Sexuality and American Culture 2012

As I was reading Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex, I thought how it should have won an award for its poetic use of language, and supreme storytelling. Lo and behold I look at the cover and discover that the book had won the Pulitzer Prize. In Middlesex, Foucault’s subjectivity of bodies takes on a new element. What happens when society has gender-coded a body as female, and then the body is discovered to be a male? In modern society we expect females to be feminine and males to be masculine (although this has recently begun to change with the LGBT movement). Read the rest of this entry »

Despite being in the midst of reading articles about hermaphrodites, drag queens, and transsexuals and finishing the documentary, Southern Comfort, for another course, I think I’ll try to choose to not write about intersexuality and related topics for this week’s response for Middlesex simply because in the bulk of book one and two, Calliope/ Cal hasn’t been quite born yet. Though, I will do so next week… When my copy of Middlesex came from Amazon, it came proclaiming as the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, an “international bestseller,” chosen by Oprah, and with pages and pages of snippets of reviews. A particular line in the little blurb/ summary sandwiched between these proclamations stood out to me: “Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.” Read the rest of this entry »

Hooray for disrupted internet connections!

Each week, I enjoy Peiss’ book a little more. This week, I’ve realized how difficult it must be for a homosexual to live under such a high magnification.

I find he Health Inspection Report in Document 5 humorous, but it frightens me at the same time. The funny part is imagining how disappointed some, not all, health inspectors must have been when given the assignment to spy on homosexuals in public places (I’m convinced by the Bayer essay that some enjoyed such a job against homosexuality). What’s even funnier is how uncomfortable homophobic health inspectors must have been sitting in a movie theater while men gave each other fellatios. What do you think a male health inspector replied to his wife after he came home from work… Read the rest of this entry »

The first time I heard about Angels in America was when my ninth grade English class read The Laramie Project. At the time, the play was an unapproachable feat of the struggle to be gay in America, and the AIDS epidemic. I didn’t want to touch it with a ten-foot pole because I was afraid that I would not be able to understand or sympathize with the play. Read the rest of this entry »

I saw Angels in America performed last year and reading the plays has been an entirely new experience. Reading the plays as literary pieces has opened up opportunities to carefully examine the many meanings within lines or within single words. This course has influenced my perceptions about a number of things, but Foucault’s discussions of identity, agency and power relations are present throughout the play. I am particularly interested in the play’s discussion of identity and the way social constructionism influences perceptions of individuals and groups based on sexuality. Read the rest of this entry »

The subtitle, “A Gay Fantasia on National Themes,” of “Angels in America” is a pretty good statement for the plays’ topics. Breaking it down, it can be read as a fantasy or something fanciful and unreal with a gay/ homosexual overture about American issues relevant in that time period (1985-1986). The fantastic elements of angels, prophets, and alternate worlds and the main cast of homosexual characters covers the first part of the subtitle. From my incomplete understanding of American and global history, almost absent knowledge of religion, and Wikipedia, a number of “National Themes” can be identified.  Read the rest of this entry »

In the very beginning of this course, I mentioned that a partial reason for taking this course was because I was taking a Gender and Society course and was interested in how it would couple and/ or digress with this course. There were instances of “ah-ha’s” and some nods of familiarity throughout this course in reference to other courses I am taking. However, this week’s readings felt particularly salient in concepts from my Gender and Society course; perhaps it is because it is deep into the semester or perhaps this week’s readings deviate from an-almost-taken-for-granted theme of dealing with the sexuality of white, Euro-descendent, and if applicable, middle-class Americans so far in this course. When faced with less-taken-for-granted groups of Americans, social structures and social constructionism become more salient?

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The fact that slavery existed in America still baffles me. The most inhumane social structure was prevalent in a country where the ideals of freedom and pursuit of happiness was, and still is, the marketing strategy for potential immigrants. It’s the greatest example of irony in the history of the world.

This is the face I make when I think about it:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_yONAxkWheLA/THqcDvBnNQI/AAAAAAAADos/UcMEXMSpva0/s320/sponge+lame+face.JPG Read the rest of this entry »

I really enjoyed Tony Morrison’s Sula. It’s a unique novel in that Morrison lets the reader to a lot of work and filling in the blanks for herself. I found that both challenging and interesting especially when I was trying to recall how certain characters related to one another. Sula reminded me of Lolita in the way that I had to stay really focused while reading because though this is a short novel, it is jam-packed with rich messages. The way that Morrison can say something really powerful in just a line or two really struck me and I have a huge amount of respect for her approach to this novel. Read the rest of this entry »

Sula is a gorgeous book to read, and it I am glad I had the documents and Foucault to offer additional insight. Toni Morrision does a good job portraying Sula in all her shades of gray. I found that I was slow to judge her (and the rest of the characters) because of our other class readings. I am still not sure what I think about Sula or Nel. I want to hear others’ opinions before I make my final judgment. I do not want to be quick to love or dislike them, as I was with Humbert Humbert in Lolita. Reading Sula was also my first experience with literature written by and about Blacks. I am not familiar with living in a black community, and so I was glad to have the essays by Brenda E. Stevenson and Karen V. Hansen to provide historical and analytical insight. Read the rest of this entry »