Unusual Monsters

I must say, I was very apprehensive about having to blog for this class. I had never blogged before, and I will admit with honesty that I wasn’t really looking forward to writing a blog once a week. Read, discuss, write a paper (or rather, procrastinate writing a paper): that’s what I know and was used to. Blogging for class? What the hell kind of assignment was that?!

But, I am so glad Suzanne asked us to blog instead of write the oh-so-traditional papers (although I do love them in their own right. If I didn’t enjoy writing those analytical papers, do you think I’d still be an English major?) Blogging allowed a new, perhaps even more insightful, part of me come to voice in my blog posts. In the blogosphere, I didn’t have to worry about using formal, academic language. I could, well, let-loose, my ideas in the blog. I could free-write and then watch my ideas develop (as I did in the Poe post). Or, I could lay out a plan for the blog post and plan how it would develop (as I did for The Shining’s post). And you know what? I soon began to love blogging! I would push aside other homework (I’d still do it…eventually) to design my blog or work on my next post. Soon, I began posting earlier and earlier in the week, days before the post was even due. I really, really enjoyed blogging!

In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I am seriously considering creating a blog just for myself and for my own further, independent reflections on my readings. I love to read, think, and write, and when I’m home (back home again in Indiana…it’s our state song in case you didn’t know!) or away from my English major friends, I hate not having an outlet to develop my ideas. If I start an independent blog on BlogSpot, I will write a reflection on every new book I read whether that book be for pleasure or for class. I’m really being serious about this; I’d love to continue blogging. So, keep your eyes peeled for my new blog’s web address. I’ll post it to Facebook or to this blog :]

As I looked back through my individual blog posts to make corrections for the final blog submission, I began to realize that there was one prevailing theme that permeated almost every single one of my posts. Actually, it was odd to discover the underlying theme I did. It was quite unsettling in a way because the permeating theme is not one of the usual American optimism and so-called American Dream. In American literature, past and present—all the way from Cotton Mather’s On Witchcraft to Steven King’s The Shining—there is an intense, almost obsessive consciousness of the fear and possibility of  losing oneself, losing one’s own moral conscious to that of an unseen amoral, unusual, or anything other than commonplace creature lurking inside each one of us. This monster, this haunting ghost, is no longer able to recognize oneself—the person society expects us to be—and begins to feel disconnected from the world around it. It faces scrutiny for its actions and is ‘othered’ by the so-called normal, productive members of society. That very-conscious, very vibrant monster is who we see emerge first as a witch in On Witchcraft; an adulteress in The Scarlet Letter; a captive white woman in the hands of Native Americans from Mary Rowlandson’s narrative; a free-spirited lover in Eliza from The Coquette; a whale-obsessed ship captain from Moby Dick; an unusually and perhaps creepily (to some people) self-assured and self-reliant Ralph Waldo Emerson; men resorted to primal, animalistic behaviors of cannibalism in In the Heart of the Sea; men dependent on physical conflict as emotional and perhaps spiritual release in Fight Club; characters seemingly lacking all moral conviction and functioning solely off of free will in Poe’s short stories; a man who loses himself to the controlling, addictive ghosts of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining; a woman named Emily Dickinson who loses herself in herself—in her reclusivity; a woman so overcome by her childhood traumas that she forces herself to relive them by writing fairy tale poetry; and finally, we have Whitman taking a new, rather unconventional approach to selfhood (for his time) in recognizing the value in being you and that true happiness comes in realizing the cheapest, most accessible part of you is being you.

Anne Sexton said it best when she said “The unusual needs to be commented on” (60). As I have said in my previous blog post, there really is no set system of judgments to decide what constitutes unusual—or, rather, monstrous, alien, or different. Is it a person who could be classified as a mad-man (Poe’s unnamed narrators or Jack Torrence from The Shining)? Is it a person who defies social standards (Eliza from The Coquette or even Emily Dickinson herself)? Is it a person who is so unusual and forward-thinking in his/her thoughts that he/she attracts praise and/or attention from those who adhere to social norms (Emerson was lauded as one of the greatest American authors for his ‘self-help’ effect from Self-Reliance while Whitman, although now greatly praised, was viewed as someone who crossed that social line of sexuality a little too far)? What is normal anyway? It’s a socially-defined set of values and standards that vary from culture to culture, country to country, people to people. It’s never stagnant. It’s malleable. But, if you don’t adhere to the definition of normal for a time period, you are the unusual one and therefore find yourself judged, ridiculed, and perhaps even ostracized from a community with which you once identified. You don’t even recognize yourself when you are stripped of your socially-defined value systems and no longer have to adhere to social norms. You are akin to the monster within, the monster you’ve feared would rear its ugly head. And, it did.  Now are identified as that monster and will forever be stamped as the person who let the unusual monster out.

Essentially, there is, even today a great fear of anyone unusual or different than ourselves. We fear becoming that unusual person. We fear being judged solely on the basis of our otherness. And once othered, how do we get accepted back into a community who no longer sees as a morally-conscious, purposeful human beings? We don’t. We are forced to self-identify as other. But, for some of us, othering is a term of endearment, a quality of monstrosity we soon love to embrace. Since I have been such a fervent, frequent referencer to pop culture , it’s time to go out with a big bang. The reference for today? Lady Gaga’s Born This Way!

Lady Gaga has pushed socially-accepted, normal boundaries. She has become the poster child for a newly emerging wave of feminism, Gaga Feminism. She, unlike many of her fellow pop artists, has a political agenda in almost every big hit single she releases. Born This Way, her newest release, couples with this provocative music video:

"This is the manifesto of Mother Monster."

(I would also like to take a moment and credit the idea to use this video to Jacqlyn. We are currently slaving away in the library frantically writing out our final blog posts. "Friends don't let friends blog alone" - Jacqlyn Schott)

And the lyrics (however, the unsung introduction to this song is just as provocative and potent as the actual song lyrics):

INTRO:
It doesn't matter if you love him, or capital H-I-M
Just put your paws up
'cause you were Born This Way, Baby

VERSE:
MY MAMA TOLD ME WHEN I WAS YOUNG
WE ARE ALL BORN SUPERSTARS
SHE ROLLED MY HAIR AND PUT MY LIPSTICK ON
IN THE GLASS OF HER BOUDOIR
"THERE'S NOTHIN WRONG WITH LOVIN WHO YOU ARE"
SHE SAID, "'CAUSE HE MADE YOU PERFECT, BABE"
"SO HOLD YOUR HEAD UP GIRL AND YOU'LL GO FAR,
LISTEN TO ME WHEN I SAY"

CHORUS:
I'M BEAUTIFUL IN MY WAY
'CAUSE GOD MAKES NO MISTAKES
I'M ON THE RIGHT TRACK BABY
I WAS BORN THIS WAY
DON'T HIDE YOURSELF IN REGRET
JUST LOVE YOURSELF AND YOU'RE SET
I'M ON THE RIGHT TRACK BABY
I WAS BORN THIS WAY

POST-CHORUS:
OOO THERE AIN'T NO OTHER WAY
BABY I WAS BORN THIS WAY
BABY I WAS BORN THIS WAY
OOO THERE AIN'T NO OTHER WAY
BABY I WAS BORN-
I'M ON THE RIGHT TRACK BABY
I WAS BORN THIS WAY

DON'T BE A DRAG -JUST BE A QUEEN
DON'T BE A DRAG -JUST BE A QUEEN
DON'T BE A DRAG -JUST BE A QUEEN
DON'T BE!

VERSE:
GIVE YOURSELF PRUDENCE
AND LOVE YOUR FRIENDS
SUBWAY KID, REJOICE YOUR TRUTH
IN THE RELIGION OF THE INSECURE
I MUST BE MYSELF, RESPECT MY YOUTH
A DIFFERENT LOVER IS NOT A SIN
BELIEVE CAPITAL H-I-M (HEY HEY HEY)
I LOVE MY LIFE I LOVE THIS RECORD AND
MI AMORE VOLE FE YAH (LOVE NEEDS FAITH)

REPEAT CHORUS + POST-CHORUS

BRIDGE:

DON'T BE A DRAG, JUST BE A QUEEN
WHETHER YOU'RE BROKE OR EVERGREEN
YOU'RE BLACK, WHITE, BEIGE, CHOLA DESCENT
YOU'RE LEBANESE, YOU'RE ORIENT
WHETHER LIFE'S DISABILITIES
LEFT YOU OUTCAST, BULLIED, OR TEASED
REJOICE AND LOVE YOURSELF TODAY
'CAUSE BABY YOU WERE BORN THIS WAY

NO MATTER GAY, STRAIGHT, OR BI,
LESBIAN, TRANSGENDERED LIFE
I'M ON THE RIGHT TRACK BABY
I WAS BORN TO SURVIVE
NO MATTER BLACK, WHITE OR BEIGE
CHOLA OR ORIENT MADE
I'M ON THE RIGHT TRACK BABY
I WAS BORN TO BE BRAVE

REPEAT CHORUS

OUTRO/REFRAIN:

I WAS BORN THIS WAY HEY!
I WAS BORN THIS WAY HEY!
I'M ON THE RIGHT TRACK BABY
I WAS BORN THIS WAY HEY!

I WAS BORN THIS WAY HEY!
I WAS BORN THIS WAY HEY!
I'M ON THE RIGHT TRACK BABY
I WAS BORN THIS WAY HEY!

          Lady Gaga takes pride in her monstrosity. She has learned to embrace it. She even says in the introduction to the song, "And as she herself split into two, rotating in agony between two ultimate forces, the pendulum of choice began its dance. It seems easy, you'd imagine, to gravitate instantly and unwaveringly towards good. But, she wondered, how can I protect something so perfect without evil?" Wow...you said it Lady Gaga. You can't have good without the evil. And the scary part of that is...well, each one of us has that evil within us. Yes, we let morality govern our judgements and actions in the world, but if we let the monster out, if we let our Tonys (The Shining) have reign, then what are we but a representation of the other and thus the model or a the dangers of wayward ways. But, honestly, come on now, folks? It's naive of us to think each of on us is all good. We're not. We're two halves, and we too are "rotating in agony between two ultimate forces" attempting to pull us one way or the other. If you think you're all good, haha...well, then you don't recognize the complexity of yourself. Now, am I going to say that I have evil desires or wishes...of course not. I like to think I'm a generally nice person. But, I recognize that the monster does exist inside of us, whether that monster is evil or just a force that makes us feel othered by the so-called normal people around us.

          American literature offers unusual insight into the monster, the othering seed each of us possesses. Whether that monster is a root of our unusual nature in terms of social behaviors or actually tempts us towards primal, evil ways—regardless, the monster still exists. American literature, especially when you look at the progression of American literature through time, is a time capsule that contains the societal-defined other, unusual, or monster and the normal. But, that concept is ever changing, ever evolving. So, how do we stay up to date with the so-called normal behaviors? We don’t, and that is why we have such interesting varieties and catalysts for that otherness in American literature.

        

The Hunt

            Anne Gilchrist, I understand what you were feeling. I’m not even going to pretend what I ever felt or hope to feel was/will be as intense as what you felt, but I sympathize with your actions, understand why you fell in love with Walt, and why you uprooted your life for him. You fell in love, Anne. What’s so shameful in that? It’s not crazy. It’s not desperate. You knew your own heart and listened to its longings. And you knew his, Walt’s, heart right from the start. You wrote beautiful sentiments of your affection: “[N]othing in life can tear out of my heart the passionate belief,” she wrote, “that one day I shall hear that voice say to me, ‘My Mate. The one I so much want. Bride, Wife, indissoluble eternal!’” (Ashworth). You discovered an intellectual beauty in him, and then he helped you discover yourself, your mind, your heart, and your writing. So, remind me again, why is that crazy? I just don’t see it.

            Why do my classmates judge you so harshly for your commitment to what you thought, what you knew, was your destiny--to be with him? I admire you, Anne. You led a full, satisfied, intellectual, interesting life. Walt only added to the already complete self who you were. You were not pathetic. Unlike what all of my classmates think, you’re not what Kylie called you—a babe, a ‘hot mess’ of a woman who was desperate or relied on her 'femaleness' to woo Walt. You led a full life with or without him, but simply put, you just fell head over heels for him. I know you found your intellectual, and perhaps romantic, match. And you, unlike so many other women I see today, pursued him. You took the initiative. Good girl. You told him, “I that have never set eyes upon thee, all the Atlantic flowing between us, yet cleave closer than those that stand nearest & dearest around thee—love thee day & night. . . . Do not say that I am forward, or that I lack pride because I tell this love to thee who have never sought or made sign of desiring to seek me. Oh, for all that, this love is my pride my glory. Source of sufferings and joys that cannot put themselves into words. Besides, it is not true thou hast not sought or loved me. For when I read the divine poems I feel all folded round in thy love. (L, pp. 65-66)” (Cavitch). What’s wrong with that!? I think you could teach the women of today a few lessons on true love and being willing to express those sentiments. It's a new world, friends--a world where women can take the initiative just as much as men can. You took that initiative. It’s the 21^st century; forget waiting for the guy to make the first move. Although you didn’t marry him, I bet you that if you came back from the grave, you’d have no regrets on your choices. Those choices made you you. For that, congratulations and good work. I’m proud of you. I wish I had as much gumption as you.

            But, as we said in class, I too recognize the tendency to victimize/call crazy the obsessed fan (fanatic). My greatest fear, for you Anne, is that you based your happiness in life off of his letters, his callings, his sweet affections. That is my fear for you. Your own happiness cannot solely be aroused by an outside source, person, or event. You must be content as you are. You must believe that, “I sit as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware I sit content, And if each and all be aware I sit content” (Whitman 19). Whether you receive affections from others or whether you don’t, you must be self-assured in your own person that you can arouse happiness from your mere existence. “What is commonest and cheapest and nearest and easiest is Me” (Whitman 13). Listen to Walt; what he says is true. True for Anne, AND true for us. It’s the hardest thing to do in the world (believe me…I’m trying to allow and make myself to be content in my own selfhood, even if devoid of all other affections), but we must do it. We must learn to do it. Because, as I will discuss in my next point, at the end of our lives, we are…alone. Plain and simple. Just you. Just Death. No one else to live that experience with you. It’s just you and being willing to let go.

            This leads to my next point, which ironically, directly relates to my favorite episode of The Twilight Zone. I love this show. And it’s all my dad’s fault. It wasn't until I called my dad to let him know (and to thank him for tuning the tvs in the house to The Twilight Zone on New Year's Day instead of football; my dad is awesome like that) that I was using his favorite Twilight Zone episode for a class assignment that I discovered "The Hunt"'s screenplay writer, Earl Hamner, not only wrote my favorite Twilight Zone episode, BUT he also wrote the screenplay for one of my favorite childhood movies, Charlotte's Web. My poor parents must have been sick of that movie; I watched it ALL the time. I even had a little, plastic toy of Wilber that went with me everywhere I went. Why? I don't know; I liked animal toys better than Barbies I guess. I distinctly remember watching an ISU Sycamore's girls' basketball game with my grandparents and parents at Hulman Stadium and not caring about the game in the slightest; I wanted to make up an imaginary adventure for Wilber the pig toy as he made his way over the mountains (back of seats in front of me; I was a creative, little child). I was very entertained. My parents were terrified I'd drop him and lose the toy forever. My mom took Wilber from me and put him in her purse. And I was forced to watch the game. I was so ticked. But, back on topic :] I just think it's an interesting side note and insight to my education as a young adult; it's interesting that this guy's works have been such an integral part of my upbringing. I blame all of my nerdiness and love of The Twilight Zone on you, Dad. But, that’s beside the point.

            In this episode of The Twilight Zone, Old Man Simpson finds himself on Eternity Road, all alone (save his trusty coonhound, Rip) and confused about how he ended up there. He finally comes upon a gate, a gate that looks like—to him—Heaven’s gates. But alas, this gate is a temptation; this gate is the entrance to Hell. The gatekeeper tries and tries to persuade Simpson to enter the gate and ‘join the fun,’ and he almost enters but Rip (good, ol’ Rip) starts acting up and refuses to enter the gates. When Simpson tries to force him to come along, the gatekeeper protests and says dogs aren’t allowed in ‘Heaven.’ If you’ve seen the scenes prior to this one, insulting Rip’s rights or excluding him is one thing that really gets Simpson upset. Simpson refuses to enter the gates and vows instead to keep on trekking down Eternity Road. Good thing he does, because "Not [he], not any one else can travel that road for [him], [He] must travel it for [him]self. It is not far....it is within reach, Perhaps [he has] been on it since [he was] born, and did not know" (Whitman 46). Lo and behold, he comes upon a man, one that he couldn’t have reached if he had not stuck to his morals (keeping his dog with him at all costs) and kept on traveling down that road. He had been on that road the whole time, the road to heaven that is, if he had kept on walking. And walking he did. He finally meets the angel who will guide him into Heaven, ironically a place without a gated entrance, and welcomes Simpson and Rip in with open arms and the promise of a coon hunt later that night--a place where he can "think [he] could turn and live awhile with the animals...they are so placid and self-contained" (32).

            The hunt is the hunt for being satisfied with one’s own independence, singlehood, one’s own self when stripped down of ‘couplement,’ exterior forces, family, or friends. Who are you down inside; who are you in your barest, most essential form? It’s a constant hunt to find that person and celebrate oneself, and when you come to the end of your life and are traveling down that long, lonely road alongside Heaven’s fence, you will realize your own ‘aloneness’ in the world. Better learn to be content with it before you have to travel that path alongside the spit rail fence in…The Twilight Zone.

            “You are traveling to another dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind, a journey into the wondrous land whose boundaries are that of the imagination. Your next stop…The Twilight Zone” (The Hunt). How is traveling to the Twilight Zone any different than the journey to discovering the need to “celebrate [oneself]” (I). It isn’t. Just as seemingly alone. Just as self-reliant. Just as thrilling. Just as scary. But, a little bit of advice from me: keep a dog at your side during your travels to fields of leaves of grass. “Travelers to unknown regions would be well-advised to take along the family dog. He could just save you from entering the wrong gate.” Because, "You see, Mr. Simpson, a man...well, he'll walk right into Hell with both eyes open. But even the Devil can't fool a dog!" (The Hunt).

The episode that started it all: Twilight Zone: "The Hunt"

Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. New York: Penguin Books, 1959. Print.

Ashworth, Suzanne. "Lover, Mother, Reader: The Epistolary Courtship of Walt Whitman." Nineteenth-Century Contexts 26.2 (2004): 173-197. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10 Mar. 2011.

Cavitch, Max. "Audience Terminable and Interminable: Anne Gilchrist, Walt Whitman,and the Achievement of Disinhibited Reading." Victorian Poetry 43.2 (2005): 249-261. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10 Mar. 2011.

   

"You're Nobody 'Till Somebody Cares"

            As Wednesday’s Dickinson facilitation group gleaned from Dickinson’s poetry, Dickinson has an “obsession with her own flaws and the flaws of humanity.” She seems to have a low level of respect for her self-image and self-worth. She pines for the day when she can find someone as lowly, alone, and different as herself to couple with. She exclaims (you can almost hear her pleading with the fates in this poem and can hear her strained wishing, hoping, and praying for her chance at ‘couplement’—or, rather perhaps, an intense friendship with Sue, her sister-in-law):

XXVII

I’m nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?

Then there’s a pair of us—don’t tell!

They’d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!

How public, like a frog

To tell your name the livelong day

To an admiring bog!

            For Dickinson (and for Sexton as we soon shall see), otherhood is a mode of living that separates oneself from the joys of love, care, and compassion associated with romantic relationships UNLESS one can find another other to whom to couple oneself.  Dickinson admits that it is “dreary to be somebody,” but would she say that if she didn’t already have such a close attachment to her significant other, Sue? Would she be proud of her identification as a nobody unless there was a nobody with her? I don’t think so. Just like Frank Sinatra said, I bet she feels like she’s “nobody ‘till somebody loves [her].” In fact…

            It is this desperation for ‘couplement,’ a feeling to which I can testify I have felt in my lonely days of singlehood, that drive her to write poems like this one:

XI

My river runs to thee:

Blue sea, wilt welcome me?

My river waits reply.

Oh sea, look graciously!

I’ll fetch thee brooks

From spotted nooks,--

Say, sea,

Take me!

Take me! She even says that she will “wait [in] reply” for his answer to her pleas to be chosen as his couple. “Her river runs to thee”—she desperately wants to be chosen by this addressee of the poem. Even though she has chosen to lead a reclusive life, I still think even the recluse (I hate to call her that; it has such a negative stigma attached to its meaning) wants to feel human compassion, wants to be chosen as worthy (especially in their patriarchal culture) for wifehood, and just wants recognition for her worth and value. Who doesn’t want that?

            Furthermore, Anne Sexton builds upon this idea of the other not being able to find worth and value in life unless he/she is chosen for ‘couplement’ or can be taken as a normal, acceptable member of society. In her poem, “One-Eye, Two-Eyes, Three Eyes,” Sexton describes the fate of the unusual others in our world (even though these others are separated from the norm stream of people by their physical deformities):

The bird who cannot fly

Is left like a cockroach.

A three-legged kitten is carried

by the scruff of the neck

and dropped into a blind cellar hole.

A malformed foal would not be nursed.

Nature takes care of nature.

            She goes on to say, “The unusual needs to be commented on…” (Sexton 60). This is why One-Eye and Three-Eye receive so much more mothering, affection, and interest from their mother than their two-eyed sister. Even today, unusual is beautiful—beautiful in the sense that it attracts attention. Normal isn’t. Normal is routine. It’s boring. Perhaps even the so-called normal can be othered because it is so non-unique, so attainable, so unexciting? But, what is normal anyway? Even when One-Eye is chosen for couplehood, her concept of otherness then merges to coincide with our own (physical deformities are other), and she takes in her sisters because,

They were to become her Stonehenge,

her cosmic investment, …

They were to become her children,

her charmed cripples, her hybrids—“ (Sexton 65).

            And, this is why I have added the link for this particular Twilight Zone episode. In this episode, a woman (who is, ironically, absolutely gorgeous and goes on after her debut on this show to star as the daughter in The Beverley Hibillies) is othered because she lives in a society where facial deformities are normal. She wants desperately to be accepted in the society and not join the clan of others separated from the normal world. She undergoes facial surgery multiple times to try to obtain normal status. And the surgery fails…time and time again. She is perpetually stuck as an other. Although her otherness is based on physical ‘deformities’ like Sexton’s woman, how is Dickinson any different in her otherhood? She is a recluse, something obviously abnormal and indicative of otherhood. Personality, mode of living choices, and physical aspects can be just as othering.

            So, what is the kind of other we should strive to be in order to get coupled (I don’t agree with this statement—we should be happy with ourselves and only couple with a person who loves and embraces us for who we are—but I am simply making this argument for argument’s sake)? Other and the concept of normal changes like the whim of the winds. Is the recluse normal? Not now, but could she be? Is a three-eyed person normal? Not now, but who’s to say she won’t be soon? Is the facial deformity expressed in The Twilight Zone normal? In the Twilight Zone, yes…but that’s the Twilight Zone—everything is ass-backwards in that world. But, what’s to stop us from making such facial deformities normal in our own Eastern Time Zone world? If normal, and therefore by default other, is a fickle concept that can change on a whim, who’s to say that Dickinson, Three-Eye, and the facial deformities from “Eye of the Beholder” might become our benchmark for normal? We live our life on a continuum, one end as other and one as normal. But who decides those two benchmarks? Who decides when they change? How do we cope with those benchmarks and where we fit in between? That, my friends, is the ultimate struggle.

Sexton, Anne. Transformations. New York: First Mariner Books, 1999. Print.

Dickinson, Emily. The Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson. New York: Modern Library, 2000.      Print.

The Twilight Zone: Eye of the Beholder Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Frank Sinatra's You're Nobody 'Till Somebody Loves You" : The song to which I owe the title of this blog