Final Thoughts: A Post in Four Chapters
I. The Intersection of Arts and Cultures
With the end of the semester comes reflection, and after spending four months reading a variety of literature, I have a lot to reflect on. Particularly in the last weeks, as we finished The White Boy Shuffle and watched Sorry to Bother You. On top of that, I watched a film called Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (which is not black media, but is connected in many ways to The White Boy Shuffle), and read the poem “Somebody Blew Up America” in class. And all of these things have been connected, leaving me with similar questions. And the way I’ve consumed all of these things is deeply affected by my own life, but they’ve also affected how I’ve gone about living my life. And they will continue to do so. So in honor of the film Mishima, here’s is a four-part sweeping comparison of these artworks and a contemplation of their impact.
As Gunnar increasingly takes suicide more seriously, he reads a lot of Japanese literature, courtesy of Yoshiko. He reads the work of Yukio Mishima, a Japanese author, poet, and playwright. Although Gunnar doesn’t agree with Mishima’s ideas in the novel, I think that beyond the specific excerpt of his work that we get Mishima and Gunnar have a lot in common. The film Mishima outlines his life half-biographically and half through his famous plays. Both of them think about suicide as an option for political protest and are poets and artists, but also have their physical selves deeply intertwined with their art.
One of Mishima’s most famous works was The Temple at the Golden Pavilion, which tells the story of a monk at the famous Japanese temple Kinkaku-ji who feels overwhelmed by its beauty. The final event of the play is the monk burning down the temple to be rid of it. Earlier in the play he says something along the lines of, “I hope that the Americans drop the bomb on the temple” (since this is right around World War II), and later remarks after the war, “I wonder why they didn’t bomb Kyoto,”. This reminded of the target in The White Boy Shuffle on Hillside, and how they literally were asking the US to drop the “third” atomic bomb on them. For different reasons, both of these people/groups see nonexistence through directed destruction as the solution to the problem.
II. Suicide
Which brings me to suicide, a topic that is difficult to discuss in a philosophical and political sense. It becomes portrayed as a choice or a protest, when most often suicide is not a choice, or at least doesn’t feel like one. But there is no way, I think, to draw a clear line between mental illness, suicide, and suicide as protest. (I am probably assuming though that there is nothing inherently wrong with committing suicide, which I know is a belief that you can argue.) For example, Gunnar doesn’t kill himself, but Scoby does - Gunnar talks about suicide as a way to protest something but we never see him commit suicide, and Scoby commits suicide because he just sees no way out of his personal life. Gunnar sees no way out of the political situation, but he has personal reasons to live, and honestly I don’t think there’s a strong indication by the end of the novel that Gunnar is even intending to commit suicide. And Gunnar’s conclusion is rather different from Cassius’s; Sorry to Bother You ends with him storming Steve Lift’s house, and I assume rebelling. Gunnar doesn’t see a way out, other than literally.
Whatever the film Mishima may have altered about the actual Mishima’s life, the end is very real and reflects the events of November 25, 1970 when he committed suicide. It’s what the DVD case calls the “controversial” part of his life. Mishima was a staunch Japanese nationalist, believing that the Western influence on Japan, particularly post-WWII, was bad for Japan. He mostly has a bone to pick with capitalism, and says that’s its “making Japanese people greedy and forget about what really matters,”. Japanese nationalism is tricky and weird, as is any nationalism. But Mishima’s points are honestly similar to Baraka’s point in “Somebody Blew Up America”. And he died symbolically for what he believed in - perhaps suicide is not just a “way out”, and there are other definitions that we have been conditioned to disagree with (and yet all of this makes me deeply uncomfortable).
Perhaps we can question, why is this part of his life controversial? The answer seems obvious - he led a military coup and backed a really extreme far-right political party. But he also died protesting what he believed was wrong. Is that not something we also value in our culture? And I step into odd territory here, but if his beliefs didn’t hurt anyone, then it just controversial because it goes against the mainstream belief? I won’t deny that both Mishima’s beliefs and “Somebody Blew Up America” are controversial because they are offensive to individuals; staunch nationalism for the most part goes hand in and with racism, and a lot of people died in the 9/11 attacks that would not be happy hearing Barak’s poem. But who is the mainstream audience listening to Baraka’s poem, who is listening to them? A world made by who? As Baraka wrote, “Who do no toil / Who own the soil”.
III. Politics and Capitalism
And now this is when Sorry to Bother You and “Somebody Blew Up America” come in. Among their many complexities, all of these works have a political message that criticizes Western/white capitalism. Everyone’s tired of the white man fucking with them, really. Sorry to Bother You in many ways highlights the problems with corporate America, and capitalism in general. Baraka talks about how capitalism is what drove Anglo-Saxon cultures to destroy the rest of the world and how the Twin Towers are clearly symbolic in their destruction. And Mishima died protesting what he saw as the submission of Japan to an economic system that destroyed the culture he believed in. And the absurd obsession with basketball and black people stereotyped as performers that Beatty depicts can be read as a criticism of capitalism.
All of these works are combating, or at least questioning and highlighting, the problems with capitalism. In the end, Cassius takes up in violent revolution against it. Mishima dies for his beliefs. Gunnar would be ready to die as a priest, as well. Baraka essentially believed that the lives that were lost in the 9/11 attacks are essentially expected consequences of capitalism. They all bother us, and take stances that we are uncomfortable with.
IV. Harmony of Pen and Sword
With the end of the semester comes reflection, and after spending four months reading a variety of literature, I have a lot to reflect on. Particularly in the last weeks, as we finished The White Boy Shuffle and watched Sorry to Bother You. On top of that, I watched a film called Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (which is not black media, but is connected in many ways to The White Boy Shuffle), and read the poem “Somebody Blew Up America” in class. And all of these things have been connected, leaving me with similar questions. And the way I’ve consumed all of these things is deeply affected by my own life, but they’ve also affected how I’ve gone about living my life. And they will continue to do so. So in honor of the film Mishima, here’s is a four-part sweeping comparison of these artworks and a contemplation of their impact.
As Gunnar increasingly takes suicide more seriously, he reads a lot of Japanese literature, courtesy of Yoshiko. He reads the work of Yukio Mishima, a Japanese author, poet, and playwright. Although Gunnar doesn’t agree with Mishima’s ideas in the novel, I think that beyond the specific excerpt of his work that we get Mishima and Gunnar have a lot in common. The film Mishima outlines his life half-biographically and half through his famous plays. Both of them think about suicide as an option for political protest and are poets and artists, but also have their physical selves deeply intertwined with their art.
One of Mishima’s most famous works was The Temple at the Golden Pavilion, which tells the story of a monk at the famous Japanese temple Kinkaku-ji who feels overwhelmed by its beauty. The final event of the play is the monk burning down the temple to be rid of it. Earlier in the play he says something along the lines of, “I hope that the Americans drop the bomb on the temple” (since this is right around World War II), and later remarks after the war, “I wonder why they didn’t bomb Kyoto,”. This reminded of the target in The White Boy Shuffle on Hillside, and how they literally were asking the US to drop the “third” atomic bomb on them. For different reasons, both of these people/groups see nonexistence through directed destruction as the solution to the problem.
II. Suicide
Which brings me to suicide, a topic that is difficult to discuss in a philosophical and political sense. It becomes portrayed as a choice or a protest, when most often suicide is not a choice, or at least doesn’t feel like one. But there is no way, I think, to draw a clear line between mental illness, suicide, and suicide as protest. (I am probably assuming though that there is nothing inherently wrong with committing suicide, which I know is a belief that you can argue.) For example, Gunnar doesn’t kill himself, but Scoby does - Gunnar talks about suicide as a way to protest something but we never see him commit suicide, and Scoby commits suicide because he just sees no way out of his personal life. Gunnar sees no way out of the political situation, but he has personal reasons to live, and honestly I don’t think there’s a strong indication by the end of the novel that Gunnar is even intending to commit suicide. And Gunnar’s conclusion is rather different from Cassius’s; Sorry to Bother You ends with him storming Steve Lift’s house, and I assume rebelling. Gunnar doesn’t see a way out, other than literally.
Whatever the film Mishima may have altered about the actual Mishima’s life, the end is very real and reflects the events of November 25, 1970 when he committed suicide. It’s what the DVD case calls the “controversial” part of his life. Mishima was a staunch Japanese nationalist, believing that the Western influence on Japan, particularly post-WWII, was bad for Japan. He mostly has a bone to pick with capitalism, and says that’s its “making Japanese people greedy and forget about what really matters,”. Japanese nationalism is tricky and weird, as is any nationalism. But Mishima’s points are honestly similar to Baraka’s point in “Somebody Blew Up America”. And he died symbolically for what he believed in - perhaps suicide is not just a “way out”, and there are other definitions that we have been conditioned to disagree with (and yet all of this makes me deeply uncomfortable).
Perhaps we can question, why is this part of his life controversial? The answer seems obvious - he led a military coup and backed a really extreme far-right political party. But he also died protesting what he believed was wrong. Is that not something we also value in our culture? And I step into odd territory here, but if his beliefs didn’t hurt anyone, then it just controversial because it goes against the mainstream belief? I won’t deny that both Mishima’s beliefs and “Somebody Blew Up America” are controversial because they are offensive to individuals; staunch nationalism for the most part goes hand in and with racism, and a lot of people died in the 9/11 attacks that would not be happy hearing Barak’s poem. But who is the mainstream audience listening to Baraka’s poem, who is listening to them? A world made by who? As Baraka wrote, “Who do no toil / Who own the soil”.
III. Politics and Capitalism
And now this is when Sorry to Bother You and “Somebody Blew Up America” come in. Among their many complexities, all of these works have a political message that criticizes Western/white capitalism. Everyone’s tired of the white man fucking with them, really. Sorry to Bother You in many ways highlights the problems with corporate America, and capitalism in general. Baraka talks about how capitalism is what drove Anglo-Saxon cultures to destroy the rest of the world and how the Twin Towers are clearly symbolic in their destruction. And Mishima died protesting what he saw as the submission of Japan to an economic system that destroyed the culture he believed in. And the absurd obsession with basketball and black people stereotyped as performers that Beatty depicts can be read as a criticism of capitalism.
All of these works are combating, or at least questioning and highlighting, the problems with capitalism. In the end, Cassius takes up in violent revolution against it. Mishima dies for his beliefs. Gunnar would be ready to die as a priest, as well. Baraka essentially believed that the lives that were lost in the 9/11 attacks are essentially expected consequences of capitalism. They all bother us, and take stances that we are uncomfortable with.
IV. Harmony of Pen and Sword
This brings me to the final part: What does art ultimately end up doing? In Mishima, his suicide was a “harmony of the pen and sword”. He also says:
“Never in physical action have I ever found the chilling satisfaction of words.
Never in words have I ever experienced the hot darkness of action.
Somewhere there must be a higher principle that reconciles art and action.
That principle that had occurred to me was death.”
This brings me to a lot of similar questions we had earlier with Invisible Man, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Native Son. What is the role of protest in art? Does art need to be protest? What is the role of suicide, and what does it do or prove? What is the way to deal with capitalism? Is there a way out? What does “fighting a system” even do? I end this semester with none of these questions even remotely close to resolved, and probably never will. And I won’t get to write a bit more about my thoughts about gender related to race and protest as well, which is upsetting as all four of these works are so much from the side of men.
What troubles me more than being left with these questions is that I will go home tonight and sleep in my twenty-dollar Ikea bed sheets and then wake up to cry about the B I got in some class. I will spend all this time thinking about suicide and capitalism and culture, and then go mindlessly spend four dollars on coffee and throw away the wasteful plastic lid. Is it because I don’t have enough of a stake in the problems I’m discussing? I come from such an udder place of privilege; I benefit from capitalism as a white person. Even if America bombed Belgrade, my family has still been allowed to rise up in America and become well-off because we are white. It’s very easy to disconnect yourself from what you read as having an actual impact on your life when you don’t have a stake. But I’ve been bothered. I have questioned what I believe and my perspective has changed. Perhaps more than I can express, I have become uncomfortable with a lot of parts of my life. And perhaps that’s what literature is supposed to do. This is a good place to end this semester, I’d say.
Never in words have I ever experienced the hot darkness of action.
Somewhere there must be a higher principle that reconciles art and action.
That principle that had occurred to me was death.”
This brings me to a lot of similar questions we had earlier with Invisible Man, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Native Son. What is the role of protest in art? Does art need to be protest? What is the role of suicide, and what does it do or prove? What is the way to deal with capitalism? Is there a way out? What does “fighting a system” even do? I end this semester with none of these questions even remotely close to resolved, and probably never will. And I won’t get to write a bit more about my thoughts about gender related to race and protest as well, which is upsetting as all four of these works are so much from the side of men.
What troubles me more than being left with these questions is that I will go home tonight and sleep in my twenty-dollar Ikea bed sheets and then wake up to cry about the B I got in some class. I will spend all this time thinking about suicide and capitalism and culture, and then go mindlessly spend four dollars on coffee and throw away the wasteful plastic lid. Is it because I don’t have enough of a stake in the problems I’m discussing? I come from such an udder place of privilege; I benefit from capitalism as a white person. Even if America bombed Belgrade, my family has still been allowed to rise up in America and become well-off because we are white. It’s very easy to disconnect yourself from what you read as having an actual impact on your life when you don’t have a stake. But I’ve been bothered. I have questioned what I believe and my perspective has changed. Perhaps more than I can express, I have become uncomfortable with a lot of parts of my life. And perhaps that’s what literature is supposed to do. This is a good place to end this semester, I’d say.
Cool post. I think you have some very interesting reflections. About suicide, I don't think that people who commit suicide feel like they have to, but rather (from what I've read from suicide survivors,) they too see it in the same light as Gunnar. To them, it is the only method of escape and so in a way they are rebelling. That being said, I also don't think that Beatty is literally trying to get people to commit suicide or encouraging it or even idolizing it, instead he is trying to get people to look at the things that led Gunnar and the black character in the book to prefer death over living under the system.
ReplyDeleteWow, what an in depth look at the novel. I think your thoughts on the deeper notions in the class are really powerful, and I too felt encouraged to look at the aspects of my life I'm uncomfortable with.
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