorities. the domestic life appears to be enough for him, and he no longer seems to find it emasculating,

what stands out as particularly modern about mr fox is how he unconsciously separates himself from both his wildness and his suburban self in his effort to combine them. he uses his ‘wildness’ as an excuse for his violence and selfishness, but is ultimately not willing to participate in truly wild forms of violence and selfishness, such has hunting. his chicken thefts always include infiltrating a human site, like boggis, bunce and bean’s farms, and the fun of it is in outsmarting them, rather than finding those animals himself out in the wild. the local animal community essentially functions as we would expect a rural village occupied by humans to function: everyone knows everyone, there is one local school and various small and quaint homes. while the setting reflects anderson’s signature style, it is also reflective of dahl’s framing of the community in the original text.

mr fox comes across as an individual who believes himself to be above the somewhat backward mentality of his village, that he is the most civilised and dazzling and original, and he exaggerates these traits in himself out of insecurity: ‘if they arent dazzled and blown away and kind of intimidated by me, then i dont feel good about myself.’this is also reflected in his consistent ‘trademark’, his whistle-and-click combination that he uses to set himself apart from other foxes. his home is also a reflection of this:

MRS FOX

you know, foxes live in holes for a reason.

MR FOX

[grunts and tilts head in disagreement]

yes and no.

this insecurity and desire for outsider approval and individuality is inherently human, a quality of his that cannot really be associated with his animalised parts. this precarious sense of identity and self doubt separates him from his ‘wildness’ as it stands, which is only intensified by the fact that he compensates by exaggerating his human traits in order to be liked and feel worthy, as those are the traits he believes have the most value. towards the end of mr fox’s character arc, he is forced to admit that his need for external validation is flawed and unsustainable. when the façade of carefully constructed grandeur is literally washed away by bean, he is left with nothing but his actions and their implications for those around him. foxy reconciles with the relative insignificance of an identity based on other’s perceptions of you when rat dies soon after, reacting to the suggestion that he redeemed himself last minute by revealing ash’s location:

MR FOX

redemption? sure. but in the end, he’s just another dead rat in a garbage pail behind a chinese restaurant.

this moment is also used to inadvertently allow the audience to evaluate the significance of motivation and intention to the value of an action. although rat did reveal useful information to aid the group in saving Kristofferson, mr fox recognises that he only did so because he realised he could not win this fight.

MR FOX

would you have told me if i didn’t kill you first?

RAT

never.

mr fox’s own motivations throughout the movie have devalued his actions as they have mostly been self-serving. as his motivations evolve to centre around his family, he gains the perspective to understand why one’s intentions are so important. while intention does not entirely dictate how good one’s actions are, they certainly characterise the person who’s action it is. your actions have value and consequences as they are, and that cannot be changed by dressing them up or animalising them to distance yourself.

in essence, fantastic mr fox is a lesson in the value of including those around you in your mentality and worldview. it paints masculinity as something that is inherent and complex in nature, but promotes the idea that it is not stuck with its traditional connotations of violence and egoism. mr fox’s emotional development throughout the text mostly centres around his own insecurities surrounding his masculinity and how that causes him to overcompensate in ways that harm those around him. by the end he recognises that more tame and domestic forms of masculinity are just as valid, and that basing his self-worth on how ‘dazzled’ his peers are by him is immature and not constructive. his family now liberates him and allows him to be vulnerable rather than restricting how he feels he can express himself, and as a unit the animals beat the farmers in their game of power-seeking. mr fox recognises and appreciates both his human and animal traits, without using them as a means to excuse his behaviour or to feel bad about his worth.

MR FOX

i guess my point is, we’ll eat tonight, and we’ll eat together. and even in this not particularly flattering light, you are without a doubt the five and a half most wonderful wild animals ive ever met in my life. so let’s raise our boxes – to our survival.

i.k.b

[attemptsonherlifepdf]

the parasocial problem: a comparison of leonard cohen and damien rice’s depictions of infatuation and entrapment

trigger warning for brief mentions of sexual assault terminology, no graphic descriptions (6th paragraph is signposted with tw)

romantic relationships are often the subject of musical musings. they are integral to the human experience and and musicians often use their medium to explore and reflect upon the nature of their relationships. more specifically, a common motif is that of romantic relationships breaking down, or being disrupted by another party. leonard cohen’s ‘famous blue raincoat’ and damien rice’s ‘back to her man’ both detail very similar, almost parallel circumstances from two different perspectives, and together provide an insight into parasocial relationships, dissatisfaction and the feeling of entrapment. these songs work in conjunction with one another to illustrate the cycle of the ‘parasocial problem’ wherein idolising people outside of one’s relationship works to trap all the parties involved in varying degrees of unhappiness and isolation.

‘famous blue raincoat’ by leonard cohen was released on march 17th, 1971. the song is widely considered one of the artist’s best, and is predominantly driven by storytelling. the song details a turbulent romantic relationship disturbed by another man’s interest in cohen’s wife, and reflects upon the nature of his romance. irish musician damien rice released the song ‘back to her man’ as an homage to leonard cohen on november 18th, 2016. the motivation behind the song lies in the story of rice opening for a performance of cohen’s in ireland. rice’s mother, sisters and girlfriend attended the show, and according to rice himself, they ‘were all dripping with love for [cohen]’ having watched him. the song ‘back to her man’ was then written about the idea that ‘after [the] show many women would be going back home and that their men were not, and would never quite be, leonard cohen.’ the song’s lilting, melancholy melody and humming solemn guitar echo the traits of cohen’s ‘famous blue raincoat’, and interestingly, appears to follow a parallel narrative.

‘famous blue raincoat’s narrative is slightly more elusive than that of ‘back to her man’, but it essentially follows cohen’s reflections on a love triangle between himself, a man referred to as his ‘brother’ and a woman named jane. the core theme shared between both songs is the notion of being with someone who is no longer who you expect them to be, but for differing reasons. while rice’s song is about a woman’s partner not living up to the idealised man she has developed a parasocial infatuation with, cohen sings about his ‘woman’ no longer being his own and having to reconcile with the fact that his ‘brother…my killer’ took the woman he knew and made her happier than he could himself. in the final verse, cohen thanks the other man for ‘the trouble you took from [jane’s] eyes’ and continues, ‘i thought it was there for good / so i never tried.’ this suggests that the narrator is aware that this other man may make jane happier than he can, and serves as an admission of neglect for jane, having not even tried to make her happy himself. this fits into the aforementioned theme as jane has become a happier, almost unrecognisable person in the presence of another man. similarly, rice sings ‘whatever you got, you lost in the game / of picking your own pockets for someone to blame / there may be nothing above the arc of love / depending on who you're dreaming of’ as a reference to never finding satisfaction in a relationship if another person is making you happier and has become the subject of your fantasy. both songs focalise on the concept of another man, particularly in the context of a woman’s different reactions to the men in question; one man is the subject of infatuation while the other, her partner, is a source of dissatisfaction. in cohen’s case, his ‘brother’ is the former and he is the latter, and in rice’s case, cohen is the former and the woman’s partner is the latter. these songs almost act as a foil to one another, or as different perspectives of the same story.

‘famous blue raincoat’ sums up the narrative of both cohen and rice’s stories, with the second verse: ‘you treated my woman to a flake of your life / and when she came back, she was nobody’s wife.’ in the context of ‘back to her man’, the singer here would be referring to cohen, the ‘flake of [his] life’ being the small amount of time the woman will have spent watching him perform, and she returns home to her man feeling as though she no longer belongs in a relationship with him due to her infatuation. watching cohen onstage is a particularly small ‘flake’ or insight into his life as it is performative; he is not being his authentic self onstage and audience members fall in love with the performance rather than the performer himself. similarly, in the original context, this lyric references cohen’s ‘brother’ sharing a small amount of time with jane, and it was enough to make her dissatisfied in her relationship with cohen due to it’s contrast to her relationship with the other man. labelling jane ‘nobody’s wife’ also illustrates that cohen perhaps only views her in relationship to himself; rather than being a woman in her own right, she is a wife that must belong to a husband. this perception of jane could indeed be part of her dissatisfaction with cohen, and suggests the ‘other man’ may have treated her as an individual and not as a wife that only exists within the context of her husband. cohen consistently refers to jane as ‘my woman’ or ‘his woman’ and rarely refers to her as a person in isolation. this provides a subtle insight to the nature of his relationship with her, and illustrates how jane is arguably ‘trapped’ by cohen’s definition of her and she cannot exist outside of the context of her relationships. this entrapment is caused by cohen’s perception of her, which is in turn the result of his love for her. in this sense, cohen presents love almost as an object to be possessed rather than a feeling to experience, and almost isolates jane from her own personhood.

TW FOR SA MENTION BELOW

similarly, rice ends his final verse with ‘you can’t escape when it feels like rape / but who’s raping who?’ the usage of the term ‘rape’ creates incredibly visceral imagery; here, rice could either be referring to the feeling of entrapment stemming from being with a partner who no longer fulfils your wants, or he could be likening audience members’ infatuation with cohen to a form of assault, suggesting that their parasocial attachment to him is in some ways an aggressive violation. while rice has introduced the song by stating that he found the contrast between audience members’ love for cohen and the discontentment of having to return home to their partners ‘humorous’, the framing of this contrast within the song itself says otherwise. rice asks the audience ‘who’s raping who?’ as a way of pushing them to consider if their infatuation is in fact harmful to the subject. additionally, the word ‘rape’ itself is incongruous with the soft, quiet tone and lilting melody of the rest of the song, making its use all the more impactful. it darkens the lyrical and musical tone of the rest of the song, with the chorus of people singing the phrase ‘back to her man’ that follows translating to the listener as a kind of omen or warning. the sense that either cohen or the audience are trapped is made explicit with the phrase ‘you can’t escape.’ this illustrates the trapping cycle of obsession where the subject is destined to be objectified and only desired at a surface level, and the person perpetuating this is destined to be dissatisfied in their own relationship and thereby hurt or neglect their partner as a result: therein lies the ‘parasocial problem.’ cohen also uses a particularly stark image in his song; the title of ‘my brother, my killer’ that he gives to the ‘other man’ invokes a biblical image of cain and abel, demonstrating the extent to which he feels betrayed. this usage of the extreme as a means of illustrating betrayal or violation parallels that of rice, creating another theme that runs through both songs.

END OF TW

cohen and rice sonically construct a lamenting, listless tonality in their respective songs, however rice’s guitar parts are much softer and feel much more intimate. this is amplified in the live performances of the song as he introduces it’s backstory with a friendly demeanour and the performance almost imitates the narrative as he arguably ‘treats’ the audience to a ‘flake’ of his life and potentially perpetuates an audience’s infatuation with himself. ‘famous blue raincoat’ arguably has its own intimacy as well; it is structured as a personal letter to the ‘other man’, opening with ‘i’m writing you now just to see if you’re better’ and signing off with ‘sincerely, l. cohen.’ it allows the listener into his interpersonal life, and into this conversation he’s having with the subject of his wife’s happiness and romantic preference. the closeness and trust between the artists and audience in these two songs is reflective of the very narrative they explore: in letting audience members in on personal experience, rice and cohen are risking enabling listeners' potential parasocial obsession with them. the ‘parasocial problem’ is cyclical and the songs in question serve as a wider commentary on the relationships between artists and their fans, not just the specific interpersonal instances that are being written about. the more artists discuss their feelings on parasocial relationships, the closer audience members may feel to them. this in turn can perpetuate the delusion that the artists may return their love and obsession, as fans can feed off being let into personal experiences even if the songs are partially fictionalised or dramatised.

the cyclical nature of obsession is also demonstrated by the mirrored perspectives between the two songs. while cohen is saddened by his ‘brother’ being his wife’s idealised man, he as a performer is inflicting the same fate upon the husbands of his female audience members. in his interpersonal circumstances his wife has become detached from him, but in the context of his performances, he is the one causing this detachment and lack of fulfilment in other people’s relationships. this illustrates how the ‘parasocial problem’ permeates various situations and can function in multiple fashions. both songs depict the end result of this ‘parasocial problem’, where the jilted lover’s feelings morph into acceptance and defeat. cohen’s third verse directly addresses the ‘other man’ and says ‘if you ever come by here for jane or for me / well, you enemy is sleeping, and his woman is free.’ this serves as a defeated invitation to his ‘brother’, letting him know that his ‘woman’ is free to be with him. interestingly, cohen still refers to jane as his own ‘woman’, suggesting he is still unconsciously attached to her in some ways, and that he still perceives jane in relation to himself. rice also directly addresses the ‘other man’ in his song, stating that ‘there’s power in your pocket and ships in your sea.’ the ‘power’ in question references the power dynamic between an idolised performer, in this instance cohen, and an infatuated audience member. cohen, as the performer, holds the most power over this fans as he is the one commanding the stage and whose attention is coveted by the audience. he ‘pockets’ the authority he has, as he does not reciprocate the attention and infatuation he receives. instead artists tend to ‘pocket’ and keep the adoration they receive and are aware of the swarming mass of fans and unaware of each individual fan, as is the one-sided nature of parasocial relationships. rice utilises the metaphor ‘ships in your sea’ to paint a vivid image of the large volume of audience members or ‘ships’ that put cohen on a pedestal, rather than referring to each individual person. the combination of these two lines serves to construct the image of one powerful person and their pulsing mass of devotees; even the traditional structure of a concert corroborates this image. artists tend to be elevated on a stage, looking down to their audience. while this has obvious practical benefits such as ensuring the audience can physically see the performer, it also has a symbolic meaning, showing the disparity in power and value between the performer and audience.

the ‘parasocial problem’ functions both in the smaller context of the relationships detailed in ‘back to her man’ and ‘famous blue raincoat’ and in the wider context of fan culture as a whole. artists cannot discuss the feeling of either being idolised or jilted without letting audience members into aspects of their personal experiences, but this act can then fuel fans' unreciprocated infatuation with them, which amplifies the artists feelings, and perpetuates the cycle. this is not the fault of the artists, but is the result of fan obsession and delusion. it is a cyclical, one-sided form of social entrapment. artists and fans are united in the construction of social bondage that keeps them trapped in one of three conditions; either being objectified and desired at surface level, being dissatisfied with their relationships due to their infatuation with a performer, or being neglected or hurt by their partner who is obsessed with a performer. we define ourselves often in relation to one another, as the people and environment around us cannot be ignored, and the ‘parasocial problem’ is a particularly clear example of how these relative definitions can socially trap us. ‘famous blue raincoat’ and ‘back to her man’ both invoke visceral imagery in order to depict the cruel cycle of parasocial relationships and the disappointing outcomes of infatuation. in either narrative, a woman ends up unhappily going back to her man.

i.k.b

[attemptsonherlifepdf]

bondage and binaries: autonomy recontextualised as a narrative device in science fiction

increasingly popular in mainstream media, science fiction has deep roots in both ancient storytelling and the gothic. the genre covers an expanse of themes that remain socially relevant throughout the entirety of its career; autonomy, transgression, transformation, and corruption. these themes originate from the gothic, the heart of many modern genres. science fiction repurposes gothic themes in fantastical, dystopian and extra-terrestrial contexts and serves as both a well-received source of entertainment and a mode of social commentary. consistent through various eras of sci-fi is the theme of autonomy. much like the gothic, sci-fi stories reflect the social fears prevalent at the time of writing: the fear of a loss of autonomy has always remained an anxiety of western audiences. this fear presents itself in various contexts throughout time. for instance, western societies have dreaded losing autonomy to religious figures abusing their authority (1790s), eastern european immigrants (1890s), and the corruption of the state and technology (1990s). matthew gregory lewis’ ‘the monk’, bram stoker’s ‘dracula’ and the wachowski sisters’ ‘the matrix’ address all these, respective to their time period. bondage has it’s place as a narrative device when it comes to depictions of autonomy as many authors use restraints as a tool to create a sense of helplessness against threat, or to symbolise social or interpersonal constraints. the core difference, of course, between restrains and bondage is that bondage exists in a sexual context and provides gratification for one or both of the parties involved. another key trope of the gothic, and by extension science fiction, is the involvement of taboo, perverse or otherwise transgressive behaviours. the atypical, ‘transgressive’ nature of bdsm gives it’s use in media that relevance, fulfilling two notions of the genre at once. additionally, both styles, at least in their earlier stages, utilise what is referred to as ‘dark romanticism’. this involves taking the stylised language of romantic literature, characterised by purple prose, decadent architecture, etc, and recontextualising it in darker, more morbid settings. the contrast between this lyrical writing and the macabre, violent, alien or taboo content that it is used to describe creates an uneasy, disjointed feeling for audiences. the dynamic between language and content weaves uncanniness into the structure of both genres, which defines them and distinguishes them from other forms of storytelling. for this reason the nature of bondage is integral to the discomfort that sci-fi relies on.

to understand the significance of this writing style and how it characterises science fiction, we need to first understand the chronology of the genre and what impacted its development over time. while sci-fi as we know it today is largely influenced by the gothic, we see fantastical elements in some of the earliest works of fiction, such as the epic of gilgamesh (around 2000 bce) and the indian poem ramayana (5th-4th century bce). ramayana tells of vimana, which are mythological flying palaces or machines that have the ability to travel underwater, into outer space, and to use advanced weaponry to decimate cities. these early references to technology, often used as narrative devices, are a common theme among ancient works of literature. similar examples include the rigveda collection of sanskrit hymns from approximately 1700-1100 bce; the first book contains a depiction of ‘mechanical birds’ that are ‘jumping into space speedily with a craft using fire and water…containing twelve pillars, one wheel, three machines, three hundred pivots and sixty instruments.’ descriptions of technological inventions like this can be found both in early literature, and in later works such as mediaeval stories. it was just prior to the era known as the ‘enlightenment’, which is credited to have begun in 1685, that science fiction started to morph into the form that we see today. 16th century european works such as thomas moore’s ‘utopia’ (1516) and ‘the faust legend’ served as early prototypes of science fiction tropes. moore’s work was the basis for the utopia motif used in sci-fi, similar to how the ‘faust legend’ exemplified the emerging ‘mad scientist’ trope. when the enlightenment era began in europe, it signalled a dramatic shift in thinking, from blind religious faith to knowledge obtained by ‘means of reason and evidence of the senses.’ this was largely influenced by the separation of the church and state, and sparked a wave of speculative fiction concerning the sciences, including: jonathan swift’s ‘gulliver’s travels’ (1726), exploring alien cultures and unusual applications of science, and margaret cavendish’s ‘the description of a new world, called the blazing-world’ (1666), describing a noblewoman’s discovery of an alternate world in the arctic. however, mary shelly’s 1818 ‘frankenstein’ is widely regarded as a major turning point for modern science fiction. shelly’s gothic horror text is the moment where sci-fi and the gothic converge and began to share core elements before developing in their own separate directions again.

shelly’s use of science, and of technology beyond the scope of scientists in her time period as a conceit to drive the narrative is a hallmark of science fiction as we engage with it in the twenty-first century. she develops upon the notion of a ‘crazed scientist’, using the contrast between technology and religion as an extended rhetorical device to alienate frankenstein’s monster. brian aldiss, in ‘billion year spree’ makes the case that ‘frankenstein’ represents ‘the first seminal work to which the label [science fiction] can be logically attached.’ he goes on to argue that science fiction in general derives from the gothic horror novel. the usage of science as a narrative device is one among multiple tropes and elements that shelly imparted to sci-fi with her work. in having an ‘alien’ character fulfil the role of antagonist, shelly comments on the human condition from a new perspective. as put by kelley hurley, ‘through depicting the abhuman, the gothic reaffirms and reconstructs human identity.’ frankenstein’s monster, referred to often as ‘the creature’ is born into bondage; a popularised image from the novel, and several film adaptations, is that of the creature strapped to a board surrounded by rudimentary scientific equipment. from his first introduction to the world, he has no autonomy. these restraints strip him of humanity and reduce him to an experiment. they are not only physical and have practical use, but are symbolic over his general lack of control over the creation of his body, this perverse ‘otherness’ and the public’s decision to outcast him. frankenstein’s monster is an alien in every sense of the word, and it is the subjugation he is born under that characterises him as such. shelly’s work emerged just prior to the fin de siecle (turn of the century), where western science experienced rapid development, which in turn increased the volume of speculative fiction being produced. after ‘frankenstein’, the gothic and science fiction generally parted ways again, but sci-fi now had a host of characterising traits lended to it by shelly’s novel. the general recipe for modern science fiction is a combination of fantasy literature, gothic horror, and advances in western science, allowing us to pinpoint the fin de siecle as a catalyst for the development of the genre. as the era continued, more proto-science fiction was published; most notably was ‘journey to the centre of the earth’ (1864), by jules verne. the tale combines adventure, romance, current technology and predictions of future technology. lyon sprague de camp, an author active in the ‘golden age’ (1940/50s) of science fiction, refers to verne as ‘the world's first full-time science fiction novelist.’

understanding the outlined framework that modern science fiction operates under, we have space to explore the relationship between bondage and sci-fi in detail. in ‘aesthetic violence and women in film’, joseph h kupfer describes violence as having three framings: ‘symbolic, structural and as a narrative essential.’ as previously discussed, violence is an integral factor in the structure of science fiction, starkly contrasting the writing style to create unease. as a narrative device, restraints are often used in conjunction with rising conflict, to create adversity for characters that drives the plot onwards; this is how it functions as a ��narrative essential.’ the final facet of the relevance of violence is symbolic. typically, women, queer men and ethnic minorities in fiction experience violence on a symbolic level; their identities are seen as purely political, and thus they face adversity against an themselves as an idea rather than as individual people. both the gothic and science fiction rely on the use of the ‘Other’, usually referring to uncanny or supernatural creatures, and often minority characters are ‘Othered’ to code them as a threat to audiences. in this instance, physical restraints are often representative of social, interpersonal or systemic barriers against a character, and by extension, against the minority that they belong to. to exemplify this, we can turn once again to shelly’s ‘frankenstein.’ while frankenstein’s monster is not immediately recognisable as a minority, lennard j davis has insisted the ‘creature’ is disabled or at least treated as such: ‘hideous appearance...inarticulate, some- what mentally slow, and walks with a kind of physical impairment.’ this interpretation of the character leans more towards the social model of disability, rather than defining disability as an impairment of the body or mind, making his argument somewhat controversial. frankenstein’s monster is not functionally hindered, but he is characterised by his disfigurement and unconventional appearance, which davis refers to as ‘a disruption in the visual, auditory, or perceptual field as it relates to the power of the gaze.’ his estrangement from society reinforces his animosity towards people; bound by the physical limitations of his disability, he develops into a ‘monstrosity’ as a result of his ableist environment. this reading sees ableism through the lens of bondage, as a social restraint or barrier that alienates the creature. he is born into physical restraints, strapped to an operating table, and is followed by metaphysical constraints that bar him from social function and acceptance. in his initial creation, what defines our understanding of the use of bondage is the power dynamic; victor is the dominant authority, controlling the movements of the creature, while the creature himself is subordinate to him, with no birthright to autonomy. his inability to control what victor inflicts upon him is illustrated by his restraints, and becomes an extended metaphor for his alienation and lack of autonomy throughout the novel. shelly’s work serves as a commentary, intentional or not, on the estrangement and ‘othering’ of disabled peoples and the impacts this has on their wellbeing and understanding of themselves. additionally, the novel functions almost as a warning tale surrounding the concept of abusing the development of science, and ‘playing god’ as victor does.

adjacent to science fiction is the genre of magical realism. it utilises the fantasy aspects of sci-fi and combines them with a realistic worldview to blur the lines between magic and reality. angela carter’s ‘the erl king’ (1979) is a prime example of using fantasy to illustrate social and systemic bondage in similar ways to sci-fi. carter uses imagery of caged birds to create a visceral picture of female entrapment. interestingly, the metaphor of caged birds can be likened to that of emerging feminism. in mary wollenstonecraft’s ‘a vindication of the rights of women’(1792), she argues that women of the eighteenth century were ‘confined in their cages like the feathered race.’ similarly, carter refers to ‘larks stacked in their pretty cages you’ve lured.’ rather than reinforce the idea that femininity is inherently trapping, carter uses this concept to create an almost tangible illustration of the narrator breaking the cycle of this ingrained imagery. in freeing the erl king’s victims and usupring his position of sexual power, the narrator subverts traditional tropes of female submission and prevents violence against women rather than indulging in it. this is evidence of carter’s signature feminist twist: she writes from the perspective of second-wave feminism. the use of ‘caged bird’ imagery as an allegory for violent and sexist systems is reminiscent of the usage of restraints in science fiction and indicates its relevance across similar genres. sexism and female entrapment are forms of social bondage in ‘the erl king’ the same way ableism is in frankenstein. genre differences aside, carter’s work is an example of how bondage as a narrative device has developed throughout literature. while in more traditional texts, it is used to trap and villainise ‘Othered’ characters, or to demonstrate an antagonist is a threat to audiences autonomy, more modern texts take the approach of reclamation. not only does carter subvert the roles of bondage to allow minorities to shift the power dynamic, she holds up a mirror to society and allows them to witness the abuse of power that she is dismantling. this subverted approach to bondage as a narrative device began to emerge in western literature in the 1970s. second wave feminism and the beginning of what is known as the ‘post civil rights movement’ era in the united states shifted the dynamics of western society in a way that we see reflected in media. as more legislation was put into place in both the united states and united kingdom to protect the rights of more marginalised groups, media produced at the time began to reflect these sentiments. while this does not apply to all movies and literature, many authors began depicting the state as the topic of fear, rather than villainising minorities.

a core example of dystopian fiction that comes to mind is margaret atwood’s ‘the handmaid’s tale’ (1985). themes of subjugation, autonomy and reproductive rights run through the novel. atwood stated that the novel is speculative fiction, rather than science fiction, as she ‘didn't put in anything that we haven't already done, we're not already doing, we're seriously trying to do, coupled with trends that are already in progress... so all of those things are real, and therefore the amount of pure invention is close to nil.’ while this distinction has massive significance in terms of the social commentary atwood is offering, her work still operates, in part, under the writing structure of science fiction. the year of the book’s release, reviewers commented on ‘the distinctively modern sense of [a] nightmare come true, the initial paralyzed powerlessness of the victim unable to act.’ atwood depicts the social bondage enforced upon women by the theonomic, totalitarian state by building an environment full of physical limitations; women are treated as commodities and are stripped of the right to chose clothing, sexual partners, pregnancy, and so on. these are all forced upon them in very particular ways, to the sexual benefit of both men domestically and men in authority. ‘the handmaid’s tale’ combines two core aspects when it comes to control. the fear of religious figures abusing their authority, which has deep roots in both traditional gothic literature and true historical events, and the fear of a surveillance state, often utilised in modern science fiction.

the 2017 television adaptation of ‘the handmaid’s tale’ uses forms of physical bondage as a clear symbol of control: red or leather ‘masks’ are worn by handmaidens as ritualistic punishment for ‘disobedience’ or ‘independent thought’, covering their mouths, and handmaidens are often forced to wear veils. this use of bondage is multi-dimensional; it prevents women from seeing and being seen, from speaking and being heard. it removes the humanity of the individual and solidifies their objectification.

similarly, a well-loved trilogy in modern sci-fi, the wachowski sisters’ ‘the matrix’ (1999) truly leans into socially relevant anxieties surrounding the corruption of the state. the movie itself was  ‘born out of anger at capitalism and the corporate structure and forms of oppression’, according to lilly wachowski. the film’s core message is one of reclamation and rebellion against a controlling state; aside from the anti-capitalist rhetoric driving the plot, many of the constraints shown represent social barriers preventing the population from experiencing reality or affirming their own identities. twenty three years from it’s release, ‘the matrix’ is more widely understood now as an allegory for the sisters’ experiences as transgender women in an unaccepting society. there are various uses of bondage and unbalanced power dynamics built into the plot, largely where the ‘agents’ of the state hold authority and dominance whereas the ‘rebels’ and general population are the subordinates being controlled. an example of this is a scene where the protagonist, neo, refuses to cooperate with these agents. in retaliation, they fuse his lips together, removing his ability to speak for himself and creating a terrifying, mangled version of his original face. neo is then pinned down as a ‘tracking bug’, shown to be a robotic centipede, is implanted in his torso. the agents, the dominant force, take his display of autonomy as a threat, and immediately respond with physical restraints in an effort to control it, or at the very least discourage it with scare tactics. this sentiment is echoed in other media, such as the aforementioned masks in ‘the handmaid’s tale.’ forms of gags are often utilised as the ability to speak opinions, call for help, express oneself holds an incredible volume of inherent social value, and having that ability supressed or blocked creates a far more tangible image of the loss of autonomy that resonates strongly with audiences.

a popular image from ‘the matrix’ comes from the infamous ‘red or blue pill’ scene, where neo is exposed to the physical system used to keep the population in a simulated reality while their ‘bioelectric power’ is harvested by machines. gasping for air in a pod filled with liquid not dissimilar to that of the womb, neo is shown to be one of millions of humans being held in pods and kept alive via medical tubes. this is a particularly visceral method of depicting the world’s population as enslaved; humans are stripped of the ability to experience the ‘real world’ and are not even able or permitted to breathe on their own. the way humans are tied into their ‘pods’ that feed their consciousness into the matrix is an example of sci-fi utilising forms of restraint to represent vulnerability and abuse of power. while this is not, by definition, bondage as it does not include sexual arousal it does exemplify why restraints are a vital narrative device. in the context of the wachowski sister’s film, the constrains represent systemic barriers preventing the population from experiencing reality and affirming their own identities. even in instances like this where restraints are used against a protagonist who does not find pleasure in the experience, the perpetrator, such as the agents in the matrix, tend to react with pleasure and almost delight at having someone captive, and the arousal is on their end of the experience as the dominant figure in this interaction. modern sci-fi often has plots rooted in a protagonist or group of protagonists’ journey to dismantle corrupt systems, systems which are reflected as binding or restricting population’s bodies, choices and autonomy. the agents of these systems take pleasure in enacting this restriction as it is a method of maintaining their power and control. consequently, protagonists reclaiming control serves as a natural way for the tables to turn on oppressors and for the narrative to reach its’ hope-filled conclusion.

the aesthetics of bdsm have their place in modern science fiction, but specifically in the matrix. western gothic and alternative fashion appear to be culturally associated with bdsm accessories, namely chokers, harnesses, garters, and so on. kym barrett, the costume designer for the matrix, has stated ‘[the costumes are] reflecting back more obviously to what’s really going on in the world, so maybe subconsciously people are connecting to it.’ the cast sports ensembles comprised of latex, leather, harnesses and accessories; while their clothes must serve a practical purpose and be appropriate attire for action, this also comes across as a co-opting of bondage gear as an act of reclaimation. barrett goes on to explain, ‘when they go into the matrix, they create their persona, which is how they see themselves.’ the depth of these characters centres around their reactions to their oppression, and co-opting symbols of this oppression helps to reinforce their fight against it.

other iconic fashion uses of bondage such as vivienne westwood’s alternative lines of clothing follow a similar vein, described as ‘clothing and imagery that appear dirty, ripped, scarred, shocking, spectacular, cruel, traumatised, sick, or alienating.’ this description matches western societal perspectives on bdsm, specifically the practice of bondage. uses of bondage in the mainstream are often a tool in shock fashion, largely influenced by both the gothic and by punk. punk subculture in particular is built upon shock culture, and utilises bondage alongside the themes of anarchy and anti-capitalism to promote a deeply political message. again, bondage gear and physical restraints are co-opted to form an anti-establishment narrative that jeers in the face of social restraints. despite music and fashion not being the same as literature, we can still see bondage being used as a narrative device. westwood’s sado-masochistic inspired clothing saw the addition of a punk line, named seditionaries, in 1976 after the designer met with the sex pistols. as previously discussed, what defines the gothic genre is the uncanny relationship dynamic between two binaries: romantic language and horror content. this translates to the worlds of both fashion and music, where gothic or alternative content relies on the uneasy contrast between the glamour of fashion or the melodic sound of a song and the shocking, counter-culturalist ‘traumatised’ method of presentation, be it the bdsm influence in the design of a garment or the macabre lyrics. this places bondage at the forefront of alternative media and reinforces its’ relevance as a narrative device.

the history of science fiction narratives is peppered with taboos, bent social conventions and abuses of power. the genre’s framework is inherently a development of gothic framework, recontextualised in a fantasy setting. we rely upon science fiction as a means of coping with capitalism; it is therapeutic to see an unlikely hero burst into the office of a space warlord, a corrupt government, a rogue machine, and blow the fucking place up. in order to experience this catharsis, we have to be able to visualise the constraints that they are dismantling, and to see the perverse nature of them in the first place. bondage traps the core sentiment of a narrative in manacles and allows it to violently break free and confront audiences head-on. it asks the audience, do you feel restrained? do the systems restraining you take pleasure in holding you in place? do you see how unjust it is to be controlled? and as our protagonist triggers an exodus of people ripping off the duct tape, loosening the rope, and unlocking the manacles, our narrative device turns to the audience again and asks, do you see how just it is to be free?

i.k.b

[attemptsonherlifepdf]

fantastic mr fox: humanising animals, animalising men, and an exploration of masculine identity

‘this story is too predictable.’ / ‘predictable? really? what happens in the end?’ / ‘in the end, we all die. unless you change.’

mr fox, the titular character of wes anderson’s 2009 stop-motion adaptation of roald dahl’s children’s book, is a portrait of two conflicting manifestations of masculinity. he is built to demonstrate the crossover between tradition and modernity, between wild and civilised. characterised as a charming gentleman, almost renowned for his recklessness, mr fox combines his undomesticated instincts with a carefully crafted domestic life. he appears to spend more time manufacturing a perfect home and family than he does actually participating in it. the events of the movie serve to strip away his facade and present both the audience and protagonist with a harsh reality to deal with: the juxtaposing aspects of his identity that he must contend with in order to survive his situation. these aspects are demonstrated through the use of anthropomorphic animals. in essence, the text attempts to convey the message that while you can associate your actions with animal or human traits in order to characterise and frame them, you cannot change their value and their consequences. it serves as a critique of how the nature of male identity is exploited to shunt responsibility, and the movie specifically promotes a more collectivist mentality.

there are four key scenes that mark mr fox’s journey in terms of his identity. initially, we first see his identity openly questioned once he has moved into a new home (a large and expensive tree), just prior to him revealing his ‘master plan’ to kylie, who becomes his assistant of sorts. he asks, ‘why a fox? why not a horse, or a beetle, or a bald eagle? i’m saying this more as, like, existentialism, you know? who am i? and how can a fox ever be happy without, you’ll forgive the expression, a chicken in its teeth?’ he attributes his identity with the ability to fulfil his base desires, like he could in his youth. aspects of his later life such as employment, family, and safety restrict his ability and leaves him feeling untethered from himself. the movie opens with his youthful vibrance and recklessness, and is quickly contrasted with his dissatisfaction with his job, home, and life in general.

MR FOX

i dont want to live in a hole anymore. it makes me feel poor.

MRS FOX

we are poor, but we’re happy.

MR FOX

comme ci, come ca...

does anyone actually read my column?

having been moved out of the hole and into an expensive tree, mrs fox asks her husband:

MRS FOX

do you still feel poor?

MR FOX

less so.

constructing the ideal domestic space for himself and his family does not satisfy mr fox and he yearns for more, which is where is existentialism and ‘master plan’ come into play. domesticity was never going to satisfy mr fox, as he yearns for something youthful and risky and dazzling, adjectives not usually applied to a quiet and content home life. the consequences of this dissatisfaction are drastic and almost immediate.

soon, having been forced out of his new home and underground by an attack from the farmers, mr fox is faced with a situation he cannot charm his way out of. he attempts to apologise to his son and recite a speech to raise the morale of his family, and both of these attempts are shut down by those around him. the facade of his elaborate home, his monologues, even his suits, are abruptly stripped away leaving him with only his actions which he cannot charm his way out of. the reality is that he and his family, his neighbourhood, is stuck underground with no means of food as a result of his selfish actions. this prompts yet another key scene; his argument with felicity, which begins with her viciously hissing and scratching his face.

MRS FOX

why did you lie to me?

MR FOX

because im a wild animal.

MRS FOX

you are also a husband, and a father.

MR FOX

im trying to tell you the truth about myself.

MRS FOX

i dont care about the truth about yourself. this story is too predictable.

MR FOX

predictable? really? what happens in the end?

MRS FOX

in the end, we all die. unless you change.

mrs fox’s physical attack on her husbands face serves as a display of genuine animal ferocity, making mr fox’s claim to being a ‘wild animal’ appear as a flimsy excuse for his behaviour. his chicken theft, which he was insistent upon regardless of the consequences, was motivated not by animal instincts but a selfish desire to feel a particular version of his own masculinity. disregarding the safety of his family actually seems like a natural byproduct of his master plans because he is trying to reclaim his masculinity from a time before his family existed, and in his eyes, restricted him. the very recent loss of his tail, combined with this conversation with his wife, is a harsh reality check for mr fox in terms of the dangers of his masculinity.

the audience sees the outcome of this conversation later on, in the waterfall scene. here mr fox admits to his insecurities and suggests sacrificing himself to the farmers to save the local community.

MR FOX

darling, maybe they’ll let everyone else live!

…

MR FOX

foxes traditionally like to court danger, hunt prey and outsmart predators, and that’s what im actually good at…i guess at the end of the day im just-

MRS FOX

i know. we’re wild animals.

the difference between this admission to animalism and the one from his argument with felicity is that here, both parties gain some acceptance of their animalism without using it as an excuse for their behaviour. the inclusion of others in animalism – ‘we’re’ wild animals, rather than ‘i am’ a wild animal – contributes to illustrate how wildness is not specific to masculinity. it is not femininity vs masculinity but animals vs man.

the movie also questions the nature of an animal in the final key scene known as ‘canis lupus.’ wes Anderson referred to this scene as ‘the reason im making this movie.’ throughout the movie, mr fox alludes to his ‘phobia of wolves’ and shuts down any conversation surrounding them:

MR FOX

scared? no, i have a phobia of them!...a wolf? what’s with all the wolf talk? can we give it a rest for once?

arguably, these reactions are representative of mr fox’s aversion to competitive masculinity. he shuts down any opportunity for those around him to discuss something he sees as more masculine than himself in order to feel secure in his own masculinity. critic shana mlawski argues that ‘the wolf is described as the wildest, most frightening, and yet most beautiful creature in the world. mr fox fears the wolf and yet wants to be exactly like him. we can thus say that mr fox fears pure, wild masculinity yet also yearns to own it himself.’ the scene holds an eerie familiarity to it; mr fox is recognising something that he thought would be a reflection of himself, but the wild animal is no longer familiar to him anymore. he now accepts his role as a husband and a father and no longer fights to overtly express his animalism in the same way as the wolf. the most he can offer the wolf is raising his fist in solidarity. he calls out to the wolf, ‘i have a phobia of wolves!’, which is an interesting moment to admit this in. it’s his acceptance that allows him to admit this. the scene is entirely compromised of male characters: mr fox, kristofferson, ash, kylie and the wolf. mr fox’s admission to his fear allows him to be vulnerable in front of these people he cares about, and to use this as a teaching moment for the young boys.

MR FOX

what a beautiful creature. wish him luck out there, boys.

here mr fox openly admits his admiration for someone else’s masculinity in front of others without showing signs of his own insecurity. he can admire the wolf for what he is without seeing him as competition. the scene allows the audience to see and directly compare two forms of masculinity and animalism, and to understand that there is no one true expression of either of those traits. the wolf has connotations of violence and ferocity, whereas mr fox and his suit and display of multilingualism are entirely modern, but both are masculine animals who are valid in their own right. either way, both animals rely on violence for survival at times.

kupfer frames violence in three ways: symbolically, structurally and as a narrative essential. there are various forms of violence within this narrative, namely mr fox killing chickens and squabs, and the three farmers’ attack on the animal community. symbolically, mr fox’s chicken theft is attributed to his masculinity. while it is often presented as thought-out ‘master plans’, his desire to enact this violence in the first place supposedly stems from his ‘wild animal’ instincts. he associates a time where he felt secure in his masculinity with his actions at the time (violence). structurally, we see the potential for this violence in the opening scene, where mr fox takes his wife chicken-stealing and they become trapped. he is stuck in a fox trap with his wife when he receives the news of his impending fatherhood, a relatively obvious symbol for his view of fatherhood in general. the news of his wife’s pregnancy disrupts his ability to continue stealing chickens, not just on this specific occasion but through the coming years as well. mr fox appears to view family life as an unfulfilling, less raw expression of his masculinity, and is shown to be wholly dissatisfied with his life.

the violence on the farmers’ behalf is almost always in reaction to mr fox’s violence, already giving it a structural framing. boggis, bunch and bean are referred to early on in the film as the ‘meanest, nastiest and ugliest farmers on the side of the river.’ their violence against mr fox and subsequently the local animal community is an attempt to gain back power and status. mr fox’s actions are “humiliating’ and the local news coverage of this exchange between the farmers and animals raises the stakes as now the reputation of these farmers is on the line as well as their power. violence here serves as a narrative essential because it drives mr fox into a situation that forces him to confront his issues with masculinity and splitting between his animal and human traits, giving the text/movie a fulfilling arc. violence is

introduced as inherently masculine, but is decoupled from masculinity by the ending. mrs fox also plays a small but significant role in this; at various moments in the movie she exhibits her own displays of aggression equal in intensity to the men around her, suggesting to the audience that forms of violence should be categorised as human vs animal rather than male vs female. examples of this behaviour include her clawing at her husband’s face, and a parallel between her and a male human character wherein they both connect two wires and shout ‘contact!’, causing an explosion. while this moment is brief, it highlights a distinct difference between animals being violent and men. humans’ aggression is driven by the need for power, whereas that of animals is driven by the need for survival. the man paralleled with felicity only sparked the explosion to destroy mr fox’s home and assert the dominance of the three farmers, while mrs fox used the same form of violence to enact a plan to save her nephew’s life. petey’s song even alludes to this sentiment: ‘well he stole, and he cheated, and he lied just to survive.’

mr fox’s tail becomes a symbol of power; bean wears it as a necktie, and mr fox feels emasculated by his loss.

MR FOX

one of those slovenly farmers is probably wearing my tail as a necktie right now.

…

BADGER

i cant even imagine how painful, even just emotionally, that must be for you… oh but foxy how humiliating, having your tail blown clean off by-

MR FOX

can we drop it?

the use of the tail as a necktie is a symbol of the power that mr fox and the farmers end up jostling to achieve: at first it belongs to mr fox, then to the farmers, and is eventually reclaimed once more by the fox.

MR FOX

you shot off my tail.

[through gritted teeth] i’m not leaving here without that necktie.

when he reclaims his tail towards the end of the movie, it has been torn to shreds and needs ‘dry cleaning twice a week’ to maintain itself. this can be interpreted as a symbol for his evolved definitions of masculinity and power: his masculinity is no longer defined by impressing people or stealing or killing chickens, but in the quiet satisfaction of having a family. the final scene reveals that mrs fox is pregnant again, and instead of her glowing and her husband giving an awkward grin like in the opening scene, both of the spouses ‘glow.’ the structural framing of these pregnancy reveals bookending the events of the movie allows anderson to demonstrate mr fox’s growth and change in his priorities. the domestic life appears to be enough for him, and he no longer seems to find it emasculating,

what stands out as particularly modern about mr fox is how he unconsciously separates himself from both his wildness and his suburban self in his effort to combine them. he uses his ‘wildness’ as an excuse for his violence and selfishness, but is ultimately not willing to participate in truly wild forms of violence and selfishness, such has hunting. his chicken thefts always include infiltrating a human site, like boggis, bunce and bean’s farms, and the fun of it is in outsmarting them, rather than finding those animals himself out in the wild. the local animal community essentially functions as we would expect a rural village occupied by humans to function: everyone knows everyone, there is one local school and various small and quaint homes. while the setting reflects anderson’s signature style, it is also reflective of dahl’s framing of the community in the original text.

mr fox comes across as an individual who believes himself to be above the somewhat backward mentality of his village, that he is the most civilised and dazzling and original, and he exaggerates these traits in himself out of insecurity: ‘if they arent dazzled and blown away and kind of intimidated by me, then i dont feel good about myself.’this is also reflected in his consistent ‘trademark’, his whistle-and-click combination that he uses to set himself apart from other foxes. his home is also a reflection of this:

MRS FOX

you know, foxes live in holes for a reason.

MR FOX

[grunts and tilts head in disagreement]

yes and no.

this insecurity and desire for outsider approval and individuality is inherently human, a quality of his that cannot really be associated with his animalised parts. this precarious sense of identity and self doubt separates him from his ‘wildness’ as it stands, which is only intensified by the fact that he compensates by exaggerating his human traits in order to be liked and feel worthy, as those are the traits he believes have the most value. towards the end of mr fox’s character arc, he is forced to admit that his need for external validation is flawed and unsustainable. when the façade of carefully constructed grandeur is literally washed away by bean, he is left with nothing but his actions and their implications for those around him. foxy reconciles with the relative insignificance of an identity based on other’s perceptions of you when rat dies soon after, reacting to the suggestion that he redeemed himself last minute by revealing ash’s location:

MR FOX

redemption? sure. but in the end, he’s just another dead rat in a garbage pail behind a chinese restaurant.

this moment is also used to inadvertently allow the audience to evaluate the significance of motivation and intention to the value of an action. although rat did reveal useful information to aid the group in saving Kristofferson, mr fox recognises that he only did so because he realised he could not win this fight.

MR FOX

would you have told me if i didn’t kill you first?

RAT

never.

mr fox’s own motivations throughout the movie have devalued his actions as they have mostly been self-serving. as his motivations evolve to centre around his family, he gains the perspective to understand why one’s intentions are so important. while intention does not entirely dictate how good one’s actions are, they certainly characterise the person who’s action it is. your actions have value and consequences as they are, and that cannot be changed by dressing them up or animalising them to distance yourself.

in essence, fantastic mr fox is a lesson in the value of including those around you in your mentality and worldview. it paints masculinity as something that is inherent and complex in nature, but promotes the idea that it is not stuck with its traditional connotations of violence and egoism. mr fox’s emotional development throughout the text mostly centres around his own insecurities surrounding his masculinity and how that causes him to overcompensate in ways that harm those around him. by the end he recognises that more tame and domestic forms of masculinity are just as valid, and that basing his self-worth on how ‘dazzled’ his peers are by him is immature and not constructive. his family now liberates him and allows him to be vulnerable rather than restricting how he feels he can express himself, and as a unit the animals beat the farmers in their game of power-seeking. mr fox recognises and appreciates both his human and animal traits, without using them as a means to excuse his behaviour or to feel bad about his worth.

MR FOX

i guess my point is, we’ll eat tonight, and we’ll eat together. and even in this not particularly flattering light, you are without a doubt the five and a half most wonderful wild animals ive ever met in my life. so let’s raise our boxes – to our survival.

i.k.b

[attemptsonherlifepdf]

flying and driving in circles: a comparison of cycles of masculinity in kite runner and a streetcar named desire

trigger warning for violence, SA, death, and abuse mentions

tennessee williams and khaled hosseini both demonstrate how men’s relationships with one another form cycles that reinforce one specific view on masculinity: that aggression and stoicism should be praised and vulnerability should be shamed; ‘fathers weren’t supposed to cry.’ a streetcar named desire and the kite runner show how the ways men present themselves have changed very little across time or culture. from williams’ portrayal of the american south in the 1950s to hosseini’s depiction of 1980s afghanistan, the most valued form of masculinity remains what robert bray describes in his commentary of a streetcar named desire as ‘king of the apes.’

the existence of an ‘idol’ is hugely significant in the presentation of masculinity within these texts. having a man who epitomises the most desirable male traits present in the social sphere means that the rest of the sphere has someone to model themselves on, but also someone who is dominant over them.  the poker scene is contextualised by the presence of ‘a picture of van gogh’s of a billiard-parlour at night.’ on the wall. this is an example of williams’ expressionism. he uses all aspects of the stage, including the set, to shape meaning; the painting is known as ‘the night cafe’ from 1888, the post-impressionist period. it is van gogh’s self-proclaimed ‘ugliest painting’ and depicts a cafe as ‘a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad or commit a crime…’ it’s presence in the kitchen creates a parallel between the scene in the painting and the scene involving the play’s characters. this paints stella’s home to be similar, as a place for drunks and unwanted population, and characterises the nature of the social sphere as uninhibited and vulgar. the social sphere is shown to be inhabited by men, in this case, stanley, steve, mitch and pablo. williams uses this painting to hint at the more primal aspects of masculinity. in the absence of women and the presence of other men, men are shown to regress or almost devolve to a more animalistic, playful state. this is particularly relevant to stanley and his ability to be both easy-going and intimidating. the setting involves ‘raw colours of the childhood spectrum’, both in terms of the kitchen itself and the men’s clothes. these characters are described as being ‘at the peak of their physical manhood, as coarse and direct and powerful as the primary colours.’ these colours not only set up a new presentation of masculinity but also work to further separate male and female spheres. serving as yet another example of plastic theatre, the separation is shown through contrasts in colour and lighting. the brightly lit kitchen appears vivid and fun in comparison to the bedroom, which is ‘relatively dim.’

the poker scene is vital in williams’ characterisation of masculinity, particularly in terms of how each individual’s sense of masculine identity is shaped by the social contexts they experience with other men. stanley’s language in this scene is hugely contrasted with mitch’s, painting him as far more visceral and commanding. much of his body language is animalised in this scene; williams describes him as ‘lurching...impatient...gives a loud whack of his hand…animal joy...’ ben foster , who starred as stanley in st anne’s warehouse 2016 production of the play, described stanley as an ‘alpha dog. men who act on base desires, typically those that are sexual, are often described in modern dialogue as ‘dogs.’ saeed  suggests that in this context, ‘the word dog is used to describe behaviour, rather than to name a species. this idea is further reiterated in the context of the poker game; it is established that the social sphere belongs to men, and games often serve as an extended metaphor for male bonding, similar to the playfulness of animals. just as stanley is the head of the bowling team, williams allows the poker game to be played in stanley’s own home, giving him the opportunity to both control the sphere and assert his dominance over the other players.

his dismissal of mitch’s concern over his mother carries an aggressive, exasperated tone, suggesting that mitch’s display of love for his mother is pathetic and should be mocked: ‘shut up...aw, for god’s sake, go home then!’ stanley’s harsh response to a display of care or vulnerability arguably prompts the rest of the men to ignore mitch entirely and continue the game; within the conversation, stanley, pablo and steve can be heard intermittently discussing the game, ‘give me three...what’ve you got?...spade flush...seven-card stud….’ the insistent repetition here exemplifies both stanley’s influence over them, and the extent to which men will shun and avoid showing weakness or emotion. he also directly references the game when insulting his friends; ‘what do you two think you are? a pair of queens?’ he emasculates them in order to assert himself as the most masculine of the group. poker itself is presented as a specifically manly game, as harris  suggests there is some ‘phallic symbolism of a game in which ‘one-eyed jacks are wild.’

hosseini uses similar techniques to show the importance of assef as an idol in the kite runner, but in a slightly more dangerous manner. assef is a prime example of how class can feed male aggression and boost their power. as a pashtun, his assumed political ‘superiority’ over hassan, a hazara, gives him the security to not face any punishment for his treatment of him, further incentivising him to abuse his physical dominance over the boy. this bears resemblance to how stanley’s ability to avoid consequence for his actions reinforces the cycle of shaming and praising certain male characteristics. in fact, class is the main reason for assef’s abuse of hassan in the first place: ‘his people pollute our homeland, our watan. they dirty our blood.’ assef attacks hassan for his ‘impurity’ but does not do so alone: kamal and wali are introduced as is ‘obeying servants’ and hosseini states that assef’s ‘word was law.’ this shows the extent of his influence on other men. he uses them to aid his abuse: ‘all i want you weaklings to do is hold him down. can you manage that?’ by referring to the boys as ‘weaklings’ and patronising them, it clearly shows how assef’s hold on them relies upon their fear of rejection or emasculation: rather than the men around him wanting to emulate his behaviour like the men in a streetcar named desire wish to imitate stanley, they obey him and mimic his actions out of fear. literary articles  suggest that it’s ‘almost as if his early upbringing prepares him for his later violent behaviours’. which addresses the impact of class on his attitude to others. unlike stanley, assef is mainly a threat to the men around him rather than women. stanely is amicable and idolisable to other men, and poses the biggest threat to the women in his life such as stella, exemplified by the incident of domestic pviolence against her, and blanche: while he threatens and mocks her throughout the play, the most significant example of stanley being dangerous would be his rape of blanche. this treatment of her was a prime example of the nightmarish complexity of stanley. in comparing assef and stanely, we see two similar but significantly separate forms of masculinity. both men use their physical power to express themselves, but while assef’s abusive actions are for the purpose of ‘teaching hassan a lesson’ and displaying his own perceived superiority, stanley’s abuse appears to stem from some insecurity. he finds the radio irritating as it serves as a loud reminder of blanche’s presence, and throws it from the window in a rage, hitting stella as she attempts to calm him down. these two expressions of masculinity demonstrate, in the case of both authors, the force with which men will attack someone, regardless of their intention behind it. should a man have the support of other men that he deems lesser, such as kamal and wali or steve, pablo and mitch, he becomes entirely dangerous and far less likely to regulate his anger in a non-violent manner.  

one display of emotion by an idol that stands out is that of baba’s in hosseini’s text. similar to how stanley’s outburst is triggered by the threat of being left by his wife, baba becomes emotional when told that ali and hassan are going to leave. he begins with the default, masculine response of anger. ‘“i forbid you to do this!” baba bellowed.’ as the reality of being left sets in, he reverts to a blatant expression of sadness instead. amir’s portrayal of this emphasises its rarity and importance: ‘then i saw baba do something i had never seen him do before: he cried. it scared me a little, seeing a grown man sob. fathers weren’t supposed to cry.’ amir’s expectation for his father to remain stoic promotes this cycle that prioritises rationale over feeling, which appears to exist in both afghan and american culture, spanning both texts. hower reiterates this, suggesting that ‘baba personifies all that is courageous.’

whilst stanley’s sobbing can arguably be interpreted as emotional manipulation, to maintain his relationship with stella, baba appears to simply be devastated at ali and hassan’s departure, with no ulterior motive. here the authors display two different sides to stereotypical, idealistic masculinity. baba’s distress could also partly be due to the family-centric afghan culture he lives in, where family and your connections with your community are some of the most important aspects of one’s life. this concern for family is differently reflected in baba’s reactions to amir’s emotion: he is openly disappointed in his young son crying at the sight of a man being trampled by horses, giving him a ‘disgusted look’ and telling a friend ‘“there’s something missing in that boy...i’d never believe he’s my son.”’ he almost appears to disown him here, highlighting the pressure to uphold masculine ideals for the sake of family honour that men must face. he buys into the afghan ideals for masculinity, particularly stoicism, as he is described as a ‘towering pashtun specimen’ himself.

both authors also demonstrate the other side of this cycle, where those not given the privilege of being an ‘idol’ are shamed to extreme lengths. often these men lack the physical characteristics of a typically strong or intimidating man, and in a streetcar named desire it becomes clear that a man’s sexual desire is also key in defining his power. while this is partly shown through the contrasts between stanley and mitch in their approaches to women, the most prominent example of this is allan. the cruel treatment of him by blanche is entirely based upon his lack of sexual attraction to women: ‘i know! i know! you disgust me…’ such comments result in his suicide only moments later: ‘he’d stuck the revolver into his mouth, and fired - so that the back of his head had been - blown away!’ the abruptness of blanche’s delivery here is reminiscent of how swiftly those who do not fit into classic male stereotypes are dismissed - she describes allan’s ‘nervousness, a tenderness’ as a trait ‘which wasn’t like a man’s’. similarly, bertens  references the ‘traditional representations of homosexuality, in which maleness and masculinity are uncoupled. interestingly, this is an example of a woman, blanche, reinforcing this cycle amongst men rather than a man, exposing how ingrained this was in the american south, particularly during the 1950s. bertens continues, discussing how the ‘binary oppositions [between masculine and feminine genderings, are] pervasively present in the way we think about nature, emotion, science, action (or non-action), art, and so on. the treatment of homosexuality in this play is likely a result of williams’ ambivalence towards his own sexuality. having grown up and lived in missouri, where homosexuality was illegal, he was often treated as an outsider which likely influenced his presentation of similar characters. additionally, the shocking and sudden description of allan’s suicide is consistent with williams’ writing style, as he said he ‘[tried] to remember two things about the audience; not to deceive them and not to bore them.’ while williams favours expressionism, the more relevant aspects of the social commentary he provides are often made blatant rather than subtle to avoid misinterpretation, also shown through stanley’s onstage abuse of blanche.

in contrast, hosseini appears to be the only author of the two who presents this male violence in situations where it is justified. baba’s charge on karim does exemplify once again how aggression is often the immediate response to conflict, but the presentation of baba both throughout the text and during this scene makes it clear that he acts this way out of desperation and a desire to protect his family. amir introduces the attack as ‘the next thing i saw’, emphasising the speed of baba’s reaction. baba fills the role in afghan culture of the father as the protector of the family. it is his role to forcefully and actively safeguard his kin, and the circumstances in which he attacks karim are dire, as they seek to escape their country for safety. roberts  describes what hosseini does here as ‘[putting] a face on the painful history of afghanistan.’ this is particularly effective as amir’s experience with his country’s conflict and immigration is similar to that of hosseini himself; his family was granted asylum in the united states in 1980, due to the communist overthrow of the afghan government.

this conflict is presented as unfolding very similarly to stanley’s attacks on both stella and blanche in williams’ text.  stella and stanley’s conflict towards the end of the third scene escalates rapidly into physical conflict, as shown by williams’ fast-paced stage directions: ‘stanley stalks fiercely through to portieres into the bedroom. he crosses to the small white radio and snatches it off the table. with a shouted oath, he tosses the instrument out of the window…[brief dialogue]...there is the sound of a blow. stella cries out.’ in the 1951 film adaptation of the play, this scene progresses from calm to chaotically violent in under 30 seconds, illustrating how stanley’s brutality is his first impulsive reaction when he wants to assert himself. stanley’s intentions differ hugely from baba’s, as he acts this way not out of protection for anyone but for his own control over the household. kupfer argues that film, and by extension plays and scripts, aesthetically frame violence in three ways: symbolically, structurally, and as a narrative essential. stanley’s violence in streetcar’s film adaptation, and in many stage adaptations, meets these three criteria; symbolically, it is a representation of both his desire to control the household and his classic, brutal male traits, as well as a symbol for blanche’s deterioration. williams utilises the musical motif of the ‘blue piano’ and ‘varsouviana’ whenever stanley is physically or mentally violent towards blanche. structurally, his violence, both in this instance and throughout the play as a whole, increases in severity and comes to disrupt any moment of peace felt by blanche. it equally functions as a narrative essential as stanley’s savagery worsens her mental state and drives the plot onwards. williams uses the structure of a play and his concept of ‘plastic theatre’ to frame male violence as a central aspect of one’s masculinity.

his rape of blanche plays out slightly differently, as it is not immediate, and not provoked by one single event. throughout the play, stanley makes multiple non-violent bids to chase blanche away from his home; even upon her arrival he subtly points out her alcoholism, making it clear from the start that he can see through her confident facade. as the narrative progresses, he questions her financial status to stella, asking her to ‘open your eyes to this stuff! you think she got them out of a teacher’s pay?’ he asks blanche for ‘legal papers. connected with the plantation’ under the guise of the ‘napoleonic code’, and when made to feel ‘somewhat sheepish’ by her reaction, reveals stella’s pregnancy to her as punishment. this triggers the ‘blue piano’, a recurring musical motif, to play, signifying the emotional toll this information has on blanche, as stanley likely intended. yet another emotional blow from stanley later in the play triggers a similar motif; by gifting her a bus ticket ‘back to laurel! on the greyhound! tuesday!’ in a blunt last-ditch effort to drive blanche away, he causes the ‘varsouviana’ to begin playing softly. williams uses these recurring musical themes to emphasise the impact stanley’s actions have on blanche, as is a trope of what he coined ‘plastic theatre.’ esther merle jackson  explains this as ‘not confined to visual structures. its sensuous symbol also embraces sound patterns: words, music, and aural effects.’ often throughout the play, lighting is used to highlight key themes such as the division between male and female spheres, using lighter tones for characters like blanche and warmer tones when men are gathered together such as the poker scene. blanche’s musical motifs are used to blur the lines between reality and unreality, and become more frequent after every emotional blow she takes from stanley. this is used to show the extent of stanley’s effects on blanche’s deteriorating mental state.

while all these efforts to be rid of his sister-in-law are cruel, they are definitely not as overtly violent, but instead more physically intimidating. in the penultimate scene, stanley’s final act of cruelty towards blanche does turn to a physical attack on her, the impact of which is marked by the ‘hot trumpet and drums from the four deuces’. j.m. mcglinn  argues that stanley ‘wishes to destroy [blanche’s] composure to make her recognise that she is the same as he is, a sexual animal.’ elements of this argument for stanley’s motivation surface in the pair’s conflict just prior to his attack on her. through the play, his dislike of her has partly stemmed from a hatred of her facade, as he constantly works to disprove the lies she tells regarding her financial status or her relationship with shep huntleigh. he tells her, ‘i’ve been onto you from the start! not once did you pull any wool over this boy’s eyes!’

it can be argued that the idolisation of stoic, aggressive, physically intimidating men in this ‘new america’ results in a culture that only responds to assertion through violence. none of stanley’s previous endeavours have successfully encouraged blanche to leave, but this assault results in her being mentally disturbed to the point of being sectioned. mitch openly blames blanche’s hospitalisation on stanley, shouting ‘you! you done this, all o’ your god damn interfering with things you-’ and he eventually ‘collapses at the table, sobbing.’ stanley predictably brushes off this display of emotion with contempt, as he literally ‘pushes him aside’ and tells him to ‘quit the blubber!’, further reinforcing the cycle where emotional or ‘unmasculine’ men are dismissed or mocked. this moment highlights stanley’s true brutality as his comments contrast the sombre tragedy of the situation.

stanley appears to take advantage of this situation that he has caused, comforting stella with incredibly sexual overtones. as he soothes her ‘voluptuously’, and as he does so, ‘his fingers find the opening of her blouse.’ stella’s sobbing is referred to as ‘luxurious...the sensual murmur.’ her husband’s violence and kindness are equally motivated by sexual desire. his abuse of blanche serves as his effort to reassert himself and reestablish his home’s original dynamic through sexual domination. as appears to be his nature, this leads to him eventually taking advantage of stella. while williams may be using stanley as an example of the most extreme side of the spectrum of masculinity, he almost seems like a different species altogether. as said by crandell , ‘the radicalised discourse spoken by stella and blanche serves to define stanley as other, a sexual, cultural, and my implication, racial alien. this would heavily imply that his character represents an idealised version of masculinity in the post-colonial american south rather than an accurate representation of men during this period. the existence of stanley serves to be the ideal that men strive for, maintaining the cycle of dismissing those who do not meet the high standard that people like stanely set.  while earlier audiences may have idolised stanley and not necessarily have been aware of the fact that williams uses his character as a vehicle for criticisms of brutal masculinity, contemporary western audiences tend to view masculinity through a more critical lens and are therefore less at risk of mistakenly looking up to what stanley represents.

ultimately, williams and hosseini both explore presentations of masculinity through the societal reactions to the different ways men express themselves. both 1950s american and 1980s afghan culture define masculinity through notions of aggression, physical dominance, heterosexuality and class, however afghan men’s roles within traditional family structures are more heavily emphasised. the texts mainly differ when it comes to political context: while the soviet-afghan war from the late 1970s onwards reinforces ideas of classism and pushes characters to rely on violence and hostility to survive, williams’ post-civil war characters carry outdated southern masculine ideals over into the ‘new america.’ additionally, the form of each text influences how differently we understand its meaning. the stage format of a streetcar named desire means that we as an audience see different events but not through any particular lens or point of view, and thus williams uses expressionism so that the costume, set, lighting, etc, all contribute to the play’s messages about masculinity; how it is characterised by aggression and reinforced by mens’ interpersonal relationships. hosseini instead gives the reader a first-person account of the story’s events through amir’s narration. this gives us a direct insight into this trauma, guilt, and evolving views on masculinity. as we see his views evolve, we can identify the incidents that have influenced him and more clearly follow his thoughts. it is likely that these differing styles are, in part, affected by each author’s intention.

however, the authors converge on the fundamental notions of what makes a man, and the importance of class or social standing in excusing overtly violent and abusive behaviour. both tennessee williams and khaled hosseini highlight how men’s relationships with one another form society-wide opinions on certain expressions of masculinity. they portray environments where stoic, hostile, physically intimidating men are praised and idolised, as are their interests; typically games, sport, cars and sexually available women. this environment damns those who do not conform to these traits and interests, encouraging and maintaining the cycle of giving dangerous men the most social power.

bibliography

bray, robert. review of williams: a streetcar named desire. comparative drama, vol. 35 no. 2, 2001, p. 234-237. project muse

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/05/ben-foster-on-his-middle-management-stanley-kowalski

https://www.arcjournals.org/pdfs/ijsell/v4-i3/4.pdf

https://www.pokernews.com/news/2017/03/poker-pop-culture-043-men-vs-women-streetcar-named-desire-27299.htm

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lsqndtmkvql1drsghorprkrh2gs4wd4r0_yhongupto/edit

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/03/books/the-servant.html

literary theory: the basics, hans bertens (2001)

roberts

a streetcar named desire, dir. elia kazan

aesthetic violence and women in film: kill bill with flying daggers, joseph h kupfer

“the sculptural drama”: tennessee williams’s plastic theatre, richard e kramer,http://www.tennesseewilliamsstudies.org/journal/work.php?id=45

http://www.cercles.com/n10/bak.pdf

https://www.jstor.org/stable/26432076?seq=1

[attemptsonherlifepdf]

fight club, fathers, franchises and ideal selves: a commentary on the absentee american dream

the first rule of fight club is to build a family according to a business model. the second rule of fight club is to blame your father.

brotherhood to fellowship to a hierarchy of space monkeys; this is the progression of antagonist tyler durden’s ‘project mayhem’ in chuck palahnuik’s 1996 book, ‘fight club.’ the anticapitalist cult classic of the late 90s entered the mainstream years after the release of david fincher’s 1999 movie adaptation. the book depicts late stage american capitalism and specifically a masculine reaction to it – the protagonist grows to resent his ‘lovely nest’ of belongings, realising he has very little identity outside of the ikea home he’s built for himself, and begins to spiral into a schizophrenic episode resulting in the destruction of his local, and eventually national economic structures. palahnuik’s ‘stream of consciousness’ style of writing gives us an insight to his unnamed narrator’s psychological decline, providing commentary not just on the events at work in the novel, but commentary of the wider context of american consumerism and men’s roles in it.

linking men’s identities with corporate positions even outside of work environments is a vital theme of the story that palahnuik establishes early on. this characterises the relationships between men as having a business-like aspect to it, as though they are mostly transactional. this is particularly applied to familial relationships, both within the text and within palahnuik’s own philosophies, and is attributed to american culture and attitudes. our narrator describes his absentee father’s patterns as very detached: ‘my dad, he starts a new family in a new town about every six years. this isn’t so much like a family as its like he sets up a franchise.’ this stems from the idea that instead of a person, you exist as product or a branding, or a company. fathers are often likened to high authorities in this text: ‘if youre male and youre christian and living in america, your father is your model for god. and if you never know your father, if your father bails out or dies or is never at home, what do you believe about god?’…‘how tyler saw it was that getting god’s attention for being bad was better than getting no attention at all. maybe because gods hate is better than his indifference.’ the connotations of ‘god’ in this excerpt grant the role of father a tremendous amount of influence, but also a kind of mythical element to it. in the context of corporate roles, this volume of power would put fathers at the top of the hierarchy, like ceos or company founders. actual ceos, or work bosses, serve as ‘secondary fathers.’ palahnuik explains this concept by referring to joseph cambell: ‘[joseph campbell] said that beyond a person’s biological father, people needed a secondary father — especially men. typically that was a teacher, coach, military officer or priest. but it would be someone who isn’t the biological father but would take the adolescent and coach him into manhood from that point. the problem is that so many of these secondary fathers are being brought down in recent history. sports coaches have become stigmatized. priests have become pariahs. for whatever reason, men are leaving teaching. and so, many of these secondary fathers are disappearing altogether. when that happens, what are we left with? are these children or young men ever going to grow up?’

fight club’s narrator introduces his job as something that he is disillusioned with. his insomnia combines the formulaic nature of his job and frequent travelling make it pass in a mindless blur. taking campbell’s theory into consideration here, it can be assumed that is ‘secondary father’, in this instance his boss, has failed him. readers later discover that his biological father, who creates new families like ‘[setting] up a franchise’, did not guide him either: ‘after college, i called him long distance and said, now what? my dad didn’t know. i got a job and turned 25, long distance, i said, now what? my dad didn’t know…i’m a thirty-year old boy.’ the narrator, sometimes referred to as readers as ‘jack’ or ‘joe’, presents himself as a relatively average representation of his demographic. this suggests that in answer to campbell’s question, ‘are these children or young men ever going to grow up?’, the narrator’s experience can be generalised. he often explains his emotions through a format found in old health magazines: ‘in the oldest magazines, there’s a series of articles where organs in the human body talk about themselves in the first person: i am jane’s uterus.’ ‘i am joe’s inflamed sense of rejection…i am joe’s wasted life.’ in fincher’s movie this is changed to ‘jack’, but the connotation of ‘average joe’ remains the same. in remaining unnamed, the narrator is an everyman, a broad reflection of masculine american culture that a readers of that demographic can relate to. in reaction to feeling like an adult child, tyler (and by extension the narrator, hereby referred to as joe) gradually work up from fight club to project mayhem, an all-male organised crime unit that functions similar to an army. while there are more details to project mayhem’s structure, it operates under a systemic hierarchy similar to that of a corporation, with departments and bosses. the core difference is that the ‘employees’ are not paid, and the unit operates not just outside of but against society, the headquarters beyond the edge of town, the members antagonising the public and authorities. initially the idea that tyler and joe have mirrored the corporations they aim to destroy seems ironic, but it does serve the pair a purpose. by founding this corporation-like project themselves, tyler and joe create founder or ceo roles for themselves. this places them at the top of the hierarchy, allowing them to experience the power of the men who failed them (namely bosses and absent fathers). project mayhem seems to naturally take on this structure, despite being separate from american society. implicit in this is the suggestion that power structures are not just ingrained in american capitalism, but in modern masculinity. the masculine response to controlling powers in this text was to take over the controlling powers yourself; while project mayhem’s aim is framed as dismantling regional, and eventually national, capitalistic authorities, it transpires that tyler and joe shift this power to themselves, even if it is only within the context of this obscure group and its branches in other states.

palahnuik, in response to the suggestion that fight club is a gendered text, states that ‘it was more about the terror that you were going to live or die without understanding anything important about yourself. in the book it does directly criticise capitalism’s impact on everyone: you have a class of young strong men and women, and they want to give their lives to something. advertising has these people chasing cars and clothes they don’t need. generations have been working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they don’t really need.’ this sentiment is abundantly clear in the text, both thematically and in some chapters, said explicitly. fight club is renowned for its anti-consumerist rhetoric, however its predominantly male cast of characters, and overt comments specifically on the relationship between american consumerism and masculinity does make the book a gendered working critique of capitalism. pahalnuik rarely addresses feminine responses to advertising and corporate employment, and it is certainly not central to the narrative in the way that masculinity is. the author’s other works, namely adjustment day (2018) follows a similar theme. it depicts an armed insurrection that overturns american society. this insurrection is triggered by a corrupt senator’s plans to draft young men, with the intention of letting them die in a planned nuclear attack in the middle east, preventing those same men from staging an uprising. these american men, upon discovering the plot, rise up and kill figures the public have voted online as most deserving to die before the vote to reinstate the draft, and become the united states’ new leaders. this echoes sentiments from fight club, particularly those surrounding the suppression of young men, and the idea of taking power for yourself rather than dismantling power structures altogether. whether intentionally or not, palahnuik focuses on a gendered reaction to american society, with his discussions targeting the culture’s obsessions with consumerism and war.

while the military and advertising culture are staples of the united states, these are not entirely at the frontline of the ‘american dream.’ in fight club 2, the narrator is seemingly living the american dream, characterised by white picket fences, a wife, a child, and so on. despite outwardly living a life sought after by many, joe remains unfulfilled. palahnuik describes this by musing, ‘it’s funny, it isn’t the process of getting stuff, it’s the stuff itself that becomes the anchor. it’s ‘buy the house, buy the car’ and then what? it’s that isolated stasis that’s the unfulfilling part you ultimately have to destroy. that’s the american pattern — you achieve a success that allows you isolation. then you do something subconsciously to destroy the circumstance because you can come down into community after that.’ this mimics motifs from the original fight club, in which the narrator discusses ‘[wanting] to destroy something beautiful’ as a form of catharsis. ‘i wanted to destroy everything beautiful id never have…i wanted the whole world to hit bottom.’ interestingly, a piece of media that conveys a similar point of view on the american dream is the song ‘once in a lifetime’ by the talking heads. it’s argued that the disconnection david byrne describes is reflective of an autistic view on the world. however it does echo the lack of fulfilment the advertised ‘american dream’ can provide. byrne sings, ‘and you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile / and you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife / and you may ask yourself, ‘well how did i get here?’ the song is punctuated by a chorus that repeats the line ‘letting the days go by, let the water hold me down.’ the drowning motif used here is often used in conjunction with feelings of unfulfillment or dissatisfaction, as is reflected in fight club 2 and other similar media. at the start of fight club the narrator feels the same way, insomnia blurring his job and ikea home and work commutes into one dissatisfying experience: ‘this is your life, and its ending one minute at a time…you wake up, and you’re nowhere.’ the destruction of something outwardly desirable, such as blowing up joe’s perfectly curated and furnished apartment, breaks him free of this.

tyler is almost drawn as the antithesis to joe to begin with. there is one key device that demonstrates this; marla singer. it is, of course, incredibly reductive to refer to a female character as a ‘device’, and marla exists to add more to the plot than just illustrating the narrator and tyler’s relationships. however, the distinction between how marla receives joe and how marla receives tyler is significant in charactersing the two of them. for the narrator, marla initially acts as a mirror: ‘her lie reflected my lie…to marla i’m a fake.’ upon meeting marla, the narrator immediately dislikes her because her dishonestly disrupts the benefits he gets from his own dishonesty. they both use these support groups to invoke more feeling in their otherwise dull or flattened experiences; palahnuik describes this by stating that ‘in fight club the [support] groups showed up to create life by being present to death, imminent death.’ for joe, being surrounded by hopelessness, ‘rock bottom’ allows him the emotional release that tires him out enough to cheat insomnia. for marla, the groups are a continuation of her fascination with death, a step up from working at funeral homes; ‘‘funerals are nothing compared to this,’ marla says. ‘funerals are all abstract ceremony. here, you have a real experience of death.’’ ‘she actually felt alive…all her life[…]there was no sense of life because she had nothing to contrast it with.’ in contrast, marla’s relevance to tyler seems predominantly sexual, and the early stages of their relationship are described bluntly and graphically: ‘one morning, there’s the dead jellyfish of a used condom floating in the toilet. this is how tyler meets marla.’ marla’s insistence on speaking with joe seems nonsensical to him, as he was not mentally present during his sexual encounters with her, and tyler’s insistence that joe not tell marla about him draws a sharp contrast between each personality’s relationship to her. ‘ok. you fuck me, then snub me. you love me, you hate me. you show me a sensitive side, then you turn into a total asshole. is this a pretty accurate description of our relationship?’

marla arguably becomes the middle man for highlighting any homoeroticism between joe and tyler, illustrated by joe’s jealousy. joe is not jealous of tyler for having relations with marla, but the other way around. he asks, ‘how could i compete for tyler’s attention. i am joe’s enraged, inflamed sense of rejection.’ towards the movie’s end, upon the reveal that tyler and joe are one person, tyler says ‘all the ways you wish you could be? that’s me.’ this indicates that the jealousy was more centred around his own insecurity, but joe desires tyler’s attention specifically, alluding to a relationship between them. this obviously becomes somewhat dangerous territory here as the pair are technically one person, so a relationship between them would be somewhat incestuous but even in one body they seem like two entirely separate people, if not just in terms of physical appearance. in fincher’s movie adaptation, tyler (brad pitt) and joe (edward norton) share bottles and cigarettes with one another after fighting, fincher’s subtle way of painting physical violence as potentially sexual or intimate. this is illustrated in this moment from the film’s commentary that occurs after the initial fight between the pair: [tyler takes a sip from the bottle] fincher: i love the post-coital smoke. pitt: it’s touching.

the relationship between a man, in this case joe, and his ideal self, tyler, has this intense charge which can obviously be mistaken to be sexual; it is arguably more in tune with the narrative to consider that this intensity is centred around ideas of control. joe is intended to represent that average american man, suggesting that palahnuik is using him as a vehicle to discuss the feeling of incongruence in men in this era. humanist psychologist describes incongruence as ‘unpleasant feelings…result[ing] from a discrepancy between our perceived and ideal self.’ essentially, the root of joe’s boredom and distress can be found in the differences between him and tyler. the tense bond between them lies in the struggle for control; the novel personifies the ideal self and depicts a hypothetical scenario in which this ideal self seizes the autonomy of the individual in order to achieve congruence (an overlap between the perceived and ideal self). congruence is the aim of humanistic psychotherapies. by helping an individual feel less distant from their goals and aspirations as a person one can be more content in themselves. what tyler does in this novel is an extreme reaction to the feeling of incongruence. his reaction encourages the men around him, in both fight club and project mayhem, to change their ideal self from the men they see in adverts to something less ‘self-indulgent’ and take control of their lives to achieve it. ‘we’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. but we won’t. we’re slowly learning that fact…you are not special! you are not a beautiful or unique snowflake!...it’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.’ in taking these men out of the public sphere and creating an entirely new environment separate from capitalistic society, each member’s ideal self becomes less influenced by advertising, television, and so on, and they are given the space to achieve congruence without societal obstacles such as jobs and families. when taken outside of regular society, these influences begin to have less effect on our identity: ‘you are not your job.’ however, project mayhem still functions similar to an army division or a cult, with its own specific hierarchy designed to suit tyler’s agenda. the congruence between tyler and joe is prioritised over all else given the intense battle over which of them is able to control the body; their combined attempt to maintain their ideal self in some way or another is the most visceral of all the characters, and is the main trigger for the events of the text.

fight club, as a piece of text, essentially functions as social commentary, through the lens of one ‘everyman’s’ neurochemical drama. joe’s struggles are specific to his role in society and his interactions with consumerism, which are depicted in a way that makes them applicable to much of his demographic: in this case, white men in 1990s america. palahnuik creates a narrative that forces the narrator to experience a push and pull effect between his real situations and ideal ones, to the point of creating something entirely separate. his experiences serve as a clear critique of capitalism and its inverse relationship to masculinity. the narrator’s identity warps and changes depending on his roles within, or distance from, consumerist structures. palahnuik’s motif of experiencing events the way one does an aeroplane ride continues throughout joe’s narration, emulating the switches from boredom to terror to acceptance that one experiences in such a structure: ‘we have just lost cabin pressure.’ the participants of fight club represent the usa’s disillusioned youth, their attitude to their jobs, their anger, and their failing desire to participate in capitalism any further. ‘may i never be complete. may i never be content. may i never be perfect.’

i.k.b

[attemptsonherlifepdf]

transgression, the other, and the evolving shape of the gothic: a comparison of the bloody chamber and dracula

transgressive behaviours are at the forefront of gothic literature, a device used to impart messages surrounding temporally relevant cultural fascinations and anxieties. this theme runs throughout the reactionary genre’s timeline, including through bram stoker’s contribution to establishing the progression of gothic tropes in the victorian era, and angela carter’s 1970s prose. stoker’s fin de siecle novel explores the threats that transgressive behaviours pose to social norms and british values through binary oppositions, drawing upon victorian fears of reverse colonisation, sexual liberation and disease. conversely, carter’s modern subversion of the gothic explores these threats via stories of transformation and metamorphosis; both authors utilise the supernatural to personify these menaces to the norm, as is a vital characteristic of the genre. by having non-human characters commit explicit acts rather than humans, gothic authors can characterise the acts as monstrous and convey messages surrounding what these threatening acts mean for the characterisation of humanity. as put by kelley hurley, ‘through depicting the abhuman, the gothic reaffirms and reconstructs human identity.’

stoker’s traditional prose utilises the gothic concept of binary opposition in order to depict and villainise the threats posed upon his idealised christain characters by dracula. dracula himself, as an abhuman entity, is representative of sexual fluidity and the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, ideas which are consistent with vampirism but are at odds with victorian english values. lucy’s brutal punishment, however, is contrasted with the anticlimactic demise of dracula himself, where his ‘whole body crumbled into dust and passed from our sight.’ stoker could be using this opposition to suggest that those who give in to threats against typical societal conventions and fail to uphold british values are more deserving of punishment than those who actually pose the threat. the contrast provides an implication of moral inferiority: while villains are transgressive by nature, their victims who fail to resist their ideologies betray the moral code they originally conducted themselves upon. this initial betrayal is what allows the threatening character to infiltrate the population and continue to corrupt the ‘good’ characters. buzzwell supports this, suggesting that ‘lucy’s moral weakness allows dracula to repeatedly prey upon her.’ stoker arguably serves as an other himself, writing as an irish protestant in london. the opposition he constructs here between lucy and dracula’s respective manifestations of vampirism not only examines cultural variations but exemplifies and exaggerates the differences in the reactions of other characters towards them. given the author’s own ‘otheredness’, we could consider the novel a criticism of victorian xenophobia, where o’kelly argues that stoker ‘[pokes] fun at some of the victorian era’s most cherished beliefs.’ however, this view of the novel’s depiction of threats to the norm is highly disputed, with gibson highlighting stoker’s own russophobia as ‘a hatred that determines dracula’s negative portrayal as a condemnation of the orthodox eastern and slavic peoples historically allied to russia.’

contrastingly, carter’s presentation of characters succumbing to villains who jeopardise established values centres around ideas of solidarity, which she demonstrates through the ‘victims’ experience of metamorphosis. her techniques differ from stoker’s in that his use of binary oppositions is undoubtedly traditional of both the gothic and of the manichean mentality of victorian england. the usage of metamorphosis, on the other hand, allows carter to force audiences to grapple with liminality and she suggests to them that ‘othered’ groups or individuals are not entirely evil. this is a view which reflects carter’s modern, second-wave feminist perspective. jaques derrida’s ‘theory of the other’ posits that ‘otherness often provokes a paradoxical response in the viewer: fascination and repulsion.’ often the fascination is morbid, working in conjunction with repulsion: audiences are curious to understand what disgusts them. the tiger’s bride and the courtship of mr lyon, two stories within the bloody chamber collection, are subverted retellings of the traditional ‘beauty and the beast’ fairytale. while maintaining the general events of the original ending, where beauty stays with the beast of her own volition, carter offers up two dynamics between the human and abhuman that serve to recharacterise ‘othered’ creatures as less threatening and more sympathetic and innocent.

the courtship of mr lyon characterises mr lyon as a ‘leonine apparition’ and an ‘angry lion’ throughout, emphasising his predatory nature and resulting in negative connotations surrounding his ‘otherness.’ his initial threatening aura is quickly negated soon after beauty’s introduction to him, as they warm up to one another, and the story concludes with mr lyon’s transformation into a human man: ‘her tears fell on his face like snow and, under their soft transformation, the bones showed through the pelt, the flesh through the wide, tawny brow. and then it was no longer a lion in her arms but a man…’ carter’s use of metamorphosis here humanises a character that would otherwise be considered a threat to traditional norms, suggesting to readers that he may have been ‘just like us all along.’ his change in physical nature is triggered by beauty’s display of affection for him; implicit in this is the notion that we can undo our villainisation of marginalised people, and emphasises the significance of understanding between privileged and unprivileged groups. carter draws the line between what is a threat and what is simply unconventional, stripping marginalised identities of their ‘dangerous’ qualities that are attributed to them by those who abide by social norms. similarly, the tiger’s bride uses metamorphosis to suggest that those who challenge established identities are not inherently menacing, and that typical and atypical creatures can coexist. rather than have a character transform from beast to man as in the previous story, carter’s ending depicts a woman-to-beast transformation. this serves to suggest that people’s desire to understand what disgusts them can manifest as identifying with the ‘other’ and unlearning their own prejudices against them. beauty’s transformation is detailed in the closing sentences of the story: ‘and each stroke of his tongue ripped off skin after successive skin, all the skins of a life in the world, and left behind a nascent patina of shining hairs. my earrings turned back to water and trickled down my shoulders; i shrugged the drops off my beautiful fur.’ beauty’s metamorphosis can be read as a sign of solidarity towards the beast, or an understanding of his nature. roberts posits that ‘to be beast-like is virtuous. to be manly is vicious.’ carter takes this concept and uses it to criticise conventional reactions to unconventional behaviours. she deconstructs the binary that stoker relies upon, and uses a far more modern gothic convention to negate his black-and-white depiction that presents anything challenging the norm as a threat that can infiltrate civilised society, and instead presents these ‘threats’ as liberating.

perhaps an incredibly modern reading of carter’s metamorphosed characters is as an allegory for transgenderism. discussions around gender identity during the 1970s in britain, even in second-wave feminist circles, were more concerned with rejecting and redefining traditional gender roles than they were with the personal identity of individuals, so we can assume this was not carter’s intention when writing these stories. however, ideas of physical transformation, and how proximity to the ‘other’ can ‘radicalise’ one’s own identity are very fitting with treatment of transgender people both historically and presently. genres that stem from the late gothic, namely sci-fi, have been known for using metamorphosis as an allegory for marginalised identities, using physical transformation as an allegory for ideological or emotional transformation. a prime example of this is lana and lilly wachowski’s series the matrix. written as a trans allegory, the movie series criticises the social pressure for conformity the way carter does and attempts to explicitly recharacterise trans people as an innocent non-conforming identity rather than a threat. carter’s exploration and reproval of established values similarly tends to centre around ideas of gender, making this reading not entirely unreasonable. carter and stoker’s gothic texts are equally reflective of cultural anxieties in their respective temporal contexts, but where stoker reinforces racist ideologies that are at the heart of british imperialism and victorian politics, carter suggests that societal fears surrounding gender identity and liberation are unfounded.

both carter and stoker identify the victimisation of women as an established norm that is essential to the functioning of a patriarchal, capitalist society, but once again carter criticises this and stoker instead reinforces it. the notion of female vampirism is a vehicle for this discussion in both gothic texts, particularly in terms of how these supernatural women contain sexual traits that simultaneously fascinate and repel other characters. this duality is vital to what characterises them as a threat: jullian identifies ‘the gothic…’ as a genre ‘where danger is so near to pleasure’. the sexualised traits of vampire women is what allures other characters to them and allows them to infiltrate civilised society. stoker’s ‘hostility to female sexuality’ as described by roth, bookends the events of the novel with the early introduction and later reappearance of the eastern vampire women of dracula’s. their overt sexuality is repeatedly described as purposeful, with explicit juxtaposition between their attractiveness and the threat that they pose: 'there was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive.’ these women are an extension of dracula that serve to specifically explore the threat of sexual fluidity, and the crew of light’s destruction of dracula ultimately eliminates that threat. van helsing’s justification of killing these women, 'then the beautiful eyes of the fair woman open and look love ... and man is weak', demonstrates that it is men’s inability to resist sexualised creatures that will result in this threat infiltrating england, but the responsibility is placed upon the women. while this echoes stoker’s suggestion that those who succumb to villains are at fault, it inevitably criticises women regardless. kaplan argues that ‘the sexualisation and objectification of women is not simply for the purpose of eroticism; for a psychoanalytical point of view, it’s designed to annihilate the threat of women.’ the threat that kaplan refers to here is that of the new woman, an early feminist concept arising in the late 19th century. the new woman is entirely threatening to established victorian values as she ‘was often a professional woman who chose financial independence and personal fulfilment as alternatives to marriage and motherhood.’ (carol senf) by acting opposite to the ideal victorian wife, the new woman challenges normal behaviours and expectations. this is another example of stoker exploring threats to the norm via binary opposition: mina is contrasted with the vampire women, including lucy, a contrast pitting an ‘angel in the house’ character against new women. mina’s pious, devoted and submissive wifely characteristics fit the victorian ideal known as the ‘angel in the house’, a title that originates from coventry patmore’s poem in which he depicts his wife as a model for all women. this stark contrast illustrates how female sexuality threatens the value women are attributed as it prevents them from performing their expected duties for men. having a threatening or taboo act committed by a supernatural figure is a hallmark of the gothic and serves to convey to readers that the act or concept is monstrous. female sexuality is a common victim of this trope during the early and fin de siecle gothic periods, but has since been commonly subverted and empowered in more modern gothic literature.

for instance, the lady of the house of love is the most conventionally gothic text in the collection, using traditional purple prose and exaggerated, decadent settings to frame discussions about heredity, sex and death. it features a countess, whom carter depicts as simultaneously being a victim and a villain. the duality of her character is a result of carter’s signature liminality, wherein the lines between what is threatening and what is innocent are blurred to explore female sexuality as a complex trait rather than fitting the ‘good vs evil’ binary that stoker attempts to attribute it to. much of her characterisation mimics that of stoker’s vampire women, but is subverted to present the countess as a sympathetic villain: ‘her beauty is an abnormality, a deformity... a symptom of her disorder.’ the girl’s attractive traits are made synonymous with a deficiency or sickness, as is the fact that men are inevitably attracted to her. carter suggests here that the girl’s reliance on seducing men for her survival is a hereditary curse, implicitly commenting on the generational trauma women face as a result of having to rely on their relationships with sexually threatening men in order to live financially comfortable lives. this mimics the way in which society relies upon established values and social norms even though they restrict and stifle us. the countess weaponises her sexuality, and while her motivation is survival, this act is conventionally taboo and is therefore committed by a supernatural entity, to traditionally characterise it as monstrous. while carter does draw on this typical gothic trope, she uses sympathetic language to paint the countess as ‘helplessly perpetuating her ancestral crimes.’ the ending of the story, however, mentions the first world war and carter hints at the notion that humanity itself is more dangerous, more of a threat, than the threat of the perceived supernatural ‘beasts’ that people project their fears onto. once again, carter feeds into kelley hurley’s idea that ‘through depicting the abhuman, the gothic reaffirms and reconstructs human identity.’ liminal characters, such as vampires or characters like frankenstien’s monster in mary shelley’s ‘frankenstien’ that exist between life and death, exist as vehicles to discuss the complexities of human nature.

ultimately, carter paints various traits and identities that are widely considered ‘threatening’ to be multifaceted and liberating instead, as she views the established values that they ‘threaten’ to be restrictive and in need of changing. in the preface to the bloody chamber collection, helen simpson writes that 'human nature is not immutable, human beings are capable of change', arguing this point as the core of carter’s work. she suggests through her writing that what is perceived as a social threat is often based upon what is uncomfortable rather than what is actually dangerous. her work is partially ambivalent in that it does not instruct what is right or wrong the way stoker does, but instead depicts societal relationships and allows the audience to interpret it. stoker’s use of transformations that involve protagonists always has them revert back to their original state, a reinforcement of the status quo. those who do not revert to the norms are killed or punished, eradicating the threat and putting readers at ease. the exploration of threats is central to the gothic as a genre that depicts and discusses transgressive behaviours and the implications they have for wider society. as put by punter, ‘the gothic is associated with ‘the barbaric and uncivilised in order to define that which is other to the values of the civilised present.’

i.k.b

[attemptsonherlifepdf]

fantastic mr fox: humanising animals, animalising men, and an exploration of masculine identity

‘this story is too predictable.’ / ‘predictable? really? what happens in the end?’ / ‘in the end, we all die. unless you change.’

mr fox, the titular character of wes anderson’s 2009 stop-motion adaptation of roald dahl’s children’s book, is a portrait of two conflicting manifestations of masculinity. he is built to demonstrate the crossover between tradition and modernity, between wild and civilised. characterised as a charming gentleman, almost renowned for his recklessness, mr fox combines his undomesticated instincts with a carefully crafted domestic life. he appears to spend more time manufacturing a perfect home and family than he does actually participating in it. the events of the movie serve to strip away his facade and present both the audience and protagonist with a harsh reality to deal with: the juxtaposing aspects of his identity that he must contend with in order to survive his situation. these aspects are demonstrated through the use of anthropomorphic animals. in essence, the text attempts to convey the message that while you can associate your actions with animal or human traits in order to characterise and frame them, you cannot change their value and their consequences. it serves as a critique of how the nature of male identity is exploited to shunt responsibility, and the movie specifically promotes a more collectivist mentality.

there are four key scenes that mark mr fox’s journey in terms of his identity. initially, we first see his identity openly questioned once he has moved into a new home (a large and expensive tree), just prior to him revealing his ‘master plan’ to kylie, who becomes his assistant of sorts. he asks, ‘why a fox? why not a horse, or a beetle, or a bald eagle? i’m saying this more as, like, existentialism, you know? who am i? and how can a fox ever be happy without, you’ll forgive the expression, a chicken in its teeth?’ he attributes his identity with the ability to fulfil his base desires, like he could in his youth. aspects of his later life such as employment, family, and safety restrict his ability and leaves him feeling untethered from himself. the movie opens with his youthful vibrance and recklessness, and is quickly contrasted with his dissatisfaction with his job, home, and life in general.

MR FOX

i dont want to live in a hole anymore. it makes me feel poor.

MRS FOX

we are poor, but we’re happy.

MR FOX

comme ci, come ca...

does anyone actually read my column?

having been moved out of the hole and into an expensive tree, mrs fox asks her husband:

MRS FOX

do you still feel poor?

MR FOX

less so.

constructing the ideal domestic space for himself and his family does not satisfy mr fox and he yearns for more, which is where is existentialism and ‘master plan’ come into play. domesticity was never going to satisfy mr fox, as he yearns for something youthful and risky and dazzling, adjectives not usually applied to a quiet and content home life. the consequences of this dissatisfaction are drastic and almost immediate.

soon, having been forced out of his new home and underground by an attack from the farmers, mr fox is faced with a situation he cannot charm his way out of. he attempts to apologise to his son and recite a speech to raise the morale of his family, and both of these attempts are shut down by those around him. the facade of his elaborate home, his monologues, even his suits, are abruptly stripped away leaving him with only his actions which he cannot charm his way out of. the reality is that he and his family, his neighbourhood, is stuck underground with no means of food as a result of his selfish actions. this prompts yet another key scene; his argument with felicity, which begins with her viciously hissing and scratching his face.

MRS FOX

why did you lie to me?

MR FOX

because im a wild animal.

MRS FOX

you are also a husband, and a father.

MR FOX

im trying to tell you the truth about myself.

MRS FOX

i dont care about the truth about yourself. this story is too predictable.

MR FOX

predictable? really? what happens in the end?

MRS FOX

in the end, we all die. unless you change.

mrs fox’s physical attack on her husbands face serves as a display of genuine animal ferocity, making mr fox’s claim to being a ‘wild animal’ appear as a flimsy excuse for his behaviour. his chicken theft, which he was insistent upon regardless of the consequences, was motivated not by animal instincts but a selfish desire to feel a particular version of his own masculinity. disregarding the safety of his family actually seems like a natural byproduct of his master plans because he is trying to reclaim his masculinity from a time before his family existed, and in his eyes, restricted him. the very recent loss of his tail, combined with this conversation with his wife, is a harsh reality check for mr fox in terms of the dangers of his masculinity.

the audience sees the outcome of this conversation later on, in the waterfall scene. here mr fox admits to his insecurities and suggests sacrificing himself to the farmers to save the local community.

MR FOX

darling, maybe they’ll let everyone else live!

…

MR FOX

foxes traditionally like to court danger, hunt prey and outsmart predators, and that’s what im actually good at…i guess at the end of the day im just-

MRS FOX

i know. we’re wild animals.

the difference between this admission to animalism and the one from his argument with felicity is that here, both parties gain some acceptance of their animalism without using it as an excuse for their behaviour. the inclusion of others in animalism – ‘we’re’ wild animals, rather than ‘i am’ a wild animal – contributes to illustrate how wildness is not specific to masculinity. it is not femininity vs masculinity but animals vs man.

the movie also questions the nature of an animal in the final key scene known as ‘canis lupus.’ wes Anderson referred to this scene as ‘the reason im making this movie.’ throughout the movie, mr fox alludes to his ‘phobia of wolves’ and shuts down any conversation surrounding them:

MR FOX

scared? no, i have a phobia of them!...a wolf? what’s with all the wolf talk? can we give it a rest for once?

arguably, these reactions are representative of mr fox’s aversion to competitive masculinity. he shuts down any opportunity for those around him to discuss something he sees as more masculine than himself in order to feel secure in his own masculinity. critic shana mlawski argues that ‘the wolf is described as the wildest, most frightening, and yet most beautiful creature in the world. mr fox fears the wolf and yet wants to be exactly like him. we can thus say that mr fox fears pure, wild masculinity yet also yearns to own it himself.’ the scene holds an eerie familiarity to it; mr fox is recognising something that he thought would be a reflection of himself, but the wild animal is no longer familiar to him anymore. he now accepts his role as a husband and a father and no longer fights to overtly express his animalism in the same way as the wolf. the most he can offer the wolf is raising his fist in solidarity. he calls out to the wolf, ‘i have a phobia of wolves!’, which is an interesting moment to admit this in. it’s his acceptance that allows him to admit this. the scene is entirely compromised of male characters: mr fox, kristofferson, ash, kylie and the wolf. mr fox’s admission to his fear allows him to be vulnerable in front of these people he cares about, and to use this as a teaching moment for the young boys.

MR FOX

what a beautiful creature. wish him luck out there, boys.

here mr fox openly admits his admiration for someone else’s masculinity in front of others without showing signs of his own insecurity. he can admire the wolf for what he is without seeing him as competition. the scene allows the audience to see and directly compare two forms of masculinity and animalism, and to understand that there is no one true expression of either of those traits. the wolf has connotations of violence and ferocity, whereas mr fox and his suit and display of multilingualism are entirely modern, but both are masculine animals who are valid in their own right. either way, both animals rely on violence for survival at times.

kupfer frames violence in three ways: symbolically, structurally and as a narrative essential. there are various forms of violence within this narrative, namely mr fox killing chickens and squabs, and the three farmers’ attack on the animal community. symbolically, mr fox’s chicken theft is attributed to his masculinity. while it is often presented as thought-out ‘master plans’, his desire to enact this violence in the first place supposedly stems from his ‘wild animal’ instincts. he associates a time where he felt secure in his masculinity with his actions at the time (violence). structurally, we see the potential for this violence in the opening scene, where mr fox takes his wife chicken-stealing and they become trapped. he is stuck in a fox trap with his wife when he receives the news of his impending fatherhood, a relatively obvious symbol for his view of fatherhood in general. the news of his wife’s pregnancy disrupts his ability to continue stealing chickens, not just on this specific occasion but through the coming years as well. mr fox appears to view family life as an unfulfilling, less raw expression of his masculinity, and is shown to be wholly dissatisfied with his life.

the violence on the farmers’ behalf is almost always in reaction to mr fox’s violence, already giving it a structural framing. boggis, bunce and bean are referred to early on in the film as the ‘meanest, nastiest and ugliest farmers on the side of the river.’ their violence against mr fox and subsequently the local animal community is an attempt to gain back power and status. mr fox’s actions are “humiliating’ and the local news coverage of this exchange between the farmers and animals raises the stakes as now the reputation of these farmers is on the line as well as their power. violence here serves as a narrative essential because it drives mr fox into a situation that forces him to confront his issues with masculinity and splitting between his animal and human traits, giving the text/movie a fulfilling arc. violence is

introduced as inherently masculine, but is decoupled from masculinity by the ending. mrs fox also plays a small but significant role in this; at various moments in the movie she exhibits her own displays of aggression equal in intensity to the men around her, suggesting to the audience that forms of violence should be categorised as human vs animal rather than male vs female. examples of this behaviour include her clawing at her husband’s face, and a parallel between her and a male human character wherein they both connect two wires and shout ‘contact!’, causing an explosion. while this moment is brief, it highlights a distinct difference between animals being violent and men. humans’ aggression is driven by the need for power, whereas that of animals is driven by the need for survival. the man paralleled with felicity only sparked the explosion to destroy mr fox’s home and assert the dominance of the three farmers, while mrs fox used the same form of violence to enact a plan to save her nephew’s life. petey’s song even alludes to this sentiment: ‘well he stole, and he cheated, and he lied just to survive.’

mr fox’s tail becomes a symbol of power; bean wears it as a necktie, and mr fox feels emasculated by his loss.

MR FOX

one of those slovenly farmers is probably wearing my tail as a necktie right now.

…

BADGER

i cant even imagine how painful, even just emotionally, that must be for you… oh but foxy how humiliating, having your tail blown clean off by-

MR FOX

can we drop it?

the use of the tail as a necktie is a symbol of the power that mr fox and the farmers end up jostling to achieve: at first it belongs to mr fox, then to the farmers, and is eventually reclaimed once more by the fox.

MR FOX

you shot off my tail.

[through gritted teeth] i’m not leaving here without that necktie.

when he reclaims his tail towards the end of the movie, it has been torn to shreds and needs ‘dry cleaning twice a week’ to maintain itself. this can be interpreted as a symbol for his evolved definitions of masculinity and power: his masculinity is no longer defined by impressing people or stealing or killing chickens, but in the quiet satisfaction of having a family. the final scene reveals that mrs fox is pregnant again, and instead of her glowing and her husband giving an awkward grin like in the opening scene, both of the spouses ‘glow.’ the structural framing of these pregnancy reveals bookending the events of the movie allows anderson to demonstrate mr fox’s growth and change in his priorities. the domestic life appears to be enough for him, and he no longer seems to find it emasculating,

what stands out as particularly modern about mr fox is how he unconsciously separates himself from both his wildness and his suburban self in his effort to combine them. he uses his ‘wildness’ as an excuse for his violence and selfishness, but is ultimately not willing to participate in truly wild forms of violence and selfishness, such has hunting. his chicken thefts always include infiltrating a human site, like boggis, bunce and bean’s farms, and the fun of it is in outsmarting them, rather than finding those animals himself out in the wild. the local animal community essentially functions as we would expect a rural village occupied by humans to function: everyone knows everyone, there is one local school and various small and quaint homes. while the setting reflects anderson’s signature style, it is also reflective of dahl’s framing of the community in the original text.

mr fox comes across as an individual who believes himself to be above the somewhat backward mentality of his village, that he is the most civilised and dazzling and original, and he exaggerates these traits in himself out of insecurity: ‘if they arent dazzled and blown away and kind of intimidated by me, then i dont feel good about myself.’this is also reflected in his consistent ‘trademark’, his whistle-and-click combination that he uses to set himself apart from other foxes. his home is also a reflection of this:

MRS FOX

you know, foxes live in holes for a reason.

MR FOX

[grunts and tilts head in disagreement]

yes and no.

this insecurity and desire for outsider approval and individuality is inherently human, a quality of his that cannot really be associated with his animalised parts. this precarious sense of identity and self doubt separates him from his ‘wildness’ as it stands, which is only intensified by the fact that he compensates by exaggerating his human traits in order to be liked and feel worthy, as those are the traits he believes have the most value. towards the end of mr fox’s character arc, he is forced to admit that his need for external validation is flawed and unsustainable. when the façade of carefully constructed grandeur is literally washed away by bean, he is left with nothing but his actions and their implications for those around him. foxy reconciles with the relative insignificance of an identity based on other’s perceptions of you when rat dies soon after, reacting to the suggestion that he redeemed himself last minute by revealing ash’s location:

MR FOX

redemption? sure. but in the end, he’s just another dead rat in a garbage pail behind a chinese restaurant.

this moment is also used to inadvertently allow the audience to evaluate the significance of motivation and intention to the value of an action. although rat did reveal useful information to aid the group in saving Kristofferson, mr fox recognises that he only did so because he realised he could not win this fight.

MR FOX

would you have told me if i didn’t kill you first?

RAT

never.

mr fox’s own motivations throughout the movie have devalued his actions as they have mostly been self-serving. as his motivations evolve to centre around his family, he gains the perspective to understand why one’s intentions are so important. while intention does not entirely dictate how good one’s actions are, they certainly characterise the person who’s action it is. your actions have value and consequences as they are, and that cannot be changed by dressing them up or animalising them to distance yourself.

in essence, fantastic mr fox is a lesson in the value of including those around you in your mentality and worldview. it paints masculinity as something that is inherent and complex in nature, but promotes the idea that it is not stuck with its traditional connotations of violence and egoism. mr fox’s emotional development throughout the text mostly centres around his own insecurities surrounding his masculinity and how that causes him to overcompensate in ways that harm those around him. by the end he recognises that more tame and domestic forms of masculinity are just as valid, and that basing his self-worth on how ‘dazzled’ his peers are by him is immature and not constructive. his family now liberates him and allows him to be vulnerable rather than restricting how he feels he can express himself, and as a unit the animals beat the farmers in their game of power-seeking. mr fox recognises and appreciates both his human and animal traits, without using them as a means to excuse his behaviour or to feel bad about his worth.

MR FOX

i guess my point is, we’ll eat tonight, and we’ll eat together. and even in this not particularly flattering light, you are without a doubt the five and a half most wonderful wild animals ive ever met in my life. so let’s raise our boxes – to our survival.

i.k.b

[attemptsonherlifepdf]

modern gothic, sci-fi, and the moral binary: why the matrix is one of the most relevant gothic pieces of the last twenty five years

the gothic is a genre that is designed to explore transgressive behaviours and private desires, and often does so by having these explicit acts committed by a supernatural character. this serves to not only characterise the behaviour as monstrous but ‘Other’ people who behave that way. while this is typical of traditional gothic literature, modern gothic tends to present sympathetic villains, who suggest to audiences that transgressive behaviours are not inherently threatening or deserving of punishment, but simply different. as put by kelley hurley, ‘through depicting the abhuman, the gothic reaffirms and reconstructs human identity.’ in order to understand the progression from traditional gothic to modern genres that stem from it, namely science fiction, psychological thrillers and murder mysteries, we must first understand it’s basic timeline.

gothic literature began as a genre with very little positive reception, originally seen as a frivolous, and unserious style of writing. often called ‘dark romanticism’, the genre used the ‘purple prose’ and decadent architecture of romantic literature, but associated it with more sinister narratives concerning religion, murder and both sexual and identitiy-oriented transgression. originating from horace walpole’s ‘castle of otranto’, the genre was used to reflect the cultural anxieties of the time period, and thus gained traction by being temporally relevant. modern gothic’s deconstruction of the ‘good vs evil’ binary is a reflection of contemporary understandings of the aforementioned topics, which address the complexities of transgression. notable examples of later gothic literature include susan hill’s 1983 novel, ‘the woman in black’, a pastiche of traditional victorian ghost stories that utilises sympathetic villains to add complexity to the idea of villainy. additionally, the work of angela carter, particularly that of her 1979 collection ‘the bloody chamber’ which uses gothic conventions to subvert more conservative fairytales and fables, another instance of this ‘dark romanticism’ technique.

by presenting transgression as complex, rather than fulfilling one side of a binary, modern gothic allows us to consider if transgression is even that dangerous; it serves to dismantle the idea that ‘different = threatening.’ a brilliant example of this is the previously mentioned work of carter, and her short stories ‘the tiger’s bride’ and ‘the courtship of mr lyon.’ these stories are subverted retellings of the traditional ‘beauty and the beast’ fairytale. While maintaining the general events of the original ending, where beauty stays with the beast of her own volition, carter offers up two dynamics between the human and abhuman that serve to recharacterise ‘Othered’ creatures as less threatening and more sympathetic and innocent. ‘the courtship of mr lyon’ mimics the original story’s ending, with beauty’s understanding of the beast resulting in his transformation back to human. ‘the tiger’s bride’ offers the reverse: in beauty’s acceptance of the beast, she transforms to be animal-like like him as well. this appears almost as an act of solidarity. perhaps an incredibly modern reading of carter’s metamorphosed characters is as an allegory for transgenderism. discussions around gender identity during the 1970s in britain, even in second-wave feminist circles, were more concerned with rejecting and redefining traditional gender roles than they were with the personal identity of individuals, so we can assume this was not carter’s intention when writing these stories. however, ideas of physical transformation, and how proximity to the ‘Other’ can ‘radicalise’ one’s own identity are very fitting with treatment of transgender people both historically and presently. genres that stem from the late gothic, namely sci-fi, have been known for using metamorphosis as an allegory for marginalised identities, using physical transformation as an allegory for ideological or emotional transformation. a prime example of this is lana and lilly wachowski’s series ‘the matrix.’ written as a trans allegory, the movie series criticises the social pressure for conformity the way carter does and attempts to explicitly recharacterise trans people as an innocent non-conforming identity rather than a threat. carter’s exploration and reproval of established values similarly tends to centre around ideas of gender, making this reading not entirely unreasonable. she suggests that societal fears surrounding gender identity and liberation are unfounded.

ultimately, carter paints various traits and identities that are widely considered ‘threatening’ to be multifaceted and liberating instead, as she views the established values that they ‘threaten’ to be restrictive and in need of changing. the matrix represents these established values with ‘agents’ who attempt to hide the true nature of the world from the population. in the preface to the bloody chamber collection, helen simpson writes that 'human nature is not immutable, human beings are capable of change', arguing this point as the core of carter’s gothic subversions. she suggests through her writing that what is perceived as a social threat is often based upon what is uncomfortable rather than what is actually dangerous. her work is partially ambivalent in that it does not instruct what is right or wrong, but instead depicts societal relationships and allows the audience to interpret it.

the matrix achieves a similar result, with gothic elements and subversions supporting it’s messages.sci-fi takes gothic settings, ideas of liminality, decay, transgression and the Other, and recontextualises them with in the hypothetical far future. traditional gothic settings such as the ruins of decadent mansions become abandoned high-tech buildings. the binary between conventional and transgressive shifts from being a contrast between catholic ideals and more modern behaviours to being a contrast between those profiting off capitalism and those suffering from it.

implicit in the matrix’s notion of discovering a newer world more true to reality is the idea that ‘different’ or ‘unconventional’ experiences and identities are not threatening, but liberating. the matrix suggests we can unlearn our villainisation of trans people, and does so through the use of various gothic conventions. to begin with, gothic texts are often written to reflect the cultural anxieties of the moment. lilly wachowski has stated that the movie was ‘born out of anger at capitalism and the corporate structure and forms of oppression.’ the late nineties in america was certainly a time of tension for lgbt people. frank rich sites ‘the homophobic epidemic of '98...spiked with the october murder of matthew shepard’ as an era of extreme difficulty for the lgbt community in the usa. this hostile environment is reflected in the nature of the matrix’s ‘agents’ and their insistence on maintaining the illusion of free will that comes with the false reality they push. they are in no way open to ideas that differ from their own and actively come down on those who suggest them. this anxiety for the lgbt community is reflected in the movie; the anxiety itself is expressed through a combination of subverted and traditional gothic tropes. gender itself is a topic highly relevant to the gothic. the wachowskis utilise binary oppositions, the most obvious example being the red pill vs blue pill’ scenario. the movie poses a stark contrast between two approaches to life: ‘the willingness to learn a potentially unsettling or life-changing truth, by taking the red pill, or remaining in contented ignorance with the blue pill.’ its interesting for a piece that is intentioned to deconstruct binaries to construct this binary, but it does serve a purpose. this binary serves as a device to show, allegorically, the experience of trans people in western cultures. belinda mcclory’s character, switch, is a specific representation of the gender transition process. in the matrix she appears as a woman, and in the real world as a man. while the wachowskis may not have had the creative freedom to include an explicitly transgender character, this was the closest and most specific hint they could have given the audience, right down to the character’s cratylic naming. switch’s experience presenting as both man and woman, and only one of her presentations occurs in the ‘true reality’ that is representative of people’s true natures and personalities. this use of metamorphosis mimics the way many trans people must present as their assigned gender at birth in public, and their true identity in private, that their physical body and their perception of themselves when they have control of their appearance are not necessarily aligned. this parallel relies upon the binary consisting of a false reality and a true one to illustrate its point.

it has also been suggested that the red pill is representative of a hormone pill, and many viewers have likened neo’s mental restlessness to gender dysphoria: ‘what you know you can't explain, but you feel it. you've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. you don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.’ these small parallels coalesce to form the movie’s representation of the trans experience in a way that is arguaby subtle to the cisgender viewer. neo openly rejects being called ‘mr anderson’ or ‘thomas anderson’ from our first introduction to him. he replaces his given male-coded name with something seemingly androgenous for his own comfort, and ‘mr anderson’ almost serves as a deadname, which only the agents who enforce a false reality use to refer to him. agent smith uses neo’s two names to frame his two separate lives very distinctly; ‘one of these lives has a future, and one of them does not.’ with an understanding of the trans subtext of the movie, this appears as a thinly veiled reference to the difficulties openly trans people face. coming out, in most places in the world, can result in loss of employment, loss of contact with family, and so on. as put by lili wachowski, ‘transgender people without support, means and privilege do not have this luxury. and many do not survive.’ agent smith appears to be warning neo of the dangerous of living as his true self, insistently referring to him with his given name rather than his chosen one, even if just for bureaucratic reasons. neo’s name is a vital to his defiance against both agent smith and the false reality he seeks to maintain:

agent smith:

you hear that mr. anderson?... that is the sound of inevitability... it is the sound of your death... goodbye, mr. anderson...

neo:

my name... is neo.

in defiantly maintaining his chosen name, neo pushes for the true reality to be accepted and understood. this is motivated by the fact that ‘i don't like the idea that I'm not in control of my life.’ this is an instance of neo taking control, by asserting his identity. the high stakes of this scene mimic the high stakes that trans people face in asserting their identities in an unaccepting social climate. the movie also acknowledges the public perception of trans people as a threat: ‘i know that you're afraid... you're afraid of us. you're afraid of change...the matrix is a system, neo, that system is our enemy.’ appearance vs reality is yet another key aspect of the gothic that is utilised in the matrix, and the narrative forces the viewer to consider whether they would accept a harsh reality or prefer total ignorance and accept what appears in front of them.

the movie’s treatment of violence against its protagonist is particularly relevant to the gothic. typically, queer-coded men or people of colour in fiction experience physical violence allegorical to the way female characters are written into sexualised danger: for trauma-based character development. violence against minorities in media, specifically gothic media, is often symbolic rather than just plain horrific. female, queer or bodies of colour are seen solely as political identities, so the violence they face is violence against an idea, not a person. queer or queer-coded men like neo are often feminised to a certain extent, even if its simply rejecting the title ‘mr’, to allow the violence against them to be symbolic or political rather than personal. often with cisgender, heterosexual, white or male characters, any cruelty they face is considered to be senseless and is characterised as brutal, pure violence, as their bodies are simply allowed to exist as bodies without a political statement attached to their existence. they are not making a statement or defying standards simply by having bodies. the gothic specifically uses symbolic violence in its later stages, and it is often faced by characters who are ‘Othered’ such as frankenstein’s monster being faced with angry hordes of people, or the suicide of jennet humfrye, the titular character of the woman in black who had a child out of wedlock. this symbolic violence in the matrix is particularly relevant to the above scene between agent smith and neo, where neo’s retaliation involves not just physical fighting but defiance over his own identity.

setting in the matrix is quintessentially modern gothic, and is an integral part of characterising the differences between appearance and reality. the real world and the matrix are characterised both by their physical appearance and the characters associated with them. the whole movie is shot with relatively bleak green, grey and blue tones; the unnamed cities in the matrix were filmed in sydney, australia, but are supposed to appear as a city that could be located anywhere. this makes viewers somewhat comforted as the cities appear familiar, but their association with the antagonistic agents makes it difficult to truly identify with them. in contrast, the real world appears cold, crude and difficult to survive in, but is home to a crew of sympathetic rebels that the audience is supposed to root for. the city of zion is all harsh metal and can feel like a very temporary, unsafe residence but scenes such as the party in matrix reloaded characterise it as a place of community. the duality of each setting is typical of the gothic, and allows the viewer to explore the complexity of the movie’s conundrum. no option is the easy, immediate or obvious choice. the viewer must consult their own morals and values. ideas and anxieties surrounding moral decay are vital to the narrative of gothic tales; the genre explores and seeks to define humanity, and doing so often involves ethnocentric set of morals associated with good and bad. concepts like metamorphosis, identity, and the rejection of religion or christian/western ideals all play into this, but this is where modern gothic’s acknowledgement of complexity reframes things. most developments described as ‘modern gothic’ apply to sci-fi as it is an extension of, or evolved from,1960s-1990s gothic.

in presenting the aforementioned topics as multifaceted, the genre is able to imply or sometimes directly suggest that the ways in which presentations of them differ from established values is not immediately threatening, but simply different or even sympathetic. the matrix almost reverses traditional expressions of transgression by suggesting that those seeking to maintain the status quo are enforcing restrictive and immoral ideals, and that those whose agendas differ from the status quo are seeking liberation. this appears very similarly in angela carter’s previously mentioned work, exemplifying the parallels between sci-fi and the gothic. ‘the matrix stuff was all about the desire for transformation but it was all coming from a closeted point of view.’ lilly wachowski states. transformation and metamorphosis are topics so in line with the content of the gothic, allowing authors to explore and compare different states of being in order to eventually, sometimes implicitly, condemn one and promote the other. in reference to how she was drawn to use sci-fi as the medium for this story, she says that ‘we were existing in a space where the words didn't exist, so we were always living in a world of imagination.’ things that cannot work in our social climate can be allowed to work in an imagined scenario, with imagined consequences separate from the real world, similarly to the gothic’s use of the supernatural as a vehicle for taboo actions and values.

the wachowskis select science fiction tropes that are core to the gothic as a medium for the matrix’s allegorical meaning: taboo subjects, metamorphosis, binary oppositions, moral questions and stark settings. the matrix arguably serves as a bridge between the two genres, while also being unmistakably modern in its support of trans people and its open criticism of capitalism and social systems. this is not to say that earlier texts do not argue similarly points, but that the popularity of the matrix means that these points and messages are widespread and consumed by a massive audience. the movie was released in early june of 1999, and by august 2000, the matrix dvd had sold over three million copies in usa, making it the best-selling of all time. its unlikely that those three million dvd owners had all interpreted the movie the way the wachowskis had intended, as is the case with all media, but their anti-capitalist and pro-lgbt rhetoric was still present in the movie and has become glaringly obvious to more viewers over 20 years beyond its release date. using binaries as a tool to deconstruct other binaries is a device used more and more within sci-fi and the exploration of morals, systemic structures and the role of lgbt people are both vital to both genres. trans people are originally characterised as ‘Other’, but are rightfully humanised and encouraged to pursue their true identities: ‘to deny our impulses is to deny the very thing that makes us human.’

i.k.bamrah

written 2021

[attemptsonherlifepdf]

attempts on her life: an exploration of victimhood, theatre and self-empowerment as modern feminine survival tactics

trigger warning for discussions of suicide, self harm, sexual assault, fetishism, eating disorders, implications of paedophilia and violence

‘is she not saying, your help oppresses me? is she not saying, the only way to avoid being a victim of the patriarchal structures of late 20th century capitalism is to become her own victim?’ martin crimp’s 1997 play, attempts on her life, was first performed at the royal court theatre upstairs the year of its release. written ‘for a company of actors whose composition should reflect the world beyond theatre’, the play explores the seedier, harsher aspects of reality, including pornography, ethnic violence and suicide. crimp’s central character, anne, is characterised as unique and empowered, but most importantly she is characterised by narrators and other characters describing her. the irony of a woman described as so empowered having so little voice of her own throughout the play is crucial to the question the play poses: is liberation from patriarchal constraints even possible, or do acts of reclamation serve to eventually end up catering to the male gaze regardless?

the scene ‘untitled (100 words)’ details anne’s self-destruction, manifesting in ‘various attempts to kill herself.’ it is an effort to replace being a victim of ‘patriarchal structures’ with being a victim of her own actions and emotions. arguably though, this effort may not be entirely fruitful as anne’s behaviour produces the same result she would achieve through allowing herself to cater to traditional expectations: a helpless victim of the male gaze. anne’s actions are presented as exhibitionist; while motivated by her own suicidal ideation, her attempts to take her life work as ‘a kind of theatre for a world in which theatre itself has died.’ she leaves a ‘gallery’ of memorabilia surrounding her attempts, including ‘medicine bottles, records of hospital admissions polaroids of the several hiv positive with whom she has intentionally had unprotected intercourse, pieces of broken glass...suicide notes…’ a narrator describes this exhibition as ‘the spectacle of her own existence, the radical pronography...the religious object.’ the semantic field of language in this scene associated with anne’s suicide attempts is littered with sexualisation and ideas of performance: ‘its sexy...voeyuers...pornography...object of herself...to be consumed...self-indulgent...entertaining.’ this opens up a dialogue between the narrators that evaluates her suicidal behaviour as a piece of artwork. one asks ‘who would possibly accept this kind of undigested exhibitionism as a work of art?’ while the other offers the idea that ‘gestures of radicalism take on new meaning in a society where the radical gesture is simply one more form of entertainment - in this case artwork - to be consumed.’ as uncomfortable as it is to suggest, anne’s suicidality is both fetishised and commodified, something that is partially her own doing. the concepts of ‘pure narcissism’ and ‘self-indulgence’ are attributed to her performance, along with one of the narrators pushing for her to receive psychiatric treatment. an obvious but viable interpretation of anne’s ‘gallery’ is that it is an exaggerated cry for help, where she lays out the evidence of her mental state in the hopes of receiving validation or assistance. this idea is disputed by this narrator’s counterpart, who suggests that ‘help is the last thing she wants.’ the sexualised language used and the repeated hints at exhibitionism could indicate that her performance is for the purpose of her own sexual pleasure: ‘surely our presence [the audience] here makes us mere voyeurs in bedlam.’ in forcing those around her to witness her mental decline, anne may be participating in fetishism. she certainly is acting with the intention of performing, and of being watched.

this is where the idea of empowerment and reclamation comes in. anne forces her peers into watching, something that she gets pleasure from, and this arguably serves as a reversal of typical sexual dynamics which place men in dominant, pleasure-receiving roles roles. in self-destructive behaviours, she reclaims her body and chooses to destroy it herself rather than allowing others to do it to her. however, in the process of doing so she achieves the same result that she would if she were allowing her environment to shape her into an object of the male gaze; that is to say, a helpless object. men’s stereotypical attraction to what ibsen referred to as ‘feminine helplessness’ tends to be the driving force of the objectification of women. it can be argued that this objectification is inevitable and thus anne’s efforts to control the means by which it occurs is the closest she can get to liberating herself from it. finding a way to enjoy or bear something painful and inevitable serves as a survival mechanism; ‘not the object of others, but the object of herself.’

the aesthetic framing of anne’s violence against herself is incredibly significant to its relevance as a piece of artwork. in ‘aesthetic violence and women in film: kill bill with flying daggers’, kupfer argues that film, and by extension plays and scripts, aesthetically frame violence in three ways: symbolically, structurally, and as a narrative essential. anne’s violence can be characterised as self harm and fulfills these three framings. symbolically it is an act of free will and a reclamation of her own body, an opportunity to enjoy her ‘inevitable’ objectification. structurally, the scene ‘untitled (100 words)’ occurs five scenes after the last discussion of anne’s suicidality within the play, a scene titled ‘mum and dad.’ this sets up certain aspects of anne’s performative nature in advance. after a suicide attempt she describes ‘[feeling] like a screen’ to her parents: ‘where everything from the front looks real and alive, but round the back there’s just dust and a few wires...an absence of character.’ here she details an experience of feeling disconnected from herself beyond her performance. the act of using performance as a means of openly criticising performance is certainly subversive, and is a device seen in more modern media, such as bojack horseman (‘i felt like a xerox of a xerox of a xerox...not my character’) and in bo burnham’s ‘inside.’ crimp uses his play to propose ideas about the nature of acting, particularly its role in the lives of women. the sentiment of acting being a survival tactic for women is echoed in much earlier texts, such as ibsen’s ‘a doll’s house.’ throughout the play nora caters to her husband’s infantalised fantasies of her whenever he is present, and doing so results in him giving her an allowance and certain limited but significant moments of freedom. torvald admits, ‘i would not be a man if your feminine helplessness did not make you doubly attractive in my eyes’ and repeatedly states that he wishes some ‘terrible fate’ would befall his wife so that he could have the pleasure of rescuing her. anne’s performance of suicidality, of feeling ‘beyond help’, would likely be received by men similarly to how nora’s childish facade is received by her husband, as a fantasy that involves saving her for their own sense of pleasure and accomplishment. however, what makes anne’s behaviour ‘radical’ is her refusal to accept help. she recognises that her feelings of hopelessness are fetishised and argues that ‘your help oppresses me.’ this sentiment is also reflected in ‘a doll’s house’; nora must refuse torvald’s money and help in order to pursue her own freedom in the final act. catering to his idealised image of a wife only served to help her survive her household, not to prosper or be her individual self. she had to leave the environment which forced her to perform behind entirely in order to discover who she is beyond the act. not accepting help is anne’s version of this, but the narrators consider the idea that even in isolating her act to only include herself, anne still cannot escape objectification. her ‘radical gesture’ of destroying herself and laying out the evidence of her behaviour is ‘simply one more form of entertainment, one more product… to be consumed.’ an earlier scene, titled ‘the camera loves you’ includes the line ‘we need to go for the sexiest scenario’, a statement which accurately summarises the likely reception to anne’s ‘dialogue of objects.’ arguably another aspect of what makes anne’s predicament ‘the sexiest scenario’ is that even within the text itself she is the subject of the conversation, but rarely a participant. anne is described by narrators, art critics, her parents, her family, etc, but only ever speaks for herself when her defiant statements are being quoted by one of these narrators. descriptions of her self-inflicted violence fit kupfer’s final framing: a narrative essential.

interestingly, the play consists of a somewhat non-linear narrative, where each of its 17 scenes has its own plot unconnected to that of the last. as a result, a narrative essential in ‘attempts on her life’ would be a device, or in this case an instance of violence, which builds our understanding of both anne and the play’s messages, rather than a traditional narrative essential which would drive the plot forwards. the play delivers multiple instances of various forms of violence, ranging from ethnic violence to self harm to forced pornography. anne’s self-injury in particular is framed just prior to and just after the midpoint of the play. before the midpoint, the audience learns of her ‘terrible detachment’ from the character she plays, how she ‘feels like a screen.’ the midpoint, a scene titled ‘the international threat of terrorism™’ opens with a brief analysis of a statement made by anne: ‘i do not recognise your authority.’ the speaker asks, ‘does she really imagine that anything can justify her acts of random senseless violence?’ ‘random’ and ‘senseless’ seem ill-fitting qualities to attribute to anne’s violence, particularly given that her parents state ‘she’s planned all this.’ however, this midpoint scene states ‘no one can find anne’s motive’, seemingly the reason that the speaker cannot see a possible justification for her behaviour. choosing not to recognise the authority of those around her is yet another aspect of our protagonist’s performance that is ‘radical.’ in neglecting to acknowledge the power of those objectifying her, anne is achieving two things; either she is allowing herself to experience her own body and emotions without it being for the sake of others, or she is allowing herself to be fetishised and is simply in denial of it. her defiance is complex and the results of it, and indeed the motivations behind it, are difficult to ascertain.

martin crimp’s use of 17 separate individual scenes rather than a traditional singular plot narrative allows the audience to gain a multifaceted understanding of many multifaceted issues. anne is placed and acts within varying contexts such as her own personal self destruction, destruction of land that comes with ethnic cleansing, the commodification of female bodies and two different familial structures. the scene ‘the camera loves you’ emphasises how anne is an ‘everywoman’ but rather than this term being used to describe an average woman in daily life, it instead refers to a woman who is, simply put, everything. anne is described in the scene ‘girl next door’ as ‘the girl next door...royalty…a pornographic movie star...a killer and a brand of car...a terrorist threat...a mother of three...femme fatale...a presidential candidate...a predator…’ by not allocating a specific speaker to each line, crimp allows the director to decide who describes anne and in what way. lines such as ‘what we see here is the work of a girl who clearly should have been admitted, not to an art school but to a psychiatric unit’ can be spoken by a parent, an art critic, a teacher, anyone, and the relation of the speaker to anne is what characterises the comment and thus characterises her. someone described as ‘self indulgent’ by a parent is very different to someone described the same way by a lover. this means that anne is not just every woman, but every woman to everyone. by placing this ‘everywoman’ in such a range of contexts, she arguably becomes a plot device used to convey meaning, and it can be argued that this negates the more empowered features of her character. it is entirely common for female characters to be reduced to plot devices, however most often when this occurs, the character is two-dimensional. anne, on the other hand, is consistently given additional layers to her character in every scene; she exists to be characterised. excessive use of character description in conjunction with limited speaking time is either evidence that crimp’s writing is atypical in style but not theme, or that it is poignant.

arguably, by giving anne countless traits and emphasising ideas of performance and media, crimp is using his 17 scenes as an extreme example of the commodification of female bodies. anne is sold to the audience as this larger-than-life persona, someone who fulfils a million roles in subversive ways that are interesting to watch, but she still ‘feels like a screen.’ again, this sentiment of the effects of performance on an actor is echoed in many modern texts and pieces of media, but ‘attempts on her life’ makes this point in specific reference to women. real life examples of anne’s treatment exist, and her ‘everywoman’ role allows audiences to relate anne to any number of women existing in media. the way that others only talk about anne when describing or evaluating her mimics the way that agencies and record labels create a solid branding for their actors, musicians, and so on. this brand becomes an intrinsic part of their genuine personality as they cannot be caught behaving in a way that is not consistent with it. acting becomes a constant, and these women are constantly selling a brand or persona, and have very little space to behave in ways that feel true to themselves instead. acting ‘out of character’ results in the loss of public support, funding from agencies, job offers, etc, and thus the character created for celebrities is vital to their survival in their respective industries. as previously discussed, traditional texts argue the importance of theatre for women’s survival just as much, namely ibsen’s ‘a doll’s house.’ the same way nora must leave the environment that forces her to act in order to be happy or individual, anne must do the same; but her attempts at suicide suggest that the environment forcing her performance is not a household or an industry, but ‘the patriarchal structures of late twentieth century capitalism.’ either she dies or ‘becomes her own victim’ in an attempt to escape constant performance, but even her death becomes somewhat performative. even dead, many female celebrities continue their branding through martyrdom. there is very little room for one to make art detailing suicide, sex, and the like without seemingly crossing the line between expression and glorification. women who suffer are not necessarily acting, but as their suffering is a part of their life experience, it becomes interwoven in their branding or public image: amy winehouse’s experiences with alcoholism and bulimia come to mind. winehouse never glorified alcoholism herself, but songs such as ‘rehab’ and documentaries covering her illness released after her death have certainly been accused of doing so. agencies and other creatives took advantage of winehouse’s struggles in order to perform their own ‘activism’ or ‘spreading of awareness.’

in light of ‘attempts on her life’ and the concepts surrounding performance that it poses, we must consider: is liberation from patriarchal constraints even possible, or do acts of reclamation serve to eventually end up catering to the male gaze regardless? it would not be accurate to the play’s style and purpose to try to make one singular conclusion to this question. crimp uses varying styles and contexts in order to showcase the various aspects there are to this issue; the necessity of performance, the constraints it leads to, the sexualisation of suffering, brand maintenance, and so on. anne’s lack of voice in this play can be read either as an example of the very thing the play criticises, or simply just poor usage of character, and the former feels most appropriate for crimp’s writing style. the play implies that victimhood can be intrinsic to womanhood, but presents anne’s defiance as ideallised, encouraging it. theatre can be used as both a survival mechanism and a method of empowerment, but the play posits that it is only empowering to a certain extent; it allows one to control the means by which they are objectified but not to actually avoid objectification. one can behave in undesirable manners, such as anne’s displays of suicidality and exhibitionism, but then we must examine their motivations. is anne behaving in this way solely based upon her low mental health? or is the fact that she is also engaging in a form of exhibitionism and forcing an audience evidence of her sexualising her own experience? if so, her sexualisation of suicidal behaviour likely stems from the ‘patriarchal structures’ she is working to avoid being a victim of, suggesting that it is not possible to liberate oneself from them. anne is evidence that women are not separate from the patriarchy, but active participants in it as it is a collection of ideals engraved into western society. it would be unfair and somewhat dejected to conclude that these ideals cannot be unlearned, but ‘attempts on her life’ certainly illustrates that unlearning them is a more active and difficult task than simply holding a feminist ideology.

i.k.b

[attemptsonherlifepdf]

bojack horseman and bo burnham: the art of acting like you’re acting and the comedy of misery

at the core of bojack horseman, raphael bob-waksberg’s 2014 comedy, is a story about the relationship between performance and depression. the protagonist of this renowned tragicomedy is best described as a sympathetic villain; he is shown to clearly be in the wrong across various events of the show, and is explicitly referred to as a bad person, but the audience is granted deep access to his personal struggles, resulting in some portions of the audience finding themselves on bojack’s side. the duality of his character is complex, but can be broken down into some core components, that all stem from the impacts of stardom and performance. the standup comedy of bo burnham arguably echoes this sentiment in real time. having been a performer from a young age, burnham creates work that serves as a satirical commentary on the life of entertainers. he uses original songs to explore the reliance upon and resentment for his performative nature both onstage and within his personal life. both the comedian and the netflix show are widely understood to be thinly veiling their critiques of the entertainment industry behind a particular brand of witty and absurd humour.

both bojack and burnham’s content openly criticises their audiences and explicitly states the manufactured nature of the narrative the audience is fed. in the fifth season of bojack horseman, the show satirises itself by having bojack star in a police procedural drama, parts of which are actively written by other characters to reflect events of bojack’s life. the titular character he plays, philbert, is the epitome of selfish male angst, and an example of what bob-waksberg’s show could have been; another story about a sad and angry man whose guilt supposedly makes up for the people he has hurt. according to bojack, philbert teaches us ‘we’re all terrible, so we’re all okay’, an interpretation that is harshly disputed by diane: ‘that’s not the point of philbert, for guys to watch it and feel okay. i dont want you, or anyone else, justifying their shitty behaviour because of the show.’ this moment is a direct reaction to some of the online reception bojack horseman has received. various circles of the show’s fanbase have found themselves relating to the protagonist to the point of defending his untoward behaviour, a response not intentioned by the show’s creators. this is not the only example of bob-waksberg’s ability to make his work self-evaluative. in season six’s exposure of bojack and sarah lynn’s problematic relationship, characters question their sexual encounter from the first season. the writers use this as a way of examining their own choices, and the harmful tropes they played into when using this exploitative sexual encounter as a gag. this self-evaluative quality is what sets bojack apart as a show that assesses the performance it participates in, much like the comedy of bo burnham.

bo burnham is known for directly addressing his audience, particularly in terms of discouraging idolisation and parasocial relationships. some examples of this manifest as responses to hecklers rather than a planned bit in the show, for instance:

heckler: i love you!

bo: no you don’t

heckler: i love the IDEA of you!

bo: stop participating!

he actively addresses the issues posed by being an entertainer, and encourages the audience to understand and recognise that his onstage persona is just that: an exaggerated persona. not once does burnham claim to be fully authentic onstage, and even moments of authenticity we see in his latest special, inside, are staged. we make the assumption that having the physical setting of a stage stripped away grants us a more personal look at the entertainer’s life, but he makes it clear that even in his own home we still see the aspects he has carefully constructed rather than the full truth. arguably though, parts of the show really are authentic; in his monologue during make happy, bo deconstructs his own show in a way that is similar to bojack horseman’s later seasons, admitting that all he knows is performing and thus making a show about the more mundane and relatable aspects of life would feel ‘incredibly disingenuous.’ in his attempts to separate himself from this onstage persona he actually manages to blur the lines between what is acting and what is now part of his nature as a result of his job. this notion is echoed in bojack horseman as bojack’s attention seeking nature is attributed to his years acting in front of a camera every day.

bo suggests that the era of social media has created a space in which children’s identities mimic that of an entertainer like himself, describing the phenomenon as ‘performer and audience melded together.’ in this observation he criticises the phenomenon. bo attempts to force the audience to recognise the ways in which their lives are becoming shaped by the presence of an audience and to some extent uses his own life as a warning tale against this. he points out the way in which the ‘tortured artist trope’ means that your cries for help or roundabout attempts of addressing mature themes such as substance abuse, mental illness and trauma become part of that on stage persona and therefore become part of the joke. both bo and bojack address these topics in more discrete manners earlier in their careers, but this eventually becomes expected, and thus they are forced to explicitly detail their struggles with these topics in order to be taken seriously. even then, portions of the audience are inclined to see it as part of the persona or as something that fuels the creators creativity and thus does not need to be addressed as a legitimate issue. the emphasis on creating a character or persona promotes the commodification of mental illness: any struggle must be made into a song or a joke or a bit, must be turned into part of the act in order to have value. this actually serves to delegitimise these emotions and create a disconnect between the feeling and the person, as it becomes near impossible to exist without feeling as though you are acting. even when an artist’s cries for help become blatant, they continue to go ignored because now they serve the purpose of creating content that criticises the industry they stem from. online audiences can be seen as treating bo burnham and his insightful work as existing to demonstrate the negative effects entertaining can have, and because this insight is useful or thought-provoking to audiences, he is almost demanded to keep entertaining and creating. in response to this demand, his work becomes more meta and his messages become clearer, and the more obvious his messages, the more people he reaches. this increases audience demands and traps entertainers in a cycle fraught with internal conflict.

during bojack’s second season, bojack’s date asks him, ‘come on, do that bojack thing where you make a big deal and everyone laughs, but at the same time we relate, because you're saying the things polite society won't.’ this moment exemplifies how aspects of his genuine personality have now become a part of his persona and this is demanded of him in genuine and serious situations, undermining the validity of his emotional reactions. he immediately makes a rude comment to the waitress at the restaurant they’re in and satisfies his date by performing that character he has set himself out to be. some circles of the fan base have argued that bojack is written as a depiction of somebody with borderline personality disorder, offering a psychoanalytical lens through which to view this notion of performance. a defining symptom of borderline personality disorder is a fluctuating sense of self; having grown up on camera, being demanded to perform to others as young as six years old, bojack’s sense of self will have been primarily dictated by the need to act.  whether this acting is for the sake of comedy, or as a representation of masking his mental illness, when they need to act is taken away bojack entirely loses his sense of self and relapses into his addictions: ‘i felt like a xerox of a xerox of a person.’ burnham’s depictions of depression run along a similar vein; in his new special he poses the idea that his comedy no longer serves the same personal purpose it once did for him. he questions ‘shit should I be joking at a time like this?’ and satirises the idea that arts have enough value to change or impact the current global issues that we are facing. burnham’s ‘possible ending song’ to his latest special, he asks ‘does anybody want to joke when no-one’s laughing in the background? so this is how it is.’ implicit in this question is the idea that when the audience is taken away and there is nobody to perform his pain to, he is left with his pain. instead of being able to turn his musings and thoughts into a product to sell to the public, he is forced to just think about them in isolation and actually face them, an abrupt and distressing experience.

the value of performance and art is questioned by both bojack and burnham, particularly during the later years of their respective content. burnham’s infamous song, art is dead, appears to be a direct response to the question ‘what is the worth of art?’ he posits that performing is the result of a need for attention (‘my drug’s attention, i am an addict, but i get paid to indulge in my habit’) and repeatedly jokes throughout his career that the entertainment industry receives more respect that it deserves (‘i’m the same as you, im still doing a job or a service, i’m just massively overpaid’). his revelations regarding the inherent desire for attention that runs through all entertainers is frequently satirised in bojack horseman. bojack is comically, hyperbolically attention hungry and self-obsessed, and the show has a running gag in which he uses phrases along the lines of ‘hello, why is nobody paying attention to me, the famous movie star, instead of these other boring people.’ his constant attempts to direct the focus of others towards himself result in bojack feeling like ‘everybody loves you, but nobody likes you.’ his peers buy into his act and adore the comical, exaggerated, laughable aspects of his character, but find very little room to respond to him on a genuinely personal level because of this. interestingly, bojack appears to enjoy catering to his audience and the instant gratification it produces, whereas bo burnham becomes increasingly candid about his mixed feeling towards his audience. ‘i wanna please you, but i wanna stay true to myself, i wanna give you the night out that you deserve, but i wanna say what i think and not care what you think about it.’ he admits to catering to what audiences want from him, but resents both the audience and himself in the process as it reveals to himself which parts of his character are solely for the sake of people watching him.

within bojack horseman, this concept is applicable not only to the protagonist, but to the various forms of performer demonstrated in the plot. towards the show’s end, sarah lynn asks ‘what does being authentic have to do with anything?’ to which herb kazzaz responds, ‘when i finally stopped hiding behind a facade i could be at peace.’ this highlights the fact that because entertainers are demanded to continue the facade, they do not receive the opportunity to find ‘peace.’ this sentiment is scattered throughout the show, through a musical motif, the song ‘don’t stop dancing.’ the song stems from a life lesson bojack imparted to sarah lynn at a young age, and becomes more frequently used as the show progresses and bojack’s situation worsens.

sarah lynn is also used to explore the value of entertainers; in the show’s penultimate episode, she directly compares her work as a pop icon to the charity work of herb, arguing that if she suffered in order to produce her work. it has to mean something. she lists the struggles she faced when on tour: ‘i gave my whole life...my manager leaked my nudes to get more tour dates added, my mom pointed out every carb i ate, it was hell. but it gave millions of fans a show they will never forget and that has to mean something.’ implicit in this notion is the idea that entertainment is the epitome of self-sacrifice. there is a surplus of mentally ill individuals within the industry, largely due to the nature of the industry itself, but some may argue that the cultural grip the industry has, and the vast amounts of respect and money it generates annually, gives the suffering of these prolific individuals meaning.

the juxtaposing responses entertainers feel towards their audiences manifest as two forms of desperation: the desperation to be an individual who is held accountable, and the desperation to be loved and validated. we see both bojack and bo depict how they oscillate between  ‘this is all a lie’ and ‘my affection for my audience is genuine’, or between ‘do not become infatuated with me im a character’ and ‘please fucking love my character i do not know how to be loved on a personal level.’ bojack explicitly asks diane to write a slam piece on him and ‘hold him accountable’, similar to bo’s song ‘problematic’ in which the hook includes the phrase ‘isn’t anybody gonna hold me accountable?’ for his insensitive jokes as a late teenager. their self-awareness is what enables their self-evaluative qualities, but self-awareness is its own issue. bojack grapples with a narcissistic view of his own recognition of his behaviour before settling on a more nuanced, albeit depressing take. originally he makes the assumption that in recognising the negative aspects of himself, he is superior to those who behave similarly: ‘but i know im a piece of shit. that makes me better than all the pieces of shit that don’t know theyre pieces of shit.’ eventually, during his time at rehab he is forced to reconcile with the fact that self awareness does not, to put it bluntly, make you the superior asshole, it just makes you the more miserable one. the show does, however, make a point to recognise how the entertainment industry protects ‘pieces of shit’, prioritising their productive value over how much they deserve to be held accountable, demonstrated using characters like hank hippopoalus. the show itself obviously stems from the entertainment industry, as it is a form of media produced by netflix, one of the most popular streaming platforms available. bojack horseman and bo burnham represent the small corner of the industry that is reflective enough to showcase the damage it inflicts. this is powerful in terms of education and awareness, and urges audiences to question their own motives and versions of performance, but the reflection alone is not powerful enough to help the artists in question. burnham’s candid conversations surrounding his mental health continue to reveal a plethora of issues somewhat caused or sustained by the nature of his career. within bojack horseman, bojack is only able to stop hurting other characters when those characters construct a situation that forces him to face consequence, his introspection alone is not enough. while bojack ends on a message of hope, suggesting to the audience that reverting back to the status quo is not the only acceptable way for events to end, it leaves stinging lessons and social commentary with the audience regarding the unnatural and damaging narrative that performers live through. on a similar but markedly different note, bo burnham’s work and personal progression is playing out in real time, and not in a way that is as raw and genuine as it appears. each bit is planned, even the most vulnerable moments that appear unplanned and painful. his latest special is not entirely devoid of hope, but does translate to audiences as a somewhat exaggerated look around the era of social media and the development of performance, using himself as an example.

the absurdist humour that often acts as a vehicle for poignant statements or emotionally provocative questions is very specific to each media creator. bob-waksberg’s use of puns, tongue twisters and entirely ridiculous circumstances served to simultaneously characterise his points as an expected part of the show’s style of humour, similar to bojack’s emotional instability, but also to make them appear gut-punching in comparison to the humour. burnham’s work is similar in that poignant but blunt statements are often sandwiched between absurd and exaggerated jokes, making them stand out via contrast but not giving the audience too much time to dwell upon them as they are said. performance art is second nature to entertainers, and is presented a an issue that is infiltrating the general population via social media rather than solely affecting the ‘elites’. bojack horseman and bo burnham present the duality of artists simultaneously attempting to level the playing field and increase their chances of survival in the industry, and encourage audiences to know that everyone is bluffing and you’ll never have the right cards anyway.

i.k.b