Susan Clements, “Matinee” UA 73-74.

Reader: Geri Spratlin

Respondent: Kirby Johnson            Recorder: Adelaide Socki

Biographical Information:

            Susan Clements was born in 1950 in Livingston Manor, New York. She attended Binghamton University.  She writes both stories and poetry with and “interweaving of Indian Themes (Internet).”  In 1993, she was awarded the New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. She has written two books: The Broken Hoop and In the moon when deer lose their horns. (Source: “Native American Authors Project.” The Internet Library. 01 Nov. 2002. http://www.ipl.org.ar/cgi/ref/native/browe.pl//A65.)

Objectives illustrated:   

5a. The power of poetry and fiction . . .

4a. To identify the “new” American who crosses, combines, confuses. . .

            3b. Native American Indian alternative narrative:“Loss and Survival”

5e. To emphasize how all speakers and writers may use common devices of human language to make poetry. . .

1c. To observe alternative identities and literary strategies developed by minority cultures to gain voice and choice:Double language (same words, different meanings to different audiences)

I observed in this piece the embodiment of five of the course objectives.  All of the works we study fall under Objective 5a—‘to discover the power of poetry and fiction to help “others” hear the minority voice and vicariously share the minority experience.’  In this case a Native American child experiencing a 50s-style “cowboy and Indian” movie. 

            The thematic elements in this poem, in particular, embody three other objectives.  The anthology itself is thematically organized into four divisions. The section in which “Matinee” is located is entitled Performing, which, according to editor Jennifer Gillan, contains, “. .the representation and performance of American identity. .” or what the syllabus calls “assimilation.” Reading through the poems in this section, one notices many with movie and stage performance themes.  This theme of “representation and performance of American identity” in this poem is carried out through the word pretend and the concept of pretending.

Objective 1c is carried out through the use of the word Pretend—“To observe alternative identities and literary strategies developed by minority cultures and writer to gain voice and choice” particularly “double language.” When the speaker relates the experience of  playing “pretend” with the white child, the word takes on two meanings—to play “make believe” and to take on a white identity. The speaker dislikes the game because where the friend pretends to be in a domestic situation, even though the Indian child sees herself closer to nature, she assimilates into the dominant precept.

 The concept of assimilation is defined in Objective 4a: ‘To identify the “new American” who crosses combines, or confuses ethnic or gender identities.’ The Indian child goes to the Matinee—a creation of the dominant culture, accepting the depiction, or another level of pretense—the Indians as frightening, violent and evil, because she has assimilated, going so far as to join in throwing popcorn and feeling animosity toward a “dark eyed boy (an Indian?).”

Another example of Objective 1c, using double language is exemplified in the word glitter.  If one were to apply Objective 3b—the Native American alternative to the American Dream, the writer experiences survival—learning to love the word pretend:

            . . .Sleeping Beauty glittering

your way through an ancient war of rough bodies until

 you reach the theater’s magical cave . .

And, at the end of the poem, being reminded that she is herself a member of the race she has just has been shown is hateful, she feels loss:

                        . . .You glitter as you fall.

Questions:

1. One more objective present in the poem is 5e—how all speakers and writers may use common devices of human language to make poetry . . . My research paper is on food imagery, so I am particularly interested in your reaction to the references to food.

Jerry:  Makes me kind of hungry.

Woman 1: It's interesting that this stuff is still around.

Addie:  And how it reflects a common experience, even in the poem, it's

on a hundred tongues.

2. What is significant about the imagery of the lights at the beginning and the end?      

Blond 1:  Lights represent the dominant culture.  Lights are used to

celebrate that Jesus was born.

Geri: Not many Indians put up neon signs saying, "The Cherokee are

here!"

Man 1: They do now! [casino reference] Lights in blue, green and red

Geri: I'm interested in the image of the snowflakes from the bird

falling apart.

Kirby: This little girl is too young to read and she is getting the

message that Indians are bad along with the rest [of the audience].

Geri: I remember Indians as terrifying on TV, movies.  It was like out

of nowhere someone was getting an arrow to the chest—terrifying.   We

get a warped view of things.

Dr. White: It's the power of Narrative.  This American Indian girl and

a story so powerful she's drawn into it.

Geri: Also refers to theme of loss and survival.  Dropping a kid [so

young] off at the movies.  Who knows what the kid will see.

Jerry:  The kid is separate from the other kids at the movies and

learns of her identity later from her father.

Geri: Did she know she was Indian beforehand?

Dr White:  There is no clue of her being separate from the dominant

culture.  We have this automatic identification  It's interesting that

after she comes out of the movies it's an "old car."

Geri: Wasn't it in the beginning too?

Dr. White: She was not wanting to play house, there you get separation

from dominant culture.  The old car, the Christmas bulbs seem strange, the

long hair.  Had she been told yet?  Maybe she had been but this is the first

time it sunk in.

Jerry:  She alludes to it with the references to nature.

Blond 1:  But she could just have been an tomboy with those references.

Jerry:  The invisible deer is more an Indian image.

?:  Poem is told in 2nd person

Geri: It helps the reader identify more with  her experience.  She's in

the city, with theater,  city lights.  I can remember going to movies with

other children her age.

Brown Curls: The term "Technicolor" just stood out in the poem for me.

Geri:  Technicolor might have been more recent.  Maybe she was older. 

'30s and '40s was Technicolor.

Dr. White:  Technicolor [in movies] was a way to get you  away from TV

Brown Curls:  Maybe it's a symbol of assimilation.

Jerry: It's not natural color.

Geri:  Trees, mountains, things a city girl would not have seen. War

paint.

Strawberry Blond:  I have a picture of the father with his arms crossed

when he tells her.

Brown Curls:  Technicolor came out in 1922.

Jerry: I imagine a cloud of smoke