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HYPER-MASCULINITY: the Construction of Gender in the Postmodern Novel

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HYPER-MASCULINITY: the Construction of Gender in the Postmodern Novel HYPER-MASCULINITY: The Construction of Gender in the Postmodern Novel PhD Thesis - Ruth Helyer Department of English Literary & Linguistic Studies University of Newcastle upon Tyne Supervisor - Professor Linda Anderson September 2001 ~NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 201 12638 3 Acknowledgements Numerous friends and colleagues have, in all kinds of ways, helped me to complete this thesis. However, I must specifically thank Linda Anderson for her sensitive and intelligent supervision and her good humour. To Jan Hewitt and Chris Thurgar­ Dawson I am indebted for meticulous proof-reading, and to Clare Bulman for being a great book supplier. Thanks also to John Beck, for his stimulating criticism, and to students too numerous to mention who never fail to inspire me with their questions and comments. Without the grant I was awarded from the Runciman Fund, by the University of Newcastle, I would not have been able to undertake this project. Most importantly, I am forever grateful to Neil, Max, Megan, Pip and George Helyer for their unstinting support in every way, also Jim and Betty Allen. I dedicate the results of the hard work of the last three years to my good friends Nosebag, Scooter and Peri. September 2001. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION p. I SECTION ONE - VINELAND p.31 SECTION TWO - WHITE NOISE p.72 SECTION THREE - UNDERWORLD p.IIS SECTION FOUR - AMERICAN PSYCHO p.162 SECTION FIVE - GLAMORAMA p.208 CONCLUSION p.2S1 BIBLIOGRAPHY p.2S9 ABSTRACT Hyper-Masculinity: The Construction of Gender in the Postmodeln Novel This thesis takes as its subject the superficial nature of the nonnative masculine gender role. To investigate the creation of this role I have attempted to bring some understanding of recent theorisation of the postmodem, and of gendered identity, to readings of selected contemporary fiction. I have chosen to focus on several contemporary American texts. In a bid to avoid essentialising masculinity ever further I attempt to embrace the self-reflexive way in which these novels are written in conjunction with the various postmodernisms posited by Fredric Jameson, Jean-Francois Lyotard, John Frow and Jean Baudrillard. Despite differing in significant ways, these critics all explore the idea of multiple identities. The lack of fixity this mUltiplicity fosters ensures that masculinity as an intrinsic given becomes disputed. 'The dialogues this creates reveal a category that is insecure, mobile and fluctuating, regardless of attempts to present it as otherwise. 'The first novel looked at is 'Thomas Pynchon's Vineland. This narrative encourages the questioning of the 'standard' masculinity adopted in patriarchal society by displaying men vulnerable to Post Traumatic Stress disorder, hysteria and madness, due to the war in Vietnam and governmental law enforcement. Masculinity is portrayed as tentative, provisional and impossible to maintain to society's exactmg requirements. Psychotherapy is shown to confusingly both offer a fixed and stable 'self, whilst also promoting the encouragement of potential multiple other' selves' . Don DeLillo's White Noise continues the search for these 'selves'. Jack Gladney's debilitating fear of death compromises his mental and physical health. His strivings to deal with this, whilst also fulfilling various strands of the desired male stereotype, are explored through life-threatening disasters, usually pre-empted by rapidly developing technology. Jack's career in academia raises questions about the circulation of knowledge and infonnation. Like Vineland, White Noise also examines the role of the family unit as an inherent part of the enforcement of standardised identities. 'The Family', both in its domestic fonnat and via its more violent reincarnation as The Mafia, plays a vital role in all of these texts. Within DeLillo's Underworld (Section Three), the protagonist's therapy brings him away from the influence of The Mob, transfoITIling him from murderer to upstanding citizen. His career in Waste Management provides a metaphor for the text's exploration of the manner in which abject matter is expulsed as part of a bid to confonn to societal requirements. I draw upon Julia Kristeva's work on abjection in this section. The ritualistic nature of what is discarded and what revered is further explored in the fourth novel, Bret Easton Ellis's Alnerican Psycho. This text offers an extreme picture of the potential results of stereotypical containment, with a protagonist who is determined to hyper-confonn. Patrick Bateman not only espouses the thorough commodification of society, he also strives to exceed every stipulation pertaining to r consummate maSCUlinity. Bret Easton Ellis's Glmnormna, provides the material for the final chapter, it offers a chilling portrayal of surface-obsessed society. Mediated images of celebrities provide role models for the characters' identity fonnation. Postmodemity's purported lack of depth is eAl'lored in the light ofBaudrillard's theories. The potentialities of the cybernetic post-human are raised and discussed via the theorisation of Lyotard and Donna Haroway. The texts were selected for their usefulness in demonstrating a developing notion that rather than forming a new or extended sense of masculinity, men are acknowledging a growing awareness of the self-conscious, perfonnative, indeed 'hyper', nature of any masculine identity. Contemporary films and television programmes are examined alongside the novels. INTRODUCTION 'The more I learn about the world, the more I feel we are fed a bunch of crud about who we are supposed to be.' 1 I intend to investigate the nonnative masculine gender role by reading contemporary fiction through an understanding of recent theoretical debate about gendered identity and the postmodem. Rather than accepting what had largely passed as a 'naturalised' masculinity, much recent fiction suggests it is an insecure construction in need of investigation. Alert to the dangers of further enforcing boundaries whilst discussing, even contesting, them I will explore texts selected for their self-reflexive properties and ability to question the limits, boundaries, targets and ideals that identify men. My sources include novels by Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon and Bret Easton Ellis. These texts, which intersect but also challenge each other, provide a series of localised narratives, offering insight into the ways in which masculine identities are fonned, reproduced and undercut and the ways that the illusion of an enduring gendered self is created.2 I have chosen narratives which celebrate the refusal of borderlines, yet present hyper-masculine characters tom between upsetting the status quo and confonning to it. The men in these novels display the inadequacy of . stereotypes whilst also admitting that the concept of individuality is flawed and not sustainable. Fiction potentially provides a sit~ where restrictive societal 'nonns' such as a standardised masculinity may be enforced. Tania Modleski discusses the complicity of some writing in the creation of an approved way of living. She points out the 1 difficulties involved in entering into any narrative, a place she deems a fictional 'world': A world .. .in which the very notion of a stable "identity" functions as part of an oppressive ideology, the regressive, falsely reassuring qualities of narrative were condemned precisely because they lulled us into complacency, suturing us into a spurious sense of identity and wholeness.3 Rather than aiding social conditioning, however, literature can also provide an arena in which to scrutinise it. Instead of replacing one defunct narrative with an equally invalid alternative, the novels discussed below all display the insecurity of masculinity without offering a replacement. Instead they display an emergent male self-consciousness, formed by men's growing awareness of the performative nature of their role. The male body is depicted in these narratives as one that is in crisis; disintegrating, abject, traumatised and hystericised. These are novels with the potential to be more interesting than the theories applied to them, as their characters act out what the theorists struggle to describe, and facilitate a focusing on gender relations which said theorists avoid. Postmodern theory generally fails to confront its own impact on normative gender constructions, as commented on by E Ann Kaplan in the introduction to Postmodernism & its Discontents. Kaplan, in her useful summary, points out that Arthur Kroker, David Cook, Fredric Jameson, Jean Baudrillard, Andreas Huyssen and others all fail to address 'the important implications of postmodemism for gender issues,.4 The characters within these novels offer vignettes of contemporary life which in many ways translate the chaos of existing within the postmodern present in a more lucid manner than the majority of postmodern theorists. The fluid and manifold nature of postmodernisms erodes the underpinning of established rules by pointing out the constructed constitution of such rules, whilst adhering to them in a mocking, self-aware way. This has profound implications for 2 the construction of a masculine stereotype as no alternative way of functioning is suggested. Understandings of what postmodernism represents or explains vary considerably. For the purposes of this study, I have chosen to look at seminal essays by Fredric Jameson, Jean-Francois Lyotard, John Frow and Jean Baudrillard, writers who offer differing explanations, even identities, for the postmodern condition. The Marxist critic, Fredric Jameson, describes
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