Football is the Continuation of Politics by Other Means: The Spectacle, Touch, and Intimacy in Ben Fountain's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
Date
2014
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Haverford College. Department of English
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Award
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eng
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Haverford users only
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Abstract
"Football is the Continuation of Politics by Other Means: The Spectacle, Intimacy, and Touch in Ben Fountain's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" looks at the ways in which communication is precluded in late Capitalism through the critical lens of Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle. The novel suggests touch as a site of intimacy in a place and time where meaningful communication is all but excluded. Billy Lynn approaches these issues as a way to examine the latent violence propagated and perpetuated in even the most seemingly mundane aspects of daily life. It asks us to recognize the environment around us as coercive and systematically impersonal, and suggests that touch can function–-for better or worse–-to break the overwhelming stasis and fundamental silence created by dedication to the image in late Capitalism. The paper outlines pertinent aspects of the Spectacular society as expressed in Billy Lynn: the role of commodity, dedication to the image, and preclusion of touch. Next, I use Elaine Scarry's The Body in Pain in order to examine the potential of physical pain to highlight the body's reality. Then, I examine the role of production in Postmodernity in order to understand how the potential for intimacy is mediated in the Spectacle through equipment, both in the case of football and war. Finally, I consider situations in the novel in which touch acts as a stand-alone method of communication-–regardless of the message–-in an overdetermined society. My paper posits that touch is a means of entering the undeniably human, a way to create a space in which to communicate the ineffable.