Birdman and No Face

After the reading "No Face," I was struck the parrells between it and Birdman, a recent film by Alejandro G. Iñárritu. Birdman follows the story of an actor past his prime trying to create a Broadway adaptation of a short story amidst various mishaps. The actor, Riggan Thomson, rose to fame playing Birdman, a superhero and thinly-veiled analogue to Batman, and since rejecting a reprisal of that role, has lost most of that fame. 

In "No Face," we follow Ysrael, a child that has been rejected by his community in much the same way that Riggan has been rejected from his. Ysrael, as a result of his physical disfigurement, wears a mask that marks him as different, while Riggan is rejected because he has faded from the spotlight, although he confronts the realities of his physical appearance, graying and aging, as well. The struggle to find identity is a central theme in both "No Face" and "Birdman," and although I won't leave any spoilers, both stories leave the question less than resolved.

In the very starting passages of "No Face" and the first few minutes of "Birdman," we find another parallel: they both have fantastical powers that may or may not exist. We see Ysrael, shouting "FLIGHT" and soaring above the trees, the metaphorical camera of narration following him, and we see Riggan, calmly levitating in his room with nothing but his underwear. Is any of it real? In "No Face" we get details from the narration that imply Ysrael could only have seen the things he had if he had actually flown, and the special effects show Riggan as actually having those powers. And yet, there are clues in both works that suggest the powers aren't real. When Ysrael uses the power of "INVISIBILITY" and sneaks among the people of the city, he is discovered anyway, and Riggan bears physical marks of injury on his hands after the camera has just displayed him throwing things around with telekinesis.

Regardless of whether they are actually real, superpowers are a strong conduit for emotional stress for both of these characters. Ysrael, disfigured and made to think himself worthless by the other boys, uses his powers to return agency to himself; they allow him to think he has some kind of control over his life. Riggan uses his in much the same way, although he doesn't cast himself into the role of a superhero, who goes around saving people and cats like Ysrael does, but rather a retired hero that has retained his powers. Ysrael uses his powers to compensate for his shortcomings, while Riggan's powers are an extension of his frustrations.

The surreal effect created by each of these works is entirely memorable, and even more impressive is that symbolism of the powers hold regardless of whether they are real or not real. To close, I would recommend watching Birdman if you haven't already. It is well-done and has some great music.

How to be An Other Black Box

While discussing "How to be an Other Woman" in class, I noticed some striking parallels with another short story, "Black Box" by Jennifer Egan. (For those wishing to read it, you can find it here: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/06/04/black-box-2.). On the surface, these appear to be very different stories aside from their shared use of the second person: one is about a woman in an affair, and the second is about a woman trying to seduce a man, possibly some kind of criminal or terrorist, in order to spy on him. The parallel lies in the way both stories' narrators develop. They both begin with a clear frame of mind, and as the situation grows murkier and more emotionally involved, they spiral into self-doubt about their identity and the relationship they've been pursuing.

Both of these stories opened by placing their narrators in a mission, which was how I first was reminded of "Black Box" while reading Moore's story. The narrator of "Black Box" is termed a Beauty, a volunteer undercover seductress employed to spy on enemies of the state; in other words, a secret agent. "Black Box" is framed as the narrator's field guide to Beauties like herself-- much as how "How to be an Other Woman" is framed as a guide to having an affair -- and the story begins with matter-of-fact advice on how a Beauty should seduce her target. Likewise, the opening of "How to be an Other Woman" immediately evoked the sort of secret mission vibe that "Black Box" had: "Meet in expensive beige raincoats, on a pea-soupy night. Like a detective movie," and later on, directly references the narrator as a metaphorical spy, "you are two spies glancing at watches..."

The language of the opening places the narrators on a mission, and the narrators have a focused frame of mind for that mission. The narrator of Egan's story is clearly focused on her mission of getting close to her target. Even though little fragments of her own background slip out in what is ostensibly a totally objective field guide, such as a reference to her husband ("If you love someone with dark skin, white skin looks drained of something vital,") the narrator consciously steers herself back to her task. She does this in spite of the physical violations she endures: "Resist the impulse to reconstruct what has just happened. Focus instead on gauging your Designated Mate’s reaction to the new intimacy between you." Similarly, the narrator of Moore's story, Charlene, fully settles into her role as mistress, not even acknowledging the possibility that she may merely be one of a string of women, as we later discover. To her, being a mistress has become a part of her identity. She sits in public restrooms and says to herself, "Hello, I'm Charlene. I'm a mistress."

And eventually, the cracks begin to show; these two protagonists discover repercussions of their pursuits they aren't totally ready to deal with. For the narrator of "Black Box," the emotional stresses both of being physically violated and thoughts about her relationship to her husband and father build up over the course of the story, eventually reaching a head in what I think is section 37, where she is forced to attack a woman holding a baby, commentating that "We are most reluctant to hurt those who remind us of ourselves." For Charlene, there's a nagging doubt that as a mistress, she's not good enough; we see this in Charlene's list-making, which she seems to do as a direct response to Patricia's list-making. Although it was less clear for the narrator of "Black Box," Charlene's turning point seems to be the scene where she realizes that's she's simply one of many woman: not just "An Other Woman," but "Another Woman." The narrator of Egan's story begins to doubt her mission and whether she truly had any control in her life ("Hindsight creates the illusion that your life has led you inevitably to the present moment. It’s easier to believe in a foregone conclusion than to accept that our lives are governed by chance"); Charlene's inferiority grows into a sort jealous panic, and she begins seeing potential lovers for her man in every woman she meets.

All in all, these are both intriguingly innovative stories, I would recommend readers check out "Black Box" if they haven't done so already. It's worthwhile to note that "Black Box" was published as a series of tweets, so every sentence is shorter than 140 characters.