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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   38049 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 8, 2024

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I read the first, autobiographical/Hemingway worship novel by James Clavell (Of Shogun fame), a fictionalized version of his experience in a Japanese PoW camp in Singapore during WWII, King Rat earlier this year. I highly recommend the book, but one character is pretty much this: Sean.

Sean is an RAF pilot who turns into a woman during the time in Changi. He's presented as the "Queen" of the camp, a parallel to the titular King of Camp. He is the only soldier given a private room, and private time to bathe. He's showered in attention and gifts, and in the regular theatrical performances he is the star attraction. It's implied he acts a bottom sexually, but it is never really the point: he traipses about in fine women's clothing, shaves his legs every day, showered in gifts and love and affection and service and praise for his beauty from other soldiers. He has immense privileges over every other inmate, far above his natural position in the hierarchy of the camp, second only to the King who runs the economy as a capitalist and above the commanding officers who have official power, simply as the star attraction in the theatrical productions. Far above the privileges given to the directors and producers of the shows! Clavell's self insert Marlowe knew Sean before the camp, and nearly killed him upon learning of his change in identity, but regrets it and considers it his own sin to fail to accept Sean, though he denies his own attraction to fSean. It is implied that Sean first takes on the female role because he was drafted to play a female role in a play, and that the attention lavished on him caused the change. That he couldn't turn down all the praise, and leaned more and more into the character until the mask became the face.

Ultimately Sean is the other main character, alongside the King and his Javert-like nemesis Grey who pursues him, who receives the news of the end of the war and their liberation with depression rather than joy. Sean, totally unable to imagine explaining his time in Changi or maintaining his new identity or returning to his old identity, drowns himself in all his finery. His privileged position in the camp, arguably a form of service from a utilitarian perspective bringing joy to the depressed prisoners, evaporates upon the prospect of returning to normality, and unable to reconcile what happened with his future, he chooses death. This is partly a strong literary parallel with the King, who is equally depressed and confused, going from capitalist king of the camp to just another enlisted ex-PoW with only a stack of the useless Japanese-Singaporean banana-money to show for it. There's a strong implication that capitalism and male dominance, as the King exercises to achieve power, is its own form of drag, no different from that used by Sean to achieve his power. It is implied that Sean first takes on the female role because he was drafted to play a female role in a play, and that the attention lavished on him caused the change, that it all started as a raft of attention paid to him and transformed over time into something more. In the same way, the King chooses to exercise dominance over other men, takes pleasure in dressing in clean clothing when no one else can, in forcing others to serve him and defer to him beyond his rank. A big part of the character of Sean, as the novel as a whole, is about examining American capitalism as a form of mental-disorder. ((Those who think Clavell's depiction of Japanese society is racist haven't read King Rat, Clavell was the kind of now-mostly-extinct British racist who thought proper humans really only came from the environs of London, and that anywhere more than 50 miles away from Piccadilly only produced gross stereotypes))

To a modern reader, its tough not to ask more identity questions about Sean: there are other sodomites mentioned in the camp, but only Sean takes it the further step of becoming female in presentation and identity, he states baldly that he is a woman causing Marlowe to attack him, leading to a narrowly averted suicide attempt due to his former friend's lack of acceptance. This is what trans looked like before trans ideology: it was ok to argue it was the result of trauma and circumstance, but attacking Sean was an act of small minded bigotry in the context of the camp, nonetheless his death is tragic, an act of desperation and sadness at what should have been a moment of triumph and joy. I would love to ask Clavell about the character, were he alive today, and how he viewed Sean in the context of modern identitarian queer politics. Did he think of Sean as having a female soul, or as having an innate attraction to men, which was triggered by the environment of the camp? Or did he think of Sean as being a normal airman, that what "happened to" Sean could have happened to anyone, even self-insert Marlowe, had they been drafted to play a female romantic lead? It's such a fascinating view into pre-movement views of homosexuality and gender.

sounds like an interesting book! It reminds me of something I learned recently- apparently drag shows were huge during WW2, especially with the US army in the Pacific theater. See: https://youtube.com/watch?v=yN1C_bPC4tc . They weren't small or hidden, they were these huge elaborate productions with costumes, choreography, and talented singing and dancing! Eventually performed on broadway! All with dudes in drag. Who, I don't think identified as trans, but maybe a precursor to that.

Could this be something similar to how you see more male-male physical affection in Muslim countries? In that case it's just assumed that the affection is not gay (because being gay could literally result in death) so it's therefore more common and accepted.

Likewise the drag shows might be for "harmless entertainment" since nobody would think anything else could happen.

Great comment, thank you for sharing. I’ve written before about how interesting it is that so much of what gay society (in the Anglo world, at least) was before about 1960 is seemingly completely forgotten knowledge. As much a lost society as any other, I suppose.

I bask in your praise.

I really do recommend the book. I read it with a friend from Singapore, and we both expected it to be in large part about the cruelty of the Japanese and the struggle for survival against them. Instead the cruel Japanese are largely a far-group fact about the universe, the primary struggle is within and among the PoWs. The book started and presents as an adventure yarn, but becomes a withering critique of capitalism.

-The book started and presents as an adventure yarn, but becomes a withering critique of capitalism.

I don’t think Clavell saw it that way himself. He was a fan of Ayn Rand.

OT, not having read Les Mis: is Javert nearly as well written as Grey?

I don’t think Clavell saw it that way himself. He was a fan of Ayn Rand.

It's hard for me to interpret the brilliant scene at the end, where the parachutist liberating the camp looks at the arch-capitalist trader King, and asks why he is well dressed well fed and clean when everyone else is in rags and starved. It's the classic dorm-room smoke session idea of how if an angel or an alien came down, they wouldn't get why some people are rich and some people are poor, man, and how would you explain why one person is rich and another person is starving to them? It's heavy handed!

I don't think he comes down against Capitalism, necessarily. Marlowe, the Clavell self-insert in the best Hemingway tradition, struggles to explain why the King wasn't bad, struggles to explain his glory, after the liberation. And glorious he was! He managed to save Marlowe's arm, and maybe his life! And he could only do that because of his power, which he only had because of his hustle. And to a certain extent, Clavell also simply thinks it right and proper for a man to live by his wits at the expense of others, to risk it all and to dominate or to fail.

It's a very deep and complex critique of capitalism. In many ways, every Clavell novel kind of follows the same plot, with a young Englishman joining a foreign culture and learning its ways. Shogun does this with Japan, Whirlwind with Iran, Tai-Pan with the Hong Kong training colony. King Rat does this, but the culture that Marlowe is indoctrinated into was King Rat's American Capitalism. The King hustles around, yelling things like "Time is money!" and "There's Always an Angle!" and he has a buddy named Tex. He couldn't be more of an American stereotype if he had an Eagle and a Flag tattooed on his arm.

OT, not having read Les Mis: is Javert nearly as well written as Grey?

So it's a tough comparison because they are in very different genres, in addition to simply being very different lengths. Characters are drawn differently in punchy 300 page adventure novels that take place over maybe six months, versus 1600 page monstrosities that cover generations with massive asides about the battle of Waterloo and the French Sewers. But in my mind, I liked Javert better as a character, Grey was just a bit too much of a butt monkey for me. Javert is defined by his dedication to rules; Grey is driven primarily by his deep envy and jealousy of the King and of Marlowe.

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