Homosexual Actors in Heterosexual Roles, and an Essay

I felt I should acknowledge this article from Newsweek that was released a few weeks ago, but continues to cause a stir. It is, of course, silly, and doesn't really deserve the attention, but a negative is usually followed by a thousand attempts at a positive that only inflate the social capital of the negative.

The article, by suggesting that Sean Hayes's performance as a heterosexual character is wooden because of his sexual identity, is interjecting sexual debate where it doesn't belong. Theatrical criticism is one thing, but suggesting that his pretending to be 'x' is skewed because of 'y' is ridiculous. There is little evidence that his sexual identity is the cause of his "wooden performance," which is, of course, ultimately an opinion anyways. Sexual identity and sexual politics seem to be Newsweek's main goals.

Actors generally aren't attacked when they fail at playing socioeconomically disadvantage characters because they are not socioeconomically disadvantaged; they are attacked in more general ways, as a bad actor, or for life distractions. Here, however, Sean Hayes is being directly criticized because of sexual identity. An "inability to relate" to a character can potentially be a problem, but is often offset by the attributes that make an actor an actor (an ability to transform their identity based on a role). There is no objective manner in which to measure the negative affects of personal identity on an actor's craft (especially implicit genetic traits; external traits, such as substance abuse, can be more explicitly analyzed), and therefore this argument against Sean Hayes is merely a way to create sexual debate and controversy as a means of publicity and sensational (in a sense) journalism. It unfortunately has created too much of a stir for no reason.

So, I will get off that topic (mostly because I feel my analysis rather inadequate), and I will fill some more space with another essay; this time it's one I wrote recently for an American poetry course. I've been focusing a lot on sexual orientation in this blog, but this essay also expresses my consciousness about gender, as it relates the repression of female identity:

Fragmentation and Return: The Projection of Female Transgression in Dickinson, Piatt, and Bradstreet

The “return of the repressed,” a psychosexual construct established by Sigmund Freud, represents the implications of attempting to assert a self in a world saturated with dominant sociopolitical assumptions. The “return” ultimately emerges from a compromise “between repressed material and repressing forces,” a consequence of “a relative failure of the repressing force” (Erwin 496) to regulate psychological expression. This “compromise” translates into a fragmentation of the self, an embodiment of a psychic conflict between repressed desires and social boundaries. Fragmentation is a mechanism through which to “covertly indulge a previously fended-off and prohibited gratification” (Erwin 496) by often “‘externalizing’ and ‘projecting’ these feelings ‘outward’” (Schalow 169). The “Other” that is constructed by this process symbolizes the “repressed” material, permitting the physical self, the component of the ego that is subject to an external sociopolitical gaze, to continue its feigned and complicated “proper” social existence.

Emily Dickinson, in “One need not be a chamber to be haunted” (563-564), utilizes an internalized “Other,” the “assassin,” to present the tensions of a fragmented self. This self implicitly recognizes the significance of projection and repression, its anxiety about the return of the repressed prompting it to bolt “the Door.” In Sarah Piatt’s “The Palace-Burner” (600-601) fragmentation of the female ego parallels a dichotomized conception of the political and domestic spheres. The “Picture in a Newspaper,” stimulating an internal debate about the societal function of the female, reflects the return of the repressed, the external projection that mediates an internal discourse. The return of the repressed fully materializes in Anne Bradstreet’s “The Author to Her Book” (46). The narrator, by perverting maternal qualifiers, represents the tensions of female artistic expression and the construction of female identity by masculine sociopolitical structures, illustrating her “ill-form’d offspring” as a projection of “improper” gender deviance. These poems suggest a fragmentation of the female self that emerges both from inherent psychological conditions, as in Dickinson, and from social implications, as in Piatt and Bradstreet

The narrator of “One need not be a chamber to be haunted” immediately excises her discourse from the domestic sphere, highlighting the universality of psychology: “One need not be a Chamber - to be haunted -/One need not be a House-/The brain has Corridors- surpassing/ Material Place-” (1-4). The “‘externalizing’ and ‘projecting’” (Schalow 169) central to the fragmentation of the self stimulated by the return of the repressed is then, after gender assumptions are erased, recognized: “Far safer, of a midnight meeting/External Ghost/Than it’s interior confronting” (5-7). The “External Ghost,” the projection of repressed material onto an “Other,” is “far safer” than a direct confrontation within the “interior,” the psyche. The “Ghost,” however, the internal psychology that transforms into supernatural externality, forces a return to the domestic sphere and gender ideology. In this way, the poem itself mirrors the process of the return of the repressed. This return of the repressed, because it is generated by gender complications, produces an external “Other” that corrupts traditional female space. This space becomes invisible as the psyche, now dislodged from a singular self, is populated by a multitude of selves, reflecting Frank Schalow’s contention that “the more fragmented the self’s identity (personality) is, the more detached it becomes from its rootedness in its situation” (169). The narrator’s identity becomes entirely rooted within the chaos of her psychology: “One’s a’self encounter-/In lonesome Place-” (11-12). The “lonesome place,” the psyche, transforms into the setting of the poem as a locus of unilinear intersubjectivity, the place where the external self conflicts with the internal self. The “ourself behind ourself, concealed” (13), the repressed material, becomes the “Assassin hid in our apartment” (15), the return of the repressed, because of this acknowledgment of ego fragmentation. That the return of the repressed is an “Assassin” indicates the power of psychic reconfiguration, the rejection of a societal identity in favor of a personal identity. However, this rejection itself is rejected as “The Body” (17), the external self subject to the sociopolitical gaze, “borrows a Revolver” (17) and “bolts the Door” (18), protecting itself from the return of the repressed by perpetuating the repression. This ultimate rejection is complicated by qualifying the Assassin as a “superior spectre” (19), suggesting that a repressed identity is inferior, yet necessary within a social context, this context indicated by the “borrowing” of the Revolver.

Sarah Piatt’s “The Palace-Burner” deals with similar issues of social and personal identity, commencing with an appeal to the political sphere: “She has been burning palaces” (1). This female power, a power that transgresses masculine political institutions, is subsequently qualified by maternal identity, suggested by the voice of the narrator’s son, which initially supplants the female voice. This identification with the domestic sphere forces the narrator to remain external from the palace-burner, signifying the creation of a projection of the return of the repressed: “But women brave as she/Leave much for cowards, such as I, to guess” (3-4). The I, the identifier of narrative subjectivity, contrasts her own conformity to female agency, an agency coded masculine by the term brave. The second and third stanzas represent a temporal (“But this is old” (5)) and ideological (“And Christian men/Shot wicked little Communists, like you” (11-12) distance that permits the narrator to remain within the domestic sphere. However, the maternal, as an educative medium for children, must ultimately critically analyze sociopolitical institutions, causing the narrator to explicitly illustrate the conflict between assertion of the self and dominant constructs: “Have I not taught you to respect the laws?/ You would have burned the palace. Would not I?” (15-16). The I has, stimulated by the picture’s function as the return of the repressed, shifted into internal debate about the validity of political structures.

This parallels the notion that the return of the repressed has “a ‘liberating’ effect by allowing the individual to exercise a greater degree of choice over his or her future” (Schalow 169). This “liberation” is suggested by the narrator’s temporary rejection of the maternal sphere by telling her son “go to your play” (17), permitting her to withdraw into the transgressive implications of female political action. The traditional linguistic qualifiers of the female soul, a soul that is “languid and worldly, with a dainty need for light and music” (18-19), becomes complicated by an assertion of the personal self that, ironically, emerges directly from the maternal sphere. The maternal function of women is idealized at a “distance” (21), constructed by dominant sociopolitical institutions that fail to recognize the more “masculine” attributes of women, attributes that are ultimately repressed. The domestic sphere becomes a locus of ideological conflation, connecting the maternal to the political: “Can he have seen my soul?” (20, 24). This suggests that the return of the repressed offers “confrontation with one’s guilt” (Schalow 169), the narrator’s guilt dissolving due to the reconciliation of her maternal function and the deeper desires of her soul, reflected through the eyes of her son.
However, the return of the repressed, like at the end of “One need not be a chamber to be haunted,” seems to be ambiguously rejected, the external projection remaining separate from the narrator’s psyche: “The child has seen/ In this fierce creature of the Commune here,/So bright with bitterness and so serene,/A being finer than my soul, I fear” (32-35). Though continuing to conform to the sociopolitical gaze, her son’s gaze implicitly recognizes the “superior” potential of the palace-burner, suggesting a transgressive conflation of the maternal and political spheres.

In Anne Bradstreet’s “The Author to Her Book” these spheres are transgressed through poetic creation by the conflation of maternal qualifiers with the physical monstrosity of an externally projected return of the repressed. The “ill’form’d offspring,” the return of the repressed, is acknowledged as the product of the narrator’s “feeble brain” (1), the term feeble suggesting the sociopolitical construction of female intellect. The “offspring” is initially a private return of the repressed, a representation of the narrator’s poetic power that doesn’t evolve into a fully externally projected return of the repressed until it is exposed to “public view”: “Till snacht from thence by friends, less wise than true,/Who thee abroad expos’d to public view” (3-4). Unlike Dickinson and Piatt, Bradstreet continually recognizes her connection to the return of the repressed despite her subjection to the external sociopolitical gaze. This is indicated by her “blushing” (7), an expression of shame that confirms her transgressive agency in the construction of a personal poetic identity. Her self is fragmented as a result of this tension between poetic identity and maternal identity, producing a return of the repressed that intrinsically conflates the assumptions of both identities. These assumptions are also perpetually filtered through a masculine sociopolitical screen, corrupting the ideal maternal relationship.

Her “offspring” is a “rambling brat” (8) and “unfit for light” (9), suggesting that it should remain repressed. However, the return of the repressed has already occurred and the external gaze, because the “offspring” is disconnected from the paternal, will continue to criticize it: “In critic’s hands, beware thou dost not come,/And take thy way where yet thou art not known./If for thy father askt, say, thou hadst none” (20-22). The projection of the repressed material onto an external “Other” is complicated here because that “Other” is identified as “mine own” (11). The monstrosity of the “offspring,” though similar to that of Frankenstein’s monster, is not re-repressed, but ultimately de-repressed. The “flaws” (14) and “blemishes” (14), though reflecting the transgressive attributes of the personal self and the imperfection of the expression of the ego, are still appropriated by the maternal. This, however, is due to economic pressure, perhaps complicating the return of the repressed to a level similar to that in Dickinson and Piatt, though still contrasting: “And for thy mother, she alas is poor,/Which caus’d her thus to send thee out of door” (23-24). The narrator’s gender deviance, resulting in the poetic return of the repressed, is an unfortunate byproduct of economic disadvantage.

The assertion of a personal self is often inherently complicated by external social structures. These pressures may prompt the “return of the repressed,” a fragmentation of the self that differentiates internal desires from external expectations. This fragmentation, because the self is still subject to an external sociopolitical gaze, results in the projection of repressed material onto an “Other,” a symbol of the return of the repressed that is separated from the ideal self. Emily Dickinson’s “One need not be a chamber to be haunted” implicitly represents this process, utilizing the “External Ghost” as an embodiment of the female transgressive that corrupts domestic assumptions. This external projection, although “safer than in interior confronting,” is ultimately internalized as the “Assassin,” a component of the fragmented self that threatens to supplant the narrator’s “proper” identity. Although recognizing the Assassin as “superior” the narrator emphasizes repression as an inherent factor in social interaction. The rejection of the return of the repressed is also evident, and complicated, in Sarah Piatt’s “The Palace-Burner.” The return of the repressed, the picture, despite stimulating the narrator’s political conscience, subsequently fails to dissociate her from the domestic sphere. However, through the conflation of the domestic and political spheres, the gaze of the narrator’s son suggests the “superior” potential of female transgression. In Anne Bradstreet’s “The Author to Her Book” the maternal transforms into the locus of poetic assertion external from a traditional paternal narrative. The narrator’s poetic identity is, however, constantly constructed by dominant paternal structures, producing a return of the repressed that is the “ill-form’d offspring of my feeble brain.” Unlike Dickinson and Piatt, Bradstreet’s rejection of the return of the repressed is subtle, her association with the external projection always intimate due to its status as “mine own.”