The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare shows how power circulates in both Venice and Belmont during Elizabethan times in various contexts. In this blog post, I will be doing a cultural materialist reading of the play and comparing it to the movie version of Fight Club, which will serve as my contemporary text. I will be looking specifically at how power operates in male networks which look to be complete in themselves, resisting the inclusion of women except as a commodity to reinforce rather than defuse the patriarchy.
Cultural materialism (for those who are unclear on the concept) is a way of interpreting literary texts as historical or cultural artefacts, emphasising the importance of history in shaping them. It sees literary and cultural criticism as participating in politics, active in reinforcing, dissenting from or opposing cultural orthodoxies.
The Merchant of Venice foregrounds make networks of power within the city of Venice. The men in the group - Antonio, Bassanio, Gratiano, Lorenzo, Salarino, Solanio and Salerio - are gentlemen of Venice and companions to each other and while three of the members of this group eventually get married, they do mention in the text that their first loyalties are to each other. Antonio, the merchant is the only member of the group with money but his money seems to be at the disposal of the rest of the group, particularly Bassanio, who is introduced as his kinsman, although the bond between the two seems to run much deeper. Karen Newman, in her essay, Portia's Ring: Unruly Women and Structures of Exchange in The Merchant of Venice points out that the women in this play are regarded as goods for exchange. When Bassanio speaks of Portia, he mentions her wealth before he talks about her beauty or her virtue:
In Belmont is a lady richly left,
And she is fair, and fairer than that word -
Of wondrous virtues. (Act 1, Scene 1, lines 160-162)
While Bassanio does soften his language to speak of her other qualities, he makes no qualms about stressing the mercenary nature of his suit:
And many Jasons come in quest of her.
Oh my Antonio, had I but the means
To hold a rival place with one of them,
I have a mind presages me such thrift
That I should question less be fortunate. (Act 1, Scene 1, lines 171-175)
Newman argues that Belmont is not a place of love but that it shares the same commercial values as Venice. She points out that the two are characterised by the same "structure of exchange", positing that marriage is the most fundamental form of exchange with men trading women to establish or tighten the bonds of male friendship. The bond that Antonio enters on Bassanio's behalf serves to promote and secure the friendship between them. As Bassanio has assured Antonio before he launches on a panegyric about Portia, his first loyalties lie with his friend, rather than his prospective bride: "To you, Antonio, I owe the most in money and in love..." (Act 1, Scene 1, lines 129-130).
While it may seem like just a lot of high-flown, flowery, ornamental nonsense, the text bears it out. When there is a conflict between what Portia has asked him to do (in terms of keeping her ring) and what Antonio asks him to do (in giving the ring to the lawyer who saved his life), he goes with what Antonio wants. During the trial, Bassanio is moved to exclaim that he would give up everything, including his wife, who is dear to him as life itself, to save Antonio. Portia in disguise who is standing by, remarks rather caustically: "Your wife would give you little thanks for that if she were by to hear you make the offer."
In each case, both with the ring and the offer of his wife's life in exchange for Antonio's, the rather obstreperous Gratiano echoes Bassanio. The message seems to be that the fraternal love between the men is worth more than their feelings for their respective wives. It is at this point that Shylock, who is cast as the villain of the scene, is moved to disgust at the relatively low value Christian husbands place on their wives.
Portia, on marrying Bassanio, finds that she is not only saddled with him, but his friends as well. Almost his first act on marriage is to rush to the side of his friend Antonio. Gratiano marries Portia's companion Nerissa. Lorenzo, fleeing Venice. after having eloped with Shylock's daughter Jessica, also comes to take refuge with Bassanio and Portia. Bassanio then, does not sacrifice any of his male friends on marriage. Rather now, with Portia's money at his disposal, he is able to play the bountiful host and disperse largesse to his friends. Portia acknowledges his right to do so. When he picks the right casket to win her hand, she submits herself to be:
As from her lord, her governor, her king
Myself and what is mine to you and yours
Is now converted. But now I was the lord
Of this fair mansion, master of my servants
Queen o'er myself: and even now, but now,
This house, these servants, an this same myself
Are yours, my lord's. (Act 3, Scene 2).
And thus saying she becomes wholly his to do with as he sees fit.
While, through cross-dressing, Portia has saved Antonio's life and frightened her husband into a true appreciation of her qualities and what might happen if he crosses her, the affair with the ring puts paid to any romantic notion she might have had that Bassanio values her over all else. Quite simply, he doesn't. And what's more, he appears proud of the fact. When all is said and done, male bonds are the most important. Wives are important inasmuch as they produce heirs. Portia's deception that she went to bed with the lawyer who possessed the ring was effective because it forefronted exactly where her value lay. In the bedroom. Producing legitimate heirs for the pauper who had married her.
In David Fincher's cinematic adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's novel Fight Club, the protagonists attempt to resurrect what they perceive to be a waning masculinity in the face of the "feminisation" of America through the formation of all-male clubs where the members pound on each other, bare-chested and bare-fisted, emerging from combat bloodied and bruised, but feeling like men again.
Susan Faludi, in her book, Stiffed: The Betrayal of the Modern Man has pointed out that consumer culture has emasculated men, pushing them increasingly into ornamental and passive roles traditionally associated with women. She described post-war masculinity with no common enemy and no common missions potentially dangerous. As the male role diminished, Faludi said many men have found themselves driven to more domineering and even monstrous displays in their frantic quest for a meaningful showdown - with a shape-shifting enemy - women, gays, young black men or illegal aliens. This is arguably what happens in Fight Club which foregrounds the lengths men are willing to take to reclaim their dying masculinity.
The first part of the movie sets up the feminised culture of America which the narrator has become enmeshed in. A chronic insomniac, he has found salvation in support groups for various illnesses, which he attends, so he can weep uncontrollably in the arms of another person. In his spare time, he shops voraciously using an Ikea catalogue, looking for the perfect sofa, the perfect coffee table, the perfect salt shaker, that will define him as a person. He is quite happy to go on being a feminised man, but his idyll is invaded by a woman, Marla Singer, who has also discovered the joy of support groups, and like him, is a tourist rather than a real sufferer. Her presence is a mirror to the narrator's own tourist status and he is no longer able to cry freely at these meetings, and as a result, no longer able to sleep. He confronts her and they agree to divide up the meetings. He goes there to cry, she to eat.
When not attending meetings or looking for the perfect salt shaker, the narrator is a "recall coordinator" for a large automobile concern. His job basically consists of mathematically determining whether it would be more profitable for his company to recall automobiles with defective parts or pay out compensation from the lawsuits that would result later.
On his next flight to investigate yet another vehicle crash he meets the enigmatic Tyler Durden, who makes US$20 from each bar of soap he makes using discarded body fluids from a liposuction clinic, "selling rich women their fat asses back to them." This meeting marks the turning point of his life. He moves in with Durden when his apartment is mysteriously blown up with homemade explosives and from then on, imbibes Durden's philosophies which are an antithesis of everything he has ever stood for until then.
Goddamit, an entire generation pumping gas, working tables, the slaves of the white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We are the middle children of history, man, no purpose or place. We have no Great War, no Great Depression, Our Great War is a spiritual war. Our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won't. And we're slowly learning from the fact. And we've very pissed off. (Tyler Durden)
The narrator and Tyler Durden set out to save the world of the emasculated white collar workers through the late-night, masochistic, bare-knuckled brawling. They start an underground boxing network and under Tyler's leadership the fight clubs become so popular they are transformed into a politicised, revolutionary movement: Project Mayhem, a series of escalating disruptions aimed at businesses, consumer consumption, and the financial system itself. Eventually the narrator, along with first-time readers/viewers, discovers that Tyler Durden is merely his alter ego.
What starts out as a reassertion of masculinity gradually degenerates int a terrorist group undertaking to blow up a dozen corporate credit card buildings to wipe out all record of credit card debt. The men bond through extreme violence and become obedient, unthinking, nameless conformists dedicated to a single cause and under the absolute authority of Durden.
Henry Giroux pointed out that while Fight Club appears to offer a critique of late capitalistic society and the misfortunes it generates out of its obsessive concerns with consumption, profits and commercial values, it is really rebelling against a consumerist culture that dissolves the bonds of male sociality and puts into place an enervating notion of male identity and agency. Krister Friday (in his essay A Generation of Men Without History: Fight Club Masculinity and the Historical Symptom)pointed out that Fight Club stages a narrative of "white male decline", but it is a narrative in which an atavistic notion of masculinity (one based on fist-fighting and terrorism) is first recovered and then offered the chance to regain its efficacy and reconstitute itself through revolutionary action.
Fight Club functions as a rejection of the feminine, which has been set up at the beginning of the movie as "the enemy". The protagonist leaves his upper middle class apartment for a hovel in a toxic dump, he trades his support groups for organised brawling, he arrives at work looking worse and worse everyday until he successfully loses his job.
The only female character in the movie, Marla Singer, is relegated for the most part to the periphery. She is only there to offer her body freely to Durden/the narrator and to be used and rejected at their whim. She is not allowed any volition. In the closing scene, she is kidnapped by Durden's highly trained militia, who bring her to him, kicking and screaming. She forgets her anger, however, in seeing his bloodied face and as they hold hands and watch them buildings around them collapse, he offers: "You met me at a very weird time in my life."
Her only importance in the movie seems to have been to get him out of the feminine support groups to form the more manly fight clubs, but otherwise, she is superfluous.
Here, as in with The Merchant of Venice, it is the relationships and loyalties between the men that matter. These relationships construct the members of the club, taking them from being disempowered men in unimportant, dead-end jobs, to members of a unified, deadly organisation wielding a destructive power which literally brings down an entire financial district. Both texts are about all-male groups which either are, or become sufficient in themselves through mutual support, loyalty and discipline. In either case, no female, however important, is allowed to come between the brothers.
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