Gender’s Survivalist Struggle: The Performative Distortion of the Body in Himes’ Rage in Harlem and Blincoe’s Acid Casuals

David Cooper, Lancaster University

I think that the crime/ detective genre is a fruitful medium within which to explore the gendered identification of the body in literature, to probe the ambiguous nature of the reality of fixed gender binaries. The nature of genre fiction means that when the writer breaks the ‘rules’ of the genre this can present the reader with a stark, shocking twist which forces a reactionary repositioning which is possibly more arresting than the twists in more consciously ‘shocking’ or ‘experimental’ works. Scott McCracken suggests the potential of the detective to transcend fixed boundaries when he makes the following comment:

[T]he detective operates by transgressing the boundaries that make up identities. He or she is able to cross the boundaries of class, ‘race’ and gender that normally define the self in a way that other people cannot. … it is a matter of debate whether the narrative of detection confirms or disrupts the social boundaries transgressed.1

I will focus on two characters from novels studied on the course, ‘Goldy’ from Chester Himes’ A Rage in Harlem2, and ‘Estela’ from Nicholas Blincoe’s Acid Casuals3. After briefly introducing the three theorists on gender and the body which will inform my argument, I intend to discern whether the representation of these two characters, a ‘fat and black’(Himes 45) man who performs the role of  ‘a, tired, fat, saintly black woman, slaving in the service of the lord’(Himes 36) in order to negotiate the streets of Harlem, and ‘a Columbian transvestite’ who is a hybrid of, among other things, stereotypical noir characters ‘The Private Eye’4 and ‘The Femme Fatale’5, confirms gender boundaries or suggests a possible positive disruption of them. I also intend to decide whether these boundaries are really a significant factor that informs the reader’s empathic negotiation of the texts.     

Peter Brooks places the narration of the body as a central literary concern when he says that in ‘modern narratives … the body must be a source and locus of meanings, and … stories cannot be told without making the body a prime vehicle of narrative significations.’6 He expands his argument further when he speaks of bodily desire in the following excerpt:

In modern narrative literature, a protagonist often desires a body (most often another’s, but sometimes his or her own) and that body comes to represent for the protagonist an apparent ultimate good, since it appears to hold within itself – as itself – the key to satisfaction, power and meaning.7

Both Goldy and Estela desire a performative distortion of their own original bodies, rather than another body, in order to achieve ‘satisfaction’ and ‘an ultimate good’. I will develop and probe the ambiguities of this assertion as my argument progresses. Is this desire for the self an empowering desire in the wake of Lacan’s notion of the unreal desire of the other which serves, but ultimately fails, to replace a feeling of loss?8 This is a question that I will have to take into consideration.

Susan Bordo said ‘I view our bodies as a site of struggle, where we must work to keep our daily practices in the service of resistance to gender domination, not in the service of docility and gender normalization.’9 This image of the body as a ‘site of struggle’ needs to be explored, I will look at whether this struggle against traditional gender formation is a survivalist practice, as Bordo seems to be suggesting, and which is particularly resonant within the dangerous landscape of the crime novel, or whether the struggle seems to be an assertion of personal identity.  

Judith Butler speaks of how the need for ‘laughter in the face of serious categories is indispensable for feminism’10, and citing Mary Douglas speaks of how ‘the boundaries of the body become … the limits of the social space per se.’11 Butler is conscious of the performative, unstable factors that form gender binaries but she concludes that ‘as a strategy of survival within compulsory systems, gender is a performance with clearly punitive consequences.’12 While adopting a lighter tone than Bordo, Butler still views gender performance as an imprisoning ideological implement. Her assertion of the need for laughter suggests that gender binaries need to be displaced playfully, and I will weigh this claim in relation to some of the incidents in A Rage in Harlem and Acid Casuals.

Paula L. Woods has remarked upon Himes’ ‘unique ability to interweave issues of black rage, race and crime unlike any other author of his time’13, which is a perceptive comment but I think Woods has overlooked the farcical element of Himes’ writing that intensifies his depictions of rage, race and crime. The narrative is brimming with endearingly farcical moments, for example Jackson’s following encounter with ‘a narrow passageway’: ‘He thrashed and wriggled in a blind panic, like a black Don Quixote fighting two big warehouses singlehanded; he got himself turned sideways, and ran crab-like toward the street.’(107) Here Himes displays a comic flourish, combining the personification of two buildings, and the de-humanisation of Jackson into a crab to create a moment of Chaplin-esque visual humour, a common occurrence in the novel. There are rare moments of dense, measured introspection though, for example the following narration of the Harlem landscape:

Below the surface, in the murky waters of fetid tenements, a city of black people who are convulsed in desperate living, like the voracious churning of millions of hungry cannibal fish. Blind moths eating their own guts. Stick in a hand and draw back a nub.

That is Harlem.

The farther east it goes, the blacker it gets.(135)

Himes here dips below the comic surface of his novel and delivers lines of intense desolation, his juxtaposition of the metaphorical ‘voracious churning’ and the metonymic ‘stick in a hand and draw back a nub’ show a societal situation that is disturbing both in its scale and its immediate reality. The rarity of such sections results in a disturbing jolt in the reader’s experience of what is largely a light-hearted novel, and it is this structure that Himes employs to ensure Goldy’s death is repulsive in its immediacy.

The narration of Goldy’s body is a key signifier of his social mobility. His nun identity is narrated as follows:

She had a smooth-skinned, round black cherubic face, and two gold teeth in front which gleamed when she smiled.

No one paid her any special attention. There were many black Sisters of mercy seen throughout Manhattan.(33)

The smooth skin which signifies Goldy’s social empowerment is at odds with his skin in a private encounter with Jackson, which is narrate as follows: ‘Jackson threw off the blankets, staggered to his feet, grabbed Goldy’s fat greasy neck between his two black hands and began to squeeze. Sweat beaded on his black face like pox pimples. His eyes had turned fire-red and looked stark crazy.’(51) The private Goldy then is vulnerable, reflected in the incontrollable bodily eruptions of grease and sweat. This juxtaposition of two skin states can be understood in relation to Bordo’s comments about the external struggle of the body to survive, Goldy’s immunity is only enabled through a performative identity practice. Goldy is exploiting Butler’s boundaries of social space for his own survival, but this involves elements of deception, and he is still at threat from those who know his natural gender identity, and are not deceived by the asexual, angel-like sign of the nun.

Brooks spoke of the desire of the body representing an ultimate good and Goldy’s ultimate good is money, revealed in the following section, ‘Those were the facts he understood. Money! … ‘I’m goin’ to help you find your gal, Bruzz,’ he whispered confidentially. ‘After all, you is my twin brother.’’(43) Goldy deceives his brother in order to satisfy his consumptive capital hunger, this desire for the self body only leads to an empty signifier.

Goldy is depicted as abnormally invincible in the scene preceding his death where ‘His black gown made him invisible in the dark.’(147) Goldy’s protective performative identity creation is made redundant though when he is assaulted by Jodie: ‘He didn’t care whether it was a man, woman, or child he was kicking. He was riding a bolt of maniacal violence, and all he could see was a red ball of murder.’(149) The final execution is also delivered with chillingly ruthless directness:

‘Jodie reached down with a violent motion, clutched him over the face with the palm of his left hand, put his right knee in Goldy’s back between the shoulder blades, jerked Goldy’s head back against the pressure of his knee and cut Goldy’s taut black throat from ear to ear, straight to the bone.’(152)

The playful empowerment of Goldy’s identity is debunked, his name’s likeness to ‘Godly’ made insignificant when faced with the harsh realities of life in Himes’ Harlem.

I have made the suggestion that Estela’s identity consists of a hybrid of elements of stereotypical femme fatale and private eye noir figures. From the beginning of the novel Estela is perceived as a glamorous sexual figure, as in the following comment from Amjad’s represented thoughts: ‘This woman had made herself into a cinema queen. Sitting on Amjad’s tiger skins, wrapped up in a big black scarf, she could pass as a film star easy.’(2) The combination of femme fatale and private eye manifests itself succinctly in the boxing chapter with Michael Cross. An anonymous boy acknowledges Estela’s sexual presence in the following paragraph:  ‘the boy caught sight of Estela as he turned. He could hardly miss her, skipping in the centre of the hall…. The smile turned into a promise. Later.’(163) The femme fatale is defined by Andrew Spicer as ‘the woman who ‘never really is what she seems to be’ and is therefore, in a patriarchal culture, ungovernable and threatening.’ Estela is a physical manifestation of this description, and a ‘courageous tough guy’14 element that is a characteristic of the private eye is revealed in the following scene:

‘Up on his feet, he was ready to punch her out. Estella waited. She had a smile ready for him. She had a bounce in her that set her breasts into locomotion …

‘Daddy pussy, whipped by a bitch.’

Michael shrugged past. But the laughter followed him.’(167)

Estela’s performance is more natural than Goldy’s, though it is soured at the expense of the deception of Michael Cross. The novel seems to be playing on the instability of external perception, the crude ‘Daddy pussy, whipped by a bitch’ comment is wickedly satirical, the crude gender stereotyping that Taz-Man resorts to is insufficient to describe Estela, here the possibilities of Butler’s notions of performance are displayed, though it is shown in a deceptive way that is imprisoning.  

The following two excerpts are Estela’s sexual encounters, and both convey wildly different emotions. The first one is narrated as follows: ‘Yen’s springy erection. She let him dance in front of her, moving his penis in and out of her mouth. His trancey cosmic style was not a complete act, Yen was a gentle boy.’(5) There is a gentle fluidity to this encounter that suggests the potential for the dissolution of tradition gender boundaries that Butler calls for.

The second encounter, described crudely as ‘a gobble’, is more unsettling. As with Goldy, Taz-Man’s skin here erupts with movement and odour to display his vulnerability: ‘His skin breathed with the leathery scent of Fendi aftershave; the open pores on his cheeks grew wider as she drew herself on to his lips.’(189) Then, ‘she felt a wave run through his body until, where there hips touched, the spasm hit his crotch and ended in a short involuntary writhe.’(190) Taz-Man’s involuntary spasms suggest a disorganised union that, if reciprocated could suggest a disruption of sexual boundaries. The scene deflates unsettlingly in the following excerpt:

She held the Luger with two hands ... the cock withered and shrank, just like the Taz-Man … Her voice came out in a hard Manchester drawl, ‘It looks like you’re out of fucking business’ … ‘The whole fucking show - we want all of Manchester.’’ (193)

I think the unsettling element lies not in the deception of Estela’s performative gender, which she has changed extremely, but in the deception of the sexual act purely for monetary, hegemonic gain. Like Goldy, Estela’s bodily desire for her own body is driven by capital, the unsettling aspect of her character lies in the Thatcherite ruthless individualism which she performs, made more unsettling when at the novel’s conclusion ‘Estela admitted that she had lost track of the plan some time ago.’(227) Estela’s individualism is revealed as lost and directionless, and directionless ruthlessness is an unsettling characteristic.

Reading these novels taking into account the instability of gender boundaries allows for a reasoned perception of identity. The scenes which I have examined though still remained unsettling, the relentless threat of spontaneous violence embedded in a light hearted plot was revealed in A Rage in Harlem, and the unsettling depiction of unfocused ruthless individualism was revealed in Acid Casuals. The novels’ disruption of gender identities is made redundant by overwhelming external forces, meaning a reading of these novels suggests that they ultimately confirm rather than disrupt social boundaries when not read from one single ideological standpoint.

1 Scott McCracken, Pulp: Reading Popular Fiction (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), p. 63.

2 Chester Himes, A Rage in Harlem (Edinburgh: Canongate Crime, 2000)

3 Nicholas Blincoe, Acid Casuals (London: Serpent’s Tail, 1998) 

4 Andrew Spicer, Film Noir (Harlow: Longman, 2002), p. 87.

5 Spicer, p. 90.

6 Peter Brooks, Body Work: Objects of Desire in Modern Narrative (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. xii.

7 Brooks, p. 8.

8 Jacques Lacan, ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative’, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, ed. by Vincent B. Leitch et al (New York: Norton, 2001), pp. 1285-90.

9 Susan Bordo, From ‘Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body’, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, ed. by Vincent B. Leitch et al (New York: Norton, 2001), p. 2376. 

10 Judith Butler, From ‘Gender Trouble’, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, ed. by Vincent B. Leitch et al (New York: Norton, 2001), p. 2489.

11 Butler, p. 2493.

12 Butler, p. 2500.

13 Paula L. Woods, Preface to Chester Himes’ His Last day, in Spooks, Spies and Private Eyes: An Anthology of Black Mystery, Crime, and Suspense Fiction of the 20th Century, ed. by Paula L. Woods (Edinburgh: Payback Press, 1996), p. 54.

14 Spicer, pp. 90 and 87.

 

Bibliography

Blincoe, Nicholas, Acid Casuals (London: Serpent’s Tail, 1998) 

Bordo, Susan, From ‘Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body’, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, ed. by Vincent B. Leitch et al (New York: Norton, 2001), pp. 2362-76.

Brooks, Peter, Body Work: Objects of Desire in Modern Narrative (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993)

Butler, Judith, From ‘Gender Trouble’, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, ed. by Vincent B. Leitch et al (New York: Norton, 2001), pp. 2488-501.

Himes, Chester, A Rage in Harlem (Edinburgh: Canongate Crime, 2000)

Lacan, Jacques, ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative’, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, ed. by Vincent B. Leitch et al (New York: Norton, 2001), pp. 1285-90.

McCracken, Scott, Pulp: Reading Popular Fiction (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998)

Spicer, Andrew, Film Noir (Harlow: Longman, 2002)

Woods, Paula L., Preface to Chester Himes’ His Last day, in Spooks, Spies and Private Eyes: An Anthology of Black Mystery, Crime, and Suspense Fiction of the 20th Century, ed. by Paula L. Woods (Edinburgh: Payback Press, 1996), p. 54.