To Kill a Mockingbird

[queerbychoice]

All of you who were wondering why To Kill a Mockingbird ended up on that top 100 queer books list I posted recently should go read this entry by rekraft.

Except that the list wasn't actually called the top 100 queer books, it was called the top 100 gay books, so really there's still a problem here . . .

Comments

[sammka.livejournal.com]

I loved Mockingbird when I was reading it in (I can't believe it was so long ago) 8th grade, and yeah, as rekraft points out, there is a certain connection between the difference of the protagonists and the difference of queer people in our society. I suppose one of the reasons I'm so interested in radical queer issues is because I'm drawn to difference- I love people who are rare, whose existence society doesn't like to acknowledge, who are essentially freaks. I got into queer issues because I made friends with those 'freak' girls who didn't fit in, and those girls all turned out to be queer. Then I just sort of got further and further into the queer community, and made friends who were trans, or ungendered, or furries, or into BD/SM (something that, as it turns out, I'd been into since I was very young). But Boo Radley was one of my first 'freak' obsessions, and he sort of holds a special place in my heart for that.

Sorry, I'm rambling.

What's really fucked up is that they're probably putting Mockingbird in there because they think either Scout or Boo Radley is lesbian/gay. Hrm.

[rekraft.livejournal.com]

The lovely thing about Mockingbird is that it talks about difference - underdogs, deviants, rare people like that; people that I too, am drawn to - using characters that at the end of the day are so human and 'normal'. Startlingly demonstrates to its enormous readership how queer is relevant to the everyday.

That, as well as its thought-provoking appearance on that gay lit list.

As I charitably decline to consider the ironic possibility that the probably-deviant people who drew up this list didn't get beyond the rumours (which could only have been propagated by Mockingbird's own vicious little Alabaman chorus) about Boo (or Scout for that matter), I can only hope they happily took gay to mean queer as well, and accordingly tossed Mockingbird into the pile.

By the way, I recognise your userpic as being from Escher, but keep thinking Kafka - probably the effects of looking at the insect and then speedreading your userid as samsa...

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

. . . oh my. *keeps an eye on sammka to see whether she metamorphosizes into an insect*

Wait, actually, she did wear a great butterly-festooned costume once. I think you're onto something here.

[sammka.livejournal.com]

By the way, I recognise your userpic as being from Escher, but keep thinking Kafka - probably the effects of looking at the insect and then speedreading your userid as samsa...

Ha! Actually, I can see that. When you look at Escher's works in their original composition, that isn't the case, but this ant has a sort of a human face, and the drawing style can be sort of Kafka-esque. Besides, I don't know if you had subconsciously caught on to this, but the ant is crawling around a giant mobius strip, something so pointless that I can imagine Kafka writing about it.

[rekraft.livejournal.com]

H'm, interesting connection! Escher too, is after all a master of illuminating the infinite and pointless pursuit. If only I had (consciously) thought of that.

More Queer Credentials.

[joethelionn.livejournal.com]

Actually, the character Dill was based on Harper Lee's real life childhood neighbor: Truman Capote

Re: More Queer Credentials.

[donutgirl.livejournal.com]

Whoa, really? That's awesome.

[winter-ayars.livejournal.com]

Well, Scout is pretty tomboy-ish. I don't know about gay (maybe when TKAMB was written it would have been considered "gay") but anyway:

It's about injustice, so (for today, at least) it's a queer (gay?) book as far as i'm concerned.

[donutgirl.livejournal.com]

I'm terribly sorry, but I'm still not completely sold on this argument. If every book about injustice qualifies as a queer novel, then they could have done a lot better than To Kill A Mockingbird. I'm not saying that's a bad book, but once we've made the category that broad, we could include just about anything. Why isn't Oliver Twist on there? Or Ellison's Invisible Man? Or the Stranger? Or Don Quixote?

Personally, I'd put Bret Easton Ellis ahead of any of these, but I bet I wouldn't make any friends with that one.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Well, the argument was more specific than "injustice": it was about being different, a freak, an outcast from society. Which, as you recently commented in a journal entry of your own, not all queers necessarily even are. But it's still a more specific concept than just "injustice."

I'm not really convinced that To Kill a Mockingbird should have been included on that list myself. I'm just presenting the reasons why those who included it chose to do so.

[donutgirl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I can appreciate that... I'm just not sure it's very useful. I guess it is and it isn't... I wish queers didn't feel the need tro view themselves as "freaks". But I guess that works for some people.

[sammka.livejournal.com]

Well, does it help to say that maybe it's not that queers need to identify as freaks, but that freaks feel the need to view themselves as queer?

Besides, freakdom is something to which I personally aspire. If you reconceptualize the 'freak' as someone that challenges society's preconceptions about which people can, and can not, exist, then being a freak is a necessary means of expanding or destroying the roles society forces us into. In that way, certain queer people (i.e.- stereotypical homosexual people) are no longer freaks, but others, such as transpeople, queer people of color, those of us who identify as queer by choice, and even bisexuals, are still freaks. This says less about us than about society. One of the primary goals of the queer movement is, of course, is to get such people re-classified as within the realms of normal. But my goal, I think, is to destroy the definition of 'normal', and to take away the value that people place on the word. So while most people understandably want the 'freak' label removed from them, some others want to seek out the 'freak' label, so as to better destroy understood categories.

[iadork4life.livejournal.com]

hey, completely not on topic but i have a question/comment!

Now that you've opened my mind to the whole "queer by choice" issue, i constantly bring it up at our GSA meetings :-p

But they always shoot me down.
So do you have an entry where you describe/explain the whole thing so i can print it up(because i'm lazy) and read it to them?

Then we can have a great interesting debate and pick you apart ;)
but i'll defend you!

--Marielle

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Parts of this entry might help, but my website would help more than any journal entry would. I'd particularly recommend the quotes pages, and my bio page could possibly be of interest too.

[iadork4life.livejournal.com]

gracias chica!!

--marielle