Culture and Ethnics

1. Using the ideas, tools, techniques, and terminology associated with Feminism,
analyze the importance of gender (femininity or masculinity) for thinking about identity in From the Graveyard of the Arousal Industry. You might consider how characters negotiate gendered expectations about their identity and how they respond to such norms. How does gender constrict or define individual characters? What does Pearson want us to notice about this? Does inhabiting gender in a certain way make some characters “normal” and others “deviant”? What about those who refuse to play into gendered stereotypes and what does that tell us about the ways in which norms of gender can be resisted? Can a narrative help to challenge social norms of femininity and masculinity, for example, by documenting the value of forms of female masculinity or male femininity? Does the narrative perhaps say one thing about gender norms and do something else in its representations of gender? What does that tell us, if that is the case?

2. Using the tools and methods of Historical Criticism, develop a reading of From the Graveyard of the Arousal Industry by analyzing the 1990s DIY hardcore music subcultures that Pearson describes and participates in. How does a knowledge of this “scene” transform your understanding of the memoir? Does this subculture attempt to critique something about society? Does Pearson’s memoir exemplify this DIY subculture in some way? Can we trust Pearson’s narration of this moment in time? There are often different ways of narrating the past; what do others say about this subculture that might be different from what Pearson has to say about it? In what ways are these differences significant?

3. Ecocriticism is an approach that places particular emphasis on how we understand a physical place, or environment, including non-natural environments. Using Ecocriticism, consider the importance of place in From the Graveyard of the Arousal Industry. How does Pearson speak about place in the memoir? Are certain places emphasized? Are places metaphors for something else? How are ideas of what is natural and unnatural reflected in representations of natural and unnatural spaces?

4. Using a Cultural Studies approach, consider the role of culture (that might mean emphasizing pop culture, high vs. low culture, subculture and counter-culture, etc.) within either From the Graveyard of the Arousal Industry or Red Dog Red Dog. How do characters interact with the culture around them? What point does the narrative try to make about the role of culture in our lives? What forms does culture take? Is it embodied in people? Objects? Events? Or something else? Is culture something that inculcates particular values or priorities? How are culture and ideology related? What is the significance of culture for a given narrative?

5. Cultural Studies places great emphasis on ideology. Ideology is the idea that individuals are encouraged to see the world in particular ways and that these ways of seeing the world may distort reality for the benefit of some and not others. Often ideology is invisible to us—almost as if it is the air we breathe or what we take as natural—and thus if a narrative can help to de-familiarize our reality it may also enable us to see things we ordinarily do not notice like the ideologies that structure our lives. Consider the ways in which ideology operates in From the Graveyard of the Arousal Industry or Red Dog Red Dog. What ideology or ideologies are present and how are they represented? Who notices them and who does not? How are they imposed or taught to individuals? What good does it do? What harm does it do? Do these narratives suggest one might be able to resist ideology? Can some resist it while others cannot? Who is advantaged and who is disadvantaged by ideology? Why is it worthwhile to think about this narrative in terms of ideology? How does such an analysis help us change the world, if that is a goal of Marxism and Cultural Studies?

6. Using the method of Historical Criticism, think about how Lane’s Red Dog Red Dog reflects the time in which it was written, keeping in mind that it was published in 2008. This means reading it not as a book about Vernon in the 1950s, but as a book that responds to the Okanagan of the present-day that just happens to take place in the 1950s. You might examine Lane’s representation of settlers and the Okanagan First Nations. Are the representations of each group balanced? How is each group depicted by the novel? Should Lane have given more attention to indigenous peoples or does this book well represent the presence of racism in Vernon in the 1950s that sought to ignore indigenous peoples? What do the novel’s historical representations mean for the present moment?

7. Adopting the methods and terms of Gender and Sexuality Studies, examine the importance of sexuality for Pearson’s identity in From the Graveyard of the Arousal Industry. How does the narrative discuss sexuality? Does the narrative confront certain social conventions regarding sexuality? To what end does it do so? What are the origins of the word “punk”? What does it mean to express resistance to norms in general by refusing to properly embody and make visible conventional norms of sexual orientation?

8. Combine Reader Response criticism and Feminism to document how patriarchy functions within the world imagined by Red Dog Red Dog. As an all-pervasive ideology, patriarchy is rarely addressed directly in the novel. How does the novel utilize ambiguity and uncertainty in order to invite the reader to judge for herself/himself how patriarchy functions? If Lane makes the nature of patriarchy something that must be reconstructed by an attentive reader, what is he trying to help the reader to understand about how it functions? Do characters tend to recognize the gendered society into which they are born? Are some gendered ways of being potentially or obviously quite harmful despite appearing “natural?” Could a reader misunderstand the book’s commentary on gender, and if so, how or why?