Becoming a Bad Listener: Labyrinthitis, Vertigo, and “Passing”
For the past three weeks I have been sick with labyrinthitis. It started with a bout of vertigo while picking up some essentials at a local pharmacy and has since recurred in various other locations. In the morning, when I stroll for coffee, it feels like I am walking a tightrope. Shelves after shelves of boxes at a local store have made the world spin. A determined trip to Manhattan (for a friend’s film release) quickly transformed into an incomprehensible blur of light and sound. Because of this lapse in cognition I have found myself listening to the world, and my body, in fascinating (although frustrating) new ways. The most frightening moments of vertigo I experienced have followed moments of both visual and audio overload. When I can no longer understand what I hear, panic is sure to follow. Worst of all, even though negotiating my day-to-day responsibilities has become a trial in patience, to most observers, I seem perfectly fine. I have decided to share these experiences because of how well they inform the ways that sound, specifically the practice of listening, informs the process of “passing” as normal in everyday life.
Labyrinthitis is often related to an inner ear infection. When the series of canals within the ear are damaged, a sense of balance is lost. This lack of balance completely skews all visual cues: things look blurry, there is an unsteadiness to things (as if on a boat), bright and flashing lights are extremely distracting . . .imagine being drunk, but with none of the perks. Another symptom of labyrinthitis is an occasional ringing in the ear. For me, this ringing is at its worst when I am trying to focus on a conversation in an environment with lots of ambient noise. For instance, if I try to hold a conversation while walking down the street and several cars pass by, the ringing will begin to overwhelm both the cars and the conversation. It’s like my brain is dialing back the volume of all the sounds around me. As mentioned earlier this is the most terrifying of all the symptoms that I experience – it feels, uncannily, like I am waking from a dream.
One labyrinthitis support site suggested that prolonged coping with the above symptoms in everyday life is, perhaps, the most difficult part of recovery. In an interesting twist they drew on sociologist Erving Goffman’s 1963 work Stigma to support this claim, “An individual carries a stigma if s/he is unable for any reason to fulfil society’s sterotypic criteria for normality – if this deviation is obvious (eg: physical deformity) the person is at once ‘discredited’. Failings that are less obvious or may be concealed (eg: vestibular problems) render the individual ‘discreditable’ in the sense that his/her identity is vulnerable. Whereas a discredited person must adopt a stigmatised identity – a discreditable individual may prefer the effort and risks attached to trying to ‘pass’ as normal to the frank stigma of admitting the attribute.” Has labyrinthitis rendered me discreditable? Although it is tempting to critique the armchair diagnosis above, I believe that it is a valuable basis for theoretical inquiry. What are the risks of acquiring the stigma of vestibular problems? In other words: do I choose to reveal my illness tactically?
Surely, as this blog post attests, I am not too frightened by the stigma of revealing my illness. It is likely to pass in the next few months and I assume that most of our readers are not particularly judgmental. I am scared, however; when I lose track of conversations. Sometimes even to the point that I choose, as Goffman suggests, to “pass” and keep my lapse of understanding secret. As the ringing in my ear grows: I will often keep quiet, smile, and nod my head. There have been several times in recent memory that I have even forced a chuckle, or a short, daft, answer. Often these replies are deliberately vague, peppered with just enough key words to convince my companion that I was listening. At these times, in my head, I am lost – reeling with confusion. I’m trying to figure out where I am (what street is this, how can I get home quickly?), what has triggered this confusion (is it the noises behind me, or the lights ahead?), and if there is cause to be concerned (is this business as usual, or am I about to faint?). I want, at these moments, to “pass” as normal because I am scared of becoming too much of a burden to those around me. My Achilles’ heel in these situations is contingent on my ability to listen, passing, at least, as a good listener.
The sense of stigma I imagine, as a bad listener, is infinitely worse than the sense of stigma I could accrue as a sick individual. Goffman, in 1963, had been writing in a late Fordist economy. As such, the stigma of illness related more to physical labor than one’s ability to socialize and fit in. In these context of illness could suggest an inability to produce; the diseased body set apart from all others. As immaterial and affective labor become valorized in new ways, stigma comes to relate to the inter-social processes of control that form the new societal knot. Chief among these stigmas, for myself at least, is the inability to listen. Listening cues others in to how well one is able to socialize, participate, and contribute to a tight web of everyday activities. When I cannot listen, yes, I am vulnerable. I am vulnerable, mostly, because I am suddenly and inexplicably alone.
The worst part of becoming a bad listener is recognizing how very little is required in a conversational exchange. As noted earlier, vagaries and key words are, for the most part, sufficient. Is there a final irony here, while my ability to listen to and understand others is diminished has my ability to listen to and understand myself increased? Many have argued that mimesis, or imitation, is, in fact, central to the way people communicate. “The whole of human culture,” according to Anna Gibbs, “then, is, perhaps, predicated on imitation, in which difference and innovation are as central as reproduction and similarity” (p.202). This notion sends eerie chills up my spine. Bad listening, is, from this perspective, simply an alternative mode of identity. Words come in through the ear, rattle around for a bit in the brain, and then come out of the mouth with sparse changes and a different order. Where difference and innovation can be considered the bi-products of good listening, reproduction and similarity stem from bad listening.
Perhaps bad listening is not all that bad. Gibbs also suggests that mimetic communication, “is the cement of parent-child, peer, friendship, and love relations” (p. 202). When “passing” for normal, I shift gears. I use my listening instincts to further a set of affective and emotional bonds which are equally important to my everyday life. Listening is central to “passing,” but there is a fine distinction between modes of listening. Listening analytically is the practice of listening in order to decipher, decrypt, suggest and parse new ideas from a statement or song. Listening affectively is, then, the binary. Not a mode which drives conversations, and/or innovates, but one which actively seeks to create bonds of comfort, compassion, and support. Listening for timbre, tone, and vibe instead of composition, consistency and argument.
AT
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Hearing Queerly: NBC’s “The Voice”
“Brittany and Santana Lesbian Kissing Scene from Glee” by Flickr user LesMedia available under Creative Commons license 2.0
Tuesday, April 26, 2011 turned out to be a red-letter day for prime time Sapphism. The Fox smash, Glee, continued its hamfisted campaign against teen bullying with a subplot about the label-averse Santana scheming to bring her lesbian (or “Lebanese”) love for Britney to fruition. Airing opposite this “Born This Way”-anchored, supersized Glee, was the debut of the vocal reality competition series, The Voice on NBC. Remarkably, not one, but two out lesbians survived the first elimination round of the show’s blind auditions: Vicci Martinez from Tacoma, WA, and Beverly McClellan from Ft. Lauderdale, FL.
The Voice pitches itself as the democratic alternative to FOX’s American Idol. Whereas Idol’s early audition rounds derive considerable schadenfreude from oddball characters excluded from the expansive realm of what is deemed “pop hot”–remember Kenneth Briggs, the infamous “Bush Baby”?–The Voice eliminates looks altogether from the audition process, including the panel’s ability to look at the singers onstage. Seated in hydraulically-controlled swivel chairs evocative of Dr. Evil’s high-backed perch, the celebrity panel of coaches (not “judges”)–Christina Aguilera, Cee Lo Green, Adam Levine of Maroon 5, and country hunk, Blake Shelton–have their backs to the stage at the beginning of each performance. Only when the singer’s voice sufficiently moves a coach does he or she press a button to swing around and face the talent. If none of the four coaches turns around before the song ends, the singer is eliminated and sent away with only two-and-a-half glorious minutes on national TV as a consolation prize.
Vicci Martinez
While latter-day Idol has increasingly focused on the “total package,” sometimes excusing vocal defects for good looks, performance prowess, and passion (“I had fun with it” is the mantra of anyone who’s suffered a tepid response from the judges, and “you look great tonight” is what a judge says when someone biffs their vocals), The Voice purports to strip away the smoke and mirrors of performance—at least in the live selection process—in order to focus exclusively on vocal talent. Furthermore, as “coaches,” the celebrity panel is meant to cultivate talent rather than simply eviscerate bad performers for the audience’s amusement. As Cee Lo opines in the premiere episode: “it’s not about the judgment; it’s about the journey.” (Has reality competition taken a critical turn from the critical turn? But that’s another topic.) Idol has been explicitly called out on the show, from Adam Levine’s reassurance to dejected contestants that “The people we are not turning our chairs around for could win American Idol,” to the sensational rehashing, ad nauseum, of Frenchie Davis’s disqualification from the Idol competition for nude photos nearly a decade ago.
As the anti or alterna-Idol, The Voice–complete with kitschy, faux Futurist set pieces–would have us believe that truly anyone from anywhere could be a vocal superstar, whether they’re fat, thin, chinless, hirsute, gorgeous, hideous, straight, gay, Mormon, or dykey. The disparate optics offered by Vicci Martinez and Beverly McClellan, the two lesbians who won the celebrity panel over with their raw-throated rock vocals (right in the pocket of what we might call the Etheridgean mode), would seem to affirm the show’s “blind” ethos. Martinez’s audition was shot so that just like the coaches, the TV audience couldn’t see the singer until she was selected. In the package leading up to her performance, we are made privy to her coming out story, offered a glimpse of her skinny jeans and boots, and invited to “listen along with our coaches and see if you would pick Vicci Martinez.”
As it turns out, Martinez is quite a little hottie: a lesbian heartthrob in the making with a cute asymmetrical shag, winning smile and sensibly curated fashion (think PacNorthwest sportif meets urban hipster enclave).
McClellan, meanwhile, offers an “edgier” look that complements her ethos of fighting–in her own words–“against the man.”
TV audiences see McClellan before hearing her, creating some element of narrative suspense: we anxiously await “the reveal” should one of the coaches select McClellan for their team, only to swivel around to confront a bald, bad-ass dyke with ample tattoos, piercings and leather wrist accoutrement, chewing on Janis Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart” with barroom tenacity.
The queer blogosphere has certainly picked up on Martinez and McClellan’s success on the show. (As of this writing, Martinez has already advanced passed the “Battle Rounds” to the live shows where audience members are are allowed to vote). After Ellen and Unicorn Booty posted items immediately, encouraging queer audiences to tune in, while After Ellen followed up with extended interviews, first with Martinez, then with McClellan. Both were asked about whether or not the format of The Voice made it “easier” for queer contestants to succeed without being judged for their appearance. Martinez famously bowed out of the Hollywood rounds of American Idol because producers asked her to buy a new wardrobe (read, “femme up” a bit), so she offered a more affirmative response in line with The Voice’s own rhetoric of leveling the playing field. McLellan, meanwhile, offered a goofy “one love” answer to the question, evoking a universal vibe of human generosity. Different as their public temperaments may be, both have been praised for amplifying lesbian visibility on network television.
Levine listens to McClellan on
Though some robust, “score two for the team” chest-bumping is surely in order after the success of these Sapphic sirens, how might we actually move past the greater frenzy for queer visibility to better grasp how lesbianism fits, or inevitably fails to fit, within the pop landscape? In other words, what would happen if we weren’t so quick to celebrate these “aren’t-we-GLAAD?” moments of prime time visibility, but instead took to heart The Voice’s premise about prioritizing listening?
Throughout the institutional life of queer studies, debates about lesbian visibility have unfurled in elaborate fugue-like variations. Rather than rehash them here, allow me to commit the theoretical heresy of constructing a binary in order to highlight some key positions. In the “real” world of mainstream LGBTQIA organizations and cultural producers, quantifying positive representations of queer folk qualifies as measuring progress. The more gays and lesbians we see on screens big and small, the logic goes, the better the world gets. In the more rarified realms of queer theory (my own habitat), this desire for representation and belonging calls forth the very crisis inherent in politicizing visibility as an end in itself. Film and media scholar, Amy Villarejo, explains this dynamic best when she remarks in Lesbian Rule that “the common sense of visibility is that it does both [parlays representation’s double meaning as ‘portrait’ and ‘proxy]: by appearing, so it would go, we belong…[but]…to present lesbian as image is to arrest the dynamism such a signifier can trigger” (14).
What, then, would be the sonic dynamism of lesbianism? Is it a transformative “grammar” that modifies the terms with which it becomes intimate? (Villarejo explores this possibility in her book.) Is it in the grain of a voice?
Far be it from me to theorize the “butch throat” here, as my dear pal and colleague Elena Glasberg already has with more eloquence and profundity than my mind can muster these days; but even if we hadn’t been primed by the show’s intro packages, might we not have heard the lesbianism in Martinez and McClellan’s throats? In their urgent, tremulous and toothsome strivings through the repertoires of “fierce females” like Adele and Janis Joplin?
There is something marked, and remarkable, in the yearning and temporal drag (see Elizabeth Freeman’s work) modeled by Martinez and McClellan’s respective vocalities, voices that could only break the surface in a format that (at least initially), thwarts the edicts of visibility: of fashion, generic niches, and the avant sensibility demanded by pop. Instead of being one step ahead, Martinez and McClellan constantly pull us back to something we’ve heard before, often in a half-empty bar that reeks of Bud and Marlboros (both Light). And for letting us hear this again, I’m willing to give The Voice the benefit of the doubt, despite its unwieldy format, liberal use of Carson Daly, and trumped up feud between Adam Levine and the real Xtina. Just maybe in this singing competition’s overdetermined relationship to blindness, we will find enough insight to hear queerly.
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