Jane Campbell

The date is October 31st, 1973.  My sister and I huddle cowardly in the dark, hopped up on sugar, two little girls spellbound by the rituals of Halloween.  I still remember the ghosts, the lions and leopards, the vampires and wolves and sheep.  I think we were lions that year.  Our costumes would have been onesies. 

My father has turned off all the lights. He puts on an album.  The old turntables were analog devices, not digital.  A flat circle of vinyl, upon which a tiny tip of diamond will dance crazily, the good vibrations sent through a bed of copper to be transformed into an electromagnetic pulse of sound. 

It’s darker than dark.  Our vision is impaired; we cannot see.  The stereo is in the corner of the far wall in the living room, tucked in walnut-stained bookcases behind the end of the couch, so you can’t see the lights.  We’ve only been in the house for two months, so it’s still strange, unusual, a queer place, but already the townhouse in the projects has become a distant memory as well, with only remnants of the blue-swirled carpeting preserved in our new environment.  Through the speakers we hear voices, and then a man screams, and then the music swooshes in.  

From my dad’s lips, a small orange glow — finally, some light, however dim!  Sometimes he rolls his own cigarettes, from some funny green-brown stuff he keeps in a cigar box.  It smells better than the cigarettes that he smokes from the small box that’s ever present in his front shirt pocket.  I remember the cellophane from those small little boxes.  How it crinkled when crumpled, but sprung back into shape when I let go.

The music changes, swirls left and right through the stereo speakers.  Voices, again.  A man laughs.  My dad chuckles.  The orange dot glows in front of my dad’s lips, the only point of light in the room.  I feel like running around in circles, raving and drooling, but I dare not because of the darkness in the still-unfamiliar living room.  The music crescendos, and then an explosion resonates throughout the house.  Quiet.  Daddy puts the joint out.  No more light.

The clocks begin to tick.  Tick tick tick tick tick.  A multitude of clocks.  My sister and I hold hands.  Daddy laughs softly. It’s almost malevolent, from such a kind, sweet, loving, gentle man.  A man with big teeth.  At the time, he wore his hair long.  Dark brown locks with a bit of a wave at his shoulders.  His mustache hadn’t gone gray yet, so you couldn’t yet see the nicotine stains under his nose.  Tick tick tick tick tick.  He’s still alive, as of this writing.  He’s got Alzheimer’s.  Four years now?  Can’t remember.  Back then, though, he was sharp.  Creative.  He was a man who made plans and executed them.  He was vital, for he hadn’t yet had his heart attacks.  Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick.

The alarms go off! …

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Being aro/ace is queer.  End of story!  To say that anyone who’s not cishet normative doesn’t belong at the queer “table” (as if being queer were some kind of banquet, Hannibal?) doesn’t really understand what it is to be queer at all.  So let’s pick up the harp and let’s dance.

“radical”: late 14c., in a medieval philosophical sense, from Late Latin radicalis “of or having roots,” from Latin radix (genitive radicis) “root” (see radish ). Meaning “going to the origin, essential” is from 1650s.

Here’s what being queer, in any sense, often entails:

• corrective rape
• pedagogical erasure
• unacceptance of one’s non-normative relationships
• othering in mainstream media
• medical stigmatization, discrimination, even “conversion”
• unsafe to “come out” to partners, families, community and colleagues and so forth, and yet “coming out” is essential to being authentic

In other words, nothing nice.

These are all things that ace people have experienced.  These are all things that gays and lesbians have experienced.  These are all things that bisexuals have experienced.  These are all things that trans people have experienced.  These are all things that intersexed people have experienced.  Why?  Because we’re all queer.  Because we all deviate from the expectations of straight people.

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I’m a big fan of etymology.  It’s a way of getting to the root of a word, of seeing where it came from.  Because of course words change over the eons.  “Nice” for example derives from Latin nescius “ignorant, unaware,” literally “not-knowing,” from ne– “not” + stem of scire “to know” (see science).  And then it changed to “timid,” then “fastidious,” then “precise” and “careful” and “delicate” before becoming “agreeable” and “kind” and “thoughtful.”  Over time, it’s been turned inside-out, polarity reversed and all that.  What a queer word!

“Queer” is the perfect word to describe the history of “nice.”  “Queer” derives from the c.1500, “strange, peculiar, eccentric” from Scottish, perhaps from Low German (Brunswick dialect) queer “oblique, off-center,” related to German quer “oblique, perverse, odd,” from Old High German twerh “oblique,” from PIE root *terkw– “to turn, twist, wind.”  Huh, looks like we got something in common with twerking, too. 

Oblique, off-center, turned… in other words, not straight.  This is the geometry of being queer, or perhaps the square root of it to be particularly nerdish, and with particular thanks to Harper’s Etymological dictionary.

So what does building solidarity look like?  Damn, it looks like looking in the mirror, I think!  Conversely, what does excluding aro/ace from queerdom look like?  It looks like, I dunno, like saying that because someone under the queer umbrella has an easier time of passing for straight we might as well just pretend that they’re straight?  It’s like demanding someone stay in the closet. 

That’s what we all have in common.  The damn closet, from late 14c. French closet “small enclosure, private room,” diminutive of clos “enclosure,” from Latin clausum “closed space, enclosure, confinement,” from neuter past participle of claudere “to shut”. In Matt. vi:6 it renders Latin cubiculum “bedchamber, bedroom,” Greek tamieion “chamber, inner chamber, secret room;” thus originally in English “a private room for study or prayer.”…

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Thank you for coming back.  My travels have kept me away.  I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting.

You must be hungry!  Aren’t you?  Maybe having a little bite of something something will help to take the edge off.  Yeah, a nice morsel.  A small good thing.  Maybe a chicken sandwich, or a bowl of soup.  Maybe some chocolate, or chips.  Something charred, perhaps?  Or a bit salty?   Maybe something cheesy, or with tomatoes, something with color.

Whatever it is, go get it now.  That tasty thing. 

I’ll wait.  Oh, and save one bite for the end, if you would.

Thank you.  You know who you are. 

Champion

Again, the opening image of the episode points to something significant in its middle, something significant that ends up being a point of failure.  In “New Colossus” we first saw the eyes of the Statue of Liberty, and that place marked a huge turning point in Prairie’s life, but it wasn’t exactly a success for her.  This is where her prophecy failed her – but then, maybe she was always going to be found by Hap, and she simply ended up being the cause of her own fate.  In any case, there’s a profound irony between the Statue of Liberty, and how “New Colossus” ends with the revelation of Prairie’s imprisonment.  Here, we get another seeming success: Prairie actually finding Homer’s ring, and a cell phone bill, which allows the prisoners a chance at escape—only for it to completely fall apart when the ring is ultimately lost.  Clever manipulation fails, and the episode ends with images of brute strength and violence. 

That said, we really should attend to the implications of everything to do with Homer’s ring, especially in light of the repeating motifs that have already been established in the first two chapters.  First, we’ve detailed a number of circular motifs—Homer’s ring was actually mentioned in “Homecoming,” and in “New Colossus” we got details like The Healos’ “Full Circle” with its verses pointing towards Ouroboros (combined with various snake references) and hence Eternal Return.  As we established in Chapter 1, the presence of WATER symbolizes a “bridge” in The_OA, a passage between different realities, a way to cross from the Ordinary World to the Other Side.  And as we saw in Chapter 2, the presence of GLASS symbolizes separation and isolation.  All these signifiers come together in the championship ring scenes.

Homer’s ring returns, again and again—in the opening image, which itself is presented as being underwater; then when Prairie finds the ring and drops it in a bathtub that holds a woman long dead (of course); and finally when the ring is passed back and forth between the glass cubicle prisons via an underground river, a river that eventually captures the ring (enveloped in a wireless cell phone bill) and takes it away forever.  So, yeah, there’s plenty here to work with.  The ring symbolizes eternity—the snake eating its own tail, the perpetual cycle of death and rebirth. …

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The_OA Exegesis is on hiatus this week, as Jane is driving across America.

But you can always listen to this, like I’ve been recently — it’s kind of fun given that “away” rhymes with OA.  Suddenly, it’s like the singer is speaking to her or something, which gives it all a different sort of (yet somehow related) context.   

See you next week.…

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Before we begin, I’d like you to reach out and touch the screen you’re reading this from.  Is it hot or cold to the touch?  Glossy or matte?  I bet it’s hard.  You wouldn’t want to put your hand through this “glass” even if you could get it fixed for free.  Notice how your hand obscures the light. 

Close your eyes, and let out a faint breath, little more than a hisssss. Remember this feeling.

I’ll wait.

Remember.  You know who you are.

Chapter Two

The Statue of Liberty is formally known as La Liberté éclairant le monde – Liberty Enlightening the World.  That’s a great name.  In the previous essay, we talked about the symbolism of eyes and the metaphor of sight in The_OA. This is a show that is not just concerned with the visible plot or what is “literally” happening, but also (and moreso, I think) with the invisible meaning we can derive from the text (including the text of our lives).  The_OA provides a window to such inner workings through the repeated use of certain thematic elements, so when Chapter 2 opens up with an image of the EYES of the Statue of Liberty, becoming visible under the influence of photo developing chemicals as clear as WATER (another important motif in Chapter 1), I think it’s trying to signal something important.  More important than just a location for some of the plot to take place in. 

And there are a lot of neat referents around La Liberté in this chapter.  Perhaps most obviously, she appears in a dream to Prairie, where she’s climbing the face of the statue, right over her eyes, and then suddenly she is somehow inside Liberty herself, back-lit by the Crown’s windows, and it is here she finds her father holding many candles deep in the dark.  Prairie believes this is more than a dream – after all, she can see in this dream… and she’s having nosebleeds (when Prairie cleans it up in the bathroom, running the Water in the sink, Nancy comes in and says, “Let me see it in the light”) – and as such she takes it as a premonition, as if she were clairvoyant. 

To get to Liberty, Prairie takes a Greyhound bus – greyhounds are sight hounds rather than scent hounds.  She crosses over water in a Ferry (we’ll go back to this) to get to the Island (and we’ll go back to this), where we see all kinds of people milling about taking pictures (remember the picture of Liberty at the beginning, and young Nina having her picture taken with the Johnsons), and many more are wearing crowns, holding torches, as if everyone but Prairie herself were an avatar of Liberty.  All kinds of little beats that incorporate Liberty into the language of The_OA: water and snow, sight and light.

And then there’s the reading of the plaque, which is the poem dedicated to Liberty by the poet Emma Lazarus (oh what a name, how apt for this show):

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
MOTHER OF EXILES.…

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You know, before you start reading this, I have a favor to ask.  Go get a glass of water before you settle in.  If you haven’t already?  It can be cold or warm, with ice or bubbles or neat.  Place it anywhere within arm’s reach — next to your keyboard, or on the coffee table, even in your lap if you want.  But it has to be water – not coffee, not beer, not a soda.  Just water. 

I mean it.  I’m serious.  Go ahead, I’ll wait. 

Thank you.  You know who you are.

Bridge

Let’s start with something that might seem very subtle at first, and yet upon reflection is blatantly obvious – the Bridge.  The very first scene of The_OA begins on a bridge, where we see OA jump off the side.  She’s not to trying to kill herself, she later says; rather, she’s trying to go back and find Homer, someone she left behind.  This is apparently to be accomplished by falling into the Mississippi River. 

This jump off a bridge is bookended by the great scene at the end of “Homecoming,” where a van full of children catapults off the side of another bridge and plunges into icy waters.  It’s here that OA, known as Nina at that point in her life, has her first Near Death Experience.  Where she has an experience of The Other Side.

So of course The Bridge is a symbol, or a metaphor, for “crossing over” from the realm of the living to the realm of those who’ve passed on.  This makes sense.  Bridges are liminal spaces – they are the place “in between” two different distinct places that are otherwise separated by an impassible boundary which we traverse – like a gorge, or a river, or a channel, often at a great height.  But no one really spends time on the bridge itself – it’s a means to an end, not a destination in of itself, generally speaking. (Nor do we usually consider the waters rushing below as being a destination – that’s generally what we’re trying to avoid in the first place, but we’ll get to that.)

The conversations that take place on the bridges, by the way, are rather telling of The_OA‘s sensibilities.  In the opening scene, a boy is recording on his phone, through which we see OA run across the bridge, practically bouncing off the cars.

BOY: Mom, Mom!  That lady—

MOM:  She’s fine. See?  She’s okay.

OA cuts across the oncoming traffic to the side of the bridge.

BOY:  She’s going to the other side.

MOM:  No, no—don’t!   Oh God—Don’t look!

BOY:  She let go.

And she falls.  Which is very surprising, of course, but it should make at least basic sense now to anyone who’s seen the whole series.  So let’s pay attention to the conversation instead, because that is something that I believe has been overlooked.

Two distinctly different experiences are occurring here.  First, there’s the Mother, who doesn’t want to pay attention at first, she’s trying to ignore what she probably thinks is a homeless person. …

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Hi all,

So, it’s been a while since I’ve put something up on Eruditorum Press.  My bad.  Got caught up in work-related travel, and then there was the return of the intestinal bug, and, well… I apologize, because I’ve been sitting on this awesome Giant Woman podcast for two weeks now, where Shana and I talk more about Steven Universe.

Steven Universe! 

In this installment of Giant Woman we cover Bubble Buddies and Serious Steven the 7th and 8th episodes of Season One.  And as both of these episodes are quite good, so too is the conversation around them, although to be fair I blew it in my analysis of the Beatles’ song “Strawberry Fields Forever” as an influence on Serious Steven, as I completely neglected to mention that the song is a fusion of two different takes.  Seriously, where was my brain at?

As always, you can get your Giant Woman fix at the Oi! Spaceman library of podcasts right here.…

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So, yes, we’ve got another Giant Woman podcast on tap for you.  Woo hoo!  But I’m struggling to find good pictures of giant women from pop culture. Too many are simply objectifying; others fall into a warrior aesthetic that really doesn’t capture our take on Steven Universe.  If any of our faithful readers have some clever ideas, drop them in the comments, or contact me and Shana on twitter (@JanieCampbell23 and @inkyosa, respectively), and we’ll adjudicate appropriately.

In the meantime, of my own accord, I present you with a plushie — a side order of fries in some kind of fusion with Hello Kitty.  Because the episodes that we cover in this podcast are Frybo and Cat Fingers.  Also, I’m hoping this image captures some of the charms of late capitalism, not that we’d ever cover such territory in a Steven Universe podcast.  Nope.  Not happening.  Even if we did manage to invoke Jack Graham a half-dozen times in the first half alone.  Just a coincidence, promise.

Finally, a note on content: there’s some stuff in here on body discomfort and alcoholism. Just so you know.

You can get the episode here.…

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Okay, the podcast isn’t literally fifty feet.  Because we don’t use spools of magnetic tape for recording anymore.  We use computers.  And so trying to measure a podcast as such would be ludicrous.

What’s not ludicrous is the podcast itself, Giant Woman, the second in what’s shaping up to be an ongoing series with Shana and Jane talking about Steven Universe.  You can get the podcast here.

By the way, we are planning to go to Virgina Beach next year (yes, I really like to plan things out in advance) for the Beach City Con, a Steven Universe convention in Beach City.  The kickstarter for it is already funded, but of course the more that’s pledge the more awesome the con will be!  Check it out here.

Finally, for those listening to the podcast, I forgot to mention that the theme song itself indicates that a “spiritual” approach wouldn’t be inappropriate for intepreting the show.  After all, “That’s why the people of this world… believe in…”

…believe in giant women!  Because giant women are awesome.  Literally!

#BelieveInSteven…

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times like this
hotel alone
panic attack
soon to be crone
new rhythm, new daring
time to make another
can’t find the word, something like life

should be happy
all put away
food in the fridge
dogs are at bay
but this, this, other thing lurking
a freshly calved iceberg about to
can’t find the word, might be like sluice

just keep running?
find it so hard to
can’t find the word, like being together
left behind
this is my way
follow your bliss, follow my this
always calls out
just turn away
keeps me at bay

stumbling slow like
running through sand
the palm of that hand
too late to go back
no, must find a sanctum
desktop, café, cave, bedroom
holds treasure so dear
like a word
just beyond this grasp

steal it
catch the wind
sail away to my garden
feed, water, dress it so fine
in plain sight
inch word
this

introduce to new friends
in hope of communion
vain hope

for i have no roots …

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