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highlyeccentricI read 'Fun Home' this week. I haven't seen the musical: if you have, does it do anything different with the part where her father is *sleeping with his (male) high school students*? I'm... I'm not objecting to the book, but I AM surprised no one ELSE is. Like. This is the same decade in which I saw both 25+ adults and younger queers getting righteously incensed about Call Me By Your Name being Bad Representation, but we're okay with Bechdel's narrativising of her father's crimes (yes, they are crimes! She specified at least one of the students was 17, and unless there's something I've missed about Pennsylvania state law that's underage? Also, homosexuality was probably illegal through some of the time she recounts(?)). The story she tells herself about her father is one of thwarted homosexuality, thwarted growing-up ending in relationships with teens.
I'm... interested in two things, one, that story itself, and two, how unclear it is whether Bechdel KNOWS that's a comforting story she's telling herself to dodge some of the bigger stuff. There are a few moments - one, a panel where she draws her father teaching 'Catcher in the Rye', where she highlights her father's 'lack of self-awareness'. The first mention of her father's sexuality at all is a shock panel - something like 'but would a real family man have been sleeping with his students?' But... for the most part, with the memoir's taught focus on Alison herself and her relationship with her father, it's not really clear if she's actually thought, at all, that there are other victims outside the family disaster zone. In the courtroom episode, the boy who reported her father for purchasing liquor for his younger brother comes to *apologise*. Which I'm sure he actually did, IRL, but it sure is a choice to foreground that part.
And yet. There's the panel where she wonders if she would have had the courage to be a 50s bulldagger; or if she might have played it safe and 'found solace in my high school students'. That's kinda... Reminds me of the ending of History Boys, in a way, the... wait. You just. You take it for granted that that's what happens, and how, and why. It offends my sense of self as a teacher - but it's not like queer folks are the only people who make that assumption, pretty much EVERYONE assumes straight men are going to be attracted to their high school pupils.
The way Bechdel framed that hypothetical, though, with its emphasis on a *thwarted young adulthood* (something not present in the closing monologue of History Boys, although it can be inferred elsewhere re Hector), reminded me of At Swim, Two Boys - it never puts down a single clear causal sentence but builds up this web of implications and character observations to the effect that MacMurrough, though he is absolutely taking advantage of Doyler by reason of class and wealth, is also on some fundamental level his emotional peer, because MacMurrough is caught in a stunted late adolescence of repression. (For that matter, I think the same could be said of Oliver in CMBYN. although I'm less sure if that is an interpretation being set up for one by the author, due to the tight POV focus.)
That struck me, at the time I read At Swim, Two Boys, as something... something that would make me not want to include that book on a syllabus, let's say (I wonder how M.L, who is an older gay man and did teach it, handled that?). I don't know how I would draw attention to that aspect of characterisation without ending up either on a list somewhere of Dangerous Queers, or enraging queer students, or, at best, ending up with some alarming oversimplifcations in essays. Fun Home would be easier - BECAUSE it feels so often like Bechdel is just not looking at the elephant head on, teach it with a hermeneutic of suspicion... which would feel, in some ways, unfair: why should a queer creator be held to account for the *nonfictional* deeds of her father?
And the thing is, while I absolutely know that homophobia is by no means the explanation for the vast majority of these kinds of abuses - not even the same-sex ones - it... doesn't strike me as an utterly invalid explanation. One heavy with freudianism, yes; one that has been used BY homophobes for such a long time that I'm honestly startled every time I encounter it engaged with in queer lit - although of course, just as Bechdel has to reckon with her father as legacy as well as wrongdoer, queer lineages have had to reckon with not just what has been done to us, but what some of us have done to others. Freudianism or no, there's research from other disciplines that suggests highly repressive environments both harm those who grow in them, and foster harm-doing, including by those who have themselves been harmed by highly repressive doctrines. (I can't find the link now because all the key words are drowned out by conviction / acquittal related pieces, but I'm thinking of an article David Marr wrote, which draw from The High Price of Heaven and more recent research, on arguments that priestly celibacy as currently enforced psychologically harms its adherents, contributing to the high toll of abuses by priests; this is true regardless of whether the priest is predominantly attracted to men or women.) It's not comfortable to talk about, though. It's not comfortable to think about. In wanting to give these authors the credit of assuming they write with insight and nuance - and therefore that their interpretations may have weight - am I merely entertaining Homophobic Tropes That Harm Everyone?
But between Fun Home, History Boys, and At Swim, I'm wondering if this is... some kind of thread through early 2000s queer content? And if so, why on earth have I never seen anyone decrying it, given how much of contemporary queer discourse (especially online) is devoted to decrying queer cultures past?
Currently Reading:
Fiction For Fun: Elif Shafak's 'Three Daughters of Eve', back in rotation again. I've also just started 'Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows', which promises to be fun brain candy.
Poetry: Still slowly working through Paradise Lost
Non-Fiction for personal interest: I made some further progress with Meanjin (autumn) but have recently misplaced it.
For work: I'm really enjoying the 18th c modernisations in Bowden's anthology, slightly to my surprise; I'm still puttering through 'The Invention of Race', having more qualms about the final three chapters than the earlier ones; and I'm listening to The House of Fame as an audio recording.
Recently Finished: Both 'Miroirs Arthuriens' and Jost's collection 'Chaucer's Humour'. The former I've filed a proper review of with Arthuriana; the latter doesn't deserve a goodreads review, as it's useful but tedious.
The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was in many ways better than I expected, and yet. Nothing quite exceeds 'Mrs Icarus' for excellence; and the whole thing is rather ruined by the redolent transphobia of 'Mrs Tiresias'.
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Huh. I ... have many questions, there are many great things about this and some troubling ones, and... HUH. (see above).
Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure by Courtney Milan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I did enjoy this - it's rare to find f/f historicals, let alone ones that have both humour and sexual tension. As ever, though, I just don't quite gel with Milan's writing style.
Online Fiction:
Sayaka Murata, trans. Ginna Tapley Takemori: I married a stranger to be left alone (extract from the novel Earthlings, which I shall be reading I think...)
Up Next: As usual, I'm not sure, because I should be reading EVERYTHING.
Some links:
Beth Plutchak (own blog), We aren't dragons: on the dsyfunctional ways that US society (and many others similarly structured) is set up so that the only route to security in old age is through wealth accumulation; and what alternatives could be considered
Patricia Morrisroe (NYT), The Woman Who Built Beethoven's Pianos. Fascinating!
Nicholas Thompson (Wired), A nameless hiker and the case the internet couldn't crack. This is also fascinating in a different way!
Harriet Sherwood (Guardian UK), Blue plaque to honour yorkshirewoman who was locked in asylum for calling vicar a liar
Autistic Science Person (Neuroclastic blog), Austistic people care too much, science says. On a bullshit research study that found autistic people are "morally inflexible" because they were unlikely to pick an option that involved an immoral action but personal benefit.
Vicky Spratt (Refinery29), Why do I think all my friends don't like me right now? I saw this being shared by autistic people on twitter as 'pandemic means neurotypicals experience problems we have all the time, but actually it kind of gave me a good explantion for why I seem to get this particular problem less often than most people.
Jennifer Romolini (Catapault), I lost my voice before I found it
Steve Kornacki (Slate, 2011), The coming out story I never thought I'd write. This is the elections numbers guy everyone was going mad for on twitter. Not a particularly astonishing story, but an interesting one - written AFTER he'd lost a relationship due to his unwilligness to come out, so it doesn't end on 'and now i have my fiancé and we're Just Like You'.
The Hatching Cat, Hafiz, the literary cat who lived in Manhattan's first apartment building.
Pamela Petro (Guernica), Shedding Light. In which the artist writes about a series of photographs taken around the globe in which she photographed light effects at dusk.
I'm... interested in two things, one, that story itself, and two, how unclear it is whether Bechdel KNOWS that's a comforting story she's telling herself to dodge some of the bigger stuff. There are a few moments - one, a panel where she draws her father teaching 'Catcher in the Rye', where she highlights her father's 'lack of self-awareness'. The first mention of her father's sexuality at all is a shock panel - something like 'but would a real family man have been sleeping with his students?' But... for the most part, with the memoir's taught focus on Alison herself and her relationship with her father, it's not really clear if she's actually thought, at all, that there are other victims outside the family disaster zone. In the courtroom episode, the boy who reported her father for purchasing liquor for his younger brother comes to *apologise*. Which I'm sure he actually did, IRL, but it sure is a choice to foreground that part.
And yet. There's the panel where she wonders if she would have had the courage to be a 50s bulldagger; or if she might have played it safe and 'found solace in my high school students'. That's kinda... Reminds me of the ending of History Boys, in a way, the... wait. You just. You take it for granted that that's what happens, and how, and why. It offends my sense of self as a teacher - but it's not like queer folks are the only people who make that assumption, pretty much EVERYONE assumes straight men are going to be attracted to their high school pupils.
The way Bechdel framed that hypothetical, though, with its emphasis on a *thwarted young adulthood* (something not present in the closing monologue of History Boys, although it can be inferred elsewhere re Hector), reminded me of At Swim, Two Boys - it never puts down a single clear causal sentence but builds up this web of implications and character observations to the effect that MacMurrough, though he is absolutely taking advantage of Doyler by reason of class and wealth, is also on some fundamental level his emotional peer, because MacMurrough is caught in a stunted late adolescence of repression. (For that matter, I think the same could be said of Oliver in CMBYN. although I'm less sure if that is an interpretation being set up for one by the author, due to the tight POV focus.)
That struck me, at the time I read At Swim, Two Boys, as something... something that would make me not want to include that book on a syllabus, let's say (I wonder how M.L, who is an older gay man and did teach it, handled that?). I don't know how I would draw attention to that aspect of characterisation without ending up either on a list somewhere of Dangerous Queers, or enraging queer students, or, at best, ending up with some alarming oversimplifcations in essays. Fun Home would be easier - BECAUSE it feels so often like Bechdel is just not looking at the elephant head on, teach it with a hermeneutic of suspicion... which would feel, in some ways, unfair: why should a queer creator be held to account for the *nonfictional* deeds of her father?
And the thing is, while I absolutely know that homophobia is by no means the explanation for the vast majority of these kinds of abuses - not even the same-sex ones - it... doesn't strike me as an utterly invalid explanation. One heavy with freudianism, yes; one that has been used BY homophobes for such a long time that I'm honestly startled every time I encounter it engaged with in queer lit - although of course, just as Bechdel has to reckon with her father as legacy as well as wrongdoer, queer lineages have had to reckon with not just what has been done to us, but what some of us have done to others. Freudianism or no, there's research from other disciplines that suggests highly repressive environments both harm those who grow in them, and foster harm-doing, including by those who have themselves been harmed by highly repressive doctrines. (I can't find the link now because all the key words are drowned out by conviction / acquittal related pieces, but I'm thinking of an article David Marr wrote, which draw from The High Price of Heaven and more recent research, on arguments that priestly celibacy as currently enforced psychologically harms its adherents, contributing to the high toll of abuses by priests; this is true regardless of whether the priest is predominantly attracted to men or women.) It's not comfortable to talk about, though. It's not comfortable to think about. In wanting to give these authors the credit of assuming they write with insight and nuance - and therefore that their interpretations may have weight - am I merely entertaining Homophobic Tropes That Harm Everyone?
But between Fun Home, History Boys, and At Swim, I'm wondering if this is... some kind of thread through early 2000s queer content? And if so, why on earth have I never seen anyone decrying it, given how much of contemporary queer discourse (especially online) is devoted to decrying queer cultures past?
Currently Reading:
Fiction For Fun: Elif Shafak's 'Three Daughters of Eve', back in rotation again. I've also just started 'Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows', which promises to be fun brain candy.
Poetry: Still slowly working through Paradise Lost
Non-Fiction for personal interest: I made some further progress with Meanjin (autumn) but have recently misplaced it.
For work: I'm really enjoying the 18th c modernisations in Bowden's anthology, slightly to my surprise; I'm still puttering through 'The Invention of Race', having more qualms about the final three chapters than the earlier ones; and I'm listening to The House of Fame as an audio recording.
Recently Finished: Both 'Miroirs Arthuriens' and Jost's collection 'Chaucer's Humour'. The former I've filed a proper review of with Arthuriana; the latter doesn't deserve a goodreads review, as it's useful but tedious.
The World's Wife by Carol Ann DuffyMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was in many ways better than I expected, and yet. Nothing quite exceeds 'Mrs Icarus' for excellence; and the whole thing is rather ruined by the redolent transphobia of 'Mrs Tiresias'.
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison BechdelMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Huh. I ... have many questions, there are many great things about this and some troubling ones, and... HUH. (see above).
Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure by Courtney MilanMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I did enjoy this - it's rare to find f/f historicals, let alone ones that have both humour and sexual tension. As ever, though, I just don't quite gel with Milan's writing style.
Online Fiction:
Up Next: As usual, I'm not sure, because I should be reading EVERYTHING.
Some links:
no subject
Date: 2020-11-15 08:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-16 12:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-15 09:14 pm (UTC)Not being at all a gay man, and only having seen the film, not read the book. I didn't find that last at all "bad representation". I thought it really grappled with the complexities of the relationship, very much including the age gap. I don't think the narrative is saying, look at this perfect relationship that everybody should aspire to, it's much more, navigating adolescent relationships is just hard and sometimes there's sweetness even in messed up situations.
I have also heard a lot of discussion by older (than me) British gay men about how their adolescent relationships with adult men were incredibly affirming and sustaining and not at all regretted, because before the turn of the millennium there was absolutely no other way to connect to gay culture than to engage in such age-gap relationships. Plus here the age of consent for sex between men was 21 until 1994; I don't think it's helpful to regard 19- and 20-year-olds who are living independently as vulnerable children being exploited by partners in their early 20s. (Which still doesn't make teacher-student relationships ok.) But it's one thing for the younger men to report that the relationships were good for them, I would probably have less sympathy if I heard the same story from the POV of the older men in these sorts of set-ups in the 90s and earlier.
There's something I have only in vague misty terms but it's about the social transition to companionate relationships being the norm, being desirable. And I think that happened at different speeds in different subcultures, and maybe later in gay male culture in countries where homosexuality was criminalized than in general heteronormative society? Sorry, that's probably not helpful with the question of whether your read of Bechdel is homophobic.
no subject
Date: 2020-11-16 03:50 pm (UTC)Echoing the impact of this. I remember a sixth form peer of mine was in a relationship with a student at the local university who was 22. My high school was surprisingly not terrible for LGB students given the time period - we had two out teachers at a time that was very rare, and older pupils who were out and in relationships - but obviously if you were 18, male, and interested in the local gay scene, you were de facto interested in people with whom relationships were, technically, illegal even if you were the same age.
Re. The History Boys, I have seen fandom discourse decrying it, but in every case this has been by people who clearly have not understood a thing about the play (which does clearly condemn Hector's actions, but not by having someone break down and sob/break the fourth wall to say "And this was wrong"). I think part of it is probably that it is, even as soon as this, becoming less accessible to people 30-35 years removed from its narrative setting compared to the original 10-15, and also that it isn't really a queer coming of age piece, but that that is a secondary theme against its major one of education and class.
no subject
Date: 2020-11-16 05:50 am (UTC)Wait, this is a bad thing now?
no subject
Date: 2020-11-16 12:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-16 01:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-16 01:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-04 04:45 pm (UTC)