Zombies: staples of the American monster repertoire that make for fun Halloween costumes, great impersonations, and an easy thing for your parents to call you when you’ve been watching TV all Saturday. For the most part, though, the living dead don’t stumble into our day-to-day thoughts except for during one special month in the latter half of the year. Well, they should, and we don’t realize it. Zombies, and specifically the movies about them, are so much more than spectacles of gloriously icky gore and raspy, yearning moans. If you take some time to peer deeper into the journeys that the directors and films take their characters and viewers, you’ll see that zombie movies are actually reflections of their creators views on how we should live. What’s more, they’re being pumped into all of their viewers’ heads, including yours. These seemingly benign movies are in fact argumentative. Their directors want to command how you, yes you, me and all of us should live our

Edgar White’s Shaun of the Dead is one such movie. It’s about a man named Shaun and his attempt to lead his mother, ex-girlfriend and her friends to safety in the midst of a zombie contagion. At first glance, Shaun of the Dead is a silly parody on the genre, poking fun at its themes and recurring stylistic choices. However, it is exactly in this parodying and playing on the styles and messages of past movies that Shaun of the Dead comes into its argumentativeness. Upon close examination, Shaun of the Dead is utopic. To understand how it functions in prescribing its ideal lifestyle, we must first understand the methods by which its predecessors in the genre did so, and how they relate and compare to each

Traditionally, zombie movies have utilized the creation of visual associations for the viewer to make between the zombies and aspects of real life. This can largely be observed through analysis of the traits of the typical zombie. In his essay “The Running of the Dead,” Christian Thorne discusses this practice. He explains that the classical zombie has three main traits. Firstly, they are always hungry; the only instinct they have retained is that of eating. Second, they’re always dressed in their Sunday best as they’re recently dead and thus garbed in funeral clothing. Finally, their skin is shockingly white. These attributes taken in sum, Thorne writes, are evidence that the filmmakers “are trying to evoke for you what it feels like to be up against a white and all-consuming middle class.” Essentially, the traditional zombie is a white, middle-class hyper-consumer.

This classical definition was altered when genre-staple film and namesake of our focus, Dawn of the Dead came out in 2004. In deviance from the traditional, George Romero’s film portrayed the zombie demographic as far more diverse. Shaun of the Dead does the same, displaying a spectrum of undead ranging from suited professionals to grocery market cashiers; high schoolers to the elderly, rather than white and, I would argue, more upper-middle-class-looking zombies of old. Despite the fact that both Shaun and Dawn of the Dead make the similar general appearance associations with the design of their zombies, the conclusions that each film wants the viewer to reach differ. Thorne argues that the diversity of the Dawn of the Dead zombies, in pairing with fact that his zombies can run quickly as opposed to the classical shuffling zombie, have an effect of inspiring associations with and ultimately fear of terrorism and anarchy against government by peers and country people. The country people aspect of his argument is especially supported by the multiracial aspect of the zombies, as the zombie collective can be seen as a cross section of the majority body of American society. SOTD zombies, on the other hand, are not fast and push a different point about the horde and the average societal members it represents. In DOTD, the horde is always considered an other, a group separate from the main characters and the viewers, to be fought and feared. In SOTD, this zombie group is not quite a separate entity. The line between zombie and human is blurred for everyone. Everyone in the movie has the potential to be a bit zombie-like, including the living. This claim subsequently includes the audience as well, as the zombie crowd looks like most of them. SOTD stresses the fact that we are all zombie like.

In retort, one could instead argue that simply due to the fact that the DOTD zombies look like average members of society, the main characters will identify with them, but such an identification is surely not as purposeful as the association is in SOTD upon examining the evidence. Shaun of the Dead stresses this point throughout the entire movie. In the opening minutes, for example, Shaun, the main character and zombie-killing survivor of the film, is shown groggily walking down the hall after waking up to go to work. The shot starts with his feet, and slowly pans up to his face as he shuffles along, yawning. The directors made an explicit choice to have Shaun walk like a zombie, and to make his yawn sound like a zombie groan. It’s even in the title, Shaun of the Dead. Shaun is literally one of the dead.

What does it mean for one to be ‘of the dead?’ The film expresses this through associations drawn in its scenes as well. Wright links zombies with the struggles and realities of existing and succeeding within a society ruled by a central government. The film builds a strong connection between zombies and work. Before the zombie outbreak, one scene in particular emphasizes this: while Shaun commutes both to and from work on the bus, all the faces of other middle-class adults in the workforce are shown. Notably, these people just as diverse as the zombies. Further, everyone’s face is deadpan and no one looks quite alive. By shooting this scene, Wright draws a parallel between zombie-ness and the work life. In doing so, he transitively makes statements connecting the zombie traits established by their appearance and associations to work for the average human in Western society. As zombies are mindless, this scene purports, so are workers. Further, the movie contends that we are all zombies, and thus, we are all mindless participants in the work force. This connection is further emphasized towards the end of the movie, after the zombie outbreak is over. A documentary showing on a TV clip depicts zombies being recruited for work, as the narrator says, “The living dead retained their most basic instincts and thus are easily used for service work.” The zombies pictured are in fact humans who were shown in the opening scenes of the film, occupying the same jobs. As zombies, they retained their viability in the workforce. Essentially, then, the movie contends that people who work are zombies in that the most fundamental thing about their existence is what they mindlessly provide to society in their work.

Now, understanding the zombies and their associations in Shaun of The Dead, we can tackle how exactly the film wants us to live our lives. The utopic nature of the film lies in the hero’s development through the movie. Through the earlier parts of the film, before the zombie outbreak, the film makes effort to setup shortcomings for the hero, which he desires to fix. At the start, immaturity is a large piece of the hero’s character. His friends, family and girlfriend all pressure him to act like an adult. To them, that means getting a better job than the one he has as a salesperson where his co-workers are all high schoolers, growing apart and moving forward from his funny, crude and unemployed childhood friend, with whom he lives. Further, the night before the zombie onset begins, Shaun is dumped. To make matters for him worse, his successful professional housemate puts him down, calling him a loser. The hero is hurt and resolves to ‘get his life together,’ as he writes on the fridge before going to sleep. When he wakes up, the zombie onset has begun, and Shaun ventures out into the zombie-world with his new goals in mind to lead his friends, recently ex-girlfriend, mother and stepfather to safety. As the film continues, the audience follows Shaun, the hero, as he leads a group of friends, girlfriend and family to safety through the zombie-disaster. Through this journey, the viewer sees him change, realizing the personal goals set at the beginning of the movie. Most obviously, for example, the hero gets his girlfriend back. Additionally, he shows maturity and leadership in his attempts to save his family and friends. He gains even the most skeptical of his girlfriends’ friends’ respect and trust, whereas before, he was only the problematic, unreliable boyfriend. Within the context of the zombie onset, Shaun is able to find success in the areas of his life in which he wanted.

We must now understand what it is about the zombie onset that allows him to do so. Central to the traditional concept of worlds in zombie epidemics is the idea of a zombie outbreak as a collapse of order in society and government, as well as a void of authority. Dawn of the Dead shows prime examples of this with its opening scene in which a town is reduced to chaos as police cars and ambulances fail miserably at their duties and kill people themselves. The government and authorities fail to function. Throughout Shaun’s journey, through a world that traditionally within the genre lacks authority, he matures, addressing many of the concerns and inadequacies with him that were identified in the earlier parts of the movie. Shaun gains leadership and courage. He gets his girlfriend back and is able to stay true to his passions, leading his entourage to refuge in the same bar that symbolized his immaturity. In the final moments before what is essentially an epilogue, the hero and his girlfriend take one last stand against all odds, weapons held high. They leave their zombie-bitten best friend in the basement (on good terms) of the pub and rather than killing themselves, chose to take their lives into their own hands and fight or die. They take the ultimate stance of self-determination by taking their lives into their own hands. At this point, it seems as if in the chaotic condition of the zombie epidemic, Shaun is able to thrive and become his best self. The utopic nature of the film is thus revealed. In the absence of government and authority, people have the capacity to move towards realizing their goals and having real decision-making power over their own existence. This sounds a lot like escaping zombie-ness and the mindlessness it comes with.

However, this utopia doesn’t last. In the last moment, the integrity of the hero’s gains is stripped of him. In this final moment of self-determination, Shaun’s efforts are suddenly stifled when the government shows up and kills all the zombies in a show of power in excess before the hero can take even one step or strike. The genuineness of the hero’s gains is stripped away from him as he nor his girlfriend are able to show any potency. And all this because the government returned. Though, it didn’t quite come back; it never left. The authority structure existed the entire time. Though it was not present in its direct form of armies and officials, the branches of the society over which it rules remain, being mindless work and consumerism, both of which serve in the favor of upkeeping the government authority.

The film doesn’t provide a way to realize it’s ideal vision of success without government that is has identified. It doesn’t provide an answer to the fact that the government and its conditions for us humans are oppressive and impossibly ever-present. It can only say what would be best, and leave the rest up to us to figure out. Michel Uebel, author of a book studying utopian concepts disagrees, argues that in Shaun of the Dead and movies like it, the utopian essence of the film is that a surplus of need, unrest and desire are required in order to have an ideal society. The utopia satisfies these needs, he contends, and then “grinds to a halt, and stagnation replaces creativity.” The cycle must then continue. This sounds like an accurate description of the arc of Shaun of the Dead. Shaun grew but was stunted in the final moments of his metamorphosis. In the film, however, no one ever quite escapes their zombie-ness, even throughout the hero’s growth. Uebel is too optimistic— Shaun of the Dead and its peers do seem at first to show that the hero’s goals are realized, but in fact, the never are. Even in those final moments, the hero is still fundamentally zombie-like, as was established throughout the film. Thus, Shaun of the Dead poses to its viewers a better way of living, and that the government is always suppressing it. As Shaun yells to a child who hits him with a ball and later reappears as a zombie, Shaun of the Dead states a seemingly unsolvable fact about our condition, and leaves us to deal with how to solve it: “You’re dead!”

Works Cited

Thorne, Christian. “The Running of the Dead.” Blog post. Christian Thorne –                         Commonplace Book. Williams College, 28 July 2010. Web. 18 Apr. 2017.             <http://sites.williams.edu/cthorne/>.

Uebel, Michael. “Postscript: Utopic Endings.” Ecstatic Transformation: On the Uses of             Alterity in the Middle Ages. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. N.                         pag. Google Books. Web. 19 Apr. 2017.

This essay was read by Julia Gunther

      Do we really care about the feminist struggles of the protagonists who disguise themselves as males to get an access to a male-dominated sphere? Often in movies and tv series, these female protagonists strive to refuse expected gender roles imposed upon them and prove themselves as professionals capable of achieving what the male characters do. Yet as viewers, at least for me, our central concern is not so much about their successful accomplishment in realm of professionalism but about the romance between a male and female character. We impatiently ask: so when is her future lover is going to find out that she is not a man? And it is a natural question to ask, since the tension that drives the plot is a romantic one, and confrontation of real life discrimination is given secondary importance in their depictions. It is fair to say that those media productions are in fact about love stories of the female and male character, who stays unbelievably oblivious until the very end despite the fact that the female protagonists usually have the stereotypical characteristics of traditional femininity–either very sassy outside the disguise or with traditional gender expectation of females–and those traits make the disguise unconvincing.

      This golden cliche also applies for the female protagonist in She’s the Man, who dresses up as her twin brother to join the boys’ soccer team in his school.  In the end, she is accepted as a member of the soccer team as a female and beat her ex-boyfriend in a rival soccer team. The festive scene in the end that shows her victory almost reminds one of a carnival scene: the loud crowd cheers at the players, people take their clothes off, and the comic depiction of the defeat of the traditional male power celebrates the inversion of hierarchy. As shown in the movie description, this scene indeed seems to show that “girls can do anything guys can do.” But it is not any girl who is accepted as a member of the domain allowed only for males is not any girl: it is the hot girl that is shown on the poster for She’s the Man, the one that falls in typical female gender description.

      I am saying we should be bothered by such association established in the movie, and take this cheesy rom-com as more than a “harmless fun for the 12 year olds” as noted by one critic. The reason is that the ideas linked with different aspects of gender throughout the movie tells us a very different story about the ideal world suggested by the movie, and this feigned utopia is just a different way of describing the reality the female protagonist was trying to escape from.

      Ideas and imageries this movie uses to frame and construct male and female genders are glaringly simple. The female protagonist, Viola, chooses to play soccer instead of becoming a debutante as constantly insisted by her mother. In Viola’s nightmare, she is wearing a heavy dress with flares which restricts her movements and make her embarrass herself in the soccer field (00:27:18). The dresses that police one’s body represent the traditional role of female, and Viola’s choice to be a female soccer player as a way of freely using her body is an escape from such gender expectation. If they are to refuse the dresses and be soccer players, what would be the new outfit that suits them? There is only scene from the entire movie that shows girls’ soccer team having a match, and they are all wearing bikinis (00:00:50). So an alternative to a dress is not a soccer uniform–but a bikini. The scene that celebrates liberation of these girls focus on their breasts, legs, and the curves of their half-naked bodies in close-up freeze frames. This opening scene of the movie sets a new definition of female gender: if they are not going to be ladies in pretty dress, they will be hot girls in bikinis seducing male audience. A coincidence or not, the lyrics of the background music of the scene, No Sleep Tonight by the Faders tell us what messages these girls may be sending to their male spectators.

“You want me

You want me all the time

…

Baby I’m what’s on your mind

You can’t stop this feeling”

      These lyrics once again reinforce the mental connection between females and their sexual appeal. So the girls who want to escape from their traditional gender frame have to redefine themselves in terms of their physical appeals.

      Viola’s transformation from female to male focuses on hiding physical features and process that defines females in this movie–her hair, breasts, and tampons. Then she learns to walk, talk, and spit like a man. (00:13:31) This juxtaposed contrast piece together for the audience that physical traits define a woman, and actions define a man. These differences become more apparent in the male-talk and woman-talk in number of occasions. When her ex-boyfriend Viola compliments her that she has become better at soccer, Viola responds that he has gotten better at kissing and that she has taught him well (00:02:57); when the two argue, the ex-boyfriend is the one who says “End of discussion!”, to which Viola responds, “Then, end of relationship.” (00:05:31). Because physical skills are alien to female gender, Viola and her soccer teammates are described as amateurs throughout the movie. In fact, when Viola tries out for a boy’s team disguised as her twin brother, she finds out that she is in fact not as good as male soccer players (00:18:35). Indeed, to break the limitations of her gender and be elevated as an amateur to a professional, Viola has to get help from her future boyfriend Duke–a name that connotes social status. Again, a simple binary distinction between the two genders arise from their interactions: women provide sexual pleasure to men, who in return can teach them skills and allow their entrance into realm of professionalism.

      Other characters, Eunice and Monique, who do not fall in such description of femininity function as jesters whose appearance and behaviors induce laughters from the audience. Eunice, a socially awkward character who wears glasses and braces is the best representation of stereotypes about smart girls. When she becomes the lab partner with Duke and tells him that “I am gonna be the best lab partner you’ve ever had”(00:34:18) as she looks at Duke in an excessively seductive way. Her expression of sexual desire looks awkward, as if intelligence and sexual appeals are two incompatible characteristics that appear comical and elicit laughter. But what exactly are such scenes asking us to laugh at? Is it not encouraging us to mock the connection between a female with intelligence and their unpleasant femininity that, as confessed by one online commentator, even causes the feeling of “disgust”? Through the gender dynamic presented in She’s the Man, females with skills are unattractive, if not repulsive.

      Monique, a stereotypical blonde girl who is considered “hot” among male characters in the movie, is on the other side of the spectrum and still the femininity she represents is also not desirable from the movie’s perspective. She is confident enough to reject a guy and say, “girls with asses like mine do not talk to guys with face like yours” (00:31:59). But Monique is rejected by Viola, who Monique mistakes for her twin brother Sebastian and makes fun of her in front of the crowd by calling her ugly. The defeat of the hot girl who is attractive yet unwilling to be their girlfriend generates feeling of catharsis among the male characters, who describe Viola as their role model. A member of female gender in the movie falls in one of the three categories: she is hot and spiteful, she is smart and repulsive, or she is attractive enough but also needs help from men. And I do not have to tell you which of the three types represents an authentic female the viewers and crowd cheer at in the end of the movie.

      But Viola herself is subject to laughter before she reveals her true gender–that is, before she clarifies that her feeling for Duke is not homosexual. Physical contacts between Duke and Viola when she is pretending to be Sebastian always end in Duke’s awkward rejection or exaggerated shuddering. Even Viola  makes it clear that she has no sympathy toward queer love. Meyer in her paper notes that Viola’s “persistent attempt to avoid intimate moments with Olivia”, a very attractive girl who mistakes Viola for a guy and falls in love, in fact “underlines the devalued and humoristic aspects of same-sex desire.” Homosexuality in the movie is something that can be readily used as a bad pun in a scene where Viola’s mom asks to the debutantes, “Now, who is ready to come out?” (1:03:49). She is the Man, a story that revolves around only two authentic genders, invites the viewers not only to laugh at queerness but also to root for Viola to reveal her heterosexual love for Duke. Viola’s choice to dress herself as a man lost its initial significance as a means to resist the discrimination in her life, and it is no more than an obstacle she has to overcome to be loved by Duke, a new life-goal that quickly replaces her original goal. Duke’s response to Viola’s confession of love summarizes how the movie views same-sex love in one phrase: “That’s just weird.” (1:27:10) Viola has to assert her femininity which is defined by her breast and her desire for a male. (Meyer, 2011). Now there indeed is no hindrance to their love, and Duke gladly confesses that “everything would’ve been so much easier if you [Viola] stayed as a girl” (1:38:14).

      The carnivalesque scene in the end of the movie does appear to cheers Viola’s victory against her opponents and her successful achievement of the initial goal in wild festivity. It pretends to be a utopia where traditional hierarchy and rules are thrown out of windows. When Viola confesses that she is in fact a girl who pretended to be Sebastian to be a part of the team, her soccer coach explicitly claims that “we do not discriminate people based on gender” and tears up the soccer manual book (1:29:45). After a direct negation of the traditional rules, Viola runs as the first wing player while the American flag symbolically flashes in the background. However, even in this ideal world that claims to embody American dream, females are still associated with unprofessionalism. The soccer coach calls his players a “bunch of girls” as they lose focus of the game and end up fighting with one another(1:26:32). In this world, Viola confesses her feelings for Duke after the removal of an obstacle–her potential queerness–and succeeds in dating Duke, yet another traditional masculine figure who is described to be a “sensitive guy” with feelings but is quick to be seduced by sexual appeals of Olivia and Viola. In the ending scene, Viola is happy to be the girl accompanied by a male to her debutante party in her elegance dress, the traditional role of a female she was so desperate to escape from. 

       The utopia this movie suggests in the end celebrates the firm re-establishment of traditional orthodox power.  In the end, just like many other bad rom-coms, love is an explanation to everything. But it has to be a heterosexual love between an attractive  girl who is only made happy by a guy who teaches her how to be a professional. Her feminist goal? Again, coincidence or not, the closing song Move Along by The All American Rejects provides you with an answer:

“Move along, move along like I know you do

And even when your hope is gone

Move along, move along just to make it through”

      Yes, move along, even if there still may be discriminations, because us women will be saved by our fellow men “as long as they conform to the codes of femininity within the matrix of heterosexual relationships (Butler, 1990).”

Revised by Juna Khang

Works cited

Butler, Judith (1990). Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge Falmer.

Fickman, Andy. About the Movie, ITunes Preview, web.

Meyer, Elizabeth (2011). “She’s the Man”: Deconstructing the Gender and Sexuality Curriculum at “Hollywood High”. Counterpoints, Vol.392.

Popular culture certainly is the realm in which hierarchies are flattened by the rebellious works of entertainment mavericks, though it does not seem right that all such rebellions should be taken in bad taste when they have something more pure and complex at heart.  One such maverick is Walt Disney, and his Fantasia was one such rebellion.  Its reception was as varied as its composition — most film critics were awed, and most music critics were appalled.  It effectively moved the chains on taste, and left as its legacy the visual concert, eventually to be the music video.  Did Disney know that he was introducing a totally new wave to popular culture?  Was he knowingly usurping the kings and masters who had established clear lines between the high and the low, the tasteful and the distasteful?

When I was three years old, in 2001, I watched Fantasia every day.  I consumed a lot of other media too, but I distinctly remember ‘othering’ Fantasia, being overwhelmed by the grandness of its music while each scene bursted with color.  It was my first introduction to classical music (I probably wouldn’t have been listening to any Beethoven otherwise).  Though I wasn’t yet aware of any cultural hierarchy, I consciously set it apart from Dragon Tales and Barney.

It is the nature of popular culture that using terms like ‘bad taste’ is problematic, because what may have been labeled such in 1940 could now be seen as the opposite.  Fantasia gave a huge new momentum to classical music, which carried it all the way to the 21st century, to a new and youthful unexpecting audience.  In that time, cultural tastes have changed, and there are fewer gatekeepers now than ever.  This is in no small part due to the impact of Fantasia, a cultural monolith which Henry Allen of the Washington Post called “Walt Disney’s glorious monument to mid-century “middlebrowism” (Allen, 1990).  The idea of there being a “middlebrow” reinforces the hierarchy, though it creates a grey area into which innovative popular culture can rise and expand, no longer being relegated to the pit.  With Fantasia, Disney created this space for future generations of artists.

The project of blending low culture, in the form of cartoon animation, and high culture, in the form of the most sophisticated classical scores, was consciously devised in order to shake things up.  According to historian John Culhane, Walt Disney “had vowed, when he was snubbed as a mere ‘cartoon-maker’ 17 years before, that his animated productions would someday be treated to the same kind of gala premieres accorded live-action films” (Culhane, 1983).  Disney was obsessed from the outset with changing the culture, and breaking down the mechanisms which might saddle his work with such descriptors as lowbrow, bad taste, or “mere.”  To get to the gala premier, he had to draw on high culture in a manner of appropriation (he admitted to not caring for classical music himself) and as a true champion of popular culture, its lowly forms, and its spirit of innovation (what some might call “bad taste”) he became a rebel.

I never thought beautiful music with beautiful animations would be viewed by anyone as bad taste.  On the contrary, the impression left by Beethoven and Bach is one of exceedingly good taste, high class.  But when the movie was released, many in the audience — especially those Beethoven fans — were appalled. What sort of lowbrow cartoonist huckster would dare try to repackage the classics with circuses of naked centaurs and battling dinos?  One critic for the New York Times said, with some indignation, “Disney’s toddling cannot keep pace with the giant strides of Ludwig van Beethoven” (Crowther, 1940).

Fantasia’s release in 1940 triggered objections from cultural purists, who were not amused by Walt’s interest in making classical music the subject of his ‘experimental’ phase.  Before 1940, classical music was untouchable — the domain of kings, bosses and masters — and arguably the highest culture in the popular hierarchy.  A producer for Minnesota public radio reviewed the impact of Disney’s choice, stating that “to mess with Beethoven was to mess with Music Itself” (Gabler, 2015).  At the time of the film’s premiere, the New York Times wrote, “Disney’s toddling cannot keep pace with the giant strides of Ludwig van Beethoven.” And “what the music experts and the art critics will think of it we don’t know. … Probably there will be much controversy, and maybe some long hair will be pulled. Artistic innovations never breed content” (Crowther, 1940).

Disney did not intend rebellious bad taste at all; he wanted refinement, despite how it was received by some.  There will always be traditionalists in the crowd who feel scandalized, who see popular culture as low culture.  But Disney wasn’t trying to buck the kings and masters — he was no punk.  He said of the film, “we’re not going to be slapstick.  There’s a certain refinement in the whole thing: we’ll go for the beautiful rather than the slapstick” (Disney, 1939).  Nonetheless, it’s hard to imagine that Disney did not have a provocative streak in him when selecting the Rite of Spring for inclusion in his grand experiment.  The infamous 1913 performance of Stravinsky’s piece provoked riots in Paris precisely because of its startling juxtaposition of music and visuals, and one could not think of the Rite of Spring in 1940 outside of this cultural context.  In this vein, choosing to pair a few of the most sophisticated classical scores of all time with animations of Mickey Mouse and dancing mushrooms, directing the same artist who created Goofy to animate segments set to Beethoven’s elaborate Pastoral Symphony, Disney had to have known that some if not all of his audience would be scandalized.

Fantasia set a new bar — nothing was off limits.  Thereafter, any and all forms of pop culture existed to be remixed.  “Critics may deplore Disney’s lapses of taste, but he trips, Mickey-like, into an art form that immortals from Aeschylus to Richard Wagner have always dreamed of” (TIME, 1940).  The monolithic nature of Fantasia, as a pivotal artifact in cultural history, is well summarized by Michael Broyles:

“In giving expression to his own rich visual imagination, Disney created a piece both ripe with potential and threatening in implications.  In retrospect Fantasia is late-twentieth-century musical culture’s Pandora’s box, for with Fantasia the visual dimension could no longer be downplayed, or relegated to the listener’s own fantasy” (Broyles, 2004).

The novel concept of the “visual concert,” as Disney referred to this aspect of his legacy, lived on in popular culture through the psychedelic movement of the 60s (think Yellow Submarine) and eventually in the music videos of the MTV era, and even in the Visualizer algorithm that accompanies iTunes or Windows Media Player.  Through all of this, because of the quality of the music and that unique marriage to Disney animation, the 1940 film has a lasting appeal.  Today, drug users and kindergarteners find something in it to love.  The website “Shroomery” hosts a forum titled, “Was Fantasia invented for people on hallucinogens?” from 2011.  Twitter boasts a slew of wacky tweets on the film, such as “Fantasia & fantasia 2000 are on tv. Trippy stuff – imagine it on mushrooms!?!” and “My first year in LA, I had a buddy who decided he was going to drop acid and go see FANTASIA in the theater. Good plan, right?”  Disney itself came out with a psychedelic blacklight poster for the re-release of Fantasia in 1969.

The narrator of Fantasia prefaces the first and most abstract score with the sentiment: “What you’re going to see are the designs and pictures and stories that music inspired in the minds and imaginations of a group of artists.  In other words, these are not going to be the interpretations of trained musicians which I think is all to the good” (italics added).

The music that exists “simply for its own sake,” which has no explicit narrative, is perhaps the most important form to Walt, because it is the raw material that can inspire multiple lines of imagination.  The word “fantasia” itself is a musical term that translates to “beyond language,” which is inherently liberatory and unrestrictive.   The narrator states that occasionally it is “all to the good” we have the guys who made Mickey Mouse interpreting this music for us.  We’ve been liberated from those constraints that tell us how and when to appreciate classical music.  This seems to be the film’s only self-conscious concession that it might be venturing into ‘bad taste,’ and it comes with no shame.  In fact, it asks the audience to agree and admit that this new, more stimulating form of entertainment is superior to what trained musicians alone could muster.

Works Cited

Allen, Henry. “Fantasia.” Washington Post, 30 Sept. 1990.

“Beethoven in ‘Fantasia’: Awesome, or awkward?” Review of Fantasia, by Jay Gabler, 1940. Classical MPR, 29 Oct. 2015, www.classicalmpr.org/story/2015/10/29/fantasia-beethoven-pastoral.

Broyles, Michael. “Mavericks and Other Traditions in American Music.” Yale University Press, 2004, pp. 299-305. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1npxvx.18.

Crowther, Bosley. “Walt Disney’s ‘Fantasia,’ an Exciting New Departure in Film Entertainment, Opened Last Night at the Broadway.” The New York Times [New York], 14 Nov. 1940.

Culhane, John. Walt Disney’s Fantasia. 1983.

Disney, Walt. “Walt’s Words: Fantasia Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6.” Interview by Leopold Stokowski. Disney History Institute, 8 Aug. 1939, www.disneyhistoryinstitute.com/2010/09/walts-words-fantasia-beethovens.html.

“Disney’s Cinesymphony.” TIME, no. 21, 18 Nov. 1940.

This essay was read by Juna Khang.

In late summer of 1977, the two spacecraft of the United States’ Voyager program were launched. The primary mission of these unmanned NASA probes was not much different that that of earlier ones: they would pass by a few planets, collecting data on the way. Their final trajectory, however, was something new. Voyagers 1 and 2 would be the first manmade objects to exit our solar system. Seizing on this opportunity, Carl Sagan set up a team to create some sort of message that could be attached to the probes in case they were ever found by other intelligent beings. The result of their work was the Voyager Golden Record.

This gold-plated copper “vinyl” contains audio recordings of sounds from our planet—a passing train, laughter, thunder, animal calls—along with encodings of photographs—net fishing, a man hiking with his dog, a jet liner taking flight, Jane Goodall with some chimps, a diagram of DNA. It also contains recordings of greetings in various languages, a message from the United Nations, and—comprising the majority of the record’s playing time—music (NASA). Although the selections for all sections of the record have been controversial (for example, NASA did not allow the inclusion of images of nudity due to political backlash from the Pioneer spacecraft plaques) the music has received particular attention. While the rest of the record contains things that people undeniably see or hear, the music is something more. Music is how people interpret these experiences. It is how we understand what it means and feels like to be a citizen of Earth. It is ninety minutes not of human noises, but human culture.

An artist’s concept of Voyager 1. A copy of the Golden Record is visible on its side.

The music on the record comes from a diverse range of geographic locations, including all six populated continents and Pacific islands. There was large effort put into representing geographic and economic diversity, but certain choices stick out. As Gorman has noted, certain groups whose music was recorded are also ones that were singled out in early anthropological work as “primitive” (270). Racist underpinnings aside, two out of twenty-seven songs do come from hunter-gatherer groups, the Pygmies of Central Africa and the Australian Aborigines. This may seem like a disproportionate emphasis, considering the low numbers of contemporary hunter-gatherers worldwide. Ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax requested the inclusion of these pieces on the Record for specific reasons. By continuing the way of life practiced during the first 99% of human history, the Pygmies and Aborigines represent diversity not only geographically, but also temporally (Cultural Equity). The inclusion of their music on the Record constitutes the preservation of a disappearing way of life, not just a presentation of humanity’s culture, and as such, is more than just a means of musical diversity. In Man the Hunter, Marshall Sahlins provides his theory of “the original affluent society”. Sahlins demonstrates that modern hunter-gatherer societies enjoy a remarkably high quality of life, working only five hours a day and having more time to sleep than any other group on Earth: all by relying on natural processes, rather than engineered creations, to provide for them. Abundance in subsistence, long foreshadowed in literary imaginations of a nonconsumerist ideal, suggests that technological and social progress is not the solution, but the problem. Many theorists have proposed that the content of all cultural material is driven by hope for an emancipatory future (Ernt Bloch is probably the most important in this movement): the Golden Record invites us to look to the past for utopia.

Although the music on the records comes from a variety of traditions, there is a clear focus on Western music, which is included in the forms of classical and pop. The reasons for this are quite obvious: Western music is the music of the producers of the Record. Western music is also the form of music that was becoming increasingly understood as being distant from the people, even as suppressing the commoner and perpetuating the hierarchies of industrial life (theorists Theodor Adorno and Louis Althusser are important proponents of this line of thought). What is interesting is that the pop selections are ones that strongly contradict this thinking. For one thing, the three pop artists are Chuck Berry, Louis Armstrong, and Blind Willie Johnson: they are black, members of one of the most repressed groups in America. The Chuck Berry selection is “Johnny B. Goode”, the song that practically invented rock and roll. Louis Armstrong’s “Melancholy Blues” is a classic example of impromptu jazz. But the third artist is little known. “Dark was the Night” by gospel-blues Blind Willie Johnson is perhaps the most interesting choice on the record. He is a genuine example of a commoner. Although his talent allowed Johnson to be recorded during his lifetime, he only gained mass following after his death. His life is still largely a mystery, despite the work of historians, although it is known that Johnson was a small church preacher before becoming homeless (Pinkard). These artists are interesting in that all are known best for their trend-setting innovations. These were early works in their respective areas. The makers of the Record recognize the black origins of Western pop music, and select works that illustrate this over derived works. The implications of this decision are twofold: there is nostalgia for the early days of pop, when everything was fresh and new; there is no inclusion of the modern restrictions by race and class in the making of culture, allowing music to be composed, even in its industrial form, by the layperson. Once again, it is evident that important elements of the Record are strongly associated with great parts of the past.

The actual content of the music, of course, is of upmost importance in choosing what we will be sending to the extraterrestrials. Stemming from a broad range of places, the music inherently has a great diversity of styles. The pieces also encompass a broad range of emotions (at least within human interpretation). And interestingly, not all of these emotions are positive ones. As Nelson and Polansky have noted, although pain, injustice, and death are large parts of human life, no images or sounds of any of the “darker side of humanity” have been included on the record: the only suffering that exists is that which we recognize in the music (373). Within the contents of the record, music almost serves as the opposite to the utopian ideal. Rather than creating an experience separate from pain, the music is the only material on the record that contains any pain. “Dark was the Night” and “String Quartet Number 13 in B Flat” are quite sad, while “Beethoven’s Fifth” is commonly interpreted as angry sounding. But these pieces area, of course, often praised for how well they represent such feelings. Music has this ironic way of allowing us to reconcile with such emotions rather than augmenting the associated suffering. Through its empathetic powers, music puts evil in a state that can be approached, processed, and understood. On the Record, evil exists only in this conquerable form.

For these reasons, the music on the Voyager Golden Record comprises a “nostalgic utopia”, a material that allows listeners to return to the perfect world of the past. It still may be hard to see the contents of the disk as nothing more than an incoherent conglomeration. The collection of sights and sound on the Record have never coexisted: they all come from separate cultures and separate times, each with their own individual histories and meanings. But long after all other forms of these songs have been lost from this Earth, long after this Earth has been lost, the disk will continue to drift through interstellar space, and the songs will only exist only in this form: together. As this synergistic assemblage, what we are sending to possible extraterrestrials is not only the best humanity has ever been, but also the best humanity could ever be. It is a perfect future made up of the past.

One of the original copies of the Voyager Golden Record. Through close inspection, one can make out the handmade inscription:
“To the makers of music — all worlds, all times”

Works Cited

“Alan Lomax and the Voyager Golden Records”. Cultural Equity. http://www.culturalequity.org/features/Voyager/

Ferris, Timothy. “The Mix Tape of the Gods” The Opinion Pages. The New York Times. September 5, 2007.

Gorman, Alice. “Beyond the ‘Morning Star’”. In Best Australian Writing 2014. Ed. Ashley Hay and Ian Lowe. Kensington: University of New South Wales, 2014. eBook, ProQuest eBook Central.

NASA. “Voyager: The Interstellar Mission”. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute ofTechnology. http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/

Nelson, Stephanie, and Larry Polansky. “The Music of the Voyager Golden Record”. Journal of Applied Communication Research. November 1993.

Pinkard, Ryan. “Dark Was the Night: The Legacy of Blind Willie Johnson”. Tidal. February 26, 2016. http://read.tidal.com/article/dark-was-the-night-the-legacy-of-blind-willie-johnson share

Sahlins, Marshall. “The Original Affluent Society”. From Man the Hunter. 1966. Accessed online: http://www.luminist.org/archives/Sahlins_original.htm

Image credit: NASA. Originally, they can be found here and here.

Thank you to Gray Livingston for reviewing my work and offering helpful advice on how to make it better.

Since its conception in the Bronx forty or so years ago, hip-hop and the spin-off genres it inspired have been vessels by which suppressed ideas can leak into pop-culture without notice. Usually stemming around musical revolts against injustice, things have progressed from N.W.A’s brash criticisms of the police to Kendrick Lamar’s brand new album which bluntly says, “fuck Donald Trump,” all the while expressing additional sentiments felt by disenfranchised urban America. This minority body of the population and their ideas, known sometimes as the “hood” or the ghetto, is frequently suppressed by mainstream media, but they represent a subculture of Americans that the stereotypical upper-middle class white family simply cannot understand.

I suppose this conversation must first begin with Shawn Carter. Shawn, known more commonly as “Jay-Z,” is credited with being one of the greatest minds in hip-hop, on and off the stage, and his lifestyle “…illustrates how the study of organizations could be extended beyond the boundaries of the safe and the well known, even into the ’hood and onto streets” (Rehn and Sköld, 53). Jay-Z’s story – he was raised in the projects and selling drugs before finally making it out – brought to the world stage a type of entrepreneurship that had never been truly recognized before. Prior to this, white enterprise and cultural connections thereof constructed the universally accepted idea that the entrepreneurial spirit had a concrete definition, but Jay-Z’s success flipped that world upside down. He uprooted the static definition of what an entrepreneur was and because of that the world realized that a particular locality’s culture played a large part in determining success (Rehn and Sköld). Jay-Z deviated from societal norms, and with that act he demonstrated that there were two separate cultures vying for power, the pre-established white-washed consumer culture and a new culture, one set to root itself in America on the platform of rebellion, and that neither of these two cultures had to be unequivocally correct. The world finally saw that culture and subcultures, often appearing to deviate from socially constructed norms, strongly influence every aspect of a person’s life. This new culture was different, and this difference opened up the lane for analysis of what that culture could be and where it could have come from.

A few weeks ago, a rapper named Joyner Lucas released a single titled “Ultrasound,” and the quick tempo and catchy bass line disguise consistent patterns of behavior and speech that, in a particularly moral sense, contrast what society would call normal. The song begins with an answering machine picking up, followed by a female voice saying, “I spent all night waiting for you to come home,” and then as her voice softens, “I’m starting to get worried.” Then she pleads over the phone,  revealing to the listener that he is most likely at the “stupid” casino again, “pissing away” all the money that the couple has. Pause the song here and it may seem like a very tender moment between the couple; it illustrates the financial struggle that the two are going through and it also provides a potential reason for this struggle. The man in the relationship, still anonymous at this point, is displayed as the negative aspect of the relationship. At this point, all the listener knows is he is missing and he may be squandering money the pair cannot afford to waste, and as soon as her voice fades away a man speaks up he says says, “Get the fuck off of my dick, hoe.” The very first lines of the song prove his feelings towards the girl, but he then compounds the misogyny by saying “Yeah I think you should know that you were under me.”

This type of treatment towards women in the song boldly advertises their place according to the established gender stereotypes of the singer, and it also gives us a glimpse into the type of society that this particular subculture valued. Hegemonic masculinity is a result of three major forces, “larger gender relations, the music industry, and local neighborhood conditions” (Kubrin and Weitzer, 5), with the gender relations and neighborhood conditions point going hand in hand, both working to disempower women. Within the subgroups and neighborhoods where these sexist sentiments still live on, principles that outside society supports are abandoned or ignored completely for the doctrines of the locale. The music industry is no better, as corporations put out demeaning music in response to a “perceived customer demand for stereotypical representations of the ghetto, and specifically of young Black men and women” (Kubrin and Weitzer, 7). While twisted and sadistic, this is the argument supporting the promotion of gender inequality, with the large corporations responding directly to what the people want. I knew that people that thought like this had to have been taught such feelings, and I couldn’t help but wonder at what age this culture indoctrinates its citizens. Towards the end of the first verse, the man in the song says, “A couple of hoes that I’ve been boning since a n**** was only ten / I’m tryna get all up in that pussy…” This worrying display of gender inequality and sexual objectification is a glimpse into broader standards of the society in which the song was written. In 1967 Elliot Liebow conducted an ethnographic study on lower-income black neighborhoods, and he described how “important it was for men to be seen as ‘exploiters of women,’ even if they did not always treat women this way,” and a more recent study found that “exploitation and degradation of young women is still a feature of some inner-city communities today (Kubrin and Weitzer 8-9. This is the type of culture that Joyner Lucas is singing from, a place where society tells him it’s okay to treat women with less respect.

It is not soon after this when four verses reveal this life in the truest way. Each line represents a different attitude, with the first one saying: “I think if I die young they gon miss me too / I think I’ma buy guns maybe empty two.” This first line juxtaposes his own death with a group of anonymous others, placing value on his life but none on the risk of shooting two clips of bullets. This is interesting because it portrays a strong sense of either selfishness or some hyper-inflated sense of importance in this society. The speaker believes, in a deranged sense, that the careless shooting of two guns is something that can be arbitrarily done with no serious repercussions. In the next line he says, “I think I’ma sell drugs to the kids at school / I think I’ma get buzzed if it gets me through.” This is where the community aspect of the song is important, as well as the concept of the “hustler.” If the speaker is ready and willing to give children drugs in school, he places no value on their potential, only their existence as a consumer group. This person is manipulating the youth, taking on the persona of the “hustler,” that being a “generic figure who occupies a central position in the black American ghetto” (Rehn and Sköld 69). This is providing a scenario where the bad things of hustling, selling drugs to children and living under the permanent influence of drug, are placed on a pedestal for listeners to admire.

The next two lines play up this idea of the hustler, saying “I think I’ma need to hide if they know where I live / I think I’ma drink and drive till I total the whip / I think I’ma get high and give her all of the dick / Even if she ain’t mine so she know what it is.” The type of person described here is one acutely lacking in morals, to the point where drunk driving to the extent that it will inevitably end in crashing the car is used in a passive, boastful manner. To amplify that depravity, his projected sexism and the sexual domination men have over women in this society resurfaces when he openly professes having sex with a woman that is declaredly not “his.” This second line puzzles me, because I am not sure whether it refers to a girl that is not openly his, meaning someone not in a relationship with anybody at all, or a girl that is in a relationship, meaning that she would have to cheat to be with the speaker. There is no motivation in these lines other than pure selfishness, and it leaves the reader either in mindless auditory enjoyment, or in deep contemplation of what kind of society promotes this.

As negative as this all may seem, there is a light at the end of tunnel. The final verse says, “My n**** what’s your worst fear? / I been running from the start / Scared to be a man, tryna hustle in the dark / I been livin in the ghetto where the devils pray to God.” There is something to be said here, and the one word to summarize it all is Hope. The callous rapper that has been preaching misogyny and corruption now confesses to being scared of the life he seemingly has no power over. This opens up the possibility that the society on the outside looking in is more ignorant than first thought. That instead of the “hood” being a place of unsalvageable corruption, beneath it all there exists hope. The line “I been livin in the ghetto where the devils pray to God” seems to be especially important. The “devils” that he refers to could be the hustlers, or he could be using devils as a blanket term to give the outside world’s perception of the ghetto. Regardless of which is actually true, the religious aspect of the ghetto and in particular how the citizens of the ghetto view religion may be the culmination of what a subculture hides from mainstream life. For an entire song, which can be loosely transposed upon a life in the ghetto, the rapper talks up like he not only wants but relishes in the life he was given, and now he’s scared and praying to God.

Extending the aforementioned transposition, the rapper acts almost like a manifestation of the “hood” lifestyle. Earlier he talks about being scared, and his statement of being scared plants the idea that the entire time he was just faking it or putting on a front. This proves that all is not lost, and it introduces the idea that the “hustler” isn’t necessarily a moral sink, but a necessary part of a society that uses him to cope with everyday struggle. The idea of hope brought in earlier is now a palpable sensation that brings us back to Shawn Carter. Shawn Carter had hope, he hoped back then to make it out of the ghetto himself, and now instead of being satiated and disappearing that hope has been planted in the hearts of everyone that knows his story. There is hope in entrepreneurship, and even though life in the ghetto is scary hope is not lost. That’s what gets hidden from the outsiders, that ideals are not yet abandoned, and Joyner Lucas’ song is a hypothetical ultrasound into this life.

Bibliography

Link to the lyrics: https://genius.com/Joyner-lucas-ultrasound-lyrics

Sköld, David, and Alf Rehn. “Makin’ It, by Keepin It Real.” Sage Journals. Sage, 1 Feb. 2007. Web. 14 Apr. 2017. <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1059601106294487>.

Weitzer, Ronald, and Charis E. Kubrin. “Misogyny in Rap Music.” Sage Journals. Sage, 19 Feb. 2009. Web. 14 Apr. 2017. <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1097184X08327696>.

Jenks Hehmeyer read this essay

Drew Cohen

4/19/17

English 117 Thorne

Grunge-bob Needs Spare Pants

Might our drive for a better life beyond our reach actually ruin our chances of ever having one?  Now, I don’t mean “better life” in terms of fast cars, solid gold faucets, or cashmere cardigan sleeves tied in knots around our necks as we tour the green.  No, I mean the “greeting every day with a smile on our face” and “happiness without the tender consolation of our bed-pillow” kind of better life.  Stick with me and I’ll show that killing the “grass is greener” pipe dream can make a “job” seem more fulfilling than a “career.”  I can prove that if we’re made comfortable with the idea that settling for less is a legitimately satisfying option, we can be fooled into believing that we would all live happier, more meaningful lives in mediocre dead-end jobs.

This notion seems impossible to the rational, college-educated sector of civilization, especially to a certain well-intentioned, grouchy German named Theodor Adorno, who, with the help of Max Horkheimer, wrote about stagnancy and uniformity in the 1940s after escaping to America from the twisted Third Reich.  

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Adorno criticized the “unending sameness” of industrialized American popular culture and the notion that “nothing is allowed to stay as it was” with technology and innovation, and that this promised that “nothing will change” and “nothing unsuitable will emerge” (Adorno 106).  America’s counterintuitive use of new technology to both keep society from advancing and decrease individual quality of goods justifies Adorno’s frustration: what’s the point of technology if not to improve our daily lives?  To Adorno, our new ability as an industrialized nation to mass-produce anything we see fit is poison to our take on the quality of our lives, and emphasizing minute differences among cultural products of industrialization that are, on the most basic levels, the same, ruins our ability to see what’s really good for us and what’s phony crap.  Is he right about this?

Well, consider the cartoon Spongebob Squarepants.  

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0b/Nickelodeon_SpongeBob_SquarePants_Characters_Cast.png

Our bubbly and optimistic titular sea-sponge’s life is filled with excitement and eye-popping color by his friends, neighbors, and undersea environment in his hometown of Bikini Bottom (note the colorful flower outlines in the “sky” that function as clouds).  The hugely popular cartoon’s creator, Stephen Hillenburg, was noted by Jonah Lee Rice to have said that the show’s characters are “intentionally bizarre and have strange shapes and that they all share the same strangeness” to the explicit purpose that Spongebob “emphasizes sameness among creatures that seem different” (Rice, 2009).  This seems like the classic “unity from diversity” ideology that drives modern liberal mentality, something positive, rather than harmful ideology, derived from a focus on “sameness.”  Viewers see examples of all types of sea life (fish, crustaceans, cephalopods, squirrels in diving suits, even people!) coexisting in an intact, inclusive community without the fish equivalent of racism.  Along these lines, Sean McElwee of Salon.com calls Bikini Bottom a “liberal utopia,” an idealized place not only for the intended child viewers but also for the parents and adults that watch alongside them (McElwee, 2013).  Sandy Cheeks (above mentioned squirrel in diving suit) is a key example of this, portraying a woman who devotes her life to scientific research rather than, as McElwee mentions, “staying at home and cooking for the kids” (McElwee, 2013).  

But like most cartoons, Spongebob incorporates frequent examples of violence ranging from Spongebob and Sandy’s playful love for karate to large-scale destruction of property and massive car wrecks, leading to the inevitable wail of sirens from police cars and/or ambulances.  Countless inconclusive studies have been carried out testing children’s tendencies to mimic the violent behavior seen in cartoons like Spongebob, often with results that contradict other studies’ findings (Kirsh, 2005).  Adorno expresses his own distaste for violence, not in terms of the impact on physical behavior it has, but rather of the humorous response it often receives, calling it cruel that laughter mostly prevails in modern pop culture “when there is nothing to laugh about” (Adorno 112).  Adorno goes so far as to say that in our “wrong society,” laughter is a “sickness infecting happiness and drawing it into society’s worthless totality,” acting as a consolation for a life poorly lived (Adorno 112).  I disagree with this sentiment, and I’ll explain my disagreement by considering Spongebob Squarepants as an example:

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Adorno claims that “laughter about something is laughter at it” in any context (Adorno 112).  There are examples of this anywhere you look, even in Spongebob: characters like the grouchy Squidward Tentacles practically subsist by means of derisive laughter, mostly at Spongebob’s misfortune or misery.  Even some of the more lax characters like Spongebob’s friend Patrick Star laugh at violence on occasion, one case being when Patrick laughs at a character on TV getting hit in the head with a coconut.  Adorno would argue that this laughter “replaces pain … with jovial denial” (Adorno 112).  Derisive laughter is a primary indicator of the exhaustion, dissatisfaction, and lack of fulfillment Adorno blames industrialized culture for.  Squidward, who hates his job at the Krusty Krab, feels the weight of the limitations of his life regularly and is seemingly jealous of Spongebob for his happiness and optimism.  Patrick’s example is more contextual, as his laughter at violence is present after he returns home from a long day at “work” (actually just watching TV) in the episode “Rock-a-Bye Bivalve.”  As Adorno would argue, these characters indulge in this derisive laughter to cope with daily struggle.   

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But this type of laughter is rare and dwarfed significantly by the amount of laughter on the show not necessarily directed at anything or anyone, but rather erupting from the joy of the moment.  The two primary sources of laughter on the show are Spongebob and Patrick: pretty much any time Spongebob isn’t working at the Krusty Krab, he and Patrick are playing games together or catching jellyfish in Jellyfish Fields.  Neither one of them laughs at the other: both laugh simply because of their shared joy.  Studies have shown that associating laughter with interpersonal communication, whether face to face or by device, indicates a higher average level of happiness from both people interacting (Vlahovic et al., 2012).  Spongebob and Patrick’s laughter makes their genuine happiness together clear, and in these cases this laughter is much more similar to carnivalesque laughter, common when considering movies like Jackass.  When carrying out crazy, “ball-busting” antics, such as when Ryan Dunn gets beat up by female world boxing champion Naoko Kumagai, the men of Jackass don’t laugh at Dunn, but rather at the absurdity and joy of the situation.  Much like these Jackass stars (and young children, the two groups likely on the same intellectual plane), Spongebob and Patrick laugh together simply because they’re happy and having “fun,” which Adorno claims, mistakenly in this case, “makes laughter the instrument for cheating happiness” (Adorno 112).  

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But when this laughter is taken away, both Spongebob and Patrick lose that happiness they share.  In the episode “Patrick Smartpants,” a freak accident makes Patrick a genius and he hates his life because he doesn’t find his usual activities fun.  Losing his ability to have fun and laugh with his best friend makes Patrick’s once fulfilling life miserable.  

Adorno would say to this that if losing your ability to laugh makes you unhappy with your life, your life was never fulfilling in the first place.  I see this hearty crock of bullshit and raise one Spongebob Squarepants to meet his claim.  

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Spongebob, aside from being kind, optimistic, and dedicated to his work, is notably unambitious, simply due to having a job he enjoys.  Once he gets his position at the Krusty Krab, Spongebob makes no attempts to work anywhere else or move past his beloved greasy spoon.  Spongebob’s boss, Mr. Krabs, is cheaper than cheap so Spongebob earns minimal salary, but he never once complains about this and is even fine with regularly having his pay docked to solve the “issue of the day” or avoid getting fired.  Squidward often notes on the show that Spongebob has an “abnormal” relationship to his work, and Sean McElwee goes so far as to label Spongebob a “marxist” because of his love for his labor (McElwee, 2013).  But Spongebob’s daily satisfaction is far from Adorno’s “austere” description of joy (Adorno 112).  Spongebob is known worldwide for his nasal, dolphin-like laughter which frequently makes itself known, especially while he’s working. Spongebob finds fulfillment in making Krabby Patties, his happiness marked by his signature laugh.  Interestingly enough, the only time Spongebob ever gets as thoroughly depressed as the times when he (briefly) loses his job is in the episode “Funny Pants,” in which Squidward tricks him into thinking that he’s broken his “laugh box” and can never laugh again.  When Spongebob wakes up the next morning and actually can’t laugh, he shuts himself in his house and cries uncontrollably until the morning after that when Squidward tells him that he was just joking.  

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Spongebob’s laughter is the purest manifestation of his happiness: losing it doesn’t simply expose pre-existing dissatisfaction as Adorno claims, but rather removes Spongebob’s already present satisfaction with his life, which makes laughter the absolute antithesis of Adorno’s claim for him.  Adorno is wrong here, simply because he fails to understand that not all laughter is derisive or malicious – in cases like this, laughter is an expression of satisfaction.

So how can we be tricked into settling for less? Well, children watch Spongebob all around the world and are influenced by this cartoon role model who laughs and plays with his friends just like they do.  Children pay more attention to products in stores that have characters like Spongebob on them, and one study shows that boys aged 6 to 7 tended to choose food items in grocery stores advertised with pictures of Spongebob, even if they’re healthier and less appealing than unhealthy foods (Ogle et al., 2016).  We see Spongebob’s happiness and optimism and want to have the life he has, forgetting that he lives in a literal utopia (and a literal pineapple) and that his life is completely unrealistic – not only because he’s a talking sponge, but also because he can casually be docked a year’s pay and be fine with it.  I mean, we could try to live in a pineapple too – it’s all we could afford on Spongebob’s salary.  Adorno’s incorrect claims about laughter actually make his complete argument worth deeper consideration.  Spongebob, meanwhile, proves that laughter itself can be used to fool us into thinking that settling for subpar pay and treatment is a good option, maybe even the best option for us.  We’re trained to accept unjust labor expectations as long as we love what we do.  We see not even just Spongebob but Squidward also unwilling to actually leave the Krusty Krab for something better.  Meanwhile, Patrick is perfectly content with being unemployed.  Watch any episode of Spongebob Squarepants and tell me whether or not you feel some urge to abandon your current dreams and become a fry-cook as well.  Then, if you will, look up “gelotophobia” and see if you can still look at Spongebob the same way you might have as a child.  In short, Spongebob recreates the world as a child might imagine it: void of financial issues, higher education, and regulation of fair employment standards, but still satisfying and, you know, full of laughter.

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This essay was read by Chloe Henderson.

References

Adorno, T. and Horkheimer, M. (1944). The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.  In T. Adorno and M. Horkheimer.  Dialectics of Enlightenment. Translated by John Cumming.  New York: Herder and Herder, 1972.

Kirsh, S.J. (2005), Cartoon Violence and Aggression in Youth. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 11: 547-557.

McElwee, Sean.  “Spongebob Squarepants is a Marxist!” Salon.com. 14 November 2013. http://www.salon.com/2013/11/14/spongebob_squarepants_is_a_marxist/.  Accessed 15 April 2017.

Ogle, A.D., Graham, D.J., Lucas-Thompson, R.G. and Roberto, C.A. (2016), Influence of Cartoon Media Characters on Children’s Attention to and Preference for Food and Beverage Products. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 117: 265-270.

Rice, J. L. (2009), SpongeBob SquarePants: Pop Culture Tsunami or More?. The Journal of Popular Culture, 42: 1092–1114.

Vlahovic, T. A., Roberts, S. and Dunbar, R. (2012), Effects of Duration and Laughter on Subjective Happiness Within Different Modes of Communication. J Comput-Mediat Comm, 17: 436–450.

Chloe Henderson 

April 19, 2017

English 117 Professor Thorne

Your Not-So-Ordinary Culture

“You can be whoever you want to be.” I don’t know about you, but I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard this. That’s probably because, quite frankly, I am a middle class white girl attending an elite college in the northeast, and I am lucky enough that I probably can be whoever I want to be. But that’s not so true for everybody. And it’s not so ordinary for everybody to hear. Although growing up we often hear about this so-called “American Dream” in high school history classes, in politician’s hopeful yet ingenuine campaign speeches, and in countless CNN articles, for most people the American Dream is quite literally just that – a dream, far fetched and far flung, and it has been for a while now. I’m not just talking about who you can become for your career because I think everyone knows that not everyone is lucky enough to be able to pursue their dream career. I’m talking about culture. I’m talking about what you get to do on a Friday night and how you get to live the rest of the week. I’m talking about why your culture is not so ordinary.

Yes, culture is ordinary in the sense that everybody belongs to, contributes to, and has their own culture (even a lack of culture could be considered a culture in itself). But the type of culture you identify with and are exposed to is greatly dependent on the thickness of your wallet. So although theoretically everybody has access to culture in the same way they have access to gaining wealth by pursuing the so-called “American Dream,” like money, culture isn’t as accessible to everybody as it claims to be, thereby making culture out of the ordinary. Just as there is an elite, middle, and lower class of economic status, so too there is an elite, middle, and lower class of culture. Take for example the beloved 1970s television series, The Waltons, based on the lower class life of author Earl Hamner. The series follows the life of the Walton family growing up during the Great Depression working on their family sawmill in the small rural town of Walton’s Mountain, Virginia in the Blue Ridge Mountains. During each episode, the connection between income and culture becomes undoubtedly clear. In the home of two grandparents, two parents, and seven children, the family’s poverty is not only a central theme of the series, but also a testament to the influence of their family’s income on their culture.

The Waltons live the simple life of a farm family, growing most of their own food, getting milk from their cow and eggs from their chickens, sewing their own clothes, building their own furniture, and sacrificing one thing for another – often manual labor in exchange for goods, such as when the eldest son, JohnBoy, works for a family in exchange for their car. The family has a radio, but is “too poor to have a telephone” nor can they afford other luxuries such as a typewriter or even shoes for the children (until later on in the series after saving money however). The wealthy life of a pair of older single sisters living together down the road from the Waltons is often used to contrast the culture of wealth versus poverty in The Waltons. The affluent sisters wear extravagant clothes for ordinary occasions – diamonds around their necks, feathers in their hair, and elegant dresses – and display their wealth in their home with their decorative lavish portraits, chandeliers, books, record player, and furniture. This greatly contrasts the simple home of the Waltons which has only necessary furniture, utensils, and the occasional decor here or there. The simplicity of their rural life is their culture. And just like any other family, their culture is their income.

One of the most prominent examples of the Waltons family culture is their free time. When they aren’t cleaning, cooking, building furniture, sawing wood, taking care of the children, or fixing things up around the house to make ends meet, the family spends their free time gathered around the radio listening to Franklin D. Roosevelt, playing music with each other, playing games, or walking to the nearby grocery store to buy a strip of licorice Once in awhile when there is an event in town such as a carnival or the local fair, the family will go out, but for the most part, their free time – and thereby some of their culture – is simple and spent at home because of their limited income. Their culture is their money – or lack thereof. For
example, the mother and father of the Waltons family could never afford to go on a honeymoon, so after nineteen years of marriage at a time when they were exhausted and overworked, Grandpa sells his beloved 1864 two cent piece for $20 to the local store, so that Momma and Daddy can take a short-lasted day trip to the beach as their honeymoon. Unlike other families that might travel frequently, the Waltons rarely ever take trips outside of Walton’s Mountain simply because they can’t afford it. Traveling isn’t a part of their culture because neither is a large income. Whereas if the Waltons had more money and were able to travel more, they would have access to wealthier culture. But since they can’t travel freely because of their financial limitations, not all culture is ordinary because it is restricted by economic class.

In 1958 a novelist and critic named Raymond Williams argued that “culture is ordinary” because “every human society has its own shape, its own purposes, its own meanings” (4). However, what Williams fails to recognize in his essay is that not all culture is ordinary because not all culture is accessible to everyone, like high class culture isn’t accessible for the Waltons. Using the example of a high-cultured pretentious tea shop in Oxford compared to his culture as a child growing up in a small farming valley in Wales, Williams argues that culture isn’t restricted to the elite because everyone has their own culture based on their “new observations, comparisons, and meanings,” (4). However, Williams fails to consider that culture is not ordinary because even though everybody has their own culture, not everybody has access to another culture they might want to be a part of. What makes you different from me or anybody else for that matter is the sum of your experiences, which have undoubtedly been influenced by your access, or lack of access, to money. I’m not saying that your values and personality are dependent on your money, because you can’t buy your beliefs. But what I am saying is that your culture depends on your money, chiefly on your access to it. Money is culture, and your money is what makes your culture more or less ordinary.

According to another theory entitled Lewis’s model, there is a “culture of poverty” that “once it comes into existence it tends to perpetuate itself from generation to generation because of its effect on the children… they have usually absorbed the basic values and attitudes of their subculture and are not psychologically geared to take full advantage of changing conditions or increased opportunities which may occur in their lifetime.” (Carmon, 404) Just like Grandpa in The Waltons has “been living in poverty for so long, [he] wouldn’t know how to get along in any other neighborhood.” Lewis’s model also suggested that there are shared personality traits among poor families, such as low self-esteem, pessimism, and loneliness (Carmon, 404). So not only is culture separated by economic class, but it is also perpetuated throughout generations and also has some effect on personality. Even though we would like to think of America as equal among all classes and cultures, it isn’t because there is an elite and middle class. But, there are similar values that trickle down from the elite class to the lower class such as the importance of education, religion, and morals.

Although we might hope that everyone has equal opportunity to become highly educated, poverty hinders this possibility. Neither of the grandparents nor the parents in The Waltons went to college, but they hope to provide this opportunity to their children. The eldest son earns a scholarship to study journalism at  University while another son puts himself through music school by playing piano at the local bar. The eldest daughter becomes a doctor and can afford medical school since her husband is already a doctor, and another daughter puts herself through business school by working as the secretary at the school. Meanwhile for the other three children, college is not an option and they pursue blue-collar jobs as mechanics or for the youngest daughter, as a housewife. Although many of the children pursue higher education, that is not to say that it was easily accessible to them. All of the children in college worked part time jobs while studying to afford their education while their family at home sacrifices financial security and was constantly worried about money. For example, for their eldest son’s high school graduation present, the Walton family gave
him a suit, but when their cow passed away unexpectedly, JohnBoy had to sell his suit to buy a new cow for the family so they have food on the table. Additionally, when the tire on the family’s car flattens, a younger son sacrifices his puppies to sell in order to get the car tire fixed. So although education may seem ordinary in that most of the Walton children study beyond high school, it is extraordinarily hard for them and their family because of their low economic status. This is equally true today. According to Census Bureau data from 2013, 78.5% of students from high income
families enroll in two or four year institutions. Whereas 63.8% of students from middle income families enroll in the same institutions. However, only 45.5% of students from low income families enroll in these academic institutions (American Council on Education, 2015). The disparity in educational opportunities for students from low, middle, and upper income families is evidence that culture is not ordinary.

Although their family encourages them to pursue their educations, the Walton children aren’t always greeted with such optimism by others who see a more realistic future for the poor children. Take for example the episode titled, The Prophecy. In the beginning of this episode, the main character and eldest son of the Walton family who attends Boatwright University on an academic scholarship, is greeted by a professor who hits him hard with a pessimistic, yet realistic truth for the Walton boy’s future as a professional writer. The professor claims that “only half a dozen [people] could support themselves as writers alone… so if you want to be an author and eat two or three times every day, there’s only one way to do it: marry money.” In this scene, the Walton’s economic status and their eldest son’s reality is exposed – his access to pursuing his dream career and culture is crippled by his poor background and lack of access to high culture. Because he doesn’t have the money to sustain himself as a writer alone (according to this professor) and since he hasn’t been exposed to high culture to have the connections to get published, the odds are stacked against JohnBoy to successfully become a writer, once again proving that culture, in the sense of career options, is not ordinary. Religion, on the other hand is a different story.

A large part of the Walton’s culture is their religion. And in this sense, yes, their culture is ordinary because they, just like any other economic class, have faith. Religion is one exception to my claim that culture is not ordinary because religion is universally accessible to everybody. Unlike other forms of culture such as art, education, customs, music, and traditions, you don’t need anything or anyone else to have religion. You have complete control over your beliefs just as the Waltons do; the mother is extremely religious – she prays every night before supper and before bed, attends church every Sunday, and frequently references God and the Bible but at the same time the father is rather atheist. The complete control over their beliefs is the antithesis of the little choice they have over the other aspects of their culture because of their low income. In an article from his book, International Review for the History of Religion, scholar Jakob De Roover argues that religion is universal across cultures and across time periods. De Roover claims that “all cultures have their ‘own’ religions; these also consist of sets of metaphysical beliefs; their practices are expressions of such beliefs; their ethics revolve around norms and values…While there is variety to the content of their beliefs, practices, norms, and laws, what remains invariant is the formal structure of such societies,” (2). This “invariant” structure is the presence of an individual’s beliefs. The fact that your beliefs are your religion and beliefs are constant across classes and culture does make religion ordinary, but not all of your culture.

Culture is not ordinary because neither is money and, let’s face it, your culture is your money. Try looking up the the ritual for newborn babies in India which is a hope to bring prosperity to the family and then tell me then if you still think culture is so ordinary. Or at least if you think an elite culture would do the same. And to that I say goodnight.

This essay was read by Drew Cohen.

References

American Council on Education (2015, November 05). Where Have All the Low-Income Students Gone? Retrieved April 17, 2017, from http://higheredtoday.org/2015/11/25/where-have-all-the-low-income-students-gone/

Carmon, N. (1985). Poverty and Culture: Empirical Evidence and Implications for Public Policy(4th ed., Vol. 28, Pg. 403-417). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

De Roover, J. (2014). NVMEN, International Review for the History of Religion (Vol. 61). Leiden: Brill.

McGreevey, J., & Hamner, E. (Writers). (1972, September 14). The Waltons [Television series episode]. In The Waltons. Los Angeles, California: CBS.

Williams, R. (1958). Raymond Williams on culture and society: essential writings. London: Sage.

“The more people identify with the dominant images of need, the less they understand their own lives and their own desires. The spectacle’s estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual’s gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him.”
― Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle