#studentsubmission

In Jun'ichirō Tanizaki’s The Key, readers find themselves facing narrative whiplash at the end when Ikuko reveals she has been manipulating her husband the entire time and exacerbating the conditions that led to his death. She takes over not only the current narrative after her husband can no longer contribute his diary entries, but retroactively becomes the primary narrator/main protagonist for previous entries as well. The metanarrative nature of the diary entries becomes apparent as she admits to wanting to give her story a proper “conclusion, rather than simply drop [it]” (Tanizaki 199). She acknowledges that she is not simply keeping a record of events through her diary, but crafting a narrative around her and her husband’s relationship and sexuality. Ikuko controls the story not only through the way she chooses to write it and reveal certain truths to readers (of which we can never be certain, since she has already admitted to being an unreliable narrator) but through her actions that actively guide the narrative towards a path that best suits her desires even as she pretends to be the manipulated one. By the end of the novel, Ikuko emerges as the heroine in what she ultimately crafts to be her own story, even though it is through grim and sadistic means that she succeeds in orchestrating a life where she can be with Kimura.

R.N.

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- Diane Arbus

  For some analysis on Diane Arbus’s work, I read Lars Nowak’s “Disabling/Enabling Photography: On Freak Photography and Diane Arbus’s Portraits.” In this article, Nowak provides a very useful overview on the history of photographing ‘non-normative’ bodies or "freaks" and discusses the criticism Arbus’s photographs of disabled people have received as exploitative but also how this critique could miss the effectiveness Arbus’s work has in breaking down the disabled / able-bodied binary between human bodies.

  Nowak's look at early freak photographic history states that for many of the show people during the heyday of freak shows, this was a major way they were able to support themselves with many photographs even serving to show the functional abilities of disabled persons (Nowak 211), e.g. people without certain body parts using other ways to perform everyday actions or creative exercises. Nowak does, though, criticize photography which draws exaggerated attention to abnormalities and not the individuals as whole themselves.

  When Arbus is brought up, Nowak writes that she photographed ‘freaks’ during the ‘60s when freak photography was dying or already dead. Arbus also “made it a rule to photograph the disabled exclusively at their usual whereabouts” (215), not in studios but often in their public and private spaces “counter[ing] the then beginning process of [disabled people] becoming invisible” (215). This is especially the case with Arbus’s photographs at homes for the mentally disabled late in her career. Arbus is also known to “monstri[fy] what is normal” (218) in her photographs, which makes some of her photographs of disabled people even more ambiguous (such as ones where the subjects are wearing masks) while also capturing the imperfections of ‘normal bodies.’

  That people who aren’t disabled come off in Arbus’s photographs ‘just as strange’ as the ‘non-normative’ bodies is pretty telling of what Arbus may have had in mind when capturing these people in her photographs. There’s some great questions at the end of the article too - whether the camera is the distorter and not the photographer (Arbus: “Something is ironic in the world and it has to do with the fact that what you intend never comes out like you intend it” - “I don’t feel that total identity with the machine” - “One thing that struck me very early is that you don’t put into a photograph what’s going to come out. Or, vice versa, what comes out is not what you put in”) and if subjects with cognitive disabilities unaware of or dismissive of ‘norms’ are not ‘freaks’ or ‘monsters’ but examples of human potential to break free from constricting dualities like normal / abnormal or disabled / able-bodied.

“I do feel I have some slight corner on something about the quality of things. I mean it’s very subtle and a little embarrassing to me, but I really believe there are things which nobody would see unless I photographed them.”

- Diane Arbus

Some Arbus photos:

Masked woman in wheelchair, Pa. 1970

On this photo: “.. the skewed lines of the sidewalk, the tree shadows and the sunlight combine with blank windows to form a circular visual movement around the woman. As in many of Arbus’s images, this composition is based on a series of diagonal lines and geometric shapes, which are also visible in the obliquely turned wheels of the wheelchair. These slanted perspectives and objects enhance the reading of the witch figure as an apparition, a skewed vision of ordinary reality which is also a prototypical embodiment of a distorted personality. Oblique lines also create visual energy, enhancing the subject’s psychological presence and indicating her power” (“Diane Arbus’s Expressive Methods,” Diana Emery Hulick 112).

Triplets in their bedroom, N.J. 1963

Untitled (4) 1970-71 - (at an all-female Vineland home for the mentally disabled)

https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw08084/Virginia-Woolf

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/woodman-untitled-providence-rhode-island-ar00356

Death is not a woman but an animal with claws we are waiting … waiting … we are in anguish in Macondo waiting … waiting … we are dreaming of reading novels while drinking café au laits at a Parisian café while other people die for their literary aesthetics we have lost our sons the sense of helplessness in the wake of the loss of a son find something to do find hope let us give ourselves the impression that we exist quaquaquaqua we all have ropes around our necks to hang ourselves from trees and after us come the mandrakes screaming the dead voices we hear everyday of our lives waiting … waiting .. suck on stones move them from pocket to pocket suck on chicken bones on fish bones defer hope eat shit to survive the more we eat the worse it gets til we get used to the muck and crawl in the mud barefoot waiting … with no more hope … waiting … wawawawaiting … Sabas sabe and we hear the rooster hear the cock the big cock salacious cock factual cock patriarchal cock matriarchal cock mollify the cocks waiting … waiting … la mamamamama grande Agustín’s cock and according to Wikipedia Saint Augustine sinfully stole pears was unsure when a human and soul first married in the womb and hated astrologers we are waiting … waiting … we are happy we are happy and waiting for the little colored birds but there is no more coffee the dole ships are bringing more and more bananas and the odor of the bananas are eating at our insides so the rooster is not for sale is not for sale but everything else is because we are starving we are getting older look in the mirror we are dying on this mound blathering away walking the streets passing around clandestine notes waiting … waiting for someone to write to us because we are lonely we don’t want to leave move go blind sleep and have nightmares and be falling and see the dead in their caskets and hear their voices calling us by our names and we keep waiting because that is all we can do …