Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Person of Interest, "If-Then-Else" (S4E11, air date: 1/6/2015): The Shaw-Root kiss and Fried Green Tomatoes


This is a post mainly about the moment of "female homosexuality" in the episode "If-Then-Else," episode 11 in season 4 of Person of Interest, air date 1/6/2015. However, at the outset I just want to note some of the distinctive creativity in this episode.


I took this down for a while after originally posting it in Jan of 2017 to reconsider, and I am reposting it now in March 2017 after having done so. I hope my beliefs and opinions (and there is a difference) do not hurt anybody. They are far from perfectly worked out, but they are where I am as coming from where I have come and what makes sense to me.  I do believe in a heteronormativity but I don't think that even the most healthy heterosexual couples in the world hit 100% healthy on it because we live in a world where pathologies happen in all different directions and at all different levels and in all different aspects (behavioral as well as organic). Dysphoria happens in more ways than simply erotic orientation or single-label gender self-identification (which I think is an actual thing to legitimately consider as the whole that is more than simply the sum of its parts ... apart form the whole question of the "ontological status" of "gender"). I honestly hope that we all find peace in our individual lives. I don't believe that "marriage equality" is necessitated for justice, in part because, as Catholic and believing in marriage as a sacrament, I don't believe that what the Church teaches as marriage in the full sacramental sense happens between two persons of the same sex ... not just that it should not be allowed by the Church, but that no matter whether the external actions have been performed, the invisible thing called the sacramental grace of marriage does not actually happen. But I can conceive of pain not just from active persecution for simply the having of homoerotic impulse/orientation or a gender presentation that does not match what is thought of as normal (especially your typical inbred redneck American), but also from a feeling of having a deep drive for something you are told cannot happen in the manner in which you have a drive for it (but you're told that others, even though they can't be perfect either, they do get to have the version they like, "better to marry than to burn" and all that ... just for them ... not for you). And I believe, based in what I have heard form people who seem to be experienced psychologists and what seems most likely to me as regards the greater plasticity in early development and the (metaphorically) organic nature of behavioral factors themselves, that even if it is all behavioral, "reparative therapy" is a huge mistake that risks mental health and life irresponsibly. And all of that is pain it would be wrong of me to say I understand if I haven't gone through it.

(Note: I use "behavioral" and "organic" in the specific senses used in psychology and psychiatry, in which they are distinct counterparts in the realm of hypothetical causality--for instance, mood disorders have both an organic component and behavioral component, whereas personality disorders have no organic component, being purely behavioral)--rather than in the popular sense of "behavior" as the actions people choose to take.)


Beyond all that, I am not perfect, and I know that my expressions suffer from insensitivity (even when I might know what I am talking about, and there are many cases where I do not) no matter how hard I might try not to, and I honestly apologize.

ORIGINAL POST:

Artistry

Chess
First of all, I lived in NYC for 8 years. So, any scene involving distinctive NYC locales is really cool to me, and I recognized Battery Park in the flashback right off the bat (heh heh, get it?). Awesome. But chess is always a good metaphor in AI-oriented sci-fi too, and it was used well here.

Computer themes:
The title of the episode, "If-Then-Else," is a command/formula in Fortran (I believe) and programs such as MS Excel that accounts for contingency, which is what the plot logistics are about. I'm not sure how it functions in Fortran because I have never learned that or any other actual computer languages; I think somebody who had worked in it just told me that when I was talking about how many if-then-else formulas I had to embed in a MS Excel cell, in which you can embed up to seven (up to ten, I believe, in the Open Office spreadsheet program) ... I used to spend hours tweaking the embedded formulas in my spreadsheet for inventory—it was the first place I personally encountered the "instability" of math that is mentioned toward the end of "Beautiful Mind."

The "save and replay" first person shooter single player game tactic:
If you have played the single-player story arcs of first person shooter games (HalfLife 1/2, Max Payne, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Quake, Halo, etc), you know the technique (save before entering a level and keep reloading til you can play the level through with minimal loss of health and ammo). This was a cool use of it.

Self-referential humor of narrative:
Some fun with replacing actual dialog with stock descriptions of the kind of line that has become iconic for each character when they are in the server room and Fusco's "relax, it's just a simulation" when he kisses Root the one time.


Shaw Kisses Root

OK, to get the elephant out of the room right off the bat: I am ideologically opposed to full acceptance of same-sex union as on the same par in all aspects with hetero-sexual union in marriage. That is the bare minimum that I feel I must say because every discussion of homosexuality winds up at the "marriage equality" question, at least this is the way it seems to me from my experience (at a grad school where the current chair of the theology department is a “married” gay man and in a university that was successfully sued for 1.5 million by a former member of that theology faculty because that person was blackballed from tenure because of a letter he wrote to the immediately governing body in the denomination in which he is a pastor advocating seriously evaluating the New Testament teaching before making any hasty moves toward endorsement of same-sex marriage) … you can talk and talk and talk about complexities of issues etc etc, but at the end of the day, if somebody from a pro same-sex marriage standpoint is still listening to you (this is my jaded “hermeneutic of suspicion” side talking, and I think he has a point, just not the only point in play), it is because they hope to convert you (ALL humans are much more “mission” minded than we like to admit to ourselves, let alone others … to quote King’s X: “little do we really know the river ego deep and wide, everybody mission”), and anything short of full public support of the same-sex marriage cause will ultimately be deemed homophobic and anything you have to say on the matter of whether you are homophobic is already undercut.

It’s a complex and loaded issue in the real world, and there is a lot of nuance (including some of what I will say in a minute about “third-wave” feminism), and I do not wish to minimalize the real experience of prejudiced behavior that some have experienced in the violation of basic human rights … although I don’t believe that the ability to have a union declared a marriage is among the basic human rights; at the very least, I do not believe that a religious institution can be labeled inhumane or seen as violating basic human rights when refusing to go against its own traditional teaching concerning the hetero-normative nature of the actual institution of marriage either in public statement or by performing same-sex “marriages,” nor do I believe that it is right for legal action to be taken against vendors who choose not to provide services specifically geared toward the celebration of the institution of marriage (about which they may have strong creedal commitments to certain positions or doctrines with which acknowledgement of same-sex union as marriage is inconsistent), such as catering a same-sex wedding.

But this post is ultimately not about the issue of same-sex marriage, but rather specifically about the Root-Shaw relationship in Person of Interest. And it is particularly occasioned by the kiss in this episode and will include a specific interpretation of that kiss. Basically, that interpretation will say that, while the sexual interest is clearly in play for Root, I think what is going on for Shaw is a lot more complex.

I hope a reader has read this far, and I have seriously considered whether putting all the loaded stuff on the same-sex marriage debate (as the hidden context into which everybody will push you the minute you say anything) up before the main content is a good idea, but I feel there is also an issue of being willing to persevere through material you might not agree with, being willing to work for it. It is a bit presumptuous of me to claim that what I have to say is pearls, but in a certain sense it is a pearl to me because it is me sweating a bit to try to understand and discuss what seems to me to be a very complex issue with a lot of ramifications, to understand and discuss it in a way that is neither of the simplistic answers: the conservative simplistic answer that any examination of homosexuality that does not portray all homosexuality as moral evil is itself evil (and that it’s better not to even speak of it at all), or the liberal simplistic answer that takes “homosexuality” monolithically and says that anything short of acceptance of same-sex marriage is homophobia at a level that might as well come with a white sheet with eyeholes cut out.

One final thing has to be noted, and that is that the base form of what follows was written directly after this episode in season 4, before the episode called “6,741” in season 5 that includes the sexual “encounter” (if you have watched the whole series, which you should do before reading analysis of this type, you know why I put it in quotes). I think that that incident can be interpreted in many ways, including at least partially along the lines of displacement or redirected cathexis in the situation of extreme psychological duress, especially as Shaw did come to develop a friendship with Root AND was concretely aware of Root's stated sexual attraction to her. This is not to definitively deny any sexual attraction on the part of Shaw for Root; it is mainly to say that the steamy episode in season 5 with Shaw’s 6,741 simulations does not automatically declare unequivocally against what I am going to say in the remainder of this post.

In fact, I would have to say that, for the season 5 instances, just as for the season 4 instance, I don’t think the material can be nice and simply decided as clearly either basic homosexual orientation or some type of displacement induced by psychological duress (which is why I said “partially” above), and I think that part of the confusion stems from a basic hidden hegemony in the majority thinking of “homosexuality” similar in kind to what I am about to describe in the critique by Luce Irigeray.

(For one thing, you have a character who is clearly stated as having many emotions switched off, or at least “turned way down,” but who shows normal levels of simple libido in some scenes [like finding the one number hot], and so all of her emotional workings are kind of a live question … except [according to agenda readings] if she shows signs of homosexual attraction; that emotion [according to agenda readings] must be the same that it is for “normal” [non potentially sociopathic] homosexuals and the emotional draw of the audience for the character must be validation of homosexuality at large? It’s not even possible to ask the question of whether other emotions [for instance, tension over a friendship] might not be displaced into the libido because that IS working all right? [I’m not an expert in psychology so I don’t know what the answer to this question would be … it just gets kind of old being labeled a homophobe for simply asking questions like that at all]).

Third-Wave Feminism

So, since Shaw kissing Root falls under the heading of the question of same-sex attraction, it should be acknowledged by all that there has been disagreement on the issue of how monolithic or uniform “homosexuality” is, particularly from the perspective of the feminine side. Luce Irigaray is a "3rd wave" feminist who has reportedly, in some form or another, come around to hetero-normative thinking (at least as of 2008 when I took a course in which we read her, and this was related by an openly gay professor). As a primer: “1st wave” is the label usually used for the “chuck these patriarchal texts in the fire” approach; “2nd wave” is the approach of reclaiming feminine sub-voices from patriarchal texts; “3rd wave” is kind of a hard one to describe, but especially with Irigaray and what I am about to discuss, I would describe it as “finding out how far down the rabbit hole [of patriarchal oppression actually goes] goes.” Irigaray was known for writing "hom(m)osexuality," the extra "m" symbolizing a male dominance in thinking about homosexuality, including by male homosexuals: female homosexuality being just taken for granted as the “other sex” version of the same thing as male. All this is from her book This Sex Which Is Not One, in which she uses anatomical imagery and analogy for male as unitary driven (phallus … she was reacting to but also trained by Lacan, who, from what I remember, coined the term “phallologocentric”) for something other than unitariness as female (labia … her point was to not call it anything that would make it simply multiplication of the male unitary, and hence “this sex which is not one”).

What this opens up for interpreting this scene in this episode of Person of Interest is simply to say that the kiss, even if it does mean concrete homo-erotic elements, doe not necessarily mean simply a uniform “homosexuality” being vindicated or advocated or other political action verbs. It could possibly hook up with other psychological matters that make it much more interesting and complicated than a simple monolithic reading (of the type that might explain Irigaray’s own reported heter-normative turn as logically consistent with her earlier work rather than a betrayal of it).


Shaw and Gift

One of my basic contentions is that, for Shaw, the question could easily be much larger than simply whether erotic arousal occurs in response to someone of the same sex, and that the “more” might stem from a different experience of even the erotic itself by women. The key thing that I will offer as a possibility for consideration in this regard is the idea of a gift.

Shaw knows Root has a thing for her, and she knows that she herself is very probably going to die in the next few minutes (at the time of the end of the episode, we had no real clue whether they are ending the character … just that Shahi was pregnant with twins and so there was this scene that could have been either way, death or capture ... and I think it is at least arguable that the character Shaw expects death). I think that it is also demonstrable that she has feelings of some sort for Root, although the central question of this debate is of what kind, and the central issue for that is that it may be beyond the male perspective ( e.g., “homosexual” as really “hom[m]osexual”) that can really process only “platonic” and “erotic.” “Platonic” is “I like talking things with you, guys and girls the same, like sports of theology [or whatever the guy’s interests are … and if the platonic friend is female, it’s likely to be help in figuring women out]” and “erotic” is “I want to have sex with you.”

One of these other dimensions could be a gift. Shaw knows Root and knows what her desire is. So she may give it to her in saying goodbye by kissing her. This could be “faked” … but it could also be other emotions quasi-consciously displaced/channeled into erotic feelings, which might then be genuinely erotic in some form but not simply erotic, and maybe not "erotic" as thought by the male/monolithic reading. On either of those readings, the gift would probably be giving the other person what has been a deep desire for them, which would be the reciprocation of their feelings.

I think we already saw a “meaningful last moment” before death instance happen in this episode that was beyond “damn, the heightened tension around danger of death manifests as the tension of being horny and I just really want to get laid one last time by somebody of whichever gender/sex I am attracted to.” That’s when we find that nice pan around reveal that Root is about to be shot by Martine and her agents, which sort of recontextualizes her “flirting” with Shaw and makes it a little more ambiguous by the presence of human connection with the one person she feels understands her best as she prepares to die.

Of course, it is also possible that Shaw does it to distract Root, to put her in a bit of a state of shock so that she does not jump out to try to save Shaw. This would be feelings for her too, but we would not be quite sure what kind or whether they could be pinned down to one kind (they may be "not one"). And it could be that it is both final gift and protection by shock .. OR both of these PLUS some real homo-erotic impulse. Ultimately, my opinion is that it’s not just “protection by shock” … I think there is some real wanting to give Root something in parting, or at least I think the performance as it panned out on the screen seems that way to me.

All I’m saying is that all of this is a possibility, but probably one that is greatly disliked by those who, at the end of the day, would want anything and everything that has to do with sexuality in any and every piece of art to be demonstrably in favor of a short hop to the same-sex marriage issue. But to be honest, I find this possibility a lot more interesting on the human level. It doesn’t deny the objective reality that same-sex attraction happens (and is not feigned as a way to challenge traditional ideas, which feigning could theoretically be on the internal level as well … working to convince self). Such a reading as I can work out that I believe admits that instances of homo-erotic impulse beyond the developmental years objectively exists beyond subjective control, but it also doesn’t accept that the only issue at play is accepting it at the level of the legitimation of same-sex marriage or that it is monolithic across all instances, even when erotic impulse is directly involved. Furthermore, it says that it could possibly be reacting with a wider array of human psychological issues, for instance, what it says about Shaw’s psychological condition if she has all these other emotions at least with the volume turned way down but the drive for some sort of meaningful communication as giving comes out so strong in the crisis moment.

And I would offer also the argument that the scene in the playground in season 5 (at the end of the episode, after the steamy scene towards the beginning) is a lot more ambiguous and open-ended than a straight-ahead “yeah, they got it on in this episode, that means both are definitely homosexual/bisexual, that is what matters” does justice to.


Comparison: Fried Green Tomatoes

So, I am going to use what seems to me to be another instance of the same thing but more well done as a way to get the idea across as well as I can. But in saying that the other instance, Fried Green Tomatoes, is better, I would be remiss if I didn’t say that this is partly unavoidable simply because of a TV series being a more limited medium for this kind of thing.

Alongside this admission, there must also be the admission of valid critiques that have been made of Root’s character, and that these things might also contribute to a flattening of her homosexual advances. I love the show and I like Root’s character, especially in the end: she is not perfect, but she knows that, and in the end she does the best she can to get back on a better side (the producers stated in interview that they had an idea for some type of redemption arc for Root from the time they first introduced her at the end of season 1 and start of season 2). The specific critiques of the character as a character have to be admitted though, and these center around one aspect, which is: it seems a bit unrealistic to go from amoral hacker to super ninja girl. The former explains her ruthlessness but not her physical fighting ability. For both John and Shaw, fighting ability is explained by military training and practice, but Root’s jump from simply hacker to bad-ass ninja is a weak point in the show, but, as I said, there are going to be more weaknesses like that in a TV show simply by the limitations of its venue.

Now, on to the example in Fried Green Tomatoes, which is a film I can never recommend highly enough, and that is not simply me as a male trying to curry favor with the female crowd (and given my take in this post, some may say that I would be doing a terrible job of that anyway, others, maybe not, who knows?). I think it’s a really well done film that is very well paced and evokes a lot of period texture (both the past setting and the present setting) in the process of bringing out some themes that are strong beyond just their gender exploration, that are strong themes of human love and commitment in the face of oppressive structures, including subtly oppressive structures and obstacles in modern life. All four women turn in superb performances of very well written and nuanced characters.

I’ll assume a reader has seen the film and not recount the whole plot. The scene to which I wish to appeal is the scene of Ruth (Mary Louise Parker) and Igdie (Mary Stuart Masterson) sitting pretty much drunk at night playing cards on the bank of the river that begins with Ruth wading up out of the river in her undedress/slip (not really sure what the period-proper name would be). It happens after the event of sneaking out on Ruth’s birthday and playing baseball half drunk with Grady and the boys behind the club by the river. This takes place during the time when Ruth has returned working with the youth in the church (after her absence after Buddy’s death when Iggy was younger) but before she goes off to marry the abusive Frank Bennett.

The finale of the scene is Ruth leaning over and kissing Idgie on the cheek before she swims back out into the river a little and the next scene opens with Idgie and her brother helping Ruth move in to Frank Bennett’s house after marrying him, bringing her mother with her. At this point in the conversation Ruth has just told Idgie that at the end of the summer she is marrying Frank Bennett, to which Idgie reacts a bit stunned. But she is not yet as semi-shocked quiet as she is when Ruth next kisses her on the cheek before swimming out into the river.

Is it a homo-erotic kiss? I think the case is more clear for Idgie she is at least very likely experiencing some questions at least on the subconscious level about homo-erotic impulse toward Ruth (as Root is clearly expressing homo-erotic interest in Shaw in Person of Interest), which I think is what makes the situation so jarring to be told that Ruth will marry a man soon and then right away to be given this enigmatic kiss on the cheek.

The last detail I would note is the commonality (between this episode of PoI and Fried Green Tomatoes) of gift giving. Of course, the fact that I find the gift giving more definitively present in the film is part of what has suggested to me the motif of gift giving in the PoI episode. But I think the parallels of character and theme fit fairly well. The most obvious gift is the honey, which we find the first time just before the riverbank kiss scene, and the film closes with Ninny and Evelyn finding the jar of honey from Idgie on Ruth’s grave.

I think there is also another gift that Idgie gives to Ruth in the context of Ruth marrying and then Ruth being a mother, and that gift is accepting the ambiguity. The biblical allusion of the name Ruth is undeniable in the paired scenes of helping Ruth move into Frank’s and then rescuing her from Frank’s house and starting the Whistlestop Cafe together (as well as Evelyn bringing Ninny to their home), meaning the allusion to the story of Ruth and Naomi and the line “whither thou goest, I will go, and thy people shall be my people, and thy god shall be my god” (I usually don’t go the whole King James route, but it is more poetic here and I think that’s the version of it most recognizable in our culture). I don’t think that the point in the film is to present a homosexual situation and then draw a biblical model into the gravity of that issue by use of the name and some similarities (thus subtextually portraying the biblical scene as homosexual) any more than I think that the fact that Ruth and Naomi in the biblical story were clearly not a homo-erotic connection means that Ruth and Idgie in the film cannot have any ambiguity in their relationship in that direction. I think that the way things work is that the biblical model does two things: 1) It provides unique themes (a unique way that women take care of each other and their families and graft and adapt), and 2) It keeps the issue of possible homosexuality from becoming made monolithic because the “sisterly love” interpretation tugs against it.

At the end of the day, I think way the feminism of the piece, its real feminist independence, works (possibly even against “feminism” itself, as per more contemporary feminists than just Irigiray, although ones who might criticize Irigiray as well, like Camille Paglia) is that you don’t get to put it down one way or the other or demand that the female characters do what you think makes sense. Maybe there is a more singular sense possible, but I don't think that a male like me is the one who should try to figure that out. For my part, whatever the interplay might be between possible feminine homo-erotic/romantic feelings and larger issue and themes, I think it’s undeniable that the themes of deep human love and loss and of struggles (for not only the women but also the African Americans and the poor whites, meaning Smokey Lonesome and the Hobo communities) in the film are done very well.

[Sidenote: I have seen blog expositions of the film working on the idea that Ninny is Idgie, who married her own brother, changing her name to do it and having a mentally handicapped child as a result … theoretically possible in the film, and I applaud the person who did it rather than deride them, even though I think it’s not the case, because they really seemed to be grappling with the meaning and the relationship of the women and what such a fact would say about it, closing their post with “I probably really shouldn’t hit publish on this,” but at the end, I don’t really see it as something that, even if implied, has a concrete place to go in the themes, or at least they don’t go anywhere with it, which is why it is at best only implied … but my opinion is that it’s not even that; I think the material details and depictions tie out without it, that it doesn’t really fill in any gaps. Although I do think that the temptation some viewers of the movie have had to think that they are the same helps to reinforce the connections of the themes between the two pairs of women in the two time periods … but ultimately I also think that Tandy and Masterson are not a good match personality-wise.]

[Sidenote 2 (an aside gripe): This is mainly because I don’t think I have had another place to put this over the years, although it has been a longtime gripe, but it isn’t against anybody or anything on these particular artistic works. Rather, it’s against an undergrad prof whom, in my post on Tolkien versusShakespeare, I noted as thinking of himself as both Mr Tolkien and Mr Shakespeare (God bless him, God bless us all everyone, Little Tim and all that, I honently shouldn't gripe ... but we all have our pet peeves). Since I am using this blog to record theories etc from across the years, I thought this would be a place to put in this one on gift as sexually symbolic in literature that goes all the way back to an undergrad paper that I don’t think I have any record of any more, just this memory (in those days I was writing papers on college lab Mac IIEs using floppy disks). Anyway, the paper was on Iago as a Satanic character in Othello as a way to demonstrate Shakespeare as drawing on tropes of medieval theology: convinces a husband to kill his wife in their marriage bed because courtly love is symbolic of grace (as I discussed in my post on courtly love in Lord of the Rings and my defense of romance in my post on chiasm in Fantastic Beasts); having him do it by strangulation because that method attacks both vocal cords and windpipe, meaning both word and breath, symbolic of the second and third persons of the Trinity, and things of that nature. So, at one point I made the assertion that the handkerchief given by Othello to Desdemona that Iago has his wife Emilia steal, thus making D. look unfaithful when it shows up in Cassio’s possession, is a token of more than a mechanical faithfulness (let alone the baudy typical Shakespeare overdoing it with the red stawberry’s on the white cloth) and that the gift in itself is a form of intimacy and of giving of self beyond a mere evidence of proximity that implies it. Next to the assertion in text was “do you have any secondary support for this?” And the write-up at the end summarized the paper as a decent bit of primary analysis “up until the part about the handkerchief,” and I always felt slighted by both comments. As a rebuttal, although not on the level of secondary literature on Othello, I would offer the girdle given to Gawain by Bertilak’s wife in the tale of his trading of blows with the Green Knight. There are a lot of different interpretations of this tale, from very traditional to feminist and post-coloniast, but what I would note is the green knight’s commentary on why the girdle warranted the cut on the neck even though the he withheld the full decapitation blow. While the three refusals to adultery (and, as the knight says, he returned the kiss etc, although not the girdle) seem to me to be tied to Gawain’s three refusals to shrink from his oath of the return blow, the knight says that he should have returned the girdle, BUT that this was not done out of what would have been adulterous motives, as would have been not returning to Bertilak any of the other tokens given by Bertilak’s wife, but rather out of fear for safety (the wife’s description of the protective powers of the girdle) … so, a cut on the neck rather than the full beheading blow that would have been warranted by either adultery or shirking the oath (I’m not sure if I got this from Tolkien’s essay or not and I would have to reread that to be sure, but I think the three times of virtue in resisting adultery, the virtue of chastity, are the base of the three times of not shrinking from the oath, the virtues of courage and fortitude). MY main point in all of this is that the girdle COULD be seen as a gift of intimacy, as would have been the ring if not refused, and as would have been the case if he had accepted the girdle BEFORE her last-ditch argument for him to take it, the protective quality. I think that this bears witness to a tradition of such gifts of clothing as symbolic of sexual intimacy in and of themselves. If the connotation is not picked up from that tradition in the Shakespeare play, I think it’s a shortcoming on the part of the bard, not of my own, which I say kind of tongue-in-cheek, but I do think that there is something to criticisms of Shakespeare, as I have made known in that post on Toklien versus Shakepeare.]

Conclusion

At the end of the day, I think that Shaw (PoI) and Ruth (Green Tomatoes) are the same third-wave feminist ambiguity in the issue of female homosexuality. If one of the PoI women was to carry the third-wave meaning, it would have to be Shaw, since Root’s presentation of the issue has been very much along the lines of at least accepting a more monolithic stance on homosexuality. But that too, at least I think, can be part of the ambiguity and gift … not requiring further clarification or reconciling with a more nuanced view or demonstrating that she is further than monolithic ideas (Shaw simply gives, not demanding meeting criterias of nuance and probably, if she is cognizant of it all, knowing that Root is probably not yet at that level of nuance ... but again, it is hard to tell on Root because of the mentioned possible thinness of the character in some aspects resulting from the limitations of the venue). Keep in mind, Shaw expects to die at this point. I think that what she is giving is a parting gift she thinks will mean something to Root, that will fulfill some of Root’s desire.

As with Ruth and Idgie, the “natural” question of a debate is whether that gift is in the context of homoerotic love on the part of Shaw or the context of only a sisterly love but one that does not judge Root and simply wants her to be happy. And, as with Fried Green Tomatoes, I think that it remains ambiguous and decidedly undecided, that that is part of the exposition of the characters and a properly feminist point from a third-wave perspective.

At the end of the day, it’s also probably true that, even were it demonstrably decided in either the film or the TV show, it’s probably not discernible by a member of the clueless “biped with testicles” class with our “me cave man type on keyboard” mentality.


Epilogue: Transparency Disclosure
I would add here only some of my own motivation in all things such as this. It is a bit pretentious of me as a male to pretend to speak for third-wave feminism and even really to be being so “helpful” or even so “generous,” and not being honest about some things in the end would be a bit condescending. I come from a certain background and have certain faith commitments regarding being, at the end of the day, heteronormative in some form or another and not in support of same-sex marriage as an institution (and especially not of coercing religious bodies to perform and sanction them as full marriages within the institution, which, in the case of the Catholic Church, I believe to originate at a level beyond the merely human).

But I also have to admit some possibly selfish motivations. I write this less than two weeks before the inauguration of a man I consider to be pretty damn close to the abomination of abominations as the 45th president of the United States. During his campaign, including his primaries campaign, there was a lot of maligning of women, a group of which I am not a member, but there was also a lot of maligning and abusing of other groups of which I am a member, and sometimes in the same person as his maligning of women.

I am thinking in particular of the “I’ll spill the beans on your wife” tweet against Ted Cruz, which showed his wife Heidi in a picture that was clearly meant to show her as deranged. The majority speculation on “the beans” was that it was an incident within the past few years surrounding issues of depression. I’m not saying that my offense as a member of the diagnosed class (and only bipolar 2 at that) should be taken as as great as that of women or even the physically handicapped reporter Trump mocked, but I have to admit that some of my motivation in challenging things like in this post comes from the fact that malignant narcissists like him will target one as well as the others, and for my membership in the group of which I am a part, I am offended by him and desire to present as much challenge as I can to any and all who accept the same type of facile readings that fueled his campaign so well (and I am aware that "malignant narcissist" is not universally or officially [in the DSM V, that I know of] accepted as a distinct disorder ... I mean it simply as a clear narcissist who is malignant in his disposition).

I happen to agree with a third-wave feminist like Irigaray on the male domination of the homosexuality question by males, and in part, my desire to make a defense of the Shaw-Root and Ruth-Idgie kisses against those (from both sides of the conservative-liberal battle) who accept a facile monolithic reading of the homosexuality comes from a defensiveness against those who, not being a member of the diagnosed class (and often not even trained or studied in the field) attempt to “handle” the situations of those of us who are and tell us what it is about.

Monday, January 9, 2017

Alchemical Structure in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them


Intro

This is a post on further thoughts on the relationship between structure and characters in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The content actually goes back beyond at least my own work on chiasm and I think beyond Dr Granger’s own work on ring composition in the Harry Potter series. It goes all the way back to his 2002 book The Hidden Key to Harry Potter:Understanding the Meaning, Genius, and Popularity of Joanne Rowling's HarryPotter Novels, between the release of books 4 (2000) and 5 (2003), which was the first thing that I read by Dr Granger. At that point he was emphasizing alchemy most heavily, and I am sort of returning here to applying a little of his method to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

The only thing I would note further at the outset is that alchemy and ring composition are not competing structures. What I am going to be emphasizing here is not so much the relation of plot events to each other as chiastic-paired elements, but rather the relation between characters as the primary actors in that narrative, their positioning in relation to each other on a symbolic level. As I have said elsewhere, I think that level of characterization is equally important.


Basic Alchemy

Alchemy is most known for the attempt to turn base metal (most commonly lead) into a “noble metal” (usually gold), and so it is, at root, defined by transformation, which is done by way of the crucible, a sort of cup or dish, with certain elements used in certain orders and heat applied. However, Alchemy is significant beyond the merely physical, and the physical elements are symbolic of non-physical. In its fullest form, alchemy is about producing not physical gold, but the “golden soul.” In this sense, while it is most commonly known as the precursor of chemistry, its thinking is really more properly the precursor of psychology, which seeks to produce the healed soul, and indeed, Carl Jung, one of the seminal fathers of modern psychology, devoted an entire work to Psychology and Alchemy (I have had it on my shelf for a while and hope soon to delve into it).

In the process, there are four elements surrounding the crucible, one on each side. On the top there is the “white,” on the left is the red sulfur, on the right is quicksilver (mercury), and on the bottom is black for the base metal/material human. From the interaction of these, gold/the golden soul is produced in the crucible by some process in which heat is the catalyst. The symbolic application of this principle to human beings, e.g. in psychology, should be fairly evident: through the heat of some kind of trial, various elements in a persons life—their spiritual side (white, on the top, is usually taken as symbolic of pure spirit), their material body (black on the bottom), their fiery or animal or more volatile side (volatile sulfur on the left), and their more cool reasoning side that is less fettered by biological animal psychology (quicksilver on the right)—interact to transform the person as a whole into the golden soul, the perfected soul, the healed soul.

The “Magnum Opus” (“great work,” the process) of alchemy is described as having a set number of stages, although the number varies. It can vary according to major grouping, but it is also the case that individual numbering systems have undergone development. So, for instance, the twelve-stage, seven-stage, and three-stage descriptions of the process are distinct conceptions, but the three-stage—nigredo (black), albedo (white), rubedo (red)—developed from the four-stage description in the fifteenth century when thinkers began subsuming a “yellow” (citrinitas) stage that originally was thought to be between the white and red stages into the red stage itself.


Alchemy in Harry Potter:

The base for Dr Granger’s work in The Hidden Key is what is known as literary alchemy, which is basically the well-attested practice of using the structures of alchemy as the structures of literary works. For instance, Chaucer is said to have developed an alchemical form of satire that some claim plays even in Terry Pratchett’s use of satire in his discworld series. This is obviously the most fitting use of alchemy, since narrative is, at base, about the transformation of characters through the plot.

I’m not going to detail the seven-stage process here but simply note that Dr Granger, of course, applies it to the seven books of the Potter series. At the time he wrote The Hidden Key, he had only the first four books with which to work, but given the presence of other alchemical material in the books, the principle is sound. Among those elements is that, according to legend, the real historical person Nicolas Flamel was an alchemist. Finding evidence that he was an actual practitioner (or attempting to be) of the physical art is difficult, but he was a scribe and manuscript seller and it only stands to reason that some theoretical work on literary alchemy and/or work on alchemy as a spiritual or personal discipline turned into legends on his actually practicing the physical art (I have some further thoughts on literary alchemy in conjunction with Dantean structure and therapeutic theme in my post on the found-footage horror film As Above, So Below, which begins with the search for Flamel's tomb in Paris). But what is most undeniable in this present discussion is that Rowling has him on the page as an alchemist who produced one of the traditional goals of alchemy, the philopsopher’s stone (sorcerer’s stone in the US Scholastic edition, because apparently, unfortunately, our culture can’t handle the word philosophy without falling asleep or asking when the game in on), and this means that she definitely has alchemy on the brain in writing the Harry Potter series.

The three-stage description of alchemy is interesting in this respect and worth a mention in passing because it works so well with the last three books of the series, Order of the Phoenix, Halfblood Prince, and Deathly Hallows. Dr Granger was writing about this on his Hogwart’s Professor site between books 6 and 7, so he had only books 5 and 6 with which to work, but the evidence it pretty tight: the stages are black, white, red, and book 5 has Sirius Black die, and book 6 has Albus (Latin for white) Dumbledore die … and we have a character whose first name is the Latin for “red” … Rubeus Hagrid. I was really scared Hagrid was going to die in the last book, but I think she emphasized his role in Harry’s life in a different way.

The key element of alchemical structuring for Harry Potter, though, is the presence of the four things around the crucible as four characters in Harry’s journey. The most obvious is Dumbledore, whose first name, Albus, means white and who thus occupies the top as pure spirit. Voldemort is at the bottom as black for pure matter in the form or radical materialism, believing that nothing is worse than material death. On the left, Ron’s red hair and fiery Irish disposition is the volatile red sulfur, and on the right, we have Hermione’s cool reason. Indeed, her name comes from the name of the Greek god Hermes, who was replaced by the Roman god Mercury, an alternate name for quicksilver. Harry himself is the golden soul produced in the crucible. When discussing this part in The Hidden Key, Dr Granger brought in some helpful illustrations from actual alchemical texts depicting the golden soul as small golden ball with wings, basically the model for the snitch that Harry becomes so adept at capturing. The Potter books that followed Dr Granger’s original book provided a few other nice little examples of Harry as the golden soul too: in book 6, Ginny wins Harry the golden soul right after she captures the golden snitch in his stead for the quidditch cup, and in book 7, we find out that polyjuice potion made with Harry’s hair turns golden. He’s the quint-essence, the fifth element, the alchemical golden soul.

All in all, a wonderful bit of exposition done very eruditely on Dr Granger’s part in that book. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and found it immensely enlightening and uplifting. And just recently, some thoughts struck me on the possibility of similar crucible structuring of the character relationships in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.


Fantastic Beasts:

So, who are the four that surround the alchemical crucible in Fantastic Beasts and who is the fifth that will be found in the crucible? I need to tread lightly here in how I justify my reading, particularly regarding the women—for, I am probably far too obvious of a writer for the reader not to have already guess that the four are Newt, Queenie, Tina, and Jacob—but also regarding Jacob.

So, the basic breakdown:

Newt= top/white/spirit

Queenie=left/sulfur

Tina=right/quicksilver

Jacob=bottom/black/matter

Aaaaaaand …. Jacob=transformed golden soul in the middle of the crucible.

Jacob (bottom: pure matter; middle: golden soul)
Obviously, I’m saying this happens a bit differently than in the Potter series, because we have only four characters. But keep in mind that Potter could be viewed as more strictly the adaptation or modification of the system by having the golden soul be a fifth character. In the stated goal of the physical “practice” (the envisioned practice, whether or not anybody ever actually did it), which is in turn a symbol for the transformations in literary alchemy, the goal is to turn the lead itself, the base material itself, into gold, so we could have Jacob undergoing transformation of some kind. I’m not necessarily imagining him actually being able to become a wizard or something like that, although who knows. I’m mainly imagining him and Queenie being able to marry as symbolizing a new era in relations in the US. Or maybe the transformation has already happened on the level on which it needs to happen by him surviving the obliviation rain and reconnecting with Queenie. But one way or another, I think the infusion into the magical world of his wonder as a no-maj discovering that magic exists is symbolic of a much needed and hopefully soon coming transformation in the magical world in the US and that this connection and the fact that it takes place in his person make it fitting to place him as the gold in the crucible into which the base matter has been changed.

But first, I have to justify calling him the base matter, especially since that is the place Voldy occupied for the Potter crucible and, and Jacob is no Voldy … he’s a truly wonderful and endearing and charitable and noble and brave human being.

The key issue is that we’re talking about the symbolic value of certain aspects of the person, not all of their qualities. The biggest quality that Jacob has that Voldy does not is very close to the one that Harry had that differed from Voldy, although it's the one Dumbledore had to pretty much club him over the head to get him to realize: Jacob has a really strong streak of liking in him, if not love. Even if we haven't yet seen him have the opportunity to display self-sacrificial love on the level done by Lily and Harry, Jacob Kowalski has a genuine charitable streak in him a mile wide. His statement that he wants to make people happy by baking is genuine, and the guy sitting on that bench in that bank, while he may have felt a little overwhelmed by the idea of competition for the bank loan, genuinely meant "may the best man win."

In order to put Jacob in that bottom, pure matter  slot I have to divorce it completely from the prejudice and directed interest of the monster Voldy. And I think it is right to divorce it so. Matter in and of itself is not evil unless one is Gnostic, which JKR as an author is not. I would even argue that she had an irony going against Gnosticism  in Harry Potter: Draco’s grandfather, Abraxas, is named after the Gnostic god of the heavens, which seems most fitting because he is the patriarch of a family dominated by “keep our secrets to ourselves” mentality and this was precisely the thinking of Gnosticism, “gnosis” being “secret knowledge” lorded over others for control; but Lucius has put their precious knowledge in the service of a half-blood who wants it for pretty much the same goals as any power-grubbing, self-aggrandizing muggle banker (or son of a real estate mogul from Queens).

Another way to put it might be to say that Voldy is an actual materialist. Jacob is only a person who is limited to working with matter in the usual ways governed by physics and chemistry etc. The difference between the two men is that, when Jacob encounters that there is magic, he wonders at it no matter whether or not he can perform it himself or capitalize on it for material gains or even being able to view himself as powerful, whereas Voldy has only ever wanted it as a means to material and psychological power.

I’ve written in my post on chiasticstructure in Fantastic Beasts that Jacob is something essential to the magical world, but he is so precisely by being non-magical (and responding with wonder when he finds out that magic exists), and, given that being in this non-magical relation to the material world is not an evil, Jacob occupying the bottom is natural. He's just also destined for more, for perceiving magic in the world and wondering at it.

But, as I said above, when he comes into contact with the magical world, when he becomes aware of it, it is precisely being in the bottom slot that makes him eligible for coming to the center as the golden soul, the soul transformed by the vision of the magical world of wonder.

A last thing should be said on Jacob. I’m not sure how this might all play out in future installments. My chiasm exposition has focused mainly on institutional reaction to conflict, specifically the “will to kill” and the view of magic it embraces (“magic is might,” rather than source of wonder), but in that post I also formulated that obliviating Jacob is a metaphorical form of killing when we take into account what he says about the cannery versus the bakery, that he is dying there (and he definitely seems to latch onto encounter with the magical world, which is what they want to obliviate, as a pardon from that death sentence). I’m not sure how tightly what I am discussing now will tie into the larger progression of the series vis-à-vis the themes that are developed by means of the chiastic structure. It could be that Jacob’s alchemical transformation will take the whole series in parallel with the chiasm themes, or it could be that his transformation is complete already as the no-maj who made it through obliviation to remember that magic existed just from the face of a beautiful woman smiling at him and that there will be other alchemical set ups of this kind in the following installments.

Newt (top: pure spirit)
Newt’s position at the top as white/spirit is a little trickier to prove than Albus Dumbledore’s occupation of that slot in Harry Potter, first of all because that positioning was blatant in the first name: Albus=White (Latin). Secondly, Dumbledore is so obviously the “sage” character (or the “mentor” archetype in Jungian terms etc), not just for Harry or even for just Hogwarsts: supreme mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards and chief warlock of the Wizengamot.

Newt’s placement, though, is strictly with respect to the others in the quartet: he is the older, wiser, and more experienced in the magical world at large. First, he comes from England, which is closer to the European situation in which the greater history of the organized magical world has occurred. Second, on his own, he has the broader experience of the things that can and do exist and occur in the magical world. Tina has read books and knows the basics of obscuriels … Newt has actually interacted with one.

And that interaction is key for his character. I noted in my post on chiasm in Fantastic Beasts that I think Newt is a very rich character, that he has a certain sadness about him but also a certain sympathy. How can one not have a certain sadness about them when they have been there while an eight-year-old girl is dying from being an obscuriel? In the “sadder but wiser” way, he is the sage character. I’ll just add it again here that I think, as was the case with Dumbledore, the sympathy is key to the sage character being good as a sage: Newt genuinely wants to get to know Jacob as a person (there is no scientific value for Newt as a zoologist in the knowledge of why Jacob wants to start a bakery … he asks that as a sympathetic human being wanting to know, as a person, the one whom he will call a friend at the end of the movie and come back to help with the collateral for said bakery).

Tina (right: quicksilver)
Tina’s is the easiest placement to defend. As Queenie says, “Tina’s the career girl.” That requires education, and aurors especially need to be perceptive, insightful, and quick-witted in their investigation work.

Queenie
Ok, here goes the one where I could really shoot myself in the foot, but hopefully I won’t.

I’ll start it off by saying that, while I would have to look it up to make sure exactly how much of this is Dr Granger in The Hidden Key and how much I added, the full reading that I endorse on the sulfur and quicksilver elements to the left and right of the crucible is that they are, respectively, the “sensate soul” and the “rational soul” in the medieval philosophical system of three categories of soul: vegetative, sensate, and rational (I’m willing to credit him with the whole, but my guess is that the full equation with the “sensate” soul and “rational” soul in the medieval system of thinking about souls is mine simply because that’s the sort of thing I have running around on the brain all the time, thinking about the debate between bipartite and tripartite anthropology and all that). So, my reading of Fantastic Beasts, by placing Queenie on the left as sulfur, posits her as the “sensate soul.”

Just to recap that system: the vegetative soul is what plants have, and its principle is simple growth; the sensate soul is what animals have and its principle is the capacity for sensation; and the rational souls is what humans have and its principle is the ability for rational thought and language based in the capacity for reflexivity, the ability to perceive, to sense, the self (this is one of the reasons I buy what I’ll describe in a moment as an “accrual” theory, because the ability to sense the self is a progression of the same ability as is in the five senses).

(Note: In all of this, keep in mind that “soul” is here being used in a sense entirely separate from that of “spirit”—that does not mean that it can later be coupled with a belief in humans as spiritual beings or that, as I believe, that, in humans, the soul and spirit are the same “thing” on the level of substances in the human person, but it should be kept clear that, here, the focus is on the soul as simply an animating life force that makes a body living, be it plant, animal, or human.)

One of the places I want to avoid confusion is in not being taken as calling Queenie more “animal,” because it is not what I mean, but it is true that, for the medieval, the “sensate” soul is what animals have. There is debate on whether humans have it too, and that is wrapped up in the debate over whether humans progress from one type of soul to another, leaving the former behind as we gain the new, or accrue the sensate on top of the vegetative and the rational on top of both vegetative and sensate, such that the human has all three. The answer depends in part on what exactly you think a soul is. Personally I buy that the human has all three (we never stop growing in some way or another until we die and we don’t naturally lose the capacity of the five senses before death), and that is in part why I buy the bipartite argument that the “soul” is not a third “thing” or substance in the same way that body and spirit are “substances.”

But my position on the bip and trip debate and the debate over accrual versus a progression through only one kind at a time is, as the English like to say, by the by. My main point is to clarify what I mean by placing Queenie as the “sensate soul” in the sulfur position (and, very importantly, to avoid being slapped in the face by any women who read this). I definitely don’t mean that I place her there for the same reason that Ron is placed there in Harry Potter, which is his volatile temper.

The word I would use for it is “sensuality,” which of course comes from the same word as “sensate” and means, in its most basic form, emphasis on sensory data, on sensation. I hesitate to use it though for reasons similar to those for which I am very cautious about using the category “sensate” soul and its accompanying categories of animal/biological psychology.

The reason that I press on with both “sensate/animal” soul and “sensuous” is that I believe they fit and that positive gains in understanding can be made without demeaning Queenie. As for animality, as I related in my post on Tolkien versus Shakespeare, even somebody as traditional as Tolkien (in his essay on fairie stories) did not have a problem with the proposition that humans are animals, simply with the proposition that humans are only animals. I don’t think that Queenie’s representation of the sensate side of humanity means that she is any less dignified in the intelligence aspect.

The only further defense I would add is that I myself don’t mind being thought an animal in a loving way. A good friend has five daughters, and every one except the youngest, who has only turned four, has loved riding on my shoulders. Various methods of getting there have been employed (one favored climbing my back from the ground up while another favored things like hitting me flying from the top of the back of a couch five feet away, usually having approached the couch at a run, and climbing from there), but what has been invariable is that, once riding on the neck, the hands come down on the side of the face, especially when there is stubble or beard. I think it is largely  unconscious and that it’s kind of like petting a puppy for them … and you know what? I have no problem whatsoever with being thought of as a puppy dog (although there was one time when one of them on the ground wanted Uncle Brett to go with her to pet an actual puppy at a festival in town—she was 3 or 4 and very determined to do it because the other kids had, but still kind of scared—and the actual puppy, who was very playful, got a bite on my goatee, which was out long at the time … that kind of hurt).

The mere fact that attachment to creature comforts led Slughorn to be a bit cowardly at times does not mean that there is not a very real positive aspect of realizing the comfort of sensation. Queenie smiles; she giggles; she likes seeing Jacob’s mouth obviously water as the strudel takes shape in the air and as the smells of the cooking hit him (a writing prof once gave the standard direction “don’t tell us … show us … use sensory data” and added that smell is the hardest to get and, for that very reason, the most effective). She like stalking to Jacob about the experience of feeding her grandfather’s owls, and it’s probably not out of an intellectual focus on animal rights (although I’m sure she has a respectable commitment to that issue when it arises, but I don’t think that even Newt’s focus is entirely intellectual); its because of the sensations involved.

As far as the word “sensuality,” the reason I approach using it with some trepidation is that it gets a bad rap in some circles in being equated with terms like “cupidity,” which means basically lustfulness. I’m as bashful as the next conservative and actually do have an issue with gratuitous sexual detail and all (which is often done, when it is done, hoping that somebody will object for attention), but I don’t think that this is what goes on with Queenie. Tina says (mentally) not to flirt, and while I don’t think that this is because Tina is a prude (I think she really is weighed down with the tension of the issue that they will be required to obliviate Jacob eventually), flirting on any level is taken negatively by some (and so the unspoken adherence to psychologically unhealthy gnostic thinking gives rise the the unjust practices of Manichean authority [it's ok to give in to the bad stuff as long as you're allied with our power base] and the cycles keep repeating). But the fact is that Queenie is a single woman in the prime of life with a very active heart/soul in a living body and Jacob is a very interesting and endearing and noble guy who naturally catches her fancy, and I don’t think that the extent to which she engages Jacob on a sensual level by flirting goes out of bounds.

What I mean by casting her as the “sensate” (“sensual”) soul is simply that she is the character with whom it is most emphasized that she is in tune with her bodily senses as a way to communicate, meaning communicating with the other by way of indicating that you’re experiencing certain sensations, such as the smile and the giggle and the wink, which indicate that you yourself are having fun in the conversation. I think Tina is well adjusted in this respect too, but she’s also a bit more bookish and nerdy … which is a great fit for dear Newt. Queenie is the one, though, in whom we see most clearly a sensate soul experiencing romance … as I said in another post, the making and giving of cocoa is a very important little ritual in the magical world of Queenie Goldstein.


Conclusion

So, my main point here has simply been to try to show an alchemical crucible structure in the character relations in Fantastic Beasts and to say that I think it can operate in conjunction with the chiastic structuring just fine. I wanted to do a piece like this in part to strengthen focus on the characters level of the work. I’ve emphasized before that I think that the character level is of equal importance with the structural and thematic levels (and I’ve expressed negative reaction to the Cormoran Strike novels, or at least Cuckoo’s Calling, which is the only one that I have red and which gave me no incentive to read further installments, and Mad Max: Fury Road on this level), and so I wanted to do this piece as a way to explore that character level in a little more formal way, closer to the formal level on which structure and theme are examined.