- What connections do James Baldwin and Tennessee Williams explore between race, gender and sexuality?
- Pay attention to the narrative texture of Baldwin's "Going to Meet the Man." How does the story introduce its characters? Who is narrating? - What is the “thrilling silence” Big Jim C. talks about? And what is the function of black song in the story?
- Pay attention to the narrative texture of Baldwin's "Going to Meet the Man." How does the story introduce its characters? Who is narrating? - What is the “thrilling silence” Big Jim C. talks about? And what is the function of black song in the story?
In both of the stories (by Williams and Baldwin), white main characters experience intense emotions (clearly sexual in both cases) that are brought out by encounters with black individuals. On the surface, the ways in which the white, male main characters in each story interact with African American characters seem to differ greatly--one character inflicts violence while the other chooses to be violated. Through violence, however, both characters address feelings that induce shame or guilt. With this in mind, to what extent can we equate each of these characters to the other and to what extent are they actually different?
ReplyDeleteI definitely saw the concept of guilt as well, and I believe another continuity between the two characters was the desire for some form of security. In Baldwin's story, Jesse has a twisted sense of security and a righteousness in bringing harm and an ultimate end to the "bad niggers". In William's story, Burns also has this desire for security by blending in to a large group of people, this sort of mob mentality is also present in both stories. To that extent,we can better equate the two characters to one another.
DeleteThis is a very interesting point- which elements of identity must be compartmentalized in the dynamics you mentioned? How is it possible to express at the same time such overt and racist hatred, as well as lust? I think that especially in the case of "Going to Meet the Man," the attraction is based in sexual dominance and violence, emphasized in Jesse's role as a sheriff (authority.) The link here may be extended as a metaphor for broader societal exploitation, that is, literal and figurative rape.
DeleteBoth readings are of a cyclical nature, suggesting the recurrence of the stories’ events. In “Going to Meet the Man”, the cycle is created through the passing of hatred from father to son. In “Desire and the Black Masseur”, it is through the masseur’s relocation to another city. What do these cycles, characterized by the temporary fulfillment and return of a desire, suggest about sexuality? Is the insatiability of the characters’ appetites for power a reason for or a consequence of what appears to be a sexual insatiability?
ReplyDeleteAnd the cycle is not only part of the content but structures the temporality of the text in Baldwin's piece. Rather than a linear narrative we get one that loops from 2 am in the main character's bed back to the past of his childhood and then comes full circle at the conclusion, having taken us only a few hours at most from the starting point of the story. What do you suppose the effect of this double-looping is? And in the case of content, is there any suggestion that the cycle will be broken in "Desire and the Black Masseur"? Or that the lines of racist inheritance will also snap in "Going to Meet the Man"?
DeleteBoth stories suggest a racial sexual hierarchy while fetishizing race. How does this soldering of race and sexuality, particularly deviant sexuality, serve to illuminate and communicate the dehuminization and humiliation of blacks throughout the period?
ReplyDeleteIndeed, and the dehumanization of whites by their own racism, or the general milieu of bigotry in which everyone lives and from which everyone suffers the effects? Also, how do you think the hierarchy and fetishism work together? Could the disparity of power have something to do with desire in any of these texts? Is there desire without (this) difference?
DeleteIn "Going to Meet the Man," Jesse's sexual infatuation with black girls seems to have everything to do with the disparity of power. He is able to ask black girls to perform sexual acts that he can't ask his innocent wife to do, and this sort of control consumes and excites him. Moreover, he starts to feel sexually aroused in the scene in which he's beating up the weaponless young black man for his protests. This brings us back to the theme we discussed in class of 'pleasure and pain,' specifically that the pain of African Americans brings pleasure to Jesse.
DeleteAnthony Burns's character seems to be pleased to be the one being beaten (by the black masseur), in which he is arguably inferior in the power dynamic. What does this say about Anthony's view of a racial hierarchy? We've drawn several comparisons between the two characters, now what are their differences -- specifically in their levels of racism?
What is the significance of the religious symbolism deployed in Baldwin's and (to a greater extent) William's work? Often we are presented with such images at the most horrible or grotesque moments in these stories. Why? How does does this backdrop inform your understanding of these two white protagonists? In Williams, the search for atonement (a quest religious in nature) is inextricably paired with the realization and actualization of White male desire. What might we make of the intersection of religion and sexuality in this text?
ReplyDeleteThe intrusion of religion into these texts is both unanticipated and hugely significant, especially (but not exclusively) in Williams's story. Would it be possible to read "Desire and the Black Masseur" as a parable, and consider the last scene a kind of liturgy of "Desire and the Black Mass"? Once we gloss the most superficial layer of the text, that is, the literal plot--which itself is not that shallow or easy to grasp--we'll try to get a hold of the spiritual symbolism, and figure out what this subtext means immanently and in combination with the story/History.
DeleteOne of the themes that I noticed in both stories was the treatment of the black characters as animalistic, barbaric, hyper-sexualized and hyperbolic stereotypes. In "Going to Meet the Man", this was shown in a multitude of ways. In the beginning, he talks about having sex with the black prostitutes and how they were "filthy, kinky and greasy" as well as "no better than animals." Later, when talking about the murder of the man, his features were described incredibly animalistically, including the line "a bigger man than his father, and black as an African jungle Cat." In "Desire and the Black Masseur", the black character ends the story by eating the body of the main (unraced) character, which is a process that is primarily associated with animals. How do you think these comparisons (subtly or not so subtly), perpetuate racial conflict and dehumanize African-Americans? Can you think of an example from pop culture where this stereotype still exists?
ReplyDeleteUgh, Emma, that last question is way too resonant. I hope people respond with their observations on contemporary mainstream culture. If you're ever interested in late-Soviet and post-Soviet Russian examples, I'm happy to talk to you about them, though deeply sad to have so many things to share. But speaking to your course-oriented observations, how would you connect these instances of "racial animality" with the bits of (anti) racist animation we watched?
DeleteI remember reading a dissertation on the treatment of Adrican Americans throughout American history and something interesting was the comparison of African Americans to apes, and how some scholars believed th the movie King Kong was full of racial undertones. Though this is a less recent "pop culture" reference I still think there are slurs and stereotypes that are used today, whether is be for "comedic" purposes (comedian or comedy films/shows making racial stereotypes) or purely for racist intent, I definitely still see dehumanizing stereotypes. I think one could also argue that the lack of people of color in our pop culture is dehumanizing in itself. Most advertisements, shows, movies, feature predominantly white people.
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ReplyDeleteThe end of Williams’s and Baldwin’s works depict a return to cleanliness and a departure from innocence, respectively. What is the purpose of burying the theme of purity (more evident within Baldwin’s stories) within the details of such gruesome carnage? What is its effect?
ReplyDeleteAs we discussed, this narrative closure or sealing off the reader from the trauma of the text happens in the short film, Black and White, too. Between your post and Taylor's above, the question of cyclicality, transmission, and purification looms too large not to look into on Thursday.
DeleteGrace Jones writes:
ReplyDeleteThe main characters in each story are rather lost in the beginning of the texts and eventually go through some sort of realization and coming-of-age: in Going to Meet the Man, Jesse is exposed to racism and decides to make it the "key of his life forever," and in Desire and the Black Masseur, Anthony discovers his atonement in his connection with the black masseur. Both Anthony and Jesse seem to have discovered their life purpose, for better or for worse. How does the fact that these stories follow the traditional coming-of-age plot line help or hinder each story? Does the reader sympathize for the characters or is he disgusted by Jesse and Anthony due to the ease in which they gave in to their corruption?
In conjunction with Mackenzie's comment, these two texts demand us to ask about the importance of childhood, Bildung or upbringing for the future racist-fetishist 'heroes.' As a complement to this question, we should probably ask about the parents or parent-figures in these stories (or conspicuously absent from them). Without our loose psychoanalytic framework, what different family dramas play out in the plot and behind the scenes?
DeleteSomeone already commented on how African-Americans are depicted as animals in the short stories we read, and I want to expand on that thought a little bit. People become "animals" through the process of dehumanization. But through dehumanizing someone else, the dehumanizer (ie the white "pick-nick" goers) dehumanizes himself. Are the white people at the "pick-nick" not animals as well? It does not seem human to take sexual pleasure in the violent, gruesome, death of another, especially a death brought about by skin color. That being said, how does the process of dehumanization function in relation to the sexual violence and to the loss of a childish innocence in both stories?
ReplyDeleteTwo snaps up. This comment poses a complex question, asking us to think about race, sex qua maturity, and humanity all in one go. To put it plainly, what is a man? What is a human? What is a good man, to borrow Jesse's own terminology?
DeleteAs I was reading the two texts, I focused on the idea of sexual repression throughout the main part of the story and its eventual release at the end, whether it was Jesse telling his wife to "love [him] just like [she]'d love a n---" after his flashback or Anthony Burns being eaten (alive? I wasn't too clear on that) by the black masseur. Both sexual obsessions are rather twisted and result in some violence being committed (Arthur's death, Jesse being turned on after beating the boy in the cell). I wonder if, even though we are disgusted or horrified by the expression of the protagonists' sexual fantasies, it's mentally healthier for the protagonists to express their sexuality rather than hide it away? If their tastes hinged on some other physical aspect rather than race – height, say, or weight – would we be nearly as repelled, considering that race is a delicate topic when height/weight aren't?
ReplyDeleteThere are also more physiological hydraulic systems at work in these stories, i.e. repressed sexual energy that is expressed (or ejaculated) more literally at some turning point in the story, or just beyond its edges. But are these acts of psychosexual unclogging--no matter how abject to us--good in themselves? If not, what kind of complex moral implications might they introduce. In other words, how do we read these rather dark works with the rosy glasses of an optimist or anti-racist? A very provocative question nestled in your post.
DeleteThe white characters in both stories, although one attempts to exert authority and another does not, are reduced to children who need protection and who are controlled by their sexual desires. What points are the authors making through this common theme?
ReplyDeleteA more specific question -
In Desire and the Black Masseur, neither character is ever humanized, at least not to any extent where we can recognize them wholly as such. The entire text is overwhelmingly characterized not only by sex and violence, but simply the body itself. These two characters are bodies (one black, one white) filled with significant desires and that cannot exist independently of one another but are incomplete separately – why do you think Tennessee Williams chose the solution to this problem that he did? And why is the text so full of imagery having to do with the body?
Indeed, the question of dehumanization cannot be disentangled from discussions of racism, with its violent logic of reducing the self down to the body and nothing more. This comment hits at the very crux of constructions of self and other--two categories that cannot exist independently of one another--that arguably correspond to the binary between soul/mind/self and body. Is there any way in which Anthony Burns is a little less embodied and more "ensouled" than the eponymous black masseur? Consider the former has a proper name, for starters. But is there more to suggest the fuller fleshing out of the very character who'd be defleshed right away if he had his druthers?
DeleteIn Baldwin's piece, the father has fetishized racial oppression, making hatred and racialization of his sexual partners a requisite for his sexual performance. This is a constant theme: his hesitation to treat his wife like a n*** woman means his inability to achieve physical arousal. His "little more spice" than his wife is raping black women by abusing his power as a sheriff deputy. After beating the singing "agitator" in jail, he "felt very close to a very peculiar, particular joy." He proceeds to touch himself. On the night of a posse being formed after hearing singing, the father and mother have sex. Charged after the brutal torture and castration of the black man by the mob the following day, he intensely has sex with his wife, fully demonstrating his fetish by imagining himself as a virile black man with wanton disregard for anything else.
ReplyDeleteIn Williams' piece, this sexual theme manifests itself differently. What takes place between the main character and black masseur is not overtly sexual, but primarily a flip in "traditional" power relations. In this sense, the violence at the hands of a black man, rather than the fantasy of hypersexuality (read: being black), is Burns' fetish. By becoming a ("voluntary") victim of violence, his most unacceptable desires are satisfied. But the satisfaction by violence can only go so far while staying "safe," progressively transgressing even more orthodoxy until it culminates in his desire consuming his mind and eventually his body. His desire for Blackness consuming him is evident from the first paragraph: "He loved to sit in the back rows of the movies where the darkness absorbed him gently so that he was like a particle of food dissolving in a big hot mouth." Not so subtle foreshadowing.
Both pieces center around becoming the "Other." For Baldwin's piece, becoming the "Other" means taking on its hypersexuality and desire for violence - seen as natural bestial qualities of Otherness. In Williams' story, the fantasy is swapping roles with the "Other" in order to embody timid qualities, abdicating Whiteness and its power in favor of being ruled and consumed.