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hidden adenoids. We see Mailer engaged in a manly masquerade, as his proximity to the image allows him to manipulate it. | hidden adenoids. We see Mailer engaged in a manly masquerade, as his proximity to the image allows him to manipulate it. | ||
So male spectators need to masquerade as well—especially male spectators who find themselves closer to the image than they would like. The Jewish male is one such figure, as a result of a history of anti-Semitic visual representations of Jews in both scientific and popular media. Sander Gilman argues that such visual representations are internalized by contemporary Jewish-American writers, registering most prominently in repeated anxiety about sounding too Jewish (10-37). Mailer’s anxiety about his adenoids is decisively Jewish, both because the adenoids are located in the nose and because they give the Jewish voice its stereotypical nasal quality. Mailer’s attempt to work through this anxiety in his films is twofold. First, he gets on the other side of the camera in order to see rather than be seen, and when he is seen (as actor), it is under his own direction. Second, Mailer employs his voice in order to intervene, destabilize, and distance himself from the power of the image. | |||