I grew up in New Orleans, LA. It used to be that before August 29, 2005 there were two questions I would get asked repeatedly when people outside the South found this out:
1.Have you ever been to *the* Mardi Gras?
2. How come you don’t have an accent?
Since Hurricane Katrina, a third question--were you or your family/friends affected by the storm?-- has pretty much crowded both of the others out. The answers:
1.You can’t grow up in New Orleans and not go to Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras is not a *place.* It is an entire season of parades and parties that takes over the city from the Twelfth Day of Christmas to the Day before Lent (Mardi Gras proper, which is a public holiday). Yes, I have been to Mardi Gras. Many, many times.
2. My parents aren’t from the South. You mostly learn to speak by copying the voices you hear around you. Also, the New Orleans “accent” is pretty different from what most non-Southerners think of as a “Southern accent.” In fact, there are many different kinds of Southern accents.
3.Yes.
In the chapter “The Perfect Voice” from Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream, Carl Elliott notes that “Southerners have a complicated relationship with their accents, a complex mixture of pride and shame and fierce defensiveness” (4). My lack of a Southern accent has actually caused me as much anxiety and sadness as many other Southerners’ possessions of them. I can fake an accent for you, but it’s just that: a fake. Does this make me a “fake” Southerner? There are times when I do pick up an accent, though. When I go home and spend time with friends I will start to do certain things with my vowels, and let me tell you: those things I do with my vowels make me very, very happy. I feel more like myself, more at home both literally and figuratively when I am connecting to that grittier, swampier way of talking. I inevitably use “y’all” a great deal more than I do outside the South. In fact, to say “you guys” in New Orleans would just feel wrong. I don’t want anyone there to think I am a Yankee. I was born and raised in the Big Easy, thank you very much!!! As Elliott writes, “identity always depends on the recognition by others” (20). I feel a sense of belonging when I am among my friends in New Orleans yatting away. Elliott describes voice in this sense as “a mechanism by which people demonstrate their solidarity with others who share their identity” (12).
Perhaps it was this sense of solidarity that Hillary Clinton was hoping to invoke on one of her campaign stops in Selma, Alabama. Clinton’s visit received a lot of press because it was suggested that she adopted a Southern accent to try to connect more with potential Southern voters. But what was so supposedly inauthentic or, worse, manipulative about what Clinton did? After all, she lived in Arkansas for many years. Maybe she, like me, just felt good being back in the South and was moved to speak more emphatically as a former Southerner?
Consider this contrasting example. In this video, a self-described "Redneck Gay Man" introduces himself. He’s planning on posting some more YouTube videos, but first he wants to get one thing out of the way. He wants us to know that this is his North Carolina accent. He notes that some people love it and others make fun of it, but, either way, it is here to stay. He says, “I can’t change it; this is who I am.” But then later in the video he concludes, “my accent doesn’t make me who I am, but it is a part of me. So please overlook it.” In the course of less than two minutes his accent goes from being an unchangeable “who I am” to just “part of me.” That inconsistency along with his request that we “overlook” the accent testifies to how complicated a matter it is, both for him and for us (his disclosure of his sexual orientation, furthermore, brings up a host of other questions that I won’t get into right now).
These contrasting examples get to the heart of Elliott’s question about voice. Is accent or voice just an incidental, malleable feature of identity? If this were the case, we might all wake each morning and decide which accent to put on just like we decide which shirt to wear. Yet we instinctually react against people we think are affecting an accent (or affecting anything really--think of Dr. Mistry) as untrustworthy. We value authenticity and consistency as a way to know where we fit and how to treat one another. So is it possible that accent/voice is a more central aspect of our sense of self than we might realize? As Elliott writes, “I suspect that the thought that an accent is incidental to identity would occur mainly to people who have never had attention called to their own” (9).
That so many people would work so hard to change the way they speak says much about the centrality of voice in self-representation. Elliot details the grueling effort non-native English speakers will put into sounding more “American,” the ambivalent project some Southerners will take on to lessen their accent for professional gain, and the huge sacrifices, both temporal and surgical, male-to-female transexuals will make in the name of passing. Accent reduction and voice modification are tedious undertakings that require commitment, consistency, and often a fair amount of money. If it’s so hard to change, why would anyone put themselves through that? Maybe the voice is simply the voice, like the "body is the body," natural and immutable. And yet we can change it.
The two advertisements above illustrate the issues at stake in accent reduction. The first promises the non-native speaker acceptance and success at work. We see two blurry white co-workers in the background. They are gazing at the subject of the advertisement and perhaps reassessing her value. Who wouldn't want more success and acceptance? But is it possible that something valuable is lost in this transaction? The second ad highlights the essential performativity of the voice. This ad for "Reel English" is aimed at actors and other performers. These individuals make a living (or attempt to) out of pretending to be people other than themselves. Though we as an audience are theoretically aware of the con act and rely on it for entertainment, we rarely apply its lessons to our own lives.
Elliott frames this paradox as the “tension between the natural and the artificial, or more broadly, between what is given and what is created” (2). Later in the chapter he reframes it as the distinction between “mutable self-presentation,” on the one hand, and an “enduring inner self”on the other(20-21). The self is given, while self-presentation is created. But, as we have already seen, it is not that simple. Elliott is very interested in the characteristically American nature of pursuits like accent reduction. An Englishman, he notes, would not think of changing his accent. This is because the English use accent to determine class. Yet Americans supposedly transcended class when we severed ties with the Motherland. Instead, Americans are obsessed with status (10). Class, Elliott points out, can’t be changed, but status can. A Southerner who sounds more like a Northerner, an immigrant who sounds like a natural born citizen, and a male-to-female transexual who sounds like a biological woman can all take advantage of certain perks to their new status (respect, perhaps a bit more money, and no threat of bodily harm). But are they somehow fundamentally altering who they are? Elliott draws our attention to the “paradoxical way in which a person can see an enhancement technology as a way to achieve a more authentic self, even as the technology dramatically alters his or her identity” (xxi).
In “Brain Gain: The Underground World of ‘Neuroenhancing Drugs,’” Margaret Talbot investigates the rising popularity of using certain “neuroenhancing” drugs like Adderall and modafinil outside the framework of therapeutic medical treatment (and often outside the boundaries of the law) to give a competitive boost in school or work. She refers to this practice as “cosmetic neurology,” after the term coined by Anjan Chatterjee (3). We might ask: If it is merely cosmetic, then what is the harm? Yet later she calls it “mind hacking”(10). Is it possible that something more sinister is going on here? Are we trying to turn our brains into computers? Talbot notes that, in tests, neuroenhancers tend to mostly improve ability to focus and sustain fairly mundane cognitive tasks (6-8). They have yet to be shown to have positive effects on “more flexible kinds of thought” (8). In fact, there is some evidence that there may actually be “a trade-off between attentional focus and creativity” (ibid). As Talbot points out, “it’s not the mind-expanding sixties anymore” (11). Rather than freeing our minds with LSD, we seem to be more interested in constraining and disciplining them with Adderall.
What kind of future can we envision on Adderall or other neuroenhancers? The genre of Science Fiction has been imagining precisely that future for quite awhile. Science Fiction asks about the nature of humanity by considering the possibility of aliens in the same way that anthropology asks what makes a culture distinctive by studying other cultures. I must admit that, like many Science Fiction writers, I am curious and troubled by the prospect of a dystopian, “transhumanist” future in which we have tinkered so much with our brains and bodies that we have become soulless machines (10). To me the risk seems to be less about “personalization” or “customization” of the brain in the way that those using neuroenhancers frame it than standardization.
But, wait, aren’t we actually just experimenting with our bodies and minds the way they did in the sixties after all? Isn’t that a good thing? We are empowering ourselves to be the masters of our own destiny. Elliott suggests that American “impatience with moral authority has given way to an embrace of technical expertise”(xxi). But the expertise is also seen as our own. It’s “old-fashioned, American-style self-improvement” (Elliott, 13). There’s a saying in New Orleans: “laissez les bons temps rouler!” Let the good times roll. Isn’t that all we’re really doing, embracing the best life possible?
Yes and no. Talbot suggests that, the way they are used now, neuroenhancers seem to simply give an extra boost to those who already possess certain socioeconomic and educational privileges. But, she conjectures, one day they could be used to help level out the playing field by giving them to those who are less advantaged (8). While I most certainly agree that the field needs to be leveled, I think this is a hideous and unimaginative way to do it. In the process of trying to be the best we seem to be pursuing being the same, dropping all the idiosyncrasies, imperfections and wonderfully diverse qualities that make us human. We seem to be pathologizing humanity itself! I am, indeed, worried about a “homogenous cultural landscape, stripped of character and diversity, where everyone dreams the same dreams and aspires to identical futures” (Elliott, xix).
The tension between conformity and rebellion is a central element of the American psyche, according to Elliott. You might think changing your voice or accent is a pretty innocuous thing compared with tinkering with your brain itself. Yet, as Elliott notes with regard to a feminist challenge to the kind of voice changes male-to-female transexuals pursue,“the point...is not to challenge stereotypes...the point is to become a stereotype” (23). Being Americans, we are fond of invoking our individual rights. We should have the right to do whatever we deem necessary for "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." I suppose I find it a little ironic, though, that we invoke our individual rights to all be the same. What would the country and the world be like if all of us, Southerners and South Asians and those from South of the Border and those whose voices “naturally” but rather inconveniently fall in the Southern reaches of the register sounded or looked or thought the same? This brings me back to one of Elliott’s first questions: “whether enhancement technologies [are] a form of liberation or self-betrayal, whether [they] help people change themselves or help them discover who they really are” (4).
Because he has been in the news as well as on my iTunes playlist a lot lately, I want to conclude by mentioning Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson straddled many lines in his very public life: man and woman, black and white, child and man. I doubt he considered his personality a laboratory for American anxieties, but it most certainly was. Jackson noted that he always wished he could just live on the stage because that is where he felt most comfortable. His discomfort in his skin and his fierce desire to be loved led him to do many things that have since been characterized as selfish, crazy or freakish (I am not talking about the charges of pedophilia here). But really he was much like the rest of us. But he never really had a childhood. He had to grow up in the spotlight. It is possible that, for him, there wasn’t much of a “gap between self and self-presentation” (Elliott, 3). Jackson, it seems to me, wanted desperately to be himself, but he didn’t really know who that was.
In his beautiful anthem "Man in the Mirror" Jackson informs us:
I’m starting with the man in mirror
I’m asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make that change
The video for the song features footage of malnutritioned children, protesting citizens, war, devastation as well as the familiar visages of some phenomenal individuals who sought to combat inequality and injustice: Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, John F. Kennedy, Mother Theresa. It seems to me that this song and video provide a challenge to the dystopian vision of a world of formal but sterile, homogenous equality. The change that Jackson proposes is not a change to his physical body, brain or voice (though he arguably changed much about these) but a change in his way of thinking and engaging with the world. As Elliott writes, “maybe it’s wrong-footed trying to fit people into the world, rather than trying to make the world a better place for people” (9). I would say that it is. "The question is not just whether there is any moral cost to the quest to become better, but whether there is any moral cost to the quest to become different" (27).
Like the image of a fleur de lis (a uniting symbol for New Orleanians both before and even more after Katrina) at the very top of this post, our identities are made up of many different and unique features that come together to make a meaningful whole. Each piece is important. I am not suggesting that we should never seek to change any of the pieces (our voice, our nose, our sexual organs, our cognitive abilities), but we should ask why we feel the compulsion to change and whether, in the pursuit of being the best or being accepted, we are losing something singularly precious.
Works Cited
Elliott, Carl. Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2003. Pp. XV-XXI, 1-27.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yat_dialect
Talbot, Margaret. “Brain Gain: The Underground World of ‘Neuroenhancing Drugs.’” The New Yorker, April 27, 2009.
Images and Video Links (In Order of Appearance in Text):
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAAyaJy9FTutfwmeIXvlHD3BsJe1LkYCLEQAdllXuLPnUKaeLlfmCSxs69O1jj5x5aMnNLvifd5a1eL_gk9DcVB2VDU46bZBpEm3PpKK6kq9slSKxzk-eQcBWEnEKZdIJQvvTdpi4fzNoG/s400/Steves+Fleur+De+Lis.jpg&imgrefurl=http://moonlightfan.blogspot.com/2007/11/images-and-little-history-of-fleur-de.html&usg=__GOgewM7gZnIteVnfyJoxS4hglgY=&h=400&w=361&sz=41&hl=en&start=55&tbnid=OKiFQxOcoloNLM:&tbnh=124&tbnw=112&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dfleur%2Bde%2Blis%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26start%3D40
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaDQ1vIuvZI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWIjyDTfnAU
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://imagesc.backpage.com/centralimages/nyc/7f/7fab2551aaba485bb59d3e0c5bfd0516--1--GlobalSpeechSolutionsjpg--medium.jpg&imgrefurl=http://villagevoice.backpage.com/Classes/accent_reduction/classifieds/ViewAd%3Foid%3D5763279&usg=__yp7dUNbDGP3BrGr410Nuw6-tYbo=&h=333&w=200&sz=16&hl=en&start=95&tbnid=98mkCDF-bzIMjM:&tbnh=119&tbnw=71&prev=/images%3Fq%3Daccent%2Breduction%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26start%3D80
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://web-design-for-actors.com/wp-content/uploads/los-angeles-accent-reduction-coach.jpg&imgrefurl=http://web-design-for-actors.com/actor-websites-for-actors/&usg=__oNIBmTQ4QFWw5QAy7sohbDkTzJ0=&h=300&w=600&sz=73&hl=en&start=8&tbnid=kLYytc3-WXY3iM:&tbnh=68&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3Daccent%2Breduction%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtGD6t75HS8
No comments:
Post a Comment