Welcome to this week's brain-liquefying word stew: Performativity! Whoo-hoo! Or, if you're in the same place I've been in the last few days: Whoo-huh?
I feel like I've written several different drafts of this post in my head and each time I mentally erase them because I'm stuck. That's right, inter-web people, I am intellectually outmatched by the likes of Judith Butler and J. L. Austin. Don't even get me started on that Derrida dude. However, in the interest of fulfilling my weekly word output (have I hit 500 yet?? No? How 'bout now? Still no? Grrr) I will push forward and drag you all with me. Below find all of the ideas I had, then discarded, then came back to.
My first offering is the sage advice of the most interesting man in the world:
The performative phrase here is, "Stay thirsty." Our silver-foxy friend is ordering us to remain in a state of under-hydration. He is attempting to create the reality of our needing a drink by ordering us to require one. What makes this statement infelicitous is that actually has no control whatsoever over how thirsty we may or may not be. And the ironic element is that he is in fact a shill for the beer company Dos Equis. Which I guess isn't ironic at all because, to him, his statement is completely happy and felicitous. He wants us thirsty because he can help. He has the solution! And the solution is beer. (Bonus word play: is it me or does Dos Equis sound like the Spanish Language sequel to a Peter Shaffer play? Think about it. You're welcome.)
Offering number two comes to you in the form of one of the more banal and terrible movies of the last few years:
The performative utterance in this gem of a movie is " I now pronounce you Chuck & Larry." Someone, somewhere, has decided they have the authority to marry these two bozos. (Full disclosure, I couldn't bring myself to actually watch this movie. But here's a link to the synopsis, should you care...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Now_Pronounce_You_Chuck_%26_Larry
Anyway. The performative quality would be marrying the two guys. Where the movie people are messing with our sense of tradition is that they are taking a well known phrase: "I now pronounce you...,"and instead of concluding it the "traditional" way, i.e. "Man & Wife," they are concluding with "...Chuck & Larry." The irony being that the person asserting the authority presumably isn't actually naming them Chuck & Larry, but marrying them. So on several levels the poster is tweaking our expectations of the phrase "I now pronounce you" along with our expectation of who will be getting married. In this instance, too goofball firefighters trying to skirt the system by getting married.
Finally, I've struggled with how the idea of a tweaked or queered interpretation of a performative phrase isn't simply satire or parody? Like, if the person uttering the utterance knows that it will be interpreted in a way that goes against the traditional interpretation, is that not parody at it's basest level? In that vein, my final offering comes to you from the well-warped and satirical mind of Mel Brooks...
If you click on the above link it will take you to a longer version of the scene, where we see the president literally tell them, "Comb the desert!" Cut to these guys in the desert...you get the joke. But it seems like a good example of how performative utterances can, in the hands of a genius such as Mel Brooks, become instant fodder for humor. It's a fairly mundane and well-known idiom. And Brooks tweaks our expectation by taking it literally and playing it out as such. The extra layer of course, is the third group of men being black men using an Afro-pick. It plays on our preconceptions of culture to get the laugh, but there really isn't a bar too low when speaking about Spaceballs.
And that's all I got for you. Check back next week, if only to see if I've dragged myself back to a level of semi-literate discussion. Until then, I leave you with of the more famous and gag-inducing performative utterances of the last two years:
Firstly, yes to "Whoo-huh?"
ReplyDeleteSecondly, since confession is allegedly good for the soul, I must share that as a child of the 80s I guiltily love Spaceballs in a part of my heart hidden deep, far, and away from the public view. Annnnd the thumbnail of the movie clip totally drew me into your post.
Most importantly, I totally appreciated your performative utterance musings. I thought about Austin's discussion of Felicity Conditions and how performatives rely on context and reception in order to be carried out. Because they must be clear, able to be executed, authoritative and understood, not all statements can fall under this category. "I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry" doesn't quite seem to cut it by Austin's definition.
As you highlighted, when cleverly arranged, a play on words within a performative utterance can definitely be humorous. I think that's because of the chameleon nature of statements to begin with. While definite rules exist, language is so rich and malleable. Fun to play with. Cheers to more words next week!