Slacker Blog for Procrastinators
Just so everyone is aware procrastinators are the leaders of tomorrow.
Anyway, just to add to the blog, here's a little something I am thinking about writing for a final paper for another class. Please let me know what you think.
“Death Hilarious:” The Bakhtinian Fool, Violence, Laughter and the Harlequin in the Works of Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian or Evening Redness in the West (1985) is regarded as his most complex and by some his best novel. Because of this more criticism is written about it than any other of his novels. Much of the criticism centers around the violence in the novel compared to the Vietnam conflict, or to the Westward expansion of America. However, the criticism lacks the association that the novel makes again and again – that of violence and humor. The nightmarish world of Blood Meridian becomes a Carnival of the borderlands, the in-between spaces occupied by the figure of the harlequin. Instead of a celebration, however, we have a danse macabre. McCarthy uses the association of violence and laughter to help us strip away our bourgeois mythos about America and the grotesque. McCarthy uses laughter to make us focus on the violence that formed our nation. We can no longer maintain a civilized and untainted distance. As Bakhtin points out in The Dialogic Imagination
It is precisely laughter that destroys the epic, and in general destroys any hierarchical (distancing and valorized) distance. As a distanced image a subject cannot be comical; to be made comical it must be brought close…Laughter has the remarkable power of making an object come up close, of drawing it into a zone of crude contact where one can finger it familiarly on all sides, turn it upside down, inside out, peer at it from about and below, break open its external shell, look into its center…Laughter demolishes fear and piety before an object…making it an object of familiar contact (23).
McCarthy’s use of laughter forces us to look up close at the violence of the novel and more importantly, at the violence within ourselves. He creates a space of familiarity. Violence and death are no longer remote objects that cannot taint our middle class sensibilities, but move to an inner space. McCarthy is putting the Catholic Christ back up on the cross. He wants to take away our image of the clean Jesus free cross of Protestantism. McCarthy wants us to look at the emaciated Jesus with wounds and strip away the mythos that we have created about ourselves as Americans and “sensible” human beings. We are forced to look inward and see the violence that is inherent within all of us. The world of Blood Meridian is no longer the distance past, but our present. We are Blood Meridian.
However this violence is not limited to the confines of Blood Meridian. McCarthy’s novels offer up a carnival of characters who are marked by the violence that surrounds them and is within them. Yet, they are not so far from us. For if Lester Ballard, the necrophiliac protagonist of Child of God, is a child of god just like the rest of us, then we are not so far removed from the carnage and depravity that marks many of McCarthy’s characters’ lives. Even within the fairly traditional love story/bildungsroman of All the Pretty Horses we have bloodshed and corruption. These harlequin people lived just as we do, all touched by the innate nature of human beings.
“[...] all the horsemen’s faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious” (McCarthy 52-3). With these lines, the narrator of Blood Meridian describes the raid of a group of Comanche Indians in the desert. The Comanche’s are messengers of death and violence, dressed in the costume of the harlequin. They are in fact, hybrids. They are mixtures of the new invasion of the white man and a clinging to the past. Most of McCarthy’s novels feature hybrid people. These are people of mixed spaces, mixed times. They are like the harlequin—black and white, a blending of things. This is the new face of America. We are a mix of old and new, and we all exist in a borderland whether it be within ourselves or forced upon us by the outside world.
Anyway, just to add to the blog, here's a little something I am thinking about writing for a final paper for another class. Please let me know what you think.
“Death Hilarious:” The Bakhtinian Fool, Violence, Laughter and the Harlequin in the Works of Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian or Evening Redness in the West (1985) is regarded as his most complex and by some his best novel. Because of this more criticism is written about it than any other of his novels. Much of the criticism centers around the violence in the novel compared to the Vietnam conflict, or to the Westward expansion of America. However, the criticism lacks the association that the novel makes again and again – that of violence and humor. The nightmarish world of Blood Meridian becomes a Carnival of the borderlands, the in-between spaces occupied by the figure of the harlequin. Instead of a celebration, however, we have a danse macabre. McCarthy uses the association of violence and laughter to help us strip away our bourgeois mythos about America and the grotesque. McCarthy uses laughter to make us focus on the violence that formed our nation. We can no longer maintain a civilized and untainted distance. As Bakhtin points out in The Dialogic Imagination
It is precisely laughter that destroys the epic, and in general destroys any hierarchical (distancing and valorized) distance. As a distanced image a subject cannot be comical; to be made comical it must be brought close…Laughter has the remarkable power of making an object come up close, of drawing it into a zone of crude contact where one can finger it familiarly on all sides, turn it upside down, inside out, peer at it from about and below, break open its external shell, look into its center…Laughter demolishes fear and piety before an object…making it an object of familiar contact (23).
McCarthy’s use of laughter forces us to look up close at the violence of the novel and more importantly, at the violence within ourselves. He creates a space of familiarity. Violence and death are no longer remote objects that cannot taint our middle class sensibilities, but move to an inner space. McCarthy is putting the Catholic Christ back up on the cross. He wants to take away our image of the clean Jesus free cross of Protestantism. McCarthy wants us to look at the emaciated Jesus with wounds and strip away the mythos that we have created about ourselves as Americans and “sensible” human beings. We are forced to look inward and see the violence that is inherent within all of us. The world of Blood Meridian is no longer the distance past, but our present. We are Blood Meridian.
However this violence is not limited to the confines of Blood Meridian. McCarthy’s novels offer up a carnival of characters who are marked by the violence that surrounds them and is within them. Yet, they are not so far from us. For if Lester Ballard, the necrophiliac protagonist of Child of God, is a child of god just like the rest of us, then we are not so far removed from the carnage and depravity that marks many of McCarthy’s characters’ lives. Even within the fairly traditional love story/bildungsroman of All the Pretty Horses we have bloodshed and corruption. These harlequin people lived just as we do, all touched by the innate nature of human beings.
“[...] all the horsemen’s faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious” (McCarthy 52-3). With these lines, the narrator of Blood Meridian describes the raid of a group of Comanche Indians in the desert. The Comanche’s are messengers of death and violence, dressed in the costume of the harlequin. They are in fact, hybrids. They are mixtures of the new invasion of the white man and a clinging to the past. Most of McCarthy’s novels feature hybrid people. These are people of mixed spaces, mixed times. They are like the harlequin—black and white, a blending of things. This is the new face of America. We are a mix of old and new, and we all exist in a borderland whether it be within ourselves or forced upon us by the outside world.
posted by Unknown at 9:30 AM
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