Michael Chabon's America

by Jesse Kavadlo

  As we look back on the 1990s and attempt to make sense of its many contradictions and challenges, I argue that Clinton, Tripp, and Lebowski enable deep analysis into the men’s identities in that era and offer insight into masculinity as it has developed since. Popular culture artifacts, such as film, novels, and even a president’s character as diffused through mass media, play an important role in determining the central narrative—or stories—that comprise life in contemporary America. These narratives establish, shape, and reflect all that we are and someday hope to be. Scholar Ray B. Browne described popular culture as “our total life picture” and urged us to read the cultural tea leaves all around us for clues regarding “the lifeblood of daily existence, the way of life . . . the voice of democracy” (252). What we see in an interrogation of these fictional and real-life characters is the manner in which society is reflected in culture and vice versa.

  Further scrutiny into these interrelated aspects of mass communications for today’s audiences reveals the way culture both reaches back into the past and ahead into the future to inform us. As eminent scholar Maxine Greene explains, “We need to hold in mind the fact that the arts are almost always inexhaustible. There is no using up of a painting or a concerto or a poem. If they have any richness, say destiny at all, they are inexhaustible; there is always more” (206–7). This idea of “more” rationalizes the study of popular culture. Films, television programs, music, and other mass media channels reveal and help establish a population’s beliefs and principles.

  As artifacts that one might have used to derive significance in the 1990s or could be employed today to help make sense of culture and society, Clinton, TBL, and Wonder Boys operate within a broader context that opens a window into the conflicted notions of identity and masculinity in late twentieth-century America. Into the early decades of the new century, society is still mulling over ideas regarding manhood. Observers today can gain appreciation for current challenges regarding masculinity by analyzing the Clinton years and how men in that era created individual and group images to cope with the times.

  Capturing Clinton

  The oppositions in Clinton’s personal life and leadership as president came to define his administration and in many ways the 1990s as a whole. Scholar Brenton J. Malin describes the president, post-Lewinsky scandal, and his shadow over the era, explaining, “Clinton was the model of a conflicted masculinity characteristic of the ’90s. Sensitive to our pain, but tough on crime; wealthy graduate of Yale, but down-home Arkansas boy; Clinton’s persona remained a bundle of conflicts that variously embraced and overturned different stereotypes of American masculinity.” It is no stretch, as Malin claims, to deem Clinton’s new brand of manhood “thoroughly conflicted,” since it embraced the delicacy or softness of the age with the hard-charging toughness embodied by American wealth and military supremacy globally (7).

  The imbalance hinged on how people chose to interpret Clinton or what mix they arrived at when considering his standing as a president at the head of a thriving economy or the philandering man behind the seat who seemed to repeatedly engage in self-defeating actions of his own making. Was he a serious statesman, “Slick Willy,” or some heretofore unrealized combination, unable to control a massive appetite, yet able to lead the nation?

  History is filled with stories of political, financial, and sexual misconduct. The general public has always had a curious fascination with the lives of those in power, including politicians, entertainers, and business leaders, particularly when these people fall from grace. However, presidents were often protected from national scandal by a media that looked the other way. Beginning in the 1970s and intensifying with the advent of the information age, the national media stopped covering for public figures. Instead, under the guise of dishonesty or hypocrisy, the media focused on sensational, scandal-ridden stories, ultimately making misconduct and public scandal a part of everyday life.

  Living in an age of scandal, propelled by geometrically more media outlets and the burgeoning Internet, people drew on the common language that developed as a result. While all presidents become infused with the popular culture of their era, arguably, no president in history blurred the line more than Clinton. He served as a kind of walking symbol of how society and the media that fed its desires had changed over the last several decades. After Clinton, for example, any vestiges of regality or luster the office held virtually disappeared. However, at the same time, he remained an incredibly popular president, routinely receiving high approval ratings, even in the midst of personal or national crisis. Clinton was still “Mr. President,” but for most people and the media, he was “Bubba,” a down-home, good ol’ country boy from Arkansas—the kind of guy you would want to drink a beer with, listen to tell jokes and stories, but (wink, wink) never leave alone with your sister. Acknowledged as a masterful politician, critics and admirers wondered about the real Clinton. In retrospect, however, he seemed simply too complex to put in a tidy box. He embodied traits of both and used them strategically to achieve his goals.

  The Internet has fueled the sensationalist aspects of society, since people gained almost instantaneous access to news and opinion. As a result, the public no longer expects movie stars, politicians, athletes, chief executive officers, or even the president of the United States to remain scandal-free. During the Clinton years, however, presidential scandal turned more intimate as the press reported on the president’s numerous sexual liaisons, including blunt discussions of Lewinsky performing oral sex and her semen-stained dresses. Many popular culture experts agreed that salacious television programs, such as The Jerry Springer Show, which featured crude behavior, incest, fistfights, and the glorification of the lowest common denominator, fueled the public craving for this kind of intimate detail. The resulting reality television craze opened everyone’s medicine cabinet to levels of public scrutiny like never before. The idea that everyone has skeletons in their closet waiting to be exposed became pretty much universal, as did the concurrent idea that everyone deserved a dollop of fame.

  As a result of ever-intensifying media coverage and instantaneous access to information, the United States thrived on scandal culture and continues to demand it. As a matter of fact, many individuals ride to great heights of fame based on disgrace. Infamy now seems part of an overall scheme to increase the “buzz” around a given entertainer, politician, or public figure as part of a campaign to make the person even more recognized. Depending on the severity of the scandal, many infamous people are eventually welcomed back into the limelight. The outcome of the scandal culture is an increase in public distrust and cynicism. As a result, there are fewer heroes in the world for people to look to in times of crisis.

  Clinton embodies how iconic figures exist within the scandal culture. Although impeached, for example, the president emerged more polarizing, yet in some ways more powerful. He remained the lecherous favorite uncle who could light up a room with a smile and a homespun story, but he continually faced trouble of his own making. As the president drew fire in the media and served as the punch line for countless comedians, this image of white men who abused their power solidified. White men overstepping their bounds as a plot twist was not new in the 1990s, but a self-love/hate Clintonian kind of assertiveness came to represent the age. As long as the economy surged, Clinton’s popularity grew and people either shook their heads at his antics or turned away from the spectacle.

  Despite the tumultuous world events that have transpired since Clinton left the presidency, he remains a polarizing figure. Although Clinton has restored his image quite a bit via global philanthropy and branding efforts, the former president still serves as a popular culture thermometer when it comes to scandal. Any new celebrity transgression (particularly by a politician or involving politics), leads to media pundits and others rehashing the Clinton/Lewinsky saga. For example, in 2011 when French diplomat Dominique Strauss-Kahn faced sexual assault charges in New York City, Time magazine used the opportunity to return to poli
tician foibles, lumping together Strauss-Kahn with Clinton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and former North Carolina senator John Edwards. Writer Nancy Gibbs noted, however, the complications surrounding Clinton. On one hand, the public watched “a President lie with great conviction about his sex life,” yet “Clinton left office with a more than 60% approval rating” (Gibbs).

  The Fall of the Wonder Boy

  In discussing the academic novels of the 1990s, scholar Jesse Kavadlo outlines the opposition inherent in using the college setting as a substitute for society, explaining, “The contemporary academy is overtly dominated by sexual theory, sexual politics, sexual poetics, and sexualized texts, yet recoils from physical, embodied sexuality” (12). What academic novels do, Kavadlo asserts, is elevate the protagonist, while vilifying the culture of the ivory tower, yet simultaneously do not give “the privileged white male” much leeway. They are “foolish, morally marginal characters who knowingly violate understood tenets and are caught primarily through their own avoidable blunders” (12).

  One does not have to stretch far to see the connections here between the (anti-) protagonist of the academic novel, a middle-aged white male who abuses his power in a number of ways that destroy society’s trust in the institution, and Clinton, whom the public seemed to love and hate at the same time. Even the president’s faithful followers, however, found his transgressions troubling and worried that he diminished the office. The end result in both cases is white men abusing their power—primarily in sexual terms—that conform to society’s worst fears about such lapses. As Kavadlo concludes, the typical protagonist in an academic novel shares many similarities with the president, which leads to repulsion and allure, or as he says, “they are victims and victimizers . . . they cannot be monsters if they are also utterly conventional men—again, Everymen—so common that their membership includes the President of the United States” (17).

  Unlike so many of his brethren in other academic novels, Grady Tripp does not suffer an extreme fate or lose his career. Yes, he is fired by his mistress’s husband, but in later marrying her and becoming a father, the onetime wonder boy, who shuffled through one disaster after another, is renewed. His wife carries on her career, but at a small college, while Grady is able to teach a course and resume his writing career. One might conjecture that Chabon, on the border between baby boomer and generation X, cannot kill his older creation or allow him to fall into the abyss. The fictional character is reported to be modeled after Chabon’s undergrad writing professor, Chuck Kinder, a legendary figure on the University of Pittsburgh campus who suffered through his own out-of-control novel. Perhaps his tie to Kinder/Tripp—perhaps in the former’s role as a mentor for the young writer—combined with his gen X sensibility (longing for a father figure), made it impossible for the novel’s protagonist to face public persecution.

  Yet, there may be a simpler answer: unlike the professors profiled in so many academic novels, Grady does not have a sexual relationship with a student. His worst transgression along those lines is a fantasy crush on Hannah Green, one of his best students who also rents a room in his house. Even here, though, he chastises himself for such thoughts and purposely steers clear of her advances. In this instance, although he acknowledges and is proud of the young woman’s interest, Grady resists the urge, a mistake he had made in the past. Hannah would not be hurt by him, or as he explains, “Yet another young woman in the course of a lifelong career of callous disregard” (Chabon, Wonder Boys 112).

  As a representation of a Clintonian 1990s white male, Grady may not have experienced a catastrophic downfall—just as Clinton himself faced impeachment but remained in office—but he is full of inner demons and doubt that defines how men often approached identity and masculinity in that era. He blames many of his problems on the mysterious “midnight disease” that afflicts writers’ psyches, as well as a pretty serious pot habit, but Grady also strips away those ideas to get at the deeper concerns. He admits to “a native genius for externalizing self-hatred.” More importantly, there is a wellspring of deeper trouble: “Not only would I never want to belong to any club that would have me for a member—if elected I would wear street shoes onto the squash court and set fire to the ballroom curtains” (128). The attempt at humor makes the pill more palatable, but points to the softness in 1990s male identity. Even his reaction to inclusion in traditional society is more or less tame. The fire he would set is significant, but wearing street shoes is inconsequential.

  Grady is out of touch, a throwback to the 1960s, but he does not resort to that era’s predatory habits committed by some white male faculty members against female undergraduates. Instead, in the late 1990s, political correctness—personified on the American college campus—has enervated patriarchal figures like Grady, who replace 1980s aggressiveness with 1990s emotion. As Clinton exclaimed in an exchange with an AIDS activist (it later became a summarizing anthem for his presidency), “I feel your pain” (“1992 Campaign”).

  Mr. Lebowski Is Disabled, Yes . . .

  Standing in the palatial office of the actual “Big Lebowski” (the older millionaire business leader who shares the same name), the Dude looks over the plaques and commendations with a bemused smirk, wondering if the philanthropist has room for one more in his “Little Lebowski Urban Achievers” program that sends disadvantaged kids to college. He sees a photo of Lebowski, whom he has never met, and asks the sycophantic assistant Brandt, “He’s handicapped, huh?” Brandt answers, in a condescending tone, “Mr. Lebowski is disabled, yes” (Coen and Coen 15). The viewer soon learns that the older man fought in the Korean War, resulting in an injury that left him paralyzed at the waist.

  What is more telling about either man, though, is the meaning encased in their words. For the older man, he views his disability as an indication of personal resolve, as a way to separate himself from the “bums” of the 1960s (like the Dude), who want others to solve their problems and provide handouts. In contrast, the Dude wonders if the older man is “handicapped,” rather than a more politically correct term. Earlier, in hatching the plan to face Lebowski, Dude refers to Woo as a “Chinaman,” which his hysterical friend Walter Sobchak corrects, explaining, “Also, Dude, Chinaman is not the preferred, uh . . . Asian-American. Please” (Coen and Coen 12). The Dude’s anachronistic language reveals and solidifies his mental standing in the earlier era, a time when he showed promise as an individual but ultimately found himself beaten down by the system that Lebowski supports and epitomizes. The Dude is a true believer in antiwar activism. As a matter of fact, he is an architect and author of “the original Port Huron Statement,” not, as he tells Maude Lebowski, “the compromised second draft” (Coen and Coen 107–8).

  What these exchanges reveal is that both “Big” and “Little” Lebowski are stuck in the past. The Dude’s perspective is 1960s antiwar agitation (which he helped lead), while the older man embodies the 1950s era of his youth when he fought for his country and paid a physical price. The resulting clash, then, between the 1950s and 1960s and how that battle would play out as the twentieth century came to a close, leaves both Lebowskis equally “handicapped” and “disabled.” Neither is able to adequately address the challenges that confront early 1990s America, because each has created an identity deeply rooted in different eras.

  In the film, the crisis of George H. W. Bush’s Gulf War brings these competing ideologies to a head. In response, the Coens ask audiences to question what kind of aggression “abides.” Simultaneously, the 1998 moviegoer is asked to look back at the film’s early 1990s time frame and ask what price the nation paid. Moreover, as TBL transitioned from box office snoozer to cult classic, contemporary viewers must also renegotiate its tenets, particularly in a post–September 11 world in the midst of global warfare and its consequences.

  The issues at the heart of TBL continue to confound the nation today, even as the film’s twentieth anniversary approaches. Reading the tea leaves, the Coen brothers created a film that is funny, filled with many qu
otable lines, and has unforgettable characters, but also demands the viewer to contemplate what it all means for modern America and its foundational themes. According to scholar ShaunAnne Tangney, TBL is a classic film noir that, like its predecessors from the 1940s and 1950s, critiques the American dream. She explains that in these movies “alienation is amplified and focused on the widening gap between rich and poor, and on an intolerant multiculturalism.” Ultimately, Tangney claims, TBL “prompts a reevaluation of the American Dream itself” (201).

  One might assert that the film pushes even further, demanding that viewers look past the farcical plot and dopey characters to question the post–World War II nation. Journalist Chris Hedges, though not specifically addressing the movie, certainly makes a Lebowski-like case, explaining, “The cost of our empire of illusion is not being paid by the corporate titans. It is being paid on the streets of our inner cities, in former manufacturing towns, and in depressed rural enclaves . . . the language of human misery and pain” (159). Placing the film in the midst of Los Angeles—the creative epicenter of an illusion society—during the First Gulf War enables the Coen brothers to reevaluate the American scene from numerous economic and cultural viewpoints.

  What becomes apparent, however, is that everyone in TBL is hiding behind a self-styled projected image (illusion) that belies each character’s true identity. The most striking, from my perspective, is the Dude himself. While often held up as the ultimate easygoing everyman or paragon of Zen beliefs, the Dude is often angry, belligerent, or coldhearted. His indifference to Donny’s death, for example, is bewildering, considering that the innocent Donny would have never faced the situation if the Dude were not mixed up in various schemes.