In the beginning of Paul Beatty's novel, The White Boy Shuffle, the main character grows up in a extremely male dominated and hetronormative, in many ways, inner city society. In this context the narrator Gunnar Kaufman, must observe how that clashes with some of the obvious contradictions.
In the beginning of the book Gunnar talks about the different colors and what they mean to him and while ending the section about the color black he says that, "Black is the repressed memory of a sandpaper hand rubbing abrasive circles into the small of my back, my back rising and falling in time with the heavy heaving chest." This section talks about the abuse that he suffered at the hands of his father, and this section in particular talks about his father raping him and shoving him into a closet. The normally absent father figure taking away the son's sense of safety and power and by both closeting himself, by not being openly gay, and by actually putting the son who he is raping in the closet, is extremely powerful.
When the music video is being shot Gunnar and his mother have an exchange about homoeroticism that this video, as well as the social setting that Gunnar is interacting in. Gunnar starts to question why his more socially accepted peers talk in such a fashion. I think his mother's comment about the homeroticism in the music video is just pointing out something that can trickle down into younger members of the society's ideas about the difference in being seen as a dominant male and that dominance having to be over "lesser" men.
And when Gunnar begins to hang out with Nicholas Scoby and Scoby is giving him a hard time about his love of poetry Scoby says, "you must either be a poet or a homosexual," and Gunnar replies "Why can't I be both?" This back and forth fits the style that is set forth in this novel where Gunnar is being humorous and a smartass but he is also making a social commentary. In a world where it is completely acceptable to be a basketball player, a gangster, and a poet, where would being a homosexual fit in?
In the beginning of the book Gunnar talks about the different colors and what they mean to him and while ending the section about the color black he says that, "Black is the repressed memory of a sandpaper hand rubbing abrasive circles into the small of my back, my back rising and falling in time with the heavy heaving chest." This section talks about the abuse that he suffered at the hands of his father, and this section in particular talks about his father raping him and shoving him into a closet. The normally absent father figure taking away the son's sense of safety and power and by both closeting himself, by not being openly gay, and by actually putting the son who he is raping in the closet, is extremely powerful.
When the music video is being shot Gunnar and his mother have an exchange about homoeroticism that this video, as well as the social setting that Gunnar is interacting in. Gunnar starts to question why his more socially accepted peers talk in such a fashion. I think his mother's comment about the homeroticism in the music video is just pointing out something that can trickle down into younger members of the society's ideas about the difference in being seen as a dominant male and that dominance having to be over "lesser" men.
And when Gunnar begins to hang out with Nicholas Scoby and Scoby is giving him a hard time about his love of poetry Scoby says, "you must either be a poet or a homosexual," and Gunnar replies "Why can't I be both?" This back and forth fits the style that is set forth in this novel where Gunnar is being humorous and a smartass but he is also making a social commentary. In a world where it is completely acceptable to be a basketball player, a gangster, and a poet, where would being a homosexual fit in?
It doesn't seem completely clear to me that the brief, disturbing passage in the "Black" section is explicitly charging that his father sexually abused him (it could be a metaphor and not a literal experience; it could be another older male relative, or just another older male). But it is certainly suggested strongly, and it would go a long way to account for Gunnar's strong feelings against his father, and their near-total alienation (which doesn't seem to be his father's fault alone; they still live in the same city), as he grows up. And note that the last time we see his father (aside from when he's hovering in the helicopter), he's beating his son Rodney-King-style in a parking lot, denouncing him as "not a Kaufman."
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