Gerz

Donald A. Gerz

Dr. Nina Morgan

Critical Theory

February 3, 2016

Once Upon a Time in Critical Theory:

A Presentation to Dr. Nina Morgan’s Critical Theory Class

Introduction

How do we make sense out of a piece of literature, whether poem, short story, novel, or, for that matter, myth or folktale? Our ability to decode, grasp, appreciate, analyze, and synthesize characteristics of the written and spoken word, particularly the creatively written and figuratively spoken word, depends on seemingly infinite categories of sense, perception, mind, brain, symbol, imagination, and innumerable other factors that emerge out of an infinite number of figurative Russian nesting dolls of perception that reveal particles and waves of life from here to Macbeth’s “crack of doom.” Language is like that.

To make sense and appreciate text, especially creative text, we have to devise perceptual lenses of critical theories. Below, twelve tales are seen through the lenses of thinkers from eleven schools of critical theory.

  1. ) Russian Formalism / Viktor Sh-klov-sky (1893-1984)

Defamiliarization and “Henny Penny” (English)

Russian formalism’s approach to literature considers it “not as a window to the world but as something with specific literary characteristics that make it literature as opposed to philosophy or sociology or biography” (Rivkin and Ryan 3). Furthermore, most formalists see literature as “accessible only through connotative language (allusion, metaphor, symbolism, etc.) that cannot be rendered in the direct, denotative, fact-naming language of the sciences” (Rivkin and Ryan 3). Toward such an approach to literature, Viktor Sh-klov-sky held that literary language employs the quality of defamiliarization, which is properly understood as presenting the ordinary in ways that are extra-ordinary.

The literary quality of tales such as “Henny Penny” is in large part due to its“defamiliar”nature---in this case, the animals’ names, their naive and ridiculous behaviors, and their total lack of judgment and instinct, a lack that leads to the deaths of all except the killer fox. Real animals, ones we are familiar with, do not behave in such ways. Certainly, their parents do not give them ridiculous names. Indeed, real animals do not name their offspring. Most surely, real animals, even domesticated ones, do not ignore their instincts. The animals of “Henny Penny” are “de-familiar” to us and therefore characters of literature, not zoology.

  1. ) Structuralism and Linguistics / Vladimir Propp (1895-1979)

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE and “Jack and the Beanstalk” (English)

Vladimir Propp separated fairy tales into 31 sequence and 7 character functions (Morgan). In so doing, he was able to discover predictable sequences that occurwithin Russian fairy tales. After an initial situation, the tale usually takes one of 31 functions (Propp). Propp employed this highly structured method to successfully analyze Russian folklore and fairy tales.

Here are some of the sequence functions of “Jack and the Beanstalk.”

ABSENTATION: A member of a family leaves the security of the home environment. This may be the hero or some other member of the family that the hero will later need to rescue. This division of the cohesive family injects initial tension into the story-line. The hero may also be introduced here, often being shown as an ordinary person.

PURSUIT: Hero is pursued (pursuer tries to kill, eat, undermine the hero).

RETURN: Hero returns.

And here are some of the character functions of “Jack and the Bean Stalk.”

The dispatcher makes the lack known and sends the hero off.

The villain struggles against the hero.

(Wikipedia: )

  1. ) Psychoanalysis / Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) / Condensation, Displacement, Manifest & Latent Content, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (Disney),

and Literally Every Fairy Tale

Fairy tales can be analyzed in much the same spirit as dreams. Therefore, they can lend themselves to psychoanalytical interpretations through terms coined and explained by Sigmund Freud in his landmark work, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). Fairy tales read in Freudian terms of latent and manifest content(as described in any fairy tale or dream), provide rich and familiar narratives as with psychological texts. Two Freudian terms come to mind: condensation and displacement.

Condensation is a critical function of the unconscious as delineated by Freud by which "dream work" is accomplished. Freud held that the unconscious automatically bundles many diverse ideas and chains of associations into condensed and thick "knots" of the manifest dream. By carefully and expertly unraveling these condensations, meaning may be found and analyzed within the latent dream (Gerz).

Example of Condensation > In a sense, every fairy tale is a tangled knot or series of knots that concentrate the psychic action of the unconscious. One of those condensed knots is the purity, innocence, and beauty of Snow White. Even her name speaks volumes of her virtue.

Displacement is another reflexive function of the unconscious as understood by Freud through which emotional truths too threatening to the stability of the ego may be made psychically "safe" and tolerable until it is more prepared for full disclosure. Also an essential part of "dream work," displacement is a mechanism by which the unconscious displaces and transfers emotional ideas and feelings to less intense and painful concepts, ideas, things, and other people (Gerz).

Example of Displacement > The huntsman takes Snow White into the forest, but is unable to kill her because she is so beautiful and innocent. The stability of his ego is threatened at the mere thought of such a crime. “After raising his knife, he finds himself unable to kill her as she sobs heavily and begs him: "Oh, dear huntsman, don't kill me! Leave me with my life; I will run into the forest and never come back!" The huntsman leaves her behind alive, convinced that the girl would be eaten by some wild animal. He instead brings the Queen the lungs and liver of a young boar, which is prepared by the cookand eaten by the Queen.

(Wikipedia:)

  1. ) Marxist Analysis / Karl Marx (1818-1993) / Alienation, Species Being, Communal Life, and “The Little Red Hen and the Grain of Wheat”(Russian)

“In the Marxist sense, alienation describes the individual's gradual separation and isolation from traditional communal life within modern industrialized and technological societies. The result is isolation, dis-empowerment, and depression---all caused by the continual erosion of what Marx calls species being. For Marx, the appropriation of the proletariat's means of production by bourgeois capitalists results in an irrecoverable loss of humanity within those who trade their labor for access to things that can never replace the creativity, life, beauty, knowledge, and consciousness that can be discovered within human possibility” (Gerz).

The apparent laziness of the farm animals in “The Little Red Hen and the Grain of Wheat” does not square with the fact that a grain of wheat cannot feed the hen, her chicks, and all the animals the hen demands to help her. Note that the hen makes no promise to the animals in exchange for their labor. Instead, she implies that she will share something that cannot possibly be shared because one grain of wheat cannot account for enough product to share. The other farmyard animals experience erosion of their species being because they have been separated and isolated from their communal life mainly because of the disingenuous intentions of the hen who is planning to use the labor of many to produce wealth (bread) for herself and her family while excluding all others. When the other animals do not fall for the Little Red Hen’s ruse, she berates them for being smarter than she thought they were.

  1. Deconstruction and Post-Structuralism / Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) / Untenable Binary Oppositions, Deconstruction, and “Cinderella” (Perrault/Disney)

Cinderella’s attributes are presented in a highly positive light, but her idealistic dreams are perceived by her stepmother and stepsisters as an unrealistic waste of time. Her projected gentleness and sweetness are perceived by them as passivity, and all of them see her as a hopeless time-wasting daydreamer.

Who is the real Cinderella? With his repudiation of facile and untenable binary oppositions, Derrida would probably hold that Cinderella’s mufti-faceted character will emerge only if we peal away the layers of a person similar to the fictional character. Theorists such as Derrida consider not in an either/or manner. Instead, they dismantle (deconstruct) the anatomy of a given text to come closer to its more likely possibilities.

  1. ) Post-Structuralism and Post-Marxist Analysis / Julia Kris-teva (b. 1941)

Intertextuality, “Little Red Riding Hood” (German), and

“The History of Little Golden Hood” (Marelles)

I define intertexuality as “the intricate and multi-faceted inter-associations between texts that are instrumental in creating new works and generating additional awareness, feelings, and attitudes within readers and audiences. As Kris-teva and others use the term, it applies to all forms of art, communication, media, and advertising as well as to literature (Gerz).

The second version of “Little Red Riding Hood” sought to extend and improve the first text by consciously imbuing Riding Hood and her grandmother with power (the enchanted golden hood) by bolstering Riding Hood as well as her grandmother. Note that in the original version, both main characters were at the mercy of chance and had to depend upon the kind huntsman. In the second version, both were more powerful, resourceful, and less the victim. Their chance for survival and victory over the designs of the wolf were considerably enhanced as the second version “intertexualized” the first to strengthen both main characters.

  1. ) Feminism / Gayle Rubin (b. 1949)

Gender, Sex, and Atlanta Ballet’s “The Nutcracker (2015)”(Russian)

Gayle Rubin suggests we change society by eliminating the many social structures that create and promulgate gender as "part of the [so called] natural order." She maintains that gender is a manufactured phenomenon, not a natural feature of life. She makes the distinction between gender and sex, making it clear she is against the former and in favor of the later. She sees gender as restrictive to both males and females, as well as something that makes it difficult for individuals of both sexes to fulfill their abilities and purposes (Rubin 679-682).

Rubin proposes a genderless society because such a situation would allow greater fulfillment and happiness for all its members. In the Atlanta Ballet’s 2015 version of “The Nutcracker,” Mary-a is not confined to the usual societal expectations regarding gender. Neither is the Nutcracker Prince.

  1. ) Gender Studies, Gay/Lesbian Studies,

and Queer Theory / Judith Butler (b. 1956) / Gender Performativity and

“Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs”(Disney)

The seven dwarfs regard Snow White as a maternal figure of domestic civility. Indeed, she takes care of them much the same as a mother would her children. In so doing, Snow White “performs” her gender through her subculture’s conception of femininity, while the men perform their gender in the way most men assume it is to be performed. Snow White cooks, cleans, does the laundry, and all other typically perceived mothering tasks. Meanwhile, the dwarfs work in a mine and provide. Both seem to be engaged in acts of what Judith Baker refers to as gender performativity (Butler 677).

  1. ) Historicisms / Stephen Greenblatt(b. 1943)

Juxtaposition of Literary and Non-literary Texts in

“Aladdin” (from The Arabian Nights / Middle Eastern) and Aladdin (Disney / U.S.)

“What StephenGreenblatt’s new historicism aims to do is to give equal weight to literary and non-literary material. A simple definition of new historicism is that it puts a literary text beside a non-literary text and performs parallel readings of them. Instead of viewing the textual landscape as something that comprises a literary “foreground” and a historical “background,” it asks us to see literary and non-literary texts as equals, engaged in mutually illuminating relationships. New historicism asks us to acknowledge that literature is in fact inextricably related to—and even coextensive with—all other products of culture”(Gemmill).

An analysis using the criteria of Stephen Greenblatt’s historicism might involve a contrast of Marshall McLuhan’s “hot” medium of the 20th-Century heavily commercial Disney film, “Aladdin,” created through costly high technology (28 million dollars), one that grossed over 500-million dollars worldwide over-and-against McLuhan’s “cool” and relatively inexpensive medium and the low technology of the original written “Aladdin” tale as included in The Arabian Nights.

Special consideration from critical theory’s school of cultural historicism might also include the bald Orientalism (see Edward Said immediately below) that permeates the Disney film that was conceived, directed, and produced in the United States of the late 20th-Century, an Orientalism that is absent from the original written version of “Aladdin” in The Arabian Nights as produced in Persia centuries ago.

  1. ) Ethnic, Post-Colonial, and International Studies / Edward Sa-id (1935-2003)

Orientalism and “Oriental Tales”(French / Marguerite Your-ce-nar)

Edward Sa-id’s work in post-colonial studies, particularly on the topic of Orientalism, provides excellent tools to evaluate the literature and culture of Asia and the Middle East.

According to David Macey, Sa-id’s Orientalism is "a manner of regularized (or Orientalized) writing, vision, and study, dominated by imperatives, perspectives, and ideological biases ostensibly suited to the Orient." It is the image of the 'Orient' expressed as an entire system of thought and scholarship.” / “Latent Orientalism is the unconscious, untouchable certainty about what the Orient is. Its basic content is static and unanimous. The Orient is seen as separate, eccentric, backward, silently different, sensual, and passive. It has a tendency towards despotism and away from progress. It displays feminine penetrability and supine malleability. Its progress and value are judged in terms of, and in comparison to, the West, so it is always the Other, the conquerable, and the inferior.” / “Manifest Orientalism is what is spoken and acted upon. It includes information and changes in knowledge about the Orient as well as policy decisions founded in Orientalist thinking. It is the expression in words and actions of Latent Orientalism” (Macey).

It should be noted that Susan Hinerfeld ofThe Los Angeles Times called the book, “Oriental Tales,"a curiosity, a melange" and continued, "The stories are meant to demonstrate virtuosity. Instead they demonstrate the dangers of imitation. The story of Wang-Fois 'faux-chinois, pretend-fantastic, coy. It is plainly a clumsy Western exercise in Chinese story telling." While Hinerfeld did not mention the cultural term, manifest Orientalism, she might as well have.

  1. ) Cultural Studies / Richard Hoggart (1918-2014)

Ordinary decency and “Hercules and the Wagoner” (Aesop)

“The term, “ordinary decency,” is an allusion to George Orwell, and the term effectively and concisely mirrors Richard Hoggart’s nostalgia for a “decent” society that strives for stable and homogeneous cultural values that ought to distinguish Great Britain and are lacking (in his estimation) the uncivilized political atmosphere and the social and crude cultural underpinnings of life in the United States. Imagine a politically correct Great Britain that portrays itself as the BBC 24/7 version, and you will grasp Hoggart’s yearning for uprightness, moral rectitude, and “right action” over and against alleged moral decrepitude and societal decline (Macey). Hoggart might very well say something similar to what Hercules said to the wagoner in Aesop's fable above (“Hercules and the Wagoner”), except he might exclaim self-righteously, “Good Lord, man, God helps those who help themselves.” Instead of silver linings behind clouds, Hoggart sees morality...the morality of Big Brother.

Conclusion

I imagine you have your favorite theorist and school of critical theory of the 11-approaches to literature (indeed, to all that exists, whether concrete or abstract). I suppose most of us do. Of course, all 11 approaches shed light on how symbol translates life and life, symbol.

According to deconstructionist theorists such as Jacques Derrida, language is an unstable medium of meanings, one that continually grasps at the straws of realities as they continuously move away from centers that never existed in the first place. Sheer diversity of perceptions, impressions, impressions of impressions, and an inexhaustible hodgepodge of images, thoughts, feelings, expressions, sounds, sights, riddles, words, and much more make meaning and reality itself hopelessly opaque.

Even inside the small, crowed rooms of our lives, mental permutations bounce off one another like ping-pong balls as our epistemological and metaphysical possibilities bound toward Freud’s conscious and unconscious ends, terminals opening onto the inceptions of still newer meanings and realities. As we persist through our fragmented histories, cultures, and subcultures, we are fated to acquire more and more language baggage, luggage in which we stuff linguistic clothing, apparel that no longer fits our meanings when we arrive at where we thought we wanted to be.