Girl Interrupted, Society Protected

The Postmodern movement criticizes the liberal search for absolute truth and homogeneous society. Bataille's “Heterology” concludes that most societies distinguish between qualities that are beneficial to the society and qualities that are not, favoring the former. Foucalt’s “Discipline and Punish” proposes that power is enforced throughout society by means of coercion and also by means of civil institutions such as schools, hospitals, churches, and even families. Derrida's “Differance” argues that because all things contain traces of all that they are not, there is no absolute. All these essays cause us to question social norms and authority. Together, they can be used to analyze a scene from a movie that may be telling much more than the story of a misguided teenage girl.

In Girl, Interrupted, Susana Kaysen is sent to Claymoore Mental Institution after having an affair with the husband of a family friend, although she seems completely in control her behaviors. Nonetheless, after a brief interview, her doctor sentences her to two years in the institution where she meets various different personalities that undermine social norms and authority. This scene from the movie demonstrates the way that hospitals function to protect and enforce social norms regardless of its effects on its subjects.




First, it is important that Susan Kaysen is a sane person who has been mislabeled as insane. Through her eyes, viewers are shown that the system of judging patients is fallible, perhaps reflecting that authority itself is fallible. We can deconstruct authority using Derrida’s “Differance” to show that authority is not authority and is not infallible. Furthermore, we can take the actions of both Susan and Lisa to support what Foucalt argues in “Discipline and Punish,” which is the idea that “power and knowledge directly imply one another; that there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations” (550). All of the patients in the hospital are aware of their living conditions and their unjust treatment. Lisa and Susan, however, are unwilling to succumb to their submissive positions and refuse to take their medication despite supervision. Lisa seems to be the most powerful patient in the ward, and she states to the other girls, “You weak people, you’re all weak fucking people, you’re victims, you people are fucking sick.” She is a strong woman and she fights sedation and submission as often as possible, which is why she escapes the asylum frequently. Lisa is a heterological thinker and she questions the role of the hospital as an enforcer of homogeneous society.

What is Postmodernism?

Postmodernism: "Incredulity toward metanarratives."

Gramsci: Less is More

When I first looked at Gramsci's work in the anthology, I was surprised at how short the section was. The abstract above the work explains that he had to write most of his work in codes so that it wouldn't be censored, which explains why so little of is included in "Hegemony." Yet, I was astonished at how those few words could mean so much. I have studied hegemony in many history classes and was always perturbed with hegemony in our society. Still, I had not put much thought into WHY hegemony existed. After reading the section, a lightbulb went off and I realized: OF COURSE! Hegemony wouldn't be possible without public consent as well as the imposing culture's efforts.

This made me realize that it is because of public consent that contemporary American society is the way it is. Why are supermodels as thin as death? Why do celebrities make more money than doctors? Why is it “cool” to be dumb in our high schools? I have often wondered whether America's values are screwed up because of mass media or mass media's values are screwed up because of America, but now, after having read Gramsci, I feel justified in setting the question aside and simply concluding that the answer is that both are correct. Mass media is the way it is because we allow it and support it as it is but also because it is established to reinforce existing class structure and support the ruling classes.

Perhaps this idea is the one being conveyed in this poem entitled "True Lies," by Talaam Acey:

The Founding Father of the Fight Club: Tyler Durden as a Modern Marx

The movie Fight Club is a revolutionary commentary on the evils of capitalist society. An homage to the Communist Manifesto, the modern masterpiece tells the story of an unnamed materialistic worker who, through the influence of his alter-ego, Tyler Durden, becomes disillusioned with society. Together, the worker and Tyler create a fight club that attempts to take over society and undo capitalism through revolution. This work is an ideal example of literature that "undermines or subverts the dominant ideologies of the culture" (Rivkin 645). In this particular scene, Tyler echoes Marx's ideas in his criticisms of capitalist society:



First, Tyler Durden echoes Marx's idea of the worker as a slave. He explicitly refers to the workers who have joined fight club "slaves with white collars." This is a reference to Marx's idea of economic slavery mentioned in the Communist Manifesto: "Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the over-looker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself" ("Manifesto"). Marx perceives the worker as a slave to his employer as well as capitalist society. This statement is further explained in his work "Wage Labor and Capital," wherein he states, "The worker, whose sole source of livelihood is the sale of his labor power, cannot leave the whole class of purchasers, that is, the capitalist class, without renouncing his existence. He belongs, not to this or that capitalist but to the capitalist class" (661). According to Marx, work in a capitalist society is a form of slavery because it is a system that workers cannot escape because the worker "works in order to live" ("Wage" 660). Indeed, workers as slaves to the capitalist system is a pivotal idea in the works of Marx.

Next, Durden highlights worker dissatisfaction that worker isolation, which is inevitable in the capitalist system, creates. He does this in several comments in this scene. First, he calls work a "squandering" of potential, or a waste of time. Second, he states that "Our great war is a spiritual war. Our Great Depression is our lives." Third, in a previously discussed quote, he refers to "jobs we hate." These statement echoes Marx's argument that the worker's production for the capitalist instead of for his own goods leads to isolation and dissatisfaction. Marx explains that, for the worker, or proletarian, "Life begins [...] where this activity ceases, at table, in the public house, in bed" ("German" 660). Indeed, work is in no way pleasurable for the worker but is only a requirement for earnings, which are necessary for subsistence. Furthermore, Marx actually argues that "In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases" ("Manifesto"). Indeed, workers are dissatisfied and even detest their jobs.

Marx's theory that the multitudinous proletariat's isolation would lead to revolution is also prevalent in this scene. Before suggesting revolution, Tyler points out the circularity and emptiness of the capitalist system. He does this through his statement that "Advertisements have us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need." This circularity is one of Marx's key descriptions of the capitalist system: "Does a worker in a cotton factor [sic] produce merely cotton textiles? No, he produces capital. He produces values which serve afresh to command his labor and by means of it to create new values..." ("Wage" 662). Certainly, this is the basic foundation of capitalism: workers work for wages, which they then give back to the the owners of the means of production through purchasing products, leaving them in need of more wages. Clearly, it in part this circularity that leads to worker angst and eventual overthrow of the owners of the means of production, or bourgeoisie. But before just before revolution, which is the only means of ending the destructive cycle of capitalism, workers experience disillusionment, which Durden points out in his memorable statement, "We've all been raised by TV to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we wont. We're slowly learning that fact, and we're very, very pissed off." In this quote, we perceive a growing disillusionment among the working class, which leads to the introduction of revolutionary ideas. As Marx explained: "The existence of revolutionary ideas in a particular period presupposes the existence of a revolutionary class" ("German" 657). Thus, at the end of this scene, Tyler suggests that some kind of revolution is about to take place. The aspect of revolution is key when discussing Marx, for it is what sets his theory apart from those of all other socialists. He argues that "What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces above all, is its own gravediggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally evitable" ("Manifesto"). The end of the "Manifesto" calls for a union among all workers of the world to overthrow the bourgeoisie in a global revolution. At the end of the movie, this is exactly what happens.



Works Cited:

Marx, Karl. "The German Ideology." Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd Ed. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 2004.

-----. "Manifesto of the Communist Party." Literary Theory: An Anthology. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 2004.

-----. "Wage Labor and Capital." Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd Ed. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 2004.

Rivkin, Julie and Michael Ryan. "Introduction: Starting with Zero." Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd Ed. Eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 2004.

Economic Enslavement (Free Video With Your Purchase!)

Let me begin by stating that I am a history major with one class left for that major and, although I would like to say my focus is in Latin America, I have also taken classes on 20th century China, Russia (USSR), and Cuba. So clearly, Marx is nothing new to me. On the contrary, I took an interest in him starting in high school.

When reading Marx's works, it is PIVOTAL to keep in mind that when he was writing, things were not as they are now. We mentioned in class that "We've never had unregulated capitalism," but let me tell you in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, business was something vicious. I mean, we can thank Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, and other administrations for anti-trust laws and social benefits like health insurance, welfare, unemployment. These things obviously didn't exist back then. Like he says in his manifesto, 90% OF THE POPULATION HAD NOTHING. Children lost limbs in machines and employers did nothing. Heads of households died in factories and mines and families were left to starve while fat bosses just hung around and eventually replaced the workers with no responsibility to the families. Workers were expendable. End of story.

As Angeline pointed out in class, many people still live in economic enslavement; that is, people are working horrible jobs for minimal subsistence, and the minimum wage is hardly even enough to provide decent living conditions. And worse, consider the living conditions for the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants living in this country who are forbidden to even drive, let alone work. They are working long hard days in construction or on the fields picking fruit for wages far below the minimum, and they are not protected by law. There is no way for these people to "pull themselves up by their boot straps" as the Horatio Algers myth would claim.

Where exactly am I going with this? I guess I just wanted to point out that even though Marx lived in a different world, a lot of what he said is still relevant. While some things may seem too radical, or too different, remember that he lived in a completely different time, and in the same way that Marxists believe that literature must be considered in historical context, I think it's important to keep in mind that Marx's work was itself a direct response to the living conditions of his own time. If he could have foreseen the regulations on big business that would come hundreds of years later, he may not have been so radical. Then again, it's quite likely that these regulations only came to exist because of his radical ideas.

On that note, I think this song by Immortal Technique is a blatant example of a way that literature (in this case, intentionally) "undermines or subverts the dominant ideologies of a culture" (645). The song "Peruvian Cocaine" underscores the negative effects of globalization through the marginalized industry of the cocaine trade. Ironically, while the United States is the greatest purchaser of drugs from third world countries, it is also the country pushing the most legislation against it, and even has agreements with other governments to extradite drug lords so that the U.S. can persecute them. Please note that the different verses demonstrate the different levels of labor power beginning with the powerless and oppressed coca leaf picker to his field boss on up through a U.S. undercover cop and so on. Enjoy!