« October 2003 | Main | December 2003 »
I had wanted to put this up back at Halloween but was thwarted by server problems. And pumpkins are still relevant to Thanksgiving, so there you go.
I'm off for my first Thanksgiving away from home, to spend the day with another set of people I love. A wonderful and blessed holiday to all of you.
This is a short assignment that I wrote for my Theory of Rhetoric class about a month ago. I read it again today and decided that I kinda like it, and thought I'd put it up here. In it, I apply elements of classical epideictic rhetoric (specifically, those outlined in Chapter Three of Poulakos and Poulakos' Classical Rhetorical Theory) to the text of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. The full title is "More Than Display: Hedwig and The Angry Inch as Epideictic Rhetoric."
John Cameron Mitchell’s character of Hedwig Robinson presents an interesting rhetor: a German man who becomes an American woman and creates discourse about the transgender condition in the form of rock songs. One might think that such a nontraditional voice might produce highly nontraditional rhetoric – and some might argue such is indeed the case in both the stage and film versions of Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
I will argue instead that Hedwig and the “anatomically incorrect rock odyssey” she inhabits constitute very traditional rhetoric, as the elements of Hedwig’s tale closely resemble the classical epideictic form. At first glance, the performance of either drag or rock and roll might seem at odds with any classical definition. Both are commonly – and incorrectly - viewed as products of the twentieth century. In fact, they have their roots in much older traditions: rock traces its heritage back to Southern African-American music, and drag has been with us since the advent of clothing. Still, this hardly places them within a classical context. The fact that they display the characteristics of epideictic rhetoric as delineated by Poulakos and Poulakos in Chapter Three of Classical Rhetoric Theory does firmly place them in the classical realm. The authors note four characteristics of the epideictic form:
• the affinity for competition
• its propensity to become a spectacle
• its proclivity to excess and exaggeration and
• its susceptibility to the propagation of dominant values (63 – 64).
I will apply each of these elements to the artifact in the paragraphs that follow.
The Affinity for Competition
One of the most central tropes of Hedwig and the Angry Inch revolves around the main character’s competition with her ex-lover, Tommy Gnosis. Throughout the film, Hedwig claims to have authored many of the songs that Tommy, now a rock superstar, is performing in his stadium concert tour. Hedwig, in contrast, describes herself as “the internationally ignored song stylist barely standing before you” (Mitchell, 19). In the play, she is playing fleabag hotels, and in the movie she is making a national tour of Bilge Water Seafood Restaurants; in any case, she is hardly touring at the level that Tommy is. Beginning in the first scene, she presents a flood of negative persuasion to her audience:
I wrote every song on that album! And by the way, the tabloids got it right. He was driving, he was on blow, he was getting blown by yours truly, and he did hit the schoolbus full of deaf children. One survived – now blind. I taught him everything he knows – and has apparently forgotten – about rock and roll … (21)
She further relates their conversation that night: “We talked about the disappointing sales of his second album – the one he wrote without me” (Mitchell, 35). Hedwig, while presenting herself as an underdog, constantly proclaims her own excellence as a superior song writer. The impetus to win by reclaiming her intellectual property provides an organizing element for both her story and her oratory. She also clearly resents the prestige that Tommy has gained, and wishes to claim it for herself by persuasive means. In the above examples, she makes the claims that not only is he the lesser writer, but also the lesser entertainer.
Aside from considerations of oratory, both drag and rock carry strong elements of competition in their traditions. Almost any public drag performance includes competition, rather implicit or explicit. Most familiar are the drag beauty competitions in which participants compete for Realness or Fabulousness. (See Jennie Livingston’s 1992 film Paris is Burning.) Even in a theoretically supportive, noncompetitive format, such as a charity benefit drag show, both participants and spectators are constantly evaluating those in drag: How real does she look? Can she pass? Who is dressed in the most surprising manner? Who has created the most persuasive representation of womanhood? Who delivers the best, most artistic, most convincing performance? Who is the most entertaining?
Rock band face similar competition, regardless of performance strata. Internationally known bands compete for the media title of “Biggest Band in the World.” Local bands regularly participate in “Battle of the Bands” events sponsored by local clubs and radio stations. The criteria are, really, much the same as those in drag events. Which band are the most convincing rock stars? Who provides the best performance? Who displays the most authentic artistry? Ultimately: Who is the most entertaining?
The presentation of Hedwig’s story, being a drag rock opera, combines all of these elements. Hedwig met her boyfriend, Yitzhak, at a Croatian drag competition. Throughout most of the film, she protects her reputation as a woman by forbidding the more beautiful Yitzhak from wearing drag as long as they are together. By insisting that they appear in public together only as a man and a woman, Hedwig seeks to remove the element of competition between them and reinforce her persuasive stance of being a more-or-less authentic woman. (“He was good. He was too good. His applause drowned out my introduction and I refused to go on” (54).) By placing herself constantly in competition with both Yitzhak and Tommy, and by constantly debating the relative merits of their abilities as songwriters and entertainers, she incorporates the standard public elements of rock star competition. Hedwig consciously constructs her oratory to reinforce her ideals of originality, creativity, and excellence – and ultimately, superiority over everyone she encounters.
The Propensity to Become a Spectacle
Its Proclivity to Excess and Exaggeration
Poulakos and Poulakos note: “Epideictic rhetoric was also influenced by the culture’s fondness of, and delight in, exhibition. … Developed along the lines of a spectacle, epideictic rhetoric helped create the awareness that words do more than call forth the world; they also create and display symbolic worlds of human design and purpose” (64). The exaggerated elements essential to the rock opera form create an alternate universe, one that is indeed “of human design and purpose.” These elements are often purposely exaggerated and excessive. Words and text alone would not be sufficient to create the world of Hedwig; exaggerated clothes, gestures and lyrics all contribute to the spectacle of the storyline. These elements also apply directly to the character of Hedwig. Her entire persona and ethos are built on an exaggerated notion of feminity constructed in the hopes of causing a spectacle: the blond Farrah hair, the bug-eye glasses, the outlandish rock-whore clothing. Her discourse is also constructed to create an event by shocking and attracting an audience:
(modeling a fur coat) You like this pelt? Some bitch stopped me on the way in, “What poor, unfortunate creature had to die for you to wear that?” “My Aunt Trudi,” I replied (54).
(spits beer into audience) That was a rock and roll gesture. Actually that was a heavy metal gesture. Want to see a punk rock gesture? (fills mouth with beer; a threatening pause; then she pits it all over herself) It’s the direction of the aggression that defines it (53).
One day, I am curled up in the trailer with my usual late-afternoon constitutional of grain alcohol and Brita. I like to be good to myself (62).
Hyperbole is a definite aspect of exaggeration in discourse, as Poulakos and Poulakos note (65). The dialogue in Hedwig depends heavily on hyperbole as a device (as demonstrated in the examples above), and so does the entire film exhibit hyperbolic tendencies, with its strong color scheme and loud soundtrack. Hedwig and Tommy don’t meet in Junction City, Kansas – they meet in a “wicked little town” (74). As Hedwig finds her salvation during the closing song, she sings:
Rain falls hard
Burns dry
A dream
Or a song
That hits you so hard
Filling you up
And suddenly gone (75)
Of course, rain does few of these things in real life. Plato might have argued that such lyrics cross the thin line that lies between enhancing reality and distorting it. In the context of the exaggerated world that Hedwig inhabits, such lyrics seem entirely appropriate. They convey emotional truth in a heightened manner that is entirely appropriate within the larger context.
Susceptibility to the Propagation of Dominant Values
The story of Hedwig, while highly unconventional, does reinforce some dominant cultural values. One of several organizing tropes in the piece is the concept of the soul mate. The song Origin of Love, which appears in both the stage production and the film, (see Appendix) is a retelling of Aristophanes’ speech from Plato’s Symposium. The film also includes an extensive cartoon sequence that dramatizes the tale of humankind’s separation into separate sexes and explains that our doom is to constantly search for our other half. Hedwig spends the majority of the film looking for her other half, first in Luther, who rescues him from Berlin and arranges for the sex-change; then in Tommy, who abandons her; and finally in Yitzhak, who she gently leaves at the end. This strongly reinforces the dominant cultural notion of “The One,” that one person who will complete each of us.
Cameron’s construction and portrayal of Hedwig as an exaggerated and alienated rock star also reinforces the hegemonic notion of transsexual as freak. (The character of Hedwig is conscious of her freakishness, and plays upon it: “My new fragrance: Atrocity. By Hedwig” (35).) However, the character is transformed at the story’s climax, ripping off her dress and wig and showing herself to the audience merely as what s/he is. Her salvation comes from removing any trappings of excess and exaggeration, and the final shot of Hedwig shows a naked figure walking down a dark city alley toward a semi-lit street, rebirthed by embracing both sides of him/herself. Plato, which his objections to hyperbolic rhetoric, would most likely approve of such an ending.
Memo to Steve: This is a real reason to go skating at Rockefeller Center, not those cheesy Christmas tunes.
The products of art and science owe their existence not merely to the effort of the great geniuses who created them, but also, in one degree or another, to the anonymous toil of their contemporaries. There is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. No cultural history has yet done justice to this fundamental state of affairs, and it can hardly hope to do so.
Benjamin, Walter. Selected Writings, Vol. 3: 1935 - 1938. 267.
Electronic media do not tolerate a show of open antagonism. Despite their cultivated air of spontaneity, these media are totally dominated by a sense of closure which is the heritage of print: a show of hostility might break open the closure, the tight control. Candidates accommodate themselves to the psychology of the media. Genteel, literate domesticity is rampant. Only quite elderly persons today can remember what oratory was like when it was still in living contact with its primary oral roots.
Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy, 137.
This morning, we were listening to a MP3 of a speech FDR gave to a group of Teamsters. I had never really listened to a recording of his voice before, nor had I read any transcripts of his fireside chats or speeches. The recording was just a stump speech, one of many, one that was probably given over and over again. I had never heard anything like it. I was struck by the wit and humor and graciousness he displayed, and wondered when these things left the political arena. None of the politicians I've grown up with ever managed to appear this human.Then, tonight, I read this passage from Ong. It would make sense, because the generation FDR was talking to was one of the last who could remember the advent of radio. They would have heard outdoor political debates and have been used to immediate oral arguement. The immediacy and humanity of that address would have been products of such an environment.
Mom found this poll tax receipt while helping Grandpa clean out the old house. I'd heard about the old poll taxes all my life, but had never seen an actual receipt for one until now.* (I've edited this one to remove the voter's name.) What makes this one particularly interesting is its date of issue: April 1, 1957. I'm sure few people who paid their poll taxes on that day would have imagined that the Central High Crisis would occur in September of that year.
I did a little research on poll taxes, and found out that they had been adopted by all eleven of the original Confederate states by 1904. In order to vote, one had to save the receipts and present them at the polls, which would explain why this one was carefully tucked away. This article, by a Prof. J. Morgan Kousser at Cal Tech, notes that "in five states, the poll tax could accumulate for more than one year - in Georgia after 1877 and Alabama after 1901, indefinitely. One knowledgeable observer termed Georgia's cumulative poll tax "the most effective bar to Negro suffrage ever devised." Kousser also observes that most of the African-American population sharecropped at that time, which meant that while they had a low annual income in general, their cash income was even lower. If they bought most of their necessities on credit, then they'd be lucky to see even a few dollars in cash a year. A $1 poll tax was an impossible amount for them to pay.
Because everyone, regardless of color, had to pay the poll tax, the states claimed that it was a nondiscriminatory policy. Kousser writes that the Southern Conference on Human Welfare took action against the taxes in the 1930s, and their efforts continued on into the 50s. Several states repealed their taxes during this time, but it wasn't until the 24th Amendment in 1964 that the poll taxes were finally abolished in all Southern states.
*I'd also never seen anything that referred to any part of the city as "Big Rock."
(thesis note)
Arie Jongejan, CEO of Elsevier's Science & Technology Division, argues that the open-access movement rests on three myths:
(1) that traditional publishing models hinder access
(2) that open access is a free and egalitarian business model
(3) that the current publishing process adds very little to the content being published
Synopsis link here at Open Access News. Original article available by subscription only.
A couple of people have been blogging about librarians and libraries they remember.
I've been puzzling on this today. I've spent an inordinate amount of time in libraries over the course of my life. If I'm not mistaken, my mother began taking me to the John Gould Fletcher branch in Little Rock sometime around the age of 4. It might have been 3. Either way, I know that by the time I was four I was checking out 12 books at a whack, which was the maximum allowed. I kept this up until sometime in my teens, when I stole an out-of-print cookbook from the downtown library. (This is the sole incidence of thievery in my history. I quit going to the library and started buying my own books out of sheer guilt. Nowadays, I'd just buy it off the internet and be done with it.)
One of the things I liked about these libraries was the fact that the librarians left me alone. They did not recognize me, as Liz's favorite did. They did not offer help. If I had a question, they were pleasant and helped me figure out the answer, but that was that.
The only librarian I remember at all was an ancient woman who ran the tiny library at the Southern Baptist Private School. She had been there since God brought in the first load of dirt, but she left after the end of my first year, which was sixth grade.
The only thing I remember about her is rather terrible. She was approaching her 70's and, as befitted a very proper woman of her generation, she wore skirts every day. Even though we were sixth graders, she made us all sit on the floor in a circle around her while she read to us. The chair she was sitting in put her knees right at our eye level, and we all stared in fascination at the heavy, service-weight stockings she wore. The longer she read, the more her knees drifted apart, and the more we saw. There were garters involved, and that strange old-lady crotch smell. It was more than any mortal eleven-year-old should ever have to bear.
People are always shy about asking me to explain my deafness. This seems to have changed a bit over the past year. In an odd demonstration of convergence, several people have asked me lately to explain how I hear. In an effort to provide thoughtful and somewhat intelligible answers, I wrote them out. Then I decided I'd post them here, both so I can remember what I said, and for others who might be curious about how such things work.
What is the nature/history/source of your hearing impairment?
Spinal meningitis when I was two. It resulted in nerve damage, which left me severely deaf in one ear and profoundly deaf in the other. What that means is that I don't hear at all on my right side, and I hear with a hearing aid on my left. Without the aid, I can only hear very low tones, and they're very unclear. I don't hear very high tones anyway, regardless.
Stating it in those terms makes it seem worse than it really is for me. My audiologist tells me that I "hear" better, in terms of functionality and pure getting around, than the actual amount of hearing I have left. I tend to fill in the gaps in what I hear with words that make sense, which works about 90% of the time. But sometimes what I come up with is so far afield as to be truly hilarious. The only time I really consider this a significant problem is when it comes to learning languages, because I'm not fluent enough to fill the gaps. With Spanish, I know the words well enough to read most things, but I don't necessarily hear them in converation, and that irritates me. It's one of the only times I really feel deaf, but I'm convinced that continued study will solve that problem.
You don't seem to have many problems from it.
Thank you. I had very determined parents who put me through a lot of speech therapy and kept me in "hearing" environments.
Do you use sign language?
No. I know the alphabet, though.
Do you talk on the phone?
Yes, all the time. My last industry job, which I had for seven years, demanded that I make my living by talking on the phone.
If I didn't already know you were deaf, would I be able to tell?
Depends. Some people are surprised to find out and say they would never have known. Most people who are close to me say that I sound like I have a very slight accent. Other people say that I sound completely normal in conversation, but that my "presentation" voice that I use when teaching or speaking in public has an accent. I do know for sure that when I'm very tired or drunk, my speech is less intelligible.
Are you part of the deaf community? Can you introduce me to deaf people?
No. I am too antisocial to be deeply involved any particular community (with the possible exception of my department.) I have a couple of deaf students right now, and they're the only deaf people I know.
You seem to love music, and I wonder about your experience of it.
I do love music, and it permeates every bit of my life. I read to classical, opera and choral; write and cook to jazz and blues; and everything else is rock and punk and whatever the current meandering is, like bluegrass. Of course, all of that is interchangeable. That said, I'm not sure that I'll be able to answer your question in a way that is satisfactory for you. I don't remember what "normal" hearing was like - all I know is how I hear now. I don't really have any way to compare the two.
How do you experience the "form" (quality) of music compared to the real "substance" (experience) of it?
It's all substance to me. For instance, surround-sound holds absolutely no magic for me, since I have no sense of sound direction. And I'll never be the kind of girl who gets the shivers over a new tweeter.
However, every time I upgrade the hearing aid I can tell a difference in sound quality, although none so large as this last time. My grandpa was kind enough to give me a digital hearing aid as a graduation present awhile back. As you know, the difference between analog and digital is huge. I came home and listened to Monk's Blues, and I cried. I had no idea how much I had been missing before, and how much more beautiful something that I already considered gorgeous was, if that makes any sense.
I'm always curious about such things but I don't want to seem like I'm prying.
This is something people are naturally curious about, and I don't have any problem talking about it. What irritates me is when people dance around it.
Here's the highlights of what I did last week:
Like I said, we were in Hot Springs this past weekend for SCMLA and decided to stay overnight because the Film Festival was also going on. The presentation went reasonably well and was over by 2, so we thought we'd mosey* on down the boulevard and stop off at one of our favorite galleries on the way. But when we got there, we found that the space was being gutted. We proceeded on to the Film Festival, only to discover that none of the 10 or so films we wanted to see were playing in the two days we were there. And then a bug flew up Mister Boyfriend's nose and wouldn't come out.
So we went back to the hotel and mutually pouted for a while, until the pouting itself was sufficient to convince us we should haul ourselves back out. On the way out of the parking deck, I, in my absent minded fashion, bumped into Ken Burns as he was getting out of a car. We didn't speak, but he gave me the nicest smile. So Mister Boyfriend and I went across the street to the Faded Rose and had a rather good dinner, which featured appetizers of fried green tomatoes and stuffed mushrooms. Then we came back to the lobby of the Arlington because the signs promised a live band playing the "Top Hits of the 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's." It started at 9, and was rather fabulous. The lobby is straight out of the 50's, with a baby blue ceiling and pink walls and molding everywhere. Chandeliers sprouting up from the floor, and huge jungle murals with big, improbable flowers and slightly psychotic monkeys on the walls. The floor was full of couples dancing, and we drank and watched. Each of them was their own story and own world. And so were we, there in the midst of it all.
*It was either a mosey or a meander. I'm not sure which.
Rather incoherent thesis note to self:
Taking a bath, and singing the Gay Bar song because it's stuck in my head, and thinking about a section from Alberto Manguel's Into the Looking-Glass Wood, in which he writes about
I have to leave right now this second for a meeting, but I wanted to write these (tenuous) connections down before I forgot them. Will think more on this later.
Writing a lot lately, just not here. Writing (and re-writing) a thesis proposal that I have to defend in the next month. Collaborating on a presentation that Dr. L'eplattenier and I will give at SCMLA today. Collaboratively teaching a web class and also teaching my own - helluva lot of writing there. Proposal written and presented at the University Teaching With Technology contest/fair yesterday.
Gotta write: teaching philosophy, statement of intent/purpose, 4 sets of PhD apps. Gotta revise and put together portfolios for writing and teaching, both to exit this program and (hopefully) enter another.
But for now: gotta get to the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. Ken Burns is the big-deal speaker this year. I doubt I'll see him, but there are some very fine films playing down there.