GRGR Finale Re: Homophobia in GR?

[jbor]

Legislation in this country identifies both behaviour *and* attitudes as 
pertinent aspects of discrimination and prejudice on the basis of race,
sexuality and sexual identification, gender, age, pregnancy and disability
and illness. I guess it comes down to the question of what constitutes a
"behaviour": an action, certainly; any writing or graffiti, indeed; a
statement, yes; an unspoken thought or opinion, well, not in terms of the
legislation but certainly a factor in a behaviourist's definition of what
might be encompassed within "behaviour", for example.

And it also comes back to notions of the differences between art and
pornography, arguments around censorship and so forth. The Pulitzer judges
in '74 felt themselves sufficiently expert or privileged wrt literary
interpretation to classify *GR* as, in parts, "obscene", and so veto the
award for that year.

(Interestingly, on the censorship issue, most-all radio and tv in this
country has chosen *not* to play or advertise that Eminem CD -- released
here about 3-4 weeks ago -- though it hasn't been banned from sale either.
I'm not sure if this has been the result of an informal agreement or a
Broadcasting Tribunal directive. Sales of the CD and single seem to be
steady, Top 20-ish.)

I don't think that a discussion around the topic of whether or not the text
of *GR* discloses homophobic attitudes, or stereotypical prejudices wrt
sexuality, race, gender, religion etc is a "redundant nonstarter", however.
Criticism and biography and general conversation thrive on that sort of
thing, I would have thought.

But the thing I'm interested in is how a literary text -- or any text, for
that matter, whether it be a propagandist song, a movie, a history book, or
a Disney cartoon -- is able to mould, manipulate, or *change* readers'
attitudes. It's something which I think Pynchon in *GR* is also very cued
into. My point is that if a reader approaches the text with preconceived
prejudices in place, strictly refusing to budge on some or all of these
attitudes -- eg. all Nazis are evil, homosexuality is a sin, sexual
dominance is victimisation, tribal cultures are primitive and inferior, etc
-- then he or she is forced to invent elaborate interpretations and
justifications *in spite of* what is plainly written in the text, forced to
*deny* the text, in effect, in order to sustain those preconceptions.

Coleridge, in his *Biographia Literaria* of 1817, referred to that "willing
suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith" (Ch.
14); and this phrase was taken up by subsequent literary critics to describe
the act of reading a novel. I'm sure there were many readers of the great
C19 novels of Austen, Dickens, Gaskell, Eliot, Zola, Flaubert, Dostoyevsky,
Melville et. al. who were unwilling to relinquish their stereotypes about
class, gender, religion, morality and so forth as well. Later generations
knew better: attitudes changed. By transposing his novel onto a very
particular and recent historical scenario Pynchon is doing much the same
thing as these predecessors, imo.

best

----------
>From: Paul Mackin <pmackin at clark.net>

snip
> This is because
> the only thing with any real operative meaning in discussing homophobia is
> BEHAVIOR--how well or poorly a person treats others different from
> himself, personally or through his elected representatives, as fellow
> human beings deserving of as much right to happiness as anyone else. So
> the key word is BEHAVIOR and at last I get to the point--it being simply
> that the writing of highly literary novels for grown up educated readers
> does not under any stretch of the imagination constitute BEHAVIOR in the
> realm of respecting the human rights of others. Therefore, the term
> homophobic cannot even hypothetically be applied to the words of
> Pynchon--or their potential interpretation by others--regardless of what
> in our wildest imagination the man may possibly feel one way or the the
> other about homosexuals. In other words P can use homosexuality with all
> its possible stereotypes anyway he sees fit. It's always a purely literary
> call. And it clearly follows that textual analysis in the effort to prove
> any thesis along these lines is a totally redundant nonstarter. IMHO.