| Contents > A Dangerous Fiction: Challenging the Perception of Masculinity in the Novels of Michael Chabon by Louise Colbran |
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The text asserts that violence is not what Joe needs to reconcile himself with his past and his future. In its representation of the death of Klaus Mecklenburg, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay writes back into the comic book narrative emotion and the corporeal reality of death, with its emphasis on the blood of the victim, and highlights the falsity of the quest on which Joe had embarked. Revenge solves nothing and Joe’s attempts to gain control of his life through performing solitary acts of violence and willfulness have resulted in the greatest tragedy of his life. The loss of his enemy is a greater tragedy than the loss of his family, the novel tells us, the implication being that in killing his enemy, Joe loses himself and his values.4 The novel warns that Joe, and with him men in general, need to find a way to integrate these concepts back into their lives if they are to truly live up to heroic standards.
In trying to emulate the superhero, Joe suppresses his humanity. He resembles what Frank Miller identifies as a defining characteristic of the Batman: “Batman imposes his order on the world; he is an absolute control freak.” (Sharrett, 1991) This is precisely what Joe has tried to do and the text shows us he cannot. In assuming this mentality, Joe has become equally as fascistic as his oppressors. His intolerance of passivity leads to his over-identification with the violent hypermasculine and the subsequent loss of his humanity.
The novel concludes that reconciliation and peace are only capable through creation and production, not destruction. In The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay the slaying of giants,5 ogres, dragons is removed from the hero’s journey and are transformed into destructive events in the life of an individual. To become heroic, Joe, has to come to terms with his own path and identity through creative and responsible practices that bring beauty and renewal to the world rather than death and destruction.
Through his comic series, The Golem, which combines an iconic American form with Czech-Jewish content, Joe is able to achieve a cultural amalgamation that enables him to create a space where he can find a home. He keeps a connection to his Czech-Jewish identity, keeping that culture alive, while becoming part of America, his new home. Joe finally realises that he can live in America and still be Jewish. It is the life giving force (a traditionally feminine ideal, but performed in part through the exclusively male act of Golem making, thus a synthesis of masculine and feminine ideals) realised through both The Golem and Joe’s meeting of his son, Tommy, and his taking an active role in fathering, that allows Joe to really start to live.
The final image we are left with in the novel is that of synthesis. This is the kind of synthesis that Brown speaks of when he discusses the Milestone comics 6:
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their reworking allows pervasive and popular conceptions of gender and race to be expanded by incorporating previously dissociated concepts of softness with hardness, of mind with body. Instead of merely championing the Clark Kent side of masculine duality as a legitimate role in and of itself, the Milestone books work to infuse gentler, more responsible, and more cerebral qualities within the codes of dominant masculinity. (Brown, 1993)
From within the hegemonic framework of the superhero, Chabon challenges the hypermasculine ideal and infuses it with a sense of “femininity”; of passivity and nurturance. At the end of the novel, Joe has proven his “hardness” and realises that he can only become whole once he acknowledges “softness.”
Ultimately, Chabon’s novel illustrates that in the attempt to live up to impossible perceptions of masculinity – epitomised here by the superhero/warrior ideal – men are made subject to and divested of any personal or “real” power. The only power they have is a façade and it merely works to sustain a hierarchy of power relationships to which they are subject.
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| Contents > A Dangerous Fiction: Challenging the Perception of Masculinity in the Novels of Michael Chabon by Louise Colbran |