Why We Want the World to End (Or Don’t)

(I’m not completely happy with this post, since I seem to be writing it from a very Western, very humanistic perspective. Usually I try to write in such a way as to challenge Western-centric views, and I ultimately tend to prefer Donna Haraway’s posthumanism to humanism. However, like the rest of the nation, I’m still reeling from the tragedy of the Sandy Hook shooting and I’m not really sure how to process it. So I’m falling back on old worldviews that I’ve been surrounded by all my life and that are Western-centric and humanist.)

December 21, 2012, has come and gone, and yet we and the world are still here. (For my fellow Whovians: the Doctor saved us! Again!) But why all the hype and build-up? Why are people so attracted to the idea of the end of the world?

A fascination with the apocalypse is nothing new, of course. Perhaps as long as there have been people, we’ve been contemplating our own demise. Many different religions have stories about the world ending or nearly ending or predicting the end of the world. We have movies about the end of civilization brought about by global warming or a zombie virus or another species. Why are we so fascinated with this stuff?

In some sense, I think it’s cathartic. When bad things happen, especially really, really bad things, I think a part of us believes that the world just can’t get better. This weekend, after being bombared by news of the tragic shooting in Sandy Hook, when I was searching for something to read, I didn’t reach for the comforting essays of David Sedaris or the wisdom of Greg Epstein or the motivation of Eve Ensler. No, I cracked open World War Z by Max Brooks, a faux historical account of the zombie apocalypse, set in our own near-future. It was a morbid mix of media—Sandy Hook on the television and a book of grisly zombie attacks in my lap. Yet the combination seemed fitting. The shooting and the book both spoke of the darker sides of humanity, the destructive parts of our nature, our callousness. It’s easy to look at all of the violence in the world, the poverty, the inequality, the injustices, and (worst of all) the indifference, and think that we really are, as a global society, devouring ourselves. Sometimes we seem like the snake that eats its own tail—we’re causing our own demise and yet we keep cannibalizing ourselves.

Of course, this is only one perspective. While Sandy Hook showed us humanity’s low points, it also showed us how noble and courageous we can be. There was the teacher who, after hiding her students in a closet, bravely defended them from the attacker at the cost of her life. There was another teacher who barricaded herself and her class in a bathroom until the police came. We can’t bring back the 26 people who died, but we are finally having serious, national conversations about gun control and about better care and access to care for the mentally ill and support for their caretakers. For every sensationalistic reporter who’s blamed mental illness for the shooting, I’ve heard at least two people point out that those suffering from mental illness are more likely to be victims of violence than its prepetrators, so we’re also having conversations about the stigma surrounding mental illness. Yes, much of the talk surrounding the shooting is unproductive, but at the same time, we’re also bringing up topics that need to be discussed and dealt with.

And that is, ultimately, why the apocalyptic genre has never really appealed to me. Yes, it has its place. It warns us of our faults and failings and shows us the sides of ourselves that we’d rather not see. But it rarely goes beyond that. It cuts out all of the hard work that needs to be done to truly make this world a better place. It’s lazy. Why worry about greenhouse gases or pollution when we could all be raptured tomorrow? Why advocate for legislation that grants women and people of color and those in the LGBT community equality when the world could end in a week? Why promote a living wage or workers’ rights when the zombie virus is going to infect us any day now? If the aliens are coming next year, do we really need to worry about finding a cure for HIV/AIDS or preventing world hunger? If we are, as a species, inherently destructive, then why should we try to fight our nature and make the world a more equal and just place? Creating change is hard. Waiting for the world to end is easy. I think a part of us is so drawn to stories about the apocalypse simply because ending it all would be so much easier than working slowly and diligently, day by day, to fix what we’ve got.

Yet, every day, so many people are doing just that. From individual random acts of kindness to large-scale social movements, people all over the globe are working to make the world a better place. And change happens. It’s incrimental, of course. It’s not nearly as dramatic as the apocalypse. Instead of basking in the glory of being the lone survivor of the end of the world, it’s building networks and teams of people, putting aside our own desires for the good of those around us. It’s engaging in the daily drugery of community organizing or volunteering or taking the time to listen to a friend’s problems or even just being polite to someone when we’d rather snap at them. It often doesn’t feel like we’re making headway, but we are. Violent crime rates are actually dropping in the U.S., despite what we see on the news. We’ve found cures to diseases that once would’ve been deadly. The idea that women should have the right to the same educational and career opportunities as men was once unheard of. Gays and lesbians can now openly serve in the U.S. military. This is not to say that the world is perfect—far from it—but to point out that change does happen! Society can get better. It happens slowly, but it does happen. And it will continue to happen because of the dedication of ordinary people to doing what they can to improve the world.

At the beginning of this post, I made a little in-joke for other Doctor Who fans. For those not in the know, the Doctor is the humanoid main character from a British television series, Doctor Who, a story about time travel, space travel, and the better nature of humanity. I doubt that we will ever see zombies in Doctor Who. Yes, the show has featured antagonists that are zombie-like, but they tend to be comical and easily defeated. I don’t think that we will ever see the Doctor facing down an unstoppable zombie horde like the mass of Zacks in World War Z  because zombies simply cannot exist in the same universe that contains the Doctor.

Here’s what I mean: zombie stories, like other apocalyptic stories, rest on the assumption that humanity and this world that we’ve created for ourselves is ultimately ruined. Humanity is corrupt, we’ve devastated the world, and there’s nothing left to do but end it all. But there are other stories, stories like Doctor Who (and The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter and Star Wars and Star Trek and so many others from countless time periods and cultures), that believe in the better nature of humanity. These stories tell us that we are brave and strong and smart and that we can ultimately progress toward building a better world. They tell us that ordinary people can create change, that we can perservere and make the world a more equal and just place, and that over time, even the smallest gestures and efforts can build into something significant. Out of tragedy, they tell us, we can rally together and, through our hard work and better nature, we can create change. Even in the wake of something as terrible as a shooting at an elementary school, we can believe that people really are good. We can create a world that brings out the best in humanity and where troubled young people get the help that they need instead of resorting to violence and where everyone feels safe enough and supported by the social system that surrounds them so they don’t feel the need to own guns.

We can sit around and dismiss humanity and the world as not worth bettering. We can give and wait for an apocalypse to wipe us all out and do nothing. We can look at all of the problems in the world and say that there’s nothing we can do and nothing is worth fixing. Or we can say with the Doctor, “The human race just keeps on going—keeps on changing. Life will out!” But we have to act. We have to make that change happen. It isn’t easy, but it’s ultimately worth the work.

Women Warriors Alone: Kill Bill vol. 1, Lady Gaga, Hyper-Irony, and Feminism

The desert air hangs heavy and hot over the highway asphalt. An enormous, bright yellow truck roars toward the horizon. In the blur of its speed, its only identification comes from two words, painted in pink, on the back of the truck: “Pussy Wagon.”

This description could easily fit either Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill film or Lady Gaga’s music video for the song “Telephone,” which references the film. Put the two together and you have a delightful mess of hyper-irony, a meta-pop culture. Gaga is referencing Tarantino, and Tarantino references, well, a little bit of everything.

In a way, when I watched Kill Bill, I felt as though I was seeing it backwards, and not just because the plot is non-linear. My first introduction to the movie had come through watching the “Telephone” music video, in which Lady Gaga and Beyoncé escape prison, a(n) (presumably) abusive lover, a murder scene in which they are the perpetrators, and the police, all from the cab of a yellow truck with “Pussy Wagon” painted on the back. The critical readings of the “Telephone” video were all quick to point out that the video was referencing Kill Bill, not only with its Pussy Wagon but also with its jumpy narrative about vengeful, powerful women.

So, when I finally watched Kill Bill, I knew, obviously, that the movie had come first. Still, in the chronology of my own life, “Telephone” had come first, so while watching Kill Bill, I’d see something—a yellow truck, subtitles, unusual camera angles—and think, “That’s just like in ‘Telephone’!” Such is the state of our popular culture, which builds reference upon reference to itself. I’d seen the reference before I’d seen the original. Then again, if Walter Benjamin and the postmodern critics are to be believed, we now live in a culture in which the original is so easily copied that it no longer has any meaning, and we are constantly surrounded by references that do not really refer back to an original. Gaga referenced Tarantino, who references classic cinema, comic books, and anime, among a whole host of other media, within Kill Bill. These forms of media regularly reference novels, myths, and plays. To trace their origins back might be interesting but isn’t the purpose of this post.

Having viewed Kill Bill backwards from the lens of “Telephone,” however, I wonder if the music video served, in some way, as a rewrite of the movie. While I can certainly find feminist undertones in Kill Bill—a strong, independent female protagonist who is not overly sexualized; an emphasis on the sexualized nature of the violence women are, regrettably, all too often subjected to; a cast of female characters who exert their own agency and skills to obtain power instead of relying on men or their sexual allure—I don’t feel confident declaring it a feminist film. (Though I think it does pass the Bechdel test.)

I found several aspects of Kill Bill problematic, but my greatest source of discomfort with the movie came from its presentation of women as natural enemies and especially how the conflict between the female characters was racialized. I also want to point out that I’ve only seen volume one of the series so far, and I realize that many of my current problems with the film may be addressed in subsequent volumes. My biggest problem with volume one was that the female characters, while all strong and independent, were set against each other as adversaries. Within the movie itself this isn’t a problem, but the movie exists within the entire cannon of popular culture (and, in fact, frequently makes clear through its references that it exists within popular culture), and within much of that popular culture exists a stereotype that women are naturally catty and suspicious of each other. The movie does nothing to challenge this stereotype.

The struggles between the women are also racialized, as Uma Thurman’s character’s two adversaries are African-American and Asian. Well, I didn’t find the conflict between Thurman’s character and Copperhead too problematic. While race is present in the scene in which they dual, it isn’t a central part of their conflict, and I found their recognition of their shared identity as mothers interesting. However, in Thurman’s character’s dual with O-Ren Ishii, ethnicity is centralized. O-Ren Ishii mocks Thurman’s character as a white girl with a samurai sword, only to be bested by her in the end. The dual perpetuates the tired trope, found in films like Dances with Wolves and Avatar, of white people taking on an exotic, foreign culture and mastering it better than its own natives. Again, within the context of the film itself, this might not be problematic, but the film exists within the wider scope of popular culture and it does little to challenge the racial/ethnic stereotypes of that popular culture.

I found the animosity between the women almost surprising, in a way, because I could have easily seen them all coming to realize that they’d been manipulated by the mysterious Bill and joining together to take him down. In fact, I almost expected Thurman’s character and Copperhead to team up, bonded together by their motherhood. The film easily could have presented a sisterhood of women fighting together against their shared manipulation. Instead, they fight each other. The Pussy Wagon could have lived up to its reclaimed title as a vehicle full of women out to take back what’s theirs.

In the “Telephone” music video, however, the Pussy Wagon lives up to its reclaimed name. Of course, the “Telephone” video doesn’t just reference Kill Bill. It also pays homage to Thelma and Louise, a film I confess I have not seen. (I know, I know! For someone who loves analyzing pop culture, I’m so far behind!) However, I have seen the classic scene where Thelma and Louise drive their truck off the edge of the cliff, and though I hadn’t seen the entire film, at the end of the “Telephone” video, when Gaga and Beyoncé drive the Pussy Wagon off the cliff, I knew enough to think of Thelma and Louise.

By referencing both Kill Bill and Thelma and Louise, the “Telephone” video blends the independence of both movies’ heroines, the cinematography of Tarantino, and the sisterhood of Thelma and Louise. It presents Gaga and Beyoncé as partners in crime who help each other achieve their goal of revenge against the men who’ve hurt them and then help each other escape. It also presents Gaga and Beyoncé as equals, irregardless of their races. It is, in a sense, what Kill Bill might have been.

I’m not trying to say that Kill Bill isn’t a good movie. I loved finally seeing Tarantino’s renowned cinematography for myself and I very much want more. As an action film, it was excellent. Its protagonist was also a refreshing break from the usual role of women in action films, in which they are usually toys or temptations for the male characters. However, the film exists within the larger field of popular culture, a field to which it itself makes frequent references. The film places itself within pop culture as a whole, and so I, as a view, must do the same. While I found its heroine to be strong, independent and compelling, it did little to challenge stereotypes about women’s relationships with each other and racial tropes about white people being better at non-Western cultures than the non-Westerners. However, the beauty of a referential pop culture is that it invites rewrites and critiques from other forms of pop culture. By combining the strength of Kill Bill with the sisterhood of Thelma and Louise, the “Telephone” music video provides such a corrective while tipping its cap to Tarantino’s signature style.

 

A Cuban…Something: Race and Gender in I Love Lucy

(Not my best post ever, but I made a commitment to blog more regularly, so I figured I should try to come up with something.)

Recently, I’ve been watching a lot of I Love Lucy reruns on TVLand’s website.  The last time I watched I Love Lucy, I was a young child, so I think I was more amused by the slapstick than anything else. The show’s stance on gender roles and race went right over my head. Now, while I find myself amused by the show, I also feel a little…guilty for enjoying it.

I could write extensively on the show’s portrayal of women. On the one hand, it’s extremely sexist. However, there is certainly an element of subversion in Lucy and Ethel’s pranks. The show panders to patriarchal stereotypes about women while also knowingly winking at them. At the same time, Lucille Ball is an outstanding comedian, and in an age where we still have male comedians and other personalities claiming that women just aren’t funny, Ball is resounding proof that women can and do have a sense of humor. However, the sexism and subversion of sexism in I Love Lucy is a topic that, if I recall correctly, Susan Douglas deals with in her excellent book Where the Girls Are, an examination of the popular culture surrounding Second Wave Feminism. Suffice to say, the show is by and large very sexist, but this didn’t surprise me.

What did surprise me was the racism. As a child watching I Love Lucy, I don’t think I ever realized that Ricky was Cuban. Watching the show now, I can’t forget. In nearly every episode, Ricky is referred to as a Cuban at least once, and it’s usually in a remark about his faults. If he won’t buy Lucy something she wants, he’s a “stingy Cuban.” If he’s angry about something, he’s a “hot-tempered Cuban.” If he holds his ground or won’t change his mind, he’s a “stubborn Cuban.” If he’s doing something that Lucy and the rest of the cast like, he’s Ricky. If he’s displeased one of them in some way, it’s because he’s Cuban. He is heavily marked by his ethnicity throughout the show.

Much like the ambiguity of the sexism in the show, however, Ricky’s “Cuban-ness” isn’t entirely negative. Seeing the show in 2012, I’m struck by just how much Ricky is portrayed as a (more or less) complete human being and not a Latino stereotype. Granted, in the 1950s, when the show was made, the ethnic stereotypes were probably different. Today, however, Latinos are often (regrettably) portrayed as poor and/or lazy, a view that, I would argue, has more to do with unfairly scapegoating them for a lot of the U.S.’s labor and immigration problems than it has to do with Latinos themselves. Ricky, though he might complain about how much money Lucy spends, is not poor. Nor is he lazy. In fact, his character is something of a workaholic.

Some of this portrayal might have to do with the fact that he is portrayed as thoroughly assimilated into American culure. He might slip into Spanish every once in a while and speak English with a slight accent, but he espouses the same values expressed by American television patriarchs such as Andy Griffith and Ward Cleaver—work hard and earnestly, don’t be frivolous or wasteful, and people get what they deserve. In some sense, he is an example of the “good” or “deserving” immigrant—the immigrant who accepts American culture and knows (or learns) the language. He finds success through his assimilation. I find this dichotomy of “good” versus “bad” immigrants problematic in many ways, as it allows us to blame individuals and not social inequalities for the failures of many people who come to this country. However, assimilation is something that many immigrants experience and many might not see it as an inherently bad thing.

Ultimately, watching I Love Lucy has made me aware of just how little I know about Cuba’s history between Spanish colonization and Castro’s rise to power. I also know almost nothing about U.S.-Cuban relations before the Cold War. It’s also made me realize that I don’t know a lot about the history of the portrayal of Latin Americans in U.S. popular culture. Clearly, there is something of a gaping hole in my knowledge that needs to be filled. If nothing else, watching I Love Lucy has made me realize how much I don’t know, which is a great way to start learning new things.