User:JBrown/sandbox: Difference between revisions

Line 69:

If all relationships have a comparable dialectic structure, then it makes equal sense to use the language of sex to describe boxing—the first fifteen seconds of a fight are equivalent “to the first kiss in a love affair”—and the language of boxing to describe sex (Existential 29). For the narrator of “''The Time of Her Time''” (1959), for example, the ''dialectic'' of sex stages conflicts between Jewishness and non-Jewishness, high culture and low culture, and even the competing therapeutic claims of Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Reich (''Advertisements'' 495). If conflict is the model for the relationship between men and women, men additionally face an internal battle between heterosexuality and homosexuality (Mailer does not think that women have this problem). So the brutal outcome of the 1962 fight between Emile Griffith and Benny (Kid) Paret is said to dramatize the ''biological force'' with which men disavow their inherent homosexuality (''Presidential'' 243). Paret had taunted Griffith with homophobic remarks at the weigh-in and during the fight, and Griffith responded by beating him to death. For Mailer, this is an example of the ring not doing its usual job of containing and controlling (or sublimating) sexual desire.

The boxing ring also enacts, and thus mostly contains, another conflict that Mailer saw as fundamental to American culture of ''our time'', one between blacks and whites (''Time'' x). Again, the challenge is to foreground and disrupt familiar stereotypical dichotomies: between whites, who are civilized, sophisticated, cerebral, literate, and literary; and blacks, who are primitive, illiterate, attuned to the pleasures of the body, and fluent in its language (''Advertisements'' 341). James Baldwin (and many others) complained about Mailer’s tendency to see “''us as goddam romantic black symbols''” (Weatherby 78). But Mailer saw everyone and everything symbolically. For Patterson vs. Liston, therefore, read Art vs. Magic, Love vs. Sex, God vs. the Devil.

The boxing ring also enacts, and thus mostly contains, another conflict that Mailer saw as fundamental to American culture of ''our time'', one between blacks and whites (''Time'' x). Again, the challenge is to foreground and disrupt familiar stereotypical dichotomies: between whites, who are civilized, sophisticated, cerebral, literate, and literary; and blacks, who are primitive, illiterate, attuned to the pleasures of the body, and fluent in its language (''Advertisements'' 341). James Baldwin (and many others) complained about Mailer’s tendency to see “''us as goddam romantic black symbols''” (''Weatherby'' 78). But Mailer saw everyone and everything symbolically. For Patterson vs. Liston, therefore, read Art vs. Magic, Love vs. Sex, God vs. the Devil.

'''HEMINGWAY AND ALI: EXISTENTIAL EGO''' “I think there is a wonderful study to be made about the similarities between Ernest Hemingway and Muhammad Ali,” Mailer told Michael Lennon in 1980, making a start himself. Both men, he argued, “''come out of that same American urgency to be the only planet in existence''. ''To be the sun''”—and at the heart of each was a dialectical struggle that was somehow both personal and national (''Pontifications'' 161–162). The fact that “''the mightiest victim of injustice in America''” was also “the mightiest narcissist in the land,” he observed of Ali in 1971, proved that “''the twentieth century was nothing if not a tangle of opposition''” (''Existential'' 28).

“''Ego''” (later renamed “''King of the Hill''”), an account of Ali’s comeback fight against Joe Frazier, is not only about a “''dialogue between bodies''” (''Norman'' 19) but about a dialogue within Ali himself. For Mailer, the triumph of the fight’s end is that Ali has somehow managed to reconcile his two ''sides''—he could dance, displaying ''exquisite'' grace, figured as black and feminine (86)—but he could also ''stand'', revealing, for the first time, qualities of endurance to ''moral and physical torture'', figured as white and masculine (93).

@@ Line 69: / Line 69: @@
 If all relationships have a comparable dialectic structure, then it makes equal sense to use the language of sex to describe boxing—the first fifteen seconds of a fight are equivalent “to the first kiss in a love affair”—and the language of boxing to describe sex (Existential 29). For the narrator of “''The Time of Her Time''” (1959), for example, the ''dialectic'' of sex stages conflicts between Jewishness and non-Jewishness, high culture and low culture, and even the competing therapeutic claims of Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Reich (''Advertisements'' 495). If conflict is the model for the relationship between men and women, men additionally face an internal battle between heterosexuality and homosexuality (Mailer does not think that women have this problem). So the brutal outcome of the 1962 fight between Emile Griffith and Benny (Kid) Paret is said to dramatize the ''biological force'' with which men disavow their inherent homosexuality (''Presidential'' 243). Paret had taunted Griffith with homophobic remarks at the weigh-in and during the fight, and Griffith responded by beating him to death. For Mailer, this is an example of the ring not doing its usual job of containing and controlling (or sublimating) sexual desire.
-The boxing ring also enacts, and thus mostly contains, another conflict that Mailer saw as fundamental to American culture of ''our time'', one between blacks and whites (''Time'' x). Again, the challenge is to foreground and disrupt familiar stereotypical dichotomies: between whites, who are civilized, sophisticated, cerebral, literate, and literary; and blacks, who are primitive, illiterate, attuned to the pleasures of the body, and fluent in its language (''Advertisements'' 341). James Baldwin (and many others) complained about Mailer’s tendency to see “''us as goddam romantic black symbols''” (Weatherby 78). But Mailer saw everyone and everything symbolically. For Patterson vs. Liston, therefore, read Art vs. Magic, Love vs. Sex, God vs. the Devil.
+The boxing ring also enacts, and thus mostly contains, another conflict that Mailer saw as fundamental to American culture of ''our time'', one between blacks and whites (''Time'' x). Again, the challenge is to foreground and disrupt familiar stereotypical dichotomies: between whites, who are civilized, sophisticated, cerebral, literate, and literary; and blacks, who are primitive, illiterate, attuned to the pleasures of the body, and fluent in its language (''Advertisements'' 341). James Baldwin (and many others) complained about Mailer’s tendency to see “''us as goddam romantic black symbols''” (''Weatherby'' 78). But Mailer saw everyone and everything symbolically. For Patterson vs. Liston, therefore, read Art vs. Magic, Love vs. Sex, God vs. the Devil.
+'''HEMINGWAY AND ALI: EXISTENTIAL EGO''' “I think there is a wonderful study to be made about the similarities between Ernest Hemingway and Muhammad Ali,” Mailer told Michael Lennon in 1980, making a start himself. Both men, he argued, “''come out of that same American urgency to be the only planet in existence''. ''To be the sun''”—and at the heart of each was a dialectical struggle that was somehow both personal and national (''Pontifications'' 161–162). The fact that “''the mightiest victim of injustice in America''” was also “the mightiest narcissist in the land,” he observed of Ali in 1971, proved that “''the twentieth century was nothing if not a tangle of opposition''” (''Existential'' 28).
+“''Ego''” (later renamed “''King of the Hill''”), an account of Ali’s comeback fight against Joe Frazier, is not only about a “''dialogue between bodies''” (''Norman'' 19) but about a dialogue within Ali himself. For Mailer, the triumph of the fight’s end is that Ali has somehow managed to reconcile his two ''sides''—he could dance, displaying ''exquisite'' grace, figured as black and feminine (86)—but he could also ''stand'', revealing, for the first time, qualities of endurance to ''moral and physical torture'', figured as white and masculine (93).