Category: 2015 Blog Post

The main character, Addison Montgomery, in the series Private Practice is always concerned and obsessing about the impact of time in her life. For example, Addison was married to Derek Shepherd but cheated on him with his best friend. Whenever Addison would try to convince Derek that they were meant to be together, she would always revert back to the fact that they were married for 11 years. Addison rarely talked about moments that she and Derek shared together that were meaningful in their marriage. The fact she only spoke about the amount of years shows that she cared more about the longevity of the marriage rather than how the two of them really felt about being together. Halberstam says that, “The logic of time-as-productive thereby becomes one of serial cause-and-effect: the past seems useless unless it predicts and becomes material for a future.”(5) Addison’s actions showed that she felt as though her future years would mean nothing because of the amount of time and effort that she put into her marriage with Derek. Also, the simple humiliation that comes along with divorce was difficult for Addison to understand. Society often sees divorce as a sign of failure and misfortune, and Addison was aware of that. When she got married it was to build a permanent life and home together, and in Addison’s eyes a divorce showed that all of that failed.

Addison was also obsessed about time when it involved her having children. Addison got pregnant at an age and time in her life that she thought was not appropriate. She was married and had gotten pregnant by another man, and she thought that it would have been wrong to have a baby that is not by her husband. In numerous episodes she expresses that she would have had the baby if there were not other parties influencing her. Those outside parties were the standards set by society. Halberstam argues that, “These are teleological schemes of events or strategies for living such as marriage, accumulation of health and wealth for the future, reproduction, childbearing, and death and its attendant rituals.”(4) Addison’s actions did not fall in place with the normal, expected life process, and that ultimately hindered her. She was not able to do what she truly wanted because it did not fall in line with her life’s timeline.

 

“Queer uses of time and space develop…in opposition to the institutions of family, heterosexuality, and reproduction. They also develop according to other logics of location, movement, and identification” (Halberstam 1).

Halberstam’s articulation of queer time and space here reframes queerness as a state of existence, one that seeks to transgress the linear path toward Hetero Happiness. Although seemingly complex, queer space and time are concepts present and identifiable in contemporary fiction. Orphan Black, released in 2013 by BBC America, is a show that follows the struggles of a group of clones to reclaim their bodies and their personal freedoms from the corporation that created them, with focus on a clone named Sarah whose backstory includes time spent in foster care. Sarah is both a clone and an orphan, someone who lacks access to her biological parents—and thus capacity to be a “daughter” in the traditional sense—and also has an unconventional yet still significant connection to the other clones who literally share her DNA. Orphan Black engages with Halberstam’s conception of queer space and time in how its characters create their own queer family identities, ones that still foster community and connection without any origins in normative family spaces.

Although most of the clones inhabit the queer family space in their reference to one another as “sisters,” it is actually a non-clone, Felix, who exists in perhaps the queerest family space in the show. As Sarah’s foster brother he has no “legitimate” familial relation to her, yet Sarah fiercely defends his status as family whenever its legitimacy is questioned. When her clone-sister Helena behaves aggressively toward Felix (in episode 2×05), Sarah immediately insists: “Hey, you treat him with respect, you got it? That’s my brother, which means he’s one of our sisters. Family.” Sarah’s assertion is that Felix’s connection to her, which is not through blood, necessities a connection to Helena, who is also a “sister” of Sarah’s. She even uses the word “sister” to describe Felix, not “brother,” since Helena would accept more easily the word that is also used to describe their clone family, with whom their connection is inexplicable but deep. Sarah’s sense of her family space is queer—it transgresses the common notion of what family is or ought to be. By creating characters whose identities inherently defy tradition in this way, Orphan Black seeks to highlight and valid the queer family space.

While “say you like sporty spice…say it!” is likely the most memorable line of one episode of a new, alternative porn outlet produced by Indie Porn Revolution, described as “sex positive with a trans female focus”, the radical and in fact humorous nature of the series can be understood through a lens of queer theory. By beginning the pornographic narrative with a handful of female friends, who gather other seemingly random participants from streets in their neighborhood, the film immediately challenges the “organizations of community…and activity in space” of heteronormative ideologies (Halberstam, p.). More specifically, the continuation of the scene and the imaginative sexual activities that transpire create a physical as well as cyber “queer space” (Halberstam), that provides endless and unpredictable alternatives both in terms of narrative as well as sexual identity.

Amongst the playful and often humorous group sex, one act consists of one of the women removing a tampon from another, with the goal of providing sexual pleasure. Strange as it may seem, this use of an otherwise stigmatized ‘feminine hygiene’ product as a means for women to be sexual with one another is a profound statement against firm heteronormative institutions. The reformulation of the tampon from a means to inhibit a natural female process, to a sex toy transcends traditional notions of privacy, of menstruation and reproduction, and thus of gender norms in their entirety. The tampon’s interaction with the somatic self becomes redefined – thus defying its institutional meaning and re-appropriating it within a free, queer space. As Freeman argues, such “institutional forces” have in many ways become “somatic facts” (p.3), a process known as chrononormativity. By challenging the ‘established’ use of the tampon, this porn and its participants take ownership and agency over products designed for their gender, but also over their sexuality and personhood as a whole.
Freeman, however, argues that to exist outside the imposed time line is to barely exist at all; in other words, abiding by a “sequence of socioeconomically “productive” moments” has been unfortunately equated to living. The existence, or rather the avid and animate living of female characters, engaging in evidently queer sexual practices is, in the context of this society, a paradox. Said simply, the silencing of queer space is what ultimately ‘kills’ its participants, depriving them of any opportunity or right to ‘live’. To take this thought even further, I considered the theatrical nature of this porn – the costume-life outfits, the exaggerated expressions, and the comedic twist on sex. So in fact, the existence of this queer space and the queer women within it, remains limited to a theatrical, almost cartooned representation of anything non-heteronormative. To further understand this, we can assess how the narrator in Winterson’s Written on the Body, is constantly struggling with perceptions of ‘survival’ and ‘living’. If living is in fact simply a product of obedience to a timeline of birth, marriage, reproduction, and death, then those that defy it (Winterson’s narrator and our friendly feminist porn stars) are left floating in a space that can only be defined as the opposite of life – death. Queer space then, provides not a flexible option for weirdos, dykes, freaks, tampon-fiends, cross-dressers, or Spice Girl kinks, but rather, it provides life.

 

Link to Indie Porn Revolution:

Welcome to nofauxxx.com home of the indie porn revolution!

“’You don’t want to be doing that,’ the men in our families would say. ‘That’s a girl thing.’ Baking scones and cupcakes for the school janitors, watching Guiding Light with our mothers, collecting rose petals for use in a fragrant potpourri: anything worth doing turned out to be a girl thing” (Me Talk Pretty One Day, 10).

I would like to analyze this quote from the perspective of Queer Temporality and Postmodern Geographies, specifically with the idea of “strict bourgeois rules of respectability” (5) that Halberstam alludes to.

David Sedaris, while considered to be a “conservative” queer individual, certainly represents someone who lives an alternative lifestyle.  He complements the traditional bourgeois lifestyle that Halberstam discusses where he is performing many actions traditionally associated with upper-class individuals, but he is a man, and these actions are associated with women.  Scones and cupcakes are reminiscent of the English high tea as well as rose petals, however, these objects are traditionally made and used by women.  Men may only discreetly enjoy these things, if they even notice them, and they are certainly not expected or encouraged to aid with their fabrication.  The fact that David Sedaris not only does these things, but enjoys them and seeks them out, represents a twisting of bourgeois ideals.  This twist also has an interesting effect on queer culture; David Sedaris, an openly gay man, could be considered to be playing into the stereotype that gay men are extremely feminine.

David Sedaris’ “queer” twist on an otherwise respected, if feminine, practice puts an interesting spin on both queer and heteronormative/bourgeois ideals.  In terms of heteronormative/bourgeois ideals, he is fulfilling the aristocratic desire to engage in high tea, watch television with his elders, and create aromatic house pieces.  However, he is engaging in these practices not because he is expected to, which he would be if he were a woman, but because he wants to, as he is a gay man.  This quotation also presents a twist on queer culture; currently, on different forms of social media like Tumblr, many queer individuals use the dialogue of girl vs. boy things to symbolize oppressive gender assignment of children.  Since children are compelled to act in accordance with society’s ideals of gender-appropriate behavior, they are unable to do things they may truly love.  This discourse is then traditionally used to propose or argue that society must be changed to eradicate these oppressive behaviors.  David Sedaris twists this, and instead uses it to make a humorous anecdote that is just that, humorous.  Halberstam provides an interesting lens through which Sedaris’ work may be analyzed, but one could argue that Sedaris’ primary concentration is humor instead of making a political point, which contrasts Halberstam’s rather political piece.

“If a boy didn’t care for barbecued chicken or potato chips, people would accept it as a matter of personal taste, saying, ‘Oh well, I guess it takes all kinds.’ You could turn up your nose at the president or Coke or even God, but there were names for boys who didn’t like sports” (Sedaris 5)

In this passage, the narrator of Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day ruminates about the strange power of the expectation that all boys will be invested in sports, something that he himself does not enjoy. Eve Kosofky Sedgwick’s discussion of how institutions come together and speak with “one voice” in order to create and reinforce meaning is useful in thinking through the narrator’s frustration with the connection between gender and sports in this part of the text.

Speaking about the way Christmas has become an institutionally constructed and enforced monolith tightly linked to the family, Sedgwick argues, “They all—religion, state, capital, ideology, domesticity, the discourses of power and legitimacy—line up with each other so neatly once a year” (6). Although the narrator does not reflect specifically on the way these institutions enforce the link between sports and masculinity, this passage reveals his frustration with the “sports/manhood” tautology; to borrow Sedgwick’s words, it is a monolith that he views with “unhappy eyes” (5). His recognition of the fact that desire for certain foods is seen merely as “personal taste” in a way that the lack of desire to participate in sports culture is not demonstrates his understanding that the “boys/sports” connection extends beyond the realm of the individual and is functioning on the level of institution.

Furthermore, the fact that the narrator can simply say “there were names for boys who didn’t like sports” without specifically providing those names only reinforces Sedgwick’s claim about institutions lining up and speaking with one voice; as readers, we are already familiar with the sorts of names the narrator is referring to, because we too have experienced the ways institutions discipline gender roles. The narrator asks for the sort of unpacking and “disarticulating” that Sedgwick calls for. He wants to live in a world where, “Oh well, I guess it takes all kinds” is the response he would receive if he opened up about his lack of interest in football. But this would require disengaging masculinity from the realm of sports, and an unpacking of the terms “boyhood” and “sports” in order to see why all their parts actually have multiple “possibilities” and “gaps” and “overlaps” (Sedgwick 8). Disarticulating monoliths in this way would open up the potential for the narrator’s (and everyone’s) relationship to sports to be seen merely as personal preference, no more linked to gender/sexuality than his relationship to “barbecued chicken or potato chips.”

The narrator in Written on the Body tries very hard, but does not always succeed in embodying a queer, abstract, script-less relationship. Throughout the novel we see references to the cliché’s of love and marriage. The narrator mocks this idea of love as prescribed with a set path that can be followed to a happy and blissful end. However, the narrator is not always successful in letting go, or changing the patterns of past relationships. However, the very last line suggests to me that the narrator has finally found a way out of cliché’s at last and into queer time. “I don’t know if this is a happy ending but here we are let loose in open fields” (190). This line implies queer relationships and queer time. If we see the narrators desire through the book for the ‘forever’ relationship as the future that heteronormative time dangles in front of us than this line becomes a shift into queer time. X says “here we are” implying the now, the present-ness, the simply ‘being’ that queer time emphasizes. “The constantly diminishing future creates a new emphasis on the here, the present, the now” (2) says Judith Halberstam about queer time. The words “loose” and “open” also reference a queer time. A place without the structure and deadlines of heteronormativity is the field that the narrator is released into.

However I find the most redemption for the narrator comes from “I don’t know if this is a happy ending”. That is the essential difference between a prescribed heteronormative relationship, and a queer undefined relationship. When we have your two story house in the suburbs with your happy-hetero family and yappy dog, you know it’s your happy ending. The whole point is that when you get to ‘perfect life’ you recognize it; you can look back on all your hard work and say that you made it. However, the narrator does not describe that moment of clarity, of feeling like X got everything X wanted. Instead the narrator lives in the unknown, in the potential of happy ending. In the books last line it denies the reader the ‘and then they lived happily ever after’ and in doing so queers the books. This is not a love story. Nothing about it functions as expected, even the ‘happy ending’.

I decided to try out the café, out of masochism, out of habit, out of hope. I thought it might comfort me, although I noticed how little comfort was to be got from familiar things. How dare they stay the same when so much had changed? Why does your sweater senselessly smell of you, keep your shape when you are not there to wear it? I don’t want to be reminded of you, I want you. I’ve been thinking of leaving London, going back to that ridiculous rented cottage for a while. Why not? Make a fresh start, isn’t that one of those useful clichés?(p. 180)

The narrator has returned to London and has been to see Louise’s mother and sister, hoping they would tell hum where Louise is, but hu is denied this information, and reminded of how very deeply hu hurt Louise. In desperation, the narrator goes to Elgin’s house and they get into a fistfight, and again hu does not find out where Louise is or what might have happened to her.

In this passage, Narrator has just left the cemetery and goes across the street to the café where hu and Louise used to meet. Perhaps she will be there, hu thinks, but of course, she isn’t. The reflection of how familiar things can be painful reminders of a love lost is an indication of the inner conflict going on in the narrator. Perhaps most of the pain springs from guilt. Guilt for being a coward, and not staying with Louise when she needed hum most, and ignoring her wishes, insisting that she will never return to Elgin, under any circumstances. But, here’s another thought; maybe hu should have asked what Elgin’s motivations for disclosing Louise’s illness were before hu just deserted the love of his life. What if Elgin really wanted to punish Louise in the only way he could, by insisting on painful, debilitating treatment when all the other doctors disagreed with that course of action? Or was Elgin perhaps aware of a character flaw in the narrator? Did Elgin anticipate an underlying fear of real commitment, and the failure of the narrator to carry though with the relationship when faced with such horrific news? Did Elgin somehow know that hu would cut and run, not out of self-sacrifice, but out of fear? The letters from other doctors said that she was asymptomatic and they didn’t recommend treatment yet, so why didn’t the narrator consider that Elgin’s desire to treat Louise might have been an unholy one.

I feel that the narrator has overly romanticized their relationship, (Why does your sweater senselessly smell of you) thinking that hu was doing the right thing by taking the decision away from Louise on how she wanted to proceed with her own life and death. The reality of how selfish and gutless the decision was to just leave is hitting hum hard, but not enough from keeping hum from considering it yet again. The absence of Louise has left a black hole in the narrator’s universe, and finally returning to try to reclaim what hu lost might have redeemed hum, were it not for hus gut instinct to flee. The tendency hu has of always considering a way out tells me that hu is a coward and incapable of carrying responsibility in a real relationship, with all it’s magnificence and distresses, demands and rewards.

“It’s as if Louise never existed, like a character in a book. Did I invent her?” (189)

At this point in the novel, the narrator has returned from their trip to London in search for Louise. Upon returning to their home, the narrator has a conversation with Gail in which they state the above passage during an explanation of their failed journey.  Although the narrator searches for Louise to the best of their ability, they do not find her. As a result, they express that “it’s as if Louise never existed.” This could suggest that the narrator’s feelings of loss have caused them to forget Louise. Yet, due to the vast amount of time the narrator spends thinking about Louise, this does not seem likely. Instead, I propose that Louise has never actually existed in the “real world.”

The use of the word “like” in this passage establishes a simile in which the narrator compares Louise to a character in a book. When one reads a book, especially a novel with strong character development, he/she may feel connected to a character on a personal level. A reader may even develop strong romantic feelings for a character, but this all exists within the reader’s imagination and outside of the “real world.” Similarly, if Louise is like “a character in a book,” the narrator may develop strong emotions towards her, but not actually be able to interact with her in the “real world.” This does not make the narrator’s love illegitimate. Instead, it shows how love can exist in different, sometimes fictional, contexts.

The narrator then asks, “Did I invent her?” This may explain Louise’s lack of autonomy as a character. Throughout the novel, the narrator seems to talk about Louise as though she is an all-knowing, active force in the narrator’s life and, on page 91, the narrator even states that he/she thought of Louise “beyond common sense.” Yet, Louise has practically no voice in the novel, and even when she does, the narrator interprets her words. The narrator may have therefore “invented” Louise, “like a character in a book.” To the reader, Louise is indeed a “character in a book.” Through an analysis of this passage, the narrator’s awareness of her character becomes evident as well.

“Marriage is the flimsiest weapon against desire. You may as well take a pop-gun to a python” (Winterson 78)

Throughout the novel, the narrator has shown that their relationship with marriage is complex. They do not think positively about marriage, which is off-putting yet comforting. Our whole lives we have been culturally conditioned to think marriage is the ultimate goal in life and over the summer I finally realized that I don’t have to get married if I don’t want to and I instantly felt more liberated. And because media reflects culture, most literature, that I’ve read, portrays marriage in a positive and idealistic manner. The narrator’s critique of marriage goes against the grain and provides a more realistic view of marriage. Earlier, Winterson describes the superficiality of marriage, “I used to think of marriage as a plate-glass window just begging for a brick” (13). The passage surrounding the quote portrays marriage as just for show, an appearance to uphold. It frames marriage not as the reflection of ultimate happiness but as something someone does for damage control, in order to prove to everyone else that they are worthy of love and a family. I also think it implies that marriage needs to be destroyed by a brick, but what is the brick? In relation to the narrator’s past love life, I would say the brick is adultery or as the above quote says, “desire.” In the narrator’s eyes, marriages are supposed to be broken up. Marriages exist only on the basis that everything that isn’t a marriage exists: adultery, polyamory, same-sex relationships etc. The juxtaposition of “desire” and “python” is a reference to the original sin, the downfall of the first marriage in the bible. Since the “first marriage” went so poorly, what kind of model does that make for the rest of history? Marriage is meant to regulate everything that is not marriage and therefore stifle and control it. In early Puritanical tradition sex was actually seen as a good thing that should be very pleasurable thing, as long as it was within the confines of marriage. John D’Emilio and Estelle Freedman refer to these practices in their book, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America. Since the Puritans were also a pro-natalist culture (we must populate the earth to keep our religion going and survive this horrible New England climate) they endorsed having lots of sex, as long as it was in wedlock and resulted in a child. This American (I do not know the British context but I cannot imagine it being that much different due to the Protestant roots of both countries and the colonial legacy of Britain in America) contextualization of marriage sees it as a channel for desire but as the narrator sees it, desire cannot be regulated. Desire is all powerful and reckless and does not care about an arbitrary agreement like marriage. The narrator is a frequent adulterer because sexual attraction cannot be simply stifled or swept under the rug.

“The dead you is constantly being rubbed away by the dead me. Your cells fall and flake away, fodder to dust mites and bed bugs. Your droppings support colonies of life that graze on skin and hair no longer wanted. You don’t feel a thing. How could you? All your sensation comes from deeper down, the live places where the dermis is renewing itself, making another armadillo layer. You are a knight in shining armor” (p.123).

In this paragraph at the beginning of “The Skin” section, the narrator presents contrasting images of reproduction and life with death and decay. The idea of a “dead you…[and a] dead me” creates separate entities for the dead versions of both the narrator and Louise (123). As this quote suggests a distinction between the dead and ‘living’ versions of the lovers, the imagery presented seemingly contrasts life with death. This is in part expressed through the idea of “droppings” that “support colonies of life” (123). In addition, the image of “the dermis…renewing itself, making another armadillo layer” further develops the binary of life and death (123). Specifically, the juxtaposition, and in fact integration of these concepts contributes to an overall theme in the novel: the difference between survival and living. The ‘scientific’ language and imagery employed in this text is meant to symbolize ‘survival’, while the aspects of decay, entwined within the processes of reproduction and life, evoke a sense of death.
The narrator’s brief attention to any feeling at all amidst a channeling of medical poetry, is in her/his questioning of Louise’s numbness: “you don’t feel a thing” (123). This lack of feeling appears to be due to the reliance on survival as a form of life, rather than embracing living. In fact, the narrator’s choice to leave Louise was a prioritization of survival rather than life; specifically, she/he chose to leave Louise in order to keep her ‘alive’, while staying with her may have caused a faster physical deterioration, but would have enabled Louise to truly ‘live’, in all the sense of the word. In this passage, the narrator’s partial resentment for this choice becomes clear: survival no longer seems as appealing. The end of the quote reconnects us with the ‘savior image, Louise as a “knight in shining armor” (123). While this theme is pertinent throughout the novel, images of the saved vs. savior binary are developed in particular in the last 30 pages of the novel (159, 160, 162, 190). The last image of the novel specifically, channels the idea of Louise as the ultimate ‘savior’ to the narrator: arriving unexpected in a midst of sunlight (190).