What's Your Story?

BREAKING- The people of Cork Country are in an acute state of disbelief following the alleged resurrection of three young brothers in their home this afternoon. The boys’ mother, who has asked that we conceal her name to ensure her privacy at this time, was devastated following the discovery of her sons, pale and without a pulse. “I just couldn’t believe it,” she wept, understandably still emotional over the event. “I thought my life was over. I ran out into the street, hoping that whatever it was that took them would take me too.” The Cork Country police, while refusing to comment further on the case, have confirmed that they do not have any evidence at this time linking them to a suspect. The cause of the temporary deaths remains unknown, as there were no wounds nor indications of foul play.

In an extraordinary turn of events, Kate, who arrived at the wake house late, allegedly made a deal with the boys’ father that he won’t soon forget. “I was walking around, utterly distraught,” he exclaimed, “when she told me to ‘control myself.’ Can you believe it?! Control myself? I thought she had gone mad when she said that she could ‘put the life back in them again’, but that’s exactly what she did!” The father did not wish to comment on what Kate asked for in return, as he “couldn’t afford a Kimye sized guest list,” whatever that might mean. Witnesses say that Kate ushered the guests out of the wake house for an undisclosed amount of time, and when they came back, they watched the young men “awaken” to the sound of their father speaking their names.

The victims, upon being asked of their recollection of the bizarre event, insist they only feel as if they’ve woken up from a pleasant nights’ rest. One of the brothers began to speak of a peculiar taste of oatmeal and iron on his breath upon his awakening, but he was interrupted by what sounded like a cock crowing.

“White is a blindness–it has nothing to do with the color of your skin.” This line, spoken by Aunt Shadie in Marie Clements’ The Unnatural and Accidental Women is perhaps the most significant.  The play introduces the audience to several distinct and complex Indigenous women, most of whom have been categorized, and therefore blindly discounted, as “victims” of their own unfortunate fate.  The theme of whiteness is recounted over and over throughout the play, for it works make the injustices faced by Aunt Shadie, The Woman, Valerie, Verna, Violet, Marilyn, Penny and Patsy invisible not only in death, but life as well: “[T]he way white people look up and down without seeing you–like you are not worthy of seeing. Extinct, like a ghost … being invisible can kill you.” Blindness allowed these individuals to be stereotyped and categorized into the heap of Unnatural and Accidental women, while a white, privileged male murderer continued to walk through the Lower East Side as a free man.
Further, the theme of invisibility draws attention to the media’s tendency to “re-victimize” those murdered through a narrative that focuses on the perpetrator. Often, media coverage in such cases reproduces a dichotomy where the guilty party is recognized to the point of stardom while the “victims” remain concealed and unrecognized under the weight of that label. This explains why Gilbert Paul Jordan and Robert Pickton become household names, while Valerie, Verna, and Violet persist in anonymous invisibility. The Unnatural and Accidental Women resists this dichotomy by giving the Women control of the narrative. The final scene portrays Rebecca murdering the barber, and subsequently returning the braids to all the women who had been wrongfully dismissed as victims of their own doing. Perhaps this scene symbolizes a newfound justice given to the women who had remained agentless and invisible throughout the biased case and its coverage.

In an introduction to her compilation of poems, Allen introduces the motivation behind the creative resistance within her works. She considers the “British-style” school system’s efforts to erase the “bad language” and culture from the malleable minds of children to be an orchestrated strategy to “degrade and destroy the very essence of [the Jamaican] identity.” This act, of attempting to colonize the mind, is a violent product of assimilation, and relates to the construction of civilized/uncivilized dichotomy within race relations. Allen’s poems, saturated with so-called “bad talk,” resist European attempts to limit authentic Jamaican expression within language and art. In addition to the erasure of identity and language, the poems address several issues that are directly linked to colonization of the body and of the mind.

The first poem, Nelly Swelly Belly, is about a young Jamaican girl who is raped and impregnated by Mr. Thompson, who [I think] we are to assume is a white British man. Thompson capitalizes on his power and violently forces innocent Nelly into the heinous act, robbing her of a childhood she was not yet ready to part with. If we are to consider Nelly’s story as an allegory for the violent attempts to install “Britishness” into the Jamaican identity, and the permanent attempt to erase the very essence of a pure Jamaican existence, we may consider Allen’s last stanza as a powerful measure of resistance. As an army forms inside of Nelly, we are not to recognize her as a victim of the white man’s crime. Rather, the once “defenseless” little girl emerges as a strong and empowered woman. In this way, the violence done to her only inspired and strengthened a solid Jamaican identity. While Mr. Thompson might have succeeded in colonizing Nelly’s land and body, she powerfully resists his attempts to colonize her mind.

For the most part, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It reminded me, in many ways, of George Orwell’s 1984 in that a completely disturbing reality is recounted by our narrator in an unvarnished and matter-of-fact way. Offred (I hesitate to call her this) conveys the image of those hanging from the Wall much in the same manner that she describes the brown toast and runny eggs she had for breakfast. I think these detached descriptions are what make Atwood’s Tale especially chilling.

That being said, there was a particular scene near the beginning of the novel where Ofglen and Offred are studied and essentially “othered” by the gaze of Japanese tourists (pp.31). [Are they happy? How can they be happy? I can feel their bright black eyes on us, the way they lean a little forward to catch our answers, the women especially, but the men too: we are secret, forbidden, we excite them…. “Yes, we are very happy”, I murmur. I have to say something. What else can I say?] They, in their red veils, become objects; Subordination personified. I suppose, in many ways, this constitutes the perspective that many Westerners in “the time before” might have had about women who wear hijabs or burkas. I would argue that this perception not only reflective of racialized stereotypes, but rests entirely on issues of white privilege. While I can’t be certain that Atwood was attempting to address debates of gender subordination in countries that uphold these customs, I took a bit of an issue with how this scene played out. If Atwood was indeed attempting to connect the exploitation of the Handmaids to women who, for religious reasons or otherwise, wear veils outside of her dystopian universe, she, as a privileged Canadian woman, would have assumed the authority to speak for them.

Again, despite this, I considered this novel a compelling and cleverly written read.

In her critique of popular culture’s representation of reproductive politics, Heather Latimer openly considers Jason Reitman’s Juno as a modern condemnation of the “a- word” and pro-choice politics. To summarize her final argument, she believes that the director should have included a scene portraying Ellen Page (Juno) “sitting down with a parent or a counsellor and talking through all of her options, cracking jokes along the way, and still deciding on adoption,” for it would have addressed the “politics of [pro]-choice in a more honest manner” (Latimer 223). While I agree that women should receive the proper education to make an informed decision about the fate of their pregnancy, I think Juno’s decision against abortion without influence from teachers or parents illustrated her ultimate agency; Her independent choice. To include a scene which placed an authoritative figure into the decision-making process might have implied that Juno was influenced in her final decision. Agency might have been taken from her.

On a different note, I noticed there was a theme throughout the film where the male characters (Mark, Mr. McGuff, and Paulie) were dissociated, both voluntarily and involuntarily, from Juno’s pregnancy. Paulie Bleaker was completely uninvolved in the adoption process, and was not informed when Juno went into labor. At Juno’s ultrasound, Bren (her stepmother) was present, through her father was not included. Further, while Vanessa tries to encourage Mark to get excited about the arrival of their adopted baby, it ends up dissociating him further. The adoption, as we find out, is not something Mark truly wanted, and was ultimately his wife’s decision. Might these scenes be adhering to constructions surrounding reproductive politics whereby women are required to endure their pregnancy alone?  If so, might these be examples of gender discrimination in parenthood?

While several distinctions can be made between Susan G Komen’s Campaign website and the BCAction webpage, I considered the opposing perspectives of gender to be most notable. Like something out of a scrapbook, the Komen website features soft pastels and photographs of little girls in flouncy dresses to illustrate its overtly “feminine” stance on breast cancer. Not only do these representations portray the disease as a “women’s issue”, it adheres strictly to the constructions surrounding the binary gender model. To say this website is “pink-washed” would be an understatement.

The BCAction site, alternatively, was refreshing in its pursuit to “challenge the narrow definitions of femininity, womanhood, and sexuality that mainstream narratives about breast cancer impose on people at risk of and living with the disease” (BCAction). Not only did it confront crucial issues surrounding gender identity, it addressed those who self-identified outside the man/woman binary. For this reason, I considered the BCAction website’s approach to be far more in sync with the real social issues surrounding  many individuals affected by the disease.

In a subtle introduction to Rose Kushner’s Breast Cancer, the reader is offered a friendly reminder that the original book (published in the late 1970’s) has been modified.  Having been re-written, retitled, and retired from its original format to be republished in what Angela McRobbie and don’tcallmeblondie would call the Post-Feminist Movement, the book is revamped  to address the modern woman.

Kushner’s book, in this way, represents an awkward encounter between the second-wave feminism of the 1970s and post(-)feminism of the 2000s.  The themes jump from second-wave instructional chapters like “How to Find a Breast Specialist” to presumably post-feminist chapters about male breast cancer.

Of course, in order to sell new copies, Kushner’s original work had to be modernized.  From what I gathered, Post-Feminists and Postfeminists (there’s a difference) are daughters of the Neo-liberal capitalist era.  While post “hyphen” feminists tend to shy away from the all-powerful and self-centered matriarchal voice of the second-wave towards an acceptance of new conversations, Postfeminists represent those who prefer to disassociate from the feminist movement altogether.  Whether the modern woman chooses to side with the Post-Feminists; the Postfeminists; or neither, Angela Robbie argues that capitalism, having reaped the rewards of the second wave, is now actively seeking to undo feminism.

While the breast-cancer narratives in the 1970’s and prior experienced the constraints of a male-dominated society (eg. President Ford’s ultimate decision for his wife’s mastectomy), the constraints women face today appear to be the result of a market-dominated society.  I considered Kushner’s decision to go with a “main-stream” publisher, thereby adhering to the social constraints of the time, as a distinct form of oppression. Such oppression is evident today, and is very much engraved in the capitalist- dominated postfeminist era. The multi-million dollar pink ribbon campaign speaks to this issue in its entirety.

 Just as cultures vary in languages; ethics; food; and music, the beliefs surrounding medicine are equally distinct. As the Phil Brown article indicates, the culture of medicine is not always based on universal scientific practices, but more often on a set of constructed beliefs and traditions which differ greatly within distinct societal frameworks. For these reasons, it is unjust to compare the state of medical care and practice between cultures.

With this, I cannot help but think of the hundreds of organizations which circulate commercials portraying people (often children) in developing countries by comparing them to the standards in the West. One World Vision commercial comes to mind which shows Jan Arden walking around a small African village, looking utterly disgusted at the living conditions of the locals. “And this is the two bedroom model,” she would say, as the camera panned two thin mats on the dirt floor. I in no way intend to undermine the work these organizations do to bring clean water and vaccinations to those who are undoubtedly in need, but I do think that the way we define developing cultures in comparison to our own needs some serious reconsideration. Societies should not hold the standards of health and wellness of other cultures to the expectations of their own. To do this denies the profound role of traditional ethics, beliefs, and spirituality- all of which are components which are all too often discounted in favor of science.

It appears that the system we rely upon to remedy our stuffed noses and clogged arteries is suffering from a disease of its own. When I am ill, I rarely consider the possibility that my doctor’s decision to administer me certain medications may not be based on science, but on dollar signs. Even more rarely do I consider the possibility that these pills, of which my doctor knows very little about, could be administered to me in a much higher dose than I actually require.  I suppose its quite simple; a higher dose correlates to a higher fee. A higher fee equates to a higher profit.  An overproduction of greed and an ethics deficiency? Looks like the system is suffering from a nasty case of capitalism.

So, the sicker we are, the richer pharmaceutical companies become. This seems backwards, but I suppose if the “blackbox” medications are curing us, it’s not so bad. But wait, since the UBC medical study proved that doctors are often misinformed, or otherwise outright denied information relating to the adverse effects of the drug, could these medications be making us sicker? The Globe and Mail article (linked in the class notes) illustrates a paradox surrounding heart-burn medication. A simple change in diet can reverse the effects of acid overproduction, yet patients are given high doses of meds with side effects such as “C. difficile pneumonia and [increased risk of] bone fractures” (Barton, Globe and Mail). The reality is, avoiding hot wings and cheese plates will not generate money for pharmaceutical companies.  Administering new drugs to cope with broken bones and pneumonia, however, will.