From my daughter Anna, who is almost 5:
“Mama, aren’t you glad we got you something good for Mother’s Day and not something bad, like a bomb, or poop?”
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From my daughter Anna, who is almost 5:
“Mama, aren’t you glad we got you something good for Mother’s Day and not something bad, like a bomb, or poop?”
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*GUFFAW*
A keeper.
Rae
ROFL
What is the holiday for which it is some sort of Johnson family custom to give bombs or poop as gifts? After all, where else would a girl get that sort of idea?
And have you stopped beating your wife yet?
Concerning Victor’s question, I have a guess (all that follows is part of that guess): October 1st. That would be History’s Greatest Monster day (formerly known as Jimmy Carter’s birthday) on which dog poop, to represent the Carter economy, and foreign-made bombs, to represent our insecurity during his administration, are presented to an effigy of Jimmy Carter before it is burned in the Johnsons’ back yard. It’s sort of like Guy Fawkes day, except that it’s for Simpsons-watching political Right-wingers and can include Catholics (though it doesn’t require it). So far only the Johnsons celebrate it, but the number of other people celebrating History’s greatest monster day is expected to triple every year.
You should offer a $10 reward to any post-modern literary critic who can demonstrate that Anna’s quote will mean something different from what it meant to Anna, to readers 1,000 years from now ;)
grateful:
Oh, that’s too easy.
First of all, your phallocentric submission to the Master(,) Discourse carries the assumption that “what it meant to Anna” is something that does not always already exist in the realm of the free play of meaning. In other words, it isn’t Father Time that over/throws meaning, but the immediacy of Temporality, which undermines “author’s intent” and other spectres from the naive Fathers metaphysics and the unified self.
As for where Anna’s utterance enters the free play of meaning, consider what “aren’t you glad” means. This is commonly used as a congratulatory, but it also is used as a threat. The very fact that the “threat” meaning requires undercurrent and tone and uses irony — this makes the phrase “aren’t you glad” a specific hinge, one pregnant with meaning that allows deconstruction of the utterance. That Anna is uttering an implicit threat to the Mother is supported by its either-or construction with the implied threat upon the “or” — poop or bombs.
Anna is thus reinforcing “Mama’s” subordinate, silenced position within the patriarchal household, reminding her of her implicit fate — we can give you something good, or blow you up and cover you with merde. Relevant to this construction is Eric’s nonanswer to the wife-beating question, meaning that patriarchal violence is a permanent and continuing feature of the Johnson household. Anna has learned and absorbed the patriarchal conditioning under the thumb of the Marine trained-killer Patriarch and is reminding “Mama” of this. Whether this is in the form of a taunt or the form of a scared warning is not known from the utterance, further throwing its “meaning” into undecidability and permanently floating it in the arena of the free play of meaning, (n)either one (n)or the other.
So when do I get my 10 bucks???
The check is in the mail!