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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/