CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY SAN MARCOS

THESIS SIGNATURE PAGE

THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULLFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE

MASTER OF ARTS

IN

LITERATURE AND WRITING STUDIES

THESIS TITLE: Queer Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and Sexuality in Richard

III and House M.D.

AUTHOR: Gina M Altavilla

DATE OF SUCCESSFUL DEFENSE: November 30,2010

THE THESIS HAS BEEN ACCEPTED BY THE THESIS COMMITTEE IN PARTIAL FULLFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN LITERATURE AND WRITING STUDIES. II-fO-If) Martha Stoddard-Holmes, PhD flf~S~ THESIS COMMITTEE CHAIR SIGNATURE DATE

Dawn Formo, PhD ~. 1- ~~-to-tU THESIS COMMITTEE MEMBER ~ DATE

Aneil Rallin, PhD ~t.~ ~\\l't-l n. 30, ~O THESIS COMMITTEE MEMBER SIGNATURE DATE

In order to critically rethink overlapping theoretical frameworks for considering identity, embodiment and "normalcy" offered by Disability

Studies and Queer Studies, this paper explores the relationship and dissonance of both through the medium of popular culture. In an overarching sense, I am informed by scholars like Lennard Davis and

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. According to Davis in Bending Over Backwards, the focus of Disability Studies is to re-imagine the body from the

"ideology of normalcy" to a "vision of the body as changeable, unperfectable, unruly, and untidy" (39).1 In a similar drive to question normalcy, according to Kosofsky Sedgwick in Tendencies, Queer Studies is an antihomophobic inquiry that examines sexuality and gender as unstable categories that "aren't made (or can't be made) to signify monolithically"(8). These fields share the practice of interrogating identities that are written on the body through cultural inscriptions of

"normalcy." In a culture mediated by film, television and print media, I seek to understand how stereotypical notions of sexuality as

"straight/normal" and "gay/abnormal" are perpetuated, and likewise,

. 1 Another significant component to Disability Studies, according to Davis, is the distinction between impairment and disability: "[a]n impairment involves loss or diminution of sight, hearing, mobility, mental ability and so on"; conversely, and in opposition to the medical model, disability is a "constructionist model [that] sees disability as a social process in which no inherent meanings attach to physical difference other that those aSSigned by a community" (41). 2 how "able-bodied/normal" and "disabled/abnormal" notions are drawn. As a Cultural Critic, I want to anatomize the liminal spaces between the lived realities of gender, class and disability and their representation in canonical texts and popular media. I am especially interested in treatments of disability and sexuality in Director Richard

Loncraine and actor/co-writer Ian McKellen's 1995 film adaptation of

William Shakespeare's Richard III and David Shore's current television series House M.D ..

At first glance, these characters seem drawn in terms of a set of easily identifiable (surface level) character "traits" understood in their socio-historical context. The problem with such easily identifiable "traits" is that they often reinforce problematic readings of the body. First, in order to effectively un-do historical Richards on stage and in film,

McKellen has to subvert the Elizabethan depiction of Richard as a

"Machiavel." In Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of

Representation, Ato Quayson describes Shakespeare's treatment of

Richard as a "Machiavellianism of the deformed character" that fails to reveal his instability as a fictional character. Even more compelling, performances of Richard III, past and present, often place Richard's disability "at the foreground of the action from the beginning and

[bring] together tighter various threads that serve to focalize the 3 question of whether Richard's deformity is an insignia of his villainy or the primary cause of it"-a category of representation that Quayson calls "disabled as moral deficit/evil" (42). Even contemporary film adaptations recycle unsophisticated readings of Richard and treat his body with contempt; and, in effect, these "Machiavellianisms" lose sight of Richard's complexity and equate the disabled fictional character with evil while completely overlooking his masculine and sexual appeal.2 3 Second, Dr. Gregory House's easily identifiable trait, like the "Machiavellianism of Richard III," is readily accessible to the

21 st century audience-simply put, he's a "jerk."4 The problem with

2 Fredrick Warde's1912 silent film adaptation of Richard 11/ is the oldest surviving American feature film, and there are at least eleven film adaptations according to the American Film Institute (AFI). In Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse, Mitchell and Snyder describe Warde's Richard III as a "coupling of interior motive with a 'visible cripple' (to borrow from Mark Jeffrey's phrase)" and, in effect all subsequent film productions retain Warde's "new physiognomy," or visualized narrative prosthesis. Warde treats Richard III like the "mutilated avenger" that seeks vengeance for his disability; furthermore, "portraying a strictly visual Richard 11/-0 limitation that could only transform Shakespeare's highly verbal character into a malevolent hunchback-resulted in spin-offs and revision into the next decade" (99). 3 Performances of Richard on film that remind us of the Machiavel include Laurence Olivier and AI Pacino. According to Barbara Hodgdon in "Replicating Richard: Body Doubles, Body Politics," Lawrence Olivier plays Richard as "[the] maliciously charming devil's minion, bearing the character's medieval heritage on his back [ ... ]" (216). Olivier's interpretation of Richard treats his disability as tantamount to animalistic/base and sinister/lascivious. Pacino's treatment of disability recalls his reductive treatment of the combative Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade in The Scent of a Woman where bad behavior is the hallmark of disability. Pacino's mirrored performance of Slade and Richard seems to differ only in the characters' military rank. 4 "Jerk" in the case of House M.D. does not reflect stupidity; rather, I mean to read Dr. House's appearance as a "Jerk" as tantamount to abrasive, misogynist, sexist, racist, elitist and generally unkind. Further, House's description as a "jerk" seems directly 4 House as a "jerk" is that his "jerkiness," at times, becomes a veil that renders disability invisible and subsequently marginalizes and erases iU

And, like the historical mistreatment of Richard Ill's body, Laurie must act through the litany of sexual associations inscribed on contemporary disabled bodies as asexual or deviant.6

Not unlike their capacity to subvert readily available readings of

Richard as a "Machiavel" and House as a "jerk," McKelien and Laurie move Richard and House beyond treatments of "disability" as a stable identity and as a fixed discursive device. While both Richard and

House appear the very sketches of David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder's narrative prosthesis, both characters reflect complexity beyond such a connected to the Sherlock Holmes-esque characterization from which he is drawn­ he dehumanizes patients by attempting to simply treat their diseases (the evidence) as oppose to treating the person. 5 At the October 2010 meeting of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH), an affinity group presentation on doctors in film and television evolved into a heated debate over House M.D. The group, comprised of PhDs in the humanities along with medical doctors and attorneys, focused solely on Dr. House's treatment of patients while overlooking his disability. The point is that even an audience relatively attuned to cultural constructions of disability could not see House's disability beyond his bad behavior. The conversation raises questions like "How is disability rendered invisible in popular media?" "How does House M.D. both perform and erase disability?" "How have we collectively created modern-Machiavellianisms that overshadow the complexity and indeterminacy of fictional identities?" 6lt's worth noting that these representations of disability are, in some cases, not contemporary at all. Instead, Dr. House's body is inscribed with past and present notions of disability. According to Martha Stoddard-Holmes in "Body Studies, Disability Studies, and Medical Humanities," "'disability' is written on the body by culture, and what may look like an 'essential' truth about the body (Le. blind people are more spiritual, disability diminishes you as a person) has been naturalized as such and is actually a palimpsest of many narratives of the body in the cultural local in which specific bodies exist" (1). I am particularly drawn to Stoddard-Holmes' use of "palimpsest" to describe the inscription of disability on the body throughout cultures. Mckellen's Richard, like Laurie's House, are such "palimpsests." 5 limited reading. In Narrative Prosthesis and the Materiality of Metaphor,

Mitchell and Snyder describe narrative prosthesis as the "perpetual discursive dependency upon disability" as "disability has been used throughout history as a crutch upon which literary narratives lean for their representational power, disruptive potentiality and analytical insight" (205). In other words, the disabled character becomes the driving force of narration like Dickens's Tiny Tim (the embodiment of charity); Melville's Ahab (the embodiment of monomania); Fleming's

Dr. Julius No and Ernst Blofeld (the embodiments of evil and genius).

Although McKelien's adaptation of Richard 11/ and Shore's House M.D. could be included as "narrative devices," I argue that McKelien and

Laurie's interpretations of disability and sexuality reflect a "queering" of the characters and of Mitchell and Snyder's narrative prosthesis-what

I call a "Queer Narrative Prosthesis."

First, a queer narrative prosthesis provides me, and hopefully the reader, not only with interpretative possibilities beyond "traditional" readings of embodiment, but as a critical lens to peel back historical layers of representation-Stoddard-Holmes' palimpsest, in this sense, is equally applicable to disability and sexuality. For both Richard 11/ and

House M.D., a queer narrative prosthesis shares meaning while concurrently resisting consistent or fixed defining mechanisms. In the 6 case of McKellen's performance of Richard III, McKellen reveals a more complex characterization of the king by queering him in a way that critically dislodges the Machiavel associated with the

Shakespearean text, the 1930's Fascist backdrop of Loncraine and

McKellen's film adaptation, and Elizabethan and contemporary treatments of disability and sexuality. In the case of Laurie's performance in House M.D., Laurie queers Dr. House in his instability as

"doctor" and as "patient" as well as perpetually queering the clinic through disrupting the medical model.

Second, in McKellen' s interpretation of Shakespeare's Richard /II, he ushers in a queer narrative prosthesis as a reading that assumes the ubiquitousness of disrupted identities and textual ruptures as the driving force of narration as oppose to disability alone. More specifically, a queer narrative prosthesis, in the case of Richard II/'s filmic adaptation points to slippage in disability as the discursive narrative device to the slippage in the act of interpretation of Shakespearean play/text to

Loncraine and McKellen's film and the actor's performance of a queer identity. In effect, this reading examines deformity and disability, sexuality and identity as performances that are intersected, resisted, and complicated by Ian McKelien's body narrative. Here, I am reminded of Barbara Hodgdon's reading of the work of Adrienne Rich 7 in "Body Doubles, Body Politics" in which she reminds us of Rich's argument for "writing in terms of this body, one that bears a particular politics of location"(l). For McKelien's Richard, his performance of the disabled king is susceptible to a litany of historical, literary, and filmic mistreatments of disability; his ability traverse and undermine the politics of several historical locations while at the same time queering

Richard provides momentum for Loncraine's filmic adaptation.

Third, my reading of a queer narrative prosthesis hinges on what I call "disabled-fit muscularity." Rather than define Richard, disabled-fit muscularity points to the problem of Shakespearean language and

McKelien's /Richard's performative body. Specifically, Shakespearean language that pathologizes Richard is subverted by McKellen' s adept wielding of Richard's body with the urgency and prowess of the

"able/bodied" men he endeavors to usurp. Disabled-fit muscularity also points to the in/visibility of Richard's deformity: Richard's hunch back and arm are not invisible they are only made visible through other characters incantations about them and even Richard's attention to his bodily impairments. Disabled-fit muscularity further disrupts Elizabethan notions of the body, Montaigne and Bacon's to name a few, by demonstrating the uncertainty of dis/ability in terms of

masculinity, sexuality, and power. 8 Finally, this approach to McKellen's Richard III, especially disabled-fit muscularity, reveals the disruptive potentiality of disability and sexuality in whom I view as Richard's modern-day descendant-

Dr. Gregory House. At times, representations of disability and sexuality in House M.D. appear more early modern (Renaissance) than contemporary (21 st century). The audience gets the sense that Dr.

House's ambiguous and disabled sexuality are somehow channeled into his medical insight. Conversely, Hugh Laurie's treatment of Dr.

House is disorienting-House is not merely an example of Mitchell and

Snyder's narrative prosthesis, but also an example of queer narrative prosthesis. Unlike McKellen's queering of the Shakespearean body,

Laurie queers House's body partly by usurping the medical model and partly by revealing dis/ability as an unstable identity as he fluctuates between "doctor" and "patient" and navigating all the spaces in between.

Development of a queer narrative prosthesis and disabled-fit muscularity rely on, but are not limited to, the following critical theories for their underpinning. 7 First, Richard and House are also "critically queer" and disabled a la Robert McRuer, Judith Butler and Michael

7 Because the critical theories of Queer and Disability Studies are so limitless, my reading of queerness, disability, and embodiment does not preclude or discourage others. 9 Warner. In his essay "Compulsory Able-Bodiedness and Queer/Disabled

Existence," McRuer posits that "the system of compulsory able- bodied ness that produces disability is thoroughly interwoven with the system of compulsory heterosexuality that produces queerness, that­ in fact-compulsory heterosexuality is contingent on compulsory able­ bodiedness and vice versa" (301-2). (McRuer's use of the character

Melvin in As Good as It Gets fleshes-out compulsory able-bodied ness and indirectly informs my reading of McKellen's Richard and Laurie's

House-especially when they flatten-out as characters and digress into

"traditional" notions of disability and sexuality.) Furthermore, McRuer's analysis of Judith Butler in Michael Warner's "Normal and Normaller" is another undercurrent of this paper whereby "critically queer" points to

"the inevitable failure to approximate the norm" and "severely disabled" (dovetailed from "critically disabled") functions "to call out the inadequacies of compulsory able-bodiedness" (305-6). It seems as if McKellen and Laurie channel these concepts in their performances that fail to approximate the "norm" as well as challenge compulsory heterosexuality and compulsory able-bodiedness.

Second, my reading of Queer theory, like that of author Warren

Hedges in "Queer Theory Explained," relies on the assumption that

"sexual identities are a function of representations;" furthermore, this 10 text is informed by what Richard III and Dr. House take pleasure in and how it is tied to the historical circumstances of both the text and its contemporary performance (1). According to Hedges:

Queer Theorists dispute a teleological view of sexuality

and identity, and avoid evaluating identities against the

yardstick of contemporary ones. Characters may prove

interesting precisely because they parody or disrupt

received identities, or reveal the contingencies of any

identity. This includes 'heterosexuality,' which they refuse

to view as an ahistorical and transcultural constant. (1)

Hedges' interpretation is significant to this text in that it points to

Richard's many inconsistencies connected to the Shakespeare's historical text and McKellen' s contemporary performance-most notably in wooing Anne, Richard's relationship with Tyrell, and his "I and I" monologue in Act V, Scene 3.8 Similarly, House's inconsistencies are made evident in his ambiguous sexuality that is oftentimes marginalized. For example, the viewer rarely sees House's relationships with prostitutes on camera; instead, these relationships exist on a sort-of visual the periphery made visible through House's frequent erotic

8 Richard's invocation and McKelien's rendering of "I and I" thirteen times in this monologue is also an ideal location for analysis of discourse and performance that relies on the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Judith Butler. 11 repartees with Cuddy and the team. Both McKelien's Richard and

Laurie's House disrupt the notion of "heterosexuality" as a "transcultural constant" in as much as they, for the most part, resist the interplay of compulsory able-bodiedness and compulsory heterosexuality.

Third, in my queer reading of House M.D. and Loncraine's film adaptation of Shakespeare's Richard III, I fall back on Eve Kosofsky

Sedgwick's understanding of "queer" as:

the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances

and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when

the constituent elements of anyone's gender, of anyone's

sexuality aren't made (or can't be made) to signify

monolithically. (8)

Sedgwick resonates for me in that I imagine people engaged in perpetual discursivity that does not lend itself to a unified "self"; instead, we seem incapable of forward momentum, certainty, and defining mechanisms when we're unendingly traversing embodiment defined by cultural formations of gender and sexuality. By extension, the characters of Richard III and Dr. Gregory House reflect such discursivity and resistance to monolithic notions of gender and sexuality fraught with "excesses of meaning." 12 Finally, by treating these texts as queer narrative prostheses connected by disabled-fit muscularity (among other things) I mean to explore the significance of Disability Studies and Queer Theory as relational. The purpose of this paper is what it reveals like the tension between sexualized disability and disabled queerness; the tension created in the many readings of the term queer in the absence of a fixed ontology; the tension of identities that are often incoherent and, at times, seemingly transparent; the tension between sexual sites of resistance and the absence of sexuality as it relates to queerness in a broader sense. 13 Chapter 1: Disabled-fit Muscularity: Masculinity, Sexuality, and Power in

Ian McKelien's Richard 11/

In their 1996 film production, Director Richard Loncraine and co- writer/actor Ian McKelien re-imagine Shakespeare's Richard III amid the tyranny of a Fascist state. Visually stunning, the film's 1930's fashion, accoutrements, and backdrop are fraught with political nuances that remind us of Hitler among other tyrannical political figures.9

Fascist backdrop aside, at first glimpse, Director Richard Loncraine and co-writer/actor Ian McKelien's film interpretation of William

Shakespeare's Richard III recalls the "original" disabled king; after all,

9 According to journalist Lawrence O'toole (in an interview with Ian McKe"en about his Fascist interpretation of Richard III on stage), "McKe"en's interpretation of Richard /1/ becomes more highly politicized than ever [ ... ] and while touring, the play had resonance everywhere" (4). In response to the play's resonance, McKe"en says, "Everyone in Romania assumed we [the cast] were making reference to Ceausescu. Another friend said he couldn't wait for this production to arrive at the Kennedy Center because he thought everyone would recognize George Bush in Richard "I. [sic] Or David Duke" (4). 14 the film adaptation preserves the Elizabethan language that describes

Richard's "unfair proportions" as the motivation for his tyranny: "And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover/To entertain these fair well- spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain" (1.1.27-30).10 Faced with Tudor mythology that posits Richard's deformity as an external deformity resulting in psychic immorality and a film history beginning with Fredrick Warde's "new physiognomy," or visualized narrative prosthesis, McKelien does not simply un-do Richard's performative history, he queers Richard beyond fixed readings of his fictional identity

(Snyder 102).11 In usurping Warde's film legacy that plays Richard as a

Machiavellianism of deformity (to borrow from Ato Quayson), McKelien also casts-off the idea that Richard's masculinity is a symptom of both his disability and the "supremacy of aggressive masculinity" suggested by Ian Moulton in "A Monster Great Deformed': The Unruly Masculinity

10 Although Loncraine and McKellen's fascist state is not the focus of this thesis, it both directly and indirectly informs my reading. It is important to note, however, that the filmmakers were cognizant of Hitler's aesthetic. According to Tobin Siebers in "Hitler and the Tyranny of the Aesthetic, "Hitler used 'beauty' to refer almost exclusively to the healthy, Aryan body" (98). McKellen's performance is disorienting: Richard's impairment is not invisible; on the contrary, McKellen seems to rearticulate Richard's dis/ability while he disrupts Nazi-esque aesthetics at the same time. Furthermore, McKellen and Loncraine seem to be rejecting the category of able-bodied ness in their poke at Nazism's fixation with healthy bodies. 11 Here, I rely Mitchell and Snyder's narrative prosthesis and their reading of con/figurations of Richard as "politicized disability critique[s] of representation" that reproduce contrary significations of the king as a "social burden" or a "metaphysical sign of divine disfavor" or even as the bearer of "entrenched identity (pathetic or vengeful) [ ... J" (104). Furthermore, my reading of early modem disability rests on their interpretations (as well as Ian Moulton's) readings of Michel de Montaigne and Sir Francis Bacon. 15 of Richard III. "Moulton argues that the supremacy of aggressive masculinity, or "unruly masculinity," creates an important, and incoherent, structure in the Renaissance era patriarchy: on the one hand, "unruly masculinity" is shaped by homosocial bonds created to serve the crown, while on the other hand, "unruly masculinity" places the "male elite warrior" into an awkward, and heteronormative, aristocratic courtly life (253).12 Unlike Moulton's reading of masculinity in the case of William Shakespeare's Richard III, Ian McKelien renders a more complex picture of masculinity and sexuality against the film's

Fascist backdrop and the socio-political undertones of his performance as both disabled and queer. Further, McKelien's performance disrupts Elizabethan and contemporary notions of disability and masculinity that inform my theme of a queer narrative prosthesis: the liminality of McKelien's performance shifts the

"disabled" Shakespearean body as the sole force of narration (Mitchell and Snyder's narrative prosthesis) to the slippage, or rupture, in

12 This chapter, in some ways, is a response to Moulton's concept of "unruly masculinity." I am particularly interested in, and respond to, Moulton's reading of Shakespeare's Richard III in terms of the Elizabethan's treatment of the "deformed" as pathological; further, Moulton's assertion that "masculinity is incoherent" in the early modern period is equally applicable to contemporary social constructions of gender-McKe/len's Richard exemplifies this treatment. 16 McKelien's performance of a "queered Identity" as the main discursive narrative device.13

In order to address McKelien's powerful and disruptive body narrative of the disabled king, this chapter endeavors to problematize

Shakespeare's language alongside McKelien's (and Richard's) performative body to reveal how the actor adeptly wields the hunchback king's deformity. More importantly, instead of a "material lack," McKelien thrusts Richard's misshapen body from scene to scene with urgency and prowess that reflects what I term as "disabled-fit muscularity": in spite of the Shakespearean verse that often treats

Richard's body as mere pathology, McKellen performs Richard's disabled body in powerfully masculine and powerfully sexually ways that subvert both Elizabethan and contemporary impressions of disability. McKelien captures Richard's body as having disabled-fit

Muscularity in the sense that his "disability" is nearly invisible to the audience until Richard, or foes and mother, call attention to it.14

13 Again, I rely on Hodgdon's understanding of a "queer identity" as a character that acts like a "passing narrative that masks a potentially legible gay identity with one that is illegible" (8). Likewise, Hodgdon's reading of Adrienne Rich is significant in McKelien's capacity to pluralize Richard in his performance that bears many bodies situated in the politics of multiple locations (1). 14 Mitchell and Snyder discuss an interview with both McKelien and Loncraine that elucidates their theory that: "Richard's wickedness is an outcome of other people's disaffection with his physique" (116). Mitchell and Snyder reiterate the filmmaker's claim: "McKelien contends that the play dramatizes the social outcome of cruel presumptions about disability held by the protagonist's family and associates" (116). 17 McKelien demonstrates that Richard Ill's "deformity" merely informs his social, sexual, and political lives rather than "defining" him; moreover, rather than hide his hunchback, he adorns himself in stately fashion and military regalia and wields his not-so-visibly misshapen body with the agility and prowess of the men he endeavors to usurp. In effect, disabled-fit muscularity disrupts Shakespearean discourses of disabled bodies as well as contemporary ones in its capacity to point to the instability of this fictional king's "dis/abled" identity in terms of masculinity, sexuality and power.

According to Moulton, Shakespeare's Richard III is a critique and celebration of "excessive and unruly masculinity" that "highlights the incoherence of masculinity" in his time (255). In fleshing out his thesis

Moulton points to the early modern works of Montaigne and Bacon (to name a few), and asserts that "unruly masculinity" is crucial to the preservation of patriarchy (252). Yet, in the case of the film, Richard relies more on incoherent, rather than unruly, masculinity to carry out his political machinations. Even more compelling, masculine

On the one hand, I agree that his disability is rendered visible when called attention to by family and court; on the other hand, McKellen' s treatment of Richard's self­ effacing monologue lacks a unified definitional power as it sounds like sarcasm directed at the audience as well as self-referential and self-effacing. Richard's incoherence is impart a by-product of the visual framework of the 1930's proto-fascist state and impart a by-product of the contemporarily coded urinal scene as a site for cruising-a space where McKelien displays Richard's disabled-fit muscularity. 18 incoherence in the film is reflected in Richard's disabled-fit muscularity and re-imagined physical and sexual prowess. Instead of being incapable of "sportive tricks," Ian McKe"en adeptly and gracefully moves Richard's "misshapen" body with the swiftness and prowess of a soldier/king and courtly lover/sexual conqueror; McKellen/Richard produce masculine incoherence in a performance of disabled-fit muscularity highlighted by Richard's queered opening soliloquy (a sort of cruising monologue) and Richard's sexual prowess in his graceful and ambiguous wooing of both Lady Anne and Tyre".

The opening scene is of particular interest to my reading of a disabled-fit muscularity: unlike the tuxedo-clad royalty in attendance at this courtly ball, Richard dons his military garb and skirts the periphery of the dance floor observing the royal court dancing in

1930's couture to the musical version of Marlow's poem "The

Passionate Shepherd to His Love." 15 Richard steps up to the microphone and raps on it-it squeals-and the soon-to-be king addresses the ballroom:

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious by this son of York;

15 Moulton comes to mind again in his assertion that the early modern aristocrat/warrior would have trouble shifting from masculine force on the battlefield to masculine prowess in the Renaissance court (253). 19 And all the clouds that lowered upon our house

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths,

Our bruised arms hung up for monuments,

Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,

Our dreadful marches to delightful measures (1.1.1-8).

Giving a victory speech made by a victor, Richard III is applauded by

Edward and his court-he is as much a patriarch and masculine war- hero/head-of-state as his kinship.16 Further, Richard's mere speech and gesticulation causes this court to erupt in laughter and applause-they are delighted by the man called "monstrous" in literature-here, the audience gets the first glimpse at his disabled-fit muscularity. Richard is a war-hero returned home to the politics and the theatrics of the aristocratic court.

In a similar sense, actor Ian McKelien disrupts Moulton's reading of Shakespeare's Richard III by reimagining his "deformed" body as agile and capable. In fact, we see this in his ambiguous rendering of the second half of the opening soliloquy:

161t is Richard, not his kingly brother Edward IV, who returns from the Battle of Tewksbury a hero. And, in the added opening scene, we see Richard III shoot and kill King Henry VI and his son Prince Edward. His on-stage delivery of Shakespeare's opening soliloquy in the film reminds us of the metanarrative quality of the film as well as foregrounding McKelien's Richard as worthy of elevation-a war hero and courtly rhetorician. 20 But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks

Nor made to court an amorous looking glass,

I, that am rudely stamped, and want love's majesty

To strut before a wanton ambling nymph,

I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion,

Cheated of feature by dissembling Nature,

Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time

Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,

And that so lamely and unfashionable

That dogs bark at me as I halt by them ... (1.1.23).

Director Richard Loncraine's setting for this scene (Richard delivers his lines from a men's bathroom) as well as McKelien's performance creates an entirely new reading of this portion of the text. In fact,

McKelien uses the bathroom mirror akin to a prosthetic device for simulacrum: 17 first, he looks at himself (his form); second, he stares into the mirror and into Loncraine's camera (behind him) in order to speak directly to the audience (we participate); third, his image/appearance

17 Unlike Mitchell and Snyder's use of a narrative prosthesis, in this usage I treat a prosthesis as an "artificial replacement for a part of the body"; alternatively, I mean to deploy its theatrical quality as an "object or procedure designed to alter a person's physical appearance temporarily" (OED). The reflection of Richard through the mirror (as a prosthetic device) advances my reading of simulacrum in that the mirror always reveals the copy as does the film as does the actor and as do all proceeding "Richards." Loncraine's simulacrum is disorienting, and, yet clarifies the trouble with previous performers' attempts to "authenticate" Shakespeare's Richard for which there is no "originaL" 21 of himself (McKelien's Richard) reveals, in the mirror, the incongruence of his body and the "original" discourse (Shakespeare's "Toad"). In our contemporary sense, McKelien's "mirror talk" is tantamount to the

"mirror, mirror on the wall" responding that. indeed, Richard's is "fairest of them all."18A self-reflective, self-affirmation. Furthermore, where

Shakespeare sets-up the audience for Richard's overthrow of the crown on the basis of physical deformity in Act 1, Scene 1, Loncraine and McKelien are establishing his powerful and ambiguous sexual. physical and political prowess:

... Why, I. in this weak piping time of peace,

Have no delight to pass away the time,

Unless to see my shadow in the sun

And descant on mine own deformity.

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover

To entertain these fair well-spoken days,

I am determine to prove a villain

And hate the idle pleasures of these days (1 .1 .24-31 ) .

Here, the film disrupts both Elizabethan notions and contemporary notions of the body: the scene takes place in a men's bathroom and the soliloquy is given from a urinal coded as "queer," and in this

18 The Brothers Grimm Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. 22 powerful display of power and prowess, Shakespearean verse slips in the liminal space of McKelien's interpretation. 19 According to Barbara

Hodgdon, this scene is significant in two ways: First, the film obviously

"flaunts the gest of unbuttoning and buttoning up," and bearing in mind the politics of Richard's deformity and sexuality as well as the inescapable politics of this queerly coded scene, McKelien takes real bodily risk, according to Hodgdon, in his adept rendering of Richard's ability to physically unzip and zip up his trousers (9)20. Second, "the space itself, the gents' urinal, is a place for other men and carries stereotypical connotations as a site for cruising gays" that, in effect, engages the spectator to engage in a particular politics of location that raises the question: "Is this body McKelien's or Richards?"(lO). In this scene McKelien's Richard doesn't bemoan his body, he wields it-

19 Robert McRuer's essay titled "Fuck the Disabled: The Prequel" speaks to the half public/half private aspect of this scene.loncraine shifts half of Richard's lines from the public space (the ballroom coded as heterosexual) to the private space (the men's bathroom coded as queer) (1). McRuer points to lee Edelman's characterization of the men t s bathroom as "the site of a particular heterosexual anxiety about the potential inscriptions of homosexual desire" (Edelman qtd. in McRuer 1). The contribution of loncraine's urinals coded as queer contributes to my reading of queerness as a controlling metaphor (queer narrative prosthesis) for the film as instability becomes the driving force of narration in as much as disability (narrative prosthesis). 20 Hodgdon seems to project that the modern "ableist" audience would either anticipate Richard's incapacity for such tasks as dressing as well as participate in a voyeuristic-ableist fascination with Richard's one-armed dexterity with his zipper and his penis. 23 he looks directly and seductively into Loncraine's camera21 and creates intimacy with the film audience as he gestures with his index finger to "come with me" and to see and participate-in the plots he has laid-sexual and political. Richard displays his disabled-fit muscularity-his potency-in this scene that points to the slippage in disability as the controlling metaphor, or narrative prosthesis, to the slippage of interpretation, or queer narrative prosthesis, as the discursive narrative device.

In yet another display of disabled-fit muscularity, Ian McKelien subverts the impotent Richard III for a Richard that is capable of wooing both sexes. And, unlike Elizabethan notions of power and sexuality, his wooing does not, impart, fit with a motivation to merely secure the crown (according to Moulton) in his relationships with Lady

. Anne and Tyrell. In fact, McKellen's Richard does not reveal an

Elizabethan sensibility to secure the blood-line and secure the crown until he attempts to arrange his marriage to his young niece, Elizabeth,

21 Mitchell and Snyder describe McKellen' s Richard as disrupting the power dynamic by directly addressing the audience as he stares into the camera; the outcome of his direct engagement with the audience is two-fold: one, he destabilizes the audience's reception of his Richard as "merely another physicoI spectacle;" two, "McKelien's Richard vies with his fellow actors and contemporary onlookers for interpretive authority over his own definition" (116). This is significant to my thesis in that a queer narrative prosthesis relies on the interpretive act as the site for unstable fictional identities to become queer and re-perform themselves into narrative devices that drive narration. The destabilized "authority" that Mitchell and Snyder refer to supports my claim. 24 who inevitably is betrothed to the two-dimensional Richmond in the final act of the play/film.22

In a scene that raises more questions than answers for

Shakespearean scholars in Act 1, Scene 2, Richard Ill's wooing of Lady

Anne over the corpse of her dead husband, Henry VI, is ambiguous at best. Anne is not a political pawn to Richard, and in the film adaptation she seems more the receiver of the Shakespearean

"courtly lover." The grieving sexualized widow played by Kristen Scott

Thomas stands over her dead husband's corpse in the hospital morgue as a site for morbid heterosexual courtship and queer sexual conquest.23 Thomas' performance is key to her character's wooing and subsequent subjugation and death. The modern audience cannot escape the visual beauty of Thomas and the fashionable sexualized version of Anne she interprets. As if stupefied by the uncertainty of her relationship with Richard, Anne's hand-rolled cigarette dangles from her bright red lips in stark contrast to her pearls, her mink-collared black

22 Author Barbara Hodgdon notes that Richmond was set-up as Richard's "other" (11). And, according to McKellen in Hodgdon: "We wanted an upright, handsome young man whose youth, beauty and assurance Richard could understandably envy" (11). As a viewer, Richmond, and the young Elizabeth for that matter, is too "pretty," too perfect. and too "normaL" (Richmond and Elizabeth represent the embodiments of Rich and McRuer's compulsory heterosexuality wrapped-up in compulsory able-bodied ness and vice versa.) Furthermore, it is Richmond's bride, the young Elizabeth that serves to preserve the patriarchy rather than the "handsome young man" coded as "normal" and as an acceptable heir to the throne. 23 We get the sense that there's a sort of death of heteronormativity established by this scene in the death of Henry VI and Anne's subsequent desire for Richard. 25 coat and her statuesque femininity. The audience gets the impression that Anne's feminine power and sexual prowess is taken by, almost absorbed by, Richard's intense masculinity that claims her and later rejects her-especially when we witness her frequently drinking, pill­ popping, and injecting heroin in order to numb her queer attachment to her ambiguous and sexually powerful king.

Likewise, McKellen's rendering of Richard-as-courtly-Iover contradicts his claim that he " ... cannot prove a lover" in Act 1, Scene

1. With the physical prowess and dexterity of his courtly peers,

McKellen's Richard stands beside Henry's corpse in the hospital morgue across Lady Anne. Richard's appearance is stunning and graceful. He wears a military uniform and carries himself with ease despite his hunchback and deformed hand (frequently kept in a pocket or inside a glove). Like Hodgdon, I agree that Richard's skillful wooing of Anne and the treatment of his body are uncanny in that his

"deformity" is often made illegible by his 1930's fashion or Fascist military regalia-his "perfectly tailored fit" (8). This isn't to say that

Richard Ill's disability is played down; instead, it lacks the defining mechanisms of Elizabethan disability as "monstrous" and, in Richard's case "deformity" does not define him-it informs him. More so than ever, we see this when Richard quickly removes his leather glove to 26 wipe Anne's spit from his face, hand her a blade to kill him or he himself (if he cannot have her) and subsequently, boldly, remove his pinky-ring with his teeth and place it directly on Anne's finger:

"Vouchsafe to wear this ring" (1.2.201). McKelien's manipulation of the ring from his mouth to Anne's hand is coded for oral sex in that it reminds the viewer of the visceral nature of this act: Anne's salvia on

Richard's face, and Richard's saliva on her finger. Furthermore, Richard has already invited himself, and, by voyeuristic invitation, the aUdience, into Lady Anne's "bedchamber" (1.2.112). It is this re- imagined sexual prowess that captures Richard Ill's dynamic masculinity and sexual prowess-his disabled-fit muscularity. Further, despite Anne's Elizabethan repulsion for Richard Ill's disability when she proclaims him "[... ] thou lump of foul deformity" (1.2.57), the contemporary Richard presents himself as a suitable, fit, war-hero worthy of wooing an enemy's widow as an entitled "courtly-lover."

The musical closing to Act 1, Scene 2 in the film Richard III culminates Richard's disabled-fit muscularity in McKelien's ability to interpret this scene as a celebration of his Richard's sexual prowess and knightly conquest on and off the batflefield.24 More importantly, the

24 Richard /1/ scholarship often points toward the ambiguity of Richard's marriage to Anne. In McKelien's interpretation, the viewer gets the sense that Richard's masculinity is more incoherent than unruly (according to Moulton). So, instead of a 27 images of Richard in this scene are striking in comparison to other film adaptations in McKelien's display of ambiguous sexual and physical prowess in his cheeky dance down the hospital corridor lined by wounded soldiers. We see him gracefully ascend the stairs from the morgue and replace his glove with ease, and, once again, Richard becomes intimate with the audience in this scene and draws us into his plots:

Was ever woman in this humor wooed?

Was ever woman in this humor won?

I'll have her, but I will not keep her long.

What, I that killed her husband and his father,

To take her in her heart's extremist hate,

With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes (1.2.227-33).

It is as if we, the audience, are complicit in Richard's sexual conquest.

He charms us with his playful masculinity and nimbleness in this scene that, in stark contrast, he becomes a fit war hero and a courtly lover against the backdrop of maimed soldiers lining the hospital corridor:

I'll be at charges for a looking glass

And entertain a score or two of tailors

focus on attaining the crown through marriage, Richard operates outside anticipated aristocratic norms and seeks marriage in what can only be inferred as marrying Anne for pleasure. 28 To study fashions to adorn my body.

Since I am crept in favor with myself

I will maintain it with some little cost (1.2.255-59).

McKellen delivers these lines while shaking the hands and patting the backs of wounded soldiers in a display of his aptitude in shifting from battlefield to Elizabethan courtly life and political charm. Moreover, this scene points to Ian Moulton's discussion on Castiglione's early modern

Book of the Courtier that encourages aristocratic soldiers returning to court to engage in "graceful dancing and measured speech" (253). It is as if McKellen studied Castiglione for this scene in his lively dance to a 1930's jazzy land tune as he gracefully ascends the stairs and into the light: "Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass/That I may see my shadow pass" (1.2.262-3). This reminds readers of Shakespeare's

Richard III as an unstable fictional identity that contradicts and complicates his own self-reflexive discourse of deformity in Act 1,

Scene 1, line 27: "And, descant on mine own deformity." While the filmgoer may anticipate a theme of disability discourse laid out by

Richard's Elizabethan speech, McKellen's treatment of Richard's body through this hospital corridor deflects such discourses away from his body and onto the deathly-looking, war-torn, and "maimed" soldiers 29 to whom he delivers his masculine supremacy-in effect, McKellen creates Richard's disabled-fit muscularity.

Having achieved his betrothal with his adept wooing, Richard seems soon bored by Lady Anne. Although Anne's wooing, in one sense, solidifies Richard's masculine supremacy, in another sense, his ongoing sexual and political power over Lady Anne merely reaffirms the ambiguity of their union. Always fashionable in her 1930's couture, flowing red gowns, and shimmering red lips, Anne reminds us of Vivien

Leigh. Her beauty, however, is overshadowed by Richard's prowess and her subsequent emotional decline-she becomes a drug addict.

And, though the couple seems to befit heteronormative stately marriages, Anne's orgasms are visually rendered as heroin injections.

We see her riding in the car beside Richard, red gown lifted to show the top of her stockings that reveal various stages of healing bruises on her thighs, she slowly injects the heroin, tilts her head back and with a relief that recalls sexual satisfaction, pulls her dress down to cover her thighs. In his dominion over Anne, Richard's masculinity and sexuality are seemingly capricious, yet Loncraine seems to be setting us up for a sort-of heteronormative crisis in the Elizabethan aristocracy.

In the film scene "His Brother's Killer," Richard, for his part, demonstrates that he has no desire to fulfill his wife's visibly visceral and 30 pathologized sexual desire. Richard's sexual dominion and Anne's unrequited desire in this scene are easily read as masochistic/sadistic.

Richard dominates and represses Anne's sexuality, and, in the process, he gets pleasure in reaffirming is already powerful masculinity.

( S)_

In this scene, Richard's misshapen back becomes markedly legible as he approaches Anne in her silk negligee-she is visibly aroused.

Richard acknowledges her sexual desire, turns off the light, and walks away. We see Anne covering herself with her robe as she ascends the staircase. Visibility in this scene reiterates Richard's disabled-fit muscularity: first, Anne, for the first time and unlike previous Anne's, shows her sexual attraction to Richard as well as to the voyeuristic audience; second, McKellen's slow approach toward Anne on the stairs gives us a glimpse at their intimacy-he knows her look of desire; third, Anne's attempt at initiating heterosexual sex is thwarted by 31 Richard's even more powerful disabled-fit muscularity. Richard's sexuality is not "erased" {to borrow from Snyder} as he doesn't occupy a sentimentalized disabled body; on the contrary, Richard refuses compulsory heterosexuality in demonstrating his dominion over compulsory able-bodied ness in his disabled-fit muscularity. Moreover, this significantly re-imagined interpretation of Shakespeare by

Loncraine moves beyond the disabled body as metaphor by showing the viewer the sexy embodiment of disability-a queered and destabilized identity.25

While Moulton may argue that the soldier turned courtly lover is clumsy in his inability to woo, McKelien's Richard demonstrates his capacity for prowess beyond the battlefield. Likewise, McKelien's re- imagined relationship with Tyrell solidifies his capacity to woo. In another act of seduction and power, McKelien exercises Richard Ill's body in incoherent and queer performances in his interactions with

Tyrell. It's as if McKelien channels contradictory notions of sexuality and deformity in Elizabethan England while concurrently resisting them, playing them out, and queering them. For example, Montaigne argues that "the disabled of both sexes have superior sexual abilities and

25 Tobin Siebers' Disability Theory provides a deeper analysis of "a sexual culture for disabled people" that indirectly informs my reading of Richard III and more directly that of House, MD. 32 enlarged genitals" and, conversely, Bacon asserts that "physical deformity is a sign of perverse desire" (Moulton 264-5). Bacon goes further to say that "deformity is an advantage to rising [in social standing]" (Moulton 265). Although these Elizabethan models of disability and sexuality are both antiquated and repressive, we see like models acted out in contemporary popular culture.26 McKelien merely plays with, toys with, Bacon and Montaigne's disability, sex and power; on the other hand, he continues (as in the queered opening scene and his relationship with Anne) to embody disabled-fit muscularity in his relationship with Tyrell.

Tyrell's role in Richard's disabled-fit muscularity is especially apparent in the films scenes: "Getting His Man," "His Brother's Killer," and "Likely to Die." Tyrell is not merely Richard's able-bodied minion, he is a prosthetic or enhancement or extension of self in order for

Richard to carry out the machinations that he cannot achieve-not physically but politically. 27 Richard must kill his kin to secure the crown,

26 Dr. Gregory House (House, MD); Dr. Julius No (James Bond series); Darth Vadar (Star Wars) to name a few. 27 Unlike Mitchell and Snyder's narrative prosthesis, I deploy the term "prosthesis" as it applies to Tyrell to reflect Tyrell as an organic prosthesis capable of carrying-out Richard's political machinations. Instead of being a "tool" for Richard, he's an extension of self that reinforces Richard's disabled-fit muscularity. Again, prosthesis (like the mirror in Act 1, Scene 1) also takes on multiple meanings as an "artificial replacement for a part of the body" and/or the theatrical quality of altering "a person's physical appearance temporarily" (OED). In this sense, "prosthesis" has the 33 and this act must be carried-out in yet another type of prosthesis-

Tyrell's body. In his relationship with Tyrell, the viewer is left wondering whether McKellen is showing us a homosocial bond, a queer relationship, or Richard's love of self (a mirror of himself-the real

"mirror, mirror on the wall").

In the added film scene "Getting His Man," Tyrell is introduced to the audience much earlier than the Shakespearean play (Act IV.2).

Instead, director Loncraine positions Tyrell as Richard's prosthesis early in the film in order for Tyrell to carry out his political machinations and move the action forward-Tyrell becomes a discursive device in this sense and an extension Richard's disabled-fit muscularity. "In Getting

His Man," Richard hardly seems "curtailed of fair proportion" when we see him walking astride Radcliffe and saluting his passing troops in search of Tyrell in the stables. In the stables, Tyrell is feeding apples to a penned boar while Richard and Radcliffe discuss the identity of Tyrell:

Richard: What is his name?

Radcliffe: His name is Tyrell sir.

Richard: [Petting and grinning at his horse] I partly know the

man.

potential to be the staging for Hodgdon I s reading of a passing narrative that renders identity as illegible-Tyrell as a prosthetic enhancement has this disorienting effect. 34 Richard: [Standing aside Tyrell at the boar's pen] Is your name

Tyrell?

Tyrell: James Tyrell, your most obedient servant.

Richard: Are you indeed?

Tyrell: Prove me, my gracious lord. [Tyrell hands Richard an apple

for the boar; and, instead of feeding the animal, Richard hits the

boar with the apple-the boar squeals much to Richard and

Tyrell's delight]

A close reading of this scene reveals the significance of Tyrell as a

"prosthesis." First, Director Loncraine seems to evoke Moulton's reading of early modern homosocial bonds. as requisite to political power.

Second, McKelien rejects the language of the bestial and the presence of the beast in Shakespeare's Richard 11/ by taunting the beast as oppose to feeding it. Richard's heraldic, the boar is often 35 associated with baseness in Richard's character;28 however, in the case of the film, the beast is rejected and Richard's actions become his own. Richard's survival doesn't rely on "animal instinct," instead his survival relies on his ability to negotiate his power and his body, or his disabled-fit muscularity; Third, McKellen, perhaps ironically, uses the phrase "I partly know the man" in reference to Tyrell and the audience gets the impression of intimacy and knowing ness that go beyond day- to-day social interactions. We get the sense that Tyrell is "like me" and

Richard knows him well-he is himself-Tyrell is Richard and Richard is

Tyrell. "Getting His Man" exposes several significant features of a queer narrative prosthesis in its capacity to redirect Shakespeare's narrative prosthesis (Richard's disabled body) with that of a complex queer rendering of yet another unstable identity-Tyrell. Further, Tyrell as

Richard's "prosthetic" advances the idea that disability is not the sole discursive device for Richard III; instead, instability is reflected in a

Tyrell/Richard symbiosis.

Richard's sort-of prosthetic reliance on Tyrell, an extension of disabled-fit muscularity, further demonstrates his reproof of the

28 Here the viewer is reminded of Margaret's curse in Act 1.3 of the play and spoken by the Duchess of York in the film: "Thou elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog." McKellen's interpretive act seems to mark him as master of the boar as oppose to the boar itself.-in effect, he separates his body from his own heraldic-the "rooting hog." McKellen and Loncraine situate the "wild" boar in a pen that further demonstrates Richard's dominance over the beast. 36 "juridical monarchy" (Foucault 89}.29 In the film we see that power isn't solely located in the (literal or political) body of the monarch, it is also located in the body of the "servant" (in this case, literal and political).

In Foucault's The Deployment of Sexuality, power is prefaced with the rejection of the historical representation of power as "the juridical monarchy" (Le. mistaking the framework of law for power) (89).

Instead, Foucault posits that power is relational and discursive and neither juridical nor hierarchical:

It seems to me that power must be understood in the first

instance as the multiplicity of force relations immanent in

the sphere in which they operate and which constitute

their own organization; as the process which, through

ceaseless struggles and confrontations, transforms,

strengthens, or reverses them; as the support which these

force relations find in one another, thus forming a chain or

a system, or on the contrary, the disjunctions and

contradictions which isolate them from one another; and,

lastly, as the strategies in which the take effect, whose

general design or institutional crystallization is embodied in

29 Although this paper gleans Foucault's notion of power, the constraints of this thesis prevent a deeper analysis of Foucault's reading of power-knowledge-sexuality as they relate to discourse and the film. 37 the state apparatus, in the formulation of the law, in the

various social hegemonies. (92-3)

Foucault's notion of relational power deconstructs hierarchical power relations and further posits that power is "exercised from innumerable points, in the interplay of nonegalitarian and mobile relations" and that

"there is no binary and all-encompassing opposition between rulers and ruled [ ... ]" (94). Richard and Tyrell's relationship is a perfect example of Foucault's postulation. One, they operate relationally rather than "from the top down." Two, they rely on one another for power-an interplay. Three, they are mirrors of each other; Tyrell and

Richard usurp the bodies of "the crown" and "the people" and, instead, exchange power outside of "the law." Fourth, Tyrell and

Richard's power-play is acted out in liminal spaces where the viewer becomes disoriented and posits the questions like: Whose body is whose? Who is king and who is servant? Who is able and who is disabled? In effect, power as a mobile relationship creates a queer narrative prosthesis in the case of the film because it disrupts the metonymic connection between real bodies (Richard/monarch and

Tyrell/servant) and represented I bodies (the crown/ the people)-a sort of queered metonymy. ------~

38 Operating as yet another type of prosthesis, Tyrell replaces

Shakespeare's "First Murderer" in the film and carries out Clarence's murder as the physical and political extension of Richard (his "right hand man"). In this sense, Loncraine reaffirms Moulton's necessary homosocial bond that anticipates sexual intimacy in the film scene

"Likely to Die." At the same time, Tyrell as an extension of Richard's disabled-fit muscularity is the "prosthetic mirror" of Act 1, Scene 1 in that he reflects a queered able-bodied mirror of self. In replacing

Shakespeare's "First Murderer" with Tyrell in the film, Loncraine solidifies his role as Richard's prosthesis in contrast to the capricious and morally ambiguous "Second Murderer."3O Tyrell ruthlessly slits the throat of the older, yet physically fit, Clarence and drowns him in Loncraine's re- imagined bathhouse in the tower of London.

30 In both the play and film the Second Murderer's ambiguity in lines 109-111 leads the audience to believe that the First Murderer (Tyrell in the case of the film) is in charge: First Murderer: What? Art thou afraid? Second Murderer: Not to kill him, having the warrant, but to be damned for killing him, from the which no warrant can defend me. First Murderer: I thought thous hadst been resolute. Second Murderer: So I am-to let him live. 39

The bathhouse scene is where the film becomes fraught with political and social commentary: visually, we cannot escape the Nazi backdrop that recalls historical queer-fear in Hitler's Germany as well as today's "don't ask, don't tell" queer-fear in our own military; 31 equally important, the bath house, a site for cruising gays, destabilizes privatized sexuality 32 This heavily nuanced and queer scene becomes a site for resistance and opportunity: First, Tyrell as the "First Murderer," even as an extension of Richard himself, further disrupts this queer space-here sex and dis/ability converge; Second, and perhaps most

31 See, for example, Desire.:. Oir. Stuart Marshall, documentary. W.B.F., Inc. 1992. Marshall's documentary explores sexuality in Germany from 1910-1945 and reveals Hitler's tyranny against homosexuals citing the slaughter of approximately 50,000 homosexuals during WWII. 32 In his conversation on the "zone of privacy," Michael Warner explains that bath houses and cruising grounds are often secluded and warrant an "( ... J assumption privacy" (176). The viewer's voyeuristic participation in Clarence's murder in the bath house draws a problematic inference between public sex and violence. 40 ambiguously, the audience is left wondering if Tyrell is familiar with the bathhouse setting in his dialogue with Clarence OR if Tyrell is the very embodiment of queer-fear and queer self-hatred when he slits the throat of the bather; Third, Loncraine's queer setting resonates in that it dislodges Foucault's "deployment of alliance"33 whereby military bodies should avoid illicit, queer, spaces that may interrupt their ultimate form of homophobia on the battlefield. Albeit an abbreviated version of Act 1, Scene 4, the nuanced environment of the bathhouse in the film has an interpretative quality that disrupts identity and queers both scene and player. A site for cruising and public sex, the bathhouse creates resistance against the backdrop of a 1930's Fascist state as tyrannous/repressive while concurrently destabilizing fictionalized Elizabethan identities-a queer narrative prosthesis.

Not unlike the scenes "Getting His Man" and "His Brother's Killer,"

"Likely to Die"(a revision of Shakespeare's Act IV, Scene 2) exposes significant textual ruptures as narrative devices for this film-namely, the uncertainty of the "juridical monarchy" according to Foucault and the heightened intimacy between Tyrell and Richard. First, "Likely to

33 In The History of Sexuality, Foucault describes this system as a set of rules that dictate lithe permitted and the forbidden, the licit and the illicit" (106). 41 Die" takes place while Richard and company view his coronation reel, a film within a film, that significantly affects a reading of "sovereignty"; in other words, where Tyrell and Richard's relationship exemplifies a

Foucauldian power relation, the reel within a reel recalls and refutes

"the juridical monarchy" as mere fiction-something to be viewed or gazed upon rather than location of hierarchal power. "The Crown" in this scene loses its metonymic currency in the meta theatrics where

Richard's sovereignty is merely an illusion. A reflection of Richard's discursivity as a character, on the one hand, he understands power as relational, while on the other hand he digresses in exercising his role in the illusory "juridical monarchy" in his plot kill his nephews and marry his niece-a "blood line" that represents "the law" and ignores Richards representational power.

Second, Richard and Tyrell's relationship expands from political prosthesis and overlapping/illegible identities to intimacy that is at times transparent and incoherent and passing and queer. In this carefully coded scene, we see the waning Anne aside Richard viewing his coronation reel while Richard directs military operations with

Buckingham, Lord Stanley, Catesby and Tyrell. Anne becomes aware of her mortality in Richard's digression into the "juridical monarchy": "I must be married to my brother's daughterJOr else my kingdom stands 42 on brittle glass" (IV.2.S9-60). For the first time, we see fear in Richard. He fears the loss of his power as a "monarch" and reminds us more of

Shakespeare's Richard than McKelien and Loncraine's-a representational digression of sorts. Moreover, the powerful narrative of the "blood line," somewhat, deflates Richard's intensity. McKellen, however, quickly recoups his Richard in his whispering proposal to

Tyrell:

Richard: Tyrell, Dar'st thou resolve to kill a friend of mine?

Tyrell: So Please you, I had rather kill two enemies.

Richard: There you have it, two deep enemies. Tyrell, I

mean those bastards in the tower. Say it is done, and I will

love you for it.

Tyrell: It .. .is ... done ... your majesty. 34

34 The dialogue is Loncraine and McKelien's screenplay version of Act IV, Scene 2, lines 68-79. 43 The quality of Tyrell's gestures over the box of chocolates is in their representational power as coded for foreplay. We get the sense that two lovers are whispering to each other over their dark chocolate aphrodisiac. There's no mistaking the pleasure Richard gets from Tyrell as both lover and political prosthesis-Richard is visibly titillated. At this point both characters become unreadable and are queered in terms of identity, representation, and performance. "Likely to Die" is opaque at times in that Richard's many inconsistencies are fraught with sexual and cultural codes that are passing acts/passing narratives that become difficult to read. While on the other hand, the representational power of uncertain identities creates an interpretive quality that reads queerness as the discursive narrative device of the film. 44 Chapter 2: Disabled-Fit Muscularity and House M.D. as a Descendant

of Richard 11/

Building on Ian McKellen' s performance of Richard 11/ and his capacity to advance a construction of disability that incorporates sexuality, I consider actor Hugh Laurie's performance of Dr. Gregory

House in House M.D. as descended from McKellen's Richard-a sort of contemporary kin.

House has an impaired leg, walks with a cane, and experiences pain associated with his impairment. The trouble with Dr. House's character is its hearkening back to Elizabethan notions of disability: his outward

"deformity" manifests inward corruption, his extraordinary power to 45 "see" his patients' complex physical conditions, and, like

Shakespeare's Richard, his ambiguous sexuality seems "enhanced" by his physical condition (according to Montaigne) or "an advantage to rising in [social standing]" (according to Bacon).35 House performs disability in a way that reminds the audience of the powerful masculinity and sexual prowess of McKellen's Richard III. Both disabled and queer, Dr. House has an intimate relationship with the audience- he reveals his "disabled insight" to the audience by staring directly into the camera.36 And Laurie, like McKellen, powerfully propels Dr. House's disabled body down hospital corridors where he battles patients' diseases with the power of the "excessively masculine" soldier with the prowess of a sexually-charged disabled body.

First aired in November 2004, House M.D. is in its seventh season.

The cast of characters includes Gregory House, MD (Hugh Laurie),

Head of Diagnostic Medicine at Princeton Plainsboro Hospital (PPH); Dr.

35 Here, I rely on Ian Moulton's reading of Sir Francis Bacon and Michel de Montaigne in a "'Monster Great Deformed': The Unruly Masculinity of Richard III." 36 Sharon Snyder and David Mitchell's Narrative Prosthesis describes Ian McKelien's innumerable direct addresses to the audience as a Brechtian tactic that destabilizes the audience's reception of McKelien's Richard as "merely another physical spectacle" (116). In fact, "McKelien's Richard vies with his fellow actors and contemporary onlookers for interpretive authority over his own definition" (116). Although House does not verbally address the television audience, his "gaze" corresponds to Foucault's "pure Gaze," or "a speaking eye" (114). In this sense, Dr. House's "speaking eye" is a language that destabilizes him as a fictional identity in his "authority over his own definition" according to Mitchell and Snyder. Simply put, House refuses to be signified. 46 Lisa Cuddy, Dean of Medicine and House's lover/companion in

Season Seven; Dr. James Wilson, Head of Oncology and House's only friend; and House's (revolving) diagnostic team, Drs. Eric Foreman,

Remy"13" Hadley, Chris Taub, Robert Chase, Allison Cameron, and

Lawrence Kutner (written out in season five). In an interview with the

Paley Center for Media, House M.D creator David Shore said that his creation of Dr. House was informed by his passion for Sherlock Holmes.

The character of Dr. House, however, is complex beyond his similarities and differences to the character of Sherlock Holmes. Although there is a resemblance to the classical sleuth, especially in House's drug addiction, I intend to disrupt such an analysis. Instead, this essay explores the disabled character House as a modern day Richard III as interpreted by Ian McKelien and to examine the disjunctions, complexities, and other interpretive possibilities the character shares with McKelien's Richard, particularly in terms of, what I call "queer narrative prosthesis" and "disabled-fit muscularity." Unlike my analysis of McKelien's Richard III, this essay specifically analyzes the way in which House M.D. disrupts the medical model of discourse and argues that medical discourse is "queered" by the unstable fictional identity of this disabled doctor. Further, although it would be easy to read House

M.D. as an example of Mitchell and Snyder's "narrative prosthesis," 47 whereby House's disability is the controlling metaphor or driving force of narration, a deeper understanding of this complex character suggests that he better fits what I call a "queer narrative prosthesis."

McKelien's interpretation of Richard 11/ has significant range in its ways to "queer" Shakespeare's text through liminality and the process of performance, Laurie, however, performs an "original" script.37 So how is the driving force of narration "queer," or a queer narrative prosthesis, in the case of House M.D.? First, in the same vein as

McKellen, Laurie thrusts Dr. House's disabled body from scene to scene with urgency and prowess demonstrative of my theory of "disabled-fit muscularity." Disabled-fit muscularity posits that "disability," in the case of Dr. House, is nearly invisible until House, his colleagues or his patients call attention to it. In other words, disability becomes more visible through verbal discourses of the body as opposed to performances of the body that are disorienting. Further, I argue, House is not defined by

"impairment"; rather, he is merely informed by it. Disabled fit- muscularity disrupts contemporary and Elizabethan discourses of disabled bodies in its capacity to point to the instability of this doctor's

37 In my work on Richard 11/, I posit that instead of disability as the sole force of narration, McKelien's Richard ushers in a queer narrative prosthesis that points to various slippages: in disability as the discursive narrative device; in the act of interpretation (from play/text to film); and in the openly gay actor's performance of a queer identity. 48 "dis/abled" identity in terms of masculinity, sexuality, and power revealed in his many queer relationships: in effect, disabled-fit masculinity dislodges a multitude of signifiers related to, but not limited to, masculinity as either "effeminate" or "unruly" and sexuality as either

"perverse" or absent, revealing power, as exemplified by these fictional characters, as relational (according to Foucault) instead of hierarchal.38

Second, Laurie's performance of "doctor" and "patient" reflects how both the body and discourses on the body (disability, for example) are inextricably linked and complex. Like McKellen, House is often illegible in the sense that he is both doctor and patient, both dis/a bled and "passing" and resisting passing. As a result, House M.D. becomes queer in its multiple sites for resistance, reading, and subverting the viewer's understanding (or lack thereof) of Dr. House's body-an unstable fictional identity. Similarly, the disabled doctor is queer in the underlying cultural association of health with physicians and sickness with patients. House "queers" the doctor-patient discourse.

38 It's important to note that many contemporary renderings of disability are not contemporary at all. House's disabled body could be simply, and reductively, relegated to Bacon and Montaigne's Elizabethan notions of disability in that he, at times, resembles them. For example, he recalls such cultural constructions as disabled persons as having insight, being harbingers of evil/corruption, or being lascivious and devious. 49 Finally, House M.D. 's use of narrative prosthesis is queered as well, partly because while narrative prosthesis theorizes the use of disability or disabled characters as a device on which narrative relies for its functioning, in House, it is disabled-fit muscularity and the disrupted/queered medical model, as opposed to disability alone, that become discursive narrative devices on which the story depends.

Furthermore, the queered medical model is connected to House's engagement (like McKelien's) with the audience--his "gaze" that brings us into the diagnostic process and medical machinations makes us complicit members of the team.

The visibility of disability is just one component of House's disabled-fit muscularity.39 In creating the television series, Co-producers

Katie Jacobs and Bryan Singer developed House as having paraplegia:

Like '60s cop Ironside, Gregory House was designed to

solve crimes from a wheelchair. "But I thank (then Fox

program chief) Gail Berman to this day for bristling at the

fact that we had him in a wheelchair," says fellow

executive producer Katie Jacobs. Having star Hugh Laurie

39 House's refusal to wear a lab coat is also a contributing factor to "visibility" as it relates to the concept of disabled-fit muscularity as well as disrupting the medical model discussed later in this text. The iconography of the white coat is central to the stability of the medical model and of medical culture more generally. 50 instead use a cane to cope with House's dead leg muscles

imparted the character a larger physical presence. Pilot

director and executive producer Bryan Singer actually

introduced House by focusing on his legs and cane before

panning up to his face -- defining him by the disability, for

which House continually gobbles painkillers. (Wert)40

Co-producers Jacobs and Singer's creative decisions reflect antiquated and contemporary understandings of disability that are ableist and reductive.41 Yet, House's disability becomes in/visible in three significant ways: first, disability is a discursive discourse that "bears a particular politics of location" (Rich qtd. in Hodgdon); second, the sometimes blurry representation of disability in House M.D. relies on what Hugh Laurie does with House's body; and third, through the illusions created by well-orchestrated camera shots.42 House's

40 Dr. Gregory House also joins a long list of disabled doctors in popular culture like Dr. Carrie Weaver (ER), Dr. Mark Greene (ER), and Dr. Albert Robbins, the head coroner of CSI. Robbins is played by actor Robert David Hall who, unlike his contemporaries, is actually disabled; he uses prosthetic legs. 41 A fictional identity "bound" to a wheelchair seems to lack power and presence in Hollywood. On the other hand, there are exceptions like the X-Men's "Magneto" and the real-life players of Murderball (to name a few). For a more thorough discussion on representation and the rhetoric of the wheelchair, see Petra Kuppers "The Wheelchair's Rhetoric: The Performance of Disability." 42 It's important to note that my reading of the "in/visibility" of disability differs from creative choices that reductively infer that to become visible, a person must be in a standing position. Also, it is likewise significant to address Singer's concept of defining House by his disability in order to advance his character through drug abuse, which seems more befitting of narrative prosthesis. 51 movement from scene to scene is significant here, because the program uses a "walk and talk" filming technique that lends a sense of urgency, movement, and prowess in Laurie's intense rendering of

House's disabled body.43 House-in-motion echoes the disabled-fit muscularity of Ian McKelien's treatment of Richard III in his nimble dance down the hospital morgue corridor in stark contrast to the

"maimed" soldiers to whom he delivers his speech in Act 1, Scene 2. A pragmatic device for showing movement, busy-ness, and transition from scene to scene, the "walk and talk" filming technique somewhat obscures House's impaired leg despite his visible limp and cane-it seems to take the viewer on a journey with House as if, we too, are on

"rounds." Furthermore, House's physical presence, amid ailing and visibly disabled patients as well as his seemingly able-bodied staff, places him in a space that traverses and resists both; subsequently, Dr.

House reveals a sense of prowess and power, or disabled-fit muscularity, unique to his character.

Like McKelien's Richard, House challenges the viewer's notion of disability and representation. Capable of "sportive tricks," House's

43 liThe show [House, MDl is mostly shot, using the 'walk and talk' film technique. Talking about 'walk and talk', it's one of the unique stories [sic] telling technique in which many characters have conversation while walking. The common type of 'walk and talk' engages a walking personality that is then joined by another personality and they walk to their destination" (Sharma). 52 inconsistencies blur the paradoxical frameworks from which he is intended to operate-doctor/patient and dis/a bled; however, his complexity and rebelliousness usurp his profession and his body in his performance of disabled-fit muscularity. In fact, House purchases a

Honda CBR 1OOOrr sport motorcycle in Season Two, Episode Five,

"Daddy's Boy." Commonly referred to as a "crotch-rocket," this sport bike has a .999cc engine, 153.5 horse power, weighs only 439 pounds, and goes 0-60MPH in 2.92 seconds. 44 House's Honda CBR1000rr sport motorcycle is equipped with a right-sided mount for his cane ("just like

Evel Knievel's" according to House) that leaves the audience wondering how a 6'2" "disabled" man negotiates this "knee-dragger" when the seat height is merely 32.3" off the ground: 45

[Cut to the parking lot, where a sports bike is parked. /t's

scraped up on the one side. Pan around and House and

Wilson are revealed to be standing near if, looking at the

bike.]

44 To appreciate the speed of this bike, the world's fastest production car, the Bugatti Veyron, goes from 0-60 in 2.5 seconds; my Honda Accord, on the other hand, goes from 0-60MPH in a whopping 9.1 seconds. These motorcycle and automobile specifications offer a perspective that is significant when we consider that a "disabled" character is maneuvering a motorcycle that rivals the fastest car on the planet -and "blows the doors off" an average car. 45 It is important to note that House's somewhat modified sport cycle is not unique. There are several motorcycle clubs for amputees that provide technical specifications to modify motorcycles according to impairment. inMotion, a club for amputee motorcycle riders provides technical information for modifications written by a variety of contributors. 53 Wilson: Well this, this is perfect.

House: Invite me to dinner Thursday night. [Wilson looks

blankly at him] Come on we haven't had a nice meal

together since, oh ...

Wilson: Yesterday when I loaned you five thousand dollars

to buy a new car. [Points at the bike.]

House: [tosses his cane up in the air and catches it near

the top, then hands it over to Wilson] My treat. [House

limps over to the bike]

Wilson: Two-wheeled vehicles that travel 150 miles an hour

don't really go well with crippled, irresponsible, drug

addicts.

House: Actually two-wheeled vehicles that go 180 miles an

hour do not go well with healthy responsible architects

who don't know how to separate braking and turning.

[While he is saying this, House is lifting his right leg over the

bike and settling down onto the seat.] Good news is, it

brings the price right down. (Shore)

The script reminds us impaired figures are prone to a litany of character and bodily assassinations: Richard III as an "elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog" on the one hand, and House as a "crippled, irresponsible, 54 drug [addict]" on the other (Shakespeare 1.3.238; Shore). House's somewhat disaffected response to Wilson (his best friend) gives us the impression that he is accustomed to his body as a measurement for ability or lack; conversely, House makes no attempt to mimic able- bodied ness, rather, he simply avers that knowledge of braking and turning is the measure for safely driving a fast sport motorcycle. Further, like McKelien's Richard, Laurie's performance of disability becomes somewhat illegible against his motorcycle accoutrements (leather racing jacket, glasses, and helmet). Finally, in the closing scene of

"Daddy's Boy," we're left disoriented by the contrast of the "disabled" character "peeling out" of a parking spot clearly marked with a disabled parking sign; in other words, the signifier refuses the signified: the blue sign with a stick figure in a wheelchair marked

"Handicapped" is no longer legible when House demonstrates his disabled-fit muscularity in his capacity to adeptly maneuver one of the fastest motorcycles in the world without his right quadriceps. The introduction of House's motorcycle in season two significantly informs how House wants to be perceived-dexterous, fast, and powerful.46

46 House M.D. seems to also pique our cultural imagination of the "donor cycle." (Hospital slang for you ride. you die. you donate your organs.) The connotation of "donor cycle" is that its rider has a death wish-a suicidal personality masked as a "thrill seeker." On the other hand. House is not the image of a doctor with a death wish anymore than he's a doctor with a burning cigarette in his mouth-his character 55 House's ability to play with power and sexuality is a particularly disruptive force in the narration of this television program because it points to the instability of the fictional identity as "disabled," "doctor," and "straight." Furthermore, House's ambiguous pursuit of a romantic relationship with Dr. Lisa Cuddy reminds us of Richard wooing Lady

Anne.47 As with Kristin Scott-thomas's Lady Anne in Richard /II, the audience cannot escape the visual beauty of actor Lisa Edelstein as

Dr. Cuddy. Always fashionable, Dr. Cuddy's workplace attire seems incongruent with her role as the hospital's Dean of Medicine and Chief

Administrator: her skirts are tightly fitted and her necklines plunge; she is highly sexualized and often objectified; and she is unmistakably coded as a sexualized "bad mommy" to her naughty child, Dr. House.

Inevitably, Cuddy's power is destabilized by the camera's focus on her breasts and her misguided claim that, in fact, her breasts trump her brains: "Seriously ... 1have always thought my breasts were one of my best features" (Shore Season 4.5). Likewise problematic is the ongoing tete-a-tete, an erotic parlay of sorts, between Drs. Cuddy and House

is far more complex than such simple associations. Instead, House is flexing his muscles and complicating dis/ability in yet another disorienting way. 47 A queered reading of House's relationship with Dr. Cuddy is rooted in disability and specifically in disabled-fit muscularity for the purposes of this essay. Conversely, House is fraught with stereotypical heteronormative, misogynist, and sexist treatment of women that reflects antiquated representations of men and women in general as well as men and women in medicine and/or perceived positions of "authority." 56 that results in their first kiss, House's sexual hallucination in Season Five, and, inevitably, their first sexual encounter in Season Seven. The problem with Cuddy and House is that their innuendo is fraught with sexism, ableism, and unkind practical jokes. This masochistic erotic repartee inexorably undermines Cuddy's feminine power and perceived position of "authority" as "Dean"; similarly, Cuddy's ableist sarcasm in response to House's sexism is tantamount to Anne's repulsion toward Richard, whom she sees as a "lump of foul deformity"

(1.2.57). The pilot episode sets-up the viewer for Cuddy and House's disorienting interplay of sexism and ableism-a sort-of acting out of hegemony: [Cuddy to House] "Is your yelling designed to scare me because I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be scared of. More yelling? That's not scary. That you're gonna hurt me? That's scary, but

I'm pretty sure I can outrun ya" (Shore). In effect, House climbs toward an idealized self with Cuddy-a connection to an "ideal" female body-while Cuddy, on the other hand, reaffirms her feminine prowess and perceived "authority" at the expense of the objectified "disabled" body of House in calling attention to his impairment as a material lack.

A glimpse at House and Cuddy's ambiguous erotic repartee helps us to better understand how their romantic relationship in season seven shares queer similarities and differences to Lady Anne and 57 Richard Ill's. Like Ian Moulton's discussion of masculine supremacy in the Elizabethan era and the art of acclimating from the battlefield (a homosocial and homophobic space) to the aristocratic court

(heteronormative) as described by Castiglione, the contemporary viewer must reconcile House as "warrior/surgeon" and House as

"courtly lover/wooer." This is especially significant in the transition from the Season Six finale, "Help Me," to the Season Seven premiere "Now

What?"

[Setting: A collapsed parking garage. Hanna (the patient) leg is

pinned under a concrete beam. A secondary col/apse occurs

as House and fire captain McCreaney attempt to free Hanna.]

[Groaning, they manage to lift the concrete off of Hanna. Her

breathing is fast and shallow. House puts his ear to her mouth] 58 House: Kit. Gimme the kit.

Captain McCreaney: All right.

[Captain McCreaney drags a duffle bag toward House]

House: No breath sounds on the left side. Tension pneumothorax.

Okay, Hanna. One of your lungs is collapsed. I'm gonna have to

reinflate it, okay?

[Ripping the syringe packaging open with his teeth, House

performs a needle thoracostomy to reinflate Hanna's lung]

Hanna: Uh ... (coughs)

[Hanna is still wheezing, but her breathing sounds better than

before]

Captain McCreaney: (to House) Hey. You better get back up

top and make sure you didn't nick an artery.

[House puts his hand to his neck and pulls it back to find blood

on his fingers. He has also sustained a scratch on the right side of

his nose.]

"Help Me" is a pivotal episode for the fictional identity Gregory House,

MD and the narrative of House M.D. Not "in the field" for the first time,

House is the doctor turned rescuer, willing-unlike the House we have 59 seen in the prior episodes--to risk his own life for the life of the patient.48

Even more compelling, House resembles the brave soldier/noble knight in his descent into the collapsed parking garage. In fact, House's body becomes even more illegible in this "battlefield" setting where his disabled-fit muscularity reflects the power and urgency requisite for the task of amputating Hanna's leg under the rubble. In a transition from

"warrior/surgeon" to "courtly lover/wooer" that reminds us of Richard

III, House transforms his disabled-fit muscularity into sexual prowess to win over Dr. Lisa Cutty in "What Now?"

[Cut to House's bathroom. He stares at himself in the mirror

then rips it off the wall and smashes it into the tub. He picks

up the two bottles of Vicodin that were hidden behind the

mirror.]

Cuddy: It's your choice if you wanna go back on drugs.

[House sits on the bathroom floor, staring at the pills. He

looks up as Cuddy enters.]

House: You think I can fix myself?

Cuddy: I just need to know if you and I can work.

[He drops the pills. They stand together and clasp hands.

48 An exception is Amber's (Wilson's girlfriend and former diagnostic team member) diagnosis in the Season Five finale and Season Six premiere, which requires the concussed House to endure electroshock therapy to stimulate his memory. 60 Fade out.}

[Fade in on the bedroom. They are still holding hands.

Cuddy strokes the area between House's left thumb and forefinger with her right thumb. She reaches up and takes his jacket off.}

Cuddy: [softly] Let me see. [She peels the bandage off the wound on his neck.} It's okay. [He pulls his head away. She inhales sharply.} It's gonna get infected.

[She puts the bandage back in place and leaves the room. House continues standing exactly where she left him, as if he's suffering from shock. He looks at his left hand and flexes it as Cuddy returns with a bucket and a towel.}

[Cuddy lifts the hem of House's t-shirt and he raises his arms so she can undress him. She removes the bandage and wrings out a towel. She dabs the towel against his wound then wipes his chest and his left cheek with it. She puts down the towel and reaches for his waistband.

House, who has been more completely passive than we've ever seen him, finally says something.}

House: Hey, you're not gonna ... [He closes his eyes, embarrassed.} You are. [She slides off his jeans, kneeling in 61 the process. His scar is at her eye level. She strokes it. He is

upset.] No. Don't, don't.

Cuddy: It's okay. I love you.

[She leans forward and kisses his scar. He turns his head

away. She takes hold of his hands and he helps her up.

They kiss, gently. House takes off her shirt. They continue to

embrace and stroke each other. House picks her up and

puts her on the bed.]

This opening scene of Season Seven follows the death of House's patient Hanna, with whom he had spent a significant amount of time working-on in the rubble of the collapsed parking garage. Unlike a lot of House's patients, Hanna, rather than her crushed leg, was the patient as a "subject" rather than the patient as "object"-a disruption of the doctor/patient narrative that often dominates House M.D.

Moreover, in moving from the pubic disaster area to the private and intimate space of the bedroom, House exposes his body and his vulnerability-he becomes passive to Cuddy's emotional, sexual, and medical intervention.

This reinterpretation of the self-proclaimed misanthrope is bewildering in several ways-a lot like Richard's ambiguous wooing of

Lady Anne to most Richard 11/ scholars. First, Cuddy breaks through to 62 the "soldier/surgeon" who is willing to accept her affection and her sex. Second, House's prowess, like Richard's, is reflected in how he uses his body-powerfully and adeptly. Third, House allows Cuddy to mend him, clean him and kiss his disfigured leg-she engages House until he takes over as the courtly lover. This significant rupture in narrative from

Season Six to Season Seven not only reflects Laurie's adept performance of House's disabled-fit muscularity, but also speaks to the slippage of disability as the sole force of narration to the performance of a queered identity as a discursive device. In other words, House's disability isn't a controlling metaphor, or narrative prosthesis; rather, his unstable fictional identity, a queered identity, produces a sexy embodiment of disability that narrates the story away from medicalized, pathologized, and sentimentalized constructions of the body.

Whereas Lisa Cuddy provides House with a unified body for erotically charged repartee and sex, House's diagnostic team suggests his capacity for a multiplicity of sexual desire.49 The seemingly "straight" and oftentimes "bad mommy" role of Cuddy anchors House's sexuality in a very visible way-even though the relationship is queered in terms

49 For the purposes of this paper, my reference to the diagnostic team includes Drs. Wilson, Kutner, Taub, Chase, Cameron, Foreman, and Hadley ("13"). 63 of disability. The team, on the other hand, doesn't provide such an anchor for House in that his interactions with them are queered beyond simple definitions of "teacher/student," "doctor/patient," and

"straight/gay." It's as if having sex and talking about sex provides the team and House with the same assurance of loyalty Moulton speaks to with respect to homosocial bonds in Elizabethan England and as exemplified by Richard and Tyrell. For example, Cameron and House have sex; Cameron and Chase have sex and later marry; Taub

(married) is an admitted "cheater," so he cannot escape accusations of having sex; House has sex with Cuddy; Foreman has sex with

"Thirteen," who is bi-sexual and the idyllic heteronormative male fantasy (fodder for straight sexual innuendo); and House is in constant competition for Wilson's affection, while Wilson's partners either leave him or die. The multiplicity of ongoing sexual relations, literal and verbal, is, in effect, another queer relationship; and, despite the fact that we cannot avoid the problems with the House/team polyamorous relationship, this group erotic exchange is a queer narrative prosthesis in and of itself. 64 In the same sense that Tyrell is Richard Ill's "prosthesis,"so House's diagnostic team is his physical and medical prosthesis; moreover, like

Tyrell's queered relationship with Richard as an "able-bodied self," or an extension of disabled-fit muscularity, the team carries out most of

House's medical machinations. In this sense, the team maintains the order of medical discourse in giving the illusion of the "able-bodied doctor" in contrast to the "disabled patient." On the one hand, the team is House's attempt at "passing," and on the other hand, the team is a prosthesis that contributes to House's in/coherence as

"doctor/patient" and the embodiment of disabled-fit muscularity.

House's agent of medical and bodily power, the team is often tasked with diagnosing and communicating with patients. In effect, the team as a prosthesis veils House's disability by extrapolating from him into the results and effects of an able-bodied doctor (or collective doctor) as opposed to reifying him as a disabled patient. The pilot episode for

House M.D. establishes the team as his prosthetic:

50 "Prosthesis" in this sense differs from Mitchell and Snyder's narrative prosthesis (the discursive dependency on disability). I deploy the term "prosthesis" in the same vein as the Tyrell/Richard dynamic: the diagnostic team acts as organic prosthesis capable of carrying-out House's medical machinations. The diagnostic team is not a collective "tool box," they are an extension of self that reinforces House's disabled-fit muscularity. 65 [Cut to the outside of the hospital, and back into (patient)

Rebecca's room, it's now night and Wilson is there]

Wilson: Ok, once again.

[Rebecca takes a deep breath]

Wilson: Good.

Rebecca: Am I ever gonna meet Dr. House?

Wilson: [scoffs] Well, you might run into him at the movies

or on the bus.

Rebecca: Is he a good man?

Wilson: He's a good doctor.

Wilson's examination of Rebecca merely extends House's diagnostic capabilities, while at the same time reinforcing the medical model of doctor as able-bodied. Although House's character development from the pilot to Season Seven somewhat reflects a shift from Dr. House as absent (a sort of queer "phantom limb") to Dr. House as visible, the team remains a significant extension of House's capacity for diagnoses. The team as a "prosthesis" reminds us of Tyrell's charge to act out Richard Ill's political machinations-not because Richard is physically incapable, but rather, because he is politically incapable. In the case of House, his medical machinations are carried out by the 66 perceived "able-bodied" physicians, who function as-an extension of

House-a prosthesis-his disabled-fit muscularity.

Not unlike the disabled-fit muscularity House demonstrates in his capacity for movement from scene to scene, House becomes even more incoherent in terms of the institutions of medical culture as he is never seen in a doctor's white lab coat.51 The significance of House's physical appearance, and the absence of an expected prop, is that removing House's doctor's coat decenters the character as

"Doctor/Father/Able" and provides him with multiple locations for inquiry and interpretation-a queer narrative prosthesis in that it extends his capacity to disrupt "fixed" identities like doctor/able and patient/disabled, as suggested by this conversation in the pilot.

[House and Wilson are walking through the hallway. All

you can see is their hands and legs, showing that House is

using a cane and limping. Wilson is the only one of the two

wearing a lab coat.]

Wilson: 29 year old female, first seizure one month ago, lost

the ability to speak. Babbled like a baby. Present

deterioration of mental status.

51 The lab coat creates an issue of "visibility" that is relative to the concept of disabled-fit muscularity, and is likewise significant in re-imaging the medical model. 67 House: See that? They all assume I'm a patient because of

this cane.

Wilson: So put on a white coat like the rest of us.

House: I don't want them to think I'm a doctor.

Wilson: You see where the administration might have a

problem with that attitude.

House: People don't want a sick doctor. (Shore)

In effect, the lab coat is the very beginning of "queering the clinic" for

House M.D.: this scene establishes House's ambiguity from the beginning, in effect, giving Hugh Laurie the opportunity to explore

House's many positions (doctor/patient; dis/abled) in the liminal spaces of a queer and fragmented performance-a performance informed by disorienting creative choices ("walk and talk" filming and the lab coat to name a few). Laurie's performance of disability, combined with disorienting creative choices, permits the viewer to see

House as more than simply "doctor" or "patient" or "disabled."

Instead, we get the sense that House's disrupted identity, as opposed to his disability as the sole discursive device, is the driving force of narration in a "queered clinic" where patient/doctor categories become unstable. 68 Another aspect of House M.D. 's queered clinic and the doctor/patient role-reversal52 advances queer narrative prosthesis through the doctor-patient counter-transference53 predicated on the credo that "everybody lies"-the crutch from which House's diagnoses rely and is seen below:

Foreman: Shouldn't we be speaking to the patient before

we start diagnosing?

House: Is she a doctor?

Foreman: No, but ...

House: Everybody lies.

Cameron: Dr. House doesn't like dealing with patients.

Foreman: Isn't treating patients why we became doctors?

House: No, treating illnesses is why we became doctors,

treating patients is what makes most doctors miserable.

Foreman: So you're trying to eliminate the humanity from

the practice of medicine.

52 The House-ian "role-reversal" is a trope in and of itself in that it intersects social, dramatic, and psychological defining mechanisms: first, in its basic social sense, a role-reversal describes a part someone might play in a social context without implying any more extensive character traits or behavior; and second, a role-reversal is a sort-of device/method used in psychodrama both psychologically and dramatically that allows the patient to act out his/her feelings with the goal of catharsis OR in theatre where characters assume each other's roles. 53 "The transference by the analyst towards the patient of feelings and reactions similar to those aroused by significant figures (esp. parents) in the analyst's early life; more loosely, any emotion felt by the analyst towards the patient" (OED). 69 House: If you don't talk to them they can't lie to us, and

we can't lie to them. Humanity is overrated. I don't think

it's a tumor.

House's fundamental assertion that "everybody lies" seems to be an attempt to displace the fact that his body and "every body lies"-that the body itself is unreliable and deceptive (Rich, Simmons, and Adams

221). In other words, counter-transference with respect to House's distrust of the patient is informed by his distrust of his own real body.

Consequently, House's bodily transfer that informs his diagnostic presumption that "everybody lies," reiterates his need to "pass":

[Wilson to House] "put on a white coat like the rest of us [ ... ]." [House]

"I don't want them to think I'm a doctor [ ... ] nobody wants a sick doctor" (Shore). In this sense, not only does House become physically illegible, but the patient-doctor discourse ("everybody lies" or "every body lies") is queered in terms of the medical model as hierarchical

(doctor-disease-patient).

In the same vein as Foucault's "juridical monarchy," House fails to comprehend the relational nature of power as oppose to power as from the top down as in the medical model; for example, the disinterested doctor gives "orders" to treat the "disease" and the pathologized "patient" takes her medicine. Conversely, the medical 70 model's outmoded discourse of "doctor" as "healthy" and "patient" as "sick" is undermined by both patient and doctor in several episodes of House M.D. including the pilot:

[Cut back into Rebecca's room, it's nighttime and House

enters]

House: [To nurse] Will you excuse us, please? [Nurse

leaves]

House: I'm Dr. House.

Rebecca: It's good to meet you.

House: You're being an idiot. Ahem. [Pause] You have a

tapeworm in your brain, it's not pleasant, but if we don't

do anything you'll be dead by the weekend.

Rebecca: Have you actually seen the worm?

House: When you're all better I'll show you my diplomas.

Rebecca: You were sure I had vasculitus too. Now I can't

walk and I'm wearing a diaper. What's this treatment

gonna do for me?

House: I'm not talking about a treatment; I'm talking

about a cure. But because I might be wrong, you want to

die.

Rebecca: What made you a cripple? 71 House: I had an infarction.

Rebecca: A heart attack?

House: It's what happens when the blood flow is

obstructed. If it's in the heart, it's a heart attack. If it's in the

lungs, it's a pulmonary embolism. If it's in the brain, it's a

stroke. I had it in my thigh muscles.

Rebecca: Wasn't there something they could do?

House: There was plenty they could do, if they made the

right diagnosis, but the only symptom was pain. Not many

people get to experience muscle death.

Rebecca: Did you think you were dying?

House: I hoped I was dying.

Rebecca: So you hide in your office, refuse to see patients

because you don't like the way people look at you. You

feel cheated by life so now you're gonna get even with

the world. You want me to fight this. Why? What makes

you think I'm so much better then you?

In this case, House becomes the patient and the patient, Rebecca, becomes the doctor: "So you hide in your office, refuse to see patients because you don't like the way people look at you" (Shore). The patient diagnoses in a moment of social, psychological, and dramatic 72 psychodramatics that recalls-"every body lies."54 Narrative is unstable and unreliable, and, in the case of House M.D., disability is not the sale force of narration-rather, the queer dis/abled body and discourse significantly inform the story.

Finally, the dynamic of a queer narrative prosthesis in the case of

House M.D. produces a larger queered clinic, encompassing the team of "students," House as "professor," and the doctors elevated "gaze" as described by Foucault. It's as if House M.D. is channeling The Birth of the Clinic with respect to the literal and metaphorical gaze of House and of medicine as a discipline:

With each diagnosis, House stares directly into the camera, akin to Ian

McKelien's Richard 11/, drawing in the viewer as if we, too, are medical

54 I'm reminded of In Dora's Case: Freud is Dora and Dora is Freud OR House is Rebecca and Rebecca is House. 73 students seated in a surgical gallery. We become complicit in his diagnosis and integral to his "gaze" as medical discourse:

Over all these endeavors on the part of the clinical though

to define its methods and scientific norms hovers the great

myth of pure Gaze that would be pure language: a

speaking eye. It would scan the entire hospital field, taking

in and gathering together each of the singular events that

occurred within it: and as it saw, as it saw ever more and

more clearly, it would be turned into speech that states

and teaches ... (114)

House's "speaking eye" stares at us and we become "patient" and

"medical student." Yet, like the patient Rebecca, we too experience the psychodramatic effects of "every body lies" linked to our bodies as

"spectators" and House's body that disorients our picture, a picture that brings disabled-fit muscularity into focus while making the archaic medical model blurry.

The audience's disrupted role as "spectator" is stretched in a way that reflects the development of the program itself-the audience, the characters, and the writers explore the limitations of

"medicine" and the body. Furthermore, the show has the power to disrupt our perception of disability, sexuality, and masculinity. And, 74 even though the creators intended to rely on House's misdiagnosed infarction as the sole driving force of narration, the instability that pervades House as a "disabled" character, the team, the patients, and the audience contributes to the program's discursivity and destabilized representations of fictional identities. 75 Afterword

The reading of House M.D. and McKelien's Richard III is filled with possibilities and problems, which include questions on where Disability

Studies and Queer Theory overlap and diverge. Does Disability Studies rebuff the sexy embodiment of representation and of disability?

Similarly, how do we discuss embodiment without essentializing the body? Do representations of queerness become medicalized/pathologized in "deformed" bodies? Keeping in mind that the term "queer" lacks a fixed ontology, does the quality of the term lose a sort-of cultural currency when it is read outside of sexuality?

How is reading "queerness" an opportunity for making meaning while concurrently reaffirming indeterminacy?

Richard and Dr. Gregory House's instability as fictional characters is just one opportunity to interrogate identities that are written on the body through cultural inscriptions of "normalcy." If the characters are "palimpsests" of transcultural and transhistorical inscriptions of normalcy, how does their discursivity reveal and renew treatments of embodiment? Even more compelling, what do we do with antiquated notions of the body, like the evil and/or asexual disabled bodies, that are perpetuated in popular culture and our day-to-day lives as the measure against so-called normalcy? While this thesis seems to 76 raise more questions than answer them, it is important to note the aim of such an endeavor. In my commitment to rethinking issues of embodiment in literature and popular culture, I seek to continually engage in the work of Cultural Studies according to Stuart Hall: "The work that cultural studies has to do is to mobilize everything that it can find in terms of intellectual resources in order to understand what keeps making the lives we live, and the societies we live in, profoundly and deeply anti-humane." Mistreatments of the body in terms of sexuality, disability, race, class, and gender in literature and popular media are just one component to perpetuating anti-humanism in our lives and in the societies we live in-rethinking embodiment is a site for mobilization. 77 Works Cited

Davis, Lennard. Bending Over Backwards Disability, Dismodernism, and

Other Difficult Positions. NY: NY UP, 2002. Print.

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. NY: Random House, 1978.

Print.

---. The Birth of the Clinic. NY: Vintage, 1994. Print.

Hedges, Warren. "Queer Theory Explained." 1999.

ory/Explained/queer.htm>.Web. 10 Jan 2010.

Hodgson, Barbara. "Replicating Richard: Body Doubles, Body Politics."

Theatre Journal. 50.2 (1998): 207-225. JSTOR. Web.10 Dec 02.

Honda.

spx>. Web. 01 Nov 2010.

House, M.D. Dir. David Shore. Perf. Hugh Laurie, Lisa Edelstein, and

Omar Epps. Fox. Nov. 2004. Television.

McKracken, James. Oxford English Dictionary. (2010). OED Online.

Web. 01 Nov 10.

McRuer, Robert. "Compulsory Able-bodiedness and Queer/Disabled

Existence." The Disability Studies Reader. Ed. Lennard Davis. NY:

Routledge, 2006. 301-19. Print. 78 ---. Fuck the Disabled: The Prequel. 2010. Unpublished Chapter. Print.

Mitchell, David and Sharon Snyder. Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and

the Dependencies of Discourse. Ann Arbor: U Michigan p, 2003.

Print.

Moulton, Ian. '"A Monster Great Deformed': The Unruly Masculinity of

Richard III." Shakespeare Quarterly. 47.3 (1996): 251-68. JSTOR.

Web. 28 Jan 2010.

O'toole, Lawrence. "Sympathy for the Devil." The New York Times

(2009): 24. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 15 Apr 2003.

Richard III. dir. Richard Loncraine, perf. Ian McKellen, Annette Benning,

and Robert Downey, Jr. United Artists Pictures, Inc., 1995. DVD.

Rich, Leigh, Jack Simmons and David Adams, eds. "The Afterbirth of

the Clinic a Foucauldian Perspective on 'House, M.D. and

American Medicine in the 21 st Century." Biology and Medicine

51.2 (2008): 220-37. Project Muse. Web. 19 Oct 10.

Quayson, Ato. Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of

Representation: NY, Colombia UP, 2007. Print.

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Tendencies. Durham: Duke UP, 1993. Print.

Siebers, Tobin. Disability Theory. Ann Arbor: U Mich. P, 2008. Print.

---. "Hitler and the Tyranny of the Aesthetic." Philosophy and Literature

24.1 (2000): 96-110. Project Muse. Web. 15 April 2003. 79 Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of King Richard III. NY: Penguin,

2000. Print.

Sharma, Ashish. "Watch House Season 7 to Understand Walk and Talk

Strategy." Blog. 12 Aug 2010.

understand-walk-and-talk-strategy.html> Web. 25 Oct 2010.

Shore, David. "Developing the Concept." The Paley Center for Media.

2006.

developing-the-concept#s-p2-st-i1 >. Web. 27 Oct 2010.

Siebers, Tobin. "Hitler and the Tyranny of the Aesthetic." Philosophy and

Literature. 24.1 (2000).96-110.

Stoddard-Holmes, Martha. "Body Studies, Disability Studies, and

Medical Humanities." Cal State University San Marcos. Feb. 2009.

Lecture.

Warner, Michael. The Trouble With Normal. NY: Free Press, 1999.

Werts, Diane. "Fox's Medical Marvel Stays on Top." Variety. 29 Jan

2009.

oryid=3530 &cs=l>. Web. 25 Oct 2010.