Cigarette Blues

In “The Weary Blues,” the piano player ends the poem by exercising power (even if it is questionable as to whether or not he actually possesses this power) in using the blues to take all the definition that enabled his suffering and deeply identifying with and comprehending this definition, rather than rejecting it.  In doing so, he becomes like a consuming black hole for this definition.  In being a black hole for this definition, he also becomes a bit of a black hole for the makers of this definition. 

It’s a bit like a man who smoked for years and finds himself on his deathbed because of the consequences of doing so.  If he accepts the definition the cigarette company has given him, he continues to be a bit of a “black hole” for the cigarette company – he’s allowing them to define his standard of living by buying their cigarettes – but the more cigarettes he smokes, the more the cigarette company depends on his connection to them for its livelihood.

Now, he could quit smoking.  But then he has a diminished connection to the cigarette company, which makes its existence depend a bit less on his own.  So what if, instead, he’s so incensed that he begins smoking cigarettes nonstop.  He harps and harps on the suffering of smoking, and he smokes drag after drag (kinda like the guy on Fast Food Nation, if you’ve seen that movie) to make his point.  He buys out the cigarette company.  He has the greatest connection to the cigarette company that he can manage, and the smoking kills him.  In his will, he states that he would like to be cremated – along with all of the cigarette company’s assets.  He wants his death to be as defined as possible by the cigarette company so that the cigarette company will increasingly depend on him for its own existence – and he went so far in that definition that he is able to equate his own death with that of the cigarette company.

Here’s the question:  Is this guy powerful?

Yeah, he’s dead.  But his death was powerful enough to destroy the defining powers of cigarette companies in a major way.  That event can become a “black hole” that absorbs the defining powers of not only the cigarette company he brought out, but also of cigarette companies on the periphery – especially for those who read newspaper headlines.

If anything can possess power, this man did.  But if power is a concept that is never really part of the individual, the least we can say is that this man exercised power – especially when he died.   And if we say that the man is not powerful because the cigarette company he destroys is not powerful, we are making a comment, not only about the man, but about the present power of anything or anyone whose defining forces can be torn down in a similar fashion.  In a sense, if such a man isn’t powerful, and a man, using the method cigarman used, could destroy almost any institution or defining power – then we are saying that these institutions  and defining powers themselves are not powerful.  This thought, however, is contrary to the way most of us think.

In looking at “The Weary Blues,” the blues become a way for the piano player to accept the definition that is making him suffer – to the point where he “can’t be satisfied.”  He takes all the definition and absorbs it into himself.  By comprehending his suffering he becomes the master of the sources of definition that enforce this suffering – similar to the way that, in comprehending his smoking habit, the smoker becomes the master of the cigarette company that is also the agent of his suffering. 

In the end of the poem, the agents who might have defined him before don’t have power to define his makeup as a person any more than they have the power to define a rock or a dead man.  He is dead to their definitions because he has resigned himself to them – similar to the way that cigarman dies to the definition of the cigarette company he intimately connected himself with.  But the difference is that the blues man is still alive.  His retreat into suffering causes the sources of definition that enforce this suffering to increasingly connect to and thus depend on him.  This dependence gives him more influence over the power of these sources, and this position of influence allows him to experience peace in comprehending his suffering instead of trying so hard to reject it.   The result is a peaceful sleep.  

If it helps you, the concept can be seen in the Bible:

Matthew 5:3-4  --  “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”

Matthew 20:16 -- “The last shall be first, and the first shall be last.”   

Matthew 23:11 – “He that is greatest among you will be your servant.”

Luke 9:24 – “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”

If you happen to be a Toaist, this is how the concept is put in Toa te Ching chapter 22:

“If you want to become full, let yourself be empty.
If you want to be reborn, let yourself die.
If you want to be given everything, give everything up.”

Now, the blues is usually discussed as an alternative to Christianity.  It’s basically Christianity without the last step.  It’s generally stated that instead of realizing your low state and repenting from it, the blues advocates realizing your low state and embracing it. 

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to write them!

For further reading:

Anderson, Paul Allen. Deep River: Music and Memory in Harlem Renaissance Thought. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2001.

Butler, Judith.  The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997.

Hogue, W. Lawrence.  The African American Male, Writing, and Difference. New York:  State U of New York , 2003.

Minh-Ha, Trinh.  When the Moon Waxes Red: Representation, Gender and Cultural Politics. New York, Routledge, 1991.

Whitted, Quiana J.  A God of Justice?: The Problem of Evil in Twentieth-Century Black Literature. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2009.

Clarification on "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow" discussion

I'm sorry -- I felt like I was being heinously unclear at the end of class, and part of the struggle was to respond in the short amount of time I had left -- things were said I wasn't anticipating that complicated what I intended to state a bit.

Here is what I was saying:

1.  There was a vested interest in keeping whites superior to blacks.
2.  There was the common thought that men were superior or more authoritative than women.
3.  When a man had sexual connection to a woman, it was seen as underlining the power of the man.
4.  When a white man had sexual contact with a black woman, the act could be seen as reasserting his authority over the black race by association, because he was white (and thus superior to blacks) as well as a man (and thus superior to women).  The superiority of masculinity reinforced the superiority of whiteness, and the superiority of his whiteness reinforced the superiority of his masculinity (read that a couple times if it is tough for you to get).  Thus, often black women got raped (as you see when the man was surprised the woman beat up by store ownwers wasn't raped) and it was no big deal -- it was whiteness and masculinity reinforcing their power over the inferiority of femininity/blackness. Interestingly, there is a lot of scholarship about attempts to "feminize" males that is related to this desire (ever seen the movie "White Chicks"?  Believe it or not, that's been part of the discussion).
5.  When a black man had sexual contact with a white woman, as the discussion of him looking at the white prostitute as well as numorous lynchings show, things were mixed up.  He was black (and was thus supposed to be inferior to the woman's whiteness) and a man (and thus supposed to be superior to the woman's womanhood -- I realize this small addition is just a bit contrary to what was said in class -- this is what I was trying to clarify).  The result, then, of such contact was frustration for many Southern whites.  This frustration occured because this contact got in the way of attempts to simultaneously uplift belief in the superiority of manhood and support belief in the inferiority of blackness.  Thus, Southern whites often went to great lengths to seperate black men and white women and harshly punished black men who did not seperate themselves  from white women (often, the women were punished less severely or not at all -- they were, after all, much weaker than the black man).  Often, to admit the man's superior power but make it OK to seperate him from the woman or kill him, the black man was seen as powerful but not fully human, or as a beastlike "monster."
7.  Although this practice of keeping black men away from white women might seem to make a white woman superior, the reality is that this seperation was only necessary to keep the illusion of superior masculinity and inferior femininity, as well as the illusion of superior whiteness and inferior blackness, intact.  White women were kept from black men because many thought their femininity was an inferior quality, not because they thought it was a superior quality (you can read that twice if you don't get it).
8.  Because masculinity depends on the definition of femininity, this divide was also there to keep in place the illusion that black masculinity was inferior to white masculinity.  This is important because, oftentimes, we seperate issues of race and gender, just as they tried to do then by trying to ensure that sexual acts between men and women didn't violate raced or gendered lines that would confuse the hierarchies.
9.  This is also important because it shows gender played into issues of race, and vice versa -- it isn't always healthy to seperate the two.
10.  It may be partially true that white women could use this position as a position of power in some circumstances, but it is also true that this power only existed because of the fear connected to the conviction that women, in general, were weaker, less authoritative, and more vulnerable than men.  So by asserting that power they would, paradoxically, be reinforcing that stereotype of inferiority and weakness.

It was difficult trying to cram all that clearly into 2-3 minutes, but hopefully that's clear. Feel free to comment.