Ladies and Gentlemen, Everything I've Done for You
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“Ladies and gentlemen, everything I’ve done for you, really I was only fooling. This is really me, and we’ll be right back.” Between Liminality and the Liminoid: The Continuum of Cultural Resistance in the Performances of Andy Kaufman A Thesis Presented by Eloise Victoria Grills 329175 The School of Culture and Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in the field of English ENGL40019 in the School of Culture and Communication at The University of Melbourne Supervisor: Associate Professor Peter Eckersall October 2011 1 Eloise Grills 329175 English Honours Thesis Requirement ABSTRACT This thesis has been stimulated by a critical interest in Andy Kaufman (1949-1984) a performer whose work relentlessly defied classification. I have chosen to examine Kaufman’s work through the concepts of liminal ritualistic and liminoid expressive forms theorised by anthropologist Victor Turner (1920-83), in order to assess the efficacy of using these as a framework for decoding the cultural politics of performance. I will suggest that liminal point in the indoctrination ritual can be utilized as a model for popular entertainment forms, as they have replaced rituals of indoctrination in late Capitalist societies. I assert that the television broadcast has remediated and replaced these forms, becoming the primary authority in the articulation of cultural values. I will also examine Turner's concept of the liminoid cultural form, as that which overtly opposes the hegemony imposed through the liminal ritual. I will apply these to Kaufman's performances, suggesting that he mimics and manipulates the tropes of liminal rituals, including the stand-up performance, the variety television show, and the wrestling spectacle, while resisting their instrinsic purpose, to reinforce dominant texts. I will argue that the power of his performances lies not in a singular extreme political strategy but in his usage of the fluid of the performance medium to exploit and move within the gaps and contradictions in discursive structures, thus remaining irresolvable within culturally sanctioned cutural categories. This analysis renders the binary configuration of Tuner's theory problematic, and suggests the necessity for a more expansive theory for performance, one which acknowledges and can fluctuate to accommodate the flux of its formal resistance strategies. 2 Eloise Grills 329175 English Honours Thesis Requirement CONTENTS 1. Introduction......................................................................................................... 2. Chapter I: On Liminality, Television, And Play................................................. 2.1: The Liminal............................................................................................. 2.2: Aspects of the Liminal Ritual................................................................... 2.3: Techniques Of Liminal Pedagogy:............................................................ 2.4: The Social Construction of the Liminal Subject........................................ 2.5: TheLiminoid............................................................................................ 2.5: Kaufman and The Liminoid...................................................................... 3. Chapter II: On Kaufman, the Liminal and the Liminoid................................. 3.1: Approaching Andy Kaufman.................................................................... 3.2: Andy Kaufman and the Symbolic Culture Monster................................... 3.3: Andy Kaufman and the Anthropology of Stand-up................................... 3.4: Andy Kaufman, Liveness, and the Liminal Television Screen..... 3.5: Andy Kaufman and the World of Wrestling.............................................. 3.6: Terminally Liminoid: Andy Kaufman Gets Kicked Off Television 4. Chapter III: Conclusion...................................................................................... 5. Bibliography........................................................................................................ 6. Filmography......................................................................................................... 3 Eloise Grills 329175 English Honours Thesis Requirement INTRODUCTION This thesis aims to participate both within established scholarship that relates directly to Kaufman, and within the theoretic tradition surrounding the concept of the 'liminal' in anthropological theory, in order to associate him within a broader performance studies framework. Little critical attention has been given to Kaufman by either entertainment or performance art theorists (barring Auslander 1997; Keller 2005). By approaching his work through an application of the theory of liminality, which in itself is a an established trope in performance studies, I am offering an original insight into Kaufman's work and placing him more squarely within a scholarly tradition. My methodology has largely been inspired by a tradition introduced in late twentieth century performance studies discourse where theorists began to borrow heavily from anthropological theory in order to form a basis for intercultural assertions about human performance. The most important of these to my theoretic approach to my thesis is the work of director Richard Schechner (Schechner 1985), who pioneered this cross-disciplinary approach in performance studies in his navigation of anthropological theory in the 1960s, and furthering this precedent for a dialogue between these disciplines through his continued collaborations with the anthropologist, Victor Turner. The original intervention in my method will be in how I apply these to my chosen case study, the performances of Andy Kaufman. In the first chapter I examine the notion of liminality as theorised by Turner (1964, 1969, and 1979), assessing Turner's definition of the liminal ritual, before I use it as a paradigm for processes of cultural indoctrination which are realised in 4 Eloise Grills 329175 English Honours Thesis Requirement mediatized and performative rituals in modern societies. I will also extrapolate Turner's later exploration of the evolved element of the “liminoid,” in greater detail, assessing its relationship and implications for the liminal ritual in this modern context, and problematising his priviledging of its overt subversive strategies to suggest that a negotiation between these two concepts is required to effectively examine performance politics. In the second chapter, I will apply these two terms, utilizing these in order to come to an argument about Kaufman's performances, and how these function as gestures of political resistance. I will closely examine Kaufman’s performance oeuvre through a selection of key performances in the genres of stand-up comedy, and wrestling, and those which occurred through the television broadcast. I will closely examine the ways in which they interact with and exploit the inner assumptions and the ideological functions of liminal ritual forms, informing this analysis through an examination of performance and media theories. I will suggest that the symbolic threat posed to cultural maxims in his performances emanates from his ability to remain relentlessly in between liminal structures and outright liminoid subversiveness a point which is further elaborated in my conclusion. 5 Eloise Grills 329175 English Honours Thesis Requirement CHAPTER I ON LIMINALITY, TELEVISION, AND LIVENESS This chapter will present a detailed overview of Victor Turner's work on the 'liminal' stage of the rite of passage. I wish to take up his hypothesis that the liminal ritual can act a universal model for cultural procedures of disseminating and indoctrinating subjects within value systems (Turner 1979: 468). I will demonstrate the appropriateness of this through decoding the liminal project within popular mass media and performance forms, which I argue have replaced rituals of initiation through enacting methods of socialization in late capitalist societies. I will look at several performance forms, but will predominantly focus on the television screen as it re-mediates and repackages previously existing liminal rituals. I will posit the television as the dominant space where the liminal ritual was staged in late modern societies. The television transmission functions as a liminal teacher, or elder, in Turner's terminology, as it both suspends and reinforces cultural values through explicit and implicit methods. I will draw the work of television theorists (McBride and Toburen, 1996; Miller, 2007; Fiske, 1987) and focus finally on Auslander, (1997), whose theories on the ontology of liveness illuminates aspects of the aesthetic construction of the liminal form, and will assist in my transposition of Turner's theory to television. I will also address Turner's later reconfiguration of the liminal in an oppositional relationship to its evolved 'liminoid' form which serves to subvert cultural values propagated through liminal ritual texts. I will problematise the binaristic trope with which he structures these, considering, alternatively, that their 6 Eloise Grills 329175 English Honours Thesis Requirement relationship, especially in a modern context, may be better characterised as a continuum which ranges from a reinforcement to a radical rejection of cultural values, encompassing diverse expressive forms and tones of resistance in between. Hence, in this formulation his theory can be helpful to us as it provides a paradigm for