Thursday, November 13, 2014
White Boy Shuffle
In White Boy Shuffle, I believe Paul Beatty has created a public space for black culture to be explored in the 21st century. Through basketball, poems, and hip hop, he is able to portray a more stereotypically black environment, but tries to challenge the expectations of race in our new world. Beatty critiques it through humor and mockery, but also validates the very real circumstances that many blacks (black men in particular) are in. And for Gunnar -- Beatty shows that it’s not his “calling” to be a leader, but just something that Gunnar has fallen into. This is different than many “black novels,” but I think sets a different trope to black male agenda. The population around him needs him to fit this role, even when he doesn’t care for it. Gunnar’s politics and culture are interspersed throughout the novel, and that re emphasizes the new type of leadership that White Boy Shuffle introduces.
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It's hard for me to tell how seriously the novel even takes the idea of "leadership." The prologue seems to mock it from the start ("this messiah gig"), and the mere fact that Gunnar "falls into it" and depicts those who follow him alternately as having valid grievances that he articulates, and as weak-minded sheep, suggests a certain ambivalence about the role. And the self-destructive form his "leadership" takes by the end of the novel definitely seems to undercut any presumption of "liberation." In some ways, the very suspicion toward "leaders" in the civil-rights-era mold is a characteristic of a post-civil-rights cultural context. In general, today, the conversation about race is more introspective and cultural-analysis-oriented, and less about masses lining up behind a leader who articulates their grievances. There's something almost anachronistic about the image of a crown hanging on Gunnar's every word--needless to say, this isn't actually how poets tend to be received in our society nowadays.
ReplyDeleteThe White Boy Shuffle seems to almost present a view of the post civil right movement clashing with pop culture. There's the teacher that signs up her student for the Shakespearean contest to show that black kids are as good as white kids. There's the students in Gunnar's poetry class who are obsessed with "black poetry", etc... It's definitely interesting to watch this development especially when Scoby is about to recite his monolgue and freezes up, only to be cheered on by the supporting white people. This an interesting dynamic that Beatty manages to portray.
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