Sending again, because this seems to have disappeared into the ether:
sorry it it appears twice!
best
A
At 8:52 AM -0400 4/6/03, Jow Lindsay wrote:
>hmm://
>
>http://www.geocities.com/jpmarshall.geo/cybermind/gender/text1.html
Interesting discussion Jow. Not least because it typifies some of
the difficulties of these issues. Sondheim's piece is clearly not
condoning what it describes, which I read as the eroticising and
enslavement of the Other (oriental, female) slave girl, who is
presented as a consumable object deserving of compassion. BUT I
wonder how far he gets in his critique beyond the cliche, insofar as
embedded in his protest is an eroticising and fetishising of the
Other's helplessness and impotence. It is in itself a classic piece
of Orientalism, as Said describes it, in how it feminises, exoticises
and eroticises the Other. This is where the questions that Wendlyn
asks are quite valid, and where Sondheim, instead of merely stating
his intention, could perhaps question what he is doing, instead of
simply accusing her of PC tyranny.
What Sondheim has not addressed is a difficulty that affects all
those who wish to write about atrocity: that its very representation
may end up being merely gratifying of a voyeuristic urge which in
itself disturbs nothing, and may in fact confirm what it allegedly
seeks to disturb. (I was looking for an essay by Louis Armand on
"traumatic realism" which describes this dilemma and Warhol's
response to it, but alas can't find it). I do think Sondheim's piece
falls into this trap; at the crude level, we can all say, how
terrible that such situations exist, while enjoying at the same time
the erotic spectacle of a bound woman. And since we are clearly
meant to identify with a simple mechanism of compassion, which is
activated through the (male) gaze of the merchants, there is not much
else going on. Perhaps the poem might have been more effective had
it been crueller.
Best
A
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