Paper, Part 2

I have spending my day really getting going on my Pulp Fiction paper, and it's turning into a part II of my essay for this class. I really didn't expect it to go there, but if anyone is interested, here is the first four paragraphs of it:



For a long time I struggled with how to start this paper. There is so much I want to cover in only eight pages, and writing in a way which is un-academic terrifies me. But honestly, what scares me the most about what I am going to attempt to do is this: I want to talk about me. In this class, we have focused on individual readers and why certain types of fiction and story appeals to a certain subset of people. Stanley Fish, in Interpreting the Variorum, believes there are interpretive communities which we are all part of (unaware or no) which dictate how we read a text, claiming that "strategies exist prior to the act of reading and therefore determine the shape of what is read rather than, as is usually assumed, the other way around" (Theory and Criticism, 2087). I think there is a great deal of credence in this theory. We all begin to associate with a group of people and see through their collective lenses. It stretches back to man's cro-magnon days where it was important to have a cohesive community; and society does seem to have a way of getting rid of undesirables (ala Stephen King's Carrie). It has an invisible iron which flattens out the wrinkles. Everyone struggles with being accepted by others--we all put on these "masks" so we can acclimate. In this paper, I would like to focus on both sides of this binary--culture and the individual. As far as reading goes (as well as society, in general), I support giving the power back to the unit. Unit is a very utilitarian world, but it perhaps it is necessary to think of society in that way. It is a collection of units, of cells, making up the whole. A utilitarian, socialist, communist structure would seem to be an ant-hill mentality, worker drones constructing a bigger framework. But we are not ants, our sole need being pleasure, and our one aversion, pain. Humans are selfish, needy, despicable, but also gloriously intelligent, generous, and kind. This struggle between the dominant culture and the individual is an important part of what makes stories and pulp fiction so important. It gives a person a way out of the society of boundaries and social anxiety, a peak into the multi-armed god, Shiva—a grand master of creation, like Shakespeare's Prospero.

Tomas Makris says, in Peyton Place by Grace Metalious, that there are two kinds of people, “Those who manufactured and maintained tedious, expensive shells, and those who did not. Those who did, lived in constant terror lest the shells of their own making crack open to display the weakness underneath, and those who did not were either crushed or toughened” (177). Literature is a transport away from this singular existence of our personalities—our rigid, separated egos which demarcate us from everything. It allows us to become anything or anyone: a pirate, a detective, a cowboy, a space alien, a 30 year-old woman desperate for a man, a governor of Venice, and a wolf in the Alaskan snow. In a novel or short story, we are everyone, every single character, every tree or stone. We are the master stage director, ordering people around and setting locales and environments in the stage of our mind, yet we are not present. We become everyone and no one--an outsider observing the show, but also the dreamer and creator of it all. What is the relationship between the inner theater (Morpheus' realm of archetypes, motifs, ogres, faeries, dwarves, and Jedi) and the outer one, our mundane constructed personalities? Why does everyone find it so easy to see through another, no matter how different they are from us (a pig in Charlotte's Web, and even a rock in short story I wrote a few years ago)?

I would also like to delve deeper into another idea which for me has been bubbling under the surface this entire semester. Something we have never explored in class is the role writing has in our lives. We have looked at pulp fiction and why that sort of literature appeals to such a wide audience, but I think I had a slightly different experience. Ever since I was a small child, I would always spend a great deal of my time constructing stories of my own. There was the massive epics depicting Jedi and Sith waging war on each other, the Pokémon, Final Fantasy, and Harry Potter fan fiction which I kept in my head, but sometimes submitted online, and the sequels to movies I loved: a group of people get stranded on Isla Nubar and are attacked by Velociraptors and T-Rex, climaxing with the survivors on a raft being chased by dino-sharks; an epic where the hero and his man-tiger friend have to escape a fantasy apocalypse; and my imagined seventh Harry Potter book where Ron Weasley sacrifices his life for Harry, and Dumbledore returns like a phoenix to save the day. There was the reconstructed story about a hero having to go through an encounter with the Minotaur, a Dinosaur, Joe Dante's Gremlins, and mummies. I would race around my living room, bouncing off furniture and banisters, making explosive noises. I lived in my imagination where there were no fetters. There could be dragons, ewoks, magic, light sabers, gods, monsters, and heroes all inhabiting the same universe, declaring war on each other, making alliances, and dying tragically. This was the realm I created. This was the kingdom I craved—a land free of inhibition, only drama and comedy, explosions and dinosaurs, and action and intrigue.

Reading did not play as large of a role in my life as did others in this class. Instead, I created my own worlds. I was, of course, influenced by different movies I watched or books I read, but on the whole, I loved being somewhere I made. The rules were my own, because I completely took the author out of the equation. There were no copyright laws in my skull--Gandalf, Dumbledore, and Yoda could dine at the same table, Batman and Wolverine could play ping-pong, and Goku could crash into Mordor and kick Sauron's eye in with a Kame-hame blast. I think there is something deeply powerful at work here, one that always seems to be bouncing up and down in my head, but I can never quite place it in the words I want to. Nothing is ever quite elegant enough. The closer I examine myself, pick myself a part for my own interest and hopefully, the interest of others I keep on discovering more layers to dig up. In class, out on the mall, in high school with the jocks, emo kids, preppies, band geeks, goths, and math nerds, I felt (I feel) isolated. I have to construct a super-composed aloof kid because I do not know how to interact. I feel the acting around me, the need for attention, and it makes me feel, well, off. I am not criticizing people's personalities; I feel a certain unwillingness to play along with it all--that, and I am scared. People scare me. They're unpredictable. What I am trying to get at is this: the bigger wall I put up towards other people, the greater the desire is to sink into my own worlds. High School was not a good time for me, the only way I really lived was through story. The universes I created grew bigger and darker. My characters became more angst-y, doubtful, and frankly demented and evil. I drew comic books. Yes, even now I am embarrassed to admit it. They were populated by the eponymous Piggy, the reluctant hero who fate would never give a break, Rooster, his arch nemesis, a chain-smoking, yes, rooster, Master Teddy, the paragon of reluctant evil who came from a parallel universe (he was a teddy bear), Heroic Man, a mixture between Superman and Coriolanus but more demented, Preston, the good nerd who wanted to conquer the world, and assorted other friends and enemies of Piggy. They emerged from the ethers, beings of my subconscious wanting to break forth and have stories written about them. I want to focus my attention on these characters, why they came from me at a specific time and place. For awhile in my life, they meant so much to me. I was lost and needed friends to guide me--they were there, my own creations. Some might call them imaginary friends, but isn't that all authors do, create non-existent people to satisfy their needs? I also want to experiment with something else. I have come to a time in my life where things are again drastically changing. Will I need Piggy and friends again? Will they return to me, or have they found someone else to live through? Can I draw a Piggy comic again?