Mr. Wicher and Precious have a bizarre relationship. Though both characters share little screen time together, the few pages where they do interact with one another explore a unique dynamic, with malleable Precious fulfilling the noble savage stereotype to Mr. Wicher's cultured European.
For a child like Precious, who wants little more than to "change my seat to the front of the class," one would assume she'd be something of a teacher's pet, trying her best to please Mr. Wicher by whatever means necessary. Of course, assumptions don't even work for the status quo, which is definitely something Precious doesn't belong to. What the audience sees instead is a combination between classroom enforcer, willing but unable learner, brown-noser, and adversarial disruption. She creates a classroom persona around her intensely mercurial emotions. How many students could one second claim to confront the teacher angrily - "his face is red, he is shaking" - to genuinely exclaiming "shut up mutherfuckers I'm trying to learn something" to her classmates moments afterwards? It seems like most of the moments in Precious' math class are equally full of these dualities. "Mr. Wicher look at me confuse but grateful," says Precious, proudly, after "keeping those rowdy niggers in line" during math class. It's behavior more fitting for a warzone than a math classroom. Furthermore, Precious elaborates her defined role within Mr. Wicher's classroom to the audience by saying she's "like the polices for Mr. Wicher, I keep law and order," and of course, here is where the reality lines start to blur together. "I like him, I pretend he is my husband and we live somewhere in Wesschesser, wherever that is," muses Precious. Although Mr. Wicher "don't come to school looking like some of those nasty ass teachers," it is probably incredibly odd to the audience to imagine a teenage girl attaching herself to a math teacher who isn't particularly attractive-looking instead of someone like, say, (generic choices ahead) Brad Pitt or Orlando Bloom or some other hunk-of-the-month seen on the covers of girl-mags. What's most interesting to me, though, is that Precious makes no remarks about the physical attractiveness of any of the (admittedly few) male characters she comes in contact with throughout Push. For a teenager living in an increasingly image-based society, it's not only expected but even encouraged peerwise to make remarks about hot guys or people she'd love to crassly fuck, but she shows little signs of real shallowness. She justs wants a man to love her, regardless of what they may look like. It's touching and realistic, as depressed people generally lack an interest in sex, if a little jarring to an audience expecting to read the equivalent to a rambling teenybopper's diary throughout Push.
According to Precious, Mr. Wicher says she "has an aptitude for maff." This is confusing. Is Mr. Wicher mistaking Precious' class enforcer role for "maff" skills? Doubtful. Does he just feel bad for the girl, like he owes Precious some blase compliments in return for protecting him? I mean, pardon the excessive vanity of my language and everything, but how the hell does Mr. Wicher know Precious has any latent math talents if all she does, by her own admission, is sit down and shut up in class? Precious doesn't even recall the last time she wrote anything down the first time Miz Rain asks the class to keep a journal in Each One Teach One. In fact, she panics - she cries, wondering if she even belongs in Miz Rain's class because she can't do nearly everyone else can. Mr. Wicher really doesn't know Precious. He doesn't know Precious at all beyond whatever front she chooses to present in class that particular day. These empty compliments are all said to placate her, a "troubled student," from interrupting his teaching, and it's a common affront I absolutely have an issue with. Mr. Wicher is an enabler. Mr. Wicher leads her on. Mr. Wicher is just like all of the other professionals who have failed Precious, only his special brand of caring but not really caring comes in "a dope suit." I find it fitting that Sapphire chose to make a Mr. Wicher a male instead of female character, like the rest of the more important characters in Push, to illustrate how Precious' - and on an even grander scale, any "problem childs'" - welfare falls not on just one sex, one gender identity, one parent, nor one ethnicity. Blaming the mother? Well, what about the teacher who pity-passed a struggling student because he was too lazy to help out, or the counselor who didn't intervene when she knew a client was being beaten by her father? These parties are all equally responsible for passing the child's problem on to another person. It should be everyone's burden to bare, because it does take a village to raise a child - as well as a village destroy one unequivocally.
Showing posts with label Push. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Push. Show all posts
Friday, April 8, 2011
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Dear Mr. Fantasy
Precious' life is as fantastical as her name would suggest. She's married to a white math teacher, lives in Westchester, is well-loved by both of her parents, and lights up the Apollo Theater as the best dancer the venue has ever seen. Of course, none of this is actually real. It all takes place inside her head.
I was struck immediately by the allegorical comparisons Sapphire creates between rape and dancing. Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz," a famous poem which compares a father's abuse of his son to a dance, a waltz, where the father's "whiskey stained breath" clings to his son like fists choking the life out of the child, runs paralellel to Push. Sapphire's uses Roethke's imagery and comparisons, that of a child retreating into a dance-like fantasy whenever they are abused by their father, throughout much of her novel. "Then I change stations, change bodies. I be dancing in videos! In movies! I be breaking, fly just a dancin'! Uhm humm heating up the stage at the Apollo for Doug E. Fresh or Al B. Shure. They love me! Say I'm one of the best dancers ain' no doubt of or about that!" However, unlike "My Papa's Waltz," which humanizes the father to some extent so we can understand why he is so abusive towards his child, none of this is present in Push. Instead, the audience is shown a father who basks in sleazy dualities. Dad compliments Precious (if it can be called a 'compliment') with "I'm gonna marry you," only to follow it up with "you as wide as the Mississppi" in the same sentence. Precious doesn't only retreat into fantasy when her father rapes her, either, as seen when she is "walking down Lennox when bad thoughts hit me I space out" to her first day at Each One Teach One. Additionally, fantasy is one of the few ways Precious copes with what she feels is a lack of intelligence - a disconnect from normalcy - on her part.
"Push the button, stupid, I tell myself. I push the button; I'm not stupid, I tell myself." There is abundant indecisiveness in nearly all of Precious' actions and reactions. Precious is shown projectig the same "mixed signals" her father thrusts onto her; it's all portrayed as a cyclical experience. Her self-image is topsy-turvy; she is at once confident and tough, but uncertain and vulnerable at the same time. In contrast to Precious' near-bullying attitude in Mr. Wicher's class, her reflections regarding her father - or lack thereof, really - approach gingerly stated levels of regret, uncertainty, and misunderstanding. "If he did he would I was like a white girl, a /real/ person, inside," muses Precious, noting how her father cares little for his daughter beyond shallow sexual gratification. Additionally, the 'white girl' symbolism, the dualities between black and white, is a repeated theme in Push. Although Precious boastingly says she believes Louis Farrakhan's stance that "crackers is the cause of everything bad," her actions, even the majority of her words, signal an altogether different (as well as confusing) opinion. While doting upon Mr. Wicher, she curses out Mrs. Lichenstein, for seemingly arbitrary reasons. To Precious, Mrs. Lichenstein is a "fat-ass bitch" irregardless of her being one of the few professionals who expresses an interest in helping her. It doesn't matter; what I noticed about Precious is her tendency to lash out at most of the women in her life, aggressively and defensively tossing around words like "bitch," "cunt bucket", and "whore" without consideration. With a mother like hers, should he even have a high opinion of other women in general? White men are barely even addressed throughout the book, but white women? At every turn. White women, black women, Jewish women, Spanish women; excepting the Spanish nurse who delivered Mongo, Carl, and Mr. Wicher, there is no such thing as a male presence in Push. Precious constantly makes demeaning remarks regarding how light-skinned certain black women are, especially in relation to the nurses at the hospital and her psychiatrist. Sapphire intentionally made nearly all of the characters in Push female. In addition to giving herself freedom to explore women's issues amongst African-Americans in Push, the all-female cast centralizes Push's main concepts - gender, incest, rape, racism - onto a singular, funneled identity. It serves to make the novel more easily digestible (i.e. more enjoyable for men who prefer not reading about "women's issues") as a whole. A more male viewpoint is given through Jermaine who, while a lamentingly underdeveloped character, stands out as a deviant amongst the cast appearance and personality-wise. Gender and ethnicity are two of the few aspects to Precious, her "black queen" self, which she can be unquestioningly proud of, while an ethnically-charged inferiority complex towards her intelligence guides much of Precious' other interactions with the rest of the world: Miz Rain, the principal, Mr. Wicher, her classmates. Sapphire tastefully captures the whirlwind reactions minorities may feel towards the majority like the author has experienced significant racial prejudice herself. I say tastefully, because Sapphire doesn't take the easy out and make her main character an Uncle Tom, or on the opposite end of the spectrum, a carbon copy of Louis Farrakhan's draconian politics, a follower. Precious is complex: while in the beginning doubt is integral to her character - awkward moments in Mr. Wicher's class, such as "his face is red, he is shaking, I back off, I have won, I /guess/" when she challenges the teacher - she begins to grow independence while in Each One Teach One. "I look at Miz Teacher's long, dreadlocky hair, look kinda nice but kinda nasty too," says Precious, initially with learned distaste until she quickly follows the statement up with the open-ended "I don't know how I feel about people with hair like that." In any one else such an unsure attitude would signal a lack of conviction or at worst, extreme flightiness, it's a much more meaningful action coming from Precious, to break away from her mother's coercive brainwashing, and a step in the right direction.
I was struck immediately by the allegorical comparisons Sapphire creates between rape and dancing. Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz," a famous poem which compares a father's abuse of his son to a dance, a waltz, where the father's "whiskey stained breath" clings to his son like fists choking the life out of the child, runs paralellel to Push. Sapphire's uses Roethke's imagery and comparisons, that of a child retreating into a dance-like fantasy whenever they are abused by their father, throughout much of her novel. "Then I change stations, change bodies. I be dancing in videos! In movies! I be breaking, fly just a dancin'! Uhm humm heating up the stage at the Apollo for Doug E. Fresh or Al B. Shure. They love me! Say I'm one of the best dancers ain' no doubt of or about that!" However, unlike "My Papa's Waltz," which humanizes the father to some extent so we can understand why he is so abusive towards his child, none of this is present in Push. Instead, the audience is shown a father who basks in sleazy dualities. Dad compliments Precious (if it can be called a 'compliment') with "I'm gonna marry you," only to follow it up with "you as wide as the Mississppi" in the same sentence. Precious doesn't only retreat into fantasy when her father rapes her, either, as seen when she is "walking down Lennox when bad thoughts hit me I space out" to her first day at Each One Teach One. Additionally, fantasy is one of the few ways Precious copes with what she feels is a lack of intelligence - a disconnect from normalcy - on her part.
"Push the button, stupid, I tell myself. I push the button; I'm not stupid, I tell myself." There is abundant indecisiveness in nearly all of Precious' actions and reactions. Precious is shown projectig the same "mixed signals" her father thrusts onto her; it's all portrayed as a cyclical experience. Her self-image is topsy-turvy; she is at once confident and tough, but uncertain and vulnerable at the same time. In contrast to Precious' near-bullying attitude in Mr. Wicher's class, her reflections regarding her father - or lack thereof, really - approach gingerly stated levels of regret, uncertainty, and misunderstanding. "If he did he would I was like a white girl, a /real/ person, inside," muses Precious, noting how her father cares little for his daughter beyond shallow sexual gratification. Additionally, the 'white girl' symbolism, the dualities between black and white, is a repeated theme in Push. Although Precious boastingly says she believes Louis Farrakhan's stance that "crackers is the cause of everything bad," her actions, even the majority of her words, signal an altogether different (as well as confusing) opinion. While doting upon Mr. Wicher, she curses out Mrs. Lichenstein, for seemingly arbitrary reasons. To Precious, Mrs. Lichenstein is a "fat-ass bitch" irregardless of her being one of the few professionals who expresses an interest in helping her. It doesn't matter; what I noticed about Precious is her tendency to lash out at most of the women in her life, aggressively and defensively tossing around words like "bitch," "cunt bucket", and "whore" without consideration. With a mother like hers, should he even have a high opinion of other women in general? White men are barely even addressed throughout the book, but white women? At every turn. White women, black women, Jewish women, Spanish women; excepting the Spanish nurse who delivered Mongo, Carl, and Mr. Wicher, there is no such thing as a male presence in Push. Precious constantly makes demeaning remarks regarding how light-skinned certain black women are, especially in relation to the nurses at the hospital and her psychiatrist. Sapphire intentionally made nearly all of the characters in Push female. In addition to giving herself freedom to explore women's issues amongst African-Americans in Push, the all-female cast centralizes Push's main concepts - gender, incest, rape, racism - onto a singular, funneled identity. It serves to make the novel more easily digestible (i.e. more enjoyable for men who prefer not reading about "women's issues") as a whole. A more male viewpoint is given through Jermaine who, while a lamentingly underdeveloped character, stands out as a deviant amongst the cast appearance and personality-wise. Gender and ethnicity are two of the few aspects to Precious, her "black queen" self, which she can be unquestioningly proud of, while an ethnically-charged inferiority complex towards her intelligence guides much of Precious' other interactions with the rest of the world: Miz Rain, the principal, Mr. Wicher, her classmates. Sapphire tastefully captures the whirlwind reactions minorities may feel towards the majority like the author has experienced significant racial prejudice herself. I say tastefully, because Sapphire doesn't take the easy out and make her main character an Uncle Tom, or on the opposite end of the spectrum, a carbon copy of Louis Farrakhan's draconian politics, a follower. Precious is complex: while in the beginning doubt is integral to her character - awkward moments in Mr. Wicher's class, such as "his face is red, he is shaking, I back off, I have won, I /guess/" when she challenges the teacher - she begins to grow independence while in Each One Teach One. "I look at Miz Teacher's long, dreadlocky hair, look kinda nice but kinda nasty too," says Precious, initially with learned distaste until she quickly follows the statement up with the open-ended "I don't know how I feel about people with hair like that." In any one else such an unsure attitude would signal a lack of conviction or at worst, extreme flightiness, it's a much more meaningful action coming from Precious, to break away from her mother's coercive brainwashing, and a step in the right direction.
Monday, April 4, 2011
The queerest of the queer.
Boys in the girls room
Girls in the men's room
You free your mind in your androgyny
Boys in the parlor
They're getting harder
I'll free your mind and your androgyny
No sweeter a taste that you could find
Than fruit hanging ripe upon the vine
There's never been an oyster so divine
A river deep that never runs dry
The birds and bees they hum along
Like treasures they twinkle in the sun
Get on board and have some fun
Take what you need to turn you on
Behind closed doors and under stars
It doesn't matter where you are
Collecting jewels that catch your eye
Don't let a soul mate pass you by
Garbage - "Androgyny"
The 1980s was an androgynous renaissance: Annie Lennox rocked a crew cut better than most men on daytime MTV, enormous shoulder pads were in, the pageboy dominated, and a defiant Grace Jones blended gender mores to a distorted paste in mainstream films like Conan the Destroyer and A View To A Kill. Although published in 1996, Push is set during the 1980s, and infused with a strong relevance to the time period it lives through. Push is as a much a product of the era it swims in as it is a testament to the intolerance which overwhelmed 1980s popular culture.
Precious is unquestioningly the novel's main character, but what about her classmates at the alternative school? While one of my biggest gripes over Sapphire's novel is the stifling lack of detail given to characters other than Precious, Mama, and Miss Rain, this could have been done on purpose. Rita, Consuelo, Jermaine - these characters are all carbon outlines for the audience to fill in however they wish. However, with all of the classmates and their unique (if underdeveloped) personalities taken into consideration, it is Jermaine who I find the most interesting and substantial. Jermaine is first described by Precious as a "a girl my color in boy suit, look like some kinda butch." It's a minimal but evocative description. Perhaps intentionally, Sapphire's self-portrait on the back of the book's jacket was the first image that popped into my head here. Between the angular, squared-off haircut and jagged expression Sapphire even looks like a dead ringer for the aforementioned Grace Jones. I would not be surprised if Sapphire inserted herself the novel as a composite of both Miss Rain and Jermaine, using distinct parts of her personality to embody these two characters. It would certainly complement the duality-heavy characters found in all of the readings we have analyzed in our class so far. Each character represents two sides of the lesbian stereotype: the butch, male-aversive Jermaine - she responds with a blunt "good" when Consuelo makes the observation that there "ain' no guys in our class" - versus the "straight-acting" lipstick lesbian embodied by Blue Rain. However, Blue Rain is by no means a 'weak' character. For example, she has no problem reasoning against Precious' homophobia when the latter expresses her Louis Farrakhan-informed prejudice: "Miz Rain say Farrakhan is jive anti-Semitic, homophobic fool." Finally, Blue Rain attempts to even change Precious' attitudes through calm reasoning, a move that is somewhat successful thanks to Precious' respect for her teacher. "Ms Rain say homos not who rape, not homos who let me sit up not learn for sixteen years, not homos who sell crack fuck Harlem. It's true. Ms Rain the one who put the chalk in my hand, make me queen of the ABCs." Unlike the relatively foppish gay and lesbian characters portrayed throughout mainstream media, Sapphire's Blue Rain is confident, strong, and intensely passionate. She doesn't resort to meekly backing into a corner nor violence when her personality comes into question. Considering the rampant ignorance and prejudice surrounding the LBGT community during the early 1990s, when "Precious" was written, Miss Rain is a rare mainstream example of a positive lesbian role model.
Though the audience learns enough about Jermaine from the character herself, it is through Precious' observations on her classmate which sheds the most light on androgyny, sexuality, and mainstream attitudes towards the two controversial ideas, especially in relation to the novel's time period. In fact, Precious has a strong aversion to Jermaine from the beginning, when she moves away from the woman when her lesbianism is thrown out into the open because Precious "don't want no one getting the wrong idea about /me/. To Precious, lesbianism is "freaky deaky," and even though her and Jermaine are the same color, they are not (and might never be) on the same plane of existence: "We about the same color but I think thas all we got the same. I is /all/ girl. Don't know here." There is a sense of learned elitism Precious extols towards Jermaine solely due to the latter's sexuality and aesthetic; it's ironic considering Precious has an extreme inferiority complex as far as almost anything else is concerned, owing to her abusive upbringing. Sapphire, who is bisexual herself, uses Precious' ignorance allegorically to represent the prejudice deviant sexualities faced in the 80s . Likewise, this same ignorance is used by Sapphire to point out and criticize the discrimination African-Americans exhibit towards people of their own ethnicity. Sapphire even wishes she had a "light-skinned" boyfriend throughout the novel, indicating there are certain shades of all-inclusive prejudice directed /towards/ blacks, /from/ blacks. On an wider scale, Precious' attitudes are essentially a microcosm for the rest of the world's behavior towards the LBGT community.
An early insight into Jermaine's character comes through in Precious' observation over the androgynous character's name. "Jermaine, which I don't have to tell you is a /boy's/ name, say, "It's who you know and I know too many people in the Bronx baby." Names are an exceedingly important component to one's self-identity. Is Jermaine even her real name? Sapphire keeps this ambiguous. Ultimately the audience has no idea, because even Jermaine's story at the end of the book mentions nothing about how she was named. Furthermore, her full name is Jermaine Hicks. It's an ironic last name; I don't really need to point out why (Jermaine's distaste for "honkies", an integral part to her character, as she so often reminds the audience, plays a big part in the blackly humorous but subtle wordplay over her name), but let me just say that with a surname like that, I could certainly understand why she might have changed her first name.
Girls in the men's room
You free your mind in your androgyny
Boys in the parlor
They're getting harder
I'll free your mind and your androgyny
No sweeter a taste that you could find
Than fruit hanging ripe upon the vine
There's never been an oyster so divine
A river deep that never runs dry
The birds and bees they hum along
Like treasures they twinkle in the sun
Get on board and have some fun
Take what you need to turn you on
Behind closed doors and under stars
It doesn't matter where you are
Collecting jewels that catch your eye
Don't let a soul mate pass you by
Garbage - "Androgyny"
The 1980s was an androgynous renaissance: Annie Lennox rocked a crew cut better than most men on daytime MTV, enormous shoulder pads were in, the pageboy dominated, and a defiant Grace Jones blended gender mores to a distorted paste in mainstream films like Conan the Destroyer and A View To A Kill. Although published in 1996, Push is set during the 1980s, and infused with a strong relevance to the time period it lives through. Push is as a much a product of the era it swims in as it is a testament to the intolerance which overwhelmed 1980s popular culture.
Precious is unquestioningly the novel's main character, but what about her classmates at the alternative school? While one of my biggest gripes over Sapphire's novel is the stifling lack of detail given to characters other than Precious, Mama, and Miss Rain, this could have been done on purpose. Rita, Consuelo, Jermaine - these characters are all carbon outlines for the audience to fill in however they wish. However, with all of the classmates and their unique (if underdeveloped) personalities taken into consideration, it is Jermaine who I find the most interesting and substantial. Jermaine is first described by Precious as a "a girl my color in boy suit, look like some kinda butch." It's a minimal but evocative description. Perhaps intentionally, Sapphire's self-portrait on the back of the book's jacket was the first image that popped into my head here. Between the angular, squared-off haircut and jagged expression Sapphire even looks like a dead ringer for the aforementioned Grace Jones. I would not be surprised if Sapphire inserted herself the novel as a composite of both Miss Rain and Jermaine, using distinct parts of her personality to embody these two characters. It would certainly complement the duality-heavy characters found in all of the readings we have analyzed in our class so far. Each character represents two sides of the lesbian stereotype: the butch, male-aversive Jermaine - she responds with a blunt "good" when Consuelo makes the observation that there "ain' no guys in our class" - versus the "straight-acting" lipstick lesbian embodied by Blue Rain. However, Blue Rain is by no means a 'weak' character. For example, she has no problem reasoning against Precious' homophobia when the latter expresses her Louis Farrakhan-informed prejudice: "Miz Rain say Farrakhan is jive anti-Semitic, homophobic fool." Finally, Blue Rain attempts to even change Precious' attitudes through calm reasoning, a move that is somewhat successful thanks to Precious' respect for her teacher. "Ms Rain say homos not who rape, not homos who let me sit up not learn for sixteen years, not homos who sell crack fuck Harlem. It's true. Ms Rain the one who put the chalk in my hand, make me queen of the ABCs." Unlike the relatively foppish gay and lesbian characters portrayed throughout mainstream media, Sapphire's Blue Rain is confident, strong, and intensely passionate. She doesn't resort to meekly backing into a corner nor violence when her personality comes into question. Considering the rampant ignorance and prejudice surrounding the LBGT community during the early 1990s, when "Precious" was written, Miss Rain is a rare mainstream example of a positive lesbian role model.
Though the audience learns enough about Jermaine from the character herself, it is through Precious' observations on her classmate which sheds the most light on androgyny, sexuality, and mainstream attitudes towards the two controversial ideas, especially in relation to the novel's time period. In fact, Precious has a strong aversion to Jermaine from the beginning, when she moves away from the woman when her lesbianism is thrown out into the open because Precious "don't want no one getting the wrong idea about /me/. To Precious, lesbianism is "freaky deaky," and even though her and Jermaine are the same color, they are not (and might never be) on the same plane of existence: "We about the same color but I think thas all we got the same. I is /all/ girl. Don't know here." There is a sense of learned elitism Precious extols towards Jermaine solely due to the latter's sexuality and aesthetic; it's ironic considering Precious has an extreme inferiority complex as far as almost anything else is concerned, owing to her abusive upbringing. Sapphire, who is bisexual herself, uses Precious' ignorance allegorically to represent the prejudice deviant sexualities faced in the 80s . Likewise, this same ignorance is used by Sapphire to point out and criticize the discrimination African-Americans exhibit towards people of their own ethnicity. Sapphire even wishes she had a "light-skinned" boyfriend throughout the novel, indicating there are certain shades of all-inclusive prejudice directed /towards/ blacks, /from/ blacks. On an wider scale, Precious' attitudes are essentially a microcosm for the rest of the world's behavior towards the LBGT community.
An early insight into Jermaine's character comes through in Precious' observation over the androgynous character's name. "Jermaine, which I don't have to tell you is a /boy's/ name, say, "It's who you know and I know too many people in the Bronx baby." Names are an exceedingly important component to one's self-identity. Is Jermaine even her real name? Sapphire keeps this ambiguous. Ultimately the audience has no idea, because even Jermaine's story at the end of the book mentions nothing about how she was named. Furthermore, her full name is Jermaine Hicks. It's an ironic last name; I don't really need to point out why (Jermaine's distaste for "honkies", an integral part to her character, as she so often reminds the audience, plays a big part in the blackly humorous but subtle wordplay over her name), but let me just say that with a surname like that, I could certainly understand why she might have changed her first name.
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