I've been reading Alison Bechdel's "The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For" and it's been a fascinating read so far. Bechdel represents for me a certain group of people in the States whom I've encountered while I was a student at the University of Michigan. I'm going to try to explain the kind of thinking she represents the way I know how, without using Bechdel's (and in general, her type's) method of labelling and ultra-awareness of different categories that people fall into. There is a sense of formidability exuded by someone who can do this kind of categorizing so habitual it seems offhand. They name discourses and articulate concepts which are rooted in a politics that is neat and consistent and which never changes despite what is considered news for the day. It is a form of communicating rooted within American politics, but specifically within a feminist, liberal, leftist section of that politics. It's the kind of worldview which may not be mainstream right now but remains forever in contention with the mainstream. Always vying for power, but in its consistency and unflagging belief in its righteousness becomes itself uncompromising, hegemonic, and alienating.
Something about Bechdel and her politics (this is the main driving force behind her art; her "message" and her worldview is political) reminds me of David Foster Wallace. They both share a strong voice, a way of seeing the world and themselves that sees the wrong. They both have on powerful critical lenses comprised of an ideal view of the world/themselves that keeps focusing on the imperfection they find. And as a result, they are unhappy. There's an aphorism that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who change themselves to fit the world and those who change the world to fit themselves. Bechdel and Wallace belong to the second group of people. They have such a strong sense of who they are and what they believe in that they are incapable of being otherwise. Whether they succeed in changing the world, though, is another story. Biographers of Wallace, especially during the anniversary of his untimely demise, are in the habit of calling him a genius. But what fuels that genius, I believe, is a characteristic absolutism that leads to certain unhappiness, to an inability to adapt to the present situation, to connect to the world. Even as I'm fascinated by Bechdel's and Wallace's works, I also have a certain aversion of them. I'm often frustrated by their stubbornness, their inflexibility to see things in other ways (even as I am sometimes frustrated by my flexibility, my easy-going nature). As I'm writing this, I keep editing myself so as not to seem like I've traded in my rationality and intellect to mysticism and the uncertain space of the spiritual. I keep going back and erasing what I'm typing. There are two elements fighting inside of me. One is the familiar, academic, critical and increasingly staid world of the intellect and the other is the unfamiliar, inclusive, kind, and exciting world of the spirit. I find myself going back to the idea of hybridity, of someone being a hybrid, which in some circles is idealized and romanticized but in the way I experience it--at least for now--is bewildering and ungrounding. I am using my intellectual side right now to articulate all these thoughts. Earlier I was thinking to myself that I retain a troubling feeling of empathy towards Hamlet. His indecisiveness, his overthinking, leading to his inability to act. But, watching "Student" at the Toronto International Film Festival, (Student is adapted from Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment"), at least I'm relieved to say that I am no longer in the same mind state as the protagonist. I finally understand that the protagonist was frustrated by the answers provided to him by the modern world where religion and indigenous values have been eroded by systems and philosophies imported from the West (including Capitalism and Individuality). It is a philosophy that upholds the ego, the individual, that glorifies personal choice as if nothing else in the world mattered. That kind of living is so deadening. You get the sense that if you met that person and even developed a relationship with him, you won't matter to that person--because nothing matters to that person except himself. He is completely disconnected from family, from nation, from nature, from God, from other people. I would feel no empathy towards the person who feels like that, except that I have gone through that kind of mindset, realized I was miserable, and found an alternative way of being. Dostoyevsky likes to write about people like this: men who have lost their moral compass, who nevertheless seek for that connection to others in women. Women who are forgiving, women who are not jaded, women who are understanding. Perhaps for Dostoyevsky women represent hope, represent a connection to all that have been lost, to a meaning of life that is rooted in something other than the ego or individual choice. Great to have supportive, unconditionally loving women like that in your life--in my life. Except, I am a woman, and I have to nurture in myself what it is Dostoyevsk's heroes find in women. I think perhaps that is what I find compelling with Alison Bechdel, beyond the fact that Bechdel's protagonists are women while Dostoyevy's are men--and in general provide more dimensionality to female characters. In comparison to Dostoyevsky's hero, Bechdel's protagonists are very much aware of the politico-economic system in place as well as their position within it-- although perhaps Bechdel's character are very much aware of the system and the struggle that they eat, breathe, and wear it. There is something confining in that, too. The struggle is inescapable. Principle is all. For Dostoyevsky, individual choice and the ego giving meaning is all. For Bechdel, politics is all. Politics gives meaning. Personal choices are directed by politics--even whom to love. Both Dostoyevsky and Bechdel provide templates for how to live. I find Dostoyevsk's suggestion to be too difficult, too selfish. It gives too much responsibility to the individual to the point that s/he is disconnected from the world and the creatures in it. Bechdel's template, although more palatable, is also too difficult to accept. It is too rigid, still too rooted in personal choice, as if one could always choose something else in order to escape the common things that hold everyone together. As if one could always vote for a better government. One could always buy free-range, organic. Sometimes, alternative products can't be bought. Sometimes, choosing not to buy isn't an option. Sometimes, people have no choice, or have to make limited choices within the conditions of possibility afforded by the situation. And I think that's what's missing in both Bechdel and Dostoyevsky. Those moments when people are in it together despite of political differences or personal ideology is really the key towards a more humane world. Those occasions--when our ability to make choices are rendered futile by the common dangers created by generations of human beings on this planet--are what we need to focus on. That is the world we are living in and that is also where the most is required of us. More than personal choice or politics, beyond the individual, there is the truth that we are part of Earth. I don't think that Bechdel or Wallace or Dostoyevsky quite capture that, what with their obsession with the individual. We are in the world and the world is in us. It is when we understand this that we will find the highest expression of our humanity.
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Words, images, & fripperies by Christine Balmes unless otherwise stated. Archives
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