Breaking Down Broken Things

By Niels-Martin Trier Josefsen
A Teacher’s Guide

The idea behind Broken Things was to make a book that did not treat postmodernism as a melting pot of everything new and weird. Instead of being a kitchen sink of experimental literature the book would look at postmodernism through the lenses of three separate genres as well as look at these three genres through the lens of postmodernism.
    This text will attempt to break down the book and offer some useful insights into – and thoughts behind – the book for teachers looking to use the book in class.

Teaching a “disgusting feast of filth”
Disregarding Shakespeare for a moment, it seems that plays as a genre are often overlooked when teaching English literature. And in a way it makes sense; plays were written to be seen and not to be read. But by stripping away the trappings of regular prose – leaving little more than dialogue – the drama as a genre imposes on itself other challenges that make a well-written play an enjoyable read. Almost everything is contained to dialogue as readers are given no direct insight into the thoughts of the characters. It is a genre endlessly open for interpretation in terms of staging which can spark the imagination of its readers. This is doubly true in the case of postmodern drama such as in-yer-face theatre.
    Blasted – which was reviewed as a “disgusting feast of filth” by the Daily Mail when it opened in 1995 – is now considered a classic that helped define a genre. Kane cites Shakespeare’s King Lear and Beckett’s Waiting for Godot as her inspirations and despite it being her debut play, it is obvious that she was a writer who knew what she was doing and it is all too easy to attribute her canonical status to her tragic suicide.
    The play begins almost like a naturalistic chamber play albeit one with fouler language than most. Over the course of five scenes there is an escalation of violence and a breakdown of form and language as if Ian’s crime against Cate has opened up for the barbaric horrors of the outside world to infest civilized Britain and started the corrosion of reality itself. In five scenes the play goes from the cool version of in-yer-face theatre to the hot version as humor and structure give way to brutality and disjointedness.
    Among other things, the play comments on the horrors of war and the indifference of the West towards violence that happens in the rest of the world. Kane was specifically inspired by the conflict between Bosnians and Serbs on the Balkans in the early nineties, but it can be argued – sadly – that the theme is timeless and that new parallels always seem to crop up.
    The play also concerns itself with the dark sides of masculinity through the character of Ian – a pitiful, racist, homophobic, misogynistic rapist – who has the misfortune of meeting his match in the character of the Soldier. The Soldier does to Ian what Ian did to Cate, but whereas Ian committed his crime offstage and failed to acknowledge it as morally questionable, the Soldier commits his crime in the open and with full acknowledgement of the monstrosity of his deeds. In case of both of these assaults – as well as the one retold by the Soldier – teachers are encouraged to treat the subject with respect and some may want to include a trigger warning.
    In-yer-face theatre is a fascinating exploration of the darker sides of humanity that is often coupled with experiments of form. It was prioritized to bring Blasted in its entirety as it is here that the full potential of the genre can be seen. The opening scene of Attempts on Her Life – another play praised for its ingenuity – serves as an example of something altogether different from Blasted – at least before everything dissolves in later scenes. The theme can be taught with just the material in the book and the accompanying web material, but it might also benefit from being supplemented with additional extracts from other plays.

These are not your role models
Dick lit and fratire are darkly humorous takes on the same crisis of masculinity that rears its ugly face in the plays of in-yer-face theatre. Society as well as the men who live in it are highly exaggerated for the purpose of humor.
    Obsessed with porn, held down by feelings of inadequacy, carrying rage born out of powerlessness, reckless, ridden by father issues, apathetic, occasionally misogynistic, struggling with twisted forms of hero complexes, immature, and perpetually horny. And somehow these men are our heroes. Or protagonists, at least. The narrators of dick lit and fratire are not heroes and nor were they ever been meant to be. Not as such, anyway.     The narrators of these genres inspire laughs and praise from their male fans for saying and doing what they – the fans – have always wanted to do. There is an element of wish fulfilment in reading about – and watching – men behaving badly.
    But the creators of these characters have never tried to hide the fact that they are not trying to portray their creations as people readers should desire to emulate. This is true even in cases when there is an overlap between creator and creation such as in the case of Tucker Max. These people are not our heroes. But nor are they are our villains. Not exactly.
    What these men have got going for them is that they understand that society is fundamentally broken and that it is beyond their capabilities to fix what is wrong with it. These men have not broken the system; they are merely navigating the brokenness – and taking advantage of it. What they offer readers is a sharp analysis of the modern world – a cynical view of a meaningless reality – it is not the answer to how one should act in this world.
    The very same transgressive actions that have readers laughing and cheering will at the same time have readers realizing – on some level – that these are bad people. Occasionally – like villain protagonists of classical literature – they will learn a lesson and get their due punishment leading to some form of catharsis for the readers rooting for these amoral men, but much more often they will simply get away with being assholes, hammering home the postmodern point that there are no true moral guiding stars.
    The key to opening a dick lit or fratire text is, firstly, to ask what is wrong with the world as portrayed in the text and, secondly, how does the narrator respond to this. Each text features a male who has been – or is being – thrown into the throes of existentialist despair the response to which is either a non-response in the form of apathy or an assertion of masculinity by way of sexual or martial prowess. While superficially crude and portraying gender roles that should give pause to readers, the stories are well-crafted and laden with symbolism and interesting perspectives.
    In each their own way, the texts included in Broken Things as well as in its extra material are exemplary but by no means exhaustive of the genres.

Not really about sex and never just about it
Literature teachers sometimes get a reputation for being able to read sex into everything and for insisting on things being there that the author never intended. Doing this theme with a class might further that reputation as it is the nature of queer readings to look for expressions of sexuality and gender that break with heteronormativity. And in the case of resistant readings, it is done without regard for what the author may have intended.
    Dealing with protagonists that for one reason or another do not fit into the mold of the society to which they belong, it is perhaps not surprising that many queer narratives can be found in fairy tales, science fiction, fantasy, gothic horror, and other genres with magical elements. These types of stories often challenge the notion of normality and the idea of fitting in.
    Gothic creatures such as vampires or werewolves, for example, possess the duality of being human and inhuman at once; they are people, but they are people whose unseen urges and/or bodies set them apart from other people.
    When Rice gives the point of view to a character like the vampire Louis – rather than relegating him to the position of antagonist – she makes her story be about being an outsider in society and she opens it up for queer interpretations.
    Queer readings typically center on identity and self-acceptance, but even if one makes a queer reading of a science fiction text or an Elizabethan historical play, it does not mean that the text in question seizes to be its original genre.
    Suggesting that Richard turned to evil because he was unsuited for lovemaking and thus unable to fit into heteronormative society is already present in the opening soliloquy. Suggesting that Lady Anne married him to pull him back into heteronormative and away from evil deeds may be a further stretch for some readers.
    Regardless, it is important to remember that even if one does make a queer reading of Richard III, it does not wipe all the other things that Richard III is also about. One can still make points about asides, iambic pentameter, and Tudor Myth even if Richard is made out to be a queer protagonist.
    It is also important to remember that these readings – disregarding those in which the queer elements are stated unambiguously – are not meant as 1:1 representations of reality. Rather they are allegories that illustrate feelings and experiences. That it can be argued that chapter four of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone can be read as an allegory for coming out of the closet does not mean that the character of Harry Potter is in fact homosexual. On the flipside, it is obviously not the intention to imply that actual members of the LGBT community are villainous, monstrous, or magical.
    The texts included in the book and the web content are meant to cover a wide array of genres spread across a significant span in time. Narratives ripe for queer readings can be found in the most unexpected of places and teachers should not be surprised if students suggest that their favorite Disney movie or X-Men comic book follow the same patterns.

Not all the pieces
When trying to put together broken things it can be infuriating to realize that not all the pieces are there. That will also be the case with a book like Broken Things. As said in the beginning of the book, it is far beyond its scope to encompass all of postmodern or even to be exhaustive within the three genres that it deals with.
    With the pieces made available, though, it should be more than possible to get a revealing glimpse of the three genres covered as well as postmodernism itself. And as with postmodernism the pieces can be rearranged, exchanged for other pieces, and built upon to form entirely new things
– or to break them.