| Contents > A Dangerous Fiction: Challenging the Perception of Masculinity in the Novels of Michael Chabon by Louise Colbran |
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Given The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay’s immersion in the world of comic books, it is difficult not to see Joe, while hidden away in the radio shack, as reminiscent of Superman in his “Fortress of Solitude.” Joe secludes himself in order to plan for his transformation into an exemplar of invulnerable masculine power, willing to fight the Germans for the sake of the downtrodden peoples of Europe. However, Chabon also allows an insight into the down-side of male solitude. Intently listening to all that goes on outside the shack, Joe comes across a German transmission that sounds local, alerting him to the presence of “Germans on the Ice.” (Chabon, 2000) Because of his isolation, Joe becomes paranoid at the thought of invaders. Superman effectively becomes the creature in Kafka’s “The Burrow.”3 (Kafka, 1961) His perceptions are warped and Joe is led to possibly the greatest tragic event of his life.
The accumulation of Joe’s feelings of impotence, through exile to the United States and service in Antarctica, culminates in an act of violent phallic masculinity where he shoots the Geologist in an act of sexual and symbolic potency – penetration causing death. Rosenberg’s reading of Jewish writers, E.L. Doctorow, Herb Gardner, David Mamet and Mark Helprin, apply to Chabon’s representation of Joe as well: “Identity, male and Jewish, has been lost, and the process of remasculinization attempts to reclaim them both simultaneously, one in terms of the other. The glue that connects these elements is violence.” (Rosenberg, 2001) All of Joe’s frustrations should be able to be consumed by this one act. It is the kind of act that Easthope argues is used to affirm masculinity:
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Energy bound to make up the ‘I’ is released against everything that appears to attack it. The unity of the body is affirmed when the body of the other is destroyed. (Easthope, 1986)
When couched in this kind of rhetoric it is possible to see the similarities between Joe and other authoritarian figures in the text, such as the G-men who rape Sammy.
Up until now, the superhero has been used by Joe as an icon to deny any gaps in the façade of masculinity: his violent confrontations, hard body and inevitable victory proving the strength and consistency of his masculinity. However, at this point Joe lets the “inside” out and in his vulnerability and “softness” becomes truly heroic.
Hegemonic masculinity becomes reformulated as an escape into the safety of conformity and an attempted escape into the safety of perceived stable gender identity. Responsibility to the world and real situations is abrogated through deference to hegemonic masculinity.
Joe’s act of penetrating the German does indeed confer a sense of identity on him. This identity, though, is of a different character to that which he expected. Rather than reaffirming Joe’s masculinity, the act of piercing another’s body confronts Joe with the reality of the grotesque body as opposed to the very hard and clean body of the superhero which had been fetishised up until this point. This revelation of the corporeality of the male body is a point of renewal for Joe and results in his identification of their common humanity. Joe is set for a rebirth, (See Campbell, 1968) not as an all-conquering warrior but as a human being – a dialogue of both masculine and feminine voices. When Klaus Mecklenburg dies, far from Joe’s expectations, his death breaks Joe’s heart:
The shock and fragrance of life, steaming red life, given off by the trail of the German’s blood in the snow was a reproach to Joe . . . In seeking revenge, he had allied himself with the Ice, with the interminable white topography, with the sawteeth and crevasses of death. Nothing that had ever happened to him . . . had ever broken his heart quite as terribly as the realization, when he was halfway to the rimed zinc hatch of the German station, that he was hauling a corpse behind him. (Chabon, 2000)
3. There are many allusions to Kafka throughout the novel, not the least Joe’s name – Josef K – and his origins in Prague. |
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| Contents > A Dangerous Fiction: Challenging the Perception of Masculinity in the Novels of Michael Chabon by Louise Colbran |