Essais Journal

Essais An Undergraduate Journal for Literary and Cultural Theory and Criticism

Vol. 11 No. 1 Spring 2021 Essais, which means “efforts” or “endeavors” in French, is Utah Valley University’s premier undergraduate publication for scholarship in literary and cultural theory, criticism, and analysis. Submissions are chosen for publication each Fall and Spring by a staff of volunteer student editors in a double-blind selection process.

For more information, visit: www.essaisjournal.com

Department of English and Literature, CB 407 Utah Valley University 800 West University Parkway Orem, UT 84058 (801) 863-8577 Staff

Editor-in-Chief Kaydee Jacobson

Managing Editor Rich Higinbotham

Technical Editor Lucy Dearden

Associate Editors McKenna Hockemier Austyn Thomas

Contributing Staff Katherine Brickey Kelsie Cannon Hannah Filizola Ruiz

Faculty Advisors Dr. Nathan Gorelick Dr. Ashley Nadeau

3 Cover art: Tuning Smoke (photography) by Martin Dennis

4 Artists

Kirby Bolick @kirbybolick & kirbybolickphotography.com

Rachel Buhler @rachel.artjournal

Pat Debenham @hpdebenham

Martin Dennis martindennis.com

Hannah Liddell @hannah.olivia.art

Manny Mellor mannymellor.com

Alie Mueller @summer_canvas.kota

Annie Neilson @annieneilsonphoto & annieneilsonphoto.com

Annalee Poulsen annaleepoulsen.com

5 Editor’s Note

After a long year filled with uncertainty, fear, loss, and political unrest, 2021 was much anticipated by all. The new year seemed to offer endless potential; somehow, we hoped that 2021 would vanquish all of our past problems. And yet, just a few days into the long-awaited year, violent protests broke out at the United States Capitol. It was then we realized that 2021 would not be free from the turmoil we had hoped to leave behind. Our hearts go out to those who have lost loved ones to the COVID-19 pandemic that has taken millions of lives world- wide, and we are grateful for the healthcare workers who have taken part in the continued effort to combat the virus. We also grieve with those who have lost loved ones due to the ongoing plague of racial discrimination, and we stand with them in the fight for equality and justice. And, we mourn with those who have experienced pain and precarity in the face of our current global instability. In a world full of chaos and darkness, we collectively ask, is there hope for a brighter future? The answer is yes. We, the editors and staff, have felt that hope as we read through the passionate papers submitted to the Spring 2021 issue of Essais, which remind us that recognizing the problem is the first step toward change. This semester’s selected pieces each address significant and timely topics such as identity performance, social and cultural stigmas, and the importance of positive representation in a media landscape aching for the voices of the unheard. Our authors’ stamina is proof of their desire to change the world. They have worked tirelessly through constant emails, regular Zoom meetings, and a rigorous revision process—words cannot fully express our gratitude. We are proud that their impressive works will be accessible to the entire world at a time when hope is difficult to find. These pieces inspire us, and we believe they will be a source of light to you, as well.

6 We also would like to thank our incredible staff who played an integral role in the editing process, contributing their much appreciated enthusiasm and vibrant personalities in our staff Zoom meetings. They consistently provided us with a much needed boost of positivity in these difficult times. This issue ofEssais would not have been possible without their extensive help. Further, we want to express our incomprehensible gratitude to our faculty advisors, Dr. Ashley Nadeau and Dr. Nathan Gorelick, for their countless hours of service. Exemplifying pa- tience to an unprecedented degree, they provided the necessary time, support, and guidance, helping us along the way. It has been an honor working alongside them throughout this experience and we thank them for their positivity and confidence, which carried us through the editing and publication process. Finally, we would like to thank the English faculty at Utah Valley University who have taught us to think critically about all that we encounter. Their passionate love for literature, rhetoric, and writing has influenced many and it will surely continue to do so in the future. It is because of them that Essais is able to make its voice heard. We also would like to thank the English and Literature Department chair, Brian Whaley, and the Dean’s Office of the College of Humanities and Social Sci- ences for their continuing financial support. Without further ado, we are proud to present the Spring 2021 issue of Essais.

Kaydee Jacobson, Editor-in-Chief Rich Higinbotham, Managing Editor Lucy Dearden, Technical Editor McKenna Hockemier, Associate Editor Austyn Thomas, Associate Editor

7 Advisors’ Note

At the risk of brushing against the excruciatingly obvious, this has been a difficult semester. Beyond the many, many lives it has claimed or profoundly disrupted, the ongoing global public health crisis has also inscribed a trauma at the core of our collective being. It is a slow shock from which we—as in, every one of us, each in our own ways but also in the wider dimension of our being together—will not simply and easily recover. Nor is this crisis confined to the COVID-19 pandemic, which would be horrible enough considering the sheer and mounting number of deaths it has caused, and the sorrow these lost lives have left behind. But as the articles in this issue of Essais make clear, whether explicitly or by implication, the pandemic has also augmented the more persistent, systemic social and economic inequalities that have fractured and corroded our communities for far longer. This is the context through which the virus circulates. Wealth inequality rises across the United States and around the world. The racism built into our institutions, sown into the fabric of our daily realities, continues to roil our communities and to aggravate the disconnect between our stated ideals and our practical commitments. Both also carry a grim and growing death toll, and together have carved a trail of pain and suffering that is perhaps less direct but certainly no less immense than what can be attributed to the novel coronavirus. Faced with such a complex of compound traumas, we know there will be no “going back to normal,” whatever that means, if that now-mythical “normal” ever even existed, which in retrospect it probably did not. The question for us therefore is not how to wind back the clock, impossibly, as if we could erase this long traumatic moment from the pages of history, not least because traumas are in part defined by pre- cisely their inability to be written or spoken in the first place. They just keep working at and on us from just the other side of language, defying and disturbing our efforts to give them

8 place within an ordered and orderly system of meaning; what makes a trauma, well, traumatic is that words cannot but fail to contain and control it. And yet we speak and we write and we double downon just these efforts to find or make meaning, which are also efforts to read what has been inscribed there, to make the trauma legible and, in so doing, give it over to the vital work of a shared reckoning. Essais in French means “efforts,” and that is what each of the articles included in this remarkable issue of the journal are: contentions with the unspoken or the unspeakable; endeavors, as the very title of the journal implies, to translate the domains of affect and anxiety, outrage and offense, fear and frustration, into a shared language through which we may come together and face the pain and come to bitter terms with it. The stakes of such a project—of collective treatment through the interplay of creativity and criticism, through critical creativity and creative critique—have never been more obvious. What, after all, does it mean to come together, when caring for our communities and our world has meant being apart? As always, our students, both editorial staff and authors, have led the way through the uncertainty and confusion of this most uncertain and confused time. To say that this is a tes- tament to their remarkable resilience would be true, but also trivializing and imprecise; a passing glance across the wide world reminds us that resilience is everywhere. So we prefer to emphasize the students’ concentration, commitment, and unbound enthusiasm for the power and promise of human- istic inquiry, which they maintained and even amplified not despite but because of these dark times. When has such work— across remote platforms, late into the evenings, throughout all the other personal and political pressures this unprecedented moment has imposed, without even the modest camaraderie of sharing a pizza while poring over the latest round of copy edits, and against the threat of a lost year which, as this issue attests, tried and finally failed to deprive us of causes to celebrate— when has all this been at once more difficult and more essential?

When has the question of humanity’s questing after meaning been more urgent? Or more unavoidable? The editors and authors who came together to produce this issue thus deserve commendation and our immeasurable gratitude and respect not only for the high quality of their work, but also for completing it with good cheer and good humor, in a spirit of giving and with a drive for scholarly and aesthetic excellence. There may be no “normal” to which we can return, no escaping or erasing the trauma that binds and compels us, but the essays collected here all variously remind us that such nostalgia for an ideal, idealized past, as far as concerns our collective well-being, is a dead end. This is a beautiful issue in part because it stands so starkly against a backdrop of sadness, as the first cracks of day break upon the horizon of a long and restless night. It is beautiful because it reminds us that with students like these, our future is bright.

Dr. Nathan Gorelick Dr. Ashley Nadeau

10 11 Table of Contents

Authors Abstracts and Bios 14

Kitchen Hands 20 Rachel Buhler

Mask Up: Identity Performance in 21 Art Spiegelman’s Maus Drake Hansen

Eunoia 40 Alie Mueller

“Misery Has Come Home:” 41 Suicide and Family Connections in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Shelby Johnson

Reef 56 Hannah Liddell

Literary Canon and its Relation to Social 57 and Political Movements in the United States Katherine Santana Brickey

Cottonwood and Flash Flood 68 Manny Mellor

Criminality and Misrepresentations 69 of Latinidad in American Dirt Hannah Filizola Ruiz

Isolation 82 Annie Neilson

12 Cinema and The Female Gaze: 83 An Examination of Queer Representation Jessica Marie Deveraux

Content 94 Annalee Poulsen

“Trawling in Silence:” 95 Lending a Voice to the Oppressed in The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao Tausha Hewlett

Mate 110 Kirby Bolick

The Blindness of Abundance 111 and the Pathology of Misinformation Drake Hansen

Oh to be there Again 123 Pat Debenham

13 Abstracts and About the Authors

Literary Canon and its Relation to Social and Political Movements in the United States by Katherine Santana Brickey

Throughout the history of the U.S., there have been racial tensions that highlight the deficiencies of institutional, as well as social, structures which are increasingly occupied by a diverse civil body. By recognizing these deficiencies, we can begin to deconstruct systems of white supremacy still present in our society. A prime medium that facilitates the perpetuation of colonization is the literary canon still present in our educational institutions. Analysis of social and political movements of the 1950s and ‘60s—such as the Civil Rights Movement—are capable of using a historical lens to enlighten privileged audiences with understanding of how a literary canon that is overwhelmingly Anglo may negatively affect the self-worth and self-esteem of students of color. In turn, students of color can understand that they are not inherently inferior to their white classmates. The aforementioned historical events have brought with them an influx of literary publications by authors of color—however, the literary canon has remained largely focused on the white experience. The implications for a stagnant literary canon go far beyond the classroom to indicate a lack of progress and continued sentiments of inequity.

Katherine Santana Brickey is a writer whose essays, prose, and poetry focus on issues of gender and race. She holds a B.S. in psychology and a B.A. in English with a creative writing emphasis. Her published works include “Pandemics New and Old,” found in the Fall 2019 issue of UVU’s Touchstones, and a collection of poems in Anthology of the BlunderBackers, an anthology of student poetry. She is currently working on her memoir, Vignettes from a Bronx Girl’s Life, and Penelope, a novel about a young woman who travels to Germany where she

14 encounters a menacing love affair. Find more of her work at katherinesantana.com.

Cinema and The Female Gaze: An Examination of Queer Representation by Jessica Marie Deveraux

This paper examines the ways in which queer films destabilize the male gaze as defined by Laura Mulvey, instead creating a space for the female gaze. Blue is the Warmest Color, directed by Abdellatif Kechiche, is analyzed to compare how lesbian desire is appropriated to pleasure audiences who have been conditioned by heterosexuality. Portrait of a Lady on Fire, directed by Céline Sciamma, is used as an example that directly critiques the male gaze, employing the female gaze to give audiences a women- loving-women narrative that does not revolve around pornographic sex. Sarah Schulman’s analysis of queer representation in RENT is used as a framework to demonstrate the importance of lesbian representation in connection with Teresa de Laure- tis’ analysis of what makes queer media queer. The aim of this analysis is to examine how showing lesbian desire through the male gaze makes these narratives no longer queer. The violence of heteronormativity affects even those who do not identify as queer. Thus, it is essential to allow audiences to exist outside of the hetero/homosexual binary, as defined by Eve Sedgwick. Sciamma’s film, specifically, is used as an example of media that allows viewers to exist outside of the position of objectifier or objectified, hetero/homosexual, and promotes the female gaze as the mode through which the film is viewed. Ultimately, the disruption of the sexuality-binary and the male gaze provides a space for lesbian narratives to exist outside of the lens of compulsory heterosexuality.

Jessica Marie Deveraux is currently pursuing an English degree with an emphasis in literary studies at Utah Valley Univer- sity, and is graduating this semester. She will continue her education at the graduate level, where she aims to broaden her understanding of queerness and investigate how it is appro-

15 priated for heternormative cultural production. Jessica currently works as a Writing Fellow at UVU’s Writing Center.

Mask Up: Identity Performance in Art Spiegelman’s Maus by Drake Hansen

In his graphic novel Maus, Art Spiegelman’s choice to depict ethnic and national groups as different animal species, and then to show characters crossing identitarian lines by donning masks, demonstrates the instability and performativity of human identity. These graphical metaphors substantiate scholarship that expands the reach of Judith Butler’s original conception of performativity from gender identity alone to include ethnic, racial, and national identity as well. As the characters of Maus move through and reflect on the horrors of the Holocaust— donning and doffing masks—it becomes clear that human identity at large is performed for an encompassing and op- pressive audience.

The Blindness of Abundance and the Pathology of Misinformation by Drake Hansen

Using ideas of panopticism from Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, this essay argues that the structure and ethos of the internet promote an oversaturation of information in which the noise makes fertile ground for falsehoods to spread. To ex- emplify how misinformation is dangerous in all situations, this paper specifically turns to research on the function of misinformation in the COVID-19 pandemic and the internet’s role in enabling it. The internet’s culture of abundance extends into academia, so solutions must be farther reaching than suggestions like greater algorithmic moderation of social media platforms. Our responses must be founded on education and building critical awareness throughout our populations.

Drake Hansen is graduating with a Bachelor’s in English with a writing studies emphasis, and was selected as valedic-

16 torian for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. His future plans include vibing, sewing, performing classical plays, pursuing happiness, fighting for human rights, and applying to graduate schools when sitting in classrooms is a little safer.

“Trawling in Silence”: Lending a Voice to the Oppressed in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Tausha Hewlett

In a world filled with privilege, there are still people who suffer, crushed under the heel of those vying for power. The Brief Won- drous Life of Oscar Wao brings such suffering to the forefront, through the struggles of the Dominican people who lived under the dictator Trujillo. This essay analyzes how Junot Díaz uses his narrator, Yunior, to redistribute power in the Dominican story by focusing on an underdog like Oscar instead of a dictator like Trujillo. This paper studies the importance of power, narrative, and healing in relation to the novel to emphasize the intentional nature of Yunior’s narrative to provide a healing voice. The narrative takes control from Trujillo by dictating everything the reader sees and instead details the suffering and trauma of the Dominican people—a step which trauma recovery experts say is a necessary part of the healing process.

Tausha Hewlett graduated Fall of 2020 with a degree in English literary studies. In her free time, she loves spending time with her three kids, camping, hiking, and, of course, reading and writing. During her time at UVU, she worked on the staff of Essais and worked as the head Prose editor for the Touchstones magazine.

“Misery Has Come Home”: Suicide and Family Connections in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein by Shelby Johnson

In the time leading up to the nineteenth century, suicide was considered a damnable sin and punished posthumously. As the secularization of suicide gained popularity, new opinions on the act of suicide grew alongside the science of resuscita-

17 tion advertised as the possibility of raising the dead. Writing during this time of innovation, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein explores the battle between the desire to live and the ability to die. Drawing on the historical background of how suicide was received during the time of Shelley’s writing as well as methods believed to bring the dead back to life, this paper seeks to explore the connections between the cultural acceptance of suicide as well as the personal experiences with suicide that the author encountered during her lifetime in relation to the portrayal of suicide in the novel. In so doing, this paper makes the claim that the motifs of life and death are not merely gothic tropes in use, but an early exploration of mental illness and an expression of auto-biographical writing on account of the author. Further, this paper seeks to examine the correlation between Shelley’s own life and the events of her novel in order to make the claim that the suicide attempts of those within Shelley’s social circle are reflected in the attitudes and actions of the characters in ways that neither condemn nor condone the action of taking one’s own life.

Shelby Johnson graduated summa cum laude from Utah Valley University in the Fall of 2020 with a Bachelor’s in English literary studies. She has previously published creative work with UVU’s student journal Touchstones and served alongside the Essais staff as both Managing Editor and Editor-in-Chief. She will be attending graduate school at Brigham Young University in the Fall of 2021 where she intends to focus on Orientalism and nineteenth-century British literature.

Criminality and Misrepresentations of Latinidad in Jeanine Cummins’ American Dirt by Hannah Filizola Ruiz

American Dirt—a novel published in 2020 that follows a mother and her son fleeing from gang violence in Mexico—was endorsed by Oprah in her official book club and anticipated by many. The book was advertised as authentic and praised as an unprecedented inspiration. Following its actual release, fundamental issues

18 with the book were exposed and it was widely criticized for its inauthenticity, appropriation and whitewashing of Mexican culture, and an unnecessarily violent narrative. This analysis attempts to contextualize American Dirt in a larger body of Latinx depictions in popular media by examining the stereotypicality of its characters and the messages those depictions send to audiences about the Latinx experience and Latinx folks. It ultimately calls for the rhetorical ownership of the Latinx character across media articles to return to the hands of the community who actually live the Latinx experience.

Hannah Filizola Ruiz is a Brazilian-Mexican American currently working toward a degree in writing studies in the English De- partment at Utah Valley University, with a minor in philosophy. Hannah centers the majority of major projects on Latinx topics/ advocacy and intends to pursue the same vein of study at the graduate level after finishing UVU’s Bachelor’s Program.

19 Kitchen Hands (India ink) by Rachel Buhler

20 Mask Up: Identity Performance in Art Spiegelman’s Maus

Drake Hansen

Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel, Maus, retells a father’s experience of the Holocaust and its effects on his life and his relationship with his son—the author and artist—through a cartoon reality in which every German is an identical cat and every Jew is an identical mouse. Upon first encountering the book, I thought Maus’s use of this metaphor argued that its depicted cultural groups—and cultural groups in general—are essentially different, which seems like an unlikely claim for a book about the horrors of the Ho- locaust. Though it quickly became clear that this is not the case, I could see that Spiegelman was not taking the trite, ‘everyone is essentially equal’ route either. As the visuals are developed and complicated through the book, it becomes clear that Maus takes the metaphor of cultural groups as distinct animals and continually pushes against it to argue that identity, particularly racial and ethnic identity, is performed based on stereotype and assumption. Strikingly, there is a dearth of scholarship on Maus’s animal metaphor as an articulation of identity. Especially in light of the contemporary relevance of these questions, it seems a glaring oversight. Investigating the arguments of this text is of particular value because the performativity demonstrated in

Essais vol. 11 no. 1 | Spring 2021 Mask Up Hansen

Maus supports a more nuanced understanding of human identity than seems to be espoused in neoliberal ideals, and, more immediately, because it points to a broader and more empirical understanding of cultural theorist Judith Butler’s original formulation of performativity. After describing the origins of Maus’s visual metaphors, I will outline the theories of performativity and identity which ground and expand Butler’s argument for gender as performance to include race, ethnicity, religion, culture, etc., as performances. Using this framing, I will read various passages from Maus where characters confront the limitations of identity, focusing on Spiegelman’s use of masks to indicate characters performing alternate identities. 1. Historical and Theoretical Context 1.1 Comics and Identity Depiction The animal metaphors in Maus build upon a long tradition of metaphors, especially in propaganda of the 1930s and 40s. Cartoon animals may have been specifically appealing to propagandists because of their perceived innocence. In the 1930s, “the use of comic strips for political purposes was not unusual, despite the widespread belief that comics only represented the status quo in a way that was simplistic and lacking nuance” (Ribbens 9). The language and imagery which radicalized the German populace in the lead-up to World War II commonly equated Jewish people with rats and mice, framing them as the infestation ruining and preventing imagined ‘Aryan purity.’ In an interview, Spiegelman himself stated, “I didn’t make up these metaphors, the Nazis did” (Weschler 7). It is this direct link to the history of the Holocaust which makes the visuals of Maus particularly potent. And yet, as Andrew Loman reports, the animal metaphors actually predate the Nazis: “the images of Jews as vermin that Hitler’s regime promulgated drew on the same kinds of sym- bolism that American animators used in the 1930s” (567). Continuity between American cartoons and Nazi propaganda is significant beyond mere genealogy since the power relations

22 Spring 2021 Essais between different animal characters “may allegorize particularly American race relations” (552). These images in American popular culture developed out of racist entertainment, indicat- ing that the use of animals may have, essentially, always been about human identitarian relations, priming itself for uptake by Nazi propagandists. With or without animals, comics were seen as unserious, and so were easy to take at face value. Kees Ribbens indicates how dangerous this perception can be during his investigation of the depictions of people of different races, ethnicities, and nationalities in a comic strip that ran in a Dutch Nazi magazine. Though this strip contained human figures, it presented Nazi racial ideology as, in it, “Jews are represented as ‘the other,’ and singled out as a group with distinctive physical characteristics, regardless of their Dutch, American, British, or Russian nationality” (Ribbens 12). He explains that the separation: occurs first through references to physiognomy in particular, the continuous, highly racialized display of specific physical characteristics, and secondly by constantly stressing their purported negative qualities, actions and attitudes. (12) By exploring a similarly racialized space sympathetically and in the long-form, Maus is able to reveal the comprehensive failings of this kind of racist caricaturization. In an interview with Art Spiegelman on the publication of the first Polish-language edition of Maus, Lawrence Weschler explains that the fifteen-year delay in publication resulted from publishers’ fear of producing a book which depicts Polish people as pigs. Spiegelman defends his choice of animal with the reasoning that “in the American cartoon tradition, pigs simply don’t carry any particular negative connotation” (Weschler 7), but notes the religious connection that pigs “weren’t kosher” (7). Combined with the racial history of these kinds of depictions, Spiegelman’s comments highlight the abundance of potential interpretations. Of the animal metaphors, Spiegelman says, “I was just trying to explore them, to take them serious-

23 Mask Up Hansen ly, to unravel and deconstruct them” (7), and that “if Maus is about anything . . . it’s a critique of the limitations . . . of the caricaturizing impulse” (8). Spiegelman’s focus on this impulse, and its use in the history of the Holocaust, validates my use of Maus as a space to explore identity, especially as this critique extends beyond the book’s art style and into its characters and their interactions and depictions. 1.2 Identity Contemporary theorizations of identity are deeply indebt- ed to Judith Butler’s work on the performativity of gender. Minelle Mahtani writes that “Butler asserts that gender is constructed through various performances, suggesting that some performances can, in fact, challenge gender” (426). Though Butler wrote exclusively on gender performance, the theory may be generalized to encompass a much wider array of identity categories. In her study of the experiences of self- identified mixed-race women, Mahtani indicates that “racialized categories, like gendered categories, may also be viewed as regulatory fictions that can be produced through varied performances among ‘mixed race’ women” (428). By combining her conclusions with Vladek’s recounted experiences of performing a non-Jewish Polish identity in his attempts to avoid capture by Nazis, an interpretation of racialized identities in general as performative becomes possible. Additionally, as Mahtani demonstrates with her in- terviews, using recounted narratives such as Vladek’s story in Maus provides practical evidence for Butler’s articula- tions, which Mahtani notes were predominately theoretical (427). She advocates for this kind of grounding, writing that “a more nuanced use of Butler’s model would map out how subjects ‘do’ identity in real time and space, and the role of subjects in that process” (427). Maus, with its detailed— though, of course, still authored—account of a life which in- cludes the most horrifying identity-driven atrocity in history, filtered through the racializing hand of its animal metaphor, provides ample ground for this kind of exploration.

24 Spring 2021 Essais

The danger of casting identity as performative is that it con- notes an identity free-for-all wherein anyone is free to enact whatever performance they want. This misinterpretation fails to recognize that, in our realities, identity is situated in a web of social relationships. Kristen Renwick Monroe defines identity as “the sense, developed early in childhood, of oneself as both an agent and as a kind of object that is seen, thought about, and liked or disliked by others” (500). Though she doesn’t address it within her paper, I believe her definition may serve to explain group identities as the individual aligns their self with those other selves which observe and ‘like’ (or, at the very least, are like) it. Monroe does acknowledge that both singu- lar and group identities equally defend their legitimacy through narrative, given how commonly “groups of people describe a common past that suggests why they have a collective identity that should be recognized as legitimate by others” (494). As the individual self identifies ‘like’ others, it may identify itself with that common past. We see these patterns play out in the history of the Third Reich constructing their Aryan identity to popu- larize Nazi fascism. The value of Monroe’s description of identity is that it requires both the persuasions of the individual and the reifying gaze of exterior individuals. A danger of describing identity in terms of performance is that it seems to suggest to people that the performance exists at the whims of the individual and is therefore unfounded and unrestricted. It is easy to forget that the stage is crowded. Performance and unfixedness do not mean freedom; each actor is entangled in the web of all the other performances, projecting their expectations of performance on others just as the others’ expectations are projected upon them. 2. Discussion 2.1 Masks in Maus The visual metaphor of masks which characters employ to conceal their identities, or present alternative identities, is the most blatant argument for performed identity; masks are a symbol of theatre. A mask first appears in Maus when Vladek

25 Mask Up Hansen convinces a Polish railway worker to help him get back across the border to Sosnowiec and his family. We see Vladek wearing a pig mask as he narrates that he “didn’t let know [he] was a Jew” (Spiegelman 66; fig. 3). Then, Vladek verbally performs a Polish identity—“You’re a Pole like me”—while present Vladek explains that “the Poles were very bitter on the Germans so it was good to speak bad of them,” but as the conductor hides him from a Nazi inspector, Vladek, now alone, holds the pig mask in his hand, ready to guise himself once more in the performance (66; fig. 3). In this first instance of the mask device, Spiegelman depicts how group identity can be performed based on assumptions. Vladek assumes a Polish identity by assuming the “train man” shares what he believes are general Polish feelings about Germans. By performing group markers, Vladek is able to conceal his Jewish identity. This system of cartoon animals and cartoon animal masks is a “potentially dangerous” narrative device (McGlothlin 183). Ribbens’ report of a racist comic strip sounds as if it could be describing Maus when he states that “the homogeneity of Jews as a group is emphasized” (12). With practically identical animal heads, Jewish characters—and members of the text’s other national, racial, or cultural groups—can only be distin- guished from one another by clothing, dialogue, and other context clues. This phenomenon follows the claim that “just as racists will often complain that members of other ethnic groups all look alike to them, human eyes often perceive individual members of other species as indistinguishable from one another” (De Angelis 232). Thus, this problematic metaphor reflects problematic tendencies in human life and interaction which stem from, according to Monroe, “an innate drive to categorize” (503). While the clear separation in Maus may present problematic implications to its readers, the narrative’s characters maintain their distinctions. Maus demonstrates this categorizing drive through its animal renderings. Spiegelman’s categories center around the Jewish mice and the German cats with major appearances by the Polish pigs and the American dogs, creating a general

26 Spring 2021 Essais play on cartoon animal hierarchies. Toward the end of volume two, this list expands to include Swedish reindeer, British fish, and a Roma butterfly (Spiegelman 285, 291, 293; fig. 1). Yet these renderings could be reductive. Spiegelman reckons with a specific danger of composingMaus within the text as he depicts himself worrying that his father can be “just like the racist caricature of the miserly old Jew” (133). By calling these similarities out, Spiegelman, in many ways, defeats potential misinterpretation, but perpetuating racist stereotypes of any kind can have knock-on effects. Julia Roos, chronicling anti-Black racism in early Weimar Germany, reports that “histo- rians have pointed to the fateful continuities between the early 1920s campaign against France’s African occupation troops and Nazi racial policies” (73). Discriminatory categorizations can rapidly exacerbate existing identitarian tensions. One of the earliest instances of conflict over identity and distinction occurs toward the end of volume one’s second chapter (henceforth, I’ll refer to chapters in the manner of I.2). As tensions rise in Poland, Anja, Spiegelman’s mother, complains that “when it comes to Jews, the Poles don’t need much stirring up!” (Spiegelman 39; fig. 2). This blanket statement offends the Polish governess, who responds, “I think of you as part of my own family!” prompting Anja to specify, “I didn’t mean you!” (39; fig. 2). This interaction seems to echo the reactionary “not all ____!” response that commonly follows after one’s identity group being called out for bad behavior. The conflict in this scene seems to be one of misalignment in how Anja and the governess identify each other. Monroe explains that “there is an inherent reciprocal aspect to our human natures because of the psychological need for boundaries and the linguistic need for categorization” (504). Our identities exist in relation to those around us. Presumably due to proximity, Anja no longer categorizes the governess as her version of “Polish” while the governess, to herself still very much Polish, categorizes Anja as “family.” Thus, Anja’s rebuke illuminates their disagreement which, by Monroe’s construction, is a threat to both characters’ identities. Notably, despite her earlier protests, the governess

27 Mask Up Hansen later refuses to harbor Vladek and Anja as they try to hide from the Nazis (Spiegelman 138). Together, these events suggest that the governess’s Polish identity outweighs her purported familial identification with the Spiegelmans. As the situation worsens in Poland, masks appear more frequently. In I.6, as Vladek and Anja sneak back into Sosnow- iec after escaping the ghetto in Srodula, Spiegelman expands his visual exploration of identity. Present Vladek explains, “I was a little safe. I had a coat and boots, so like a Gestapo wore when he was not in service. But Anja—her appearance—you could see more easy she was Jewish” (Spiegelman 138; fig. 4). This description accompanies a panel where the couple walks down a darkened street in their pig masks, but Anja’s mouse tail is visible under her skirt. Both are depicted as performing a Polish identity, but something about Anja “looks” Jewish, rendered here as a tail. Anja’s flawed performance is called out from across the street by “an old witch” (139), and shortly after, Vladek himself is recognized as a Jew by a fellow Polish- performing Jew (140; fig. 5). Both are called to their default performances as expected by other actors based on recognized phenotypic variations—things which make them appear “Jewish.” But Spiegelman quickly highlights how these outward characteristics are not universal or essential indicators of identity, but rather learned interpretations. Shortly after those recogni- tions, he shows Vladek’s explanation that he would travel into town on a streetcar, always taking the car for Nazis because “the Germans paid no attention,” while “in the Polish car they could smell if a Polish Jew came in” (Spiegelman 142). Despite hating Jews so much, the external distinctions so obvious to the natives of Poland are entirely unclear to the Nazis. The irony of this moment highlights the broader irony of these kinds of racial/ ethnic/sectarian conflicts: people believe they are so different that they must kill each other, but that hatred does not require the ability to tell each other apart. This inessentiality demonstrates how “racialized productions, like gendered productions, are culturally constructed, rather than biological, imperatives”

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(Mahtani 428). Vladek’s false performance passes for an audience which ostensibly hates him more but lacks the cultural literacy to detect his errors. Even in front of the audience which is liable to recognize his lack of authenticity, Vladek is able to maintain his alternative performance. When a group of Polish children identify him as a Jew and run screaming to their mothers, Vladek, still masked, approaches the mothers and tells them not to worry and that he’s not a Jew (Spiegelman 151; fig. 6). The Polish mothers accept his statement and laugh the incident off as kids being kids. Beyond highlighting how, with familiarity, inauthentic identity can be performed to members of the in-group, the rapid assumption of his identity by the children demonstrates how quickly individuals are taught to recognize and police others’ performances. This early in their upbringing and encul- turation, the children already have basic training in performing, assigning, and assuming identities. Vladek’s recounted experiences substantiate Mahtani’s claims beyond the scope of her subjects. Mahtani’s study led her to claim “some women of ‘mixed race’ challenge and contest racialized labels by putting into practice a varied set of racialized performances” (425). Though the much more openly transitory spaces occupied by “mixed-race” individuals allows for a greater range of performances, Vladek’s testimony suggests that more outwardly categorizable people are similarly capable of performing alternate identities. Interestingly, Ribbens finds this same observation in Beekman’s racist comic strip, explaining that: By showing how some ‘obvious’ Jewish figures have managed to avoid the new measure [the yellow star] by ‘posturing’ as non-Jews, Beekman emphasizes their pur- portedly dubious credentials, their disloyalty towards the authorities, and their opportunistic haggling with identities. (13)

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The deliberate inauthentic identity performance which is presented as an unquestioned survival strategy in Maus is used to support Beekman’s anti-Semitism. Performativity undermines racists’ self-aggrandizing hierarchical worldview. This worldview is flawed because “race is actively performed and mas- queraded among participants, rendering it ephemeral, such that racial categories are subtly, and not so subtly, displaced and disrupted” (Mahtani 428). Mahtani’s findings combined with Spiegelman’s account and Beekman’s racist fears suggest that these “participants” are anyone who exists in a racialized system. 2.2 Masks in II.2 The mask metaphor is taken to its extreme in the meta-textual first section of II.2. Here, we are confronted with a new Art Spiegelman, a human wearing a mouse/Maus mask, wres- tling with the guilt and emotional toll of producing such a successful work on the backbone of one of the most significant human atrocities as he’s hounded by interviewers and business- men trying to get something out of him (Spiegelman 202; fig. 7). Erin McGlothlin explains that “the wearing of the mask, which places Art both inside and outside of the representation- al framework that governs the rest of Maus, prevents him from assuming a quasi-transcendent, autonomous authorial identity” (183). Placing animal masks of the same style as the animal characters in the story’s other temporal levels on human bodies forces Maus’s readers to reassess its titular metaphoric logic while furthering its depictions of performance. Though McGlothlin claims “there are crucial differences between the two uses of the mask” (196), her claim relies on an essential existential dichotomy between human and animal where animal-assuming-animal exists within the book’s metaphor, but human-assuming-animal does not. This assumption is flawed because it requires affixing unfounded social classifica- tions to non-human animals. As Richard De Angelis explains, “the common human perception of animals is also essentially a racist one” (238). These new visuals are an expansion on, not a rebuke of, the visual metaphors that have preceded them.

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Additionally, McGlothlin’s claim fails to acknowledge that those hounding this Spiegelman are also humans masked as animals, evidently aligned with the book’s categories—an American interviewer in a dog mask, a German interviewer in a cat mask, a Jewish interviewer in a mouse mask, and an Amer- ican businessman in a bulldog mask (Spiegelman 202; fig. 7). The visual of humans in animal masks drives home the idea of performed identity, especially as performed for popular media. There is clearly a complex individual under each of the masks, but they are putting on a face for the camera—whether literally or figuratively—and performing that assumed identity; the ostensibly German reporter asks Art why young Germans should feel guilty about the Holocaust and the Jewish interviewer presses Art about Israeli Jews (202; fig. 7). Art himself, by hiding behind a mask, seems to be experiencing some kind of imposter syndrome, or some feeling that his performed identity is disingenuous, perhaps as a Jew, or perhaps as the person expected to be “the Author of Maus.” The visual claustrophobia throughout this section, shown through Art shrinking into a child (202; fig. 7), shows how restrictive human performativity is. Our “performances take place in constrained places, the vigilant racial border guards constantly on patrol” (Mahtani 436). Though it’s just a facade, the crowd acts to keep anyone from breaking it. 3. Conclusion Maus revolves around an incredibly simple graphic metaphor which it continually calls into question as it navigates the abundant complexities of human identity. Portraying ethnic and national groups as identical simple animal forms is a clear representation of the way the human brain rapidly organizes and categorizes the overwhelming amount of information it is constantly inundated with. It’s such an incredible power, but it has tragic consequences. The animal characters are not an explanation of how the world is but a visualization of how we divide and categorize the world.

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In a time when questions of human identity are central in popular discourse, and reactionary forces have bolstered rising tides of nationalism and fascism across our planet, stories of the Holocaust are uncomfortably salient. Maus, in particular, offers a valuable framework for interpreting these phenomena: Characters mask themselves in some new and/or alternate identity. The personal account that this story comes from carries numerous instances of grounded performance which validate Judith Butler’s theorizations for identities beyond gender. As Maus’s characters move through and reflect on the horrors of the Holocaust, donning and doffing masks, it becomes clear that human identity is performed for an encompassing and op- pressive audience. The better we articulate the underpinnings of self and group identity, the better equipped we can be to pre- serve, protect, and defend those identities most at risk.

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Fig. 1. Panels from Maus showing other animal identities. British fish (Spiegelman 291), Swedish reindeer (285), and a Roma butterfly (293). The fish are identified as British by the Union Flag flying on their vehicle.

Fig. 2. Identity conflict between Anja and the governess (Spiegelman 39)

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Fig. 3. The first appearance of a mask in Maus (Spiegelman 66)

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Fig. 4. Anja’s tail and rejection by the governess (Spiegelman 138)

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Fig. 5. A masked Vladek is recognized (Spiegelman 140).

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Fig. 6. A masked Vladek is recognized by Polish children, but performs Polishness for their mothers (Spiegelman 151).

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Fig. 7. A masked Art Spiegelman is surrounded by masked human reporters and bussinessmen and shrinks into a child (Spiegelman 202).

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Works Cited De Angelis, Richard. “Of Mice and Vermin: Animals as Absent Referent in Art Spiegelman’s Maus.” International Journal of Comic Art, vol. 7, no.1, 2005, pp. 230-49. Loman, Andrew. “‘Well Intended Liberal Slop’: Allegories of Race in Spiegelman’s Maus.” Journal of American Studies, vol. 40, no. 3, 2006, pp. 551-71. JSTOR. Mahtani, Minelle. “Tricking the Border Guards: Performing Race.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, vol. 20, no. 4, 2002, pp. 425-40. SAGE Journals. McGlothlin, Erin. “No Time Like the Present: Narrative and Time in Art Spiegelman’s Maus.” Narrative, vol. 11, no. 2, 2003, pp. 177-98. JSTOR. Monroe, Kristen Renwick. “Morality and a Sense of Self: The Importance of Identity and Categorization for Moral Action.” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 45, no. 3, 2001, pp. 491-507. JSTOR. Ribbens, Kees. “Picturing Anti-Semitism in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands: Anti-Jewish Stereotyping in a Racist Sec- ond World War Comic Strip,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, vol. 17, no. 1, 2018, pp. 8-23. Taylor & Francis Online. Roos, Julia. “Nationalism, Racism and Propaganda in Ear- ly Weimar Germany: Contradictions in the Campaign against the ‘Black Horror on the Rhine’,” German History, vol. 30, no. 1, 2012, pp. 45-74. Oxford Academic. Spiegelman, Art. The Complete Maus. Pantheon Books, 1996. Weschler, Lawrence. “Pig Perplex,” Lingua Franca: The Review of Academic Life, vol. 11, no. 5, 2001, pp. 6-8. EBSCOhost.

39 Eunoia (acrylic on wood) by Alie Mueller

40 “Misery Has Come Home:” Suicide and Family Connections in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Shelby Johnson

Born to well-known parents, married to a radical poet, and acquainted with people who refused to adhere to social norms, Mary Shelley’s life and works have been critiqued and examined by interested academics for decades. Much has been said about her most popular novel, Frankenstein (1818). Written at the age of eighteen and published anonymously at the age of twenty, Shelley’s Frankenstein examines themes of Godlike knowledge, creation, mental illness, and the oppos- ing powers of life and death. Referencing the groundbreaking science of her day, Shelley draws on what it means to hold the power of life over death, as witnessed in both the reanimation of the creature composed of corpses, and the constant con- templation of suicide by both Victor and his creation. First conceived as part of a challenge to create a ghost story, Shelley’s novel takes on a personal edge as it explores the ghosts of her past in relation to the suicide attempts of her mother, as well as the encounters with suicide within Shelley’s social circle. The novel alternates between the first-person perspectives of Frankenstein and his creation, giving the text an autobiographical approach that appeals to both Shelley’s life and the fictional lives of her characters.

Essais vol. 11 no. 1 | Spring 2021 “Misery Has Come Home” Johnson

The dual perspectives of Frankenstein and the monster he created offer insight into the deepest recesses of the living mind. Victor Frankenstein and his creation demonstrate what happens when man tries to control the powers of life and death. Fueled with ambition to create “A new species [that] would bless me as its creator” (Shelley 82), Victor sacrifices mental and emotional health in pursuit of his goals. Horrified and dis- gusted by the creature he had intended to be beautiful, Victor spirals into a psychological collapse from which he never truly recovers. Driven mad by guilt and the desire for revenge, Victor is plagued by thoughts of suicide and finds himself battling with the polarizing power of life and death while the creature, alone and unprepared for the life that he has been thrust into, begs for companionship and salvation from isolation. Unwill- ing to create such a companion, Victor’s life plunges deeper into despair while the creature kills Victor’s friends and family in re- taliation for Victor’s refusal before finally taking his own life. Through examination of eighteenth-century attitudes toward suicide during the time of Shelley’s writing, alongside an exploration of eighteenth-century resuscitation methods pub- licized as a way of bringing the dead back to life, this paper will investigate the connection between both the cultural acceptance and Shelley’s personal experiences with suicide in relation to the portrayal of suicide in the novel. In so doing, this paper claims that the motifs of life and death are not merely Gothic tropes in use, but an exploration of the human mind through an expression of autobiographical writing. By examining the correlation between Shelley’s own life and the events of her novel, I argue that the attempted suicide of her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, and the suicides of both Mary Shel- ley’s half-sister, Fanny Imlay, and her husband’s former wife, Harriet Shelley, are reflected in the attitudes and actions of the characters in ways that neither condemn nor condone the action of taking one’s own life. Instead, I propose that the novel approaches the subject of suicide with sympathy and understanding, suggesting compassion rather than judgement for those who struggle with suicidal ideation.

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In order to understand the significance of suicide in Fran- kenstein, we must first examine how self-murder was regarded leading up to the 1818 publication of the novel. Prior to the En- lightenment, acts of suicide were punishable under common law and considered a damnable sin. Historian Michael Mac- Donald explains, “The guilty were designated asfelones de se, felons of themselves; the innocent were returned as persons non compos mentis, lunatics” (70). This distinction between lunacy and felons of themselves was the only explanation offered in early Britain as to why people committed suicide, and those considered guilty of being felons de se were punished after death along with their living family members. MacDonald explains: Suicide was regarded as a heinous crime in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England, a kind of murder committed at the instigation of the devil. Suicides were tried posthumously, and if they were found to have been sane when they took their lives, they were severely punished. Their moveable property was forfeited to the crown or to the holder of a royal patent; their bodies were buried profanely, interred in a public highway or at a crossroads, pinioned in the grave with a wooden stake. (69) As seen in the above example regarding the deceased’s property, the living relatives of the deceased were punished as they lost the belongings at times, their only source of income, in addition to losing a loved one to suicide. Before the Enlightenment, the response to suicide was harshly punitive. The punishment of suicide victims was carried out mostly between 1500-1660, before tapering off in favor of labeling the majority of those who committed suicide as insane. As science advanced into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the penal response to suicide decreased as the result of a more secular view of the world. MacDonald observes, “The ruling classes lost faith in the devil’s power to drive people to kill themselves; [and] coroners’ juries gradually ceased punishing men and women who took their own lives” (74). This turn from religious to secular thinking regarding suicide resulted in suicide beginning to be un-

43 “Misery Has Come Home” Johnson derstood as coming from something related more to emotional anguish than satanic influence and sin. Along with the rise of understanding mental distress, a popularized view of suicide began to emerge, largely due to the publication of Johann Wolfgang van Goethe’s novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther. A tragedy, Werther’s novel ends in suicide as he is unable to cope with the devastation he feels when the love of his life marries another. The novel, as MacDonald points out, “excited the admiration—and occasionally the emulation— of writers and romantic youths” (80). This emulation known as “Wertherism” or the “Werther effect” is part of the culture that fueled the romanticism of suicide during the Romantic era that Shelley later found herself writing in. Social researcher Derick Beattie and psychiatrist Dr. Patrick Devitt also com- mented on the fanaticism caused by Goethe’s work in their study on suicide, noting: It was widely believed at the time that Goethe’s work led to a wave of young men deciding to end their lives all over Europe. Some men who killed themselves were discovered dressed in the same manner as Goethe’s descriptions of Werther. Others used a similar pistol. Copies of the novel were even found beside a number of suicide victims . . . the copies found at the scenes of these deaths were frequently open to the page at which the suicide occurs. (8) In short, suicide became fashionable. It was no longer the crim- inally minded or possessed who killed themselves. It was the emotional and sensitive who were driven to end their own lives. This drastic shift from insane criminal behavior to idol- ized sacrifice became a popularized public belief throughout the early nineteenth century. What was once seen as an abom- ination to God became a trend for those affected by emotions too strong for the world in which they lived. Poems about the beauty of death and the power of emotion began to be published as the romanization of suicide took hold. This trend was usually attributed to the upper class where, as Lisa Lieberman points out:

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The mere mention of suicide invited speculation. What secret, what anguish, what previously unsuspected depth of character might have prompted the tragic act? This most private of decisions became, by virtue of its finality, a provocative public statement. (612) In other words, Lieberman suggests that suicide was no longer a shameful sin to bury privately but a scandalous act that invited speculation. However romanticized the event may have been, the act of suicide still required the family to pay the social rami- fications that followed such a public action. Despite the tragedy left in its wake, the publicity and fame now associated with suicide transformed it into a phenomenon within the Romantic era; it became an art belonging to sensitive souls who departed from the harshness of the world in a dramatic style. As noted above, Mary Shelley was familair with suicide. While she never knew her mother, she was well aware that as a young woman, her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, had attempted suicide twice. Richard K. Sanderson discusses the methods Wollstonecraft employed in her efforts to end her life. He notes that in her first attempt, “[She] took an overdose of laudanum . . . in the second, she jumped from Putney Bridge into the Thames” (51). Both methods are actions that did not kill Woll- stonecraft, but were methods that young Mary Shelley would later see emulated by close acquaintances. Thus, while it was ultimately not suicide that killed Wollstonecraft, the absence and attempts of her mother impacted young Shelley’s life. She visited her mother’s gravestone frequently as a child and came to know the woman who had died giving birth to her only through her works and the stories of those who had known Wollstonecraft while she was living. Wollstonecraft’s suicide attempts occurred around the same time the public’s view on suicide was beginning to become more lenient. Sanderson goes on to claim that Wollstone- craft’s husband William Godwin considered Wollstonecraft to be “a female Werter” (51). The absence of her mother and her status as a child of a “female Werter” may have been what

45 “Misery Has Come Home” Johnson contributed to Shelley’s depiction of the self-education of the creature in Frankenstein. Devoid of parents, the creature teaches himself to understand speech and human interaction through reading various books he finds. One of the books discovered by the creature is Goethe’s The Sorrows of Werther. Concerning the book, the creature states: I thought Werter himself a more divine being that I had ever beheld or imagined; . . . The disquisitions upon death and suicide . . . fill[ed] me with wonder . . . I found myself similar, yet at the same time strangely unlike the beings concerning whom I read. (Shelley 153) The creature’s admiration of and specific reference to Werther is notable considering the scandal Goethe’s novel caused at its publication. While the creature has no intentions of ending his life at this point in the novel, it is worth noting that the founda- tion of his education begins with the knowledge of suicide’s existence. Like Shelley herself, the creature is introduced not only to the concept of life and death at a very young age, but also to an individual’s power to decide whether one lived or died. Wollstonecraft’s suicide attempts were not the only encounters with suicide that Shelley experienced in her peronal life. Shelley again came in contact with suicide as a young woman when her lover, Percy Shelley, suggested they kill themselves in an act of devotion (Sanderson 51). Mary Shelley’s reaction to Percy’s suggestion is not known. Despite the family connection with suicide and the invitation by Percy, Shelley is not known to have ever attempted suicide herself. While it would continue to be a theme later in her life with the suicide of both her half-sister Fanny Imlay Godwin by laudanum, and of Percy’s pregnant wife, Harriet, by drowning, Shelley’s thoughts on suicide are unknown. There is little to no mention of their deaths in either her letters or her personal journals. However, after the death of her sister Fanny, Shelley’s father, William Godwin, refused to identify or claim the body and it was interred in a pauper’s grave with the explanation that she had died of fever (Sanderson 52). While we do not know why Godwin

46 Spring 2021 Essais refused to claim his daughter’s body for certain, it was likely done to avoid the stigma of suicide that persisted despite the development of more accepting attitudes. Surrounded by so much death, it is little wonder why Shelley undertook a novel about resurrecting the dead. Around the same time as the secularization and popular- ization of suicide took hold, a new science viewed as having the potential to revive the dead was discovered in Amsterdam. Common as it is now, the possibility of resuscitation was seen as a miracle science and societies that popularized the technique spread all over the European continent and into England. Orig- inally referred to as the Society for the Recovery of Persons Apparently Drowned, the name was changed to the much simpler Humane Society. The original Amsterdam Humane Society founded in 1768 was led by ten directors, including most notably a man by the name of Johann Goll van Franken- stein. As the popularity of resuscitation grew, pamphlets were distributed and classes were held on how to harness this life- restoring power. In 1774, William Hawes and Thomas Cogan created their own branch in London known as the London Royal Humane Society devoted to studying resuscitation. Strikingly, Mary Shel- ley’s mother was rescued by these new life saving efforts after her attempted suicide at Putney Bridge. Included in a biography of Wollstonecraft’s life written by Elizabeth Robins Pennell, a letter Wollstonecraft wrote to her lover Gilbert Imlay contains complaints about the jarring sensation of being resus- citated. Wollstonecraft recollects, “I have only to lament, that, when the bitterness of death was past, I was inhumanly brought back to life and misery . . . If I am condemned to live longer, it is a living death” (242). While various methods on resuscitation were taught during this time, the new and exciting science of Galvanism believed to cure every ailment through the application of electric shock quickly found its way into the practice of resuscitation. One of the surviving instruction manuals from the Royal Humane Society in London offers a series of four steps on how to revive

47 “Misery Has Come Home” Johnson a drowned person with step number four claiming: “Elec- tricity may be early employed, as it will not prevent or ob- struct the various means of resuscitation; but on the other hand will render the plan of recovery more expeditiously and certainly efficacious” (Williams 216). While it is never outright mentioned in the text, it is largely assumed that the power with which the fictional Victor Frankenstein bestows life upon his creature is electricity. Shelley alludes to the potential of electricity being the source of the creature’s resurrection in the introduction of the 1831 edition of her novel. She explains, “Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated; galvanism had given token of such things: perhaps the component parts of a creature might be manufactured, brought together, and endued with vital warmth” (Project Gutenberg). Shelley would have been aware of and inspired by the advances of science in her day. Regardless of whether electricity was the source behind the reanimation of the corpse, the similarities between the science of Shelley’s day and the action undertaken by her fictional protagonist create a biographical link that establishes Shelley’s work as a reflection of the events in her life. An auto-didact, Shelley met many scientists and intellectu- als at a young age through her father, William Godwin. Later, when married to Percy Shelley, her interest in the advances of science continued. Taking into account her intellectual background and the similarity in names between the director of the resuscitation society and her novel’s main character, the connection is impossible to ignore. Indeed, in 1791, The Royal Humane Society published a report that seems to echo the sentiment of the fictional Victor Frankenstein’s motivation to resurrect the dead. In an article discussing the history of the Humane Societ- ies, author Carolyn Williams quotes the 1791 report that asks: How many godlike sentiments must you have been deprived of in witnessing that the apparently dead have been raised into existence, and the inanimate mass hath again breathed the breath of life. (229)

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It is this motivation of experiencing the “Godlike sentiments” of restoring life that puts Shelley’s main character on the path to his eventual destruction. When explaining why Victor undertook his experiment to resurrect the dead, he announces, “A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me” (82). By harnessing the power of life and death, Shelley’s character crosses a boundary that was not meant for mortals to encounter and he thus endures an unhappy life that, as Wollstone- craft lamented following her resuscitation, is little more than “a living death.” One of the most striking things about Victor’s attempts at reanimation is his claim that in the process of collecting work, “I had selected [the] features as beautiful” (85). He wanted a bond with his creation akin to a parent and a child and hoped that in time he might, “renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption” (82). Victor sees his work as having the potential to restore lost loved ones to the human race. Before departing to begin his own education and foray into the world, Victor’s mother passed from scarlet fever. He laments, “She died calmly; and her countenance expressed affection even in death. I need not describe the feelings of those whose dearest ties are rent by that most irreparable evil, the void that presents itself to the soul” (72). His interest in creating life may have been tied to the potential he saw to return the dead to the land of the living. This motivation frames his response to the creature’s waking moment: I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! — Great God! . . . I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. (85) Shocked with the hideous vision of animated flesh, Victor is horrified by the realization that his ability to restore life will only bring back a breathing corpse, not the affectionate countenance of his mother or other deceased loved ones.

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Haunted by his actions, Victor’s mental health declines further from a state of obsession to a state of paranoid mania. Encountering his friend Henry Clerval following the reanimation of the creature, Victor finds himself cracking under the pressure of his secret act and overwhelmed with fear of being found out. Upon discovering that his creature has fled his responsibility, and has, in his mind, freed him from his burden, Victor becomes manic. “I jumped over the chairs, clapped my hands, and laughed aloud . . . [Clerval] saw a wildness in my eyes for which he could not account; and my loud, unrestrained heartless laughed, frightened and astonished him” (89). In the text, Victor’s reaction is referred to as a nervous fever, and Victor is nursed back to health by his friend over the course of several months. While still heavily tormented by his actions, Victor soon finds himself “as cheerful as before I was attacked by the fatal passion” (90) and his life moves on, though he admits to not being as psychologically resilient as before the events in his laboratory occurred. Unfortunately for Victor, and as is true for many that struggle with episodes of mental distress, this calm period in his life does not last. The creature returns, avenging himself by killing Victor’s youngest brother, William. Distraught with grief, Victor’s emotions are further compounded by the trial and exe- cution of Justine, a close family friend, who was accused of the murder of William. Haunted that his creation of life has now resulted in the death of two loved ones, Victor’s mental health lapses, not into a nervous breakdown, but into the depths of suicidal ideation. “I had begun life with benevolent intentions, and thirsted for the moment when I should put them in practice, and make myself useful to my fellow-beings. Now all was blasted” (117). So disturbed is he by the results of his endeavors, Victor sees little point left in living. Sometimes, after rowing into the middle of the lake, I left the boat to pursue its own course, and gave way to my own miserable reflections. . . . often, I say, I was tempted to plunge into the silent lake, that the waters might close over me and my calamities for ever. (118) 50 Spring 2021 Essais

Rather than turn toward grieving family and friends, Victor isolates himself and comes to see death as the only option to end his suffering. Victor finds himself in a spiral of constant mental anguish until he at last acknowledges, “all joy was but a mockery” (166). Victor finds himself trapped completely and irrevocably in the grip of depression. One of the contributing factors to Victor’s unstable mental health are the methods he employs to control it. Rather than focusing on the life around him, Victor turns inward and refuses to allow the companionship of friends and family to comfort him. The most damning of all his coping mechanisms is revealed in his confession of using laudanum: Ever since my recovery from the fever I had been in the custom of taking every night a small quantity of laudanum; for it was by means of this drug only that I was enabled to gain the rest necessary for the preservation of life. Oppressed by the reflection of my various misfortunes, I now took a double dose. (207) Laudanum is a tincture of opium in alcohol. Highly addictive and easy to overdose on, the substance Victor Frankenstein is dependent on is the same drug that both Mary Shelley’s mother and her fiancé attempted to overdose on. In 1816, two years prior to the publication of Frankenstein, it was also the drug that Shelley’s half-sister Fanny Imlay used to take her own life. Though he never admits to thinking of using laudanum as a way to commit suicide, Victor does admit that, “At these moments I often endeavored to put an end to the existence I loathed; and it required unceasing attendance and vigilance to restrain me from committing some dreadful act of violence” (206). Living on suicide watch, potentially mad from the use of laudanum, and tormented with grief and despair, Victor Frankenstein’s de- pressive episodes and suicidal ideation have eaten away at the brilliant scientist he once was and left him a shell of a man. A year after the publication of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s own son, also named William, died at the age of three. As her fictional character Victor laments over the death of his brother,

51 “Misery Has Come Home” Johnson

“misery has come home” (119). Having been largely quiet on the subject of her mother’s absence in life, as well as the suicides of friends and family, Shelley’s silence finally breaks, and she acknowledges her grief. In her letters to friends, she recounts: “I never know one moment’s ease from the wretchedness & despair that possesses me . . . I feel that I am not fit for anything & therefore not fit to live” (1201-2). While these words are suggestive of her being suicidal, Shelley does not act on her emotions. She ends her letter with the words, “But this is all nothing to anyone but myself” (1202), further isolating herself from those who may try and reach out, precluding further communication on the subject. Three years later in 1822, Shelley again experienced a period of mental distress. As she notes in a letter to her friend Maria Gisborne: “I was not well in body or mind. My nerves were wound up to the utmost irritation, and the sense of misfortune hung over my spirits” (1203). Over- whelmed with despair, Shelley admits, “My only moments of peace were on that unhappy boat, when lying down with my head on his [Percy’s] knee I shut my eyes & felt the wind & our swift motion alone” (1203). Of course, this action of being out on a boat as a source of remedy is the same that Victor employs when experiencing moments of depression. It is in this quiet moment on a boat in the middle of the lake that life follows art. The episodes of mental anguish and depression that Shelley and Victor Frankenstein experience were referred to as states of melancholia as early as the 1500s. By the time of her writing, society having moved on from seeing suicide as the result of satanic influence, began to acknowledge what Philip Barrough, a physician publishing over 250 years earlier in 1560, identified as, “the disease of melancholy,” whose sufferers “desire death, and do verie often behight and determine to kill themselves” (46). Whether Shelly was familiar with Barrough or not, her work is part of a movement toward the modern understanding of mental illness. Mary Shelley’s novel cultivates a sympathetic if not understanding view on taking one’s own life. Painfully aware of her mother’s own suicide attempts, as well as the suicides of both her sister and her husband’s first wife, Shel-

52 Spring 2021 Essais ley’s outlook on suicide is far more compassionate and forward thinking than many of the people of her day. When read through the lens of early science trying to understand the workings of the human mind and the personal lens of biography, Frankenstein becomes a novel about the anguish of death and the suffering experienced by those who are still living. It is not the act of taking one’s own life that Shelley focuses on, but the active choice to continue living despite the misfortunes and trials of mortality. As Henry Clerval notes after the murder of Victor’s young brother William, “the survivors are the greatest sufferers” (100). The dead do not mourn. Rather, it is the living that are left to pick up the pieces after a loved one passes. It is the survivors that continue on despite how difficult mortal existence can be. Instead of adjudicating whether it is morally right to kill oneself, Shelley’s novel explores the human desires and emotions that lead up to the action of suicide, allowing her audience to sympathize with a character whose motivations were just coming to light in the lives of the people of Shelley’s day. Shelley’s exploration of suicide and compassionate attitude toward such a taboo subject is still a groundbreaking approach in our day. While we have made progress in regards to understanding the human psyche and the importance of prioritizing mental health, there is still a stigma around depression and suicidal ideation. Shelley’s willingness to explore her own grief and personal encounters with suicide in such a public way makes her an ally to those dealing with their own dark moments. In that sense, Frankenstein is far more than a forerunner to the science fiction genre or a story about mankind’s God complex. It is a novel about the parts of humanity that are often avoided in favor of topics that are less controversial. Shelley’s work takes an unflinching look at the complex emotions that make us who we are. The monster created by the scientist Victor Frankenstein is not just a creature made of dead tissue, but a physical compilation of the grief and loss of all those who have lost loved ones and are desperate to bring them back. Fran- kenstein’s ultimate message is that although misery does come

53 “Misery Has Come Home” Johnson home, it does not have to stay. Although Victor’s life and the life of his creature ended in sorrow, we can choose to emulate Shelley and survive while remaining compassionate for those who met their end through suicide.

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Works Cited Barrough, Philip.“XXVIII Of Melancholy.” The Method of Physick: Containing the Causes, Signes and Cures of Inward Diseases in Man’s Body, from the Head to the Foote, Where- unto Is Added, the Forme and Rule of Making Remedies and Medicines, 6th ed., vol. 1, Printed by Richard Field, 1634, p. 45. Beattie, Derek, and Patrick Devitt. “Suicide and the Modern Media: Are We Doing More Harm Than Good?” Suicide: A Modern Obsession, Liberties, 2015. Lieberman, Lisa. “Romanticism and the Culture of Suicide in Nineteenth-Century France.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 33, no. 3, 1991, pp. 611–629. JSTOR. MacDonald, Michael. “The Medicalization of Suicide in En- gland: Laymen, Physicians, and Cultural Change, 1500- 1870.” The Milbank Quarterly, vol. 67, 1989, pp. 69–91. JSTOR. Pennell, Elizabeth Robins. “Imlay’s Desertion.” Life of Mary Wollstonecraft, Roberts Brothers, 1884. Sanderson, Richard K. “Glutting the Maw of Death: Suicide and Procreation in ‘Frankenstein.’” South Central Review, vol. 9, no. 2, 1992, pp. 49–64. JSTOR. Shelley, Mary. “Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus.” The Project Gutenberg EBook of Frankenstein: or, The Mod- ern Prometheus, by Mary W. Shelley., 13 Mar. 2013. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/84/84-h/84-h.htm. Accessed 20 Apr. 2021 Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, et al. Frankenstein: or, the Mod- ern Prometheus; the 1818 Version. Broadview Press, 2004. Shelley, Mary. “Select Letters.” The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Volume 4: The Age of Romanticism, Third Edition, edited by Joseph Black, et al. Broadview, 2018, pp. 1201-1203. Williams, Carolyn. “‘Inhumanly Brought Back to Life and Misery’: Mary Wollstonecraft, Frankenstein, and the Royal Humane Society.” Women’s Writing, vol. 8, no. 2, 2001, pp. 213-234. 55 Reef (photography) by Hannah Liddell

56 Literary Canon and Its Relation to Social and Political Movements in the United States

Katherine Brickey

Educator and philosopher Paulo Freire’s notable Pedago- gy of the Oppressed declared that the current state of teaching is one in which “knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing” (Freire 72). The present overwhelmingly Anglicized literary canon taught in schools throughout the United States speaks to this idea. Literature taught in schools today is highly tailored around the White1 experience, perpetuating ideals of White supremacy, or what Freire calls the oppressor. Freire contends that the oppressor uses a “banking concept of education,” which treats students as depositories of information, as a tool for keeping its subjects in a state of oppression and compliance (71). By occupying students’ minds with programmed information, they are kept from true investigation, true learning. Investigation, according to Freire, is the ultimate demonstration of a person’s humanity. When kept from it, individuals are dehumanized.

1 “White” is capitalized purposefully, with authorial intent and as a ty- pographical choice.

Essais vol. 11 no. 1 | Spring 2021 Literary Canon Brickey

Consequently, the banking concept of education is detri- mental for all students who engage with it, but it is especially damaging to the “marginalized” student who has a higher propensity (by the nature of being more distanced from the White experience) to higher docility and disengagement from critical co-investigation of our collective history. Moreover, Freire asserts that “the oppressed are not ‘marginals,’ are not living ‘outside’ society. They have always been ‘inside’ the structure which made them ‘beings for others’” (Freire 73). As such, their voices should be included in the examination of literature. Not only are their voices necessary in the telling of our collective history, but by virtue of being human, they are bestowed critical consciousness—the ability to deeply and proactively analyze systems of inequality and disrupt them. Critical consciousness is the ontological vocation of students of color and all humans in pursuit of being more fully human (Freire 73). The literary canon of academia in the United States moves at a painstakingly slower rate than that of social happenings, specifically civil and human rights movements. The publishing world, although not perfectly diverse itself, does reflect social movements and provides some means of diversifying literature. However, these have not penetrated the literary canon taught in our schools. This refusal of the literary canon to let people of color narrate their own stories, in turn, attests to modern-day practices of White supremacy and colonization. It perpetuates the erasure of the cultures and identities of non-White people. The stakes, although seemingly higher for those who are oppressed, are high for all of us. By creating opportunities for students of color to connect and see themselves authentically represented in literature, social change and transformation are accomplished to better all. This is, as Rick A. Breault summarizes in “Dewey, Freire, and a pedagogy for the oppressor,” the realization of a true democracy. Contemporary politicians and academics alike have denied that White writers overwhelmingly dominate curriculum across the nation. In July 2009, the Tucson Unified School District ex- panded its current non-inclusive, monocultural curriculum to

58 Spring 2021 Essais include various ethnic classes. Tom Horn, former Arizona State Attorney General, vehemently opposed the inclusive courses, arguing that ethnic courses spread anti-American sentiment (“Bill History”). I would like to extend this conversation to highlight the limiting and damaging effect a dominant White canonized literary curriculum has on students of color, students who need and desire to see themselves represented in meaningful and authentic ways in the literature they read. Social movements of the twentieth century, such as the Black Panther Party and the Chicano Movement, created a rise in books published by authors of color. However, opportunities to diversify the literary canon were missed or overlooked. Only a couple of these have made it into the literary canon and fewer into the standard curriculum. After the controversial debate between Tucson Unified School District and Tom Horn, Arizona state passed a law that prohibits school districts from teaching purely ethnic courses— securing the position of students of color as information re- ceptacles of the state (“Bill History”). The current Anglocen- tric monocultural literature that statesmen like Tom Horn and other lawmakers defend, commits the very thing they claim ethnic literature perpetrates—it spreads inequality, which is an anti-democratic sentiment, and isolates students of color. The current literary curriculum hyper-focuses on the White or Anglo experience, only speaking to this unique identity. Fur- thermore, it isolates, limits, and essentially indoctrinates an ever-increasing diverse student body into believing it is the standard of human experience and the epitome of literary excellence. Freire maintains that it is this approach to learning that turns students into a depository of information, void of “creativity, transformation, and knowledge” of what it means to be “truly human” (Freire 72). This counteraction toward critical consciousness that the oppressor seeks to normalize in our schools is the perfect system for indoctrination. In “Is Teaching the Literature of Western Culture Incon- sistent with Valuing Diversity?” Lori Schroeder Haslem argues

59 Literary Canon Brickey that students of color should learn to find their identities in any book, even those written by White authors: I wish someone had encouraged you to try reading— Shakespeare or anyone—not to find yourself faithfully rep- licated in and by the text but rather to explore otherness in it and, where necessary, to take issue with the portions of the text that misrepresent you as a woman, as someone of non-Western heritage, as a human being. (121) Here, Haslem is not only assuming that students of color are not already reading these texts with a critical or analytical lens— this essay is evidence that indeed I, a student of color, am doing this very thing—but she is also insensitive to the fact that texts by Shakespeare and other White authors are already standard- ized readings. Students of color are required to read, study, and analyze these in many classrooms throughout the nation, whether we want to or not. Moreover, by virtue of being an experience not our own, we are inevitably bound to regard differences. Furthermore, the position of students of color is not a radical one. Students of color do not seek the erasure of White literature, rather an integration and representative literary canon of all human experiences. Historically, when oppressed individuals can connect and identify with one another or see themselves faithfully represented in a meaningful cause, leader, or art form, they can promote positive and transformational change for themselves and society. Take, for example, the Civil Rights Movement, which occurred due to an overwhelming consensus amongst the Black community that the common Black experience in the U.S. was one of brutality and injustice. As more Black Americans shared their experience in media and demonstrations, Black Americans were able to fight for the betterment of their lives and the lives of all of us. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ‘60s provided a road map for other underrepresented groups seeking equal rights and equal representation. It also reminded the U.S. and its representatives—federal, state, and local—of its sacred role as protector of individual rights and liberties.

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In James Baldwin’s 1963 The Fire Next Time essays, he declares, You [speaking to Black Americans] were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity. (7) It is interesting to note that Baldwin uses the words “spelled out” because it is in the very vocabulary and idiomatic expres- sions in history and literature books where students of color are dehumanized. This is where they are taught from a young age to think of themselves and their cultural heritage as inferior and inadequate. Here is where they are taught to view the world in terms of a White paradigm. Martin Sean Arce, Mexican American Studies scholar and co-author of “White” Washing American Education, asserts that: public schools traditionally and currently do not provide safe and healthy spaces for [Xicana/o youth’s] development; culturally responsive curricula and/or pedagogy . . . where youth can cultivate a sense of honor and dignity for themselves . . . . (Sandoval et al. 11) A child cannot cultivate a sense of dignity or cultural esteem if all they read about is their ancestors’ devastation, victimization, and eradication. Instead, this perpetuates the idea that there is inherently an oppressor and oppressed, a superior race and an inferior one. This is not to say that the realities of the brutality and injustices perpetrated against people of color should not be learned. They should be learned, but from the perspectives of the oppressed; so that the oppressed can recount it from an authentic and dignified point of view. “It’s time to diversify and decolonise our schools’ reading lists” by Anjali Enjeti articulates the problems with the literary canon present in our schools; it professes to be inclusive of diverse experiences, but in reality, perpetuates negative formulaic “black and brown characters in the

61 Literary Canon Brickey predominantly white-authored literary canon, [that] are flat and grossly stereotypical” (Enjeti). Classic literary books Enjeti mentions are To Kill A Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huck- leberry Finn, still used in curriculums throughout the United States today. This preoccupying of the minds of historically oppressed students with stereotypical versions of themselves ensures that they are less concerned with “develop[ing] the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world” (Freire 72), further securing the dominant position of the oppressor and perpetuating racist ideologies. My examination of the relationship between social movements and book publications by authors of color revealed that the 1960’s-70’s Chicano Movement, which “Championed Mex- ican-American Identity and Fought for Change” (Carrillo), facilitated a large rise in memoir and realistic fiction published during the same time. Sadly, books published during this time, portraying authentic Latinx experiences, have not made it to the standard, widespread and streamlined literary curriculum. Books published later, in the ‘80s and ‘90s, such as The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros or How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez, are only taught in specialty classes or limited to predominantly geographical Latinx communities. However, they are not taught in White communities, which would benefit more immensely from literary diversification. Breault argues that the present literary canon should merge democratic ideals of equality, which should inevitably translate into diversity. He argues that if we were to achieve true “democracy [then it] becomes more a mode of living and working than an understanding of a political system” (Breault 4). In other words, if we were to implement the ideals of equality and democracy truly, then diversity in our society and academia would be a practical matter and not a theoretical one. Similar to this concept is Michel Foucault’s examination of normalized discipline, wherein an idea, in this case, equality, becomes so in- grained in our society that it is no longer a question of theory but total normalization.

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As a student of color, having attended public schools for most of my life, I have witnessed first-hand what an Anglo-focused monocultural curriculum and literary canon can do to the self-esteem and intellect of a person of color. For many years, I questioned the people’s intellectual capabilities from my ethnic and cultural background compared to White people. In my classes, I was only exposed to White authors, poets, scientists, scholars, entrepreneurs, and other academic professions. The only context with which I encountered people of color was in powerless, stereotypical roles or fighting for their lives in the form of social activism. Gradually, as I sought out literature, ideas, and people that represented me—through Native American and Latinx courses and other educational sources—I realized that I had been taught to believe that people of color were inferior. I, as Freire says, had been indoctrinated to believe this. Like many members of underrepresented groups in the United States, I had been effectively kept in a state of oppression and compliance. Breault proposes solutions to the problem of equal representation in academia’s curriculum. He says, “One way of doing so is to help students become convergent thinkers. Instead of seeing a situation as a competition between conflicting options, students would see the potential for the merging, compromise, or interplay of ideas” (Breault 4). This reasoning is important because it helps break the propensity for dominating groups to think in dualistic ways. Instead of thinking autonomously, they can begin to think in an interconnected fashion. Another in- sightful thought by Breault is his solution for individuals who live in ethnically un-diversified communities. He suggests that “the emphasis can be on diversity of gender, social class, religion, political perspective or geography” (5). The ideas of pa- tience, inclusivity, and appreciation for other viewpoints will be an integral part of creating productive and interdependent citizens. He goes on to assert that not teaching students to be convergent thinkers “encourages dichotomous thinking and sends the message that democracy is something you practice only after you leave school” (5). Instead it should be a process learned very early on.

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One reason why dominant groups refuse to commit to diversification and inclusion is fear—the “fear and resentment that perpetuates” ideas of White superiority (3). The oppressor fearing subjugation or “any restriction on their current way of life (3)” chooses to ignore the issues of racial or cultural discrepancies. Is fear the reason why academics refuse to adopt diverse voices in their classrooms? Do White academics and authors fear that their voices will be shut out from literary discussions? Aside from the political and social benefits I have outlined above, allowing individuals to bond within (and consequently outside) their cultural heritage and experience also has educational implications. To be human is to create. We endlessly create foods, stories, relationships, ideas, and structures. Re- ducing both White and non-White students to a set of limited ideologies and paradigms through the banking system “inhib- its creativity and domesticates (although it cannot completely destroy) the intentionality of consciousness by isolating consciousness from the world” (Freire 80). How much further would we be technologically and creatively speaking if we had nourished and cultivated true inclusivity? If we had allowed every human to reach their highest human potential of creativity instead of dehumanizing them into knowledge or fact recep- tacles? Freire asserts, “Problem-posing education is revolution- ary futurity . . . Hence it corresponds to the historical nature of humankind” (Freire 80). In other words, humankind’s historical nature directly relates to the extent to which humans are able and willing to problem-pose to transform the future. I contend, therefore, that one of two statements is true. Either we are living in the present, with an antiquated idea of what our literary canon should be. In which case, if we claim to be a nation of equality, we must seek to remedy it immediately. Not doing so presents a threat to our ability to transform our future. Al- ternatively, we are stuck in the past, believing our literary canon to be sufficiently representative of all people—a past where oppression and racism still exist.

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Being complicit in either of these realities presents a future that will hinder, even endanger, society’s growth. Without diversity “in classrooms and literature” our communities do not flourish. Furthermore, as we evolve into a more globally connected community, the representation of people of color becomes increasingly important. It is important because seeing diverse, creative, and successful examples leads to individuals contributing to society in meaningful ways. When individuals feel represented and see successful examples of themselves, they are more likely to contribute their voices, resources, and talents to our communities. This in turn ensures that all groups have a voice and our government and political leaders are willing to advocate for more inclusivity, passing laws that benefit all. Equal representation also contributes to innovation and alternative solutions that can make life easier for all humans. Consider inventors of color such as Garrett Morgan and Freder- ick Mckinley Jones, who, respectively, invented the three-light traffic light and the refrigerated truck securing the safe trans- port of goods across the country and nations (Morgan). The consequence of maintaining the status quo is a stagnated future, a future where problems are not being solved, and people continue to feel discounted, undermined, and depreciated.

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Works Cited Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time. Vintage International, 1993. “Bill History for HB 2281.” Arizona State Legislature, 2021, https://apps.azleg.gov/BillStatus/BillOverview/74739. Accessed 20 Apr. 2021. Breault, Rick A. “Dewey, Freire, and a pedagogy for the oppressor.” Multicultural Education, vol. 10, no. 3, 2003, pp. 2-6. EBSCOhost. Carrillo, Karen Juanita. “How the Chicano Movement Championed Mexican-American Identity and Fought for Change,” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 18 Sept. 2020, www.history.com/news/chicano-movement. Accessed 20 Apr. 2021. Enjeti, Anjali. “It’s time to diversify and decolonise our schools’ reading lists.” US & Canada18 Mar. 2018, www. aljazeera.com/opinions/2018/3/18/its-time-to-diversify- and-decolonise-our-schools-reading-lists/. Accessed 20 Apr. 2021. Foucault, Michel. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Vintage Books, 1995. Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy Of The Oppressed. Continuum Books, 1993. Haslem, Lori Schroeder. “Is Teaching the Literature of West- ern Culture Inconsistent with Valuing Diversity?” Profes- sion, 1998, pp. 117-130. JSTOR. Morgan, Thad. “8 Black Inventors Who Made Daily Life Eas- ier.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 20 Feb. 2019, www.history.com/news/8-black-inventors-african-american. Accessed 20 Apr. 2021. Sandoval, Denise M., et al., editors. “White” Washing American Education: the New Culture Wars in Ethnic Studies. Praeger. 2016.

66 67 Cottonwood and Flash Flood (linoleum block reduction print) by Manny Mellor

68 Criminality and Misrepresentations of Latinidad in American Dirt

Hannah Filizola Ruiz

The 2020 novel, American Dirt, written by author Jeanine Cummins, follows Mexican migrant Lydia and her son Luca on their journey to the United States. They flee from narco gang violence in their home city, Acapulco, Mexico, following the brutal mass murder of their extended family at a Quinceañera party. The man responsible, Javier, was a friend of Lydia’s and (unbeknownst to Lydia) was also the head of the gang that terrorized Acapulco for months prior to their escape. The story follows them as they are terrorized, robbed, and kidnapped, all while trying desperately to arrive at American soil, where sup- posedly the impunity will stop. The novel was heralded as transcendent by myriad sources prior to its release, with Oprah’s inclusion of the book in her book club lending substantial credibility and anticipation to the story. However, the reception of the book following its release was less than entirely positive. Individuals, primarily in the Latinx community, berated the novel for being thor- oughly grounded in clichés and stereotypes, calling out the novel’s Spanish inaccuracies and whitewashed protagonists as misrepresentative of the Latinx experience, and also as blatantly disrespectful to the source culture. Oppositely, myriad defenders of the novel cite the author’s good intentions as

Essais vol. 11 no. 1 | Spring 2021 Criminality & Misrepresentations Filizola Ruiz playing a major role in the novel’s saving grace. Furthermore, they argue that despite the novel’s less than positive reception, the book did facilitate the beginning of some kind of discussion on the subject of Latinx peoples. Still, dissenters maintain that the book distorts the position of popular discourse on the migrant discussion by painting an incomplete and stereotypical portrait of what constitutes migranthood and what constitutes Latinidad. A Latinx Perspective My mother was an upper-middle class Brazilian who came to the United States as an 18-year-old on vacation and coin- cidentally never left. She learned English in high school and spoke it with only the slightest accent when she came to this country. My father was a working 19-year-old Mexican immigrant who spoke barely a word of English. Now they’ve lived here for 20+ years, and my siblings and I are first-generation Latinx U.S. citizens. My upbringing, then—rubbing elbows with wealthy Argentines and working Venezuelans, Mexican doctors and Dominican yard workers—has taught me that there is no single way to exist as a Latinx person. Those who assume the label celebrate Latinidad for the vibrancy and variety of experiences it envelops. As an identity label, Latinidad is meant to function as an avenue for expression and understanding rather than as an indi- cator of homogeneity within the group. For this reason, fictionalized narratives that attempt to homogenize the community, adhering to stereotypes and perpetuating misconceptions, have the effect of being particularly disturbing to me. As a first-generation U.S. citizen and Chicana living in the United States who never had to undergo the sort of horrifying and trauma- tizing journey of migration that American Dirt attempts to capture, the caricaturic depiction of Latinidad in the novel was nonetheless deeply troubling for me. Rather than offering a holistic account of Latinidad as a source of both strength and joy as well as oppression and violence, Cummins restricts her narrative only to the latter, casting Latinidad as a label that in-

70 Spring 2021 Essais dicates victimhood rather than celebrating it as a source of community and rich culture. That distorted narrative was lauded by many as representative of the Latinx experience, even as it silenced entire dimensions of Latindad—the dimensions that make the violence and horror worth it. American Dirt is saturated with not only myriad explicit depictions of Latinx criminality, but also many indicators that these violent occurrences are commonplace. The inciting incident of the story is the graphic murder of sixteen of Lydia’s family members by a group of male gangsters. Later, readers discover that the massacre of Lydia’s “sixteen slaughtered loved ones” (Cummins 112) is not even notable enough to make national news, characterizing Mexico as a country so fraught with crime that mass murder isn’t newsworthy while also characterizing Mexicans as entirely lacking compassion. What’s lacking in the extant research is the intersection between both the discussion of perception of Latinx individuals and how that affects their lived realities, and the influence of depictions of criminality on public perceptions. The function of this examination, then, is to inspect the repercussions of the sort of reductive depictions of Latinidad that occur in American Dirt and discover why they trigger the sort of viscer- al discomfort and repulsion that characterized the Latinx community’s explosive reactions to the novel. This examination will track both the inaccurate representations of Latinidad through an analysis of American Dirt and its depictions of Latinx criminality, as well as the impact of those depictions in the Latinx community. The Examination A precise examination of the impact of the characterizations of Latinidad offered in American Dirt requires a deeper look into several subsections of academic analyses. Former U.S. president Donald Trump’s foundational slogan for his 2016 presidential run was “Make America Great Again.” This slogan begs the question: what made America worse? A study that examined Trump’s rhetorical approach to discussing Latinx indi-

71 Criminality & Misrepresentations Filizola Ruiz viduals in the U.S. found that “Latino” tended to appear “in close proximity to words like poor, jobs, violence, drugs, and immigration. The rhetorical devices used in marrying these words and dispersing them to audiences . . . reinforced preexisting stereotypes of Latino identity with associations to foreign in- compatibility and illegality” (Gonzalez 56), flooding the cultural memory with images of the Latinx immigrant as the rapist, drug dealer, gangster, and the ultimate cause of the bastardiza- tion of America. Consequently, such associations already exist strongly in the recent cultural memory and affect public perceptions of Latinx peoples and therefore their lived experience. The fundamental result of the use of these stereotypes is that they conflate Latinidad, as an ethnicity, identity, and culture, with criminality as a circumstantial condition. In the same study, author Eduardo Gonzalez cites “six popular tropes [that] have existed in classic Hollywood cinema and shaped U.S. Latino identity across social and political spheres: the bandit, male buffoon, female clown, Latin lover, dark lady, and the harlot” (52). The bulk of the stereotypes in American Dirt revolve around the various branches of the bandit archetypal character. The excessive reliance on gang- related violence in the novel plays heavily into the bandit stereotype, which Gonzalez describes as being perpetuated by fictionalized depictions of: Mexican-American “boy gangs” that depicted Mexicans as evil, violent, and barbaric. The bandit stereotype among Mexican-Americans persisted into the late-twentieth and twenty-first centuries portraying the bandit as a greaser, gang member, criminal, drug dealer, and rapist. (53) Lorenzo, a young man in the novel that Lydia and Luca meet atop a train, is a self-proclaimed ex-gang member with three documented murders, fleeing to the U.S. to be free from the gang’s influence. His character is crass, making explicit sexual references in front of Luca despite his youth, behaving predato- rily around young girls, and near the end of the novel, even attempting to rape one of them before he is shot in the head. In

72 Spring 2021 Essais this way, his character alone fulfills all the roles associated with the modern bandit stereotype, as a murderer, rapist, and gangster escaping to the U.S. to terrorize its citizens. Even Beto, a young orphaned child Lydia and Luca meet on the final stretch of their trip to the U.S., reveals that he was only able to afford the trip by selling drugs in his hometown. Contrary to these stereotypes, researchers continually find that perceived crime rates among Latinx folk are much higher than real rates are. Indeed, studies find that “foreign-born His- panic youth are less likely than their U.S.-born counterparts to engage in criminal activity, and that this is true across various Hispanic subgroups” (Sohoni 49). To further establish that these assumptions about criminal proclivities are ethnically motivated, negative perceptions of immigrants are contingent primarily on their legal status and ethnicity, so that being Latinx becomes conflated with being both an (illegal) immigrant and a criminal in the public eye. In an examination of the relationship between perceptions of criminality and immigration, subjects presented with instances of immigrant criminality “saw ‘illegal’ immigration as the root cause of serious crime” (59), rather than as a co- incidental fact of a criminal’s citizenship status. In the text the criminal tendencies of the bandit are far from restricted solely to gang members. On their long journey from Acapulco to the U.S. border, Lydia is constantly skeptical, regarding “every single person they meet—shopkeepers, food vendors, humanitarians, children, priests, even their fellow migrants” as people who “deserve their suspicion” (Cummins 91). In this way, every encounter with other Latinx folk is colored with distrust and all come to possess the label of criminality before they have even interacted with the novel’s protagonists. Fictionalized accounts of crime and selective or oversim- plified documentations create a space where “the way we think about criminality [becomes] linked to systems and structures that exist within a cultural imagination . . . [where] instead of trying to understand the circumstances that lead to crime, certain characteristics of the accused are romanticized through various codes and conventions that vilify and stigmatise them as

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‘other’” (Carrington 3-4). Ultimately, overemphasis in popular media on crimes that are particularly brutal or that are committed by ethnoracial minorities creates a false perception that posits criminals as one dimensional and lacking moral nuance so that audiences are comforted by how separate they are from the criminals rather than sympathetic about the complex circumstances that motivated their actions. Deepening that perceived divide between “the criminal” and “the citizen” allows constituents—whose vote and influence heavily affect criminal justice, sentencing, and treatment—to become harsher in their attitudes while remaining sequestered from the reality of their own impact. This effect is compounded in the novel because of the way criminality becomes rhetorically linked to Latinidad. Coupled with a characterization of the U.S. or el norte as the elusive promised land, Mexico, a cultural site of Latinidad, is made worse through the juxtaposition. Mexico is described as a place where “there’s the ubiquity of ordinary human violence: You can die by beating or stabbing or shooting. Robbery is a foregone conclusion. Mass abductions for ransom are commonplace” (Cummins 50). The United States, then, on this violent, traumatic journey, becomes the place that is suppos- edly free from violence, with Lydia noting that “entire neigh- borhoods were abandoned as people fled the rubble of their lives and headed north. For those who left, el norte was the only destination” (74). This characterization that posits Mexico—a country necessarily full of and founded by Latinidad—as a cess- pool of drugs and crime projects the same characterization onto the people who populate it. This inspires the image that these migrants are only escaping from a hell they’ve created; that their desperation and desire for non-violence is the excep- tion to the rule of Latinx propensities for violence. As viewers are able to feel inherently separate from the criminal subject of the crime media they consume, so too are readers able to feel inherently seperate from (and superior to) the Latinx peoples in American Dirt, and even Latinx people they encounter in their daily lives.

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Another examination focusing on cumulative depictions of criminals in modern media articles, such as TV shows, novels, true crime docuseries, etc., discusses the way this proliferation of crime-related entertainment has caused “the boundary between crime information and crime entertainment [to become] increasingly blurred in recent years” (Dowler 837). In this way, both laymen and working enforcers of the law are influenced by media depictions of criminality. The media articles that become popular and inform public attitudes about criminality encourage the “supporting [of] harsher measures, critiques of the inadequacy of police efforts, . . . strengthen- ing laws, or increasing prison sentences” (842). Furthermore, this study corroborates Gonzalez’ M.A.G.A. findings in that “in both Canadian and American newscasts, racial images saturate media portrayals of criminality and victimization; minority crime victims receive less attention and less sympathy than white victims, while crime stories involving minority offenders are rife with racial stereotypes” (840). In this way, the stories that saturate media depictions, inform public opinions of criminality, and attitudes about inmate treatment are the ones that are racist and sensationalized. Criminal depictions in media, both fictional and documented, fundamentally affect the way the public perceives criminality in general, and therefore the way they vote, weaponize law enforcement, and interact with groups that are stereotypically labeled as criminals. An article examining the influence of criminal depictions in film found that “viewing television news and reality-based police shows was associated with greater support for capital punishment, more positive attitudes toward gun ownership, and an increased likelihood of actually owning a handgun” (Welsh 459). Furthermore, “other scholars have described the act of punishment itself as a form of social ritual wherein shared moral values are believed to be commu- nicated to offenders and a natural social order restored” (460). In this way, if the mechanism that constructs the social order is public media, media also controls the form that the social ritual of communication to offenders (i.e., capital punishment) takes.

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Ultimately, then, the media is responsible for three major con- flations: Latinidad and criminality, crime media and crime information, and justice and punishment. The result of these confla- tions is that all Latinxs by default become subject to the violence masquerading as justice that criminals are subject to, because of the way they are stereotypically depicted in popular media. The novel’s characterizations of Mexicans as inherently criminal, and Mexico as inherently indifferent to violence, are emphasized repeatedly. In a shelter for migrants, Lydia encounters two women discussing in explicit detail their shared experience of rape, calling it “the price of getting to el norte” (Cummins 66). Two young girls, one of which later is nearly raped by Lorenzo, share their history of being forced into prostitution in their home countries. Later, when the group is kidnapped, both girls are separated from Luca and Lydia and raped again. Prof- ligate and unpredictable criminal behavior in a group makes all of its members acceptable bearers of the retributive justice generally doled out to criminals by conflating membership with criminality. Cummins’ depiction of Mexicans subliminally posits criminality as an inherent facet of Latinidad. When media representations are restricted to tired portrayals of stereotypical archetypes, young Latinx populations become constantly exposed to solely negative representation. That exposure motivates Latinx youth to internalize feelings of inferiority and inherent criminality, vi- tiating the perceived value and potential of the community as a whole and therefore affecting their lived potential and manifest- ing something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. In this way, depictions of Latinidad affect living Latinx foks not only because of the way they cause others to view Latinx communities, but also because of the way it causes them to view themselves. A Note to the Novel’s Supporters A salient caveat about the specific way Cummins depicts these criminals is that she circumvents the more traditional, two-dimensional depictions of criminals discussed above. Many of the studies that note the problematic, all-bad characteriza-

76 Spring 2021 Essais tions of criminals in the media describe “media narratives that offer viewers more complex, realistic constructions of crime and criminality” (Welsh 461) as a feasible solution for adjust- ing popular misconceptions. Cummins does this by actively hu- manizing her criminals, reminding readers constantly that they are motivated by undisclosed, complex external factors, and that they have family and friends who care for them. Javier— the friend, gang leader, and murderer of Lydia’s family—is en- sconced in endearing details, from the fact that his father passed away when he was a child to his passion for emotional, badly written poetry. When his daughter’s death is revealed as his motivation for the murders, Lydia realizes that “it changed everything” (Cummins 95), lending a dimension of vulnerability to his character that wouldn’t have existed otherwise. A group of boys manning a narco roadblock into Mexico City are similarly described as “brothers or children or grand- children” despite their intimidating and dangerous heavy artil- lery, and passersby offer the narcos their “genuine bendiciones” (45). Even Lorenzo, the aforementioned gang member, receives the benefit of the doubt when Lydia questions whether “beneath the shield of his baby narco swagger, he’s also a scared boy, alone in the world and running for his life” (96). That consideration immediately tugs Lorenzo’s character into three-dimensionali- ty as readers are forced to consider his motivations and context. These details paint a more comprehensive portrait of the depicted criminals and their motivations and complexity. Still, in this particular instance, these details perform the opposite function, making criminality seem all the more inherent in Latinx peoples because of the way all these criminals resemble other Latinx non-criminals so strongly. Javier’s cha- risma only serves to render his crimes all the more viscerally disturbing as he’s already demonstrated a capacity for compassion that he must overcome in order to commit the crimes that he does. The bendiciones of the passersby to the narcotraficantes only makes their presence seem all the more commonplace, and the passersby all the more tolerant of violence. Ultimately, a stereotype, no matter how three-dimensional and holistic, is still a

77 Criminality & Misrepresentations Filizola Ruiz stereotype and functions in the same restrictive manner, limiting representation to a tight circle of archetypes. In the author’s note of the text, Cummins discusses her intentions when writing this novel. She described it as being intended to counteract the dominant narrative that posits migrants as “an invading mob of resource-draining criminals, and, at best, a sort of helpless, impoverished, faceless brown mass, clamoring for help at our doorstep” (181-2). However, the novel itself fatally undermines the author’s own stated intentions. She describes a desire to create a narrative that allowed readers to “individuate” the migrant experience (182) and relate to migrants on a fundamentally human level. However, the profligate inclusion of not only criminality, but mass amounts of violence dehumanizes the bearers of that violence. Cummins herself acknowledges the stereotypicality of violent narcotrafi- cante centered stories, even stating that “the depiction of that violence can feed into the worst stereotypes about Mexico” (181), even while her own novel follows a family fleeing from narco gang violence. Furthermore, more than subjugating an entire demographic to negative, limiting archetypes, centering the plot on the extreme circumstances that motivate the protagonists’ flight from Mexico has the effect of erasing the experience of migrants who flee to the U.S. for no less valid but perhaps less immediately dangerous reasons. Lydia and Luca flee Mexico because of extreme gang violence that puts them in immediate mortal danger. Gang violence is a prevalent reason for migration—especially in South America—however, Cummins relies too heavily on the shock, trauma, and fear of the murder of the protagonists’ family to endear readers to their cause and root for Luca and Lydia to make it safely to the United States. That act, then, invalidates motivations for migration outside of mortal danger, such as fleeing poverty, searching for a better life, or even searching for work.

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Conclusion Clichés come about because they typically have some basis in reality, but they become harmful when they are presumed to be wholly representative of a body of people. Assumptions like these homogenize groups and, similar to the otherization of criminals, reduce marginalized peoples to stereotypes that may or may not actually play a role in their lives. Moreover, this principle, coupled with the characterization of Mexico as a cess- pool of drugs and crime, dehumanizes not only the migrants fleeing the country, but even the people who remain behind to populate it, all the more. A story cannot effectively advocate for a population it actively dehumanizes. The novel adheres to startling stereotypes about Latinx criminals even while the protagonists themselves become criminals by illegally crossing the border. Efforts to humanize a silenced population become counterproductive when their silence is perpetuated by those who claim to advocate for them. Furthermore, including so many instances of criminality that are committed with near exclusivity by Latinx folk has the effect of not only characterizing all Latinx peoples as possessing criminal tendencies, but also of reducing the shock factor of violence, manufacturing pity—or worse, indifference—when migrants are harmed, rather than horror or sympathy. The exagger- ation of Latinx criminality and excessive depictions of trauma being done to the migrants in the story in the form of rape, murder, and theft reinforces debilitating attitudes that vitcimize minorities, relying heavily on the marketability of migrant pain because “happiness doesn’t sell immigrant stories” (Zarago- sa). When portrayals of trauma and hurt are co-opted exces- sively for entertainment value, they begin to lose their impact. The violence is less frightening because audiences become de- sensitized through continuous exposure to violence against already otherized bodies. This is when appeals to sympathy through harm have the opposite effect of inspiring disdain or indifference. Because aforementioned studies have already established that criminal depictions in media have caused empathy for non-white victims of crimes to go down, profli-

79 Criminality & Misrepresentations Filizola Ruiz gate inclusion of harm coming to Latinx bodies only plays into that already-existing issue. Excessive reliance on violence and helplessness ultimately promulgates only pity and notions of inferiority, not empathy and genuine allyship. More than just offending a small group of Latinx scholars, these inaccuracies trap migrants and Latinx folk at large in a different, but no less confining box of expectations, assumptions, and prejudices. The conflation of Latinidad with criminality and punishment with justice has the real and violent effect of rendering an entire demographic always already worthy of punishment and violence. The effect this has on both the self regard and social regard of Latinx communities emphasizes the need for the rhetorical ownership of the Latinx image to be restored to the rightful hands of the titular community all the more. Ultimately, freeing some Latinx criminals from the otherization all criminals are typically subject to in the media does not outweigh the cruelty of limiting all Latinx peoples to discriminatory and unfounded notions of inherent criminality and disbelonging.

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Works Cited Carrington, Natasha. “Picturing the Offender: The Image as a Construction of Power, Popular Culture, and Difference.” The International Journal of the Image, vol. 6, no. 1, 2015, pp. 1-12. EBSCOhost. Cummins, Jeanine. American Dirt. Flatiron Books, 2020. Dowler, Ken, et al. “Constructing Crime: Media, Crime, and Popular Culture.” Canadian Journal of Criminology & Criminal Justice, vol. 48, no. 6, 2006, pp. 837-850. EBSCOhost. Gonzalez, Eduardo. “Stereotypical Depictions of Latino Criminality: U.S. Latinos in the Media during the MAGA Campaign.” Democratic Communiqué, vol. 28, no. 1, 2019, pp. 46-62. EBSCOhost. Sohoni, Deenesh, and Tracy W. P. Sohoni. “Perceptions of Immigrant Criminality: Crime and Social Boundaries.” Sociological Quarterly, vol. 55, no. 1, 2014, pp. 49-71. EBSCOhost. Welsh, Andrew, et al. “Constructing crime and justice on film: meaning and message in cinema.” Contemporary Justice Review, vol. 14, no. 4, 2011, pp. 457–476. EBSCOhost. Zaragosa, Alex. “The ‘American Dirt’ Controversy Illustrates the Media’s Thirst for Immigrant Trauma Porn.” Vice, Vice Media Group. 22 Jan. 2020. https://www.vice.com/ en/article/wxenzm/the-american-dirt-controversy-illustrates-the-medias-thirst-for-immigrant-trauma-porn. Accessed 20 Apr. 2021

81 Isolation (photography) by Annie Neilson

82 Cinema and The Female Gaze: An Examination of Queer Representation

Jessica Marie Deveraux

My analysis is concerned with the application of queer spaces in film that destabilize the male gaze. I will argue that this destabilization is essential for films with queer content; otherwise, the male gaze prevails, and queer women are only looked at and are denied the opportunity to do the looking. Ultimately, queer films usurp the male gaze and provide a viable space for the female gaze to exist. To substantiate this claim, I will analyze Sarah Schulman’s discussion of queer representation in RENT in connection with Eve Kosofsky Sedg- wick’s definition of the hetero/homosexual binary. Next, I will define and discuss the male gaze and its appropriation of queerness for male pleasure. I will then show how the male gaze is prevalent in the film Blue is the Warmest Color, which is saturated with pornographic lesbian sex-acts that command a heterosexual, male gaze from the viewer. I will compare this film to Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which disrupts the male gaze by creating a queer narrative that does not revolve around performative sex. Portrait works to remove the male gaze from women-loving-women narratives, signaling the need for a female gaze to work against films like Blue that appropriate queer desire for audiences that have been disciplined by heterosexuality.

Essais vol. 11 no. 1 | Spring 2021 Cinema and The Female Gaze Deveraux

In her foundational work, Epistemology of the Closet, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick discusses the way that current discourse examines sexuality under a binary of hetero/homosexual with no space for nuance. Relieving this constraint creates a queer space to replace that sexual dichotomy (11). By doing this, human sexuality becomes more than an either/or. Although Sedgwick was writing in the 1980s, her definition of this binary is ap- parent in most contemporary queer media. For example, Sarah Shulman describes how RENT, despite being a play about the 1980s AIDS epidemic that destroyed the gay community, actually reinforces heteronormativity and creates a precedent for the dominant culture exclusively depicting only the most pal- atable elements of queer culture. Schulman describes RENT as “straight-made homosexuality for predominantly straight audiences” (50). Thus, queer creators are stuck assuming and living the experiences prescribed by the dominant ideology. Schul- man highlights the lesbian relationship in RENT specifically, describing how the characters “do little besides bicker,” with no profound development to their narrative (65). These straight- made plays for straight audiences prevent queer creators from having a platform, and, in turn, cause the queer, lesbian experience to be homogenized by the expectations of the male gaze. On another note, Teresa de Lauretis discusses the aspects of art that potentially make it queer, so her interpretation becomes significant to the discussion of the homogenization of queer media into something to be solely consumed and understood through the male gaze. According to de Lauretis, a queer text must “carr[y] the inscription of sexuality as something more than sex” in order to be considered truly queer (244). The essence of de Lauretis’ argument is that sexuality is more than what a person’s genitals desire; sexuality is a lens through which one experiences the world. It cannot (or should not) be solved or categorized. This deconstruction of sexuality is similar to what Sedgwick hopes to accomplish in the “queering” of the hetero/homosexual binary (9). De Lauretis notes that queer space, including textual spaces, is the space in which “Freud imagines the drive to operate…it is the space of a transit… [it

84 Spring 2021 Essais is] not a referential but a figural space” (246). Again, de Laure- tis establishes that sexuality is something transitive and thus escapes the traditional narrative that forces its audience to be heterosexual. Traditional narratives force their audiences to be “straight” by using the gaze—specifically, the male gaze. Todd McGowan describes Jacques Lacan’s theory of the gaze as a fundamental aspect of film criticism, to the point that scholars of film criticism refer to it as “The Theory” (27). The act of looking becomes a method of ideological interpretation where the watcher of a film is the absent yet all-present viewer. As McGowan puts it, “Being absent as perceived and present as perceiver affords the spectator an almost unqualified sense of mastery over the filmic experience” (28). In other words, the watcher of the film can hold a level of power over the images on the screen. However, as the spectator watches what happens on the screen, they begin to identify with the camera’s gaze. Jean-Louis Baudry emphasizes that “The spectator identifies less with what is represented, the spectacle itself, than with what stages the spectacle, makes it seen, obliging him to see what it sees” (qtd. in McGowan 30). In other words, the audience watching the film sees the camera view as their perspective rather than as a vehicle to display the images on a screen. Feminist film theory interprets the gaze of the camera, and thus what the viewers identify with, as always male. Accord- ing to Laura Mulvey, this creates a space of “active/male and passive/female” engagement, where the audience must identify with either the objectifying male gaze or the objectified female (62). Naturally, the identification is with the male protagonist; women on screen are reduced to sexual objects that only function as modes through which the male characters operate. Thus those watching start to feel the same power that the on-screen male characters have. Mulvey writes: As the spectator identifies with the main male protagonist, he projects his look onto that of his like, his screen surro- gate, so that the power of the male protagonist as

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he controls events coincides with the active power of the erotic look. (63) As the audience member experiences the camera pan up and down a woman’s body, they feel like the male gaze is their own. To put it another way, the viewer inhabits the male gaze and in an instant, becomes the objectifier to keep from identifying with the objectified. In the case of queer cinema, the male gaze exists in the way the dominant culture appropriates bits of lesbian culture that appeal to straight/dominant ideology. A recent example is Blue is the Warmest Color, originally published as a graphic novel. The story follows French teenager, Adele, through her “sexual awakening” to adulthood. The text follows Adele as she deals with political protests, homophobic friends and family, and falling in love. The graphic novel, written by Jul Maroh, differs from the film in many ways but the most crucial aspect in which they differ is in the novel’s queerness. The sex in the graphic novel is not what makes it queer; what makes it queer is its nuance of “sexuality as something more than sex” (de Laure- tis 244). The story is told posthumously, as Emma (Adele’s love interest) reads diaries left to her by Adele. Rather than focusing purely on sexual desire, the diaries show the trials and tribulations of Adele’s coming-of-age. And, although there are acts of sex in the graphic novel, they come from a place of intimacy and love rather than performance for a male gaze. The graphic novel depicts sex with men as a choice for Adele. Rather than watching Adele suffer through a sexual encounter with a man she is not interested in intimately, the audience witnesses Adele, while grappling with the pressures of a heterosexual society, make the difficult choice to not have sex with her male lover (Maroh 21). Adele feels like something is wrong with her and is actively trying to convince herself that she is attracted to men. This emotional distress and conscious thought process are what make the graphic novel queer by de Lauretis’s definition; it is not about sex, but about the person. This absence of compulsive sexuality prevents Mulvey’s forced

86 Spring 2021 Essais heterosexuality. By contrast, the film version of Blue is the Warmest Color, directed by Abdellatif Kechiche, is straight-made lesbianism that is pleasurable for heterosexual audiences. The film ignores the emotional aspects of Adele’s experience and all of the characters’ daily lives: sexuality is only sex, which makes the film not queer. Before Adele meets her lesbian love, the audience must first watch her try and fail to enjoy a heterosexual relationship, fulfilling the heteronormative lesbian film trope of having to see the protagonist experience getting fucked by a man (Blue 00:21:49-00:23:39). The audience then watches Adele grapple with the discomfort of her ambiguous sexuality as she interacts with a mysterious woman. As soon as the audience sees Adele lean in for her first kiss with this woman, the scene immediately switches to a pornographic sexual performance (01:14:36- 01:21:29). The scene does not allow for any foreplay;the camera pans up and down the two women’s naked bodies as they grasp at each other’s breasts and buttocks. As Mulvey puts it, because identification with the camera is inherently male, there is a direct objectification of the women on screen (63). As the audience watches this heteronormative lesbianism, they are forced to either identify with the objectified women or the camera’s dominating male gaze; there are few moments of intimacy or innocence. Instead, the focus is on close-up shots of lips around erect nipples and long pans up and down Adele and Emma’s hairless, naked bodies. The audience is faced with the choice of either objectifying or being objectified themselves. Thus, the lesbianism in the film feels performative, not only for men but also for other women: “women [are] objects designed to attract the gaze, not only of men, but also of other women invited to emulate them” (An- dersen). Again, the primary display of affection on screen is a heterosexual fantasy of lesbian sex; this objectification of the relationship of two women is just like what happens to individual women in the male gaze.

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Because of how the camera spends its time in the film and its inherent maleness, Adele cannot be authentically anything other than a sex object for male pleasure. As John Berger describes in G.: A Novel, “. . . in each action there was an ambiguity which corresponded to an ambiguity in the self, divided between surveyor and surveyed. The so-called duplicity of woman was the result of the monolithic dominance of man” (150). Berger’s analysis can be applied to the depiction of Adele’s sexuality: her duplicity, in this sense, is her sexual performance. Her sexuality is no longer her own, as she never exists outside of a culture of male dominance. She can fuck a woman only because she has already been fucked by a man and will continue to be fucked by men in the future. Thus, anything authentically queer is suppressed by the male gaze. Additionally, in the film, the audience never sees Adele experience life on her own—instead, we watch her bounce from relationship to relationship with melodramatic arguments, jeal- ousy, and insecurity about Emma’s success. As Berger states, “For a woman the state of being in love was a hallucinatory interregnum between two owners, her bridegroom taking the place of her father, or later, perhaps, a lover taking the place of her husband” (152). The audience rarely sees the female characters bond and grow together, and the times they do are filtered between moments of defensiveness and envy. The graphic novelist described the discomfort of watching the sex scenes as such: “among the only people we didn’t hear giggling were the potential guys too busy feasting their eyes on an incarnation of their fantasies on screen” (qtd. in Sasson). Here, Maroh is eloquently explaining the power of the male gaze in the film version of Blue is the Warmest Color. The film’s male viewers feel power over the women performing their sexual fantasies on screen; the other viewers must then giggle and brush off the awkward and objectified feelings they are forced to experience. As Schulman notably discusses in her analysis of RENT’s queer representation, “[the text] reveals the depth of the author’s belief in the supremacy of heterosexual relationships over homosexual ones” (51). And, as Sedgwick has established, those

88 Spring 2021 Essais are the only two options that a person—and thus an audience member—have for their sexual expression (2). Even though the audience watches Adele struggle with her first heterosexual relationship, we still see her choose one after her lesbian relationship fails. Between this and the already mentioned issues with the lesbian representation in Blue is the Warmest Color, it becomes clear that this movie is not the queer experience it pretends to be. In Maroh’s own words, “It appears to me that this was what was missing on the set: lesbians [emphasis added]” (qtd. in Teeman). As previously examined, the graphic novel Blue is the Warmest Color is not about sex; it is about a person struggling with sexuality. Because the text evaluates sexuality as something political, emotional, and intersec- tional, it can be queer. Thus, objectification is not inherent to the story itself but arises from the male gaze that was forced on the story once it was appropriated to force a heterosexual gaze on the audience. In contrast to the film version of Blue is the Warmest Color, the filmPortrait of a Lady on Fire, made by lesbian director Céline Sciamma, critiques and dismantles the male gaze. The story is set in France during the eighteenth century, where artist Marianne is asked to paint a portrait of Héloïse, an aristocratic noble- woman, for her future Italian suitor. Héloïse originally refuses to pose for the portrait, meaning Marianne must look at her while they go on walks and try to memorize her form. It is stun- ningly clear how Sciamma removes the male gaze from her film, consequently refusing to tell a lesbian love story through a heteronormative lens. The female gaze is a central theme in the film: women look at each other, and women are seen. As Susan R. Bowers discusses in her essay on the female gaze, “The an- tidote to the male gaze, and one avenue to women reclaiming their own sexuality, is the female gaze: learning to see clearly for themselves, thus reconstructing traditional male images of women” (218). In other words, the female gaze creates a space where women can look at each other without the active/male, passive/female objectification that Mulvey lays out in her definition of the male gaze.

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The female gaze can exist inPortrait because Sciamma defies the hetero/homosexual binary and instead, as Sedgwick says, “disrupt[s] many forms of the available thinking about sexuality” (25). In other words, Sciamma’s refusal to force heterosexuality on her audience allows for a queer narrative to complicate the either/or sexual binary. For example, Marianne attempts to paint a portrait of Héloïse for a potential husband. Héloïse at first refuses to sit for a portrait, as she had done with the pre- vious painter, who was male. When Marianne arrives on the island, she is told to pretend to be a walking companion to Héloïse and not disclose that she is an artist. When Marianne finds the portrait that the male artist had originally painted, her body and hands are posed and seem stiff; where her face should be, the canvas is blank. In this painting Marianne is seeing a material consequence of the male gaze. She burns the portrait of Héloïse, completely erasing the existence of this male interpretation of her. The burning of the painting shows that the male gaze is escapable and that two women can look and actually see each other. However, after Héloïse has sat for Marianne, she has a strong reaction to her portrait. She asks, “Is that how you see me?” to which Marianne responds with an answer about how one must use the conventions of art. Historically, these conventions have been created by men to depict women. Héloïse then tells Mar- ianne, “The fact it isn’t close to me, that I can understand. But I find it sad it isn’t close to you” (Portrait 00:49:03-00:50:36). Here, the film shows that because this portrait was painted for a man, Héloïse has again been looked at, but not seen. It is not until Marianne begins a new portrait, this time depicting Héloïse how she truly sees her, that she finally captures Héloïse’s essence. The portrait has movement and life. Héloïse is not shown as a stiff empty object. Another aspect of Portrait that critiques the male gaze is that even though Héloïse is being painted, it is on her terms. While she is being looked at, she is also looking. The two women see more than the curves and physical beauty of each other. Instead, they see each other’s quirks and idiosyncrasies—the

90 Spring 2021 Essais things we do without thinking. Marianne notices how Héloïse bites her lips when she’s embarrassed and does not blink when she’s annoyed (01:04:15-01:04:47). But it is not just Mari- anne who sees Héloïse. Héloïse shows that she is also looking at Marianne—she is not just an object being watched, as she also notices intimate aspects of Marianne’s character rather than her sexuality. As Mulvey would say, Héloïse is actively engaged in the looking process rather than passively being looked at. The two women are on equal ground; one does not hold power over the other. This intimacy of knowing and seeing another person is what is missing from the relationship between Emma and Adele in Blue is the Warmest Color. The audience sees very little of the actual sex between Héloïse and Marianne; instead, the audience watches them get to know each other. The film critiques not only the way men look at women, but also the way the male gaze objectifies women and does not allow for a female community or engagement. Specifical- ly, the film shows the power of women building bonds with one another in ways that challenge patriarchal norms. Sophie, Héloïse’s maid, goes to see a medicine woman to get an abortion. Both Héloïse and Marianne go with her, and when Marianne tries to turn away from the scene, Héloïse tells her to look. Marianne then paints the scene of the abortion, further demonstrating this event from a female gaze rather than a male one (01:25:09-01:30:30). An abortion is not something that straight audiences and the male gaze would want to see in a movie, especially one about a lesbian relationship. This shows that the female gaze is more than just women looking at each other with desire; it is women seeing and supporting each other, creating a matriarchal community. Thus, we can clearly see the difference between queer-made films for queer audiences and, as Schulman said, straight-made film for straight audiences. Films like Blue is the Warmest Color may offer representation to a mainstream audience, but at what cost? Its representation of lesbianism is one of performative sexual desire created for and by men. Though the film can still have value, the problematic elements should not be ignored, as

91 Cinema and The Female Gaze Deveraux the violence of heteronormativity and the either/or binary of sexuality affect everyone, not just queer people. To allow audiences to look outside of an either/or sexual binary, the male gaze must be destabilized. Otherwise, women-loving-women on-screen relationships will continue to be appropriated by the male gaze for compulsory-heterosexual pleasure.

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Works Cited Bowers, Susan R. “Medusa and the Female Gaze.” NWSA Journal: National Women’s Studies Association Journal, vol. 2, no. 2, 1990, pp. 217-235. EBSCOhost. Berger, John. G.: A Novel. Vintage Books, 1991. De Lauretis, Teresa. “Queer Texts, Bad Habits, and the Issue of a Future.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, vol. 17, 2011, pp. 243–263. Kechiche, Abdellatif, director. Blue Is the Warmest Color. 2013. McGowan, Todd. “Looking for the Gaze: Lacanian Film The- ory and Its Vicissitudes.” Cinema Journal, vol. 42, no. 3, Mar. 2003, EBSCOhost. Maroh, Jul. Blue Is the Warmest Color. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2013. Mulvey, Laura “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen, Volume 16, Issue 3, Autumn 1975, pp 6–18, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/16.3.6 Sciamma, Céline, director. Portrait of a Lady on Fire. 2019. Sedgwick, Eve. Epistemology of the Closet. U of California P, 2008. Sharf, Zack. “Céline Sciamma Defends Abdellatif Kechiche’s Male Gaze, ‘Blue Is the Warmest Color’ Sex Scenes.” IndieWire, 10 Sept. 2019, www.indiewire.com/2019/09/ celine-sciamma-defends-abdellatif-kechiche-male-gazesex scenes-1202172406/. Accessed 22 Apr. 2021 Shulman, Sarah. Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay American. Duke UP, 1998 Teeman, Tim. “‘Blue,’ Through Lesbian Eyes.” 6 Nov. 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/11/07/fashion/blue-is-the-warmest-color-through-lesbian-eyes.html. Accessed 22 Apr. 2021

93 Content (oil on paper) by Annalee Poulsen

94 “Trawling in Silence”: Lending a Voice to the Oppressed in The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao

Tausha Hewlett

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence. —Charles De Gaulle, The Edge of the Sword

In an effort to counter the silencing effects of authoritarianism, Junot Díaz wrote The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in 2007. The novel follows the life of Oscar de León and his family from the perspective of Yunior, a family friend with intimate knowledge of their history. Oscar is a nerdy, sci-fi- loving, introverted Dominican-American who struggles to find his place in the world. His mother immigrated to the United States to escape the oppression that killed her family, nearly killed her, and ultimately killed Oscar. As a result of his mother’s immigration, Oscar grows up in America—a product of two different cultures, but belonging to neither. Yunior, the novel’s narrator and Oscar’s former roommate, is better at conform- ing and fitting into his environment. Through his complicated perspective, the reader is shown a new side of the history of the Dominican Republic, a version that is shaped by the voices of the oppressed. As the novel makes clear, the Dominican people experienced intense suffering under the tyranny of Raphael Trujillo, the dictator who ruled with an iron fist and left a sea of traumatized people in his wake. As he tells Oscar’s story, Yunior

Essais vol. 11 no. 1 | Spring 2021 “Trawling in Silence” Hewlett relates the stories of three generations of Oscar’s family who all suffered under the curse of Trujillo’s dictatorship. In Yunior’s narrative, the life of the novel’s unpopular, overweight, Domin- ican-American hero, Oscar De León—whose life is cut short— embodies the pain of the Dominican people who suffered under the Trujillo regime. Like many, Oscar’s family fled the country to recover, but as Oscar’s life demonstrates, their suffering continues. It is in an attempt to balance the effects of that cursed legacy that Yunior presents his narrative. As this essay will demonstrate, the events in the story and Oscar’s life are not simply tragic; they are purposeful, and through that purpose, even “wondrous.” In fact, many scholars see Yunior’s narrative as a subversion of power systems that place monsters like Trujillo in historical prominence by instead positioning Oscar as the focal point and unconventional hero of the story. However, other interpretations of the novel argue that Yunior is fatalistically demonstrating that some trauma has no resolution. I agree with the former analysis, and additionally view the battle between dictatorial powers and the refusal to accept those powers as the great source of conflict in the novel. Ultimately, I argue that through Yunior’s narratorial power in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, he is able to reshape history and heal the trauma caused by the Trujillo dictatorship. Amongst the extensive scholarship available on Oscar Wao, this paper will focus on research that offers important insights into my argument regarding the novel’s calculated use of narrative to promote healing. Jennifer Hartford Vargas, in “Dic- tating a Zafa: The Power of Narrative Form in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” explores the differences in power between Yunior and Trujillo through a comparative analysis of the novel’s narrative power and true dictatorial power, and shows how Yunior used his authorial power to thwart Trujillo’s power and provide healing. Also inspecting Díaz’s narrative technique, including the novel’s blank pages and the narrator’s use of mixing languages, Ellen Jones, in “‘The página is still blanca’: reading the blanks in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” evaluates how the novel bids

96 Spring 2021 Essais the reader to fill in the various blanks with their own knowledge, research, or perspective. Jones shows how the authorial powers used in the organizational details of the novel can create a healing cancelation of Trujillo’s toxic power. Juanita Heredia additionally weighs the healing power of narrative provided by the book to the Dominican diaspora in her essay, “The Do- minican Diaspora Strikes Back: Cultural Archive and Race in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” Providing a different perspective, Lauren Jean Gantz, in “‘Nothing ever ends’: Archives of Written and Graphic Testimony in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” discusses Yunior’s narrative powers but suggests healing through a narrative is not always possible. Narrative is also the focus of the article “The Imperatives of Nar- rative: Health Interest Groups and Morality in Network News,” by Joshua Braun. Braun interrogates the influential nature of narrative in relation to news and healthcare while providing en- lightening questions to the discourse on narrative. Each of these articles represents a valuable perspective in the conversation regarding narrative power in Oscar Wao. Read alongside critical theories addressing power, narrative, and healing, this essay seeks to place these various arguments in conversation and trace the relationship between power and narrative. To provide the critical dimension to my argument, I will explore the ideas of three theorists relevant to the topic of narrative power. First, I will look at the essay “The Means of Correct Training,” by the literary critic and philosopher Michel Fou- cault, to discuss power dynamics, particularly in relation to my paper’s interrogation of the authoritarian control that existed in the Trujillo era. Second, I will review “Dominici, or the Triumph of Literature,” written by the literary theorist and philosopher Roland Barthes, which suggests we all have the capacity to be accused and condemned by the power that “hear[s] only the language it lends us” (46). Barthes adds nuance to the arguments made by Braun, Heredia, Jones, and Vargas, who each explore aspects of narratorial power. Lastly, I will evaluate “Bearing Witness or the Vicissitudes of Listening,” by Holo- caust survivor and premier authority in trauma recovery, Dori

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Laub, to understand the necessity of speaking about trauma as a vital part of the recovery process. This essay, in sum, explores how narrative can heal trauma and examines how the exercise of power through narratorial control can facilitate healing. One of the primary ways that Diaz’s Oscar Wao examines the nature of power is through showing that both Trujillo and Yunior are dictators in their own respect. Trujillo dictated everything that went on in the Dominican Republic, while Yunior dictated the message of the book. They both determined the meaning of the world they created. Yunior is not subtle in the parallel he draws between writers and dictators, purposefully elaborating, “Dictators, in my opinion, just know competition when they see it. Same with writers. Like, after all, recognizes like” (Díaz 97). Yunior is making connections between his role as a writer and Trujillo’s role as a dictator to demonstrate that both positions are capable of manipulating meaning. In her analysis of Oscar Wao, Vargas addresses the narrative power of Yunior as a counter curse, or as Yunior calls it, a “zafa,” against the curse left by Trujillo. Vargas points out the power that dictators have over the world, describing how Miguel Asturias’s fictional dictator in El Señor Presidente, proclaims “that he, not the novelist, is the real author of the novel” (8). Vargas concludes that the dictator is effectively “declaring himself the supreme meaning-maker” (8). In this quote, the tension between the author and the authoritarian to control meaning becomes tangible. Yunior’s struggle with Trujillo is very much the same. Vargas’s assertions align well with Roland Barthes’s who highlights the complicity of narrative where the reader is “deprived of language, or worse, rigged out in that of our accus- ers” (46). In other words, narrative shapes everything the reader sees and believes. The line between Yunior who wrote the truth as he wanted it to be seen, and Trujillo who controlled perception as a dictator, is only differentiated by the purpose behind the manipulation. Yunior is aware of his own dictatorial complicity and uses it to alleviate the influence that Trujillo had over the lives of the Dominicans and help heal their trauma.

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Yunior’s controlling narrative and the forceful control of Trujillo differ in their objectives, but they are both manipula- tions of power. The extent of manipulation from both of these sources can be better understood through the study of power theories. Michel Foucault teaches that the ability to maintain control is facilitated through a “diagram of a power that acts by means of general visibility” (171). Foucault is drawing attention to power structures—like the power held by authors and dictators—that control what is seen and heard. It is easy to recognize the similarities between Foucault’s diagram of power and the tactics employed by both Trujillo and Yunior. In the novel, Trujillo (through historical influence) and Yunior (through narratorial power) strive to be at the center of power, defining the way history is told. Along the lines of Foucault’s observations about visibility, Vargas notes the significance of controlled perspective as a power system in narrative, observing, “the narrative structures that allocate space and focalize perspective in a novel are structures of power” (11). There is no denying that Trujillo shaped the history of the Dominican people, but in Yunior’s narrative, power is commandeered from the Trujillo dictatorship through Yunior’s own authoritarian control of the recounting of history. Because of the artful use of his narratorial power, Yunior’s story about the antihero Oscar seizes control of the Dominican narrative and redresses history in a new light: a light that shines on a non-typical, oppressed character and dims the focus on Trujillo. Yunior’s narrative holds extra power because American readers are generally unacquainted with the history of the Do- minican Republic, and even less familiar with Trujillo. Yunior openly acknowledges this ignorance in his first footnote when he begins: “For those of you who missed your mandatory two seconds of Dominican history” (2n1). Free of preconceived notions, the reader is a captive audience guided by Yunior’s purposeful narrative that dictates all visibility: seeing the story the way Yunior wants it to be seen. No sooner than the novel begins, Yunior presents a one- sided image of Trujillo, describing him as “one of the twen-

99 “Trawling in Silence” Hewlett tieth century’s most infamous dictators . . . A portly, sadistic, pig-eyed mulato who bleached his skin, wore platform shoes, and had a fondness for Napoleon-era haberdashery” (2n1). However valid Yunior’s assessment may be, the reader unfamil- iar with Dominican history has no other context to judge Trujil- lo by. The description diminishes our view of Trujillo’s character and of his power as a dictator by painting a picture of a mean, ugly, ridiculous man. Prejudiced narratorial power is a subject questioned by Barthes in his analysis of power structures, like those described by Foucault, in relation to a historical trial where the ignorance of the defendant was taken advantage of to gain a conviction. The controlling narrative, Barthes points out, “allows it always to take other men as objects, to describe and condemn at one stroke” (45). Barthes questions authorial power similar to Yunior’s, illustrating the malleable nature of truth: it can be controlled to fit a certain agenda. While Yunior’s narratorial power is like the power in the trial, his intent is different. The novel is another sort of trial, but Yunior shapes perception to find justice and lend a healing voice to the people who suffered under Trujillo. The subversive power dynamics of the narrative which act as a source of healing are evident from the beginning of the novel when Yunior claims Oscar as “our hero” (Díaz 11). As Yunior accentuates Oscar’s role as the hero of the story, he is toppling power structures and diminishing Trujillo’s importance. Yunior’s decision to refocus the Dominican story on a person like Oscar, who embodies much of their suffering, is a healing act in itself, even with the complicated complicity of the authoritarianism displayed by Yunior. In her reading of the novel, Heredia reiterates the importance of Yunior’s chosen protagonist, suggesting that Yunior upends typical Dominican history by focusing on people who were not traditionally given a voice (210). In Yunior’s narrative, power is redistributed; Trujil- lo is given no voice and no major character contribution to the story. This minimization of a tyrant’s power in favor of an

100 Spring 2021 Essais oppressed underdog is an act of healing. Trujillo’s characterization also serves to reduce his power in the novel. Accord- ing to Vargas, Trujillo had over one hundred complimentary titles meant to honor him during his leadership, and Yunior, in contrast, lists an impressive array of derogatory terms to counter any flattery that had previously benefited Trujillo (13). Yunior’s creative, demeaning descriptions are also important, Vargas notes, because the humor further subverts the dismal power that had ruled the Dominicans so unbendingly (13). Al- though Yunior’s portrayal of Trujillo may simply appear to be a macho power struggle between two forces vying for dominance, it is much more than that. Heredia offers a crucial insight when she contends, “Díaz knows that he must be accountable to tell the story of the oppressed, the silenced, and the underprivi- leged” (211). Yunior’s narrative is well-designed to accomplish that healing task. By representing the people who had previously been ignored, the novel is questioning the power structures and values that kept Trujillo in power; it gives them a voice that, as Dori Laub suggests, will allow them to heal. Evaluating the effects of silence on people who had suffered in the Holocaust, Laub affirms that telling a victim’s story can create a healing dis- tance from the trauma of the past (69). As the reader, we are an important part of the victim’s trauma recovery. As we learn and understand what the Dominican people went through, those who are suffering, especially those who move to a new country unaware of their experiences, are less isolated in their feelings. Laub observes, “The listener to trauma comes to be a participant and a co-owner of the traumatic event: through his very listening, he comes to partially experience trauma in himself” (57). This means the reader can become part of the resolution of suffering by reading and witnessing the trauma inflicted on Oscar, his family, and by extension, all the Domin- ican people who were terrorized by Trujillo. Yunior is assist- ing in the healing process by using his narrative to relate the experience of the Dominican people who suffered from many atrocities inflicted by Trujillo.

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From some viewpoints, however, Yunior’s narrative does not provide healing. In her critique of Díaz’s novel, Gantz interrogates the capabilities of a healing narrative or “metatestimo- nio” to accurately represent the perspective of victims through a work of fiction (126). While I agree that trauma is difficult to duplicate in fiction, Gantz’s approach toward perspective and truth may be too rigid in not recognizing the subjectivity of these concepts. It is never possible to recreate another person’s perception perfectly because perception is unique to each individual, but the narrative heals and connects to people through points of similarity rather than the exactness of the trauma. Yunior is taking control of a narrative that had previously been defined by an evil dictator; he is telling the story of a people who were silenced, and the readers through their new perception become part of the healing. Whether the reader understands or relates to Yunior’s narrative perfectly, it provides healing for those who suffer through the combination of its similarities to traumatic, real-life experiences and through its different way of relat- ing events of history. Oscar’s story is removed enough from the historical Dominican suffering but contains enough similarities to be relatable. In addition to Laub’s analysis, it is relevant to consider that humans are driven by pathos and become part of trauma through empathetic responses. When we read about Oscar’s family’s suffering in the Dominican Republic and how the curse of Trujillo continues through generations, culminating with Oscar’s murder, we understand the Dominican suffering better. However, Gantz believes Yunior is not healing trauma through his story, but making it worse through his omission of details (130). While Gantz’s view is interesting to consider, the subjective nature of a narrative, according to Laub, is not important to the ultimate message of the story being told. Laub maintains that when he listened to one woman’s story: I in turn came to understand not merely her subjective truth, but the very historicity of the event, in an entirely new dimension . . . breaking the frame of the concen-

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tration camp by and through her very testimony: she is breaking out of Auschwitz. (62) Laub’s account reiterates the importance of Yunior’s narrative: Yunior, though the dictatorial complicity of his narrative authoritarianism is literally and figuratively breaking free of the fear-powered silence that enabled Trujillo’s dictatorship by providing a narrative to heal the trauma experienced by the Dominican people. Despite the intentions of Yunior’s healing narrative, his authoritarian reshaping of history problematically resembles the way Trujillo also controlled information. The absolute power Yunior holds over the narrative can be seen as a corrupting influence to the objectivity of the story and, for good or bad, Yunior’s bias and agenda definitely shape the tone of the story. Braun discusses the purpose of narrative as a way to “make sense of the world by imposing a narrative structure” (6). Yunior’s narrative is attempting to do just that. But that imposition is not without harm according to Braun: “Imposing such a structure invari- ably does violence to the ‘reality’ it professes to represent” (6). In other words, narrative can alter reality. This argument against the manipulation of narrative is a valid concern regarding truth, but Yunior is quite overt about his manipulative ways with women, Oscar, and his writing. In keeping with postmodern self-consciousness, Yunior is fully aware of his complicity in his manipulation of authorial power, but it is that complicity, not the exact reality of the story, that enables him to create a healing story about a sensitive, Dominican-American nerd, rather than a ruthless dictator like Trujillo. As a womanizer concerned with appearance, Yunior may be seen simply as a shallow male figure. However, from my perspective, Yunior’s handsome, popular, ladies’ man persona, contrasted with Oscar’s shy, nerdy characteristics, is designed to critique the Trujillo-esque ideas of masculinity prevalent in the Dominican Republic that caused so much trauma. Oscar was Dominican, but he did not fit the ideas of normativity. Yunior declares that Oscar “was not one of those Dominican cats

103 “Trawling in Silence” Hewlett everybody’s always going on about . . . dude never had much luck with the females (how very un-Dominican of him)” (Díaz 11). As Yunior underscores, Oscar is a departure from the typical Dominican male. From Foucault’s studies on power dynamics, we learn that ideas of normativity are part of a system of power that punishes behavior deviating from the norm (191). Oscar lived a life of ostracization because he did not conform to societal ideals as either an American or a Dominican. Foucault attests “This turning of real lives into writing is no longer a procedure of heroization; it functions as a procedure of objectification and subjection” (192). Therefore, forcing normativity on Oscar would turn him into a victim, but by showcasing Oscar in all his nerdy, unique glory, he becomes a character capable of imparting healing balance to the rigid norms espoused by Trujillo. Vargas similarly claims that Oscar’s differences “challenge authoritarian power and normative discourses, drawing a link between both forms of domination” (17). While Oscar’s awkward qualities made him a more sympathetic character, the very differences that set him apart from the norm simultaneously made him capable of challenging those normative values. Yunior purposefully depicts Oscar as the opposite of everything Trujillo stood for. This portrayal may have made Oscar seem like a weak character, but that very individuality pushed him out of the lines of normativity dictated by Trujillo to provide a healing figure for the people suffering from trauma. Indeed, the novel has profound political and social ideas about power that would be lost without Oscar as the hero. He is the type of underdog that people want to root for, and as we become invested in Oscar’s story, we simultaneously glean the deeper authorial purposes of the novel. Braun explains that when an author wants to make a point without obviously pushing an agenda, it is necessary to “find a protagonist, thereby turning a story about a concept into a story about a person” (9). Ideas and concepts are interesting to consider, but they can fall flat without human interest to push them along. Yunior is able to introduce healing ideas that reshape history through his focus

104 Spring 2021 Essais on the ordinary, nerdy, sci-fi-loving boy Oscar De León, instead of a dominant world figure from history. It is not only through the content of the story that Yunior pushes against Trujillo’s narrative to promote healing for the victims of trauma, but also through important formatting choices throughout the story. As Oscar occupies the prominent, eye-level real estate of the primary text on the page, information regarding Trujillo is relegated to the single-spaced, small print footnote at the bottom of the page. While Oscar’s mother brag- gingly compares young Oscar to a famous Dominican ladies’ man, the footnote on the same page contrastingly calls Trujil- lo, “the Failed Cattle Thief” (12n4). The contrasting portrayals such as these build Oscar up to the role of hero while tearing Trujillo down, in this case, not just to the role of thief, but an unsuccessful one at that. Footnotes are often seen as the trivial, academic tidbits unimportant enough to warrant top page notice, but factually relevant to the book. There seems to be a certain amount of preconceived validity attached to information in a footnote, even when it is so blatantly maligning a person as it does in Trujillo’s case. In conjunction with my own ideas about footnotes, Vargas points out that Yunior’s footnotes take the form of secretive messages with sensitive information which would be passed below the watchful gaze of an authoritarian regime (20). Vargas’s additional insight reflects the way truth was passed subversively and lends an element of vital importance to the messages imparted by Yunior. By subverting Trujillo’s authoritarian power and relegating his importance to footnote status, Yunior is able to heal trauma by questioning Trujillo’s power and creating conspiratorial feelings of opposition that were previously denied to his victims. Through its unlikely protagonist and unconventional style, Oscar Wao lends a voice to the silenced and oppressed who had been unable to speak for so long. Yunior is speaking for people, like Oscar, who were unable to tell their stories. He is rejecting the history that had defined the Dominican diaspora, exchang- ing their identity for their safety. By speaking for those lost voices, Yunior is helping to free them by giving them back their

105 “Trawling in Silence” Hewlett identity. Amplifying the power of his emancipatory words, the book is interspersed with purposeful blank pages. Laden with meaning, the blank pages speak volumes with no words. The pages represent the suffering that was silenced by the Trujillo regime and the unknown future felt by the people who suffered because of it. Complementing Laub’s claims that the person hearing and bearing witness to trauma becomes part of the trauma themselves, Jones insists that the blank pages also function to draw the reader into the resolution of the novel (282). The blank pages are full of possibility. They can mean whatever the reader thinks they mean. Yunior dictates the history throughout the novel, but with the open-ended possibilities in the blank spots, it suggests alternatives that wouldn’t exist in the Trujillo dictatorship and illustrates the difference between an author and authoritarian. At the end of the book, there is a blank of sorts where Yunior has left possibilities open with the thought, “Nothing ever ends” (331). The open ending is intriguing because it goes against typical ideas of narrative. Jones addresses this inconsistency, noting an interview with Junot Díaz where he asserts that “only the reader can provide the most important, final part of the story” (293). Giving the reader, who is part of the healing journey, a voice in the outcome of historical injustice is the perfect countercurse, or “zafa,” against the curse brought by the oppression and lack of freedom in a dictatorship. By looking at The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Waoand the associated scholarship through the lens of experts Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, and Dori Laub, who are removed from ideas about the novel itself, we are able to gain a theory-based insight into the relationships Díaz outlines between power, narrative, and healing which adds nuance to the existing scholarship on these subjects. What Foucault, Barthes, and Laub ultimately allow us to see more clearly is that Trujillo was a dictator who removed possibilities from the reach of the people of the Dominican Republic; he wanted to control every aspect of the truth. Moreover, these theories show how Yunior counters Trujillo’s abuse because he creates possibilities; he gives

106 Spring 2021 Essais an alternative version of history and provides a healing voice that didn’t exist before. When reflecting on the reason things happen the way they do, whether fate is defined by a curse, personal choice, or just bad luck, Yunior answers: The only answer I can give you is the least satisfying: you’ll have to decide for yourself. What’s certain is that nothing’s certain. We are trawling in silence here . . . a silence that stands monument to the generations, that sphinxes all attempts at narrative reconstruction. A whisper here and there but nothing more. (Díaz 243) There will always be questions and trauma in life, but nothing is set in stone. Yunior’s narrative power in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao shows us that history, power, trauma, and truth are capable of being reinvented.

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Works Cited Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Translated by Annette Lavers. Hill and Wang, 1972. Braun, Joshua A. “The Imperatives of Narrative: Health Inter- est Groups and Mortality in Network News.” American Journal of Bioethics, vol. 7, no. 8, 2007, pp. 6-14. EBSCO- Host. Díaz, Junot. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Riverhead Books, 2007. de Gaulle, Charles. The Edge of the Sword. Translated by Ge- rard Hopkins. Faber & Faber, 1960. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. Translated by Alan Sheridan. Pantheon, 1977. Gantz, Lauren Jean. “‘Nothing ever ends’: Archives of Written and Graphic Testimony in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” ARIEL, vol. 46, no. 4, 2015, pp.123-153, Gale General OneFile. Heredia, Juanita. “The Dominican Diaspora Strikes Back: Cultural Archive and Race in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Won- drous Life of Oscar Wao.” Hispanic Caribbean Literature of Migration Narratives of Displacement, edited by Vanessa Perez Rosario. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, pp. 207-221. Jones, Ellen. “‘The página is still blanca’: reading the blanks in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” His- panic Research Journal, vol. 19, no. 3, 2018, pp. 281–295, EBSCOhost. Laub, Dori. “Bearing Witness or the Vicissitudes of Listening.” Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, by Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub. Rout- ledge, 1992, pp. 57–72. Vargas, Jennifer Harford. “Dictating a Zafa: The Power of Narrative Form in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” MELUS, vol. 39, no. 3, 2014, pp. 8–30. JSTOR.

108 109 Mate (photography) by Kirby Bolick

110 The Blindness of Abundance and the Pathology of Misinformation

Drake Hansen

In light of ongoing resistance to common-sense public health measures prolonging and exacerbating the toll of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is clear that online misinformation is, quite literally, a life-threatening matter. With lives on the line, the fundamental question is how to counter it. Before we can respond, though, we must understand what enables the distribution and uptake of misinformation at this unprecedented scale. Using ideas of seeing and being seen from Michel Fou- cault’s Discipline and Punish, I will explore the environment in which misinformation grows, how it spreads, and how it may be treated. By examining digital systems which may be labeled as ‘panoptic,’ it becomes clear that content-sorting algorithms—necessitated by the overabundance of consumable media—amplify and encourage misinformation. 1. Panopticism Michel Foucault derives his broader theory of panopticism from Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, an architectural design for a building in which its subjects are kept in stacked rings of individual cells, all visible to a central tower. Foucault explains that “the major effect of the Panopticon [is to] induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the

Essais vol. 11 no. 1 | Spring 2021 Blindness of Abundance Hansen automatic functioning of power” (201). He reads the power relations between the invisible observer(s) in the central tower and the infinitely perceptible inmates of the Panopticon as representative of the structures of power in modern disciplinary societies, or what he calls the “indefinitely generalizable mechanism of ‘panopticism’” (216), claiming that “our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance” (217). In recent decades, with the advent and widespread adoption of global internet systems, scholars have connected panopticism with the almost complete surveillance made possible by these new com- munications technologies. Though they often come to differing conclusions, these writers all seem to recognize the similarly all-encompassing nature of both structures. Writing in 2002, Tom Brignall presents a linear connection between the internet and panopticism, arguing that “if Internet service providers or police agencies randomly monitor Internet users, then the Internet begins to share similar properties with the panopticon prison structure” (3), worrying that “a tight form of social control could be exercised over those who choose to use the Internet as a main source of information, communication, research, product purchasing, and community building” (7). Internet control systems do share surface-level similarities with traditional panopticism, but the ensuing years of development seem to have led us away from the panoptic mechanisms of control. A more complex—and, perhaps, more intriguing— comparison appears in a brief article from the computing education magazine ACM Inroads, in which emeritus profes- sor C. Dianne Martin argues that the internet is a “reverse Pan- opticon” with us as its prisoners “in a metaphorical glass tower, with ‘inspectors’ in shuttered rooms all around us” (9). This re- versal provides a fascinating metaphor to move us away from a panoptic system projecting power over its captives and to the attention economy holding its captives in full view of any number of discrete silent observers. Rather than a single entity enforcing its will upon the prisoners, a multitude watches for myriad reasons, often seeking conflicting control over those on

112 Spring 2021 Essais display. Martin’s metaphor does have an important distinction from the theater and the spectacle against which Foucault was originally contrasting the panopticon—the invisibility of the audience. The reverse panopticon retains the superpositionality of observation afforded by Bentham’s architecture, but invites an unknown number of discrete observers who are unaware of each other’s presence. This understanding reflects the actual operation of internet systems where any number of different sites place trackers in your browser and build their own distinct model of your preferences and behaviors. These tracking operations raise the specter of panopticism and fears of coercion, confinement, and subjugation by oppres- sive and repressive regimes. Though these disciplinary and penitentiary structures outlined by Foucault throughout Disci- pline and Punish are prevalent in our contemporary reality, these dangerous systems are secondary to a more insidious structure. In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Niel Postman contrasts the warn- ings in the works of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, stating that, while “Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information,” “Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism” (qtd. in McMil- len 2). The dangers of an Orwellian society are much more self- evident than those of Huxley’s society of oversaturation. And yet, it is this latter society we seem to find ourselves in. Brignall, writing nearly twenty years ago, noted that “as Internet users, we seemingly have no obligation to anyone but to please ourselves” (18). Now, with practically unending streams of content, it’s becoming possible to spend one’s time consuming only that which they find pleasurable to the point that personal pleasure becomes the totality of their media intake, leaving them blind to everything else. We may understand the modern internet in terms of a blindness of excess. Rather than a lack of input, we are presented with maximal input as an infinitesimal portion of the ever- expanding billions of hours of accessible content. While it is impossible to see all of the content, so much of it is readily available and asking to be seen. In this system, the only limiting

113 Blindness of Abundance Hansen factor is the viewer’s time and attention (Williams), so content creators are incentivised to draw attention by whatever means necessary, making it increasingly difficult for the captive population to discern the legitimacy and intentions behind the barrage of inputs. The constant calls and hails of the internet may have brought about a different kind of panopticism, a pan-opticism— a cultural compulsion to view all, an ethos where the individual feels it is their responsibility to see and consume everything happening around them. As I write this, I am logged into Steam, a gaming platform, which will display a push notification in the corner of my screen whenever one of my “friends” on the service starts playing a video game, as though it’s important that I am aware of and monitor that behavior. It’s as though we are in a transparent tower and the prisoners will see if we have our backs to them; rather than the fear of being observed, we are trapped by the fear of being unobserved and, worse, failing to observe. 2. The Effects of This Reading of the Internet Taina Bucher explores the former of the two entrapping fears by presenting a striking investigation of the consequences and individual-scale effects of the Facebook algorithm which selects and orders posts for a user’s News Feed, EdgeRank. Although the application changes frequently enough that, as she acknowledges, some of her specific findings were already outdated by the time of publication (1178), Bucher identifies a different kind of blindness which problematizes panopticism via the internet: invisibility. She claims that “in Facebook there is not so much a ‘threat of visibility’ as there is a ‘threat of invisibility’ that seems to govern the actions of its subjects” where “the problem . . . is not the possibility of constantly being observed, but the possibility of constantly disappearing, of not being considered important enough” (1171). The original formulation of panopticism relies on the individual’s desire to not be seen and the violation of that wish; Bucher’s work indicates an entirely different structure which impels the individual to seek visibility. Of course, this drive to be seen—to bare oneself before

114 Spring 2021 Essais onlookers—makes easy the task of the panoptic observer; while the primary objective of content-sorting algorithms is to keep users engaged by feeding them curated material, the secondary effect of driving content creators to engage with the platform in certain ways to make themselves seen accomplishes the same goal of investing a site’s users in its panoptic web. The genius of the original architectural Panopticon is that the invisibility of its tower’s occupant(s) makes the unknow- able threat of being observed the source of its power, allowing the building to function just as efficiently without any observers, essentially automatically. The internet, though seeming to lack that threat in the minds of its general users despite most devices’ front-facing cameras, similarly carries out most of its functions automatically by means of algorithms. The weakness of algorithms is that they are mechanical systems designed as a one-size-fits-all solution to increasingly complex and ambiguous moral problems. One of the most complex problems is the moderation of violent, hateful, abusive, and otherwise harmful content. The speed and volume at which content is uploaded— not to mention the ethical complexities of human subjectivity—necessitates some level of automatic moderation. But these systems must still be built by humans full of conscious and un- conscious biases. Reporting on systems for content moderation, Baker et al. explain: Engineering the concept of harm into algorithms and automated processes requires acknowledging that science is uncertain, evolving, and must cope with the emergence of real-time data; that the concept of harm is not neutral and will vary from the standpoint of individuals and col- lectives; and that content moderation can be gamed to promote certain values, generate publicity, and foster doubt. (106) This level of ethical care is possible, but a lack of awareness seems to pervade existing, profit-motivated structures. Features of these extant systems appear to directly facilitate the dangerous spread of misinformation.

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3. Misinformation and COVID-19 In light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Ameri- can Journal of Public Health published a special issue on misinformation. In the issue’s opening note, New York State’s com- missioner of health contests that: Misinformation is especially dangerous today because of declining trust in institutions, including government, medical systems, and the press, which has created a vacuum in which science is pushed to the margins and misinformation more easily takes hold. (Zucker S269) Not only are we facing this populist shift in the broader western culture opening the canals for misinformation, but the rapidly shifting patterns of digital communication seem to have increased the transmission rates of misinformation and the ideologies which support it. Writings in and out of this special issue drew parallels between misinformation and virology. Valika et al. conclud- ed that “we must remain vigilant and objective to manage this second pandemic of misinformation” (932). Safarnejad et al. created an even more explicit link: “We showed the importance to treat misinformation (pathogen), users (hosts), and social media (environment) as an interconnected entity—the Infodemiology Triad” (S346). This idea of misinformation as disease follows on from a statement made earlier this year by the World Health Organization describing COVID-19 as a two- fold danger, both pandemic and ‘infodemic’ (Baker et al. 104). Baker et al. noted that this global warning against misinformation has placed internet “platforms under pressure to respond to false and misleading information about the virus” (104). The scale of attention being given to these problems of misinformation highlights the power of internet systems. Of course, misinformation does not require the internet. The danger of the internet is that it facilitates and amplifies the human penchant for simple solutions to complex problems; the speed at which information may be transmitted and the vast population it can contact means the problem is happening at

116 Spring 2021 Essais a much larger scale. More misinformation spreading further is bad enough, but the algorithmic systems of the internet fighting for our attention are going to push users farther and farther into circles of untruth where false narratives are all they see from “trusted” “friends.” Safarnejad et al. explored the mechanisms of online information dissemination by modeling and analyzing networks of both real information and misinformation spread on Twitter about the Zika virus in 2016, finding that the two modes of distribution were distinct: “misinformation attracted more grassroots users one after another, as opposed to more hierarchical, cascade-like dissemination in the real-information group” (S344). The simple, hierarchical spread from a major publication, organization, or official in the real-information group runs contrary to the anti-institutional thinking Zucker warned against. We can assume that because the distribution of misinformation revolves around grassroots users, many of these users fall victim to this ideology and believe their “information” is more legitimate because it comes from unverified sources. Safarnejad et al. found, specifically, that “propagators of misinformation might create an initial burst of retweets, shown as local stars in the network, which attracted more grassroots users to help pick up the trend and retweet one after another,” noting that they “did not observe such a sophisticated arrangement in the real-information group.” (S345). Misinformation’s reliance on grassroots users highlights a major weakness in our new pan-optic vision of the internet—from the tower, all the cells look the same; no wonder it can be difficult to tell fact from fiction when the only difference between the Center for Disease Control and Twitter User 867530990210 is a blue checkmark. Chou et al. summarizes many of these ideas, writing: The diversity and volume of social media facilitate the creation and maintenance of information silos by making it easy for users to self-curate their feeds and find similar content through automated algorithms. These features reduce the likelihood that individuals who are part of

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a group in which misinformation is circulating will be exposed to content that contradicts the prevailing view of their network. (S273) It’s important to note how the absolute abundance of content necessitates the content-curating algorithms that exacerbate these silos. When practically the entirety of the contemporary human experience is available to be consumed through online platforms, the simplest way for the algorithms to keep a user on their site is to feed them more of the same. This level—and culture—of abundance affects more than just social media users. Valika et al. found that “in the month of March, nearly 1800 peer-reviewed articles were published regarding COVID-19. The following month, that number peaked at 5600, averaging almost 200 articles daily” (932). Some of these findings speak to issues in academia—particularly the academic sciences—which are beyond the scope of this exploration, but they suggest that academic research is subject to the pan-optic ethic that everything must be seen and must be said. And this overwhelming mass already exists, just by taking into account peer-reviewed research; Baker et al. warn that “issues around accuracy are confounded not only by emerging data . . . but the accessibility of pre-prints not yet subject to peer review and medical papers based on unreliable data” (104). How much more crowded is the space with the inclusion of untested, unreliable, and untrustworthy data? Again, a full exploration of these phenomena would pull away from this exploration of the internet, but it’s important to establish that these issues exist to some degree outside of general social media platforms, especially when a lot of misinformation originates in erroneous claims in, or erroneous interpretation of, academic papers (104-5). These problems in the sciences filter down. Writing about information distribution during the COVID-19 pandemic, Valika et al. explain: In a time of widespread immediate access, conflicting advice and data lead to an overly informed public, which translates to a worried and uninformed public. We are

118 Spring 2021 Essais

bombarded with contradictory headlines: practice social distancing; promote herd immunity; there is no cure; there are many cures. With little time to discern due to an underlying current of distraction—heightened by the daily stresses of navigating life during a pandemic—even highly educated individuals lack the mental stamina to process the emerging facts and fictions. (932) The realities and the culture of overabundance saturate our daily lives. There is so much information that it starts to look the same, and, as conflicting information, legitimate and illegit- imate, vies for attention in the same space, it melts into white noise: it becomes more and more difficult to see anything but static. 4. Conclusion So what can we do? Based on the current narrative about the grassroots spreaders of misinformation, presenting real information wouldn’t be of any use: “psychological factors, including emotions and cognitive biases, may render straightfor- ward efforts to counter misinformation by providing accurate information ineffective” (Chou et al. S273). As such, a different response is necessary. In light of Foucault’s original work on panopticism, I was surprised that, as solutions, many of these writers discussing the ‘infodemic’ encouraged increased and more targeted surveillance. Chou et al.’s first recommendation for resisting misinformation is to “ENHANCE SURVIELLANCE” (S273), but, as they further specify their meaning, they primarily seem to be calling for research of misinformation distribution on un- and understudied platforms. Taking data from their network analysis, Safarnejad et al. are more clear in their recommendation, suggesting that “these quantitative metrics could be utilized by health informaticians to develop more accurate info surveillance and misinformation detection systems” (S345). The initial instinct of those tackling misinformation seems to be to build algorithmic systems in response to these issues which we have attributed to algorithmic systems. While constructing such

119 Blindness of Abundance Hansen systems carefully and effectively may return the hoped-for result, it seems misguided to perpetuate the problematic structure without addressing its inherent dangers. There is a more promising possibility. Safarnejad et al.’s second recommendation is to increase literacy so that people “frequently update their knowledge about the health issues, instead of merely being told whether a piece of information is real or not” (Safarnejad et al. S345). More broadly, the solution to misinformation in the pan-optic internet may be literacy and critical consciousness, or, as Paulo Freire put it, teaching “consciousness as consciousness of consciousness” (79). If we could collectively foster greater critical awareness, we may be primed to overcome the traps and pitfalls of new media. And we may already have the tools to do it. The internet’s greatest danger may also be its greatest strength—the rapid transmission of ideas. Brignall, despite being skeptical himself, poses an important, and hopefully impelling, question: “Is the distribution and dissemination of ideas sufficient to foster and create a social revolution?” (15).

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Works Cited Baker, Stephanie Alice, Matthew Wade, and Michael James Walsh. “The Challenges of Responding to Misinforma- tion During a Pandemic: Content Moderation and the Limitations of the Concept of Harm.” Media International Australia, vol. 177, no. 1, 2020, pp. 103-107. Brignall III, Tom. “The New Panopticon: The Internet Viewed as a Structure of Social Control.” Theory & Science, vol. 3 no. 1, 2002, pp. 1-22. Bucher, Taina. “Want to Be on the Top? Algorithmic Power and the Threat of Invisibility on Facebook.” New Media & Society, vol. 14, no. 7, 2012, pp. 1164-80. Chou, Wen-Ying Sylvia, Anna Gaysynsky, and Joseph N. Cap- pella. “Where We Go From Here: Health Misinformation on Social Media.” American Journal of Public Health vol. 110 no. S3, 2020, pp. S273-S275. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. Translated by Alan Sheridan. Vintage-Random House, 1995. Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Translated by Myra Bergman Ramos. Continuum, 2005, pp. 71-86. Martin, C. Dianne. “The Internet as a Reverse Panopticon,” ACM Inroads, vol. 4, no. 1, 2013, pp. 8–9. McMillen, Stuart. “Amusing Ourselves to Death.” Recombi- nant Records, 2009. Safarnejad, Lida, et al. “Contrasting Misinformation and Re- al-Information Dissemination Network Structures on So- cial Media During a Health Emergency.” American Journal of Public Health vol. 110 no. S3 (2020): S340–S347. Valika, Taher S., Sarah E. Maurrasse, and Lara Reichert. “A Second Pandemic? Perspective on Information Overload in the COVID-19 Era.” Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery, vol. 163, no. 5, 2020, pp. 931–3. Williams, James. “Stand Out of Our Light.” TED: Ideas Worth Spreading. 12 Sep. 2017, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=MaIO2UIvJ4g. Accessed 22 Apr. 2021

121 Zucker, Howard A. “Tackling Online Misinformation: A Crit- ical Component of Effective Public Health Response in the 21st Century.” American Journal of Public Health, vol. 110, no. S3, 2020, pp. S269–S269.

122 Oh to be there Again (altered photo) by Pat Debenham

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