Friday, February 19, 2010

The Outlaw: Crime and Punishment



Brandon Teena is an outlaw. He exists outside of the law, both in the legal sense and in the sense. An imperfectly postmodern being, Brandon blurs the binaries of sexuality and gender. Is he a heterosexual man or a homosexual woman? He exists as a challenge to the binary language of gender and sexuality that we rely upon for understanding.

Hermann Goering, a prominent member of the Nazi party, once said "when I hear the word 'culture', that's when I reach for my revolver". Such is the violent nature of ignorance. It is well known that men fear/hate the unknown, it follows that the less knowledgeable a person is, the more hatefully they shall behave. Butler refers to "punitive consequences" for the violation of taboos. The rednecks in Boy's Don't Cry as simply carrying out their brand vigilante justice in the name of the cultural laws beneath which they live. They gather a posse and Brandon Teena gets lynched.


On a only a lighter note:
Lenny Bruce - Psychopathia Sexualis

Saturday, February 6, 2010

The Female Of The Species...

In my reading of the Emily Dickinson poem I was struck by a notion of sexism as internal dissonance that had not previously occurred to me. If we internalize the ideologies of our institutions and said ideologies are sexist in nature, privileging the male over the female, what does this mean for to the mind of a woman? I have no idea. It is indeed a many-splendored thing to be a heterosexual white man and with each successive unit I am appreciating it more and more. Thank you lit theory!

P.S. apologies for my extended absence. To quote the rap group Clipse, "These are the days of our lives and I'm sorry to the fans but these crackers weren't playing fair jive"