Estrangement of House of Leaves Through "Haunted"
Mark
Danielewski’s House of Leaves has the
unique characteristic of having an accompanying studio album: “Haunted” by Poe, Mark’s own sister. The two
works were released months apart in the year 2000. Because of the closeness of
the release dates, the relationship between creators, and the similarity in topics
and mood of the two, the works should be examined as colluding, possibly even
complimentary, pieces. When simultaneously analyzed, a phenomenon of
estrangement results from the diametric nature of the dominating speakers of
each work. Listening to the Goth-Pop album “Haunted” by Poe offered a
polarizing voice to the voices of House
of Leaves: a dominant feminine
voice. House of Leaves is pervaded by
three male primary speakers, Johnny, Zampano, and Will Navidson. The story breaks
from this domination only by a later discovery of narrative control from female
speaker, Karen. But the foiling, powerful, and characteristically female voice
of “Haunted” brought greater attention to the relentless masculine-centric plot
and feeling of House of Leaves.
The
dominant male voice of House of Leaves
begins with Johnny and his friend Lude (notice the name). The pair spends their
leisure time “chasing tail” with extremely demeaning methods. The voice of the
narrator, Johnny, inserts stories related to Zampano’s writing; stories which,
at the beginning of the book, are nearly invariably about conquest of some
woman. The only features Johnny ever acknowledges about a woman are their
genitalia and, occasionally, some other physical feature. His deepest
infatuation is with the stripper, Thumper. He recklessly flirts and sleeps with
married, engaged, and dating woman, and offers nothing more to them. But this is
only Johnny’s hobby, because his main occupation lies in the devotion to the
stories of men: compiling and
interpreting Zampano’s writings of the Navidson
Record. As House of Leaves
progresses, Johnny loses his interest in having sexual relations with women, or
even exiting his home. He has forfeited even his interest in Thumper, and turns
full attention and energy to the life of Zampano and fictional story of
Navidson. His debilitating focus is marked by the last significant sexual
encounter he has with an eighteen year old named Hailey. Johnny’s obsession has
become so severe that he alienates his female partner by screams in the night
and the strange nature of his apartment. Any amount of significant female
contact while compiling Zampano’s writings is terminated with his last phone
call with Thumper. “Beautiful as her voice is, it is not strong enough to draw
me from this course. Where eight months ago I’d have been already out the door.
Today, for whatever sad reason, Thumper no longer has any influence over me.” During
their conversation, it is shortly after he turns down an opportunity to see her
that the phone company disconnects his line, silencing the sole remaining
female voice in Johnny’s life (Danielweski).
Because
Johnny has entirely suppressed all female voices, he cannot be distracted from
the manuscript of Zampano, whose writings focus on the story of a fiction
photographer, Navidson. These next levels of narration are notably focused on
the adventures of man conquering the unknown, while exploiting women. Johnny
informs us of the numerous female guests he had to read literature for him.
“Exhibit B, Bits” is vital in a deeper understanding of Zampano’s relationship
with these women. The editors inform us that a number of these brief passages
are “written by someone else,” possibly one of his female visitors (Danielweski). Bit [J] on page 545 reveals how Zampano
treats the women: “Goddamn!... Yes, of
course write it down! Write down all of it down! Everything I say!.... Goddamn
her wrong!” This conveniently displays that Zampano is both using a woman, and
abusing her to write his masculine reflection through the Navidson Record. This is emphasized further by Bit [H], where he
not so subtly calls his female ghost writer garbage. And in his account of the Navidson Record he occasionally
viciously demeans the sole female character, Karen. She is carefully portrayed
as an unsupportive, insubordinate, adulterous wife. This is in contrast to the
sympathy with which Navidson is portrayed as he disregards his wife’s wishes in
order to pursue the knowledge of the hallway (Danielweski). Navidson’s
relationship with Karen is equivalent to the relationship Zampano and Johnny
have with women: satisfying a need, but
rejecting attachment in order to continue pursuing knowledge of his respective
labyrinth. Zampano is also sure to include detailed discussion on the nobility
of defeating a mutiny, justifying Navidson’s pursuit into the hallway. While
not entirely obvious that Zampano’s writing reflect a dominating masculine
voice, inspecting the nature of the writing and some clues in the Bits, it
becomes apparent that The Navidson Record
is working to suppress the feminine voice.
In
addition to suppressing the feminine voice, House
of Leaves has multiple layers of men competing for control. From the top
layer of Johnny’s story, there is a constant alpha-male struggle present in the
beginning of the book, with echoes of this struggle later in the book. As
previously mentioned, Johnny and Lude spend evenings like average young men
competing for the attention of women. But Lude also competes for the readers’
attention with his crude and pornographic stories. As Hemmingson details, Lude’s
“list of women he has had sex with in the past thirty days… draws away from the
issues of The Navidson Record,” (Hemmingson). Additional hyper-masculine behavior is
presented in Johnny’s story though the character known as “the Gdansk Man”. He
enters the story with the knowledge that Johnny has had a relation with his
wife, Kyrie, and, as fitting of the role of an alpha-male, unleashes physical vengeance
upon Johnny and Lude. Johnny’s fantasized, hyper-masculine retaliation was to
beat the Gdansk Man to death, then rape his wife; but Johnny settles for the
mildly less masculine vengeance of beating the Gdansk man to an socially
acceptable degree (Danielweski). The alpha-male
struggle is continued further in the Navidson
Record level between Navidson, and his visitors, especially Holloway. Navidson was feminized by Holloway as he made
approaches on Karen, and even more so by Holloway leading the expeditions into
his home. Even Will Navidson’s brother Tom felt the insecurities of insignificance
to his masculine, successful twin, as evident through the comparison made
between the brothers to Jacob and Esau of Genesis (Danielweski). The struggle for alpha-male
dominance throughout House of Leaves
shows the extent to which the masculine dominates the book.
The
sole presence of a female voice in House of Leaves enters with Karen’s creation
of What Some Have Thought and A Brief History of Who I Love. This
appears to be a shift in the voice House
of Leaves, but even though Karen now is able to tell her story, she tells a
story about Navidson. Karen’s compilation of What Some Have Though itself contains an underlying, but blatant,
tone of suppressing the feminine voice. In these fictional interviews, Karen
interviews twelve men and seven women. This is a minor example male domination,
but relevant at least. Some more interesting analysis of the voices is how a
large portion of interviews end with the interviewee making a pass at Karen.
This was done by a handful of the male interviewees and even one, possibly two,
of the women. Some more subtle than others, for example Douglas Hofstadter’s
explanation of Zeno’s arrow could contain a subtle hint of flirtation as he is
implying an arrow getting infinitely close to its target, but never reaching
it. In the closing remarks, the women interviewees, in one way or another, only
get to say one word or a few if they in some way are not acting as a woman. This
contrasts the men, who each say at least three words, but up to even a
paragraph. Importantly, this is followed by Johnny’s footnote of Thumper’s
voice being cut off, discussed previously. But it cannot be ignored that
Zampano is the author of the fictional tale of Karen’s compilations, meaning
that Zampano is the direct cause of the suppression of Karen, and the female
voice in general, here as he was elsewhere in The Navidson Record.
But
these instances of masculine domination could easily be missed, as was the case
of my initial reading. It was only upon listening to the companion musical album,
“Haunted”, that this aspect was brought to my attention. The general style of
the album as a whole contains a strong female lead vocalist (with mostly female
supporting vocals and echoes), and the female voice asserting dominance over
male voices and traits. The extreme feminism of “Haunted” is what brought my
attention to the male domination of House
of Leaves. Inspecting various tracks of “Haunted” reveals the numerous ways
in which the album supports an overthrow of male dominating voices.
As
the album begins with listeners learning, through the experimental track “Exploration
B”, about an absent mother, and a father who had just died (Poe
"Haunted"), representative of
Poe’s exact history (Poe "Poe
- Interview"). The first musical
track “Haunted” begins the trend of a feminine voice asserting dominance. The
commands of the track begin with “Come here, pretty please” but escalate to
“Come here, no I won’t say please. One more look at the ghost then I’m gonna
make it leave,” in a dominating voice (Poe
"Haunted"). The female voice of
the track is asserting dominance of the story, which would be representative of
Poe asserting dominance of telling her father’s story after he passed away.
This is emphasized with the following track, “Control”, in which the female
voice declares, in an aggressive tone, that she has taken control. The track
ends with sound clips of her father asserting that it is “comical in the idea
that we can impose our will upon humanity. Power corrupts,” (Poe
"Haunted"). Her father’s voice
is countering Poe’s control, yet the female voice remains in control to tell
her story. The introduction of the album is focused on a feminine overthrow for
control, which is a sentiment that numerous songs on the remainder of the song
will echo.
Track
“Walk the Walk” acts as a rebellious call to empower the feminine voice and
woman’s role. Stylistically, it has definite feel of country music and
alternative characteristics, genres fairly dominated by the male voice, and
focuses on woman independence from male control. The female voice attempts to
inspire women (evidence by the call of “Hey everybody”) to “walk to the beat of
[their] own drum” (Poe
"Haunted"). In the story of the
lyrics, Poe reveals that her mom had her dreams suppressed and her father was
the suppressor of creativity and aspirations. This track acts to rebel against
male suppression in both genres and the idea that men should be the half that
pursues their aspirations.
In
tracks like “Not a Virgin” and “Hey Pretty”, Poe takes this sentiment further
by demonstrating a gender role reversal with female voice in the position of
dominance demeaning and controlling a man. The female voice in “Hey Pretty” is
driving the car, typically the man’s role as the driver is in control, and
addressing her, presumably male companion as pretty. In “Not a Virgin,” the feminine narrator is
relatively proud and boastful about her sexual prowess. With the male
background literally suppressed in volume, she asserts her dominance over the
man with cockiness in her demand of hearing a true story (Poe
"Haunted"). She aggressively
disarms the power of demeaning women through “slut-shaming” as the track
asserts her sexuality. The song ends with the female voice apologizing to a
man, “Oh Sir, I’m sorry,” in an exasperated and sincere tone. But the context
of the song implies that this is mocking the idea of a woman having to
apologize. These two songs work effectively together to enforce the idea that
women should strive to become the dominant voice over anything that is
traditionally male-dominated.
However,
as the commercial world is not as open to a female dominating voice as the sentiment
of “Haunted” emphasize, Poe’s album was not received with general positivity.
Alternative radio wanted little to do with the female vocals of the album,
despite the popularity of her previously successful neo-feminist song “Angry
John” (Farber). Instead, the album
grew its fanbase through the new media of music dissemination, the internet,
and by touring bookstores with her brother Mark. It was after the base grew
that an Atlanta radio station began playing a remixed single of “Hey Pretty.”
This remixed song however was dominated by Poe’s vocals being voiced over by a
reading of the book from Danielewski (Farber;
Poe "Haunted"), literally
suppressing the female voice. A historical event like this is the exact
suppression that House of Leaves and
“Haunted” attempt to bring attention to.
The
importance of the overwhelmingly dominant female voice in “Haunted” is that is
draws attention to the domination by the male in House of Leaves. According to Herbert Marcuse, one of the most
important roles of art is to estrange the audience. He describes the
“estrangement effect” as “dissociation in which the world can be recognized as
it is,” (Marcuse). “Haunted”
effectively shocks listeners with an abrasive female voice, or as Poe puts
simply, “people are afraid of the angry woman thing,” (Poe "Poe
- Interview"). As a result of
this, readers like myself are able to grasp the extent that House of Leaves revolves around the
stories and struggles of men. The voices are men, the stories are about men,
and the men are in constant competition for control. But the estrangement goes
beyond just the two works. The brother-sister novel and album work to estrange
their audience of the condition of literature and art: Male-domination. Danielewski’s
book is so dominated by stories of masculinity because that is the inevitable
result of literature. While Danielewski’s own piece is layered with male
voices, the art and literature it references are also stories of men. From the
story of King Minos, to the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, to Don Quixote, to
philosopher Heidegger, House of Leave
redundantly references works about men and written by men. Though Danielewski
should hardly be faulted as suppressing the female voice and creativity has
been the trend of western culture for millennia. Though the condition has
gotten better for the creative woman, the long-term repression has given
advantage to the male voice, as important work over a few centuries old will
inevitably be voiced by a male. But even contemporary works tend to focus on
the masculine. Examining the scope of this course, Portal appears to be the
only work that was had pure female domination. While Neuromancer had a powerful female role and Frankenstein was a feminist-sympathetic book, each is superficially
voiced through a man. This is the case not only literature, but cinema, music,
and various other forms of art. “Haunted” and House of Leaves estrange the audience to this condition of the
creative world through their polarizing domination of opposite voices.
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