Tag Archives: gender

04/3/23

Week 12: Love and Totalitarianism in Lemebel’s My Tender Matador

    A political malaise of smoke and mirrors, secretive plots and political rebellion create the tone of My Tender Matador, the Pedro Lemebel book which concerns a foiled Guerilla plot to take down the Augusto Pinochet regime in 1980s Chile. As this week’s lecture puts it, it is as much a political drama as it is a love story. This is fitting in the sense that, speaking for myself, political oppression and conflict means little when authors do not put a face to those who are most affected by it, as well as do not shine light on the interpersonal relationships we as readers might relate to even under much different circumstances. Under dictatorship, it is often humanity which most brightly shines through the dogmatic oppression, jack boots and party slogans. It is with this landscape Pedro Lemebel creates a classic not merely related to the past, but like with most of our course readings, remains relevant through to the present. 

    The question of gender, as well as one’s identity under authoritarianism, is highlighted throughout the narrative. The story revolves around the central protagonist, the “Queen of the Corner,” or La Loca de Frente. In addition to what has already been said in the lecture of her character name’s etymology, I interpreted Frente as a nod to the “front” she must maintain while keeping up appearances in a time of conformity under totalitarianism. To be outside the norm is a counter-culture statement itself. Yet with the bovine complacency towards love songs—cultural artefacts which might be seen as commercial and banal in any other circumstance—on her sleeve La Loca wears a wish for escapism: through political change, or interpersonal relationships. This is further reflected in her dynamic with the revolutionary Carlos, to which many of this week’s blogs have referred to as either toxic or loveless. While I’m not sure an entire relationship can be distilled in this way from an outside perspective, there are certainly struggles which, owing to the turbulent times, are certain to find their root cause in the totalitarian regime which surrounds them and a wish for change. It is in the metaphor of Carlos and La Loca for real world political conflict the reader is able to assign a face to the anguish others went through in 1980s Chile. 

    My question to the class: Do you agree that the goal of Pedro Lemebel, as well as other authors speaking on socio-political world events we had studied, is to humanise the conflict, or simply tell their own truth? In what ways do the two complement each other, or are incompatible? S

03/13/23

Week 9: The Question of Gender and the Self in The Hour of the Star

    Clarice Lispector is an author who is famous for her capricious dance between the actual and the abstraction. Through her story The Hour of the Star providing the semblance of a plot, she is able to cover the meaning of existence, or in her least complex, simply dive into the everyday meanderings of a disillusioned boy in his contemplation of the mundane. The title page, with its various alternate titles, suggests anxiety and flightiness on the part of the narrator who is made the author. Additionally, the gender swap of the author from girl to boy suggests a yearning to break free from established gender roles, and in fact “bend” them in a similar fashion to the established rules surrounding narrative plot, structure and content. “I’ll  try  contrary  to  my  normal  habits to write a story with a beginning, middle and ‘grand finale’ followed by silence and falling rain,” the narrator states, revealing his breaking away from convention. At another point, he expresses his preference for “a male writer…because a woman would make it [the story] all weepy and maudlin.” It is a thinly veiled critique of how females are viewed in literary society which is offered from, of all voices, a male constructed to espouse the sentiment. In this direct communication of intent to the reader, Lispector breaks the fourth wall and the illusion of story, and can therefore be viewed as postmodern in her approach. 

    Another layer to the onion is added when you consider that the author creates the man for the express purpose of having him write into existence the story of a “northeastern girl.” Regardless, with the rest of the text revolving around the man, the Marshall-McLuhan medium represents him as trapped by the world around him and its manifold of bombarding messages. It is in this sense the protagonist is not completely caricaturised, instead being painted as a victim of society. “Happiness? I never saw a dumber word, invented by all those northeastern girls out there” is a sentiment which best represents the narrator’s misogyny, yet also displays his sadness which draws from the reader some degree of sympathy. “I write because I have nothing else to do in the world: I was left over and there is no place for me in the world of men,” he states once more, further showcasing an age-old desire for writing as a form of escapism. The story is postmodern in the sense that the stand-in for the author—another author—is creating the story for the same purpose. Ironically, he only cures his writer’s block on writing the girl when adding in male side characters of the young and old men—I take this to reflect Lispector’s belief that writing is a transmission of the self onto the page, rather than a complete fabrication. 

    My question for the class is: What do you believe Lispector hopes to capture in her decision to shift perspective on the opposite gender? Do you believe Clarice Lispector values honesty in her writing above all—the reason for her rebuking of established norms—or does she still enjoy the trickery and fooling readers a la Jorge Luis Borges? S

01/30/23

Week 4: The Question of Expression in Twenty Love Poems

    Pablo Neruda is a poet best remembered for his vivid writings about everyday objects, romanticised through an employment of the most sensual aspects of life in the human senses. Reading his poetry, one can find a man in love with the very pursuit of life’s simple pleasures, if not for the very idea that the sensual lends itself to the sexual. Twenty Love Poems is a work which lives up to this ideal, a love of living and all unconscious actions associated with it including but not limited to the most prominent in the form of smelling, touching and tasting. Yet it is also one of the most personal, informing the reader of what a poet should be: one who, if not speaking for everyone, then speaks for living instead. 

    Of course, Pablo Neruda and the old world attitudes which accompany him are not without their controversy when viewed through a contemporary lens. This week I was intrigued by the debate highlighted concerning female autonomy, gender roles and what some might mistake neglecting the voice of others guise as a diehard romanticism. Personally, I am reminded of the poetry of John Donne in one past English class and the troubling male-centred perspective through which we view relationships (as seen in “A Flea” and several others).  They brought to mind a similar conversation I had with my professor–hopefully not viewed as an argument by him!–about the implications of judging the old world too harshly, or not nearly enough. 

    As for where I stand on the debate, I think art can be interpreted in a manifold of ways, and is therefore the most powerful means through which to champion free expression. At risk of boxing myself into a single category, I would confess that I am a liberal in the creative and political realm. What might be seen as a distasteful statement to one reader can in its entirety encapsulate how another thinks; it is therefore impossible to assume what one intended or did not intend owing to the subjective nature of art.

   By writing about a seemingly non-consensual relationship, it is possible Neruda was commenting on the despair and anger which one might feel towards creative endeavour, or the passion involved in the fact. Perhaps each embrace is not a corporeal one, but instead a spiritual assemblage of a priceless work of art, with all the blood, sweat and tears required to produce the whole. As the lecture states, Pablo Neruda was a writer, not a lover. Perhaps his art was more involved with themes of anarchy than any anachronistic ideal of him somehow being a defender of women!

    My question would be how do we account for the works of those which came before modern social movements: is it better to judge them as products of their time which might inform us of our present, or relics only useful for telling us something about an era? S