Permorphativity
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Permorphativity Senior Seminar Anthology Fall 2012 Essays from the seminar “Fakes, Cons and Double-Talkers: Performativity and Literary Deception” Dr. Maria Doyle Department of English & Philosophy Printed on campus by UWG Publications and Printing. Table of Contents: Introduction I. Permorphing the Past The Cost of Performance: Oskar Schindler’s “Role”in the Holocaust Jack Perry....................................................................................pg 3 A Universal Language: The Importance of Narration in Martin Amis’ Time’s Arrow Jordan Hall................................................................................pg 15 The Bastards of History: The Eminence of Culture and Social Ethics in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds Lauren Williams........................................................................pg 26 Performing Re-Masculinization through Costuming in Rock of Ages Ashley Carroll-McCarley..........................................................pg 39 II. Permorphativity of the Moment How Wharton’s Introduction Frames Ethan Frome’s Unreliable Narrator Casey Smith..............................................................................pg 51 New Beginnings: Staged Admiration in The Edge Clence Patterson........................................................................pg 63 From Submission to Affection: The Performativity of Marriage in Their Eyes were Watching God Tamara Beckham.......................................................................pg 78 Table of Contents III. The Permorphed Future Performing and Veiling Deformity in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest Tyler Key...................................................................................pg 89 To Thine Own Self, Be True: Performance and the Animorphs Series Chris Berry..............................................................................pg 101 Suzanne Collins’ Transcendentalism: Reflection, Rebellion, and Restructure of Twenty-First Century America’s Sociocultural Landscape in The Hunger Games Valerie Yearta..........................................................................pg 112 Author Biographies.................................................................pg 127 iv Exploring Permorphativity Students in this seminar hit upon a marvelous portmanteau word for their title, one that both highlights the transformations that are central to the essays in this collection and calls attention to the role performance plays in defining the meaning of such “morphing” moments. The course out of which these essays grew was called “Fakes, Cons and Double-Talkers: Performance and Literary Decep- tion.” Our subject was the variety of ways that texts represent or enact deception. We looked at characters who tell us about their own trickery and at unreliable narrators who are a little less forthcom- ing in their relationship to the reader; we examined stories told and purposefully retold from new perspectives within the same work; we considered how texts manipulate their audiences’ assumptions about gender, race and national identity to lead us in the wrong direction – or towards what the author sees as the right one; and we even looked at the way that an author’s carefully constructed public persona shapes a reader’s acceptance of a text and its ideas. Often, writers wish us to uncover the deception so as to re-examine the larger narratives we’ve become comfortable telling ourselves. We then become like detectives, pursuing uncertainty, sifting evidence and piecing together different shades of truth. As students began to ponder their own contributions to this volume, many became interested in examining the ways that the lie inherent in performance – in putting on a costume, whether physical or ver- bal, and pretending to be something that you’re not – actually can enable the production of truth or even the pursuit of virtue. Several essays take up the question of performance as camouflage, including Jack Perry’s examination of Stephen Spielberg’s framing of Oskar Schindler, Tyler Key’s reading of deformity in David Foster Wal- lace’s Infinite Jest, Casey Smith’s assessment of Edith Wharton’s defense of her narrator in Ethan Frome and Lauren Williams’ read- ing of linguistic and historical reconstruction in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. Others chose to examine how performances reveal spaces of cultural crisis: Ashley Carroll McCarley takes up the depiction of 1980s masculinity in the filmRock of Ages, Tamara Beckham explores diverging conceptions of gender and marriage in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Chris Berry v Introduction considers aggression, gender and the complexities of young adulthood in K.A. Applegate’s Animorphs series. Others examined performance as a means of seeking to understand cultural trauma – Jordan Hall’s reading of the narrator in Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow – or of pon- dering the boundaries between civilization and the self, as in Clence Patterson’s reading of the class divide in Lee Tamahori’s film The Edge and Valerie Yearta’s exploration of the new Transcendentalism of Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games. Whatever its motivation, performance becomes a means of transforming perceptions of insti- tutions, of cultures, of selves. This collection is divided into three sections. Part I focuses on ways that authors or directors take up the questions of the past: how does performance position us to understand pivotal moments of political or cultural development in a clearer way? Part II focuses on authors who took issue with the performances that defined their own present. The essays in this section all examine, in one way or another, how an awareness of these performances might reconstruct the reader’s perception of the cultural and geographical factors shaping individual identity. Part III explores the imagined future as it performs and recon- structs elements of both past and present: since the future is always imagined, depicting the future is always a “permorphative” activity that draws attention to contemporary cultural anxieties as much as it draws the reader out of the present. Dr. Maria Doyle February 2013 vi I. Permorphing the Past The Cost of Performance: Oskar Schindler’s “Role” in the Holocaust Jack Perry With such titles as E.T., Indiana Jones (then only a trilogy), and Close Encounters of the Third Kind garnishing his resume, at the turn of the decade—1990—Steven Spielberg took it upon himself to create an artistic masterpiece that would be as gut-wrenching as it would be heartwarming and as performative as it would be informative. In an Inside Film Magazine interview with Spielberg, the prolific writer/ director/producer states that even in the earliest stages of his creative process when planning to make Schindler’s List (1993), he made a conscious decision to avoid making the film in the coveted “Spieber- gian” style. His knack for warm and fuzzy endings and mind blowing special effects encircles him in a “family film” aura, and superb direc- tion of Steven Zailian’s screenplay adapted from Thomas Keneally’s Booker Prize winning novel Schindler’s Ark (1982) won him not only Best Director and Best Film, but the reputation of a truly didactic and awe inspiring film maker. Reading this film as a piece of literature, offers an opportunity to explore several avenues of possibility: On the one hand, a critic may assess the closeness with which Spielberg adheres to the novel and/or factual history; on the other, one may identify and explicate a number of signs and/or motifs utilized in the film to create meaning. Here, however, the general idea is to push the film, its images, motifs, and composition through a particular system, interpreting the film though the frame of performative theory in order to determine the role of performance in the film. As Schindler (Liam Neeson) says himself, “Not the work, not the work. The presenta- tion.” On the surface level, of course, a film typically implies that there will be actors—playing roles, reciting lines, adopting manners not their own, and recreating specific characters in their own image; however, “performativity” as theory attempts to reach beyond this superficial concept of performance and grasp something a bit more abstract: meaning. As a bio-historical film,Schindler’s List makes use of a number of filmic techniques—including but not limited to: color pallet, blocking, and wardrobe—to reflect, even mimic, the internal thoughts and external actions of Oskar Schindler; in doing so, the film 3 Jack Perry encourages and, at times, forces the audience to identify with both Schindler and the Jews at Krakow. By approaching the film in this manner, Spielberg effectively creates a motion picture monument, not simply to memorialize the Holocaust or Schindler the man, but to set in stone the benevolent effect of Schindler’s list, which still to this day impacts the Jewish population in this area. Without this list, there would be no Jewish community of which to speak; as Itzhak Stern, Schindler’s accountant and subordinate business partner, com- ments, “The list is life,” (scene 29). Color pallet The opening shot of the film focuses on the lighting of two ritual candles. As the orange flames raise the frame cuts to a color shot a Jewish family performing a Sabbath ceremony of singing prayers. Though at first it is unclear, the color of this opening sequence indi- cates that the event is happening in the present moment. The scene offers a stark contrast as it reverts to the past in a black and white