The Long-Ass Holiday Review, Episode X
American masculinity is a rich vein for humorists and serious thinkers alike, certainly too rich to tackle head-on in my little blog. Fortunately, the Christmas season gives me an opportunity to take a glancing shot at the topic via "A Christmas Story," one of the best pop culture depictions of masculinity and its problems.
The origin of A Christmas Story is pretty strange, and might explain its many matter-of-fact insights. The film is an adaption of Jean Shepherd's work, which is smart anti-conformist stuff. However, the film's plot isn't taken from any single story or published work; it's an adaption of many separate pieces, all tied loosely together using the Red Ryder air rifle plot. Somewhere in the process of transforming Shepherd's many works into a single, mass-audience story, an undeniable "rites of passage" theme developed. Whether it was intentional or not, this theme pervades the film. Every major plot point reflects Ralphie's clumsy and incomplete transition to manhood. Meanwhile, the Old Man (Ralphie's father, never named) and Ralphie's younger brother Randy serve as constant contrasts, representing mature masculinity and pre-masculine childhood, respectively. Each time the film depicts Ralphie struggling with a rite of passage, one of both of these supporting characters are used to throw Ralphie's predicament into sharper relief. The neatest example of this is in the film's most famous subplot: the lamp incident.
Electric Sex
Sexuality as a rite of passage
An 8-year-old boy, rapt with erotic fascination, rubbing the disembodied buttock of a porcelain female leg; how did something so strange and honest end up in a family film? Had Ralphie been in the room alone, I think the scene would have been cut. Instead, Ralphie's whole family is in the room as he encounters the fetish of adult sexuality. His father's obliviousness and his mother's attempts to rein him in probably make the scene palatable, and they also form the scene's commentary on masculinity.
The brilliant thing about the leg lamp is that its sexuality is implicit, which makes it a point of ambiguity (and thus contention) in the family's sexual politics. While it's strangeness entrances Randy and its sexual significance lures Ralphie in to explore it, the Old Man completely ignores the lamp's sexual side, seeing it as a status symbol. And yet, while the lamp is a passive object for Ralphie's curiosity and the Old Man's pride, its inanimate presence is an affront to Ralphie's Mom. Obviously, the lamp is only a pawn. The real struggle -- one that Ralphie is only a part of -- is over sexuality and self-ownership.
Cultural sanction to control one's own sexuality is extended mostly to men, less so to women, and much less so to children. Men enjoy sexual privileges so great that they are sometimes, ironically, blind to shades of sexuality that they alone are free to ignore. The Old Man is suffering from this syndrome when he blithely lights up the racy lamp in the living room window. Although he seems to understand that the lamp is a little risque, he cares only that it shows off his status as a "major award" winner; the Old Man isn't putting his own sexuality on the line in displaying the lamp, because he's allowed to use sex for status in this manner. Contrast the Old Man's situation with that of Ralphie's Mom. Obviously, she's humiliated by the lamp's display; it casts a shadow on her, and she can't escape that shadow. It's difficult to explain just how Ralphie's Mom is constrained, because there's no rational explanation. Her lack of control over her own sexuality is purely cultural. Nonetheless, the limitation is real. As a mother and a wife, she is unable to ignore the lamp's sexual dimension. Obviously, masculinity makes the difference between using the lamp as a tool and being constrained by it. So where does that leave Ralphie?
Ralphie's brief encounter with the lamp is something of a failed rite of passage. Presented with a passive sexual object, Ralphie tries to feel it up, exerting his masculine privilege to express his sexuality. Note that Ralphie's groping is the flip-side of the Old Man's choice to treat the lamp as non-sexual. Both approaches are unilateral; the men can act on the lamp without being acted upon by it... in theory. Like most privileges of adulthood, the privilege of sexual self-expression only exists for children insofar as their parents are willing to grant it. Ralphie's Mom thwarts him, first directly, then by distracting him with the radio. Ralphie's privilege is easily denied, but the Old Man's can't be. Instead, it has to be circumvented by real power (as opposed to cultural sanction). While she's got less "authority" that the Old Man, Ralphie's mom has plenty of practical power in the household. She uses it to keep Ralphie away from the lamp, and (it is suggested, but not confirmed) to break the lamp "accidentally." Is is often the case in "A Christmas Story," the men's cultural privilege is useless without real power to back it up. Between social injunctions and Mom's control over the household, nobody in the family really has control over his or her sexuality.
Red Ryder and his Peacemaker
Violence as a rite of passage
There are two kinds of violence in "A Christmas Story," each with its own rite of passage. Ralphie passes both. First, there's real violence, the kind that Ralphie and his friends suffer at the hands of Scott Farkus. Real violence is an expression of personal power and one of the battlefields in the struggle for masculinity. The Old Man is exempt from real violence and never seems to dish it out, despite the threat that he'll punish Ralphie for the Farkus Affair. Ralphie and his friends, on the other hand, inhabit a world of bullies and victims. Randy, who is too young to begin asserting masculinity, is a relegated to helpless victim status automatically. Ralphie, on the other hand, is old enough to be responsible for Randy and his friends (even if that responsibility is observed only in the breach). The rite of passage in real violence comes when Ralphie attacks Scott Farkus. The fight is bloody, personal and meant to defend masculinity; it rewrites the social hierarchy of the school kids, rather than bowing to it.
The air rifle plot that drives the movie culminates in a very different rite of passage that is still related to violence, albeit more subtly. In asking for an air rifle, Ralphie is asking for social recognition of a masculine privilege. It's no mistake that the toy that drives A Christmas Story is gendered and an instrument of violence, nor that the Old Man's final justification for buying it is that the Old Man himself had one when he was eight. Unlike the real violence in "A Christmas Story," the implicit violence of the air rifle isn't about real power. Ralphie's not going to hurt anybody with the rifle. Instead, this rite of passage is about earning the masculine privilege to own and use a weapon; the adults of the film are notoriously concerned that Ralphie will shoot himself, not that he'll attack anyone else.
Ralphie's victory against Scott Farkus is hard-won, equivocal (Ralphie cries and is led away by his mother after the fight) and represents proof of Ralphie's actual ability to protect himself. Contrast this with Ralphie's air rifle, his ultimate achievement in the film. The air rifle is a gift that Ralphie gets only because the Old Man judges him worthy of it, reflecting that Ralphie's real power in his family is still minimal. Still, though, the gift has important significance, for it connects Ralphie to the institution of masculinity. The "Black Bart" fantasy sequence depicts the traditional male hero, the protector of family and property, that Ralphie identifies with. No amount of real violence could ever truly connect Ralphie to that role, and he knows it. He needs social sanction to use violence, a privilege totally separate from the actual ability to fight. His mother essentially gives him that sanction after the Farkus affair by helping him avoid punishment, but the Old Man's gift is what really seals the deal.
The Pink Nightmare
Independence as a rite of passage
As an 8-year-old, Ralphie lives completely in the shadow of his parents. He's got very little control over his own life. His interior life, though, is distinct from that of his family; unlike Randy, he's his own person with his own preferences. While women have cultural sanction to go on living with this contradiction indefinitely (as Ralphie's Mom is, arguably), masculinity is construed as requiring a certain degree of independence and even transgression. The Old Man shows that independence from the rest of the family by cursing and staying detached from group activities (even as he gives in to the family and to his wife in most matters of substance). In the film, Ralphie shows a few key moments of independence, including one that is conferred upon him as a personal recognition on the cusp of his greatest victory, acquiring the air rifle.
Ralphie's use of the "F-dash-dash-dash" word is an important statement of independence for a couple of reasons. First, it comes while he's changing a tire with the Old Man for the first time, a privilege that his mother grants him as an acknowledgement that he's growing up. Ralphie says the word when he screws up his father's task, seemingly failing at the rite of passage he's been given. This brings us to the second important point, though: The Old Man, who showed no particular approval of Ralphie helping to change the tire, does smile at Ralphie's use of the F-word (after sending Ralphie away, of course). It's apparent that while the Old Man helps Ralphie's Mom to punish him, he isn't personally offended at Ralphie's use of the word, and sees it as positive in some sense. The dynamic between real and cultural power is clear in this sub-plot. Changing the tire is an artificial rite of passage, a task that Ralphie isn't really good at, but is considered responsible for as a boy becoming a man. He doesn't do well. And after Ralphie curses, he is punished and forced to frame a friend for teaching him the F-word; here, the extent to which he is subject to parental punishment is obvious. However, at the moment when Ralphie says the word, he exercises his real power to break the rules and shows that he has not internalized them. While he must be punished for cursing, as the Old Man would probably agree, Ralphie proves his masculinity by showing that he's internally capable of transgression, and that he can break the rules that he follows.
In my experience, men worry about being ruined by following rules, and sometimes act out just to prove to themselves and to others that they are still men. I interpret the Old Man's smile as relief that Ralphie hasn't allowed his mother to completely emasculate him. Whether the Old Man's fear is reasonable or not, it explains a neat moment later on. Though the F-word incident seems like a disaster and a failure to Ralphie, it wins some respect from the Old Man that will lead to an important event later.
When Ralphie's aunt sends him a hideous pink bunny outfit, Ralphie's Mom forces him to try it on. The Old Man's reaction is almost indignant. He says that Ralphie looks like a "deranged easter bunny" and "a pink nightmare." He doesn't just demand that Ralphie change, though. He asks Ralphie whether he likes wearing the outfit, albeit rhetorically, and then sends him upstairs to change when he says no. It's significant that the Old Man uses Ralphie's own dislike for the outfit as grounds for him to take it off, Aunt Clara be damned. While the Old Man could hardly sanction Ralphie's cursing, he's taking this opportunity to do effectively the same thing by telling Ralphie that he's not obligated to do anything that makes him unhappy. This is a difficult lesson to interpret in today's slightly more feminist world. On the one hand, men's feeling that they aren't responsible for anything but their own happiness is probably the source of much discord in families and in the greater society. On the other hand, if more little girls were taught the same lesson, a lot of their later difficulties in life could be avoided. Without making judgments, though, it's clear that the Old Man's words are a tacit recognition of Ralphie's right to make his own decisions and to resist the wishes of others when it comes to his own actions.
I'm way behind on my Christmas articles, so that has to be it for A Christmas Story, though it deserves a much more thorough treatment. Later this week, hopefully: Fun, Christmas-related nerdiness.
The origin of A Christmas Story is pretty strange, and might explain its many matter-of-fact insights. The film is an adaption of Jean Shepherd's work, which is smart anti-conformist stuff. However, the film's plot isn't taken from any single story or published work; it's an adaption of many separate pieces, all tied loosely together using the Red Ryder air rifle plot. Somewhere in the process of transforming Shepherd's many works into a single, mass-audience story, an undeniable "rites of passage" theme developed. Whether it was intentional or not, this theme pervades the film. Every major plot point reflects Ralphie's clumsy and incomplete transition to manhood. Meanwhile, the Old Man (Ralphie's father, never named) and Ralphie's younger brother Randy serve as constant contrasts, representing mature masculinity and pre-masculine childhood, respectively. Each time the film depicts Ralphie struggling with a rite of passage, one of both of these supporting characters are used to throw Ralphie's predicament into sharper relief. The neatest example of this is in the film's most famous subplot: the lamp incident.
Electric Sex
Sexuality as a rite of passage
An 8-year-old boy, rapt with erotic fascination, rubbing the disembodied buttock of a porcelain female leg; how did something so strange and honest end up in a family film? Had Ralphie been in the room alone, I think the scene would have been cut. Instead, Ralphie's whole family is in the room as he encounters the fetish of adult sexuality. His father's obliviousness and his mother's attempts to rein him in probably make the scene palatable, and they also form the scene's commentary on masculinity.
The brilliant thing about the leg lamp is that its sexuality is implicit, which makes it a point of ambiguity (and thus contention) in the family's sexual politics. While it's strangeness entrances Randy and its sexual significance lures Ralphie in to explore it, the Old Man completely ignores the lamp's sexual side, seeing it as a status symbol. And yet, while the lamp is a passive object for Ralphie's curiosity and the Old Man's pride, its inanimate presence is an affront to Ralphie's Mom. Obviously, the lamp is only a pawn. The real struggle -- one that Ralphie is only a part of -- is over sexuality and self-ownership.
Cultural sanction to control one's own sexuality is extended mostly to men, less so to women, and much less so to children. Men enjoy sexual privileges so great that they are sometimes, ironically, blind to shades of sexuality that they alone are free to ignore. The Old Man is suffering from this syndrome when he blithely lights up the racy lamp in the living room window. Although he seems to understand that the lamp is a little risque, he cares only that it shows off his status as a "major award" winner; the Old Man isn't putting his own sexuality on the line in displaying the lamp, because he's allowed to use sex for status in this manner. Contrast the Old Man's situation with that of Ralphie's Mom. Obviously, she's humiliated by the lamp's display; it casts a shadow on her, and she can't escape that shadow. It's difficult to explain just how Ralphie's Mom is constrained, because there's no rational explanation. Her lack of control over her own sexuality is purely cultural. Nonetheless, the limitation is real. As a mother and a wife, she is unable to ignore the lamp's sexual dimension. Obviously, masculinity makes the difference between using the lamp as a tool and being constrained by it. So where does that leave Ralphie?
Ralphie's brief encounter with the lamp is something of a failed rite of passage. Presented with a passive sexual object, Ralphie tries to feel it up, exerting his masculine privilege to express his sexuality. Note that Ralphie's groping is the flip-side of the Old Man's choice to treat the lamp as non-sexual. Both approaches are unilateral; the men can act on the lamp without being acted upon by it... in theory. Like most privileges of adulthood, the privilege of sexual self-expression only exists for children insofar as their parents are willing to grant it. Ralphie's Mom thwarts him, first directly, then by distracting him with the radio. Ralphie's privilege is easily denied, but the Old Man's can't be. Instead, it has to be circumvented by real power (as opposed to cultural sanction). While she's got less "authority" that the Old Man, Ralphie's mom has plenty of practical power in the household. She uses it to keep Ralphie away from the lamp, and (it is suggested, but not confirmed) to break the lamp "accidentally." Is is often the case in "A Christmas Story," the men's cultural privilege is useless without real power to back it up. Between social injunctions and Mom's control over the household, nobody in the family really has control over his or her sexuality.
Red Ryder and his Peacemaker
Violence as a rite of passage
There are two kinds of violence in "A Christmas Story," each with its own rite of passage. Ralphie passes both. First, there's real violence, the kind that Ralphie and his friends suffer at the hands of Scott Farkus. Real violence is an expression of personal power and one of the battlefields in the struggle for masculinity. The Old Man is exempt from real violence and never seems to dish it out, despite the threat that he'll punish Ralphie for the Farkus Affair. Ralphie and his friends, on the other hand, inhabit a world of bullies and victims. Randy, who is too young to begin asserting masculinity, is a relegated to helpless victim status automatically. Ralphie, on the other hand, is old enough to be responsible for Randy and his friends (even if that responsibility is observed only in the breach). The rite of passage in real violence comes when Ralphie attacks Scott Farkus. The fight is bloody, personal and meant to defend masculinity; it rewrites the social hierarchy of the school kids, rather than bowing to it.
The air rifle plot that drives the movie culminates in a very different rite of passage that is still related to violence, albeit more subtly. In asking for an air rifle, Ralphie is asking for social recognition of a masculine privilege. It's no mistake that the toy that drives A Christmas Story is gendered and an instrument of violence, nor that the Old Man's final justification for buying it is that the Old Man himself had one when he was eight. Unlike the real violence in "A Christmas Story," the implicit violence of the air rifle isn't about real power. Ralphie's not going to hurt anybody with the rifle. Instead, this rite of passage is about earning the masculine privilege to own and use a weapon; the adults of the film are notoriously concerned that Ralphie will shoot himself, not that he'll attack anyone else.
Ralphie's victory against Scott Farkus is hard-won, equivocal (Ralphie cries and is led away by his mother after the fight) and represents proof of Ralphie's actual ability to protect himself. Contrast this with Ralphie's air rifle, his ultimate achievement in the film. The air rifle is a gift that Ralphie gets only because the Old Man judges him worthy of it, reflecting that Ralphie's real power in his family is still minimal. Still, though, the gift has important significance, for it connects Ralphie to the institution of masculinity. The "Black Bart" fantasy sequence depicts the traditional male hero, the protector of family and property, that Ralphie identifies with. No amount of real violence could ever truly connect Ralphie to that role, and he knows it. He needs social sanction to use violence, a privilege totally separate from the actual ability to fight. His mother essentially gives him that sanction after the Farkus affair by helping him avoid punishment, but the Old Man's gift is what really seals the deal.
The Pink Nightmare
Independence as a rite of passage
As an 8-year-old, Ralphie lives completely in the shadow of his parents. He's got very little control over his own life. His interior life, though, is distinct from that of his family; unlike Randy, he's his own person with his own preferences. While women have cultural sanction to go on living with this contradiction indefinitely (as Ralphie's Mom is, arguably), masculinity is construed as requiring a certain degree of independence and even transgression. The Old Man shows that independence from the rest of the family by cursing and staying detached from group activities (even as he gives in to the family and to his wife in most matters of substance). In the film, Ralphie shows a few key moments of independence, including one that is conferred upon him as a personal recognition on the cusp of his greatest victory, acquiring the air rifle.
Ralphie's use of the "F-dash-dash-dash" word is an important statement of independence for a couple of reasons. First, it comes while he's changing a tire with the Old Man for the first time, a privilege that his mother grants him as an acknowledgement that he's growing up. Ralphie says the word when he screws up his father's task, seemingly failing at the rite of passage he's been given. This brings us to the second important point, though: The Old Man, who showed no particular approval of Ralphie helping to change the tire, does smile at Ralphie's use of the F-word (after sending Ralphie away, of course). It's apparent that while the Old Man helps Ralphie's Mom to punish him, he isn't personally offended at Ralphie's use of the word, and sees it as positive in some sense. The dynamic between real and cultural power is clear in this sub-plot. Changing the tire is an artificial rite of passage, a task that Ralphie isn't really good at, but is considered responsible for as a boy becoming a man. He doesn't do well. And after Ralphie curses, he is punished and forced to frame a friend for teaching him the F-word; here, the extent to which he is subject to parental punishment is obvious. However, at the moment when Ralphie says the word, he exercises his real power to break the rules and shows that he has not internalized them. While he must be punished for cursing, as the Old Man would probably agree, Ralphie proves his masculinity by showing that he's internally capable of transgression, and that he can break the rules that he follows.
In my experience, men worry about being ruined by following rules, and sometimes act out just to prove to themselves and to others that they are still men. I interpret the Old Man's smile as relief that Ralphie hasn't allowed his mother to completely emasculate him. Whether the Old Man's fear is reasonable or not, it explains a neat moment later on. Though the F-word incident seems like a disaster and a failure to Ralphie, it wins some respect from the Old Man that will lead to an important event later.
When Ralphie's aunt sends him a hideous pink bunny outfit, Ralphie's Mom forces him to try it on. The Old Man's reaction is almost indignant. He says that Ralphie looks like a "deranged easter bunny" and "a pink nightmare." He doesn't just demand that Ralphie change, though. He asks Ralphie whether he likes wearing the outfit, albeit rhetorically, and then sends him upstairs to change when he says no. It's significant that the Old Man uses Ralphie's own dislike for the outfit as grounds for him to take it off, Aunt Clara be damned. While the Old Man could hardly sanction Ralphie's cursing, he's taking this opportunity to do effectively the same thing by telling Ralphie that he's not obligated to do anything that makes him unhappy. This is a difficult lesson to interpret in today's slightly more feminist world. On the one hand, men's feeling that they aren't responsible for anything but their own happiness is probably the source of much discord in families and in the greater society. On the other hand, if more little girls were taught the same lesson, a lot of their later difficulties in life could be avoided. Without making judgments, though, it's clear that the Old Man's words are a tacit recognition of Ralphie's right to make his own decisions and to resist the wishes of others when it comes to his own actions.
I'm way behind on my Christmas articles, so that has to be it for A Christmas Story, though it deserves a much more thorough treatment. Later this week, hopefully: Fun, Christmas-related nerdiness.