Spectacular Addiction in Hubert Selby's Requiem for a Dream

240 The Journal of American Culture Volume 33, Number 3 September 2010 An Enemy Deep: Spectacular AddictioninHubertSelby’s Requiem for a Dream Abigail L. Bowers According to Sadie Plant in Writing on Drugs, In the preface to the newest edition of the ‘‘addict’’ as an identity emerged in the late Requiem for a Dream, which was released con- nineteenth century as an outsider, a ‘‘figment[] of comitantly with Darron Aronofsky’s cinematic a modern imagination that needed to define its version in 2000, Hubert Selby writes that, while own normality, drawing the boundaries around every individual has his or her own preconceived the upright, productive, and reproductive mem- notion of the ‘‘American Dream,’’ too many are bers of twentieth-century society’’ (164). The afraid to pursue it, or to even recognize and accept addict, a ‘‘thing’’ for which desire existed with- its existence. Selby muses, out regulation, soon became mythologized in I believe that to pursue the American Dream is not American society as a creature that voraciously only futile but self-destructive because ultimately it consumed but offered little in return. As the destroys everything and everyone involved with it. By definition it must, because it nurtures every- nineteenth century concluded and the twentieth thing except those things that are most important: in- began, there was little the government could do to tegrity, ethics, truth, our very heart and soul. Why? The reason is simple: because Life/life1 is about giving, stop the influx of this monstrous consumer. In an not getting. (vi) attempt to halt the growing number of addicts, the American government enacted several laws For Selby, the American Dream represents an and regulations; these only resulted in much archaic myth, one that may have been prevalent larger, and certainly more insidious, threats during the early years of America’s foundation emanating from within both official medical but has long since disappeared. This illusive—and channels and the increasingly sophisticated elusive—dream nurtures the idea that, in order to underworld of ‘‘street’’ drugs. By the time World be happy, we must first achieve success and War II ended, and American prosperity was at an money; however, this is, as Selby advocates, a all-time high, the country was deeply entrenched false happiness. Requiem for a Dream deals with in the first of many ‘‘Wars on Drugs,’’ and addic- the consequences of following an illusion over tion was no longer limited to repressed middle- truth, and as Aronofsky suggests, no human in the class females—the ‘‘reproductive’’ members of novel acts as the ‘‘hero.’’ Instead, the novel ‘‘is a nineteenth-century society—who were victims manifesto on Addiction’s triumph over the Human of iatrogenic practices. Instead, a new breed of Spirit,’’ an enemy that lives ‘‘deep in the characters’ addict was born in the postwar world. heads’’ (Aronofsky 1). The commodities Selby’s Abigail L. Bowers currently holds a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of English at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, where she works on contemporary narratives of addiction. The Journal of American Culture, 33:3 r 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. An Enemy Deep Abigail L Bowers 241 characters tie themselves to become their own tially developing into ‘‘virtually a human being in worst enemies, and instead of salving their souls its own right’’ (347). This virtual human being and allowing them to feel whole, addiction takes broadcast to the world what was happening in over so completely that they can only live for the Asia, projecting the struggles of society and the next fix. war onto President Lyndon B. Johnson and the In Requiem for a Dream, Selby introduces four generals—authoritarian figures considered to be characters, Harry Goldfarb, his mother Sara, his pursuing, without rational motive, a war ‘‘out of girlfriend Marion, and his best friend Tyrone C. sheerly patriarchal malignancy’’ (Jameson 347– Love, in order to show his hypothesis that ‘‘Life/ 48). Christopher Lasch notes that many Ameri- life’’ is about ‘‘giving, not getting.’’ Each of the cans desired to forget the sixties and all that went characters searches for their own version of the with the tumultuous decade: the riots, the new American Dream in different ways, and though left, the Kent State University Shooting, and the substances used are varied, the final desired ‘‘their entire collective past’’ (5). In forgetting, feeling is the same: Harry, Sara, Marion, and Ty- though, a new collective character of the Amer- rone want to feel whole. For Harry and Tyrone, ican was formed, resulting in a representational this means scoring a pound of pure heroin so they paradox that takes away any subjectivity and au- can be rich; however, the two end up using more tonomy because the image becomes divorced than they sell. Harry eventually loses his arm from the actual object (Jameson 348). The advent from a gangrenous infection brought about by his of a global media, coupled with the stripping of heroin addiction, and Tyrone ends up on a chain the individual, resulted in a void that could be gang in a Georgia prison. Marion prostitutes her- neither articulated nor understood. self to feed her heroin addiction and not only The turbulent sixties and seventies, however, loses Harry, but more importantly, her sense of find roots in the early postwar years. At the self. Finally, Sara consumes both food and televi- height of global power at the end of World War II, sion in an effort to stave off loneliness but enters Americans were able to experience, for the first the dangerous world of amphetamine addiction time, a leisurely and luxurious existence where instead, which leads her to develop schizophrenia items, desired instead of necessary, could be pur- and lands her in a mental institution. Selby’s novel chased by almost anyone. The postwar years ush- illuminates contemporary society’s desire for ered in what David Riesman in The Lonely wholeness, as well as the search for an identity Crowd refers to as a revolution that cut Ameri- and a meaningful life, through the mass consump- cans off from traditional family values that his- tion of ‘‘junk,’’ including chemical means and torically existed, giving way to ‘‘a whole range of other addictive compulsions. More particularly, it societal developments associated with a shift from is no accident that his tale interweaves drug and an age of production to an age of consumption’’ television consumption, revealing, especially (6). In A Consumer’s Republic, Lizabeth Cohen through Sara, a synergistic effect between drugs agrees, noting that the aftermath of World War II and images which, though sought for personal provided a fundamental shift in America’s politics, fulfillment, only affords participation in the illu- economy, and culture, creating major conse- sion of the spectacle. quences for how Americans began to live, as well When Selby first published Requiem for a as what they expected from their government (8). Dream in 1978, the United States was still dealing Cohen indicates that postwar mass consumption with the aftermath of the turbulent Vietnam War. was less of a personal indulgence and more a ‘‘civic In Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late responsibility’’ encouraged by the government in Capitalism, Frederic Jameson suggests that the order to provide ‘‘‘full employment and improved sixties gave birth to a media that became ‘‘a col- standards for the rest of the nation’’’ (113).2 lective actor on the historical scene, feared by The political and business leaders of postwar politicians and tolerated by the ‘public,’’’ essen- America hoped that a dynamic mass consumption 242 The Journal of American Culture Volume 33, Number 3 September 2010 economy would deliver prosperity and fulfill so- of American political ideas. Rather, the real win- ciety’s loftier aspirations, creating what Cohen ner of the century was consumerism’’ (1). Essen- refers to as ‘‘the Consumers’ Republic.’’ This new tially, the ‘‘consumption of sheer commodification economy included more social egalitarianism, po- as a process’’ took over (Jameson x), resulting in a litical freedom, and democratic participation; fur- place where only illusion is being consumed, since thermore, in an ideal America, jobs would be ‘‘[t]he commodity is this illusion, which is in fact plentiful, increasing the act of purchasing and al- real, and the spectacle is its most general form’’ lowing citizens to live better than they had before (Debord 32). The empty and meaningless feelings World War II. America’s social landscape where the illusion created ultimately caused Americans the populace lived and consumed helped reshape to fill this void with ‘‘junk,’’ resulting in addiction the nation’s class and racial profile, as well as in its most spectacular form. As Selby ultimately gender dynamics both in the family and in the shows in Requiem for a Dream, this type of workplace (Cohen 404–06). Peter Whybrow, in ‘‘junk’’ is futile at best, as it in no way creates a American Mania: When More is Not Enough, sense of connection or wholeness on the part of remarks that the American society in the postwar the consumer. world was one embellished by a commercially When someone feels full, when his or her life is contrived illusion of infinite opportunity (4); in ‘‘filled,’’ he or she is able to navigate the world in a spite of all this, or perhaps because of it, most satisfied manner. In Powers of Horror, Julia Krist- Americans felt increasingly empty and lost. In eva suggests that ‘‘a lust for swallowing up the The Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord states other’’ develops into a ‘‘deathly drive to devour that the illusion of infinite prosperity and the in- the other’’ (118).

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