I’ve been reading Eve Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet, which is pretty darn brilliant. Her central thesis is:
…that many of the major nodes of thought and knowledge in twentieth century Western culture as a whole are structured — indeed fractured — by a chronic, now endemic crisis of homo/heterosexual definition, indicatively male, dating from the end of the nineteenth century. The book will argue that an understanding of virtually any aspect of modern Western culture must be, not merely incomplete, but damaged in its central substance to the degree that it does not incorporate a critical analysis of modern homo/heteroexual definition….
Translated from the academese, she’s basically saying (or, anyway, I think she’s saying) that heterosexual masculinity in our culture is defined in relation to, or by excluding, homosexuality. There are a bunch of problems, or inconsistencies, with defining masculinity in that manner. Those problems have provided our art and culture with much of its energy, content, and/or tension. Sedgwick is particularly interested in the way that the closet has shaped our ideas of knowledge, ignorance, and secrets, and how these ideas are in turn translated into power or action.
In her book, Sedgwick analyses a bunch of canonical texts (Billy Budd, James’ “A Beast in the Jungle,” Dorian Gray, Nietzsche). But me, I’ve got Sim on the brain this week, so I was trying to think through how her thesis might apply to Cerebus, and especially to High Society.
First of all, form its beginning, Cerebus is a parody of a particularly overblown masculinity. In fact, the central, ongoing joke of the series is that Cerebus behaves like Conan and yet, he’s clearly not Conan. In other words, Cerebus is in part a funny character because he has all the attributes of hyper-masculinity (temper, violence, a certain kind of competence, emotional distance, etc.) even though he is essentially a (feminine-associated) plush toy. The joke is heightened by the fact that the other characters in the story are, for the most part, oblivious. Cerebus is treated as if he had all the privileges of masulinity — women try to seduce him, for example, and he is treated as a political threat. Or, to put it another way, Cerebus successfully passes as a traditional (heterosexual) man.
Part of the pleasure of the story, especially on the early outings, is the reader’s knowledge of this open secret — a secret everyone in the book knows, and yet which is only rarely alluded to. Cerebus himself doesn’t talk about it, or even seem to notice it for the most part. And yet, even as the story becomes more intricate and the formative Conan meme fades into the background, the fact of Cerebus’ difference, and its relation to his masculinity, remains of central importance. High Society can, it seems to me, be read as a story about Cerebus’ masculinity — his efforts to eschew femininity, and (ahem) lay hold of a manhood which he obviously doesn’t really possess. Ironically, most of these efforts to resist the feminine involve precisely turning down offers of sex and/or close relationships with women (Astra, the elf, Jaka.) Is this (not always successful) imperviousness to female attention a sign of Cerebus’ true status as a manly-man? Or is it a sign that he is something other than a man, after all — another species perhaps? Or maybe it’s both?
I’m not saying that the (possibly non-genitaled) Cerebus is gay — or that Dave Sim is, for that matter! My point is just that the question (unarticulated, as such questions often are) makes sense of many of the ways in which gender works in Sim’s world. The malevolent, magnetic force at the edges of reason, the nexus of desire and repulsion — is it really female? Or is it a masculine presence made up of various irreconcileable bits: Conan, Lord Julius in the shower, and, of course, something else entirely? For Sim these days, women aren’t exactly human; I can’t help but think that he reached that conclusion for some of the same reasons that he decided to build his career around a character who is, and is not, a man.
Update: More about Eve Sedgwick and comicdom here
Why can't we recognize homosexuality as an abberation? What percentage identify themselves as exclusively homosexual- %2 or so? ( do not, for your own good, mention Kinsey- it's a proven fraud).
Why do we have to redefine ourselves to accomodate what is essentially a foriegn, completely un-usefull wordlview ( which is freely defined and redefined by whomever cares to do so, to whatever ends they see fit- usually it fits with the Frankfurt Schools agenda for incremntal Marxism).
I just don't et any of it. It's absurd on its face.
-I was responding to the thesis part only.
Hey Luke. I feared this would annoy you.
I don't know quite what you mean by "aberration". Same-sex sex has a long and noble history (ask Ken Smith). The modern Western identity is relatively recent (100 years or so), but lots of people find it meaninful to them in various ways.
An "un-useful" worldview? According to whom? Henry James? Nietzsche? Proust? Oscar Wilde? Melville? Whitman? All of them were self-consciously gay in a sense that is recognizably modern; all of them incorporated that world-view into their art.
Your quick move to link homosexuality to Marxism is actually exactly the sort of thing that Sedgwick is talking about (heterosexuality/homosexuality is used as a way to create various binaries, political and otherwise). Not that you have to see it that way if you don't want to, of course.
Okay, homosexuality is relatively rare. But it's really important to a lot of people (gay marriage, anyone?), and there's no reason that a minority can't make the majority of people act pretty funny (Commies, illegal aliens, fundamentalists…).
Awesome decloseting, Noah, as if Conan's oiled muscles weren't already an eyebrow-raiser.
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Where is this percentage of identifying homosexuals coming from? Or, rather, percentage of what group? The entire world? Because there are many, many countries and cultures in which, even if you are a homosexual, it would not behoove your status or the safety of your person to identify as such openly. Hell, there's plenty of places in America where that's still true. Seems to me, what with leaders like Ahmadinejad claiming that there are "no gays in Iran", we're not anywhere close to getting an accurate count.
(This is not even accounting for the large and growing number of people who are comfortable with both sexes and simply refuse to identify one way or the other.)
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Noah, interesting reading. Someday I've gotta plow through the back half of Cerebus (I got stalled somewhere in the middle of READS) and try and join the conversation.
Funny to say "plow through the back half of Cerebus" in this context.
See also Sedgwick's _Between Men_ for a look at the impact of same-sex male behaviors and discourses on women as "objects of exchange."
the (possibly non-genitaled) Cerebus is gay
man, if you really want to get into it, you really really have to read the rest of cerebus. these things are brought up.
i am no apologist for sim's worldview (shudder), nor will i tell you that reading, say, the last five books was half as pleasurable as reading the first five. i got through the last two by sheer orneriness.
but if you want to talk about the development of sim's art, & especially if you want to talk about the development & meaning of sim's universe, you can't do it by reading the first two phonebooks & glancing through some internet flamewars.
Hey Miriam. Well, that's why I decided to do it as a transient blog post rather than trying to write a longer essay. Maybe someday I'll, um, plow through the back half…but I didn't even enjoy the second one all that much, and most people say that's the best, so….
Reading more Eve Sedgwick, though, is definitely on the agenda. "Between Men" is the other one I've looked at, and it's super.
I'll second what Miriam wrote. Cerebus's genitals actually become a plot point in "Reads". And sexual politics dominate much of the series. Have you encountered references to "Cirinism" and "Kevillism" in the parts you've read so far? (I've forgotten whether they show up in late "High Society" or early "Church & State".)
Sim even wrote, early on, that he considered the first 150 issues the "male half" of the story, and the second 150 the "female half".
Okay…but would somebody whose read more of it than me care to try to extend and/or undermine the analysis based on their more complete knowledge?
I've read everything but the Last 50 issues — I wasn't living in North America so getting the final issues was a pain, and what I DID see was very alienating. But your considering that your analysis doesn't factor in anything that takes place from 200 on, I'd say it's pretty perceptive and definitely on the right track.
If you're really interested in the topic, you HAVE to read Guys, which is basically an extended discourse into the phenomenon of what straight-guys these days are referring to the "man crush". Where a heterosexual guy has feelings for a member of his own gender that, if it the same feelings existed for a member of the opposite sex, you would date them. Basically you fall in love with someone, but without necessarily being sexually attracted to them. This kind of conflicted sexuality is, as you intuited and will have confirmed, is at the CORE of Cerebus as a character, and GUYS is the book in which that conflict is made manifest.
In reference to what Luke said, t he percentage of guys who identify themselves as exclusively homosexual IS really small. However, if you redefine the question from "Do you identify as homosexual" to "Do you engage in sexual activity with other men?" the answers are a lot different. A lot of guys who don't identify as gay to things that are by definition gay. Gay as an ideology and worldview is one thing; Gay as a set of sexual activities is quite another.
It's always been unclear to me the degree to which queer theory is necessarily ABOUT (homo)sexuality as it is about otherness in general, which may be more or less associated with gender or sex.
But in any case, I think you're entirely right to see Cerebus as a text dripping with sexuality — sexual tension, confusion, and frustration in particular. Of course, I've read about as far as you have…
Hey, look, a homophobe troll.
Whine, troll, whine.
-A-