| Contents > A Dangerous Fiction: Challenging the Perception of Masculinity in the Novels of Michael Chabon by Louise Colbran |
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A Dangerous Fiction: Challenging the Perception of Masculinity in the Novels of Michael Chabon
In all of his major novels, including The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Wonder Boys, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and Summerland, Michael Chabon is profoundly interested in the subject of masculinity: how it is popularly perceived, its strengths and weaknesses. He foregrounds the constructed nature of what is perceived to be masculine, highlighting the daily performance of masculinity and the vigorousness with which it has to be defended in order to appear “natural.”
Throughout his oeuvre, Chabon is committed to an ideal of social responsibility. He makes a commitment to the kind of masculinity that will result in social justice, seeing fluidity, so often perceived as a threat to gender identity, as liberating and more healthy to a human identity than a fixed and stable binary gender identification. Hegemonic masculinity becomes, in his novels, a dangerous fiction that limits men as human beings, destroys them and is dangerous to the world around them. It is a fiction because of its performative nature and the fact that its reality is anathema to the values it promotes.
This paper will focus on the figure of the superhero as an exemplar of masculinity in popular culture and will explore the ways in which Chabon challenges perceptions of masculinity through his critique of this important cultural figure in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, particularly through the central character of Joe Kavalier. Chabon explores the concept of the competition between individuality and the social nature of identity and discusses the need for the “hero” to acknowledge his social existence and the necessity for social connection in heroic action. Anything less becomes merely an escape from responsible adulthood and mature masculinity.
Chabon takes the concept of the superhero and works from within the paradigm to tease out the positive aspects of the mythology and incorporate these into a new conception of masculinity. His novel attempts to reunite dualisms inherent in the form, showing that both sides of the binary hero/alter-ego – which is mapped onto strong/weak; masculine/feminine – constitute the inseparable dialectic identified by Jeffrey A. Brown: “these two male extremes are not so far removed as they might seem. Warrior and wimp exist side by side, each defining the other in mutual opposition.” (Brown, 1993) Chabon’s text also suggests that they combine to create a “masculine” identity. As a result, the text calls for a shift in the perception of masculinity and argues that to be “masculine” should not mean fully and completely polarising and negating the “weak” or “feminine.”
The two main characters of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay are both minority members of their society’s hegemonic gender. Josef is Jewish, an immigrant who has escaped from Nazi-ruled Czechoslovakia. Sammy, though born in America, is doubly marginalised as he is Jewish and homosexual. Recognising the status of the two men as minorities within the dominant gender provides a very fertile starting point for an assessment of Chabon’s novel. David Buchbinder warns against the tendency for “ ‘patriarchy’ and ‘masculinity’ [to] often become conflated,” (Buchbinder, 1994) the problem being that not all men, even within a patriarchal society, have equal access to power. This is particularly salient within the World War II context of the main part of the novel’s narrative.
Persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany has been characterised by Brown, utilising the work of Klaus Theweleit in Male Fantasies, as a process of “othering”; creating out of the totality of the Jewish people an “Other” to the assumed, universal and masculine Aryan master. Brown notes that “the Jewish man,” has “been burdened by the projection of castrated softness.” (Brown, 1993) It is this kind of “softness” that Joe fights against in his war against all Germans in New York and, eventually, Antarctica. Sammy is doubly troubled as he not only has to fight the stereotype of the “soft” Jew but also the “sissy” homosexual. Each attempts to reassert their masculine voice through their work and personal lives. As a result of their perceived weakness within their gender, both of these young men look up to and create muscular, independent and powerful, hypermasculine men in order to feel some sense of masculine empowerment themselves. They project all of their weaknesses onto the alter-ego and the superhero obliterates them.
The Escapist, equal parts superhero and Harry Houdini, is alter-ego of the limping Tom Mayflower, a blue-clad superhero who frees the masses from their shackles of oppression with the aid of his golden key. On one level, this is exactly how the Escapist functions for the two cousins. However, he is also an icon of impenetrability and phallic power, the epitome of masculinity. This is realised through the violent repression or destruction of anything that threatens the stable masculinity of an individual. Antony Easthope’s model for masculinity is the perfect vehicle for reading the superhero, for Easthope’s concept of masculinity centres on an attempt to completely expel the feminine. The superhero’s split between feminised alter-ego and hypermasculine hero graphically illustrates this point. Easthope conceptualises the male ego using the model of the castle: “The castle of the ego is defined by its perimeter and the line drawn between what is inside and what is outside.” (Easthope, 1986) This reads like a blueprint for the idea of the superhero. The union suit in which the superhero is traditionally clad effectively seals off any gaps in the body’s perimeter and foregrounds the masculine body’s impenetrability.
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| Contents > A Dangerous Fiction: Challenging the Perception of Masculinity in the Novels of Michael Chabon by Louise Colbran |