Apollon EJournal Vol. 3

UNDERGRADUATE EJOURNAL

Volume 3

contributors this issue Jason Cohen Faculty Director Featuring articles by Elizabeth Davis • Doly Begum • Joseph Witkin • Laura Stamm • Nicole Corrigan • Justin Holliday

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East Schooling and West Watching Elizabeth Davis

4 - 10

Education and Development: The Backbone of a Nation Doly Begum

11 - 20

Ekphrastic Potential: Giving Voice to the Dance Joseph Witkin

21 - 25

Making Gender Reels Laura Stamm

26 - 30

Sexism in American Art Museums Nicole Corrigan

31 - 34

This Sin Can Destroy An Empire Justin Holliday

35 - 38

East Schooling And West Watching Effect of West German Television on Young East Germans

BY Elizabeth Davis

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Scholars have argued that no area of East German society more decisively formed the “socialist citizen” than education, and the monolithic nature of this socialist education serves as a testament to such indoctrination (Rodden 2002, pg.

9). The socialist principles of Marxism-Leninism were the underpinning of all curricula in the 10-year polytechnic school system of East Germany (which will be abbreviated in this paper as the GDR), and almost every young person in the GDR enrolled in these institutions (Rodden 2002, p. 15; Rodden 2006, p. xviii). These polytechnic schools covered grades one to ten, providing an education geared toward vocational training and work-study programs in industry; thus, students were provided with the proper technological skills and instruction in the socialist worldview to become productive members of the state’s working class, which Marxist-Leninist principles heralded (Augustine 2007, p.

204) The Marxist-Leninist principles in these polytechnic school curricula were historical materialism and political economy, principles directly opposed to the capitalist principles that students were able to clandestinely view through the West German television programs they watched each day.

Historical materialism works on the assumption that the whole of human history is a series of class struggles over a society’s means of economic production, which the working class will eventually win in a revolution against the upper classes (Nothnagle 1999, p. 15). Marxist-Leninist political economy posits the capitalist exploitation of the working class as a basis for the special mission of the working class to form a classless society (Nothnagle 1999, p. 15). Yet while GDR curricula attempted to indoctrinate polytechnic school students in socialism, television programming from West Germany (which will be abbreviated in this paper as the FRG) contradicted this worldview by broadcasting the attractions of capitalism, especially the wide variety of attractive products to be bought in such an economy, and criticism of the GDR’s human rights abuses and economic woes. (Edwards 2001, p. 242). This study will focus on these opposing forces and their effects on GDR students from 1980 to 1989, asking, what happened when the socialist worldview taught in school and the capitalist worldview as seen on TV collided in the minds of East German youth? Due to the conflicting ideologies young East Germans learned primarily from these sources, they tended to idealize the consumerist society of the FRG, while Western television’s underlining of GDR political abuses and the GDR’s lack

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of luxury items often hindered young East Germans’ development into socialist personalities.

state allocated resources for utility purposes, meeting critical needs of society only (Dennis 2000, p. 257). Jana Hensel (2004), who grew up in the GDR in the 1980s, relates that this focus on utility left little room for variety or luxury, stating that the GDR as a society was “oriented toward things that had practical uses, rather than things that were supposed to demonstrate one’s good taste or fashion sense” (p. 52).

Stores had “one type of any given product: one kind of butter, one flavor of jam, one brand of soft drink” (Hensel 2004, p. vii, 46). Furthermore, products manufactured in the GDR were often obvious generic knockoffs of FRG goods.

Hensel (2004) relates, “We knew an Eastern ‘Germania’ skateboard was a cheap copy of the Adidas one…Likewise, it was a major source of embarrassment if your aha or Modern Talking stickers came from Poland, and not from Western teen magazines” (p. 48). Residents’ opportunities for recreational activities were also scarce. Holger Lutz Kern and Jens Hainmueller (2009) write, “As in other communist countries, life in East Germany was rather dull and uneventful,” pointing to the “scarcity of restaurants, cinemas, theaters, and night and sports clubs” in the country (p. 380) The quality of life in the GDR illustrates the totalitarian hand of the SED at work, and its grip included education.

The conflicting ideologies with which young East Germans were presented stemmed from the differing political systems of the GDR and FRG and the barrier of the Berlin Wall. The GDR was a member of the Warsaw Pact, a security system of allied Soviet states. It had a complex history of reliance on the Soviet Union, especially the Soviet Union’s military, to legitimize the nation, as the GDR had only been in existence since 1949 (Dennis 2000, pp. 53, 92). GDR politics were dominated by the Socialist Unity Party (SED), a Communist party which presented itself as the “highest form of class organization of the working class,” guided by the principles of Marxism-Leninism (Dennis 2000, p. 188); its policy of parteilichkeit, meaning party-mindedness or partisanship, demanded that GDR citizens believe the SED’s word as law (Rodden 2002, p. 15). The Berlin Wall which the SED-run East German government put up to divide the GDR from the FRG was heavily guarded, and strict travel regulations kept most GDR citizens from crossing over to the West (Taylor 2007, p. 306; Dennis 2000, p. 93). The FRG, in contrast, was democratic, capitalist and a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), comprised of Western countries (Tusa 1997, p. 37; Dennis 2000, pp. x, 92).

The socialist worldview and parteilichkeit of the SED governed all aspects of polytechnic school (hereafter known Residents’ quality of life in the FRG was far superior to the as POS) educational policy. The GDR Minister of Education quality of life in the GDR, in part due to West Germany’s in the 1980s was Margot Honecker, Erich Honecker’s wife, flourishing economy (Tusa 1997, p. 362). The West who was known for her rigid adherence to Communist German mark was valued much more highly than East ideology and the SED (Rodden 2002, p. 14). She aimed German currency, and labor productivity was much higher; to form “socialist personalities” through education, an aim additionally, West Germans had access to better-quality, manifested in the Ministry’s tight control over school systems and even luxury goods (Tusa 1997, p. 363; Dennis 2000 (Rodden 2006, p. 14). This socialist influence was pervasive p. 263). East Germans observed with jealousy West in materials and activities provided in schools. Jana Hensel German visitors to the GDR who “were dressed in stylish, (2004) was a student in a Leipzig POS from the mid to well-made clothes and enviable shoes,” and who “snapped late 1980s, and she describes reading “magazines for up as bargains goods the locals could not afford” (Tusa young readers” with a “friendly little freckle-faced mascot” 1997, p. 363). In contrast, East Germany’s economy was who gave schoolchildren tips such as “how to improve in crisis during the 1980s (Dennis 2000, p. 263). Essential the quality of our special edition of the school newspaper services such as the maintenance of roads and the updating celebrating the signing of the Warsaw Pact” (pp. vii, 9). She of telephone technology were neglected (Dennis 2000, p. also remembers her classroom walls being adorned with 264). Furthermore, the variety of goods produced in West “pictures of Lenin and…Erich Honecker” (Hensel 2004, p.

Germany’s capitalist society was not to be found in East 5). In such a controlled climate, textbooks became a matter Germany. The GDR’s status as a communist society meant of primary concern. that it totalized the socialist concept of the working class’s ownership of society’s means of production (Dennis 2000, POS curricula were of the utmost importance to the Ministry p. 257). All the country’s industries were state-owned; the entrusted textbook writing to academic collectives headed by

an elite Party member who would “adhere to the communist line on all questions” (Rodden 2006, p. xxvi). These textbooks introduced complex socialist theories as students advanced in the POS (“Comparison,” German Historical Institute, 2011).

The SED also had a tight hold on POS faculty. Paul Gleye (1991), a Fulbright lecturer in the GDR during the 1980s, commented that teachers were “invariably Party members” (p. 71). Even if teachers were not SED members, Rodden (2006) states SED policy demanded every teacher “teach the textbook to the letter” (p. 6). Furthermore, virtually all GDR classrooms used the assigned textbook for each subject and grade level (Rodden 2006, p. 7). The Marxist-Leninist content in these books was omnipresent.

The socialist worldview promoted in POS textbooks attempted to form young East Germans into “socialist personalities” through pro-socialist indoctrination. Every subject was underpinned with its own version of socialist teleology; for example, “socialist geography” promoted the superiority of socialist nations by the sheer amount of land they took up (Rodden 2006, pp. 70, 149). History became a key area for promoting socialist teleology. This socialist worldhistorical view is illustrated by a 1982 edition of the history book Geschichte 5, intended for POS 5th graders (Rodden 2006, pp. 117, 196). For example, when teaching the concept of “centuries,” the editors of the book ask questions referencing the Roman slave revolt led by Spartacus (73-71 BC) such as: “In which century did the revolt of Spartacus take place?” (Rodden 2006, p. 196). GDR textbook writers widely held the Spartacus revolt as the “exemplary model” for later working-class revolutions from below such as Lenin’s Great October Revolution (Rodden 2006, p. 196).

Indoctrination in socialism and appreciation of the Soviet Union was often much more blatant, as in the 1986 edition of Geschichte 9’s coverage of World War II; the book points to the most important factor in Germany’s defeat as “the heroic battle of the Volk of the USSR” and also states that after the war “the balance of power in the world altered in favor of peace and socialism” (Rodden 2006, p. 198). The positive indoctrination that POS texts attempted to force on students was supplemented by training for future service to the state.

The POS curriculum included courses in socialist production and training in industrial work in order for students to become a productive working class of socialists. This training accounted for more than 10 percent of all classroom hours

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in the POS system, and it was intended to steer young East Germans into industries where workers were needed (“OnSite II,” German Historical Institute, 2011). Such training also included a weekly “School Day in Production,” in which students would receive on-site technical training for government jobs (“On-Site” I,” German Historical Institute, 2011). The children and youth were outfitted for these jobs, both literally and figuratively. A 1980 picture of this on-site training depicts three children on-site at the Lauchhammer Brown Coal Combine, all outfitted in workers’ uniforms, fascinated by the workings of a pantograph of a mine locomotive (“On-Site I,” German Historical Institute, 2011). Similarly, a 1987 picture of an East Berlin “School Day in Production” manifests the same insistence on students’ wearing the uniforms of the industry which they are studying; depicted are four boys standing in front of a chart, all in nondescript two-piece uniforms of industrial workers (On-Site II,” German Historical Institute, 2011). This importance of being trained to become part of the collective body of state workers, especially symbolized in the wearing of the uniform, is echoed by Jana Hensel. Hensel (2004) states that “children learned that they were supposed to be useful and do their duty toward the state. As kids, we were always pretending to be soldiers, nurses, cops, doctors---any responsible job where you got to wear a uniform” (p. 12).

While those behind the POS curriculum attempted to foster students’ allegiance to the state by training them for labor that would benefit the GDR, the curriculum attempted to form the “socialist personality” through agitprop tactics in civics.

who is instructing students in the difference between the GDR’s socialism and the FRG’s capitalism (“Civics Lesson,” German Historical Institute, 2011). The heading written on the blackboard behind him states: “The GDR and the FRG ---two states with different social orders” (“Civics Lesson,” German Historical Institute, 2011). On the “GDR” side of the board he has listed the following descriptions: socialist state, socialist ownership of the means of production, power of the working class in alliance with other working people (“Civics Lesson,” German Historical Institute, 2011). On the “FRG” side he has written: imperialist state, privatecapitalist ownership of the means of production, power of the bourgeoisie monopoly (“Civics Lesson,” German Historical Institute, 2011). As the civics’ teacher’s lesson illustrates, GDR socialism was clearly presented to students as superior to capitalism. His illustration of the two states as having different social orders due to their different economic systems is a concept straight from Marxist-Leninist ideology.

The Marxist-Leninist world-historical teleology states that the inevitable dominance of socialism in the world will develop in stages; before the working class comes to power and produces a socialist utopia, the society’s economy will be in the hands of the upper class bourgeoisie who will oppress the working class (Nothnagle 1999, pp. 97, 171). Through the civics teacher’s assertion that the GDR economy is controlled by the “alliance” of working class people while the FRG’s economy is monopolized by the bourgeoisie, he is demonstrating to students that the GDR’s socialism puts the GDR at a higher social order than the FRG. This Marxist-Leninist insistence on class dynamics as the central An insistence on socialism’s superiority and that class struggle factor in historical eras permeated the civics curriculum. As was the central factor in historical dynamics defined the civics a 1988 edition of the civics textbook Staatsbürgerkunde curriculum. Civics represented the Ministry of Education’s 10 stated in no uncertain terms, civics was meant to teach definitive effort to shape POS youths into socialist citizens. students that the “struggle of the working class is being Rodden (2006) writes, “The study of civics in the DDR [GDR] guided by the nature of our era, the main direction of social did not merely involve rights and responsibilities to the development, and the most important details of the historical community; because the socialist citizen was fundamentally situation” (“Civics Textbook,” Calvin College, 2011). This a collective being, the subject defined the identity of East Marxist-Leninist division of the world into two social orders Germans” (p. 90). POS civics represented the world in strict informed the policy of Education for Socialist Patriotism that terms of bilateral power to students: on one side were the characterized the civics curriculum.

GDR and its socialist allies, committed to spreading peace and socialism, while on the other were the western capitalists The civics curriculum promoted love for the policies of the and imperialists who were determined to destroy the world. SED as well as complete hatred for its opponents through The east-west divide between the Germanies in particular a policy known as Education for Socialist Patriotism, which was used to illustrate this split in economic systems. One began in the 1950s and lasted into the 1980s. Using the 1988 photograph in the German Historical Institute’s archives policies of parteilichkeit and Erziehung zum Hass (Education depicts a 10th-grade civics teacher at an East Berlin school for Hatred), the Ministry of Education attempted to instill an

emotional binary in students, combining love toward the “socialist Fatherland,” the GDR, with hatred of “imperialistic enemies” in West Germany and any other antagonists of the GDR (Rodden 2006, p. 98). This binary, as Rodden states, can be summed up in two slogans used extensively by the SED: “The Party, the Party, it’s always right!” and “Carry hatred in your heart!” (Rodden 2006, pp. 98-99).

The rhetoric of parteilichkeit is evident in Staatsbürgerkunde 10. Alan Nothnagle (1999) states such rhetoric provided no room for individual interpretation; it avoided interpreting facts with the subjunctive and indirect discourse, instead using direct quotations from the SED and prominent socialist figures as self-evident truths (p. 29). This adherence to the SED’s word as law and use of direct quotations can be seen in Staatsbürgerkunde 10. The author writes, “As the 11th Party Congress of the SED stated, ‘it is becoming more clear that imperialism, whose most aggressive circles risk a nuclear war, has become a hindrance to societal development.’ That is the clearest proof that it is outdated” (“Civics Textbook,” Calvin College, 2011). The book portrays the SED in terms of its ability not only to nourish socialism through progressive economic and social policies, but also in terms of its abilities as a peacemaker. The SED, writes the author, wants humanity “to maintain peace and to learn how to live and get along with each other” (“Civics Textbook,” Calvin College, 2011).

The author continually contrasts the fatherly (or perhaps Big Brotherly) love that the SED has for its citizens and the socialist cause with the aggressive, destructive intentions of Western nations, especially those involved in NATO. The chapter consistently associates NATO members with the “evils of capitalism,” such as extensive unemployment, as well as aggressive militarism and nuclear war (“Civics Textbook,” Calvin College, 2011). The book resorts to scare tactics in its depiction of the Western powers, stating that if left unchecked by socialist nations, NATO members will create a “nuclear inferno” that will consume all of humanity (“Civics Textbook,” Calvin College, 2011). Students recognized the binary of love and adherence to the fatherly SED and hatred for the fiends of NATO they were supposed to espouse, and they responded dutifully---at least in school.

In school, POS students were forced to comply with the Marxism-Leninism, parteilichkeit, and Education for Hatred in their curricula; the GDR “regime of fear,” using forces such as the Stasi secret police, suppressed public dissent (Rodden 2002, pp. 13, 45). Students learned that giving correct ideological answers mattered more than cultivating

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knowledge of the actual subjects they were taught. As Jana Hensel (2004) put it, “You could be as mediocre as you wanted in math or history, as long as you got good grades in the things that really mattered: conduct, orderliness, enthusiasm, and application” (p. 89). Not only did POS curricula encourage compliance to socialist principles, they made it incredibly difficult for students to conceive of any other worldview. As Stefan, a student who attended a POS during the 1980s, put it, “Teachers rarely commanded us, ‘You must understand it this way.’ It was a matter of perspective, of a Marxist worldview utterly enveloping us in such a way that no one could really think outside those terms” (Rodden 2006, p. 214). And in school the views of the West, especially West Germany, that they articulated demonstrated the requisite hatred. Hensel (2004) writes, “As good 1980s Socialist preteens, our official attitude toward the West was one of contempt” (p. 91). She states POS students learned that in “the society on the other side of the Wall,” left-wing activists were persecuted, massive unemployment and price gouging reigned, and the inhabitants were neoNazis (Hensel 2004, p. 91). “At least that’s what we were taught in school,” she says (Hensel 2004, p. 91). But the “society on the other side of the Wall” had a powerful tool that transcended that barrier. That tool was television.

Despite the barrier of the Wall, East Germans in many regions of Germany received and watched West German television as their “primary source of entertainment,” their unusually intense interest stemming from the lackadaisical, luxury-free nature of life in a Communist regime (Lutz Kern and Hainmuller 2009, p. 380). This ability to receive West German television, although fortuitous, was not the deliberate fruit of West German government policy (Garton Ash 1994, p. 135). “This was, as it were, an act of God,” states Timothy Garton Ash (1994) of East German reception of West German television (p. 135). Nevertheless, widespread reception of signal allowed for widespread television watching. As Lee Edwards (2001) writes, “With the exception of Dresden and part of Saxony (located in the southeastern corner of the GDR), all of East Germany could receive West German television, mainly due to the relay antennas located in West Berlin” (p. 141). And watch West they did, en masse. Studies in the 1980s confirmed that working people in the GDR spent up to 70-80 percent of their free time at home, where they watched Western television programs that contained the message of “a better life, of greater freedom and also the possibility of actively

forging the future” (Edwards 2001, p. 141). The influence of West German television on young East Germans was often great. Thomas Davey wrote in his 1987 ethnographic study of children in East Berlin, A Generation Divided, that East German children were “flooded with information about the West, primarily through television. Without ever leaving their living rooms they are in a position to compare the official rhetoric in which they are immersed in ‘reality’ as it is served up on their television screens” (p.124). As Davey’s comment illustrates, the content of these television channels filled an informational void that the GDR regime had created in East German children’s lives through its socialist bias.

On the whole, West German news channels gave East German affairs an “extraordinary amount of coverage” (Edwards 2001, p. 144), often criticizing the government that was so venerated in the POS. Although East Germans’ reception of West German television was purely coincidental and most FRG programming was intended for West German audiences, the West German government and West German news stations often used this influence on East German audiences to their advantage. West German news was constantly concerned with the workings of East Germany. As Edwards (2001) writes, “Each week, West German programs like ZDF-Magazin, Monitor, and Report, moderated by well-known television personalities, presented items about the politics, economics, and culture of the GDR” (p. 145). This continual coverage came from news sources with political stances that ranged from right-wing to leftwing (Edwards 2001, p. 145). Although, as stated before, the West German government did not deliberately arrange for signals from West German television stations to reach East German sets, but the West German government was aware of this effect (Edwards 2001, p. 146; Garton Ash 1994, pp. 135-136). Yet the West German government’s specific policies regarding television broadcasts to East Germany, both its aims and its level of involvement in such broadcasts, is hard to ascertain. Garton Ash (1994) points out the difficulty of distinguishing between the influence that West Germany exerted passively, “by virtue of its mere existence, prosperity, freedom, openness, etc.” and that which it exerted actively “by virtue of conscious policy” (pp.

135-136). However, he is able to verify that West German reporters’ “vivid, first-hand, live reports” on East Germany’s internal affairs in the 1980s reached East German viewers as a deliberate “fruit of West German policy” (pp. 135-136).

Working conditions for Western journalists were the subject

of “hard-fought negotiations and agreements” between East and West Germany, and this intense coverage was the product (pp. 135-136). The depth and variety of West German news coverage caused a great multitude of the East German population to become politically aware (Edwards 2001, p. 145), including young East Germans. Children’s easy access to televised political programming from West Berlin caused them to be “forcefully confronted with political views and social perspectives diametrically opposed to those espoused in their schools” (Davey 1987, p. 7). Clearly the subversive criticism of the GDR that West German news stations presented contradicted the GDR’s particular socialist worldview in and of itself, but the consumerism present in West German commercials also threatened to undermine the utilitarian society and antipathy for the West that POS curricula promoted.

The Western consumerist society prominent in West German television commercials was the antithesis of the utilitarian society that the East German government fed young East Germans in the POS; its bells and whistles attracted East German children and youths, frustrating attempts to indoctrinate them in the values of socialism. A consumerist society is, as Peter Stearns describes, “a society in which many people formulate their goals in life partly through acquiring goods that they do not need for subsistence or traditional display,” and in this process of acquisition “take some of their identity from a procession of new items that they buy and exhibit” (Stearns 2001, p. ix). The Communist conception of the manufacture of goods simply for necessity stood in stark opposition to the consumerist espousal of luxury that television commercials promoted. These commercials offered the West German time to stretch his legs between shows, but to the East German represented a world of “magical wealth and amusement” (Edwards 2001, p. 146).

The types of goods presented in these commercials were precisely the type of goods from which East Germans were cut off. In contrast with the “one kind of butter, one flavor of jam, one brand of soft drink” Jana Hensel (2004) found in East German stores (p.46), and the “scarcity of restaurants, cinemas, theaters, and night and sports clubs” in the GDR (Lutz Kern and Hainmuller 2009, p. 380), Paul Gleye (1991) states Western commercials presented goods like rich coffee, champagne, and chocolates to a deprived GDR public and an “urbane, carefree life” (p. 156). These commercials gave many East Germans a sense of relative deprivation, or, more specifically, “an intense longing for material goods and a

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no less intense hatred for the political party and economic system that had made them unobtainable” (Edwards 2001, p. 146). Young East Germans’ naivety made them especially prone to experiencing relative deprivation due to such consumerist presentations on West German television. Paul Gleye (1991, p. 156) described children’s reactions: They turned the dials and watched the commercials about things like toys and cookies, and then they asked their parents to buy the products. Parents told me how difficult it was for them to explain to their children why they could not have the things they saw on television. No, that’s a different country, with different money, and no, you can’t go there. I suspect that, of all the factors conspiring to frustrate the building of a socialist state in East Germany, in the long run West German television had been the most effective.

West German television made GDR children painfully aware of the consumerism that lay over the Wall, sparking longings for luxuries they learned they could not have in a socialist state.

Naturally could not share these subversive views while at the POS. Thus, GDR students formed value pluralities, paying lip service to socialism at the POS but disregarding schools’ attempts to form socialist personalities by watching West German television at home.

Due to the need for secrecy about their West German television watching habits at school, POS students learned to form value pluralities regarded their behavior in various settings. Such value pluralities meant that at school, they would publicly behave in ways that upheld the principles of their socialist education, but in “safer” private settings like home they disregarded such principles in favor of their enthusiasm for Western television. Such behavior indicated that West German television inspired an unenthusiastic embrace of the “socialist personality.” As Jana Hensel (2004) states, “Everyone in the GDR watched Western TV shows, which could be picked up by fiddling with the TV antennas. We just had to do it secretively, and we were careful never to mention our favorite shows in front of our teachers” (p. 9). As mentioned above, GDR teachers were often Party members, and they were commanded to root out any interpretation of the world that differed from a socialist worldview. Punishments for such differing interpretations

varied in severity, but all served as a sharp reminder, not only to the recalcitrant student but to his or her classmates, of “the price one pays for violating ideological property” (Davey 1987, p. 90). In any case, students had to be careful, cultivating a kind of doublethink that allowed them to navigate both the domestic realm and educational realm with ease. Gleye (1991) noted that due to the conflicting ideologies with which West German television and the POS presented students, a “form of value plurality seemed to be mastered quite early by children. One said certain things in school…one said a different set of things at home” (p.

72). Students’ ability to navigate two different worlds was often superficial, however; Davey’s ethnographic work on East and West German youths presents many instances of children’s identity crises stemming from these opposing ideologies.

Davey’s study exposes the confusion and uncertainty of GDR children caught in the midst of an East-West culture war. On location, Davey (1987) interviewed children in both East and West Berlin aged between 10 and 12, a developmental range in which he argues that children begin making increasingly complex connections about their social worlds; Davey’s questions focused on the “political socialization” of both groups of children, or how and to what degree they established their sense of national and ideological affiliation (pp. 1-3). East German children showed marked ambivalence and hurt toward the GDR and their socialist education that was totally at odds with the parteilichkeit they learned in school, indicating their resistance to developing a “socialist personality.” This reaction appeared to stem from the conflicting educations in East-West sociopolitical dynamics that school and West German television had given them. Eleven-year-old Sybilla admitted about her school experience, “Sometimes I do get tired of it. Always politics…I have to pay attention, I know that. Sometimes I listen to west radio, or watch west television, though. Then I get really confused. I know one of them (West or East) must be lying” (Davey 1987, p. 89); as Davey states, Sybilla’s ambivalence toward school life and confusion was all too common among the responses he received (p. 85). But GDR children also described the outrage and hurt felt once they realized, usually after watching a liberal dose of West German television, their schools had presented them with a false version of reality (Davey 1987, p. 85). As twelve-yearold Gritt states, “We learn in school that the Wall was built to protect us from capitalists who want to invade our socialist

land. I used to believe that completely” (Davey 1987, p. 85).

She later tells Davey about an incident when she watched a West German TV program that reported the death of a man who was shot trying to get over the Wall (Davey 1987, p.

86). “I’ll never forget it. That’s when I really began to feel like they were lying to us here,” she says (Davey 1987, p.

86). Their responses to West Germany were more idealistic.

In contrast with their own ambivalence and insecurity about the GDR and their education, young GDR students tended to idealize West Germany as a land of plenty; this reaction was in part due to the forbidden status the POS gave the FRG and also due to the consumerism students witnessed on West German television. Gleye (1991) writes that East Germans watched a great deal of West German television, in particular programs such as Dallas and Dynasty, which dramatized the lives of rich, beautiful, and powerful Americans (pp. 1213). He states that American television comedy ALF, about a beloved but mischievous alien creature, must have enjoyed surreptitious popularity among East Germans, as he relates how he frequently saw stuffed ALF dolls in rear car windows and how a young girl made him take a picture of her in an ALF T-shirt (Gleye 1991, pp. 70, 154). Perhaps most loved of all of ALF’s shenanigans, Gleye (1991) writes, was ALF’s ordering out for a pizza, as “the concept of hot food delivered to one’s door was quite foreign to labor-short East Germany. It suggested a different world from the bratwurst kiosks of the DDR [GDR] with their eternal lines of hungry customers waiting to be served” (p. 154). Occasionally, the POS engaged in self-defeating behavior when it warned against the insidious society on the other side of the Wall, as Hensel points out. She states, “The unintended consequence of our teachers’ prohibitions was to transform West Germany into a nirvana where friendly adults ran around with candy and gum in their pockets, handing them out to children on the streets” (Hensel 2004, p. 91). But television clearly played a part in this idealization as well. Youths learned to associate the West with consumerist luxuries, and therefore learned a keen sense of the superiority of FRG conditions over those of the GDR. Gleye (1991) writes that children who watched Western television picked up “an acute awareness of the East-West relationship as it applied to their world,” and the FRG took on a “magical aura” (p. 151). Or, as one young boy put it, “people who want to go to the West…I think they want to leave because of the advertisements from the West.

They see those ads and want to go over” (Davey 1987, p.

103).

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Such evidence indicates West German television promoted children’s frustration with GDR communism and the GDR government’s repression of that frustration. Yet evidence also exists that young East Germans’ viewing of West German television promoted their satisfaction with their government, and that the GDR took steps to provide its citizens with West German television. Lutz Kern and Hainmuller (2009) argue that West German television bolstered GDR citizens’ satisfaction with their regime due to its “escapism,” presenting East Germans with a vivid world unlike the GDR; they state, “West German television…allowed East Germans to vicariously escape life under communism at least for a couple of hours each night, making their lives more bearable and the East German regime more tolerable (p. 395).” Lutz Kern and Hainmuller claim the opposite of regions of East Germany that were unable to receive West German programming, particularly the Dresden district in the southeast due to its topographical features and its distance from West German broadcasting towers; they contend that dissatisfaction with the GDR accompanied residents’ inability to watch FRG TV channels, pointing to evidence that the number of East German applications for exit visas was higher in counties of the Dresden district that were unable to watch West (Lutz Kern and Hainmuller 2009, pp. 382, 395). Although this theory may be true, it points less to youths’ approval of the GDR government and more to approval of relief from the GDR government and their orientation toward the West, allowing them to mentally travel to West Germany although their feet were planted in the GDR. In any case, Lutz Kern and Hainmuller’s 2009 study was geared primarily toward teenagers and young adults (p. 396), so an assessment of young children’s satisfaction with the East German regime could vary significantly from these findings.

on television” (p. 80). As their experiences show, the search for identity amidst this crossfire proved arduous indeed, a search made even more complex after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the successful campaign of West Germany’s Chancellor Helmut Kohl for “reunification” in 1990, resulting in East Germany becoming part of the Federal Republic.

The surge in West German consumer goods’ availability in the East after November 1989 caused the new East Germany to become what Stefan, the POS graduate mentioned earlier, called a “consumer society,” stating, “Many of my classmates simply gave themselves over to a great indulgence, a spree….You could now have whatever kind of pop record or newspaper you wanted” (Rodden 2006, p. 219). Hensel (2004) describes fervently studying West German culture in order to fit in completely, just as she and her peers had watched West before, but admits that in the early years of the 1990s young East Germans had a hard time truly understanding the norms of Western consumer culture (pp. 52, 58-59). She relates that she and her peers were unable to “dress properly,” and that young East German women chose clothing based on a predilection for novelty rather than Western standards of good taste (Hensel 2004 pp. 58, 60). Such assimilation also took place on the East German educational front. East German curricula were replaced with West German curricula that taught such subjects as post-1945 West German history (Hensel 2004, pg. 95), and GDR history and civics books from the pre1989 era were disregarded (Rodden 2006, pg. 246).

Hensel (2004) relates that pictures of Honecker and Lenin disappeared from classrooms, and “gone were the activities by which teachers “had hoped to mold our personalities and to prepare us for future careers as engineers, cosmonauts, Although students in the GDR POS system could rarely leave teachers, or transportation workers” (pp. 4, 6).

East Germany for West Germany, the availability of West German television channels allowed them to metaphorically Yet after the initial East German frenzy over becoming emigrate away from the socialist worldview that was forced Western died down, many who came of age in the on them in their schools. While GDR curricula attempted reunification eventually felt the need for self-identity and to indoctrinate POS students and make them into “socialist careful introspection, rather than the consumerist thought en personalities,” the consumerism and criticism of the GDR masse that West German television had encouraged. Stefan espoused by FRG television ultimately caused young East relates that it took a long time, “at least two or three years,” Germans to question and often reject what they were taught for him to come to the realization that it was possible to in the classroom. Young East Germans’ ambivalence and renounce consumer goods and the bandwagon mindset that hurt toward the GDR and tendencies to idealize the FRG entailed; this recognition promoted his self-individuation, as resulted from the fact that these children and youths were, as he states “with that insight you suddenly distanced yourself Thomas Davey (1987) put it, “caught in the crossfire between a great deal more from this consumer society” (Rodden socialist rhetoric and western ideology as it is represented 2006, p. 219). And Hensel (2004) admits that since her

initial drive to become Western, “I’ve grown afraid that, by always looking forward, and never glancing back, we [East Germans] no longer have any idea where we stand” (p. 4).

Stefan responded to such problems of mass culture in the early unified Germany, stating, “You must conduct a search for self. You must ask: Where do I conduct that search? Do I conduct it in great department stores?”; he continues, “Do I seek it in the newspaper and magazine stands, or in music stores? Do I search in the display windows of a new mall?

Or do I conduct it within myself?” (Rodden 2006, p. 219) Stefan’s question in turn points to overarching questions as the post-Cold War era began. Would young East Germans subscribe to a Western worldview and lose their sense of personal history? Would they continue to replace socialist perspectives with consumerist views? And what would they do when their idealized consumerist visions of the West proved to be merely that? Hensel and Stefan’s reactions provide some insight, but ultimately each person who grew up in East Germany during its final years will have a unique story to tell, with unique answers to give.

References Augustine, Dolores. 2007. Red Prometheus: Engineering and Dictatorship in East Germany, 1945-1990.

Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Calvin College. 2011. German Propaganda Archive [online]. Available at: http://www.calvin.edu/ academic/cas/gpa/gdrmain.htm [Accessed: November 2011].

Davey, Thomas. 1987. A Generation Divided: German Children and the Berlin Wall. Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books.

Dennis, Mike. 2000. The Rise and Fall of the German Democratic Republic 1945-1990. Essex: Pearson Education Limited.

Edwards, Lee. 2001. Mediapolitik: How the Mass Media Have Transformed World Politics. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press.

Garton Ash, Timothy. 1994. In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent. NewYork: Vintage.

German Historical Institute, Washington D.C. 2011.

German History in Documents and Images [online]. Available at: http:// germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/index.cfm [Accessed: November 2011].

Gleye, Paul. 1991. Behind the Wall: An American in East Germany, 1988-1989. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University.

Hensel, Jana. 2004. After the Wall: Confessions from an East German Childhood and the Life That Came Next.

New York: PublicAffairs.

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Kern, Holger Lutz and Jens Hainmueller. 2009. Opium for the Masses: How Foreign Media Can Stabilize Authoritarian Regimes. Political Analysis 17 (4), pp. 377-399.

Nothnagle, Alan. 1999. Building the East German Myth: Historical Mythology and YouthPropaganda in the German Democratic Republic, 1945-1989.

Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Rodden, John. 2002. Repainting the Little Red Schoolhouse: A History of Eastern GermanEducation, 1945-1995.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rodden, John. 2006. Textbook Reds: Schoolbooks, Ideology, and Eastern German Identity. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press.

Stearns, Peter. 2001. Consumerism in World History: The Global Transformation of Desire. New York: Routledge.

Taylor, Frederick. 2007. The Berlin Wall: A World Divided, 1961-1989.

New York: HarperCollins.

Tusa, Ann. 1997. The Last Division: A History of Berlin, 1945-1989.

New York: Addison- Wesley.

Education and Development: The Backbone of a Nation A Case Study of Bangladesh

By Doly Begum

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ABSTRACT

KEY WORDS: Bangladesh; Compartmentalized Learning; Development; Dropout; Education; Gender; Private Tutoring; This paper evaluates the problems that commonly plague edu- Wastage cation systems and policies in developing nations. Through primarily qualitative with some quantitative investigation con- INTRODUCTION ducted in Sylhet, Bangladesh and analysis of the secondary research, I find that besides poverty there are several other Development – social, political and economic – is a complex functional problems that impact the quality of education in and multifaceted concept. The development of a nation may developing countries. These include, but are not limited to: be impacted by numerous factors that include domestic and teaching curriculum and a lack of extra-curricular activities; international politics, issues of human rights and freedom, parents’ and teacher’s attitude and behaviours towards chil- and the nation’s access to resources. One of the strongest dren/students; and gender inequalities – all of which limit contributing factors to development is citizens’ access to qualthe learning experience of students in Bangladesh. Despite ity education. Education is a pillar of modern society and, as an increase in enrolment and regular attendance, this re- such, it is the backbone to creating active participants in a search finds that even those students who regularly attend nation’s development. Sharma et al reinforce this statement class experience low levels of learning satisfaction, resulting in their article on education in India; “[e]ducation is the prinin lowered motivation for educational attainment. Also, the ciple instrument in awakening the child to cultural values and current education system perpetuates gender inequality with thus is the strongest force in the development and growth of a a patriarchal curriculum and hierarchical behaviour of teach- child in preparing him to be a responsible, intelligent, strong ers within the school environment. With further evaluation of and healthy citizen” (201). The United Nations Educational, these problems and a positive correlation between research Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) places simiand policy making, improvement in the education system lar importance on education, stating that it is necessary for may be possible in the current economic conditions since not an individual’s achievement of goals, increase of knowledge all problems are a direct cause of poverty. Along with enrol- and potential, and effective participation in wider society ment rate, the quality of education should also be focused on (Myhill 129). through enhanced policy enforcements.

Realizing the importance of education, many developing naMETHOD tions have adopted policies that seek to increase the availability of educational institutions while also encouraging The field study consisted of visits to both schools and house- enrolment and regular attendance. Such policies may be eviholds in rural areas within the districts of MoulviBazar and denced in the nations of Sub Saharan Africa (SSA), India and Rajnagar in Sylhet, Bangladesh. Sylhet was chosen as it suf- Bangladesh, each of which has adopted the United Nations’ fers from low levels of educational attainment, as well as be- Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with varying levels of ing cost-efficient to the researcher – a necessary factor given success (Oketch and Rolleston 131). Bangladesh in particuthe strong budgetary constraints. A purposeful sample was lar has accomplished a great deal in improving educational taken within the limits of these districts so as to reflect school accessibility to rural areas and other disadvantaged groups environments ranging from poor to significantly improved (Ardt et al 6) – generating an overall increase in primary social and economic conditions. A total of 349 grade nine education enrolment (Ardt et al 10). This increase may have and ten student interviews across 9 schools are used for this also benefited from the Food for Education (FFE) program, paper. The sample adequately represents a diverse range of whereby families who send their children to school would households regarding both income and access to secondary receive not only long term advantages associated with educaeducation institutions. The objective of this study is to investion, but also more immediate rewards (Arends-Kuenning and tigate and analyze the dynamics of primary and secondary Sajeda 295). education. These dynamics are crucial for understanding and analyzing the quality of education as it helps map out the While it is evident that Bangladesh has increased the quantity barriers to education. Moreover, it enables governments to of enrolled students, it is not necessarily the case that the qualmore effectively allocate resources and form developmental ity of education matches the quantity. This not only questions policies.

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the students’ learning experience but whether the education adequately prepares them as citizens for the further advancement of the nation, household, and as individuals. Unfortunately this question is largely overlooked by policy-makers who tend to focus more on simply increasing enrolment statistics rather than ensuring the quality of educational content and delivery. Many scholars find that the quality of education is just as, if not more, significant than the number of citizens receiving it (Unterhalter et al. 85). This has resulted in a gap between the theoretical policies recommended by scholars and the actual policies implemented by politicians and administrators. The former suggests that educational quality and enrolment must be parallel, whereas the latter sees quality as an eventual evolution upon enrolment. The consequence of this gap is a disinterested student base that may, in turn, lead to dropout or wastage – a low return on educational investment.

As a means of addressing this gap, I have conducted field research in Sylhet, a regional division of Bangladesh. I have sought to analyze and explain the potential consequences to current policies through interviews with students and teachers.

The results of my findings strongly favour the quality-centric view of scholars as opposed to the quantity-based policies of politicians and administrators. This paper will provide a brief overview of existing literature on the linkage between education and development in both Bangladesh and other developing nations. Moreover, it will address the effects of particular systems and policies on the student body following which the methodology, findings, discussion, and limitations of the field research conducted in Sylhet will be presented. Finally, I will provide suggestions for future research or policies and present the overall conclusions derived from existing literature and the field research.

EXISTING RESEARCH Along with the previously mentioned MDG and FFE programs, another policy responsible for the increase in student enrolment in Bangladesh is Education for All (EFA). EFA aims to provide local access to safe schools with acceptable levels of staff, learning materials, and other necessary facilities (Lewin 154). The EFA policy has been especially significant as it has spawned at least three more major innovations, namely the National Education Policy of 2000, the Primary Education Development Programme (PEDP), and preparation of the National Plan of Action on Education for All (Unterhalter et

al 92). These educational policies have been adopted under the pretences of spurring national development. For instance, completion of primary schooling has shown large economic returns, fewer births, lower infant and child mortality, better child health and education, reductions in gender inequality, and a decrease in youth marriages (Lloyd et al 13).

tive effects on girls in terms of completing their studies and require additional attention from all involved stakeholders (Zeelen et al 172). The deficit of attention placed on gender equality is likely to create an underrepresentation of women in continued education and thus limit the number of potential opportunities available to them (Novoryta 78). Furthermore, it will serve to entrench and perpetuate gender-based stereoHowever, rapid expansion has led to chronic shortages of types and injustices. learning materials and overpopulated classrooms, subsequently reducing the quality of the learning experience (Lewin A student’s learning experience depends largely upon the 155). In regards to increasing enrollment these policies have classroom environment, availability of extra-curricular or experienced marked success (Ardt et al 4). It is certainly true classroom activities, the qualification of teachers, and the stuthat attendance is necessary for education; without regular dent’s workload; the imbalance of any or all of these elements attendance and initial enrolment at the basic level, children may lead to school boredom and/or frustration. For example, would lack the exposure required for even the most minimal although many children and youth work out of necessity, recognitive goals set by national education plans (Lloyd, Mensch search show that due to the quality of education, many stuand Clark 13). However, attendance alone is not sufficient dents “become discouraged” by the schools and prefer to for maximizing a student’s potential. Interest and engage stu- work instead (Das and Mukherjee 464). A national survey dents as the contents are perceived as extraneous. Another conducted in India showed that, among dropouts, 25% were problematic characteristic is the inherent gender inequalities disinterested in school (Das and Mukherjee 454). Similarly, a built into the curriculum. The perceived superiority of men in proportion of children working in the labour market were not texts often make females feel inferior and, in turn, less mo- there out of economic need, but rather they wanted to spend tivated to learn (Zeelen et al 171). These issues, while not their time acquiring skills that the schools failed to teach (Das exclusive to developing nations, frequently have roots in past and Mukherjee 454). and present societal norms. A study conducted by Sharma et al in a district of Kangra, India showed that even though Students’ interest in school is described as the “psychologieducational development programmes have increased male cal investment” and effort dedicated to understanding and and female enrolment, there are still major discrepancies as gaining knowledge and skills from their academic experience social norms continue to impede female growth.

(Pellerin 283). The outcome of this “investment” is crucial for preserving students’ interest towards learning since disinterStudies done on gender and education in developing coun- est leads to disengagement. Disengaged students may not tries have stated that parents are less interested in sending develop the intellectual curiosity of challenges possessed by girls to school since they are needed at home and their educa- those who are engaged (Pellerin 284). The implications of tion is unlikely to provide a worthwhile return on investment. disengagement extend farther than just time spent in school.

Parents in this study reported that girls are likely to assume Indeed, it may lead to deeper repercussions of halted eduroles in agriculture, caregiving, and/or “reproduction” – all cational attainment, unemployment, economic instability, and requiring little to no education (Sharma 203). From a young confinement within the individual’s current social condition age girls are expected to be second class citizens within the (Pellerin 284). family and economic society. This expectation is similarly evidenced in the classrooms as well. School policies, classroom Leisure activities play an important role in keeping students dynamics, and teachers’ attitudes are important to encourage engaged in school. These activities provide adolescents the students (Lloyd, Mensch and Clark 117 - 118). As such if opportunity to develop their “identity, motivation, autonomy, there is a systematic difference in the allocation of time boys and self-regulated behaviour” as well as present opportunities and girls spend in the classroom - be it performing duties or to socialize and build life skills such as planning and decision receiving punishment, then boys and girls cannot be assumed making (Wegner et al 423). Furthermore, it keeps adolesto have the same learning experience (Lloyd, Mensch and cents away from “low-yield” activities – simply hanging out or Clark 119). All of the aforementioned factors have had nega- watching television which may lead to negative future results

13

(Wegner et al 423). Despite these findings, nearly all schools in SSA and South Asian countries fail to offer extra-curricular activities (Ardt et al 13). The lack of extra-curricular activities results in boredom which may lead to students’ passive nonparticipation in school, perpetuating the cycle of boredom and ultimately leading to the incompletion of studies (Wegner 429). These problems with regards to curricula and pedagogy in SSA nations have placed students at a disadvantage, hindering their ability to succeed in school and leading to grade repetitions (varying age groups are represented within each grade) and later dropout (Lewin 171).

A student’s level of involvement in school is also dependent upon the behaviour of teachers and parents. In her article on socialization in high school, Pellerin draws parallels between Baumrind’s typology of parenting and possible teaching methods, stating that there are four applicable styles: authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, and indifferent (Pellerin 285). Authoritative parenting is characterized by high demand and firm enforcement without sacrificing responsiveness or, in other words, “warmth, open communication, and respect for the developmental needs of the child” (Pellerin 285). Authoritarian style, on the contrary, forgoes responsiveness in favour of greater obedience and force, causing children to become heavily reliant on external controls, losing the ability to selfregulate. In addition, many of these children exhibit low levels of self-esteem and social competence. Nevertheless, they achieve high grades and tend to avoid unsavoury or anti-social conduct. Permissive styles are less demanding and more responsive. Children exposed to this style tend to be highly social, but achieve low grades, are disengaged from school, and have a risk of future behavioural problems (Pellerin 285).

Lastly, indifference is, as it sounds, a general lack of interest or concern with the child’s progression (Pellerin 284). This style places the onus of good grades and behaviour solely on the child, as they receive little to no attention from adults.

Children often fail to recognize the importance of their grades and behaviour from an early stage which results in a lack of necessary motivation in learning.

According to Pellerin’s findings, applying the authoritative style of parenting to teaching achieves the best results for students’ grades and skills building (283). Authoritatively taught students perform noticeably better than those in authoritarian, permissive, and indifferent environments (Pellerin 284).

As dropouts are concerned, Pellerin found that authoritarian schools have the best results, while indifference fared the

worst of the four styles in terms of overall achievement and study of Kenya’s educational challenges by Achola and Pillai engagement (Pellerin 284; 300). demonstrate how a student’s learning experience puts them at risk of future wastage. Wastage is the loss of governmental inThe next pedagogy affecting students’ learning quality is vestment in students and the students’ loss of effort, time, and homework, since many schools feel that regular homework monetary expenses (17). Students’ learning behaviour, which will help students learn the material, and create a dialogue includes participation in school activities, not only impacts between teachers and parents (Deslandes 60). Students are their academic outcomes but also their educational and ocgiven a large amount of homework, yet most lack the sup- cupational aspirations (23). The negative outcome of students port of parents and private tutors—paid teachers outside of and behaviour can contribute to their outcome of repetition or class— due to illiteracy and high prices, respectively. Students dropout (23; 31). Since the causes of dropout can be indirect, are then unable to complete homework and can consequently I have focused my research to instead evaluate the quality of heighten teacher frustration (Ardt et al 12-3). This frustration education and how it influences students’ future aspirations, may manifest itself as failing grades, damaging potential pointing out the possible future risks of these students and thus student retention rate and/or increasing dropout (Ardt et al the deficiency in the education system and initiatives.

12-3) Homework is an important learning method however, as Deslandes argues, its point is to foster a relationship be- The field study consisted of visits to both schools and housetween parents and teachers in order to enhance the students’ holds in rural areas within the districts of MoulviBazar and achievements (61; 66). Thus, when the effects are negative, it Rajnagar in Sylhet, Bangladesh. A purposeful sample was needs to be reconsidered. taken within the limits of these districts so as to reflect school environments ranging from poor to significantly improved soEach of the aforementioned constraints and obstacles should cial and economic conditions. A total of 416 students were be reflected upon when forming educational policies since interviewed from 11 high schools; however, two schools (67 there is no single formula encompassing all of these issues. students) were lost for analysis due to inadequate amount of When officials or managements look at “what works” in a responses to the interview questions (respondents failed to neighbouring nations’ education systems for example, they answer the majority of questions presented) or a lack of adoften overlook the unique constraints that block the correct ministrators’ response. Thus a final list of 349 grade nine and implementation of those policies in their individual countries; ten students across 9 schools were selected within the sample. it is important to understand why a policy worked elsewhere The sample includes one girls’ school and one boys’ school, and not simply what worked (Myhill 130). while the rest are mixed gendered. The division of male and female students was 173 and 176, respectively. Although METHODOLOGY 6 to 13 teachers at each of the schools were gathered for round table discussions of their perspectives and experiencThe initial focus of this research was to investigate the causes es, the students’ perspectives remain the central focus of this of dropout amongst Bangladeshi youth. However my research paper. It is necessary to use grade nine and ten students as caused this focus to shift towards creating a better education- the primary respondents due to their prolonged exposure to al development plan and the prevention of wastage. Prelimi- school environments and the quickly approaching transitional nary findings in regards to dropout found that the majority of period between high school and post-secondary education. student respondents attended school regularly. While there Grade ten is the transition period, where the students must were many students who dropped out of school during transi- pass the national exam to attain the Secondary school Certion years, the most commonly reported issue was instead dis- tificate (SSC) in order to advance towards higher secondary satisfaction with the received education. Student respondents education. This transition represents a pivotal decision for the wished for change in the education system. continuation of further educational attainment and is therefore a key factor of this study. Interviews were semi-structured Although the majority of student interviewees dodged the consisting of both open-ended questions and guided converquestion of dropout, declaring that they wish to continue fur- sation. As the topics of dropout and education are fairly perther studies, their responses for future goals and comments sonal, many students required different approaches to attain on the learning experience suggested otherwise. An in depth the necessary answers. However the overall themes of the

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study did not deviate between interviews. With the exception of the teacher group discussions, almost all student interviews were conducted on an individual level.

The objective of this study is to investigate and analyze the dynamics of primary and secondary education. These dynamics are crucial for understanding and analyzing the quality of education as it helps map out any potential barriers.

The study aims to appraise the characteristics of the school environment as described by students’ perspectives, experiences, levels of engagement, and learning processes. Supplementary information provided by teachers and administrators will be analyzed in a similar fashion.

Regular Attendance 80% Occasionally Attend 11% Do Not Attend Regularly 9% Average Attendance FINDINGS The findings of this study produced a wide range of qualitative and quantitative data. Although the qualitative research provides richer information about students’ and teachers’ attitudes,motivation, and a detailed perception of the learning environments, the quantitative data nonetheless, provides a clearer outlook of the findings to better compare and grasp the different variants in the students’ learning experience. The collected data confirmed many of the study’s hypotheses; however, some surprises surfaced throughout the findings of the project.

Students’ attendance in school, derived from the response of students and later confirmed by teachers, showed an average of 80% regular attendance. The rate of students who ‘do not attend regularly’ was higher for boys (10%) than for girls (7%); with an overall average of 9%. The rate of attendance indicates that most of the students come to school on a regular basis. Figures 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 illustrate the findings of the students’ attendance record, along with the variance among girls and boys. There was very minimal difference between the attendance rates of the two genders.

Figure 1.1: Students rate of attendance

Regular Attendance 80%

Socialize

Occasionally Attend 13%

Other factors

Do Not Attend Regularly 7%

Number of Students

Attendance Among Girls Regular Attendance 81% Occasionally Attend 9% Do Not Attend Regularly 10% Attendance Among Boys Figure 1.2: Rate of attendance among girls Figure 1.3: Rate of attendance among boys

Factors Resulting in School Attendance Student Rationality for Attendance Total Boys Girls Figure 2: Students’ rationality for attendance

As demonstrated in Figure 2, the majority of students attend Although attendance rate is similar for both genders, the ra- school with the intent to ‘learn’ (more boys than girls). Howtionality for attendance varies between girls and boys. Figure ever, ‘socializing’ is second (more girls than boys), and third 2 illustrates students’ reasoning behind attending school. It is is ‘other factors’ which includes fulfilling parents’ wish, or betimportant to note that the responses were not mutually exclu- ter future. All of these are expectation of students which drives sive – respondents could select multiple motivators for attend- them to attend school. Many students who expressed a desire to do well in school also voiced that socialization is a motivaing class. tion to attend as well. It should also be noted that even if the ambition behind attendance was to gain knowledge, students 0% conveyed discontent and disappointment with the learning received. Students have a desire to interact with their peers and 10% learn interpersonal skills. They try to fulfill that desire during class time, though it would be better suited for extra-curricular 20% activities. Due to the lack of extra-curricular activities, this goal 30% of socializing and learning interpersonal skills goes largely unfulfilled. Along with a lack of skill building and extra-curric40% ular activities, the students are also not taught or encouraged about their future. The rate of continuation in Figure 3 signifies 50% students’ motivation to finish their studies and go into Higher Secondary School.

60% Figure 3 shows that 56% of average students have intention 70% to ‘continue’. However, with the combination of students who ‘will not’ continue and those that are ‘uncertain,’ almost half 80% of the total student body are distraught about the direction of their future.

Learning

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0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% Continue Will Not Uncertain Rate of Continuation Girls Boys Total Figure 3: Students rate of continuation in studies While in Figure 1 we see that attendance level is high (80%), responses for future continuation in figure 3 hints towards possible risk as almost 50% of students will not or uncertain about continuing their studies. When students were asked to explain their reasoning for not continuing, students complained about the lack of connection between their future and learning experience. The students are not taught or encouraged about their future in a field that requires further education. In fact, a large number of them were certain that they will find other endeavours through leaving school, and ultimately leaving the country for a “better future.” Many students bluntly expressed that although they acknowledge the importance of education, they dislike coming to school and feel teachers are too strict or careless about the students’ learning. Many students added that they believe change to the school system is required, with the inclusion of qualified teachers, entertainment, and activities in school.

The future goals of the majority of the girls pointed towards becoming teachers, which is a job teachers themselves complained about as the income level is extremely low and very few qualifications are required. More than 30% of the girls want to become teachers whereas only 11% of the boys felt the same. Boys’, although still limited, had a wider variety of future goals than girls, with a large number of them keen on going abroad. Girls state that they can only play certain roles, unlike boys who feel there is a range of opportunities open to them. Many girls and boys who complained about the teachers’ behaviours and teaching style declared that they wished to be “good” teachers for future students.

planation of the material before the homework is given. Thus students require private tutors to understand the material. Due to the lack of class time available, which 77% of the teachers complained about (Table 2), it is not possible for teachers to go in depth with their lesson plans.

Table 1: Percentage of students’ satisfaction in classroom learning and private teaching

Students believe that private tutoring is a necessity for understanding the class material (this is a popular belief among many parents and students and is a topic of debate considering the commercialization of private teaching in Bangladesh).

Moreover, the ironic part here is that many of the teachers found in the classroom were also the teachers providing paid private lessons to the students.

Students’ learning

Table 2: Teachers’ attitudes from school discussion

Girls (out of 173)

Teachers’ Attitude

0%

Boys (out of 176)

% of teachers

20%

Total (out of 349)

Express a lack of motivation for teaching

40%

Able to understand material during class

77%

60%

37%

Admit they lack appropriate training

80%

28%

34%

32%

Assert there is not enough class time to teach correctly

100% Boys Girls Desired Future Occupation Teacher Doctor Abroad/Others Figure 4: Students desired occupation From the 349 participating students, 88% of the students wished to have a private tutor, and 70% of the students indicated that they have had private tutoring at some point in their school career. Table 1 portrays students learning experience in school and the concerns of private tuition. This is mostly because a majority of the class time is spent on laying out the lesson plan and then taking up homework. While taking up the homework includes explanation, there is a lack of ex-

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Appreciate the learning in class 51% 43% 7% Wish for a private tutor to higher achievement 91% 85% 88% Have had private tutor(s) at least once?

62%

(45 minutes) 67% Voice concern about low income 67% Private tutors as side job to compensate for low pay 34% State there is not enough space/material to teach 44% Blame parents’ “carelessness” for students’ failures 56%

78%

Believe early marriage for girls is an issue in their education

70%

67%

DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS Seven major points may be derived from the above findings: (1) regular attendance, both boys and girls, is higher than previously anticipated; (2) while learning seems to be students’ utmost expectation, almost 50% of all students also have reasons other than learning for attending school; (3) more girls than boys choose school as place to socialize and both urge for better leisure activities in school; (4) nearly 50% of all students are either certain that they will not continue or are undecided about continuing secondary education or toward Higher Secondary Education (SSC and HSC); (5) students’ future prospects include a minimal list of occupations with more girls indicating teaching as a desired occupation than boys; (6) 88% of all students express a need to have private tutoring in order to achieve good grades at schools; (7) teaching quality inside classrooms suffers due to a lack of teachers’ training, motivation, and necessary teaching materials; and (8) marriage at an early age continues to be an obstacle for girls’ educational attainment, whereas an obstacle to many boys’ educational attainment is the strong desire to go abroad.

Within the last two decades, specific policies were put in place to increase the quantity of students’ access to schooling. These policies consist of free and compulsory education, books, and scholarships for females in rural secondary schools, many of which resulted in much success (Chowdhury et al 603-4). Figure 1 reflects on the success of these policies as attendance rate for both boys and girls is high. Despite the increase in national access to education, the quality of this education however is relatively lacking. My results are parallel to the findings of Lloyd, Mensch and Clark as they reported the scarcity of time to learn, materials, space, desks, classrooms, and effective teaching are all contributing to an adverse educational environment (117). Although the quantity of students has increased over the years, there is an absence of quality in the education system.

exam questions and their answers to be inserted into the students’ memory for a short period of time. This type of teaching does not provide the necessary skills or knowledge for the later success of the students. This relates back to the aforementioned disconnect that students feel between their learning and their future goals. The teaching is neither holistic nor interdisciplinary (Cohen 5). As pointed out in Table 2, most of the teachers explained this to be a problem of time. As class sizes are quite large, teachers do not have sufficient time to teach a lesson or focus on ensuring each student understands.

The teachers admitted to giving brief lessons on topics with seasonal exams in mind, complaining that very little can be taught since the curriculum allows only 45 minutes of class time.

In addition, teachers blame parents for students’ failure at school. Likewise, students explain that because most parents are uneducated they are unable to help students with homework. Due to a lack of financial support, many illiterate parents are also incapable of hiring private tutors. On the surface this becomes a matter of poverty. However, a fundamental question arises: why must it be necessary for almost all students to have private teachers? Table 1 shows the students’ lack of understanding of the material in class (32%), who were also surprised by the proposed question concerning afterschool help. They did not understand the concept of receiving additional help from teachers after school because the notion of teachers help outside of class for free is extremely rare in Bangladesh. Many students with private tutors admitted to skipping classes because they “know” they will not learn anything in class, instead they attend their private lessons.

A noteworthy concern from the findings is the teaching style at schools and the abilities of teachers. Teachers stated that sometimes they face a lack of personal understanding of the material they teach, while students note a feeling of discontent from the learning in class. Teachers begin administering the learning material - providing the tools to learn rather than Teaching Style and the Education System facilitating the learning. As a result students are discouraged from learning. Those teachers who are interested in the stuThere are a number of issues with school curricula, resulting in dents’ learning take on a more authoritarian role toward their the deprivation of students’ learning experience. One particu- students. Although many believe that discipline should be lar issue may arise from the “compartmentalized” teaching taught by teachers (Pellerin 297), many students complained style. “Compartmentalised” learning, as Cohen explains, is that in the name of discipline, teachers were too strict at times. “learning reinforced by teachers that is non-transferable and The harshness of authoritarian schools has been stated as a limits creativity”; it is a method often exercised in developing factor for higher dropout than authoritative schools (Pellerin countries (5). The focus of this learning is on possible test or 299).

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Teachers’ lack of interest or indifferent behaviour was evident in all the visited schools. Students complained that their teachers showed very little interest in their achievements. Many teachers also admitted to this indifferent behaviour, shown in Table 2, contribute to the students’ loss of interest. Lloyd, Mensch and Clark have argued that if an academically competent student becomes discouraged, they are more likely to drop out of school (119). Consequently, it is important to empower teachers so they may empower their students (Cohen 38).

Gender and Education Many teachers, on the other hand, expressed the need for education for both genders equally, while 67% expressed disappointment for girls stating that many girls who do well academically face marriage at an early age. They commented that it was not worthwhile to “waste their energy” on girls. As a result girls are often ignored and put aside to better focus on boys; this is a norm in Bangladeshi society and has become a norm in classrooms. Educational material is also very gender biased. In high schools, girls are taught “greahostho biggan” (home science) while boys are taught “krishi shikka” (farming) without any choice given to the students.

Another problem girls face involves the lack of equipment necessary for education specific to girls, such as physical education, which as a result can make girls fall behind in physical development and teamwork (Lloyd, Mensch and Clark 119).

Omwami exemplifies Kenya as another developing nation that also includes a curriculum that reinforces the role of females as caregivers and compliments the educational system to mould females into housewives (21). This is called “proselytization,” in which countries aim to improve national condition alongside the existing patriarchal thought process; this results in the subordination of females and thus reinforces the system of gender disparity (Omwami 22). Female students also criticized that most of their teachers are male, making it difficult to connect with teachers. Although schools have female teachers, the numbers are very limited, ranging from 0 to 4 in total per school. Some conditional improvement for girls has been taking place is terms of their household behaviours and tasks. For example, many female students note that as long as they achieve good grades, their parents were more inclined to keep them in school, away from household work or marriage.

Extra-Curricular Activities and Leisure Boredom Socialization is another significant element of schooling demonstrated in the findings. Illustrated in Figure 2, many students attend school to fulfil a need for socialization, however all the students complained that zero extra-curricular activities are available. Due to the lack of leisure activities during school, students feel that full school days are “too long.” This also shows the schools’ deficiency in developing students’ skills thus resulting in boredom. Leisure \boredom is defined as “subjective perception that available leisure experiences are not sufficient to instrumentally satisfy needs for optimal arousal” (Wegner et al 423). A respectable school system should supply the appropriate time and activities to satisfy, challenge, and engage students outside of the classroom (Pellerin 287). A study conducted in Cape Town, South Africa, discovered leisure boredom as a significant predictor for poor performance in school leading to dropout, especially among students aged 14 and up (Wegner et al 421). This may be higher for girls as more girls expressed a lack of socializing opportunities outside of the household, thus school is seenas a free pass. Although a large number of students admit that they attend school to socialize, activities through which they can fulfil that need are lacking, hence class time for them serves that purpose.

Private Teaching and Student Achievements Along with a lack of extra-curricular activities, a lack of learning also seems to be prevalent inside the classroom, therefore increasing the need for private lessons outside of class time.

This has to do with a lack of “expertise, sincerity, knowledge and commitment” teachers express towards their students during school (Hamid et al 298). In order to do well, students are forced to self-teach or hire private tutors. Table 1 shows that 88% of students reported that they have or wish to have private tutoring for their educational success. As a result, having a private tutor has become a necessity to be successful in school and is considered to be a societal norm.

Many students feel school is a waste of time as they are not taught adequately in class. To resolve this, affluent children hire private tutors whereas underprivileged children are left feeling helpless. This dynamic inherently discriminates the less affluent children, who are then inevitably subjected to a worse learning experience because they are unable to hire a private tutor. Students with private tutors expressed a feeling of satisfaction with the private lessons over learning in class.

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Private teaching is also a must in order to keep up with regular homework. To recap, homework has been seen as an instrument to encourage parent-teacher communication, parent-child interaction and to create a link between family and school life for students. Homework is essential in strengthening students’ ability to acquire a proper understanding of the school’s curriculum (Hampden-Thompson 129). However familial input in a child’s education is not helpful for the family or the child when expectations of familial assistance in homework puts stress on poor families (especially on mothers) who may lack the appropriate material and knowledge; once again, putting the students from poorer families at an educational disadvantage (Deslandes 72).

Many teachers complained that parents’ lack of education and apathy towards their child’s education negatively effects students’ learning. Many students do not receive help from parents with homework and are not able to afford private tutors. The “good” student must have a private tutor, especially those in higher Grades preparing for the SSC exam in grade ten. As a result students without private tuition are unable to compete. During this period of grade nine and ten, many students explained that they were introduced to new material that is harder for them to grasp and without private tuition they did not have the capacity to understand the material.

However, no particular steps within the teaching system were taken for the success of this specific policy. Classroom settings and the teaching style continue to reproduce knowledge that is memorization based. Accordingly, students do poorly in examinations because they do not learn to analyse.

This encounter in educational policy implementation points out that “dominant pedagogic discourse is monologic, with high levels of teacher control and didactic teaching strategies” (Myhill 131). The teaching is examination-led, emphasizing reproductive knowledge transmitted by the teacher.

These difficulties are due to the teachers’ limited experience as responsive educators and the expectations of students as having limited capacity (Myhill 131-2).

RESEARCH LIMITATIONS

Throughout the study, several limitations became readily apparent. The data accumulated in this research came from discussions with students and teachers. It was difficult to conduct individual interviews with teachers as the entire faculty often insisted on answering questions together as a group. This may have resulted in the phenomenon of groupthink, whereby individual opinions are sacrificed in favour of greater conformity and forming consensus. On the other hand, conducting these interviews in groups allowed for a certain degree of It is important to note that private teaching has become com- brainstorming and recollection. Similar situations occurred mercialized in Bangladesh. Most of the class teachers also with student interviews conducted in the home whereby parplay double roles also providing paid private lessons outside ents would at times accompany children, potentially impactof class. These are curriculum teachers who described this as ing their responses. a necessary endeavour in order to properly sustain themselves due to their low level of income from teaching at school.

Another limitation was locating absent and dropped out students. As a result, respondents were limited to those who atPolicies for Improvement/Policy Implementation tended class during the days of the interviews. Although some Problems students were tracked down for home interviews, the availability of contact information was largely lacking. According to Furthermore, new policies enacted for the improvement of the attendance sheets on the days of the interviews, an average education system are also influenced by the old policies al- of 15% of the total students were absent. Naturally, this causes ready in place, for example policy reforms with the introduc- limitations as the responses of these absent students would tion of new policies do not look at classroom obstacles (Myhill have shed additional light on the reasons for their absenteeism.

131). Both the teachers and students complain about the difficulties of the new exams; a new policy in Bangladesh which Moreover, it would be erroneous to assume that school quality requires more wide reading and critical thinking. This is simi- is purely exogenous. It is also impossible to conclude that a stalar to Myhill’s analysis of policy implementation to improve tistical association of the findings has a direct causal relationliteracy quality without changing old policies (131; 133). To ship with dropout probability. It is unlikely that any one cause, elaborate, in order to help students learn to analyze, Ban- in this paper or otherwise, is solely responsible for dropout, but gladesh introduced “srijonshil” or analysis base examination. rather an amalgamation of potential factors.

IMPLICATIONS AND FURTHER RESEARCH This investigation shed some light on relatively under-researched areas of Sylhet division in Bangladesh. The results generated not only pointed out critical factors within the perimeters of schools in those areas, but also demonstrated a parallel relationship between other developing countries and Bangladesh that can be used for better policy analysis and execution. Overall findings and insights infer that educational policies need to be readdressed for extensive review.

Incentives are provided to students or households by governments or NGOs to attract students to schools (Ardt et al 17) while what students learn in the class is disregarded. If the teachers were trained, felt motivated, and classrooms had a better student to teacher ratio, then students would feel engaged and motivated towards learning with less incentives required. It is essential to understand that NGOs or government programmes can offer incentives and “bribe” students for a certain period; but if the material incentive is not provided the succeeding day, then the students will be discouraged to continue attending school. If students enjoyed the learning experience and felt a drive towards education, then they would be enthusiastic to continue schooling even without the material incentive.

Although many students enrol in secondary school, their lack of success can lead them to discontinue attending school. The reasons for student dropout may include affordability and poor performance, but other factors such as loss of motivation, lack of relevance and quality of the learning and school environment may also contribute (Lewin 157; Zeelen et al 1).

The findings show that even students who attend regularly can undergo a loss of motivation or become disengaged from the schools and feel unsure about continuing their studies. When almost 50% of the students say that they are unsure about continuation or feel certain they will discontinue, it signifies grave concerns for the educational system.

Students, especially girls, can benefit immensely from empowerment. In the late 80s Cohen wrote a bulletin pointing out ways to help students think creatively and become active in their learning. She noted that empowerment can start from classroom learning, where students gain some autonomy to select their learning topics or stories in class. This will demonstrate that teachers care about student interests, helping them feel positive about themselves so they may find a source

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of self-direction through education (Cohen 38; 45). For girls cation policy has been planned and designed parallel to the specifically, it will also help them build self-esteem and open values of educational administration in central government opportunity for individual development. and large NGOs instead of generating them from scientifically acquired research on pupils’ needs. Elite groups closely Along with learning material, teaching and parenting need to connected to central government also influence and in many become authoritative. Instead of the authoritarian or indiffer- cases are in charge of education policy development. Many ent behaviours currently seen, schools can be more demand- scholars on education and development also stress that very ing and hold students to standards of discipline (authoritative), little research has been done that is independent of governwhile maintaining responsive relationships with them. Schools ments or commissions from large NGOs (Unterhalter et al. need to provide teachers who support and demand, in order 85). However it is crucial to understand that not only is there to encourage students to feel confident while ensuring higher a loss of investment for the students , but also for the governengagement and responsibility to become academically moti- ment when students do not receive any quality education and vated and achieve higher grades (Pellerin 279; 288). are likely to repeat classes or dropout as a result. Oketch and Rolleston note that an increase in enrolment in Kenya has reTeachers in Bangladesh attend yearlong training, but very sulted in a decrease in quality of education (156). A review of little learning is found in practice and little to no renewal train- Kenya’s educational policy prospect showed that an increase ing is required after years of teaching. Both teachers and of 91% in budget (0.8% GDP) is necessary by the governstudents express that they are mostly passive and not very in- ment for all household education costs in order to sustain the teractive with each other. Annual training on life skills knowl- net enrolment rate of 94% (Oketch and Rolleston 150). Other edge and monthly refresher training sessions with frequent SSA nations have also shown similar effects. Ugandan educameetings with supervisors who guide them in their teaching tional policies are made to increase access to school but the can improve teaching strategies (Ardt et al 16; Nath 20). main problem faced now is keeping students from dropping out (Zeelen et al. 31).

My interviews with teachers pointed out dissonance in terms of the pedagogy in teaching and teachers’ expectations of Since communities have many linkages with the school and their pupils. My account of teachers’ feelings is similar to education system in developing countries such as BanglaHamilton’s (418) account of teacher’s dissonance, whether desh, communities can provide programmes that improve the it is in personal (teachers, head teachers) or institutional lev- skills of educators in supporting students with learning difficulels (422). Hamilton’s article, focusing specifically on teachers ties. Suggestions from a social survey done in South Africa and narrative identity within the school system, points out dif- emphasize the need for communities to support local educaferent issues that can appear in school in terms of teachers tion. Communities can provide drop-in-centres after school for and how they can improve the learning environment. Their learners with homework or provide extra-curricular activities. attitudes can lead to positive results or negative results in pol- They can also support caregivers with parenting programmes icy implementation in the school. He also points out ways to such as adult’s basic education and training (“Social Survey” improve the narrative between teachers and students (Ham- 5). In the realm of development, as Muzmder and Halim point ilton 421- 3; 427). These kinds of research can be used for out, participatory development in broader terms is considpolicies on teachers’ training and to assist teachers to build ered a bottom-up approach (153). In this type of developtheir identity hence enabling them to better guide their stu- ment, the beneficiaries are not passive objects of their own dents. Moreover, there must be an understanding or a shared development and instead act as active subjects. The focus of dialogue between policy makers and teachers. Teachers are development is also specific in that communities are the main unable to passably teach students subjects or provide lesson sources for identifying the problem as well as the solution plans that they themselves lack the capacity and/or tools to for themselves. These include sharing ideas and contributing comprehend and teach. Students’ learning within the school resources and time (Mozumder and Halim 153). All of these environment also shows a gap between researchers and pol- approaches can be utilized to improve the education systems icy makers in Bangladesh. The communication level between of developing nations and thus the quality of students’ educaresearchers and policy makers are minimal and their views tional attainment. are diverging. The current education system shows that edu-

Finally, throughout the research process, I realized that there is a need to further investigate the work of the school managements and how resource allocation in each school takes place.

The managements include strong community members who control the resources of the schools and impact the learning of the students. They control the system and internal behaviours, which means they control teacher selection thus directing the type of teaching and learning inside the institutions.

CONCLUSION Ginsburg’s examination of polarized economic empowerment levels portrays power relations and their pervasiveness in hierarchical structures – which in the times of colonialism laid the foundation of power relations in economic and sociopolitical structures (Omwami 17). Developing nations experience similar effects in terms of resource allocation and developmental, whether it is in the international field of resource allocation or within the national sphere across cultures and groups in a society (Omwami 17). The implication of these gaps in policies can be disastrous and instead of developmental success it can be detrimental for a nation.

Educational efforts and expansion have all aimed to contribute to modernization and economic improvement, even though government and development groups mainly try to improve quality of life (Omwami 15). Development concerns are raised while arguing against modernization theories. Yet in reality developing countries go through a path following developed nations. Government policies implemented in developing nations now had been the focus of developed nations decades ago. Why not learn from the experience of first world nations and evaluate their successes and failures.

International institutions and NGOs helping developing nations should help make better policies that will bring a series of changes instead of a cycle that repeats and keeps the country in a recurring “developing” stage. Formulation and implementation processes of policies need to focus on how and whom they benefit. Governments, NGOs and other organization involved in recent policies on access to primary and secondary education must concentrate on who the policies benefit and how excluded groups can be reached and the institutionalization and financial sustainability of these policies.

these institutions. Helping children become literate individuals themselves empowers them to develop their nations towards progress rather than repeating the same cycle. What benefit is there for a nation to increase the number of students if these numbers lack substantial quality of education? If education is the backbone to development, then the government and other international and national actors should make sure that this backbone is strong for the nation to stand on its own, without the risk of trembling due to a weak foundation.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research investigation was supported by the Dipty Chakravarty Bursary from the University of Toronto. I would like to acknowledge Shahjalal University of Science & Technology for the warm welcome and support throughout the research, all the participating schools, and thank all the interviewed students and teachers for providing information. I am also grateful to Dr. Courtney Jung for his unwavering support guidance. Thanks to Sayful Alam, Aysha Sonna and Wali Ahmed for their time and dedication and to Sean Meehan for his continuous support all throughout this project. I am indebted to all for their invaluable contributions.

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Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Calvin College. 2011. German Propaganda Archive [online]. Available at: http://www.calvin.edu/academic/ cas/gpa/gdrmain.htm [Accessed: November 2011].

Davey, Thomas. 1987. A Generation Divided: German Children and the Berlin Wall. Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books.

Dennis, Mike. 2000. The Rise and Fall of the German Democratic Republic 1945-1990. Essex: Pearson Education Limited.

Edwards, Lee. 2001. Mediapolitik: How the Mass Media Have Transformed World Politics. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press.

Garton Ash, Timothy. 1994. In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent. NewYork: Vintage.

German Historical Institute, Washington D.C. 2011.

German History in Documents and Images [online]. Available at: http:// germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/index.cfm [Accessed: November 2011].

These findings do not undermine the importance of enrollment and attendance but rather complement them. Development in Gleye, Paul. 1991. Behind the Wall: An American in East Germany, education should also look at the institutions that these chil- 1988-1989. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University. dren are enrolling in and the quality of education provided in Hensel, Jana. 2004. After the Wall: Confessions from an East German 20

Childhood and the Life That Came Next. New York: PublicAffairs.

Kern, Holger Lutz and Jens Hainmueller. 2009. Opium for the Masses: How Foreign Media Can Stabilize Authoritarian Regimes.

Political Analysis 17 (4), pp. 377-399.

Nothnagle, Alan. 1999. Building the East German Myth: Historical Mythology and YouthPropaganda in the German Democratic Republic, 1945-1989. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Rodden, John. 2002. Repainting the Little Red Schoolhouse: A History of Eastern GermanEducation, 1945-1995.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rodden, John. 2006. Textbook Reds: Schoolbooks, Ideology, and Eastern German Identity. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State Univer-

sity Press.

Stearns, Peter. 2001. Consumerism in World History: The Global Transformation of Desire. New York: Routledge.

Taylor, Frederick. 2007. The Berlin Wall: A World Divided, 19611989. New York: HarperCollins.

Tusa, Ann. 1997. The Last Division: A History of Berlin, 19451989. New York: Addison- Wesley.

Ekphrastic Potential: Giving Voice to the Dance

By Joseph Witkin

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Paul Valéry’s “Philosophy of the Dance” may have ekphrastic potential, but before suggesting that the author’s words give voice to the dance, a strong association between word and the dancer’s image must be formed. One way that Valéry solidifies this verbal/visual relationship is by comparing dancing to writing and poetry, which offers evidence for the word’s ability to capture the expressive content of the dance.

In this 1936 essay, written about the Spanish dancer Mme Argentina, there are several examples of clear connections between word and image where the visual art literally writes with the poetry of action. The author describes the dance between the Earth and the body of the artist in which the ground is “the prose of human movement” (Copeland and Cohen-1983, 61). What he means by this comparison to the written word is that the dancer expresses her art by composing her body movements onto her environment, literally creating the world on which she steps. Thus the flow of her toes across the stage writes the floor into the story.

Valéry conveys the sense that if the dancer were to stop, she may fall through the emptiness as the prose of the Earth disappears. For the dancer “is in another world; no longer the world that takes color from our gaze, but one that she weaves with her steps and builds with her gestures” (61).

The author suggests that dance seems to let the artist write the world where she exists, and furthermore, she expresses through her body “a poetry that encompasses the action of living creatures in its entirety” (64-65). “Philosophy of the Dance” also connects the written and performing arts from the reversed perspective of poetry having a movement like dancing: “To recite poetry is to enter into a verbal dance” (63). The speaker explains that a poem is also action because without being read it ceases to exist. These two media for artistic expression—dance and poetry—are similar because they are both an artist’s performance of meaning through rhythm. Therefore, these connections are strong evidence for “Philosophy of the Dance” having the ability to give voice to the mute art object, the dance of Mme Argentina.

Though we have demonstrated the ability of the writer to give voice to dance’s silent expressive content, there are some hindrances to proposing this form of ekphrasis.

Writing about dance often gives description and analogy instead of feeling the art and bringing it to life in the mind of the reader. In Valéry’s essay it is the speaker’s detached tone and philosophical rhetoric that block the ability for the reader to deeply connect to the art of the dancer. For example, when Valéry compares the dancer to

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a flame or a sphere of energy his images are captivating, but they may pull the reader away from the dance with distanced philosophical rhetoric and distracting images: “Our philosopher may just as well compare the dancer to a flame or, for that matter, to any phenomenon that is visibly sustained by the intense consumption of a superior energy” (Copland and Cohen-1983, 60). These words create an interesting and beautiful image, but the reader may notice rhetorical devices that deflate the importance of the dance (Townsend-2005, 137). Valéry continuously refers to his own internal philosopher, which focuses his writing on himself and his own thoughts. He says the words “may just as well” as if the dance could be loosely compared “to any phenomenon” (Copland and Cohen-1983, 60). And following the use of these images he states, “Forgive me that outrageously bold expression” (60). Valéry’s interjections pull us back down to earth from his images he paints in the air. The distance between the writer and dancer does not allow the voice of the dance to be heard.

Another example of a hindrance to ekphrasis is in the overuse of analogy, which the French philosopher Jacques Derrida criticized of Valéry. “Derrida suggests that philosophical rhetoric employs metaphor as a kind of detour that seeks, finally, to obliterate the metaphorical figure in order to render abstract language concrete” (Townsend-2005, 137).

These bold words argue that the use of analogical metaphor loosely suggests a comparison to another image, and this analogy focuses attention on the associated image and the ideas it portrays, not the object of figuration. The usage of philosophical methodology exemplified by Valéry is designed for understanding purposes. It is a form of dissection of the figure in order to compare it to a representation in philosophy.

Derrida states that art involves a transformation or a change in the onlooker, and this cannot be accomplished by the pursuit of philosophical systemization, which deconstructs the metaphorical figure (Townsend 138). Hence, the analogical metaphors in Valéry’s work are part of a general writing style that serves to distance the poet from the dancer.

Julie Townsend analyzes this rhetoric in “Synaesthetics: Symbolism, Dance, and the Failure of Metaphor,” an essay comparing the dance writings of Valéry with those of Stephane Mallarmé. According to Townsend, “Valéry takes a removed philosophical stance,” attending to the advancement of philosophy and its connection to poetry rather than attempting to understand the essence, or the integral meaning, of the dance (138). Valéry himself states

that he “approaches the matter from far off, in the hope that distance will dispel the difficulties” (Copeland and Cohen-1983, 58). This distance may limit understanding the dance, as the writer himself admits to the loops and tangents it creates: “I admit that I’ve given you rather too much [philosophy]” (58). Therefore, “Valéry’s voyeuristic approach . . . is not an adequate condition to provoke artistic revelation, which requires, instead, a movement that leaps out of the self and co-mingles with art” (Townsend-2005, 141).

Townsend contrasts the distanced, philosophical approach of Valéry with a literary emphasis on metaphor, which is paramount in Mallarmé’s ability to identify with the performer (137-138). This identification with the dancer and the dance is necessary for a truly ekphrastic piece of writing because when attempting to comprehend the voice of a mute art piece one cannot hear from afar. By forming connections among the reader, the writer, and the dancer, Mallarmé’s “Ballets” brings to life the scene of watching the dance: Oh, stranger to me and yet a Friend, as you sit hidden some evening in the theater: if, at that sorceress’ feet (she! All unaware of sorcery), you will but humbly place the Flower of your poetic instinct (like those roses which are thrown off and up into visible higher worlds by a flick of her pale and dizzying satin slippers), drawing from this alone the true light and revelation of your numberless secret imaginings, then (in an exchange which seems to be the secret and revelation of her smile), through her always ultimate veil, she will give you back your concepts in all their nakedness, and silently inscribe your vision as would a symbol— which she is. (Copeland and Cohen-1983, 115) Mallarmé starts by identifying strongly with another spectator by capitalizing the word “Friend.” He presupposes the connection between attentive spectators and dancer that will later be demonstrated through psychology and the mirror neuron system. Unlike Valéry’s essay, “Ballets” weaves metaphors that keep the imagination and focus on the dancer while we see, once again, a connection of dance to poetry. This connection is ubiquitous throughout this piece as Mallarmé likens the dancer to a poet by seeing her “lunges and abbreviations” as being written with her

body: “Her poem is written without the writer’s tools” (112). She reaches across the barrier between separate subjectivities, an “ultimate veil,” to mirror the spectator’s own ideas. But now she reveals to the observer the “true light and revelation” of those ideas, stripped of individuality—“in all their nakedness.” Thus according to symbolist aesthetics, ideas evoked by a true symbol will be universal. In one reading, the dancer burns onto his eye the symbol of her movement, and inscribes onto his inner vision the symbol of her dance. Townsend suggests that where Valéry failed to follow symbolist notions of aesthetic experience, Mallarmé understood this symbolist imperative, since his speaker observes the art form and is lifted from his normal state of being so that he may return to himself changed by the dance (Townsend-2005, 139).

Difficulties still exist in giving voice to the dance because symbolist aesthetics of the dancer’s movements produce subtle and ever-changing significations. In one essay, Mallarmé depicts the dance as an unstable symbol: “The moment when this philosophical construction appears to crystallize, the dancer undoes and reforms the model of [our beliefs]” (Townsend-2005, 134). Thus, is it possible to understand each gesture or must the observer suspend judgment until the end of the dance when the piece is understood as a whole? Mallarmé’s view is that to understand the dance “will mean living entirely in the world of revery” (Copeland and Cohen-1983, 115). Though these symbolist gestures seem to contain the voice of the dance, the speed and subtlety of the symbology creates difficulties in interpretation.

Therefore, further evidence of language existing within these gestures is necessary to show that dance writing can include ekphrasis.

Modern linguists are exploring a new set of theories that examine the possibility of gesture being as integral to language as speech. In an article appearing in Anthropological Linguistics, Brenda Farnell discusses the findings of a collaborative research effort. Farnell states that current research considers gesture to include hand and arm movements, posture, and facial expression.

However, she suggests that this view may be limiting when considering dance and other human practices incorporating body movement to convey meaning. One researcher she presents, Adam Kendon, uses video recordings of natural conversations between Italian people to establish a “convincing case” that both speech and gesture are

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“modes of symbolic representation that achieve meaning” (Farnell-2000, 246). Kendon also shows that the language of gesture is formed differently than spoken phrases when they are used in conjuction; however, as the spoken language is removed, gesture begins to take on a structure similar to spoken language (Farnell-2000, 246). In other words, gesture has meaning, but it is supplemental when used with speech. However, as spoken language is removed, the gestures literally form abbreviations, pauses, punctuations, and many other expressions found in language. Thus, growing scientific research is giving evidence for gestures having a voice of their own.

than the action itself (670). To understand the ramifications of this idea in regard to dance, one can imagine a ballet full of action: tragedy, war, and happy occasions. Yet, picture the dancers all having counterintuitive dancing movements, like fast and bouncy during a tragic scene. The action of the ballet means little without attention to the expressions of the dancer. Therefore, research in cognitive psychology is exhibiting how the ballerina’s gestures contain meaning that strongly affects the thoughts of spectators.

Research in neuroscience indicates that this expression of meaning between the dancer and observer is conveyed through the mirror neuron system. In 1996 neuroscientists discovered a class of neurons in the brain that they called mirror neurons because they were stimulated both in an individual performing an action and in a person who “simply witnesses” that action (Berrol-2006, 302). These neurons were also stimulated during body movements or when expressing an emotion (303). But as scientists have demonstrated, when the witness observes the event it is the sensorimotor system, “not intellect or reasoning” that activates the mirror neurons. The stimulation is “experiencebased” in that the witness must have experienced something similar in themselves (303). This research constitutes an argument against Valéry’s method of using philosophy and reasoning to try to understand the dance, since he states that he is not a dancer (Copeland and Cohen-1983, 55).

Furthermore, mirror neurons are certainly being activated when observing the dance, and this mirror connection and vicarious experience of what the dancer is doing and feeling may be integral to voicing the mute art object, the dance.

Berrol suggests that the mirror neuron system is essential to empathic understanding between individuals, naming this understanding “intersubjectivity or subpersonal transfer of meaning” (Berrol-2006, 308-309).

To synthesize the scientific research presented in this essay, a connection is created between word and image in writings about dance through the mirroring effects between the two artforms.

Together the writer and dancer perform an action, feel the same emotion, and express it in language. The spectator quite literally experiences what the dancer feels within the mind. Thus it is empathy not intellectual understanding that may allow the writer to connect word and image in dance.

Research in cognitive psychology can also shed light on how the gestures of dancers on the stage can have such a powerful influence on the spectators. According to Susan Goldin-Meadow and Sian Beilock in their article “Action’s Influence on Thought: The Case of Gesture,” recent findings in psychology are changing traditional views of how thoughts are formed: psychologists are moving from a theory of encoding symbols in the brain to a new theory of “embodied cognition” (664). What this means is that body movement and the senses are integral to thought processes through activation of the sensorimotor systems (GoldinMeadow and Beilock-2010, 664). The experimenters had adults complete a puzzle that involved stacking blocks and then explaining how they did it to a researcher. The participants’ gestures reflected the movements of the blocks.

They set up another experiment with two puzzles that were slightly different from each other. Participants who did both puzzles in a row solved them both easily. However, when participants were made to speak about how they solved it the first time and were also allowed to gesture, they had trouble with the slightly different second puzzle. Only when the person was given a chance to gesture did it hinder their ability to adapt to the changed puzzle. However, if the puzzle didn’t change, those that gestured completed the puzzle more quickly and effectively. By manipulating the conditions of the study, the experimenters demonstrated that gestures strengthen the “mental representation” of an action (670). Furthermore, they showed that observers watching the gestures of a fellow participant would be highly influenced by the way the person gestured (669).

Indeed, making gestures not match the puzzle slowed down the speed of completing the puzzle more than changing These scientific findings may show that specific aspects of the puzzle itself. Goldin-Meadow and Beilock suggest that dance, namely the connection between writer and dancer as gestures about an action have a greater affect on thought well as the interpretability of the art form, demonstrate how

dance writing may give voice to the art. When Mallarmé suggests that the dancer “silently inscribe[s] your vision as would a symbol” (Copeland and Cohen-1983, 115), this can be interpreted ambiguously. The statement could mean either that the movements of the dance are etched onto the eye like a memory (After Images n.p.), or the dancer literally writes your worldview. The latter interpretation means that the ballerina has drawn the spectators into her world until her views are mirrored in the witnesses minds. This is a key concept in the writer’s ability to give voice to the image and is a common theme with other dance writers. A similar perception is expressed by Arlene Croce, a prominent writer for The New Yorker in the 1970s. She writes in the preface of one of her collections, “Afterimage is defined as ‘the impression retained by the retina of the eye, or by any other organ of sense, of a vivid sensation, after the external cause has been removed.’ . . . Dancing leaves nothing else behind—no record, no text—and so the afterimage becomes the subject of dance criticism” (Croce-1977, n.p.).

This passage once again highlights the difficulty of describing dance, by pointing out the fleeting existence of the art. Croce further concedes this point: “The dance critic resigns himself to doing a fool’s job as best he can” (Croce-1977, n.p.)

But despite this negative outlook, the occasional gleaming ekphrastic passage shines through the pages of the works of Croce and her mentor Edwin Denby. In the essay “Theatre is Truth” from her collection Sight Lines, Croce develops a picture of the ballet Sunset: Whatever the piece “says”—about women as a part-time need of men, or about the fatuity of male assumptions in regard to women, or about love versus duty, honor, and country—is inconsequential beside the shimmering ambiguity of the vision it holds before us. Emotionally, no moment is unmixed, and the continuing delicacy and subtlety of the piece trains us as we watch it.

A simple response is impossible. The short way of saying this is that Sunset invents a new realism in the theatre (Croce-1987, 110).

Thus far we have been discussing ekphrastic potential of a single dancer’s art, but an entire ballet is just as much a mute art object. In the first line of this excerpt the word “says” certainly gives voice to the ballet, and after the dash the words are like a qualification for what the dance was

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previously expressing. These words move toward what appears to be the fundamental expression of the visual art. What the speaker says of the “ambiguity” and mixed emotions is that throughout the ballet no situation is cliché or goes according to plan. Some characters are excluded from merriment, the soldiers fail to get the girl, and nothing happens perfectly or simply (109-111). Thus the ballet Sunset speaks of realism in “human nature.” (111).

the County Paris, then rushes back home from the apothecary.

Denby places the reader in a heightened state of empathy and physical limits where the chest is stretched open near bursting (Denby-1986, 395). He then tells the reader to “push the neck forward as hard as you can, and lift your head until you feel ‘desperately resolved’ . . . and now, keeping the stance unchanged, rush about the room with an incredible lightness and rapidity.” He concludes that “when Ulanova does it, you feel it means “here is my heart” (395) The symbolism of the open heart is a common theme, but it is the deeper linguistic interpretation of the movement that is most important to the ekphrastic interpretation. The arched chest alone has a sense of pride, but with the neck stretched up and forward, the shape of the silhouette in profile remains concave. Thus, the symbol depicts a hollow saddness, yet it is drawn and stretched forward toward love, open-hearted, yet ready to pierce that very heart. Thus, the dance of Juliet gives voice to the tragedy (Denby-1986, 395). Furthermore the words “desperately resolved” (395) are another example of ekphrasis because the posture of Ulanova is giving voice to the moment in the dance. “Resolved” ambiguously contains the double meanings of the two repeated movements: her fling and rush away from marriage where it could mean she is determined, and the second fling and rush returning from the apothecary where she feels desperate relief, like when a dissonant chord is finally resolved. Giving voice to the dance on more than one level allows readers to connect to the expressive meaning of the art and is a sign of great ekphrasis.

Despite the difficulty of expressing the meaning of dance through ekphrasis, this art form seems to clearly speak through Croce’s work. Another example of ekphrasis, excerpted from Croce’s essay “The Fire This Time,” is strong, simple, and abrupt in its voicing of the dance. The ballet is about a Prince capturing what may be a firebird or a woman, Croce states: “The step that does it best, for me, is the lunge on point braced by him from behind. This pose, with the legs in profile and the torso turned front, seems to say ‘strength and cunning’” (Croce-1987,269). The power of this phrase changes the perspective of the entire piece by giving voice to the struggling emotions and the fighting will of the bird. It truly makes the reader feel the intensity of the female part and creates a sense of excitement in the situation.

The bird is fluttering and darting only to be grabbed by the prince (268). “She pits her strength and cunning against the man’s” (269). The lines of ekphrasis can be analyzed according to the symbology and gestural linguistics of the physical movements: facing forward towards the audience is a gesture of strength and “legs in profile” are tactically moving sideways, which symbolizes cunning. Therefore, this mute art object, the dance of a bird, is a symbolist Thus, the ekphrastic potential of dance writing appears fully aesthetic and a linguistic representation that speaks through realized in the New York dance scene—and despite the the writer. hindrances and resistances to this mode of writing—an art of giving voice to the silent may expand into a new sphere Croce Learned to critique dance from her mentor and friend of literature. Word and image in dance have a strong Edwin Denby (Croce-1987, 335-337). In an essay tribute relationship because of similarities between dance and to Denby she writes of his method of analysis as simply poetry, highlighted by 19th century poets. Yet the challenge seeing and believing (337). This lack of philosophical for ekphrastic writing about dance is to capture a meaning judgment allows the writer to be a good listener in terms of that is expressed in the body and that exists only in the ekphrastic voice. Denby also believed in the interconnected moment. Through scientific research we may understand subjective experience of watching the dance (337). And the language of gesture, the effect of body movements on this “intersubjectivity” transfers meaning to his words. In the our thoughts, and the mirrored subjectivities of the performer essay “Bolshoi at the Met” from a collection entitled Dance and observer reflected all the way down to the neuron.

Writings Denby helps the reader develop a subjective feeling When spectators observe the dance, research suggests that of Ulanova’s movements in Romeo and Juliet by suggesting a unison of bodies and minds occurs, so that the observer that the reader attempt her dance movements. Ulanova is feels the action being performed by the dancer. Amazingly, Juliet and, in this moment, she rushes away from marriage to Arlene Croce understood this reflection and embodiment of

shared experience in her 1987 essay on Denby, almost a decade before the mirror neuron system was discovered.

Croce notes that “it seemed that kinetic excitement was what made viewing dancing” a subjective pleasure (Croce-1987, 557). This subjectivity and reflected feeling leads to empathic understanding of the dance. Thus, we must only be human and write down our personal observations of watching a dancer’s performance to give voice to the dance.

References Berrol, Cynthia F. “Neuroscience Meets Dance/Movement Therapy: Mirror Neurons, theTherapeutic Process and Empathy.”

The Arts in Psychotherapy. 33 (2006) 302-315. Summon. Web. 14 March 2012.

Copeland, Roger and Cohen Marshall. What is Dance?

Oxford/London: Oxford University Press, 1983. Print.

Croce, Arlene. After Images. Toronto: Random House of Canada Limited, 1977. Print.

Sight Lines. Toronto: Random House of Canada Limited, 1987. Print.

Denby, Edwin. Dance Writings. London: Dance Books Ltd., 1986. Print.

Farnell, Brenda. “Language and Gesture.” Language, Culture and Cognition Series: General editor, Stephen C. Levinson, Max Plank Institute for Psycho-linguistics: Nijmegan.

Cambridge University Press. Rpt. From Anthropological Linguistics 46.1 (2000): 100-115. Summon. Web. 14 March 2012.

Goldin-Meadow, Susan and Sian L Beilock. “Action’s Influence on Thought: The Case of Gesture.”

Perspectives on Psychological Science 5 (2010): 664-674. Summon.

Web. 14 March 2012.

Smith, Mack. Literary Realism and the Ekphrastic tradition.

Penn State Press, 1948. Online Townsend, Julie. “Synaesthetics: Symbolism, Dance, and the Failure of Metaphor.” The Yale Journal of Criticism 18.1 (2005): 126-148.

Summon. Web. 16 March 2012.

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Making Gender Reels

By Laura Stamm

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As a fantasy structure, film acts as a privileged medium to conceive of formations, including identity formations, which are otherwise unthinkable under dominant ideology. Film may be a series of images composed for human entertainment, but as Susan Hayward states, “film is not just film, it is also the nexus of text relations which function as fantasy structures enunciating unconscious desire” (Hayward 109). That is, film possesses the potential to show sublimated and repressed desires, such as the spectator’s desire for alternative gender performances. Works like Hedwig and the Angry Inch (John Cameron Mitchell, 2001) and Velvet Goldmine (Todd Haynes, 1998) illuminate identities that celebrate the fluidity of gender performance and a refusal to be contained by social norms. While all of these films show the normalizing forces of regimes such as the family, a national imaginary, and hate crime violence, performance serves as way to imagine identity formations that dominant culture renders abject. Performances within these films visualize an “outside” to the reality that rigidly defines intelligible bodies—particularly, the trans body. Whereas the surgicalized body is connected to structural norms, music represents a place for the freeing up of gender and, in this manner, functions as a transforming lexicon. By labeling the filmic language of these texts a transforming lexicon, I mean to say that the use of music and performance in these two films forms a vocabulary of social transformation. Hedwig and Velvet Goldmine communicate visualize for their spectator embodiments of gender identities that dominant discourses do not makerender invisible.

The transsexual body is often equated with a surgicalized body, meaning that the trans body is only a thinkable body in its postoperative form. Moreover, the trans body becomes defined by surgery and this association according to Nikki Sullivan, “on the upside,…makes visible significantly different forms of non-normative embodiment that require quite different responses, but on the downside, it tends to forge what in time comes to be an almost inextricable link between transsexualism and surgery” (Sullivan 104). This rigid definition of transsexuality as a post-operative, “corrected” body is limiting because it promotes a body strictly defined as male or female, thus reinforcing binaristic conceptions of gender in which one must adhere to one of two overdetermined genders. The medical discourse surrounding transsexuality functions to limit the range of gender intelligibility available for the transsexual body and identifies it as either transmale or transfemale, or more accurately male or female. Post-operative identities as male or female actually function to erase the “trans” part of this identity such that the trans individual becomes a “normal” man or woman. This type of normality that erases the “transness” forms part of a larger grid heteronormativity in which compulsory heterosexuality dictates many operative decisions. Emily Skidmore in her analysis of the “good transsexual” describes one transwoman whose “decision to get sex reassignment surgery out of her allegiance to heteronormativity” (Skidmore 281). Under these struictures, in order to be seen as a “normal” person worthy of love and affection, the trans body must be a post-operative body.

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This idea of “normal” relies on the notion that there is a “not-normal” or “wrong” body. The medical community has encouraged the notion of gender reassignment surgery as corrective, implying that one must belong solely to the category of male or female to function in society. Sullivan states, “those desiring surgery or hormone therapy must meet various requirements, and basically prove that they are in the ‘wrong body’, and that surgical intervention will ‘rectify’ this ‘problem’” (Sullivan 104). This notion of gender ambiguity as a “problem” establishes binaristic gender as the norm and all other gender expressions as a violation of it. In “The Empire Strikes Back,” Sandy Stone describes medical discourses governed by cultural norms that act as “the force of an imperative—a natural state toward which all things tend—to deny the potentialities of mixture, acts to preserve ‘pure’ gender identity” (226). This preservation of a pure or true gender serves to close down the possibilities for gender play—possibilities that create a multiplicity of thinkable gender identities. Gender reassignment surgery, therefore, functions as a means of perpetuating the gender norms that close down the possibilities for ambiguity opened up by more fluid trans identities.

In “The Question of Social Transformation,” Judith Butler describes the way in which normality operates as exclusionary and violent, stating “norms are what govern ‘intelligible’ life, ‘real’ men, and ‘real’ women. And that when we defy these norms, it is unclear whether we are still living, or ought to be, whether our lives are valuable, or can be made to be, whether our genders are real, or can ever be regarded as such” (“The Question” 206).

Social norms then produce discourses and ideologies that police gender performance. Medical discourse is far from free of these discourses and as such, medical language and operations function to police the trans body; consequently, “for the most part, the medical establishment (and the values and beliefs that inform its practice) is intolerant of, and works to annihilate or ‘rectify’ ambiguity of any kind. In this sense, sex reassignment surgery and/ or hormone therapy could be said to play a normalizing, corrective role” (Sullivan 107). Ambiguous gender must be corrected so that the trans person convincingly performs a thinkable gender. In order to be seen as a human, one must be intelligible as either an adherence to social norms or a violation of social norms. The danger of social norms is seen as a violation of gender norms risks severe consequences that pose a threat to survival and the ability to lead a livable life. Intelligibility, here, directly corresponds to visibility: bodies that are unintelligible become invisible. Without visible alternative bodies and embodiments, it is nearly impossible to conceive of new identities. However, film provides a way to imagine what different gender formations could look like, and I will now turn to the two films Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Velvet Goldmine to demonstrate how these films perform this work. More specifically, I will look at how music and performance function as privileged spaces for the materialization of subversive embodiments.

In looking at use of performances in the two films, I want to note how these musical spectacles both do and do not explain gender

performance, which I will address from a position informed by Judith Butler’s writing. To describe Butlerian gender performance, it is first useful to mention that gender performance and drag (or in the case of these films, literal onstage performance) are not synonymous terms; drag may act as a hyperbolized de-naturalization of gender performance but holds little relevance for everyday acts.

Instead, gender performance includes acts that are citational of heteronormative gender ideals of “masculinity” and “femininity”.

Reiterations of these simulacral (copy without an origin) acts constitute gender performativity—the narrative of performances that allow a subject to perceive a “true” or “essential” gender identity. Butler describes the compulsion to “perform”: “If a regime of sexuality mandates a compulsory performance of sex, then it may be only through that performance that the binary system of gender and the binary system of sex come to have intelligibility at all” (“Imitation and Gender” 318). In other words, binaristic gender identities are not “natural” but discursively constructed by (heteronormative) regimes of sexuality. The musical performances in the two films I will discuss do not act as a literal model of gender acquisition, but instead, they both de-naturalize heteronormative gender identities and make visible previously unseen gender performances. The fantasy space of musical performance creates a space for the spectator to view subjectivities and embodiments that reality renders unthinkable.

The temporal similarities of the two films, both in their time of production and the historical time periods they represent, reflect the hope presented in the two films for not only socially accepted but celebrated gender fluidity. Both films were produced in the late 90s-early 2000s—Velvet Goldmine in 1998 and Hedwig in 2001—around the time that transgender studies emerged as a legitimate academic field growing in popularity. The new writings under the umbrella of transgender studies expressed the desire for new theoretical positions, along with heterogeneity of embodiments. In the landmark 1998 Transgender Issue of the journal GLQ, “Susan Stryker writes that ‘as a field, transgender studies promises to offer important new insights into such fundamental questions as how bodies mean or what constitutes human personhood’” (qtd. in Valentine 146). This vision of a sort of queer utopia in which multiplicity and alterity replace normality echoes the visions of a sexual revolution in the 1970s. Both films show the 70s with a sense of pastness, but a past full of hope and possibility that is foreclosed some ten or so years later. Hedwig sets Hedwig’s childhood in the early 70s, showing the decade as reflective of the dreams of Hedwig’s youthful mind. Velvet Goldmine is set mostly in the early 70s, but the film presents this era through the lens of recovering the true story of the disappearance of Brian Slade ten years after the fact. Both films reference a specific aspect of the early 70s—the glam rock phenomenon popularized by stars like David Bowie. Glam rock embodied all of the 70s faith in a sexual revolution as it became the sphere of sexual openness and queer gender presentations. The male pop idols that perpetuated this style of music and dress dared to don extravagant costuming, including full make-up, glitter sequins, long hair, and even dresses. This fluidity of gender identity that

characterized glam rock serves as a historical predecessor to the optimism surrounding the emergence of transgender studies in the late 90s-early 2000s.

this naming seems to mock corrective sex reassignment surgery that aims at perfection, parodying claims like “not an inch left” for male-to-female patients’ successful surgeries.

Yet, I do not solely attribute the subversiveness of glam rock to costume; I argue that the music itself played a very significant role in the political work glam rock performed. By featuring musical performances as the axis on which the film turns, Hedwig and Velvet Goldmine emphasize the importance of music. Music functions differently than spoken language. As Adorno explains, “music is similar to language in that it is a temporal succession of articulated sounds that are more than just sound. They say something, often something humane” (401). Music does not depend on a fixed meaning like language often does; instead, music permits and plays off a slippage of meaning. This slippage or multiplicity of meaning mirrors the subversive and multiple gender identities performed in glam rock and cited in the two films. Accordingly, in both Hedwig and Velvet Goldmine, music and spectacular performance present a means for creating newly visible gender performances.

HEDWIG

the mobile home-cum-performance space. The band takes over the trailer in what becomes an over-the-top show with Hedwig appearing in a costume made of blond wigs at the song’s close.

Thus, the American fantasy that Hedwig envisions as a new better life forms nothing more than a collection of norms whose violence become figured in Hedwig’s botched surgery. The only way for Hedwig to find happiness and acceptance is through creating and performing music.

The structural norms that define the body are also figured in the figurations and symbols of nationalism throughout the film for both America and Germany (Berlin). For example, the film opens with the patriotic song “America, the Beautiful” and the first scene features Hedwig decked out in patriotic regalia. As Hedwig takes the stage in the opening performance, she dons a denim rhinestoned costume complimented by a cape-like addition emblazoned with the words “Yankee Go Home with Me.” These Americana signifiers are contrasted with reminders of Hedwig’s German origins as she sings the song “Tear Me Down” that describes her former life in Berlin and ability to endure everything that has been thrown her way. The title of the song alludes to the Berlin Wall and Hedwig is compared to the wall repeatedly. Notably, Hedwig was born the same year (1961) that Germany constructed the Berlin Wall. The wall with its division of East and West Berlin comes to stand in for Hedwig’s uneasy position on the borderlines of man and woman. After the show, Hedwig and the band retreat to the Americana Motel, reinforcing the scenes explicit references to national identity.

The contrast of Hedwig’s heartbreak and the lively performance demonstrate that while the American fantasy does enacts a certain violence, music as a fantasy space opens up the possibility of gender ambiguity and freeing up of desires. According to Butler, “fantasy is what allows us to imagine ourselves and others otherwise. Fantasy is what establishes the possible in excess of the real; it points, it points elsewhere, and when it is embodied, it brings the elsewhere home” (“The Question” 217). Music functions as a way access to this fantasy. The film visually depicts this entryway in the dreamlike sequences during Hedwig’s (then Hansel’s) childhood when he retreats to the kitchen oven as an escape from a harsh reality. The oven is in rich mise-en-scène as it is filled with a radio and colorful photos of music icons, such as David Bowie and acts as an unconventional space for fantasy.

When Hansel, needs to retreat from the his screaming parents or life’s other unpleasantries, he crawls into his only private space in the house and dreamily slips into the music of David Bowie, Lou Reed, and Iggy Pop played on an American music station. The radio, along with images of music icons, proves the oven to not only be a sphere of music, but also a sphere for Hansel to take comfort in the dream world that glam rock provides.

Throughout the film, Hedwig aspires to an American fantasy, and it is partially the pursuit of this very fantasy that leads to Hedwig’s surgery. In order to marry Luther and come to America, Hedwig is subjected to a botched surgery; this marriage, though, quickly falls apart after Luther brings Hedwig to the States. Hedwig’s surgery reflects the narrative of the “good transsexual” woman—the “white transwomen…able to articulate transsexuality as an acceptable subject position through an embodiment of the norms of white womanhood, most notably domesticity, respectability, and heterosexuality” (Skidmore 271). Yet after these dreams of domesticity fail to materialize, Hedwig withdraws from an unaccepting society as a sad and lonely outcast. Luther, in fact, runs off with a young boy and abandons Hedwig in a trailer in Junction City, Kansas. In the scene of this abandonment, immediately after he leaves, Hedwig turns to the news on the television to see footage of the Berlin Wall being torn down. The wall acts a visual reminder of the sacrifices Hedwig made in pursuit of the American fantasy. This moment of hopelessness, though, transitions to a performance of the song “Wig in a Box” and the trailer becomes a stage; one side opens up and lights surround the perimeter of

Throughout the film, Hedwig embodies an unconventional gender performance as (s)he is never specified as either a man or a transwoman. Yet, Hedwig is often strongly coded as either masculine or feminine. During the majority of the film, and particularly in musical performances, Hedwig’s make-up, costuming, and wigs signify an excess of femininity similar to that of a the glam rock stars of the 70s. The abundance of glitter, color, and exposed skin reflect the performative nature of gender and the fantasy involved in Hedwig’s music. When on stage, Hedwig performs a multiplicity of identities—all subversive by virtue of their sheer excess; here while performing, the limits of normality imposed on the surgicalized body do not contain or restrict Hedwig’s gender identity. This freedom within the space of Hedwig’s music appears at the end of the film as Hedwig’s gender presentation rapidly transforms with the performance of “Midnight Radio.” In the final scenes of the film, we see Hedwig coded as a man as (s)he is stripped of feminine clothing, wig, and excessive make-up. In fact, Hedwig appears to be the visual double of former lover Tommy Gnosis, sharing his attributes including his shirtless chest, short hair, and

In Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Hedwig (John Cameron Mitchell) is a transgender lead-performer of a rock band whose story is told through a series of tour performances. Born in East Berlin as a boy named Hansel, Hedwig undergoes a sex change operation during his mid-twenties when he falls in love with an American member of the army (Luther) stationed in Germany. Hedwig agrees to the surgery so that the pair can marry and flee to the United States together, but unfortunately, the operation does not go as planned and Hedwig is left with an “angry inch.” As Hedwig’s life is told through flashback, her band continues on a musical tour that coincides with the tour of her former lover, Tommy Gnosis (Michael Pitt)—a boy who she once loved but abandoned her, taking both her heart and her songs.

In the film, the juxtaposition of music and the surgericalized body illuminates the difference between the fantasy space of performance and the limits of intelligibility enforced on the body. Hedwig’s surgicalized body has been limited to the understanding afforded by the medical discourses of transsexuality; one can either be a “corrected” man or woman, or risk falling out of the category of human. In this manner, Hedwig’s surgicalized body in the film functions as a stand in for the rigid structural norms. Hedwig’s post-operative body, including her “angry inch,” reflects the limits of intelligibility: Hedwig is not understandable as either a man or woman. The pain and scars of the surgery stand in as an allegory for the violence done by regulatory discourses. For “when gender norms operate as violations, they function as an interpellation that one refuses only by agreeing to pay the consequences: losing one’s job, home, the prospects for desire, or for life” (Butler, “The Question” 214). Hedwig’s “angry inch” operates as a figuration of these consequences of norm violation as her surgicalized body falls out of the sphere of visibility. Nevertheless, the colloquial classification of Hedwig’s botched surgery as an “angry inch” subverts medical language as well. In doing so,

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silver cross on his forehead. This visual doubling suggests that performance opens up the freeing of gender acquisition, even allowing for the melancholic incorporation of a former lover to be literalized on the body.

This final scene proves Hedwig’s music as a fantasy space not only for Hedwig alone, but also for those around her—including the spectator, as the scene’s attention to the crowd pulls the spectator in as part of Hedwig’s audience. Her partner, Krzysztof (Rob Campbell), exemplifies this influence of Hedwig’s performance as he feels free to act out a feminine gender performance at the end of the film, even donning a platinum blond wig and pink sequin dress as he crowd surfs across the audience. This scene reinforces Hedwig’s music as a transforming lexicon and a space for the freeing up of gender play. Krzysztof’s transformation shows the “transing” power of Hedwig’s music for all around her including the audience of the performances and the film’s spectator. Hedwig’s music embodies the space where “the body is that which can occupy the norm in myriad ways, exceed the norm, rework the norms, and expose realities to which we thought we were confined as open to transformation” (Butler, “The Question” 217).

Musical performance envisions corporeal possibilities unconstrained by social norms and in this regard, Hedwig’s music acts as a rupture in the film that makes room for queering its spectator.

Todd Haynes’s Velvet Goldmine actively performs a similar queering of its spectator. The film tells the story of journalist Arthur Stuart (Christian Bale) as he works on a story about glam rock legend Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys Meyers). Arthur, a former Slade fan or, more accurately, fanatic, is assigned the task of finding out the “truth” about the enigmatic star as ten years earlier, Slade constructed his own onstage assassination and subsequently retreated from the public eye. Arthur’s investigation shapes a telling of the rise and fall of the 1970s glam rock counterculture filtered through the lens of stars Brian Slade and Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor), major influencer and eventual cohort of Slade. Yet, the film also “parallels Slade’s ascent to stardom with Arthur’s memories of ‘all the things’ of his lost youth at odds with normative culture, especially his now repressed fandom and queer sexuality” (Bennett 28). For the film tells the tale of a glam rock icon while paying attention to the followers his music inspired and transformed.

Velvet Goldmine

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In discussing Velvet Goldmine in this context of “transing” musical performance, I want be explicit about it is important to acknowledge the fact that it does not portray characters that are explicitly trans, much less identified as transgender.

Instead, the film depicts men who rebelliously break with heteronormative gender presentations, wearing extravagant costumes, full faces of make-up, long hair, and articles of clothing like dresses that are considered exclusively designed for women. These gender identities would in contemporary language likely be referred to as genderqueer, though many transgender studies scholars began to write about the political efficacy of those who blur gender lines around the time of the film’s production. For instance, “texts like Feinberg’s Transgender Warriors (1996)…makes a case for everyone who transgresses gender norms (“from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman,” as its subtitle states) as transgender Warriors” (Valentine 148). In what morphs into a not-so-thinly-veiled David Bowie biopic, the world of glitter, oil, heavy makeup, and erotic performance becomes the sphere for gender subversion.

childhood. This moment takes the form of a school setting in which the students in Oscar’s classroom stand up one-by-one and announce what the want to be when they grow up. Each boy announces an average, respectable career like farmer or truck driver; Oscar, on the other hand, states “I want to be a pop idol.” With this declaration, the film flashes 100 years into the future and cuts to a boy in a school scenario similar to that of Wilde.

However, in this case, the implicit violence of normalizing regimes becomes literalized as young male students physically harass one of their classmates outside of the school.

As the bullied boy falls to the ground, he enters a dream sequence of a magical other world, which then quickly cuts to the boy standing in front of the mirror and applying lipstick in the dead of the night. From here, the scene cuts directly to this young boy, to be known as Jack Fairy, as a young adult dressed in feminine clothing and exhibiting a queer gender performance in his everyday life. This character, Jack Fairy, becomes the “original” glam rock star that others like Brian Slade imitate. The citational identity construction that all of the film’s characters act out creates many slippages in the film in regard to who constructs whose identity, highlighting the simulacral nature of gender performance. Moreover, it seems as if this connection between the stories of two young boys 100 years apart indicates that Jack Fairy, Brian Slade, and Curt Wild fulfill Oscar Wilde’s dream to become “a pop idol.” The not-so-subtle similarity between the names Wild and Wilde solidifies this bond.

The film begins with plain white text on a black screen with the words: ‘’Although what you are about to see is a work of fiction, it should nevertheless be played at maximum volume.’’ From the outset, Velvet Goldmine demands its spectator’s total engagement and participation in the film to come.

With the film’s attention to identity construction and transformation, along with the viewer’s suturing into Arthur’s gaze, it opens up the possibility for the spectator to fully engage with the queering or “transing” experience of the text. While the characters in the film always seem to search for “others The slippage of identification and identity, this time involvlike me,” the spectator becomes a part of this world of “oth- ing the experience of fandom, takes place again in the film ers”. when Arthur sees Brian Slade on television and exclaims, “That’s me!”. In this scene, a teenage Arthur watches an The first scenes of the film establish the theme of a succession interview with the rising glam rock star in his parents’ livof “others like me,” forming a significant intertext, as the first ing room. Slade appears on the television in a bright green character shown is a very young Oscar Wilde. This allusion leopard-print and a full face of make-up with multi-colored to Wilde, the nineteenth-century poet and playwright who eye shadow; his over-the-top dress is matched by the drainfamously imprisoned for acts of sodomy, links the story of matic delivery of his answers to each of the interviewers Brian Slade to a history of queer artistic creators. Wilde’s questions, suggesting the interview to be a performance of involvement in aestheticism produces another important link sorts. Throughout the exchange of questions and answers, to the glam rock movement that would follow some hun- the scene shifts back and forth between Slade in the conferdred years later. The film’s brief inclusion of Wilde as a ence room and Slade on the television screen in Arthur’s child features him in a grade school classroom exposed to home. As Arthur watches intently, the camera cuts from a the normalizing regimes that police gender and sexuality. close-up of Arthur’s eyes, to the television screen, and back This single scene reveals a brief but poignant moment of his to Arthur’s eyes. This shot-reverse-shot construction here su-

tures the spectator into Arthur’s gaze and thereby encourages a simultaneous identification with Brian Slade. Suddenly, Brian jumps up and points at the television and joyfully screams, “That’s me, Dad! That’s me!”. As Brian wildly gesticulates, his parents star at him with mouths agape in disapproval. His parent’s dissatisfaction does not seem to affect him, though, because “in Arthur’s fantasy, the shame of fandom offers the pleasures of stardom, humiliating isolation holds out the promise of passionate connection, and frustrated desires move toward fulfillment” (Bennett 37). As the film sutures the spectator into Arthur’s gaze, they are enmeshed in the same fantasy that anticipates fulfillment in the onstage sequences of Brian Slade to come in the course of his rise to fame.

of the three performers. Jack takes the stage in the gendertransgressive style that defines the films stars, wearing a black sequined floor-length dress with a daringly plunging neckline. This costume is augmented by glittery make-up and a cloak-like neckpiece of long black feathers. Part of the way through the song, the shots of Jack transitions to a montage sequence of images of children and adults from all walks of life. With the “20th Century Boy” performance continuing to play as the background to these images, this montage conveys the ability of the glam rock movement to touch a vast range of populations. As the performance wraps up, the film ends with a close-up of a radio, accentuating music’s power to reach the masses. In Velvet Goldmine music is the impetus for social transformation and through employing and embracing the shame of queer performativity, the film’s When Slade’s stardom truly begins to take shape, a spec- glam rock stars show their audience “not how to do without tacular party/circus/performance scene occurs to highlight shame, but rather how to do things with it” (Bennett 19). the aestheticism of his identity as a singer and his role as Their explorations and embodiments of abjected or shamean artist. The scene begins in what looks like a bourgeois inducing gender performances within the sphere of music party where everyone is dressed in extravagant costumes in bring otherwise unthinkable identities to the foreground and shades of gold and white and covered in glitter and sequins. visualize new possibilities of ways to be human.

The adorned partygoers partially sing, partially speak (sing talk) lines about the responsibilities of a performer. The In Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Velvet Goldmine, musigroup forms a glamorous chorus who insist on the impor- cal performance serves as the driving force for the film’s vitance of “beauty” and “pose”, as well as showing the type sualization of gender identities that society typically renders of counterculture Slade’s stardom fosters. One of the chorus invisible. For the case of Hedwig, the surgicalized body is members even appears in drag in a platinum blonde wig, figured in the film as a reminder of the limits of intelligibility which functions as it does in Hedwig as a signifier of hyper- imposed on a body as it incorporates the gender policing femininity. The mass of sensational bodies in the party scene performed by medical discourses. In contrast, Hedwig’s mutransitions to a circus scene set in an opera house-like set- sic functions as the transforming lexicon as it frees up desire ting with Slade appropriately serving as the ringleader. The and the possibilities of gender play. The fantasy space of the opera house location foregrounds this performance as high performance with its queering of Hedwig and her audience, art and identifies Slade as the artist. The dramatic but also including the film’s spectator, opens up possibilities for genqueer nature of the performance becomes fully realized as der ambiguity and fluidity. Velvet Goldmine makes use of the Curt and Brian kiss for the first time in the center of the stage. glam rock aesthetic and performance style that Hedwig cites The kiss immediately cuts to cameras flashing and then con- to visualize transgressive identities. This glam rock look, in cert footage of Brian and Curt performing on stage together. reference to stars like David Bowie, carries with it the 1970s optimism for gender fluidity that becomes echoed in the late The final scene of the film brings the sequences of perfor- 1990s transgender movement. Both time periods suggest a mances and performers full circle as the film ends with Jack type of utopic thinking and Stryker defines transgender acFairy’s performance of “20th Century Boy.” The title of the cordingly: “both as personal identification and as a way of song suggests that Jack Fairy is the prototype for what a knowing about the world: ‘transgender became associated modern “boy” should look like, and in this way, captures with a ‘queer’ utopianism, the erasure of specificity, and a the optimism of the 1970s for broad social transformation. moralizing teleology that condemned certain practices of When Jack takes the stage, images of Curt Wild and Brian embodiment that it characterized as transsesxual’” (qtd. in Slade’s faces in brightly colored lights flash behind him and Valentine 147). In these films, music and onstage perforremind the audience of the mutually informing relationship mance provide a space in which the social norms associat-

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ed with the corrected transsexual body become violated and re-inscribed to create new visions of human intelligibility in line with transgender embodiments. In the fantasy sphere of performance, the queering of both the performer and audience, including the film’s spectator, opens up the possibility for gender fluidity and, thus, social transformation.

References Adorno, Theodor W. and Susan Gillespie. “Music, Language, and Composition.” The Musical Quarterly 77.3 (1993): 401-414.

Bennett, Chad. “Flaming the Fans: Shame and the Aesthetics of Queer Fandom in Todd Haynes’s Velvet Goldmine.”

Cinema Journal 49.2 (2010): 17-39. Print.

Butler, Judith. “Imitation and Gender Insubordination.” The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader. Eds. Henry Abelove, Michèle Aina Barale, David M. Halperin. New York: Routledge, 1993. 307-320. Print.

Butler, Judith. “The Question of Social Transformation.” Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge, 2004. 204-231. Print.

Hayward, Susan. Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts.

New York: Routledge, 2000. Print.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Dir. John Cameron Mitchell.

Killer Films, 2001. Film.

Skidmore, Emily. “Constructing the ‘Good Transsexual’: Christine Jorgenson, Whiteness, and Heteronormativity in the Mid-Twentieth-Century Press.” Feminist Studies 37.2 (2011): 270-300. Print.

Stone, Sandy. “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto.”

The TransgenderStudies Reader. Eds. Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle. New York: Routledge, 2006. 221-235. Print.

Sullivan, Nikki. A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory.

New York: New York University Press, 2003. Print.

Velvet Goldmine. Dir. Todd Haynes. Miramax Films, 1998. Film.

Valentine, David. Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. Print.

Sexism in American Art Museums

By Nicole Corrigan

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In the 1960s, the second wave of feminism came crashing over America and led to the criticism of many cultural institutions that had long been bastions of sexism. Even the art museum, long seen as a holy temple above such politics, was not spared from the feminist critique. The goal was to transform museums into establishments that promoted inclusivity and multiple narratives. As time has passed and feminism has moved from the second to third and, some argue, fourth wave, there are some who say that feminism has done its job and there is no need for it any longer. As pleasant as that may sound, it is unfortunately far from the truth, especially in the world of museums. Despite several decades of feminist critique, American art museums still reinforce a hierarchy of gender that ultimately privileges the male gaze and the male artist. Before delving into the ways that art museums have yet to make significant progress in becoming more gender inclusive, it would be beneficial to explore the ways in which it has traditionally been exclusive. Historically, female artists have been absent from permanent collections; there has been a dearth of solo exhibitions by women; and the ways women are presented in artwork have ultimately caged them and made them subjects to the male gaze.

One of the largest complaints leveled by feminists against art museums is the lack of representation of women artists in permanent collections. Katy Deepwell explains, “Until the late 1960s, the presence of women artists in most major museum collections would lead one to bethink that women existed only as a minority of practitioners. Their work formed less than 10-20 percent of most major art collections…” (Deepwell 67). This was the trend throughout most American art museums.

exhibitions of women artists were rare events” (Deepwell 67). Solo exhibitions are events that often showcase the art of more modern artists. While one could again make the argument that there simply have not been enough female artists for these shows, it is quite easy to disprove such a statement. Since the 1950s, the number of female artists has been growing and as of 2009, almost half of all working artists in the United States are women, so there are plenty of women artists to choose from when planning a solo exhibition (Condon). This has been the case for several decades now. It then stands to reason that the only reason women have historically been ignored for solo exhibitions is because museums, intentionally or not, have picked men instead.

ter narrative that privileges white men” (Levin 102). While there has been some improvement, there is doubtless still much that remains to be done.

Though much attention has been called to the meager number of female artists represented in the permanent collections of museums, or at least what is displayed from those collections, little has been done to rectify the situation. The Guerilla Girls, a group of anonymous female artists dedicated to calling attention to sexism in the art world, counted the number of female artists in the modern art sections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1989, less than 5% of the artists were female; by 2005, this number had dropped to less than 3% (Guerilla Girls). Furthermore, the Guerilla Girls publicized the low numbers of female artists on display in Outside of the representation of women artists, feminists have the art museums of the Smithsonian in the April 22, 2007 found much to critique in the way women are displayed in issue of the Washington Post (see fig 1). the very artwork hanging on the walls of museums. Perhaps the most blatant example of this problematic display is the prevalence of the female nude in art museums. It would be entirely irrational to argue that nudity in paintings is a sexist practice that needs to be eradicated; the nude figure in art is a long tradition often used to showcase the beauty of the human form. However, it does become problematic when one discovers that as of 1989, 85% of the nudes displayed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art were females (Guerilla Girls). When such an overwhelmingly large proportion of nudes are female, it is impossible to merely accept the artwork at face value. In exploring the ways that the people view nudity in art, John Berger explains that often times, the nudity of a female is not expressing the feelings of the subject—instead it is expressing “her submission to the owner’s feelings or demands. (The owner of both woman and painting)” (Berger 51). He continues, “the ‘ideal’ spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him” (Berger 52). With this in mind, the female nude is no longer an experience in aesthetics—it is an experience in domination and consumption. It is this experience that feminist critiques attempt to dismantle.

Those who defended the lack of female representation in museums often claimed that there simply were no “great” female artists, and that it would be destructive to the integrity of the museum to hang mediocre works, merely because they were created by women. However, with some research, it becomes obvious that there is a plethora of works from women, all of them of artistic merit, that have simply been ignored over the years. In their stead hung the regular litany With issues as blatant as these plaguing art museums and of “genius” male artists that the public is already well ac- the decades of criticism they have garnered, it would seem quainted with. likely that there would have been extreme overhaul to collections, policies, exhibitions, and display practices. In spite of The permanent collections are not the only place in the art it all, however, the gender hierarchy still stands strongly in museum where women artists have been historically under- art museums. Gail Levin notes, “Museums today remain bur- Fig. 1. Close-up of the Statistics from “Horror on the Narepresented. Deepwell goes on to say, “until the 1980s, solo dened by a centuries-old commitment to maintaining a mas- tional Mall!”, a Guerilla Girls piece in the Washington Post

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At the Tate in Britain, “women artists represent 10 percent in the collection of British art” (Deepwell 67). This situation is much the same in America and elsewhere—art museums around the world all have a shocking disparity between the number of female and male artists represented.

What is even more surprising is that this disparity is not always the result of innocent ignorance. After several years of complaints about the lack of female artists in their permanent collections, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City raised the hopes of many when they announced they were going to rethink their installations and “investigate ‘multiple narratives’” (Saltz). The museum was obviously aware of the problem and appeared to be taking action to rectify it. By the end of 2006, when the reorganization and remodeling of its galleries were completed, it became clear that the situation largely had stayed the same. A count done by Jerry Saltz, an American art critic, revealed, “Of the 135 artists installed on these floors [housing the permanent collection], only 19 are women, 6%” (Gender Disparity in MoMA’s Collection). The museum knew that its collection was lacking and willfully abstained from taking action. Apparently, decades of feminist critique meant very little in this situation.

Some museums claim that they simply lack enough works by female artists in the collection they choose from to display and have insufficient funds to acquire any. This is a reasonable argument; after all, museums are often restricted by tight budgets. Yet how often is this lack of female artists in their collection actually a lack of knowledge of what is in their collection? While working at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Gail Levin discovered the museum once held a large cache of artwork by Josephine Nivision Hopper, wife of the heavily acclaimed artists, Edward Hopper (Levin 94).

Instead of making use of this large collection, the museum instead gave away many of the paintings, without recording information about the donations, and relegated the rest to anonymity in their collection (Levin 94). As time passed, most employees of the museum forgot about the paintings and eventually most did not even realize they were there.

Levin remarks, “While some female artists have fared better [than Jo Hopper], the works of many twentieth-century women remain obscured by their husbands’ fame as artists, and museums collude in this practice” (Levin 93). This occurrence of a museum willing a female artist’s work into obscurity raises an important question—how many other museums

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are doing the same, while simultaneously claiming that it is impossible to display more female artists? If an institution as prestigious and trusted as the Whitney is guilty of such a practice, it stands to reason that this could be a common practice.

other words, only 25% of all solo exhibitions are for female artists. At the Art Institute of Chicago, there have been twenty solo exhibitions for female artists and ninety-one for male artists in the past ten years (Art Institute Exhibitions). Female artists comprise 18% of solo exhibitions. In the same time frame, only 12% of all solo exhibitions at the Metropolitan It is not just in the permanent collections of museums, how- Museum of Art were for female Artists (Metropolitan Exhibiever, that women artists still face discrimination; there is also tions). The largest discrepancy is at the National Gallery a great disparity between temporary solo exhibitions of men in Washington D.C. From 2002 to 2009, there have been and women artists. As previously mentioned, it is true that two solo exhibitions for female artists, compared to sixty-one progress was made in this area of museum display; in the for male artists (National Gallery Exhibitions). The percent1980s, solo exhibits of the work of women artists finally age of solo exhibitions for female artists is a miniscule 2%. became something more than an anomaly. Feminist artists, Clearly, the years of feminists deriding museums for failing such as Judy Chicago and Cindy Sherman, have their art- to showcase female artists have little effect on these prestiwork featured in temporary exhibitions in some of the most gious institutions. prestigious art museums in the country. Having these exhibits by female and even feminist artists, some would contend, Even when there are temporary exhibitions by women artis proof that feminism’s job in the art museum is over. While ists, the effects are, as their names suggest, ephemeral. As it is true that the inclusion of female solo exhibits is a large Gaby Porter comments, step forward, it is far from enough.

[T]hese exhibitions are, like women’s traces in Solo exhibitions in art museums are still troublesome because the collections of museums, marginal and less enthe sheer difference in numbers between the exhibitions of during: the chances to learn from them may be male and female artists is staggering. From 2002 to 2012 marginalized or ‘lost’ within institutions as their in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, there were circumstances change; or overlooked by other ninety-two solo exhibits for male artists as compared to only professionals because they do not recognize such twenty-eight solo exhibitions for female artists (MoMA Exhishort-term projects as a valid alternative (125). bitions). This means that for all solo exhibitions, only 23% of them were of female artists; for every solo exhibition for The solo exhibitions of the work of women artists are transia female artist, there are 3.3 shows for male artists. Intrigu- tory; eventually they will be replaced by other exhibition, ingly enough, in 2007, the year of the highest disparity be- presumably one displaying the work of a male artist. In that tween male and female solo exhibitions (seventeen for men way, art museums can afford to pay lip service to feminism and one for women), there was a temporary exhibit called by holding exhibitions of feminist or female artists without “Documenting a Feminist Past: Art World Critique.” Accord- having to radically change their philosophies. ing to MoMA’s website, “This exhibition of material from The Museum of Modern Art Library, the Museum Archives, and Some museums will attempt to counter accusations of disthe collection documents feminist critique of art institutions criminatory displaying by proudly pointing out a Mary Casfrom 1969 to the present” (Documenting a Feminist Past). satt or Frida Kahlo painting hanging on their walls. They This seems indicative of the situation in art museums: feminist are, however, contributing to fetishization of a select few critiques exist and are acknowledged, but have not led to women artists, without actually pushing the boundaries of significant changes. their collections. Deepwell explains, “The selective presentation of and over-investment in a handful of individual women The numbers for solo exhibitions in other art museums in as another ‘artistic’ product in the culture industry is fueled the United States are no more promising than the ones at by the popularization of their work through videos of the MoMA. In the past ten years, there have been thirteen solo artist’s life, calendars, mugs, bookmarks, and gift-cards” exhibitions for female artists to forty for male artists in the (Deepwell 70). As a result, if one was to ask an average Guggenheim in New York City (Guggenheim Exhibitions). In American to name all the female artists they could think of,

the answer will almost invariably consist of Frida Kahlo, Mary Cassatt, Georgia O’Keeffe, and maybe Diane Arbus.

Most could only name one or two of those artists and no more. While art museums could be educating the public on the less known female artists, they instead intensely push a limited list of crowd-pleasing female artists, which perpetuates the lack of awareness. In this way, feminist critiques have had little effect on the education art museums provide.

the number of nudes in the Metropolitan Museum in 2005, the percentage that were female was largely the same: 83%, as opposed to the 85% of 1989 (Guerilla Girls). Additionally, there is no evidence of any major art museum staging exhibitions to explore the issues of representation in these works of nude females. The labels accompanying these pieces of art have not changed to include challenges to the ways that visitors or scholars typically view nudes.

the ‘Return’of Feminist Art.” The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader. Ed. Amelia Jones. New York: Routledge, 2003. 31-43. Print.

One attempt to solve these problems in the lack of female artists in art museums has been to establish museums exclusively devoted to the work of women artists. The National Museum of Women in the Arts’s website declares, “The idea for the National Museum of Women in the Arts grew from a simple, obvious, but rarely asked question: Where are all the women artists?” (NMWA). Indeed, the heart of the collection, acquired by Wilhelmina Cole Holladay and Wallace F. Holladay, began forming in the 1960s when this question was first beginning to be asked on a large scale (NMWA). Another American museum dedicated to female artists is the Florida Museum for Women Artists, whose mission is “to identify and promote women artists and educate the public about women in the arts” (Florida Museum). It would seem that this is an ideal solution to the disparities in major art museums.

In 1913, British suffragist Mary Richardson slashed through a painting of Venus at the National Gallery in London as a protest against the way that early art museums displayed and caged women (Levin 2-3). This is perhaps one of the earliest instances of feminists protesting against the gender hierarchy of art museums. Nearly one hundred years, and several waves of feminism, later, the question still persists— is there gender equality in art museums? Disappointingly, the answer is a resounding “no.” Though much criticism of the lack of representation of female artists and the ways in which the female body is displayed have been leveled against museums, an contemporary examination of American art museums shows that little to nothing has changed.

Even the establishment of separate museums for female artists cannot be called a success in the fight against sexism in art museums. What is it that keeps this hierarchy of gender so firmly entrenched in art museums? Maura Reilly, the founding curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, accurately summarizes the situation: “We are all aware that institutionalized sexism has yet to be eradicated, and until ‘greatness’ can be redefined as something other than white, western, heterosexual, and unmistakably male, we still have quite a battle ahead of us” (Butler, et al. 32). Until the words “genius” and “masterpiece” are no longer automatically synonymous with “male,” then art museums will continue to privilege the male artist and the male gaze to the detriment of women.

“Documenting a Feminist Past: Art World Critique.” Museum of Modern Art. Web. 11 April 2012. http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2007/feminist_past/

However, this “solution” is not as idyllic as it may appear.

By separating the artwork work of women into a separate museum, women artists are automatically classified as “different” from the artists in other museums. The very qualification of the art as “women’s art” separates it from men’s art.

Deepwell explains this as “establishing a category known as ‘women’s art,’ in which the concept of ‘outsider’ or ‘other’ would become the mark for women artists” (Deepwell 74).

This occurs because the highest measure of success throughout history has been what men have produced. As Inga Muscio says, “the standard for existence set by white men has yet to be rescinded in this age” (Muscio 206). Separating women’s art into its own museum celebrates the art of female artists while simultaneously reinforcing the division that has forced it into a distinct museum. As a result, it cannot accurately be called a “solution” to the bias towards male artists in art museums.

References “About.” National Museum of Women in the Arts. Web. 11 April 2012 http://www.nmwa.org/about “Are women still a minority in the art world?” New Britain Museum of Art. 3 Dec 2010. Web. 11 April 2012. http://nbmaa.wordpress. com/2010/12/03/are women-still-a-minority-in-art-museums.

Not only has feminist critique failed to change this bias, it Berger, John. “Ways of Seeing.” The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader. has also failed to rectify the ways in which females are dis- Ed. Amelia Jones. New York: Routledge, 2003. 49-52. Print. played in artwork itself. When the Guerilla Girls recounted Butler, Connie, Amelia Jones, and Maura Reilly. “Feminist Curating and

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Condon, Amy Paige. “Women in the art world still have room to grow.”

District: theStudent Voice of SCAD. 29 Oct 2009. Web. 11 April 2012. http://www.scaddistrict.com/blog/2009/10/29/women-in-the-art-worldstill-have-room-to-grow/5096/>.

Deepwell, Katy. “Feminist Curatorial Strategies and Practices Since the 1970s.” NewMuseum Theory and Practice: An Introduction. Ed. Janet Marstine. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. 65-84. Print.

“Exhibitions & the Collection.” Museum of Modern Art. Web. 11 April 2012. http://www.moma.org/explore/exhibitions “Exhibitions.” Guggenheim. Web. 11 April 2012. http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions “Exhibitions.” National Gallery of Art. Web. 11 April 2012. http://www. nga.gov/exhibitions/ “Exhibitions.” The Art Institute of Chicago. Web. 11 April 2012 http:// www.artic.edu/aic/exhibitions/ “Exhibitions.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Web. 11 April 2012. http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions Levin, Amy K. Introduction. Gender, Sexuality, and Museums. By Levin.

New York: Routledge, 2010. 1-11. Print.

Levin, Gail. “Art World Power and Women’s Incognito Work: The Case of Edward and Jo Hopper.” Gender, Sexuality, and Museums. Ed. Amy K. Levin. New York: Routledge, 2010. 93-104. Print.

Muscio, Inga. Cunt: A Declaration of Independence. Berkley: Seal Press, 2002. Print. “Our Mission.” Florida Museum for Women Artists. Web. 11 April 2012 http://www.floridamuseumforwomenartists.org/ who-we-are/our-mission/ Porter, Gaby. “Seeing Through Solidity: A Feminist Perspective on Museums” Theorizing Museums. Ed. Sharon Macdonald and Gordon Fyfe.

Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1996. 105-126. Print.

Saltz, Jerry. “Where Are All the Women?” New York. 18 Nov 2007. Web. 11 April 2012. http://nymag.com/arts/art/features/40979/ “Some of Our Greatest Hits: Posters, Stickers, Billboards, Books.”

Guerilla Girls. Web. http://www.guerrillagirls.com/posters/index.shtml Winkelman, Edward. “Gender Disparity in MoMA’s Collection: Rays of Hope and Other Considerations.” edward_winkelman.

30 June 2009. Web. 11 April 2012. http://www.edwardwinkleman. com/2009/06/gender-disparity-inmomas-collection.html

This Sin Can Destroy An Empire Exploring Homosexuality and Masculine in Victorian England

By Justin Holliday

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The first Act of Cloud 9 by Caryl Churchill takes place during the Victorian era, a period associated with social repression; this part of the play is set in Africa. When the British colonized the continent, most of the colonists were men who formed homosocial relationships. Although these relationships were not necessarily homoerotic, Harry Bagley’s erotic encounters with other male characters indicate a bond found only between men, regardless of age or race. According to Michel Foucault, homosexuality during the nineteenth century was “transposed from the practice of sodomy onto a kind of interior androgyny, a hermphrodism of the soul” (qtd. in Dellamora 266). Harry outwardly acts the part of the ideal Victorian man because he is an explorer, representing the British Empire. However, his secret homosexual desires violate nineteenth-century social norms, resulting in a dualistic characterization that encapsulates both the masculine and the feminine. These homoerotic encounters indicate his greed to “conquer” other male characters, similar to the conquest involved in imperialism; in effect, he colonizes male bodies.

Clive. As the patriarch, Clive hails Harry as a paragon of manliness because Harry is a self-reliant explorer. Ironically, as an explorer, Harry eschews the Victorian ideal of a family under one household, yet Clive upholds Harry’s virility anyway because Harry exhibits “masculine” strength.

Harry’s role as an explorer extends beyond the metonymic exploration involved in colonialism; in fact, his deviant sexual pursuits are a type of exploration because sexual intercourse with members of the same sex is purportedly as foreign to the Victorians as the culture of the African nation in which they inhabit. Still, Clive values his relationship with Harry over his relationship with his wife Betty because their friendship is “the noblest form of relationship” (Churchill 51). According to Clive, homosociality takes precedence over the family despite his upholding of a traditional familial structure, which necessarily includes a wife and children. He describes homosocial relationships between men in terms of “sharing adventures, sharing danger, risking their lives together” (Churchill 51). All of his descriptions illustrate ideal masculine traits, implicitly referring to Harry’s explorations.

Similarly, the male characters in Heart of Darkness by Joseph However, Harry misconstrues Clive’s affirmation of homoConrad colonize Africa and the bodies of the indigenous sociality as an affirmation of homoeroticism, resulting in his people, forming homosocial relationships, and attaining failed seduction of Clive. Consequently, Clive clarifies the a nebulous status that suggests latent homosexual desires. distinction between friendship and sexuality, revealing the Conrad’s characters do not express open homoerotic feel- supposed femininity of homosexuality as diametrically opings, but in Churchill’s play Harry’s homosexual desires are posed to masculine, homosocial friendship. perverse according to Victorian norms, and having sexual intercourse with other men is a form of rebellion, which pos- In Heart of Darkness, however, Conrad contrasts this ideal of es a threat to the superficial stability of the British Empire. masculinity in Victorian Africa in his depiction of the nameThis upheaval against strict Victorian norms signifies Harry’s less, foppish accountant that Marlow meets. While Clive desire for personal freedom. Because of the sexual repres- denigrates men with feminine attributes, Marlow affirms that siveness of the era, he uses his sexual desires to disrupt the the dandy resides in “the great demoralization of the land… outward stability of the empire by claiming as many male [but] his starched collars and got-up shirt-fronts [are] achievebodies as he can. However, he ultimately surrenders his ments of character” (Conrad 2340). Marlow avers that the freedom, which reveals the great, insurmountable power of Congo presents a moral danger for Europeans, so he atthe British Empire during the nineteenth century while the tributes the accountant’s feminine appearance to European degeneracy of Kurtz in Heart of Darkness complements the morality because, through European fashion, he removes insurmountable imperial construct because the lust that em- himself from the foreign land, which “demoralizes” Europepire breeds leads to his own destruction. ans, perhaps leading to a sense of turpitude or at least the loss of a former, stable European mental framework. For Harry presents a contrast between “masculine” heroism and example, Marlow, who exposes himself to the land, feels out “feminine” or “effeminate” sexual proclivities. During the Vic- of place in Europe and cannot tell Kurtz’s fiancé about his torian period, male effeminacy was synonymous with homo- death because it “would have been too dark—too dark altosexual desires (Dellamora 267). Therefore, Harry’s outward gether” (Conrad 2385). According to this reasoning, Africa masculinity should code for heterosexuality, but he defies the presents a threat to Europeans so that they lose their former stereotype by having “effeminate” sexual proclivities unlike European probity. This Eurocentric mindset also explains

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Harry’s desire to refute the strictures of Victorian England.

He experiences moral darkness as the characters in Heart of Darkness do and gives in to his seemingly primal passions, which manifest as his sexual conquests.

Harry’s sexual relationship with nine-year-old Edward is the first example of his male conquests, connecting homosexuality and pedophilia on a continuum of sexual deviation, which adds the layer of age difference to emphasize Harry’s dominance. While Harry is a figure of masculinity, Edward is so feminine that a woman plays his role. This disruption between the sex of the character and the actor playing him indicates the dichotomy that Victorian gender norms dictate.

Because of the rigid expression of masculine behavior for men, a boy who engages in seemingly feminine behaviors, such as playing with a doll, cannot be fully represented as male. Despite Clive’s realization of Harry’s homosexuality, Clive never makes the connection between his friend’s sexuality and his son’s effeminacy although he believes that “[e] ffeminacy is contagious” (Churchill 52). Clive symbolizes the ideal function of imperialism, wherein homosocial relationships abound without any sexual connotation. Thus, Clive, the representative of the imperial construct, considers feminine mannerisms a learned behavior and a potential danger to the empire. Nevertheless, Harry’s influence becomes evident when Edward tells Clive that instead of being soldier, he would “rather be an explorer” (Churchill 48). Edward, therefore, subverts imperial authority while outwardly asserting a claim to what Clive views as masculinity. Because Harry acts as a model for Edward, Edward’s desire reveals that, according to Harry, homosexuality acts as a contagion “like a disease,” in this socially repressed world (Churchill 52). Because they are in Africa like the characters in Heart of Darkness, the Eurocentric mindset that Clive advocates reaffirms the fear of the demoralization of Europeans who spend too much time in Africa.

Nevertheless, Edward’s desires complicate this pedophilic relationship. He expresses interest in Harry and even wants to tell others about their relationship, showing that Edward does not yet fully acknowledge the repression of Victorian society. When Edward tells Harry about his adventurous fantasy, which ends with a crocodile biting off Harry’s leg, Edward claims that by the end of the fantasy, he has “[forgotten] about the leg by then” (Churchill 33). This passage suggests that Edward understands that his relationship with Harry is incomplete. If Harry’s leg symbolizes a phallus,

Edward’s ability to forget the erotic component of his relationship with Harry in favor of an exciting adventure affirms the identity of Edward as a child. As a child, he is a body too young to fully understand the import of his relationship with Harry, the effects of imperialism, or his own status as a colonized body. Additionally, the brutality of his fantasy also reveals the dangers of both homosexual relationships and of Africa according to the Victorian mindset. Nevertheless, this interpretation about Edward’s subconscious understanding does not discount his overt desire to have a homoerotic instead of a merely homosocial relationship with Harry, confirming Edward’s eschewal of the masculine ideals that his father typifies and encourages.

Harry also has a sexual relationship with Joshua, the African servant, which reasserts his purpose of colonizing male bodies since the servant’s body is an African body, providing a symbolic referent to the Europeans’ colonization of Africa.

Since Europeans fear the supposed demoralizing influence of Africa, Harry copulating with Joshua reflects his loss of morality as a form of distancing himself from Europe in favor of immersing himself in base concupiscence. While he and Edward only intimate the sexual nature of their relationship, Harry reveals their relationship more explicitly when Harry tells asks him, “Shall we go in a barn and fuck? It’s not an order” (Churchill 21). Because of Joshua’s status as a servant, Harry disrupts the racial hierarchy that imperialism has constructed. In a conversation with Clive, he tells Harry that homosexuality can “destroy an empire” and that it is a “betrayal of the Queen [Victoria]” if he has sex with the indigenous people (Churchill 52, 53). If he has sex with a servant, Harry lowers his social status, an idea he emphasizes by offering rather than demanding sex. When speaking to Joshua, Harry’s diction indicates that he views his relationship with Joshua as closer to an egalitarian, homosocial friendship rather than a master-servant relationship, hearkening back to Clive’s claim of friendships between men as the noblest type of dyad. Because a white actor plays Joshua, however, the idea of egalitarianism between these characters is not as drastic in a Victorian context, but Joshua is a servant and an African. Thus, Harry “conquers,” or even colonizes, a native who is only outwardly white because of the influence of Eurocentric imperialism. Whether he offers or demands sex, Harry must be the one to initiate sexual contact to maintain his European dominance, regardless of the nature of their personal relationship as two men.

Additionally, going into a barn to have sexual intercourse signifies not only the secrecy of their sexual acts, but also

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the purported perversion of homosexuality because animals and morality. reside in barns. Therefore, their sexual relationship, which does not fit in with the Victorian model of relationships, re- Harry, on the other hand, retains and even accentuates his duces them to livestock rather than people. masculinity through his greed for the dominance of male bodies. As the imperialists gain control of other human beWhile Harry’s relationship with Joshua provides merely ings, Harry does the same through sex, but he rebels against sexual gratification and dominance, his relationship with the Victorian ideal, permitting him even greater dominance Edward adds a perverse romantic layer; the Russian har- when he seems to escape those norms by going to Africa. lequin in Heart of Darkness parallels the possibly romantic Still, his control extends only to the characters with whom he relationship between Kurtz and himself. The relationship be- has sexual contact, and he must keep his “conquests” secret, tween Kurtz and the harlequin reflects the power of both or he shall lose his control, for Clive symbolizes the Victohomosociality and imperialism when they “come together rian values that Harry cannot fully escape. Although Harry unavoidably, like two ships becalmed near each other, and acknowledges to Edward that their sexual contact is sinful, lay rubbing sides at last” (Conrad 2369). Comparing their his failed seduction of Clive provides Clive the opportunity relationship to ships forges the connection that they are in- to remind Harry that his time spent in Africa has caused dependent vessels that cannot control themselves, much as his “perversions.” Harry solidifies this point when he asks, Harry appears unable to control his sexual desires. When “Where can I go except into the jungle to hide?” (Churchill the “ships” rub against one another, Marlow intimates a level 52). Harry has become a part of Africa in his quest for of physicality in the relationship between the harlequin and individual freedom, and he concedes that he can only find Kurtz, and the harlequin’s explanation that he has nursed solace in the place that has supposedly caused the manifesKurtz reiterates the physical element of their relationship. tation of his sexual degeneracy, signifying his psychological Also, the harlequin vehemently denies any sexual connec- separation from England and Victorian values. tion to Kurtz when Marlow muses, “Ah, he [has] talked to you of love” (Conrad 2369). The harlequin’s fervent denial To put a stop to Harry’s non-Victorian sexual practices, Clive of a homosexual relationship reveals the fear of sexual devi- instructs him to marry a woman so that Harry may reclaim ance and the accusation of being a sexual deviant at the risk Clive’s version of normative society and thus a sense of Euroof losing one’s status as a “masculine” man. Similarly, Harry pean morality. Although Harry consents to marry Edward’s keeps his homosexual relationships secret so that he may re- governess Ellen, he affirms, “I suppose getting married tain his dominance as a European man. Because Marlow is wouldn’t be any worse than killing myself” (Churchill 53). the narrator, the harlequin’s relationship with Kurtz remains After discovering the liberty of dominating, or colonizing, indefinite, but his devotion to another man implies feelings male bodies, Harry feels resigned to returning to Victorian that extend beyond friendship. principles, equating a morally strict lifestyle to suicide. Despite his attempts to explore Africa and his identity, Harry In both texts, Victorian men strive either to be or to appear must succumb to the strictures of English society in an attempt masculine, but Marlow compares Kurtz’s materialistic greed to regain a sense of Victorian morality, which Kurtz cannot to femininity, which creates a parallel between Kurtz and do because he dies in Africa, separated from a moral EuroHarry. According to Marlow, Kurtz’s “grubbing for ivory” pean influence, condemned to reside in the place of African renders him as vulnerable as an “enchanted princess sleep- demoralization. ing in a fabulous castle” (Conrad 2359). Avarice leaves Kurtz unaware of the danger that Africa poses to both his The end of the first act reveals the subverting effect of Harry’s body and his morality, so Kurtz subverts himself into a femi- version of colonization through the actions of Edward and nine figure. He cannot exemplify masculinity because his Joshua, his male sexual partners. Clive repeatedly expresses conquest renders him blind to the demoralization of Africa his disappointment with Edward when his son engages in that the accountant ironically escapes despite his femininity. traditionally feminine behaviors, such as playing with a doll.

However, the accountant removes himself from the degener- When Edward claims that he has kept Betty’s necklace to acy that Africa imposes on Europeans while Kurtz immerses protect it from theft, Clive responds that Edward’s actions himself in it, thereby distancing himself from not merely Euro- are “very manly” (Churchill 59). When Harry steps on the pean civilization, but his Victorian paradigm of masculinity doll under the table while near Ellen, his action signifies the

end of his sexual relationship with Edward while simultane- far-reaching power at the end of the act, showing that Vicously reaffirming the secrecy of their sexual relationship by torian ideals often override personal freedom even if some destroying this feminine, symbolic evidence. characters overcome these strictures.

Afterward, Joshua comes in, pointing a gun at Clive in an attempt not merely to destroy the man who has disrupted his life with Eurocentric ideas, but also to upset the power structure of the British Empire because Clive represents both Victorian values and the empire. Instead of preventing the violence, Edward, the only character aware of the danger, warns nobody. Since Harry has shown him sexual liberty, Edward may believe that his father’s death will erase his main obstacle from achieving individuation apart from Victorian ideals, but when he covers his ears, he exhibits a moral dilemma, reminding the audience of his Englishness, or moral compass. In contrast, Joshua, whom Harry has also taught liberty, utilizes a phallic symbol to assert his masculinity and even his foreign wildness, ostensibly setting him apart from the Europeans as a savage. Both cases reveal that Harry has achieved the goal of colonizing Edward and Joshua and altering their belief systems enough to disrupt the imperial structure, consequently exposing the insecurity of the British Empire.

While the characters uphold masculinity as the ideal for men, the male characters show that regardless of their levels of masculinity, the empire is tenuous. Victorian principles dictate that sexual deviance, including homosexuality, upsets the equilibrium of the empire, so this mindset causes characters to allow that disruption to occur. Harry cannot control the bodies that he has colonized once he returns to the supposed stability of the Victorian world when he marries Ellen and then exposes himself to the demise of his identity apart from the empire. Social repressiveness clashes with social liberty, causing Edward and Joshua to abandon their prescribed roles within the empire because of Harry’s attempts at erotic conquest. Ironically, Harry himself gives up his own liberty when he reenters the Victorian world by marrying Ellen. He must cease his rebellion in his pursuit for individual freedom now that he has conformed to English expectations rather than fulfilling his personal desires.

In contrast, Kurtz’s attempt to fulfill his personal, materialistic desires, shows how he succumbs to Africa unlike Harry, who succumbs to Victorian values. Still, Kurtz’s death in Africa reflects the near death of Harry’s Englishness as Africa attempts to “demoralize” Europeans. Although Harry successfully exposes the instability of the empire through his process of colonization, he capitulates to the empire and its

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References Churchill, Caryl. Cloud 9. New York: Routeledge, 1979. Print.

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. In The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: Norton, 2006. 2329-86.

Print.

Dellamora, Richard. “Victorian Homosexualities in the Prism of Foucault” Indiana University 38:2 (1995). 266-72.

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