Terror Fantasies, a Vast Continent and the Inner Femme
Thank you so much for these insightful posts. It’s a privilege.
Susan Gardner raises a fascinating and important observation about land in America. The vastness of the continent was, indeed, a powerful force in shaping the national zeitgeist, and one I wish I had had a chance to talk about more in the book. To the Puritan mind, the “howling wilderness” was as much an evocation of Satan as the Indian “savages.” (And also a major threat to the Puritan patriarchal establishment by the late 17th century, as the second generation of sons began throwing over the traces of father rule and headed west for free land.) And yet, the Puritans—at least at first—did not respond by retreating to a simplistic mindset.
If anything, they reacted with an extremely elaborate and nuanced reading of their vulnerability as a call to re-embrace dependency on God--and to do it in a rigorous and hardy fashion. Then again, they were not yet fully Americanized and were filtering their experience through a complex and cerebral theology. Needless to say, that all would change as a more certainty-filled evangelical impulse took hold in subsequent centuries.
Another way to think about the consequences of living in a vast continent is to consider the effect, or ultimately, the repressed effect, on the American female populace. I’ve often thought about the sort of authentic American frontier woman whose presence was never allowed to assume pride of place in the cultural pantheon.
I talk in the book about the 1787 story “The Panther Captivity,” which showcased a heroine who symbolized the Revolutionary era’s exaltation of independence and liberty. Her tale might have taken equal status with Daniel Boone’s, whose first biography was published three years earlier. The Panther Captivity became the best-selling short fiction of its time, going through 25 editions between 1787 and 1814. But in the years that followed, as Boone’s star rose, hers would be extinguished.
That endless frontier landscape offered tremendous opportunities to women, too, or could have. Women were freed from vertical associations of grandmother-mother-daughter stuck in one spot, and were suddenly in this horizontal world with no matriarchy above them, and with a vast wilderness to be strong in. And so many rose to that occasion, refashioning themselves to fit the wilderness.
As Deanie Mills observed in a comment yesterday about her own experience married to a “cowboy” and living the ranch life out west, “The thing about REAL cowboys is that the west was a place settled by frontier women in very harrowing circumstances, and to this day, ranchers depend on their spouses as equal partners. In the old west, if they had to be away for several days, they had to know she could take care of the place and their children in his absence, even if it meant answering the door with a shotgun. This has not changed.”
And yet that female development was silenced and thwarted by the emergence of the myth. The ideal American Victorian woman, who casts her shadow still, was conceived as neither equal nor strong, but as a woman who met the knock on the door by crawling under the bed (sans shotgun). She was, moreover, a woman who allegedly took no relish in the possibilities of the new landscape. I’m reminded of the moving testimonial from another daughter of the Far West, Dawn Lander Gherman, in her groundbreaking (and sadly, never published) 1975 dissertation, “From Parlour to Tepee: The White Squaw on the American Frontier.” She wrote in the introduction: “Ten years after I left Arizona, I began graduate studies in American literature and, not surprisingly, my interest focused upon literature of the wilderness.
Repeatedly, however, I could find no place for myself and for my pleasure in the wilderness in the traditionally recorded images of women on the frontier. . . .Victimization and martyrdom are the bone and muscle of every statue, picture and word portrait of a frontier woman.”
* * *
Also immensely thought provoking was Stephen Ducat’s commentary on the “first battle” that every man must fight in the essential male rescue drama, the primal grapple with his own shame-inducing weakness--his deepest fear being his own inner “femininity.” To go back to the Puritans (as just one example that illustrates Stephen’s point), when the hand-wringing first began over the threat of a Calvinist society turned effete, the anguish focused first on young men, whom the Puritan fathers feared were giving in to a “strange degeneracy” exhibited by a lack of martial and spiritual vigor, a tendency to booze it up at the local taverns, and a penchant for gadding about in “monstrous and horrid Perriwigs.” (These quotes are from no less a Puritan luminary than the Rev. Increase Mather.)
Of course, later on, the accusing finger turned to women, with deadly effect in the Salem witch trials. (A case where, you might say, “possessed” girls were enlisted to accuse their elder sisters of succumbing to their inner male devil….)
The idea that invasion itself, by its very nature, presents a violation of national, and thus masculine, boundaries was brought home to me on my recent book tour. Virtually every time I talked about the home soil being “penetrated,” it elicited an uneasy joke from male interviewers. In a bookstore one night, a man sitting in the front row slapped his legs shut at the mere mention of that word. Not sure what it means, but the reaction sure was visceral.
Also highly intriguing is Stephen’s idea of “24”’s Jack Bauer as a stand-in for Bush. Makes sense to me (down to the alliterative last name….). Bauer may be not only a stand-in but also a reassuring remake, a dressed-up protector who actually delivers on his ornamental displays of his manhood (as opposed to, say, the costume drama on the USS Lincoln…).
Stephen's observation inspired me to dig out my notes from a long Netflix-aided binge of “24’s” first season a couple years ago, where I jotted down the many permutations Bauer utters of the family-protection mantra: “I will do everything that I have to do to protect my family”; “As soon as I know they are safe, I will let you go”; “We are talking about my family, do you understand me?” And so on….. Even the (endless) scenes of shootouts on a rural compound where Bauer goes to save his wife and teenage daughter have the feel of an Old West stage set (despite the high-tech weaponry and cell phones), down to the wooden rough-hewn shacks arranged in the overgrown brush.
What occurs to me reading these posts is the way the culture claps its legs shut in fear of discussing itself in gender—or irrational, psychological, mythic—terms. But what happens when you don’t clap your legs shut? What a wonderful concatenation of forces we perceive when those things are discussed ensemble: continental vastness inspiring hedged-in gender certainty; economic fear in the face of globalization producing a need for cartoon renditions of masculine strength and feminine weakness; masculine insufficiency giving rise to superhero overcompensation; and the evolution of failed protector into brutal hero in TV dramas reflecting a 300 year progression in the national psyche. This is rich territory and I’m excited to have commentators who help to push these bounds.
Ms. Faludi
The 'national reckoning' you thought should have taken place after 9-11, in this formulation would literaly be impossible.
Weaknesses or faults cannot ever be acknowledged by the testosterone cult... then that actually precludes fixing the problem.
The psychological obstacles of repression and denial are so all-powerful that our hands are figuratively tied behind our backs.
The absolute refusal to acknowledge our own skulduggery ("You just blame America first!") in the mid east is our actual 'defeat' - not a terrorist attack.
The level of denial approaches brain washing - both bin laden and Hussein were once our 'allies' and yet that doesn't even slow the konservatives down one bit.
November 7, 2007 11:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
If you want some good leg-shutting you should include Native women in your research. I've got a good one for you. It was told to me by a very old Pit River Indian, Craven Gibson. Nobody knew exactly how old he was, but the old-guys in Pit River said Craven was old when they were young. But Craven was born on Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay. Yes, Alcatraz pennitentiary was original created to incarcerate captured Indians - a little known and often ignored historical fact. When Craven was about three or four, his mother and her sister decided to escape from the island. They swam the bay towards Oakland, with Craven on his moter's back. He said all he remembered was that Mom was wearing an Indian bead necklace, and as he was holding on to her neck he broke the string. He said he watched the necklace sink into the blue and disappear.
Once on land the began their long walk to North Eastern California, of course hiding along the way from any person they encountered. But when they got to the Battle Creek watershed, 20 miles or so east of Red Bluff, Craven's aunti was caught by a whiteman with a rifle. They had separated to gather frood. When the whiteman was about to pull the trigger, Mom jumped him from behind, and they wrestled around on the ground for a bit until Mom got her legs wrapped around the guy's neck and squeezed - ultimately killing the fellow - breaking his neck or suffocation, I don't know.
But they made it home to Big Valley, but they and their people had to live in hinding - only surviving by theft of goods from the white people who were settling in their territory. Craven, who passed away in the 70s, was one of those rare Indians around who were never able to integrate the white culture with the indian culture. He would slip in and out of both - in the middle of a conversation his eyes would glaze and he would start speaking in his native Ajumawi language. So he had a reputation in Big Valley as being crazy - but he wasn't. He just lived in two worlds that wouldn't mesh.
BTW, the Pit River people are very strong, genetically. I even found a paper once at UC Berkeley written in the thirties: "Are California Indians stronger?" Yep, the scientific study proved that they were. The test subjects were Pomos, which the Pit River people think are pansies (I joke).
Neoboho
November 7, 2007 11:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
Reflection of the experiences of early Americans, and the stories they told themselves, is intrinsically interesting. But I wonder whether Ms. Faludi might be overestimating the continued influence of these stories on the reactions of contemporary Americans to fresh events. To what extent is the attitudinal makeup of contemporary Americans a reflection of the attitudes of Americans in these earlier times? Exactly how much of a hold do these early responses and narratives continue to have over us?
I grew up in Connecticut and have lived in New England all my life save for three years. Certainly, I can detect the Puritan cultural influence on my own attitudes. But that impact is combined with an assortment of other cultural influences - the experiences of Irish Catholic immigrants to New England; the experiences of later non-Puritan New England protestants; the experiences of postwar suburban living; the reaction to successive waves of European immigration to the New England area; the impact of other artistic, literary and cultural traditions that spread from areas outside the New England region entirely - including some from abroad; and then of course the more particualr influences from my own family, heritage and personal experiences. With most of these other cultural legacies, myths about the frontier and the wilderness played little role, and they each generated their own bodies of stories, not all of which were mere reworkings or retellings of colonial era myths.
I'm sure Americans from other regions could say the same thing about the myriad influences on their own attitudes. So I'm not sure looking at Americans of 100, 200 and 300 years ago is the best way to understand Americans of the 21st century. To what extent can the key to contemporary understanding be excavated from the cultural history of a selected handful of times and places? I also wonder whether the tendency of cultural historians to zero in on particular times and places, such as colonial New England, might not reflect a prejudice on their part in favor of certain foundational Ur-myths. But maybe there is no American Ur, just one movement of thought and feeling after another.
November 7, 2007 11:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, really? In Massachusetts the Puritans supposedly came to America seeking religious freedom, but freedom for whom? The only freedom they promoted was freedom for themselves. They established a theocratic rule regulating every aspect of life based upon their interpretation of the bible. The iconoclastic preacher Roger Williams complained that the state should have no place enforcing orthodoxy and argued for freedom of conscience. His view of the Puritan rule was that “no tenant…is so heretical, blasphemous, seditious, and dangerous…as persecution for the cause of conscience.” The Massachusetts civil authorities decided every citizen including Williams should take a loyalty oath to the governor. Williams refused! The Puritan leaders took Williams to court and found him guilty of “disseminating new and dangerous opinions” and banished him from the colony.
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/May05/Salisbury0503.htm
This is an important point because we see semblances of that theocratic rule today as political candidates are grilled about their religious beliefs (real or assumed) in spite of the Constitution's stipulation that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States" (Article VI).
Besides the "hyper-masculine posturing" which is the subject of this book, there is a theocratic religious component to American foreign policy today, in Colin Powell's "crusade" and the neocons' ranting about "Islamofascism", and it has its roots in the first European colonies in America.
ecotourism
WeGoEco.com
November 7, 2007 11:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think you would have to account for the massive cultural interventions that have taken place between colonial time and the present. Two that come to my mind are the industrial revolution and the growth of mass-media culture (hand in hand developments, I would think). Then the task would to be to extrapolate what of the old has penetrated these new things - weaving, distorting and (de)evolving along the way. Not an easy task.
But one historical example comes to mind, and that was the social upheavals in Northern Europe at the outset of the so-called "Early Modern Era." While we celebrate the artistic joys of the Renaissance, it was also a very stressful era on society. The redistribution of capital, early urbanization trends, the excesses of the Holy Roman Emporer all combined to give us the Peasant's Rebellion, the 30 year war, the 100 year war and so on. In response, especially evidenced in the arts of the era, we see a revival of very ancient cultural values, expressed in the proliferation of the old Wildman mythologies, heavy reference to "the good old days" of the simple life close to nature, Liviathan and so on. Read some of the writings of Hans Sachs for a perfect example (who may have been the first populist author). It's interesting to note that the peasants were fighting for the old, pre-Roman, system of land tenure, which viewed the human individual's ultimate right to the soil as sacred and fundamental. BTW, this same sort of sensibility emerged in early twentieth century Germany -young people opting for a back to nature course in response to the industrial revolution in Germany.
So I would argue that the old is very much with us, in spite of the huge changes that have ocurred since Davy Crocket punched Mike Fink in the nose. But the forms, or paradigms, are never the same when they recapitulate, in my opinion. The Nazi evocation of germanic history and culture was no where near the original model. But it was culturally relevant enough to get a bunch of guys to proudly wear Lederhosen in Berlin.
Neoboho
November 7, 2007 11:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
I too think it doubtful that any one movement or influence from our past has a singularly strong or direct impact on us today. I think finding examples of that anywhere in the world would be challenging although certainly not impossible. In places where a people have lived for far longer than we have lived here in North America I'm sure you could find vestiges of the past having a clear and daily impact on the present. But that's not who we are and it is not how this nation was formed.
What I believe has occurred (and still occurs) here in America is that we take what we want from events and influences and then assimilate them into a growing artificial construct I call (I do not claim credit) the American Mythos. Oftentimes we would take things that weren't even there or never actually occurred and used them to build the Mythos. So long as these things helped to propel the Mythos forward then that was all that was necessary. I do not think that this Mythos has been specifically designed but rather that it has taken on a life of it's own, growing in one direction or the other depending on the times. But there was always a general direction of growth and there were always certain defining characteristics.
One defining characteristic of our American Mythos is that of grandiosity. With this comes the inability to self-critique. This self importance has served to both inspire us as a nation and to alienate us from others (and at times from ourselves). I think that this one characteristic is pivotal in why we find it so difficult to change ourselves intentionally, in any area, either for the better or for the worse. The Mythos is simply too powerful and has become too ingrained into the subconscious fictional fabric of who we are, or rather who we think we are.
In the end, maybe the thirst we seem to have to clone ourselves and our ways to the farthest corners of the world derives not from some egotistical hegemonistic dream but rather from one of self preservation. Perhaps it's the inner realization that we are ultimately more fiction than fact. And if there is an enemy in the world which can dispel and triumph over fiction it is fact. So it must be eliminated at all cost or the Mythos will crumble.
November 7, 2007 12:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
In at least one of the few places that Faludi lapses into relating facts, she has it, well, not quite right:
"Of course, later on, the accusing finger turned to women, with deadly effect in the Salem witch trials. (A case where, you might say, “possessed” girls were enlisted to accuse their elder sisters of succumbing to their inner male devil….)"
Yes, you "might say" this if you wanted to be inaccurate. The girls were not "enlisted" by some unnamed, ulterior-motivated conspirator, and 7 of the 20 people hanged as witches were men. In fact, the Salem Witch Trials were the last gasp of a craze that swept across Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, and which had pretty much died out there by the time it made its way across the Atlantic.
As for the myth of the west, it seems most likely that most of its elements arose in the civilized population centers of the East, which projected the stereotype of the helpless servile woman onto the reality of the frontier wife. The 20th century version of the western myth owes far more to the stereotypes imagined by the early New York movie producers than to the reality of the West.
November 7, 2007 1:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't blame this on men anymore than I would blame it on women.
November 7, 2007 1:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Stephen's observation inspired me to dig out my notes from a long Netflix-aided binge of “24’s” first season a couple years ago, where I jotted down the many permutations Bauer utters of the family-protection mantra: “I will do everything that I have to do to protect my family”; “As soon as I know they are safe, I will let you go”; “We are talking about my family, do you understand me?” And so on.
Though this long predates 9/11-- look at Die Hard, look at the Tom Clancy Jack Ryan movies. Ironically enough I think this is the feminist influence on the action thriller-- the archetype in the 40s, 50s and 60s was the hard-drinking, single tough guy, looking for a quick fling with a hardedged yet easy dame, a description which fits characters as different as Philip Marlowe, Mike Hammer or James Bond. But the bedhopping single with an expense account had become sufficiently disreputable culturally by the 80s, that action heroes became either outright chaste (Rambo, who's too Zen to have a girlfriend) or at least respectably faithful family men (often surrogate fathers, like in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom or Terminator 2). Die Hard took this to its furthest extreme with Bruce Willis as the blue collar cop who has to prove his worth to his white collar wife by saving the day; and so the action hero has gone from bedding multiple floozies to having to woo his own wife! By the time Jack Bauer is saving his family and the nation at the same time, it was the established profile of the action hero more than it was any specific reaction to 9/11 (which, incidentally, happened after the first season began)-- even present in the Jason Bourne movies, which outright deny 9/11, as I wrote here.
November 7, 2007 3:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re: Oh, really? In Massachusetts the Puritans supposedly came to America seeking religious freedom, but freedom for whom?
This is a myth: the Puritans were not seeking religious freedom. They were seeking a place to build their New Jerusalem without inteference from non-Puritans and the English government (even when that government became for a while Puritan-led under Cromwell). There simply was no notion of "religious freedom" in that era. the closest you could come was "religious toleration" practiced by the Dutch, and only because they had too many external enemies and had to stay united against them. An interesting observation though: the Puritans were the Far Left of their day. After all they completely rejected the established order of King, Aristocracy and the episcopal (=led by bishops) Church, things even most other Protestants accepted. They were far more egalitarian than anyone else at the time, which by modern standards may not be saying much, but by 17th centuries was quite a bit. And note that New England is the most consistently liberal part of our country today, and was alawys so: a hotbed of the Revolution and firmly anti-slavery later. The Puritan church itself evolved into several fairly liberal denominations like the Congregationalists.
November 7, 2007 4:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, but does art imitate life or does life imitate art?
November 7, 2007 4:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great now I'm going to have chickens and eggs rolling around in my head all night. (And flashes of Arnie in Commando being such a great dad to young Alyssa Milano - before her more sorrid exploits).
Thanks!
November 7, 2007 5:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is an interesting argument and Faludi makes some good points, but the one trait that has motivated this crazed response to this entire sad episode of our history is good ole narcissism and I'm not sure that the U.S. has a particular lease on that.
From the beginning, when those planes hit the WTC the discussion has centered on what that means to America - and do you know what it means to America? Nothing. The WTC held no sentimental or patriotic or any kind of symbolic meaning to the people of the U.S. It did, however, mean a great deal to the Muslim fundamentalists who saw it as a symbol of everything they think we are - controlling, rich, selfish and the center of the world universe.
After the WTC attack, the political discussion was fraught with what message they fundamentalists were sending us, what did it mean to us, what were they trying to tell us, why they were trying to tell us something and on and on about us. The fundamentalists weren't sending us a message, they were sending a message to their own people - that the U.S. is just as vulnerable as they had been telling their people for decades and we were as easily manipulated and used as we had manipulated and used them.
And yet, the discourse still revolves around us - how 9/11 has effected us, how the U.S. has suffered, how various immigrant and minority groups have suffered because of it, how we saw ourselves, what kind of image did we want to project, how the fundamentalist Muslims saw us, what they want from us, what we can give them, what we can do to them, why they want to destroy our freedom, how they need our freedom and on and on and all about us, all the time.
Do you know what the fundamentalists want? They want US out of THERE. Do you know how I know that? Because that's what they SAID.
All of this conceited introversion, all of this narcissistic soul searching, all of this selfish search for meaning is a sideshow, a diversion from the real problem which is our selfish contempt and disdain for anyone who isn't us.
Sadly, we'll continue to get these slaps upside the head until they get it through our heads that it isn't about our national mythology, it isn't about our masculinity or feminimity, it isn't about conservatism or liberalism, it is about THEM.
November 7, 2007 5:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let Aristotle settle that for you - the chicken came first because the chicken is a known entity and the egg is not.
On the other hand...
November 7, 2007 5:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Curse you other hand...
November 7, 2007 5:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not to mention (and I hate to ruin a perfectly good theory) that the first season of '24' was produced *before* 9/11.
"Ruin" is too strong, actually: Season 2 is when Bauer started to use torture, and the show's creators do clearly sympathize with this Administration when interviewed. However, as far as Season 1 is concerned, I'm afraid I'll have to let the facts get in the way of a good story.
November 7, 2007 8:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
JPF311,
Is it a myth to say that people driven by religious fervor (accompanied by some non-religious folks), who came in little boats across the Atlantic Ocean to a harsh land, were seeking religious freedom, freedom to practice their religion? Seeking a place to build their New Jerusalem, as you say, is not seeking religious freedom, and it is a myth to suggest it?
The Mayflower Compact: . . .In ye name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwriten, ye loyall subjects of our dread soveraigne Lord King James by ye grace of God, of Great Britaine, Franc, & Ireland king, defender of ye faith, e& Haveing undertaken, for ye glorie of god, and advancemente of ye Christian faith and honour of our king & countrie, a voyage to plant ye first colonie in ye Northerne parts of Virginia, doe by these presents solemnly & mutualy in ye presence of God, and one of another, covenant & combine our selves togeather into a civill body politick, . . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayflower_Compact
As you say, they were (on a world scale) the Far Left of the day, but this was still under a theocratic structure of town governership. Again, this was religious freedom they were seeking so I don't understand you calling it a myth.
New England is many things, including being liberal about human rights. But if you were to live there you would find it somewhat lacking in openness and receptivity to change. Other parts of the USA are much more hospitable to visitors and newcomers, for example.
I am somewhat familiar with New England history but I have never heard that the Puritans' aim was to build a "New Jerusalem". Do you have a cite on that? I am open to learn.
November 7, 2007 8:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
There was an interesting observation about the choice of the WTC as a target in Slate shortly after it happened, which I've never seen anyone comment on.
People have noted that the Japanese architect of the WTC used Muslim motifs in the design. But few have asked where he got that influence. On projects he designed in Saudi Arabia. And what royally-connected construction firm built those projects? You guessed it-- Binladen.
It was a family terrorist attack. Osama was just striking back at Dad for not paying more attention to him over his 50 other kids...
November 7, 2007 8:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Huh, I never heard that one. Though it's a real stretch. What "Muslim motifs" specifically?
Many "Muslim motifs" are also known as "geometric patterns" which have transcendent appeal for both physical strength and aesthetics.
Regardless, even if true, it's a small world with few degrees of separation.
November 7, 2007 10:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great post. Exactly right there was no concept of "religious freedom" in popular culture as we think of it today. Though it's reasonable to assume the framers of the constitution were supportive of the argument for true religious freedom, and the gist of the Protestant movement intellectually towards conscience and proto-Democratic ideals, even if it wasn't actually practiced at the level of small communities. You're also right that the region was and continues to be ahead of the curve.
And in general Fauldi's theories seem pretty goofy and conspiratorially paranoid.
November 7, 2007 10:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
So you're saying Bush has more "testosterone" than you? Or that rural regions have more "testosterone" than urban areas?
Sounds like a lot of nonsense, pseudo-science, sloppy language, and lousy symbolism.
Which makes me suspect you don't actually have much idea about the cause at all, and rather than actually trying to figure it out, are just forcing the complexities into simplistic terms you feel comfortable with. And if someone like Faludi writes a book which reinforces simplistic ideas, tribalism, prejudice, and calls it expert opinion, some suckers will lap it up.
Which ironically seems to be exactly what Bush is doing, along with his cadre of propagandists.
Polemic, tribalism, and group think.
November 7, 2007 10:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
"To Bin Laden, the World Trade Center was probably not only an international landmark but also a false idol."
Laurie Kerr's essay is here. And see, here.
November 7, 2007 11:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think Faludi's discussion of many of these themes would benefit from more cross-cultural comparison. What are the continuities and discontinuities between xenophobia, nationalism, territoriality, and gender across the US, France, China and, say, Egypt? Such a comparison is necessary before one can discuss whether or not there is anything culturally specific in America's hypermasculine response to 9/11. It would be particularly interesting to compare the American "homeland" to the German "heimat" or "vaderland" and the Russian "mat'-rodina" (Mother-Country).
I also think the discussion needs to look cross-culturally not just at the hypermasculinization of imagery of men, but at the masculinization of imagery of women. Lara Croft, Jennifer Garner and Buffy -- what are their German or Russian equivalents? The masculinization of women in Russian (and American) propaganda art of the '30s and '40s? Leni Riefenstahl? (Riefenstahl's nature films as the German Western, scored by the same German composers who ended up scoring the great American Westerns a decade later?) Isn't it interesting that in the contest against Russian Communism the initial line ("Ninotchka") was that we allowed our women to be women, while they turned theirs into men; while in the contest against "Islamofascism" the polarities are reversed (Jessica Lynch)?
And one final wrinkle: is there something worth exploring in the way that the internet and computer gaming famously blended and destabilized gender identities as one of their first effects in the '90s? Again, Lara Croft, but also the rise of the gender-ambiguous rave aesthetic in the '90s and the ascendancy of ambient and dance music, traditionally seen as "European" or gay in American discourse. How has this played out since 9/11? Is the masculinizing reaction in part not against Bin Laden, but against the gender-ambiguous '90s?
For my money, the best film for opening up all these related cans of tuna is definitely "The Bourne Identity". Franka Potente -- the embodiment of Euro rave videogame boy-girl gender ambiguity from the frantic "Run Lola Run". Matt Damon -- he wakes up literally not knowing who he is, possessed of skills he can't explain, a walking videogame character in a hypermasculine underwear model's body. As it turns out he was stripped of his memory in an incident where he failed to shoot an African dictator, losing his nerve -- because he saw the dictator's wife and photos of his children! What Hitchcock was to the Cold War identity crisis, the Bourne movies are to the current one.
"All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out." - I.F. Stone
November 8, 2007 12:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Geeze. Who knew Lara Croft and Angelina Jolie were "hypermasculine." Who knew a woman could have such large breasts, extremely puffy female features, be a sex symbol, and still be "hypermasculine."
And here I thought she was just an "action hero" using weapons, specifically guns, which have no gender prerequisites to operate. Anybody can pull a trigger, as the NRA is fond of reminding women.
But wait, it's all homoeroticism right? So Angelina Jolie is actually a man! And that's why she wants to "rescue" all those children!
Suuure. It all makes so much sense!
This is why I hate the gender politics. Ordinarily intelligent people go through the most extreme contortions to accommodate these sacred cows. It reminds me of young earth creationists attempting to reconcile the Grand Canyon.
November 8, 2007 12:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the link. Yeah... Not a lot of there, there.
As I suspected the "Muslim motifs" are also known as pointed "arches" and "doorways" and other simple geometric forms which have inherent physical strength and can be found throughout nature. Gothic cathedrals are also chock-full-o-Islamic-motifs. Take all those vaulted ceilings and flying buttresses for example.
Of course the problem with calling arches "Islamic" is Muslims didn't build them thinking "let's do something Islamic." They built them because they had intrinsic strength and beauty, being sound engineering and mathematically elegant. And the engineers of Europe copied them, and modified them, for the same reasons.
Actually, the pointed arch is stronger at bearing weight and provides more height than the round arch which it may even predate. So for pure functionality and for aesthetics, you especially go with the pointed arch for taller structures, like cathedrals and skyscrapers. And that's been known for centuries at least.
* btw, I just checked, and the pointed arch is actually Assyrian dating to 720 BC, predating both Christianity and Islam.
November 8, 2007 3:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
Re: Though it's reasonable to assume the framers of the constitution were supportive of the argument for true religious freedom,
True, the Founders believed in Religious Freedom, if not perhaps the more extravagant versions of Separation of Church and State that we argue about.
150 years separated the Founders from the first Puritan settlement in New England. 150 years ago from today there was still slavery in America. A lot can change in 150 years. Religious toleration emerged as an ideal later in the 17th century after ruinous religious wars in Europe and Cromwell's brutal dictatorship in England. And that blossomed into full scale relibgious freedom under the Enlightenment.
November 8, 2007 3:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
We agree up to that, but I think that's unfounded. True, religious freedom and tolerance emerged as popular memes more fully later.
However, the founders were hardly ordinary folks on or behind the popular curve.
I don't see how the educated, intellectual, and worldly founders could have missed the writing on the wall regarding religious freedom and complete separation of Church and State. If the State endorses religion, it's inherently coercive.
Besides, the language is clearly a negative and a barrier in the Constitution, with no mention of exceptions. Yes exceptions were permitted in practice and by tradition, but we're speaking of intents separate from pragmatic compromises.
Furthermore, these were secular men. Perhaps some agnostics and even closet atheists. It's impossible they missed the proto-democratic thought inherent in the Protestant backlash against Catholic centralization and hence corruption, and the move towards individual conscience. The Founding was filled with literal and symbolic hearkening to Greek and especially Roman polycultural and polytheistic democracy, vital during the epitome of the Roman empire. Then you have the Free-Mason influence and general move towards forming a rational society.
I think it's pretty clear a secular nation was intended with a complete wall between church and state, conscience and civic duty. Regardless, it made sense then and it still makes sense now.
Having said that, the people who protest the pledge of allegiance and such triviality to hostile audiences, are imo counter productive.
November 8, 2007 3:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Admittedly, on a minimalist form of architecture a "motif" is going to be pretty minimal, too. But the idea that he found such motifs profaned by being applied to a building full of Jewish-named financial firms isn't a stretch, in a culture that objected to the swirls on a Burger King ad resembling the script for "Allah" too closely. And the interesting point is that Bin Laden blew up a building by someone he may have even seen in person or even met, or at least associated with his own family's work to some degree. Puts a different perspective on the whole thing.
November 8, 2007 4:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Evolutionary change always manifests in the egg, so it gets pride of place, A chicken is just an egg's way of making more eggs.
Or you could note that the chicken is just a mature egg, so when asking whcih chicken comes first, the immature or the mature, the answer is obvious.
November 8, 2007 6:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bush thought they were gothic motifs and went all crusade on his ass - we need an international committee like the Red Cross (though it can't be red or a cross) to come up with an international building symbolism code.
November 8, 2007 6:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
I haven't felt comfortable contributing, because for once in absence of reading a book I felt unable to grasp the picture enough to be fair. But, somewhat late, something seems missing from the picture. Dan K asked us to consider many contributions to American culture. I might put it differently: we shouldn't generalize about the American myth before or after 9/11 without seeing it in context of the recent political history of a divided America.
Culturally, by 9/11 more Americans were identifying themselves as conservative while preferring liberal policies. Similarly, more men and women were accepting much of a traditional feminist agenda while women were also more reluctant to identify themselves as feminists and more likely to use vocabulary like "girl." More broadly, as in movies and TV, but also in attitudes to marriage, contraception, abortion, sex, etc., etc., we had evidence that the culture wars had basically been over and largely won, while Americans had trouble working out what that meant. Meanwhile, a small minority continued to wage the culture wars as if they had a chance.
The GOP had long fought for marginal positions, like abstinence only education or refusal to distribute condoms in Africa to combat AIDS. It could draw on NRA and the cowboy myth without worrying that most Americans prefer gun control. So rather than see 9/11 as galvanizing support for their position, it might be that understandable fear and patriotism in wartime masked lack of support. There may be surprisingly little change, outside some right-wing propaganda.
Finally, it may be important to see such things as the mythologizing of the female warrior Lynch and other apparent violations of the story as an acknowledgment that the propaganda has to be flexible, because it's vulnerable. Don't underestimate right-wing cynicism, just as they were happy to pretend to appropriate feminism to argue that only they cared about women's rights under Muslim law.
As for me, I don't recognize myself in the gentleman's response that Faludi has him more aware of his concern for his masculinity. I don't worry about it. Ok, maybe I worry about getting a date, but that's different. That could just mean I'm a leftist or an out of touch elite liberal or whatever. Or it could mean that on a day to day level, we're not really all that vested in myth. It just makes good entertainment.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
November 8, 2007 6:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
This response makes me believe you're willfully obtuse.
Let me map it out for you:
The formulation is that denial and repression make it impossible to be honest with ourselves about how to go about fixing a problem.
November 8, 2007 7:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
Um, Kozmik, if you don't think that boys pretending to be gun-toting girls with large tits are performing some pretty complex gender-coded maneuvers, I don't know what you do think. It's not the people who analyze these things who are going through "extreme contortions". It's the things themselves. They are extreme contortions. And I'm not sure what the "sacred cow" political stance towards Lara Croft even is. But I'm pretty sure it's not to pretend that she's feminine. I mean, if you had to call her a butch or a femme, which would it be? The first "Tomb Raider" movie ends with Jolie dressed in a frilly white dress. If the character were supposed to be feminine, that wouldn't be a joke. It is worth at least thinking about the extent to which games like "Dance Dance Revolution" represent the inverse phenomenon -- 12-year-old girls imagining themselves as slender boys dancing sinuously. But I still think the masculinized ass-kicking girl images have been more pervasive.
"All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out." - I.F. Stone
November 8, 2007 7:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
. . . the pointed arch is actually Assyrian dating to 720 BC . . . .
You're not the first to have noticed this fact, kozmik. On the nineteenth day of his interrogation KSM disclosed that the attack on the WTC towers was touch-and-go for some time.
OBL had selected the towers for destruction because, in is view, the design details showed that it was, from the outset, intended as an insult to Islam and was a parody of the holiest of Islamic religious sites. Mohammed Atta disagreed. He pointed out that the metaphors expressed were traceable to a pre-Islamic architectural language, namely, Assyrian.
T he dispute became extremely heated, OBL arguing that he was a better Muslim and a construction engineer and Atta countering that riding an earth mover en robe hardly makes one an expert in Assyro-Babylonian architecture. And further, that he would be greatly embarrassed should it come out that he, a graduate in architecture at Cairo University, Alhamdulillah, had attacked the WTC towers because he thought they reflected Arab influences whether parodistically or not.
Indeed, the arguments became so heated that several times OBL, fearing that it might result in fisticuffs, was forced to call for the Prophet to be praised to settle Mohammed down.
In the event KSM reported that Dr. Zawahiri interceded and was able over a period of days to convince Atta that although he was technically correct, the attack on the WTC towers was intended to be an example of "propaganda of the deed" addressed to the Islamic world who would not notice the architectural anachronisms.
In the end Atta succombed to the entreaties of Dr. Zawahiri and the rest is history.
November 8, 2007 8:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ohhh, riiiight. Which has to do with, uh, "testosterone" and, uh, "hypermasculinity" right?
Because the, uh, "testosterone" makes men repress their... No, the, uh, hypermasculine men are repressing their testosterone, or uh, wait.. the testosterone makes them want to make war, which makes them hypermasculine, which uh... wait, almost got it... they feel guilty about, or at least the feminie side of the hypermasculine testosterone monsters feels guilt, guilt for not repressing urges, which then then repress, the guilt that is, but not the urges, though they think they should.. so uh... yeah, anyways it's all about testosterone, and hypermasculinity, and guilt, and stuff. And dream analysis too. And astrology.
November 8, 2007 12:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
The level of denial approaches brain washing - both bin laden and Hussein were once our 'allies' and yet that doesn't even slow the konservatives down one bit.
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Well, what the heck, so was Stalin. Didn't slow FDR down a bit
November 8, 2007 2:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
And note that New England is the most consistently liberal part of our country today, and was alawys so: a hotbed of the Revolution and firmly anti-slavery later.
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They came to anti-slavery much later. There were black slaves and black and white indentured servants in Plymouth colony. Also the Indian survivors of King Philip's War between the colonists and the Wampanoag Confederacy were enslaved in 1676. Some were kept and others were sent to be sold in the West Indies
November 8, 2007 2:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're right Faludi has history pretty mixed up. Her conclusions are stacked on false premises. It's hard to know where to begin. Take this one:
Heady stuff.
So, how is living in an American western frontier town really that different from any low population, remote, agrarian hamlet, including those throughout much of European history? If anything the American West sounds worse.
If remote frontier towns with couples living harsh and mutually dependent lives equates to women's liberation in Faludi's theory, then it seems to have occurred some centuries earlier in Europe, and throughout most of history in most places.
If it was a tremendous opportunity to freely wield shotguns in the Wild West, and find "freedom" from oppression, why did so few women take it? She blames the "Victorian ideal."
A friend's Chinese ancestors came up the California coast on a junk in the mid 1800's and settled in Monterey. And they were truly a frontier family, poor, hard living, though they would have liked to have been prosperous Victorians given a chance. Later, the family had to flee, literally into the ocean and then back to Monterey, as San Francisco's Chinatown burned in 1906, and Chinese weren't allowed to flee into the posh neighborhoods. Again denying their chance at Urban Victorian prosperity which they had endured racism and second class status in hope of.
Also, many truly poor men were going to the edges of the frontier with nothing. They truly were seeking freedom, opportunity, and riches, and risking their lives. This included escaped and former slaves, poor Mexicans and Chinese, and generally the worst off.
So, I'm having trouble with Faludi's theory the victimized Victorian women of European decent had this great opportunity, just waiting for them to seize it, and yet they didn't.
As great as it all supposedly was... the freedom of isolation, the lack of trade goods or common luxuries of the era, the lack of doctors, the lack of schools or any infrastructure, the lack of law, answering doors with shotguns, hard physical labor, carrying water, shoveling pig shit...
Ah yes. How wonderfully "horizontal" it all sounds. Clearly what humanity has always longed for: isolation, hard labor, poverty, and a general lack of civilization.
***
Anyways, in regards to the Victorian era, it could be called the "age of neurosis" due to the way it teetered and teetotaled, between modernity and antiquity, materialism and religiosity, and other extremes. They were more prosperous than ever, and the Victorians themselves seem to have delighted in it while also being somewhat guilty or uncertain about it all.
Both men and women were cast into extreme caricatures of gender roles, class, status, etc, dictating fashion, profession, pretty much their existence, while at the same time they had more liberties and leisure time than ever.
November 8, 2007 2:45 PM | Reply | Permalink