Spider Woman Analysis

This analysis will look at Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman (1976) in the context of the theories concerning high art and the culture industry put forward by

Adorno and Horkheimer and Foucault’s writing on reform and control.

From the very first page the novel challenges the conventions of narrative fiction.  The story begins in media res with two voices discussing a woman sketching a panther in its cage at the zoo, no context or exposition is initially given.  There is no reference to setting, names, pasts or even the genders of the characters.  As the speaker describes the woman the details given, colours, clothing, emotions could easily lead the reader to assume the describer is female conversing with some antagonistic male character;

                      Its as if she’s in some other world, all wrapped up

                      in herself drawing the panther.

                    - If she’s wrapped up inside herself, she’s not in

                      some other world.  That’s a contradiction (p4). 

The reader is gradually fed the information through the dialogue of the characters. They are actually discussing a scene from a movie, and the two voices belong to prison inmates Molina a homosexual convicted of corruption of a minor and Valentin a political radical.  This exposes the connections between language and gender encouraged by popular culture.

This challenging method of imparting information directs the attention of the reader backwards and forwards asking them to make distinctions between the characters and situation.  Further experimental techniques stream-of-consciousness monologue, an extended series of academic footnotes, scenes written in a dramatic format similar to film scripts, epistolary form such as court documents and police reports all work together to highlight the lack of an omniscient narrator and draw attention to the style.  This is an element of the “high art” described by Adorno as it requires active participation and individual thought from the reader as they are made to repeatedly revise and consider their understanding of what they have read;

                   great artists have retained a mistrust of style, and at crucial

                   points have subordinated it to the logic of the matter… This

                   promise held out by the work of art that it will create truth by

                   lending new shape to the conventional social forms is as

                   necessary as it is hypocritical (Adorno 1947).

By omitting an authoritative narrative voice from the text the reader can observe the action directly and come to their own interpretations without a mediating presence guiding them through the story.  The novel attempts to blend high art and popular culture.  The embedded narrative of Molina’s film stories puts further responsibility on the reader to actively think about what they are reading.  Molina is recalling a fictional tale he was told through the popular medium of film so we are given Molina’s interpretation of the film and how he himself relates to it. 

The idea of popular culture as a form of escapism is an important theme in the novel.  Molina finds his identity in images of films from the 30’s and 40’s; he relates to tragic heroines from the screen to such an extent that he sees himself as a woman.  Molina retreats into a private narration of a movie about the romance between a disfigured World War II veteran and an ugly maidservant employed in his isolated home when frustrated at Valentin’s bad moods.  Through Molina’s stream-of-consciousness we see how he relates the film to his external circumstances, his anger at Valentin, remorse over his mother and his hopes for a pardon.  He reflects angrily on Valentin's devotions to politics that prevent his enjoyment of the story that Molina finds so appealing. He says to himself,

                    I won't tell him any more of the films I like the most, they’re

                    just for me, in my mind's eye, so no filthy words can touch them,

                    this son of a bitch and his pissass of a revolution" (112).

We can see Molina’s “conditioning” with regards to the culture industry.  For him the image of romance and all conquering love completely satisfies Molina emotionally.  He believes the female should take the submissive nurturing role in relationships and puts himself in this position with Molina as their relationship develops.

However the politics held by Valentin do not allow him to retreat from the escapism of Molina.  Valentin has no definite specified sentence, his day to day experience of time has been taken away from him.  As Foucault notes in Discipline and Punish, a prisoner will undergo a process of reform in order to convert him to the social norm.  His experience of confinement, regulated diet, instruction, hygiene and labour has been designed to redefine his inner self to conform to the culturally approved values of society. 

The culture industry operates in much the same way and for the same ends and Valentin is exposed to this manner of conditioning while Molina narrates his movies in their cell.  These films are of a specific type, B movies, packed with melodrama, suspense and nostalgia, designed purely for entertainment to distract from the tedium of everyday life.  They do not qualify as art in the Adorno sense, but are blended together with the high art of the novel to evaluate the role of popular culture in society.  There seems to be a comparison in the novel with the term “cell” connoting imprisonment, repetition and reform and “celluloid” seemingly offering escape into a world ever changing but may also be a form of imprisonment and a tool for conditioning society.

We begin to see Valentin’s reform in his response to the first film Cat People. He begins initially responding to the film in a detached and critical manner;

                           

                           I’d like us to discuss the thing a little, as you go on

                           with it, so I get a chance now and then to rap about

                           something…Like for example: I personally would like

                           to ask how you picture the guys mother  (16).

Soon after Valentin begins to blur the lines of reality and fiction as he identifies with a particular character.  When Molina comes to the end of his narration Valentin becomes emotionally affected;

                          

                       I'm sorry because I've become attached to the characters.

                       And now it's all over, and it's just like they died (41).

Although Molina interprets this reaction as Valentin possessing “a bit of a heart”, Valentin himself sees his sympathetic response as “weakness”.  However he does not seem to be able to control himself from responding in this way.

The process of Valentin’s reform continues when he contracts food poisoning when his meals are tampered with by those in charge.  Valentin suffers extreme diarrhoea and is put into degrading positions while Molina tends to him and cleans the mess.  This corresponds with Foucault’s work on discipline as everything in Valentin’s world is controlled by others.  The toil on his body is a form of enforced exercise further relating to Foucault.  In exercising the body by purging it of the poison Valentin is undergoing a form of exorcism of his mind.  Molina conforms to the stereotypically female role of nurturer, at this point their relationship is almost that of mother and child, altering further for Valentin the dynamics of power.  At the times when Valentin is at his weakest we are given clearer access to his consciousness.  After a particularly harrowing attack of sickness Valentin is forced to accept Molina’s help in matters of intimate hygiene and it is at this point that the novel moves into Valentin’s mind for the first time as he tries “to relax…like you told me” (124).  We see images that represent the conflicting desires inside him;

                         a bright woman, a beautiful woman...educated…

                         a woman with a knowledge of Marxism a woman of discreet

                         but elegant dress. . . a woman who knows how to entertain

                         at home. ..  a woman who understands the problems of

                         Latin America, a European woman who admires a

                         Latin American revolutionary" (124-5). 

This emphasises Valentin’s attraction for the bourgeois lifestyle completely against the Marxist ethic he apparently holds so dear therefore bringing him closer to the reformed character closer to society’s norms.  More attacks of diarrhoea weaken his resistance further to Molina’s promotion of popular culture and sentimental romance.  Shortly after Molina sings a bolero which Valentin derides as “romantic nonsense” he begins to reminisce about his own feelings for a woman named Marta.  At this point the reconstruction of Valentin reaches a defining moment.  He admits out loud;

                          I don't feel attracted to her for any good reasons,

                          but because . . . because she has class . . . that's right,

                          class, just like all the class-conscious pigs would say" (144-5). 

After Valentin takes another “rest” we are again given stream-of-consciousness access to his thoughts in which unfolds a love story culminating in the death of a revolutionary.  This seems to be Valentin accepting the death of his old self.  Under the stress of outside influences Valentin has begun to reform and conform, the further he conforms, the more access we are given into his interior thoughts. Boundaries are removed as Interior and exterior are merged together bringing in the presence of an omniscient authority into the text that was not apparent at the outset.  This is a form of the panopticism discussed by Foucault.  As Valentin becomes a properly programmed consumer of popular culture we are made more and more aware of an agent of social authority keeping us under constant surveillance.

The final victory for social control and bourgeois principles over individualism and political dissent is shown in the ends to which both characters succumb.  Molina is killed in an attempt to deliver a message to Valentin’s comrades, the text offers the possibilities that he died for a "just cause" or that "he let himself be killed because that way he could die like some heroine in a movie" (279) and if we were to judge Molina on his previous actions it would likely be the latter.  Valentin endures more torture and during a morphine induced dream we are finally given full penetration into his psyche in which Valentin retreats into a romantic sanctuary. His conversion is complete.

This is a fantastic novel which merges the aesthetics and narrative strategies of high and popular culture.  While it criticises the predictability of popular culture it also offers the view that it can be a positive medium for communication and intimacy as although it is a means to reform Valentin it was also the vehicle for reviving his beaten spirit.  Through their progression of dialogue the characters begin to see each others perspective and their eventual union sexual and emotional represents a unification of these viewpoints.  There is a suggestion that popular culture should not be immediately dismissed as inferior as the politics of human relationships are as important as political convictions, and popular culture can too promote critical thought.  Through Molina we are led to criticise the Marxist’s failure to recognise the individual and their need for an emotional connection, while Valentin allows us to see that Molina does nothing to resist his own oppression and uses the culture industry as a means of escapism.  Readers are left with a great deal of interpretive freedom allowing them to analyse various binary poles for themselves male/female, rational/emotional, critical thinking/escapism, and macho/effeminate.  With all its experiments in form and attempts to engage the reader in active critical interpretation it presents them with a comprehensive view of the culture industry, penal system and social control in a form of high art/popular culture hybrid that meets all of Adorno’s requirements while simultaneously breaking them. 

References

The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as mass Deception, in Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947) by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. Available from http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1944/culture-industry.htm

Foucault, M.  (1977)  Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. Hazell, Watson & Viney Ltd: England

Puig, M.  (1976)  Kiss of the Spider Woman.  Arrow books Ltd: London