English 67

One of the many common threads of the dystopian materials we’ve looked at is that they involve an invaion of the mind. Societies cross over from utopia to dystopia when the government attemps to control the thought and ideas of its people. This may be obvious to everyone, but this particular aspect of dystopian text intrests me. In The Prisoner the rulers of the island invade Number 6’s mind. They also erase the memories of the citizens so they don’t remember their past and the government information that they were privied to.  “We Can Remember for You Wholesale” dealt with memories and true identity. These texts address the idea that your memories are your identity. The prisoners of the island have lost their true identites because they can’t remember their past. This is very similar to what happened the the protagonist of Phillip K. Dicks story. The connection between memory and identity is made once again. These dystopian text all predict a future where not even the mind is safe. Is this fear common in dystopian literature? What do you make of the connection between memory, identity and dystopia?

Susan, in an older post, wrote that science fiction seems to lack strong females, much less strong femaleprotagonists. This post brought to the surface of my head my own observation that runs sort of counter to hers: science fiction male characters may be “blatantly male,” but in the dystopian fiction I’ve encountered, the male protagonists are in some way or another emasculated, enervated (note: I broadly understand dystopian literature as not just literature which envisions a complex future society, e.g. Brave New World, but also literature which simply represents a negative, hopeless world, present or future.) George Orr in Lathe of Heaven, Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five, Bernard Marx in Brave New World, Shinji Ikari in Neon Genesis Evangelion, even the image of the cubicle worker part of a massive bureaucracy - all of these men are at the center of their dystopian universes, narratively, and all lack the sereotypical male brashness. They even lack the more agreeable masculine qualities of self-dependence, Hemingway-esque stoicism, or even normal sexualities/understandings of sexuality. As for women in dystopian literature, they often seem to fulfill the worst nightmares of sexually frustrated, powerless men. Arther’s wife is brutal to her feeble husband before his memory’s awakening, a stereotypical bitch. Billy Pilgrim’s wife is not cruel, just insensible and stupid, unable to give Billy emotional support, or understand his depression.

Thus, at the center of most dystopian universes is a powerless male, so much so that it is difficult to imagine a dystopian novel in which a woman is at the center. I suppose that men are at the center of dystopian universes is because their emasculation is a further inversion of what is “normal” in a corrupted future. A dystopia necessarily has inhabitants who are powerless against the grim future envisaged, else there would be hope in this future; in these grim futures, who else can understand the hopelessness of the situation better, but a lonely person who lacks the “attributes” of his gender: strength, resilience,and willpower?

Finally, athough I do not agree with the chauvunism implied in this statement, I think that the traditional genderattributes also explain why women are rarely, if ever, the center of dystopian novels (please correct me if I am revealing my ignorance of novels proving the contrary.) Think back to the snippet of Matthew Arnold’s poem “Dover Beach” in the intro to Falling into Theory, and remember the Young Feminist Professor’s complaint about the peom’s implication that “it’s the function of your [the female professors's] naturally more spiritual sex” to “protect and console” weary men. The men at the center of dystopian novels badly need consolation; that is why their painful reception of their dystopias are espcially acute. Women, however, in these dystopian schemes, are always a facet of the dystopia, a symptom. Their inability to commiserate for the protagonist makes the future only more bleak. The traditional role of women as a pillar of emotional support makes it difficult to imagine women as protagonists of dystopian novels.

[note: Sorry if I come off in any way sexist, chauvunistic, etc. I will not lie in saying that in discussing gender issues, I would never unintentionally bring in my own prejudices, especially since gender studies is fairly new to my mind.]

Two streams of our discussion today peaked my interest, and both seemed to fall into the theme of channeling. 

Desire, some of us decided, is never satisfied in humans.  I agree with this decision.  Just as, in a biological sense, our bodies are constantly adjusting in order to achieve homeostasis, I think that we are always adjusting in a more general and external sense (often socially) so as to feel emotionally stable.  We often sense some sort of nagging inconsistency within ourselves–a hole that we want to fill or some excess that has built up which we would like to mediate–and we behave accordingly.  We might fill one gap or dig through one mound of overwhelmingness, but new holes and mountains appear (we might even have created them in our effort to fix that previous problem).  Weird metaphors aside, our pursuit of stability is perpetual.  Manayo brought up an interesting point when she mentioned the single force of desire that we inherently assume exists with such a philosophy of perpetuality.  I agree with this idea of singularity.  We are always working to satisfy our desires, even if our method or particular desire changes–even if we channel our desire in different ways, it is always there.

After Jamie’s presentation it occurred to me that literature lets us channel our thoughts and feelings.  Whether we write or we read, literature can help us explore voids or recall overwhelming points in our lives.  I think it is great that the author Jamie mentioned expressed what must have been or represented a traumatic experience in his/her life.  And I think there is definitely something to be said for others reading about it.  Maybe such controversy surrounds rape because we don’t know how to deal with it.  Maybe we don’t know how to deal with it because it is not highly represented in the canon.

So yeah, channels.

In the other dystopian novels and short stories we’ve encountered, the government is in control and they are proud of that control. They don’t try to play their power off as something it isn’t. However, I found it interesting that the people in the government in control in The Prisoner, always tried to claim that they were a democratic nation. They allowed people to run for office and have newspapers in order to seem like they were really holding true to their apparent democratic ideals. However, whenever number 6 spoke out in a way that the current government disliked he was immediately suppressed. It seems uncanny, however, how similar the actions of the government in The Prisoner were to current governments in the world. Many so called democratic nations have “free elections” where in actuality the people in control are guaranteed to retain power. Versions of dystopian societies seem to exist around the globe without anyone really taking notice, just like the people on the island in The Prisoner, are virtually forgotten by the rest of the world. It seems like dystopian/utopian societies should be impossible outside the realms of science fiction. Yet, as people continue to strive for utopias, will they create more societies that accept the harsh control of dytopian rulers? If we continue to turn a blind eye to the state of affairs in certain countries who claim to be something they are not, is it possible that the dystopian societies that we have only seen in stories could actually come into existence?

Here are some half-formed thoughts:

Desire and Dystopia in Dick’s “Wholesale” and LeGuin Lathe of Heaven

If Utopia is largely political, then politics is about competing narratives. Competing narratives are different instantiations or competing outgrowths of desire.

How is desire expressed as possible existence(s) in PKD, “Wholesale”:

The desire or will to live (the narrative about the aliens = Abraham, and Sodom: if I can find one good man I will spare the city – Gen. 18) expressed as either a childish fantasy of self-aggrandizement or
The desire for non-alienated labor (his other life as a spy/assassin)
The desire for another place – any place but here (a utopian desire)
The desire for memory that constitutes identity – a truer memory than “history” with all its unreliable gaps and omissions. And “tangible” proof of that identity
Continue Reading »

Episode one (”The Arrival”) and two (”Free for All”) of The Prisoner are now online at http://etv.pomona.edu.

Log in with your PO ID, and go to Video Library->Classes->ENG 67

I seem to be having decent results on Macintosh with Firefox. Windows users should try IE. You may asked to install a plugin before using it for the first time. Do it, and restart your browser and you should be OK. I will try to retrieve these DVDs and leave them outside my office for any who want to borrow them.

Here is a link to the Wikipedia page on the series, for some background: cold war, espionage, suspicion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner

I encourage one and all to groove on the swinging ’60s (and paranoid) vibe of the show.

I’m going to try to elaborate on my comments tying the beginning and ending together. Hopefully I can keep this all clear, bear with me I’m working off 2 hours of sleep. . .

Jellyfish- I think the idea of the Jellyfish extends beyond just Orr to also include Haber and the Aliens. I see the Jellyfish as the dreamer. The jellyfish is described as having given up control to the sea. As a dreamer you do give up control of your thoughts to your dreams. But in the case of Orr and Haber they give up a little more. Orr has given up control initially to emotions which affected his dreams, then to Haber. Haber don’t give up control but is not able to gain control over his dreams in the first place. In this way, both are pulled by external forces.

However, only one really ends up on the rocks. The aliens approach Orr and help him to find a sort of balance in the “mist”. He’s able to find his “happy place” and though he might still be under the control of Haber, he is able to regain a sense of rightness in his life.

He tries to pass this experience to Haber before Haber looses control, but Haber cannot control anything, much less find comfort in the mist. He becomes both literally and figuratively stranded.

The question then is, what do aliens and the ending have to do with this? It’s interesting that the alien in the end views the humans leaving like an animal in an aquarium. While imitating the sea, an aquarium is controlled and less violent. It is less likely to control the jellyfish, there is no possibility of being thrown up onto the sand. Orr is viewed as leaving into the mist, the aliens refer to the dream state as the mist.

So what I was trying to say about social evolution is that the ideal is to end up in the aquarium like the aliens, having some control over dreams, or at least sanity. This is successfully passed on Orr who now understands what the mist is. He has gone from the possible danger of dying on the sand, to no longer being exposed to danger through a combination of blocking off his dreams and getting help. Unfortunately, Haber isn’t able to reach this state, like states that never reach certain levels on Marx’s development chart thing. . . (not really sure how it works, I just understand that it’s a progression from one form of society to next till ultimately socialism is accomplished? I think?) He is not able to change the sea around him to an artificial one, he becomes subject to the waves and dies on the sand.

A question along a different line of interpretation: if Orr is jellyfish in the sea and the alien is in the mist, is Orr leaving in the mist, the alien being in an aquarium at the end significant? has Orr, by dreaming the aliens into existence trapped them while he free to leave? or is he, by wandering into the mist becoming a lost part of the aliens dream? Maybe this reading is reading a little too much into things, but I’d like opinions on both interpretations. . .

What did anyone make of the opening paragraphs of Lathe of Heaven?

And now, now the currents mislead and the waves betray, breaking their endless circle, to leap up in loud foam against rock and air, breaking. . .

What will the creature made of seadrift do on the dry sand of daylight; what will the mind do, each morning, waking? (7)

Granted that this could be yet another of Orr’s dreams (or not?) Even so, does the jellyfish connect in any significant way to the sea-turtle aliens of Orr’s imagination, who seem to be in charge of things at the end of the book?

My uncle sent me an article from the Washington Post with a paragraph I’d like to discuss:

“As to Dumbledore, it would have been disturbing if Rowling had used her final book to argue for some baldly political agenda — if the Hogwarts headmaster and professor Snape had married, for example, in a touching civil ceremony. Whatever your view of homosexual rights, this would have been an abuse of parental trust, the exploitation of an unfair advantage. But this is not what happened. Dumbledore’s sexual identity was an assumption Rowling brought to her writing, not explicit in the text itself.”

Is Gerson’s point that it’s okay that Dumbledore is gay only because his homosexuality is never explicitly expressed in the text?  That’s kind of…close-minded, isn’t it?  I happen to agree that it is nice that Rowling makes this aspect of Dumbledore’s character subtle so that it may be analyzed differently, and even ignored, by different readers.  Children constitute a large portion of those who follow the Harry Potter series, arguably making the subtlety tactic particualrly tactful.  Also, anything “gay” tends to attract excessive attention, so it makes sense that Rowling would not want anything to distract readers from the main story.  But the real question here is whether Rowling should have to consider who her readers are to such an extent. Must she consider children and society’s sexual stigmas?  If she had had Dumbledore marry a man in one of her books, would that truly have been “abuse of parental trust”?  I don’t know if it’s fair for an author to have such a responsibility to anyone else–particularly since it seems that such pressure is only put upon Rowling due to the popularity of her books.  If she had written them all decades ago and they had all only just now been discovered, how would we treat them?  Do we expect her to write what we want her to write because we have lived with her and watched movies made from her books as she has lived and written?  She claims to have had the characters all figured out from the start, and I am inclined to believe that she had a right to have them be however she wanted them to be.  It was refreshing to have her present homosexuality as something underlying someone’s personality and at the same time not present at all in someone in that we “knew” Dumbledore without identifying that one trait of his.  But she didn’t have to do it that way.  Let’s say it had been more extreme: should the controversiality of being gay make any book with explicit homosexuality a book with a “political agenda”? This idea reminds me of our discussion of female writers and whether anything they write should be considered feminist.  In both cases I say no.  I think it would’ve been fine for Dumbledore to marry Snape or Grindewald or even Harry Potter.  But that is not what Rowling wanted.  Perhaps she wanted what we touched on in class when we talked about the trashy reporter Rita Skeeter.  Maybe she wanted us to realize how ridiculous it is that we blow up any situation in which people act “different.”  She wants everyone to have their own reading, and for us to see how unjust some responses to some readings are. 

In class we briefly discussed the idea of alienation of labour.

In recent years (dating back to around Ford’s time, as Brave New World points out), we have seen increasing mechanization of hte work force.  Individuals are being used as machines, as they repeat the same action over and over again on a conveyor belt assembly line.  In the past, the individual would have pride for a finished product. New the people who create these items can barely recognize their own work.  They have become completely disconnected.

Utopian/Dystopian socities often require the alienation of their labour force.  If the individuals are too attached to their work, they are unlikely to blindly accept the will of one individual leader.  They will think, innovate, and question, all actions that are strongly discouraged, as they give rise to individual liberty.

There is nothing inherently wrong with individual liberty, from a dys/utopian point of view, other than that it naturally undermines the idea of collective responsibility which must be instilled in all society members.  A dys/utopian society could never exist if the individuals were unwilling to sacrifice their freedoms for the better good of those around them. Liberty must come second to society.

I think this is why the labour force in dys/utopian societies is generally depicted as disconnected, alienated from their work.  What do you think?