"You
ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real
world, that you're a part of all the sound and anguish, and you strike
out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize
you. And alas, it's seldom successful."
-Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
This week's reading covered a range of complex issues from postmodernism
to the subculture of black gay men, but these topics are linked by the
common thread of identity questions. What is the importance of identity
and where does it fit in today's world? Marlon Riggs' Tongues Untied
explores the issue of identity with depth and courage. He supports the
subculture of his own identity as a black gay man by exposing their
beauty and their struggle, yet he admits the conflict of defining oneself
in those terms. As he searches for a culture to identify with there
is opposition from every angle ; he is too black for the white gays,
too gay for the straight blacks, too intellectual for his demographic,
doesn't come from the right demographic to be one of the "intellecutals"...one
feels that to be defined is
sometimes a curse.
In Robert Stam's Film Theory, he quotes Jameson's formulation of postmodernism
by saying it is " 'a unified theory of differentiation,' torn between
an impulse to unify its fields with totalizing assertions and a contrary
impulse to proliferate differences." (Stam 300) There is an ongoing
struggle with the differentiations being made between leftist groups,
minority groups and oppressed groups, each of them looking for the same
thing but never uniting in the cause. Of course each group has their
own needs and goals, but as we divide we grow even further from a succesful
revolution. As Stam says "Instead of a macro-narrative of revolution,
there is now a decentered multiplicity of localized 'micro-political'
struggles." (Stam 299) On the topic of the search for identity,
Stam's chapter on post-modernism paints a depressing portrait of what
our generation may associate their own identity with. A quote from Denis
Epko writes "the celebrated postmodern condition is nothing but
the hypocritical self-flattering cry of overfed and spoiled children".
(Stam 306)
There was recently an article in "The New Yorker" that interviewed
Jon Stewart, host of "The Daily Show" on the struggles the
show went through after September 11th. The show is mentioned in Stam's
book with the following description; " Here irony becomes not only
'blank' but autotelic, a self-satisfied 'yeah, whatever' response to
history." (Stam 304) The New Yorker article was a good example
of the political ambiguity that Stam speaks of. It says
"To the surprise of everyone on 'The Daily Show', the number of
viewers quickly rose to the show's pre-September 11th level: it turned
out that there was an appetite for silly jokes about life-and-death
matters." Americans are finally getting "back to normal",
in that we are once again a helpless, hopeless sarcasatic nation who
dares not defy the comfort of capitalism, the comfort of television,
and the comfort of distance from suffering. Even us leftists are content
to watch "The Simpsons" and "The Daily Show" and
feel fulfilled that our causes are clearly advertised. Stam refers to
postmodernism as "a symptom of the battle fatigue of tenured leftists"
(Stam 302). How pathetic.
The end
Nazism" -Jonas Mekas