I have written about Neil Gaiman's story-arc "A Game of You" twice now, in the posts "A Case Study of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman" and in "An Interpretation of Neil Gaiman's "A Game of You"". I haven't quite finished talking about it; I have a had another good look at the comic, rethought my view of it and decided there is much more to be said about it. In today's post I want to discuss it in terms of a battle between the feminine and the masculine, as a reaction against Feminism. It will help if you've read the previous post.
"A Game of You" depicts a conflict or struggle between Good and Evil. This is not unusual in any fiction and is of course the central theme of almost all Fantasy fiction. For much of the first part of "A Game of You" the Good is Feminine and and the Evil is Masculine. Barbie lives in an apartment building with two lesbians, an ancient witch called Thessaly and a trans-gender 'woman' called Wanda. These are her friends. The only man in the building, George, is sour and suspicious and disliked by the other characters – he turns out to be evil, an accomplice of the Cuckoo. The first half of the story involves a quest undertaken by Barbie and her dream-friends to defeat the Cuckoo and although the Cuckoo's gender is not specified until later it is reasonable to believe until we see the Cuckoo that the Cuckoo is probably male. It seems to begin with that "A Game of You" could be a Feminist fable, a tale of good women taking on the patriarchy. However, it goes well beyond women's empowerment. As I said in the previous post, there are elements of horror throughout, and Thessaly, although ostensibly on the side of Good, is a frightening and formidable figure who kills George and then cuts off his face and yanks out his tongue with his teeth so she can communicate with his ghost. The kind of Feminism at this moment verges on a violence towards and perhaps even hatred of men. There is a second aspect to the Feminism the story presents. The sort of Feminism at work here, at least early on, is one in which there a kind of supernatural or mystical Feminine power that women, Thessaly in particular, have access to – but which Wanda, for some reason, does not. Barbie's three female friends, having petitioned Thessaly's female gods, are able to travel via the moon's road to the Land, but Wanda cannot accompany them. After they have left Wanda says to the sleeping Barbie, "You know what's really spooky? Hazel and Foxglove. I meant they just fell into it. Like it was natural as anything. I, on the other hand squeal and toss my cookies. Maybe I'm not the woman I thought I was [...] But, Jesus, we're the good guys – you and me and Foxglove and Hazel. And Thessaly. Maybe." So even from the beginning the story presents Feminism ambivalently.
The moment that this narrative of powerful good female figures opposing a powerful male figure is totally upset and inverted is the moment when Barbie finally confronts the Cuckoo. Admittedly this upheaval in the narrative has been foreshadowed for some time. The Cuckoo it turns out is not a powerful male figure or even a powerful androgyne (a la the Goblin King in Labyrinth). It instead takes the form of a little girl. In fact, it appears to be a childhood version of Barbie. Barbie says, "You're me." The Cuckoo replies, "Not quite. I'm part of you. Sort of. You created me. Kind of. I'm the Cuckoo. [...] Like I said: I'm almost you." Barbie says, "What is this? Some kind of moment of revelation? Like in the books? Is this is where I find out I was abused as a child and I've been blocking it all the years?" Barbie's response is fascinating because it references both repressed memory syndrome and false memory syndrome. But the main point of this passage is that, for a moment, the whole reality of the Land has been called into question. For a moment all binary oppositions are up in the air.
The Cuckoo explains that Barbie wasn't abused. She just had an overactive imagination when young. She invented the Land, basing her friends on childhood toys. The Cuckoo then delivers its speech about little boys and little girls, that I have quoted in both other posts and so won't quote again. In my earlier essay I proposed that in this speech the Cuckoo is proposing an essentialist view of gender but, in fact, the speech ironically demonstrates the opposite, the idea that notions of gender in childhood are socially constructed. Barbie is left doubting her whole understanding of what constitutes her identity, saying "Is this real? Or is it just my imagination?" This marks the turning point in the narrative. The whole notion of the Masculine and Feminine has been briefly dismantled.
As I said in the previous post, the Cuckoo is a liar. It is not really Barbie's childhood self, it is not a little girl. It is a malevolent supernatural being pretending to be a little girl, pretending to be the Land's queen, an alien intruder from outside Barbie's dreams who has invaded and gestated in Barbie's fantasy kingdom. By lulling Barbie into a hypnotic trance, the cuckoo is able to compel her to do its bidding, to initiate the destruction of the Land. In this way the Cuckoo triumphs. Shortly after Barbie destroys the Porpentine, the Sandman arrives to uncreate the Land and the enchantment on Barbie (and her three female friends) is lifted. The Cuckoo is recognised as real supernatural creature, not a fiction. The Masculine and Feminine return – except now the Masculine, in the form of Morpheus, is Good and ascendent. In the first part of the story, the narrative seemed a war between good women and evil men but this second part does not involve a complete inversion, the defeat of an evil female by a good male. Rather it describes the subordination of women to men. Morpheus brings the land to its end, its inhabitants marching up the promontory to where he stands and being swallowed up in his cloak. The last to go is the Land's original princess Alianora, one of Morpheus's former flames; Morpheus greets her as "old love" before she is erased. A little later Thessaly shows the first signs of having fallen for Morpheus. It seems that when the Feminine is dominant there is no possibility of heterosexual love – we learn at the beginning of the story that Barbie has gone off men since her experience with Ken, Foxglove and Hazel are in a lesbian relationship, Thessaly is an intimidating spinster and Wanda is effectively neuter, insofar as s/he is a woman at all; only when the Masculine is dominant can real heterosexual love exist. In "A Game of You" Gaiman aligns Feminism with hatred of the opposite gender and male dominance with love for the opposite gender. And, with the appearance of Morpheus, the Masculine prevails over the Feminine. At its deepest level, "A Game on You" can be read as a reaction against elements in the Feminist movement.
On one hand, "A Game of You" concerns a conflict between females and males in which the feminine is Good at first and then the masculine is Good later. At a deeper level however it is concerned with a conflict between Fantasy and Reality. Is the Land a dream or real? Is Morpheus a dream apparition or a kind of real god? Is the Cuckoo a product of Barbie's childhood imaginings or is it a supernatural being that transcends dreams? For a moment, 'reality' takes the upper hand and the notion of gender is revealed as an ideology, the pivot that leads to the Cuckoo's triumph. We learn, however, that 'reality' is only the Cuckoo's lie; Fantasy returns. But now it is the Masculine that is dominant rather than the Feminine. The Cuckoo wants to grow up and in order to do so, to free herself of the Land, it seems she needs Barbie to grow up also. Implicitly it seems Barbie needs to recognise that it is men who have the power, and should have the power, not women. Her fantasy of male wickedness or male subordination is what must be expelled in order for her to mature. Again this suggests an attack on Feminism.
Although I am suggesting that "A Game of You" has an anti-Feminist subtext, one should remember it is a story, not a polemic. It is also a tragedy; even male readers do not glorify in Barbie's defeat, the Land's demise and Wanda's death; it has an unhappy ending. Another subtler aspect of the story is this – Gaiman is also, either deliberately or serendipitously, describing a shift within Feminism itself. Feminists once exalted and reified Femininity, associating it with Nature, with spiritual power, with the ocean and lunar gods; this kind of Feminism is represented by Thessaly. Around the same time that Gaiman wrote "A Game of You" Judith Butler wrote Gender Trouble in which she argued that gender is performative; this more recent Feminist position is represented by Wanda and the Cuckoo. Perhaps Gaiman had read Butler's book. In my original essay about "A Game of You" I said that the Cuckoo and Wanda represent opposing positions; in the sequel I said that they were alike in being both transexuals. The best way to categorise the relationship between the two, I think now, is to say that both regard gender as performative. The Cuckoo is in actuality neither male nor female; it is 'naturally' a bird. Wanda too is a performer. At one point Wanda says, "I was born a guy. And now I'm a gal. Only I haven't gone all the way." (Gaiman perhaps misunderstands trans-gender people because I do not believe a real trans-gender person would say this, would more likely say, "I was born a woman in a man's body".) If there is a difference between the Cuckoo and Wanda it is that the Cuckoo's performance is a flawless exercise in persuasion and this is why it wins, whereas Wanda is too scared to go through with a sex change and so his/her performance is incomplete and defective – and so Wanda must die. Even though Gaiman I think misrepresents trans-gender people with Wanda, his categorisation of Wanda fits appropriately the underlying binary oppositions operating within the story – nature vs. performance, fantasy vs. reality, adulthood vs. childhood. It seems that dreams, fiction and even the supernatural are all on the side of the dominant ideology, on the side of 'nature'.
I should say something again about the end. After Wanda's funeral, Barbie has a dream in which she sees Wanda as a perfect woman. I still haven't completely figured out the significance of this but I would suggest tentatively the following odd reading – Wanda is not permitted to be a woman in a world where women are dominant but can only be allowed to be a woman after the masculine has won.
I have thought a lot about this story in the last couple of weeks. It seems to me that this story is pointing out something profound – that little children aren't male or female, aren't gendered, are simply children. Little boys have diddles and little girls don't, but otherwise there is almost no physical or hormonal difference between the two. Gender in children is performative; boys perform their boyness by playing with cars and girls perform their girlness by playing with dolls. For parents and other adults to worry that a boy is transexual or gay because he plays with dolls, not cars, at the age of five, is absurd; five year olds cannot be transexual or gay. It is perhaps even injurious to the child; kids pay attention and understand more than adults realise. To suppose as some neurotic conservative American parents do that Tinky-Winky is a bad influence because he carries a purse or that the makers of SpongeBob Square Pants are spreading homosexual propaganda because they show SpongeBob and Patrick holding hands is ridiculous. Children are smarter than than that. Apparent gender uncertainty in children is something they usually grow out of – unless parents make it worse.
Having said that, I have also thought a lot about my own childhood. I always knew that I was a boy. I remember before I turned six I invited my class to my birthday party and everyone wanted to come; I was dismayed because I only wanted the boys to come. At this party, a fancy dress party, I dressed up as the Incredible Hulk – imagine, if you will, a scrawny six-year old with a serious speech impediment, which I grew out of, wearing only ripped jeans and painted green. I was totally sure of my gender. After my parents divorce when I was seven, I had a strong sense that I was being punished for a crime I never committed, but I won't talk any more about that here. My understanding of gender continued to be informed by my obsessive watching of TV, by films and by the books I read; I had a reasonable understanding of sex while still in Primary School, although I was fuzzy about the details. One of my favourite series of books was The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and I'll quote a couple of passage from the third novel.
"Those who are regular followers of the doings of Arthur Dent may have received an impression of his character and habits which, while it includes the truth and, of course, nothing but the truth, falls somewhat short, in its composition, of the whole truth in all its glorious aspects. And the reasons for the are obvious. Editing, selection, the need to balance that which is interesting with that which is relevant and cut out all the tedious happenstance [...] But there are other omissions as well, beside the teethcleaning and trying to find fresh socks variety, and in some of these people have often seemed inordinately interested [...] 'This Arthur Dent,' comes the cry from the furthest reaches of the galaxy, and has even now been found inscribed on a mysterious space probe thought to originate from a client galaxy at a distance too hideous to contemplate, 'What is he, man or mouse? Is he interested in nothing more than tea and the wider issues of life? Has he no spirit? Has he no passion? Does he not, to put it in a nutshell, fuck?"
I loved this chapter when I was kid. It is the only time Douglas Adams uses the word 'fuck' in any of his novels. The sex scenes in So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, by the way, are romantic and very very far from being explicit. So I knew a little about heterosexual sex as a child. On the other hand, I was exposed very little to homosexuality – although I do remember seeing The Rocky Horror Picture Show as a kid and feeling very disturbed by the scene in which Frank N. Furter sleeps with Brad. I knew then, even as a child, that two men sleeping together was 'wrong'. Yes, as a kid, I sometimes listened to the album Faith by George Michael, but there is no way for a child or even an adult to know that George Michael is gay simply from listening to this record.
The fundamental issue is this. Is future gender and sexual identity determined by what one is exposed to as a child? Or not? I don't completely know the answer but this is of course a question of fundamental importance. Certainly I don't think adults should 'diagnose' sexual or gender confusion in pre-pubescent children. To do so is both evil and stupid.
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