...and then I found out this morning that someone is writing their PhD dissertation on slash, and I felt sad. But I'm not a doctoral candidate, and I had half a semester to come up with ten pages on something I only found four books on, so I think I'm in the clear here.
This news about the doctoral candidate reminds me of something else I'm working on right now -- our last unit in peace studies dealing with the topic of race. This evening I have to go over to SJU to watch a movie we started in class called "The Color Of Fear" in which eight men of varying ethnic backgrounds (two latinos, two blacks, two asians, and two whites) discuss their perceptions on race. When we stopped the movie last class, one of the black men (whose name escapes me at the moment) had just finished a rant, for lack of a better term, in response to several comments by the others on what it means to be American. In what I thought to be a brilliant peice of discourse for someone who was so angry, he outlined his displeasure in the idea that one has to "give up the hyphen" as it were to truly be American. He said that we can't all be the same, so why are we trying, and that being American is all about owning who you are, be it African American or Euro-American.
I won't hide the fact that by the time he was finished, I was crying. Reading my online blog will probably not have given you the sense that I am by nature a very emotional person, especially when it comes to problems I know I can't solve but want to anyway. My problem with this issue is this -- I have always felt either way I approach 'a minority issue' if we can call it that, if I connect with the issues presented to me I will be considered patronizing, and if I don't connect I will be considered racist. Either way, I lose.
This is not the first time Peace Studies has made me feel this way -- When we were reading "Beloved" earlier in the semester, I faced the same problem, addressed on this blog in "An All-Seeing Eye: The Big Other in The Bluest Eye". I had read Toni Morrison before and had run into the problem of not liking "Beloved." I had a hard time coming out and saying that because I could be seen as racist. On the other hand, I had a hard time coming out and saying that the power and emotion in "The Bluest Eye" struck me in ways that I have not been struck before because I might be seen as patronizing --
Pre-conditioned responses have already been embedded into my system, and apparently one of them is to step away any time a black author tries to involve me in the shared feeling of remorse and say "But I'm not on the same level as you." This is troublesome indeed, and I'm not entirely sure I know how to solve that. On the one hand, it is true -- not being picked for the kickball team is by no means the same as being rejected from the social network of your classroom by your peers because you are black and do not look like the beauty ideal of Shirley Temple in any way, as Pecola is in The Bluest Eye.I feel the same way about Toni Morrison's writing as I do about slash fanfiction. While I've been doing my research, I kept coming across information that told me that female fanfiction writers write slash to break away from the hetrosexual-centric culture and reclaim agency and writing space for themselves. It sounds epic and exciting and revolutionary...and I'm not part of it. I'm a female fanfiction writer. I've never written a piece of slash fanfic in my life. I'm part of the group of writers reaffirming the social norm in their writing. And for some reason, that makes me feel bad. Why can't I be part of the majority and enjoy it? It's not that I look down on the minority, that I consider their expieriences less valid and important than my own, it's that I like it where I am. I'm being guilt-tripped into thinking that just because I enjoy Jane Eyre, whose main character is allowed to exist and prosper because her colonial sister Bertha is repressed by the system of British Imperialism, I am a bad person.
Why?
And perhaps more importantly, what do I do now?
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I can understand that - especially regarding fiction. I think there's always something of a moment of awkwardness with things we can't understand. Racism is something I've never experienced, and the huge gulf of bitter experience outside my own is often...daunting. But I do agree with you about Jane Eyre. I read the Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys and at first, I felt awful - outraged that she'd changed Mr Rochester into a manipulative monster, subverted one of my favourite literary characters! Of course, Bertha is a stereotype in Jane Eyre- not quite as excruciating as a reading of Heart of Darkness, but no very distant way from the same attitudes. I preferred the mid-way ground the 2006 drama went for, really - where Bertha's not a sub-human monster; she was beautiful. Beautiful and dangerous.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I still can't forgive Jean Rhys from making Rochester a misogynist wife-abusing fiend. But - I can understand why Jean Rhys needed to make Bertha's voice heard.
Someone is writing a PhD dissertation on slash. Lemme guess: because it's good for the soul. I wonder if your friend realizes that homosexuality is medically unhealthy? Guess not. Who needs facts?
ReplyDelete"This news about the doctoral candidate reminds me of something else I'm working on right now -- our last unit in peace studies dealing with the topic of race. This evening I have to go over to SJU to watch a movie we started in class called "The Color Of Fear" in which eight men of varying ethnic backgrounds (two latinos, two blacks, two asians, and two whites) discuss their perceptions on race. When we stopped the movie last class, one of the black men (whose name escapes me at the moment) had just finished a rant, for lack of a better term, in response to several comments by the others on what it means to be American."
You know in China, they kill you if you're not Han Chinese. Of course you'd cry at this race-baiting movie: you have white guilt, you feel ashamed, and you take...Peace Studies. Motherfucking peace studies. How is that a serious academic study, other than blaming whites?
How about this: if you want to be diverse, how about importing Indians to China? But oh no, that would be bad for both. So why is Europe the ONLY FUCKING ONE who has to bow down to it?
"While I've been doing my research, I kept coming across information that told me that female fanfiction writers write slash to break away from the hetrosexual-centric culture and reclaim agency and writing space for themselves. It sounds epic and exciting and revolutionary...and I'm not part of it." - Good, and we normal people know who to hang in the morning.
Don't like America? GET OUT.