Discussion Questions: Ann Bannon & the Lesbian Pulp Genre

Many recent readers of lesbian pulp novels have disdained them because the characters, to their minds, are stereotypical, or because they are often abusive or and otherwise miserable. Others disagree, arguing that the novels represent an emotionally realistic portrayal with an important message about the pain that comes when one’s very life is illicit. Which argument better reflects your feelings about Beebo Brinker. Do you think this is a valuable or harmful representation? What criteria are you using to form your judgment?

In what ways does the novel portray lesbian and gay urban life as an identifiable subculture?

Beebo describes her sexuality in part by saying that there’s a boy inside of her (51). What are the implications of this model for understanding homosexuality?

Look again at this passage from page 91: “Paula told Beebo about her young years in Washington D.C., and the shock that accompanied her suspicions that she was a Lesbian. Because it was Paula speaking, and because Beebo had never talked heart-to-heart with another Lesbian, the story seemed remarkable.” What do you make of the word “seemed” here? What role is it playing? What does it tell us?

How might a story about an 18 year-old Wisconsin girl realizing she’s a lesbian look different if it were written today?

Discussion Questions: James Baldwin

Take some time with your blog posts. Review passages in the novel that might help you address these questions. Above all, be thoughtful and deliberate and serious.

I want us think of the novel as a series of quest narratives. John’s quest begins and ends it, while the quests of Deborah, Gabriel, and Elizabeth make up the novel’s center.

1. What are the characters seeking? How would each character define success? Or, alternately, is success even possible for them? In what ways might the quests they’re engaged in exceed the bounds of their individual lives?
2. Baldwin titles his middle section, “The Prayers of the Saints.” How are quests similar to prayers? From what you’ve read so far, is John’s quest also a prayer? Is religion a tool for John, Florence, and Gabriel? Or is it a destination? Or both?
3. What does the phrase “holy life” refer to on page 10? How is this “holy life” opposed to the world of film described on pages 31 to 34? Does the “holy life” conflict with or support the kind of “goodness” John refers to when he asks if his father is a “good man”? (17)
4. In what ways does each character struggle between her or his individual self and the demands placed upon her or him by race, religion, and family? Are there also conflicts between these such demands? Between, that is, what each individual owes to his family, to his race, and to God?
5. How do John, Florence, and Gabriel reconcile their desire to maintain a distinct sense of self and the desire (or obligation) to belong?
6. How do we know John is gay (or probably gay)? Point to specific passages. How does he feel about his attractions to other boys? How does he understand his homosexuality? Do you think Elisha is also gay or bisexual? How do you understand their wrestling match in the church? (48) Is it an act of mutual sexual desire? Self hatred? Both? Something else?

Boys Don’t Cry, Matthew Shepard, and Gay Panic

Your blog entries are great. Keep ‘em coming.

Instead of writing specific questions this week (and perhaps giving away some of the film’s plot in the process) I want to suggest two general directions for discussion. Please be sure to build on each other’s posts, which is something many of you have already begun to do productively.

1. Boys Don’t Cry marks the first time we’ll be discussing transgendered identities in class. We use the phrase L-G-B-T often, yet rarely think about what connects these four seemingly distinct identities. In one line of entries, then, explore the connections and disconnections here. Think about not only the accuracy of the conjunction, but also the cultural niche into which lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people are placed. Is it similar? Does it make sense, for instance, for us to compare the lives of Matthew Shepard and Brandon Teena?
2. “Gay panic” is a term that marks reactions to homosexuality as deeply psychological. The term “homophobia” does this as well. Other terms for common forms of bigotry (e.g. racism) don’t speak to the bigot’s psychology in the same way. In another line of posts, then, address the extent to which anti-gay and anti-transgendered actions or attitudes might indicate something uniquely psychological about the perpetrator. Or the extent to which either phrase might be a misnomer.

In the pictures: Brandon Teena as a young man (top) and Matthew Shepard a year before his death (bottom).

Discussion Questions: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

1. Sedgwick writes that it is a “rather amazing fact” that, of all the different ways people have different sexualities, “precisely one, the gender of object choice, emerged … as the dimension denoted by the now ubiquitous category of ‘sexual orientation.’” Do you agree with Sedgwick that this seems odd? Or do you think there are very good reasons that what gender you’re attracted to has become so crucial in how we categorize sexuality?
2. On page 16 Sedgwick makes an ethical claim: “Ultimately, I do feel, a great deal depends—for all women, for lesbians, for gay men, and possibly for all men—on the fostering of our ability to arrive at understandings of sexuality that will respect a certain irreducibility in it to the terms and relations of gender.” What do you think she means by the term “irreducibility”? Do agree with her?
3. What does Sedgwick mean with the phrase “master terms” on page 11?
4. Sedgwick talks a couple times about “reading rebelliously” (50) and “the urgencies and pleasures of reading against the visible grain” (55). How would you describe this kind of reading or interpretation? What kinds of value do you see in it?

Jeanette

Jeanette was a very smart girl, but she wasn’t much of a free thinker.  Throughout her childhood, Jeanette confronted situations by trying to do what her mother would want her to do, rather than by thinking for herself.  Almost everything about Jeanette, from her opinions to her aspirations, were a direct result of her mother’s constant preachings.  Since Jeanette failed to form an individual thought process and way to confront problems, she instead got into the habit of going to her mom when faced with a difficult situation.  Even though she knew that her mom would strongly disaprove of her relationship with Melanie, she still told her about it because she frankly didn’t know what else to do.

No longer a commenter…i am now a blogger

I think Jeanette tries to explain her feelings to her mother because she says in the novel that she once thought her and her mother thought exactly the same. Jeanette has always shared things with her mother, and I think that even though she knew that this was different, she still wanted to share what she was feeling and thinking with her mother to get some kind of response from her. She also may have thought that the relastionship between her and Melanie wasn’t a “lesbian” relationship, and therefore, it wasn’t a sin. The orange demon comes when she represses her feelings because I think the orange demon represents her “unnatural passions”.

September 10th (My Response to Question #2)

I do not view Jeanette to be any different than any other character from novels I have read in the past.  She has her problems, yes, but so does every other female character.  Otherwise there wouldn’t be a story based on them.  Her situation is different, granted, but there are other novels about lesbian struggles.  One book with the same concept would be “Holly’s Secret” by: Nancy Garden.  In which the lead character Holly is trying to grow up facing the fact that she is a lesbian, and deal with the outcomes. 
I found it particularly hard to pick up on the fact that Jeanette was a lesbian.  I mean I knew it probably would inform me sooner or later because we were reading it in this English 100 class.  But it wasn’t until page 103 when Jeanette mentions how she “traced the outline of her marvellous bones and the triangle of muscle in her stomach.”  Before this sentence I was still under the impression that Jeanette and Melanie were just really close friends.  I think the lines that are drawn between a lesbian relationship and a female friendship are very grey in this novel.  Considering the fact that Jeanette has never really had any close friends before, not to mention any friends, I think she is struggling with what is natural to do with friends.  She could have been so caught up with the fact that she had such a close friend, and was in love with her as a friend, that she never thought of what she was doing to be “unnatural.”  Especially because he mother never taught her otherwise.  Her mother didn’t talk to her about the two ladies who owned the print shop, and kept advising her to stay away from boys.  I can see how Jeanette could have easily been misinformed and confused with the whole situation of lesbianism and a close friendship.

Discussion Questions: Jeanette Winterson

1. Why does Jeanette try to explain her feelings about Melanie to her mother? Why not hide them? Why does the orange demon appear at precisely the moment Jeanette decides to hide her desires and experiences?
2. Is Jeanette distinctly different from the novel’s other female characters? What helps us to know that she is a lesbian? How does the novel define her lesbianism? How does it separate a lesbian relationship from a female friendship?
3. What use does Jeanette’s mother have for her strict binaries? Why does she maintain such a Manichean worldview (everything is good or evil, light or dark, and so on)? How does Jeanette resist such opposition? What reasons do you think she has for doing so?
4. In what ways in Jeanette’s mother a kind of hero in this novel? Why does the novel end with her voice?
5. What is the purpose of the text’s allegorical section? Why do they become more frequent after her lesbianism becomes public? How are both Sir Perceval and Winnet both appropriate alter egos for Jeanette?
6. Why do you think Winterson never includes the words” lesbian” or “gay” in a novel that is very much about coming out?

(The picture is from the BBC’s film version of the novel, which is quite fun.)

Discussion Questions: Diana Fuss

1. Fuss opens her article by opposing two different conceptions of gay identity–”empirical fact” and “political fiction”. As clearly and simply as you can, what does she mean by each of these (don’t worry about being too obvious). Do you think these conceptions are strictly opposed? Or is there some way they might work together?
2. Fuss quotes Jenny Bourne, who criticizes the way identity politics talks about “oppression” instead of “exploitation.” How is Bourne using these terms? What is the difference? Which do you personally think provides a more accurate framework through which to analyze power?
3. Fuss really disputes the idea that one can be political merely by being something or doing something that doesn’t engage the public sphere (see, for instance, her remark on the bedroom at the bottom of 101). What do you think? Does merely being gay or being Asian-American qualify as a political act?
4. Fuss approvingly quotes Jane Gallop that “identity must be continually assumed and immediately called into question.” How might that look in practice? Can anyone legitimately organize around an identity position while at the same time calling the stability of that identity into question?

How Does Mad TV Define Gay Identity?

Here’s a video clip to watch before our first class meeting.

And here are some questions to think about. No need to write anything. Just be prepared to discuss your ideas.

How does the clip define gay identity? Is it fixed or malleable? What causes it? What is its most defining characteristic? What kinds of cultural markers go along with gay identity? Are they essential or peripheral to the definition?

Who, according to the clip’s definition, is gay? Is gayness something universal or is it unique only to a small subset of the general population? Can people be “sort of” gay? How does one know if one is, in fact, gay?