Community and the Postmodern Self
Popularizing the
Shipwreck, Capitalizing on Dislocation
Kendra Crede,
credek@bhc.edu
This paper considers Yann Martel's Life of Pi, J. M. Coetzee's Foe, and Daniel DeFoe's Robinson Crusoe, defining the shipwrecked protagonist as a poster child for the failure of language. This discussion will be framed by Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, as he discusses the power of stories to nurture or destroy a community, a group bound by a common language. Robert Bly, also highlighting the power of communication through stories in his social critique, A Sibling Society, locates a modern trend of regression in adulthood. Bly's description of this phenomenon, an evolution in parenting practices or a lack of passing down knowledge in the form of stories necessary to raise a responsible, individual and intellectual adult, also informs the social use of language. The texts under scrutiny here show that the solitude of the shipwrecked protagonist often accompanies a close inspection of the utility of language, while readers continue to popularize the motif and to identify with harbored feelings of dislocation in an increasingly distracting world.
Steve Zissou: The Postmodern Broken Hero
Matthew Nusko,
matt.nusko@gmail.com
mnusko@purdue.edu
Wes Anderson's film, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,
is a postmodern work of brilliance which brings to light the hero of today's
culture; the broken hero. The tale of the tragic hero is one of
his/her decline, whereas the broken hero's journey begins with the hero having
already failed, and their journey is that of coming to an understanding, or
contention with their life, and most importantly their failure. The
film's protagonist, Steve Zissou, has been making his
living filming undersea documentaries and he is in a continuous state of
decline. As the film progresses, it becomes more and more apparent
that there is a highly likely possibility that Zissou
never was great. It is only when Ned Plimpton arrives, a man who
comes to Zissou with the pretence of possibly being
his son, that something sparks inside of Zissou. There is a void in Zissou's
ship which must be filled, and the possibility of actually being a father
terrifies Zissou. This brings to light why
this generation's hero is broken and stuck in such a depressed stasis; fear of
maturity and responsibility. Unfortunately for Zissou,
he must bury two friends, one of which may actually be his son in order to be
provided with the appropriate vehicle for change. The question,
then, that is raised is: if it takes this one average man so much to grow up,
are we really as mature as we think we are?
A Fan’s Life: Sports
Fandom, Autobiography, and the Production of the Self
Ricky Werner,
Ricky.Werner@gmail.com
In recent years, an unusual but increasingly popular species of autobiography has appeared in bookstores and on coffee tables. In this genre, which might be called “the fan autobiography,” the autobiographer structures his or her life story around the consumption of sports, interweaving narratives of his or her personal experience with narratives from the sporting world—usually, with the narratives of a particular, beloved team.
Because
it often differs from more traditional forms of sports writing in degree rather
than kind, it is hard to locate an exact point of origin for the fan
autobiography. However, 1968’s A Fan’s Notes, a so-called “fictional
memoir” by
My paper will address the following questions:
-How and why, in the fan autobiography, do narratives from consumed sporting events merge or fuse with personal, autobiographical narratives?
-What conditions—cultural, social, psychological, literary, etc.—enable and/or demand such a form of self-accounting?
-What does this reveal about sports fandom and other forms of consumption, popular or otherwise?
The fan autobiography is a potentially invaluable resource because, among other things, it provides scholars of culture with a unique window into popular consumption and the lives of popular consumers. Critics have long derided sports and other forms of “low” culture as being superficial and aesthetically inferior to “high” culture; they have long lamented the popularity of the low and the obscurity of high.
My study of the fan autobiography suggests, however, that it is the very superficiality and incompleteness of low culture that encourages its wide and hyperactive consumption. Because the commodities of popular culture lack the completedness and the aesthetic status enjoyed by high culture, this makes them open to productive re-working, rewriting, completing and to participation on the part of the consumer (see Fiske, “The Cultural Economy of Fandom”)
In the consumption of sports, for example, consumer participation may take the form of cheering, singing, heckling opposing players, wearing their teams’ colors, following superstitions, etc. For other popular cultural forms, participation might include gossiping about a particular character, imagining future or alternate plot lines, or, in the extreme, writing fan fiction or attending fan conventions.
In a very real way, consumer’s actual or perceived participation in the cultural product merges the consumer and the consumed: for a sports fan, the sense that he or she is “part of the team” also entails a sense that the team is part of him or her. Thus, the consumed becomes part of the consumer’s identity.
We see this fusion at work in the structure of the fan autobiography, making possible the interweaving of the narratives of sports and self. This fusion also explains why consumers almost inevitably choose Monday Night Football over Masterpiece Theatre, because while high culture may provide superior aesthetic experience, low culture provides an opportunity for intensive participation—provides, that is, no less than the experience of self.