American Pietas: Visions of Race, Death, and the Maternal

211 Pages·2011·2.815 MB·English

by  Ruby C. Tapia

AMERICAN PIETÀS
CRITICAL AMERICAN STUDIES SERIES
George Lipsitz, University of California–Santa Barbara, Series Editor
American Pietàs
. . . .
Visions of Race, Death, and the Maternal
Ruby C. Tapia
CRITICAL AMERICAN STUDIES SERIES
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis
London
A version of chapter 1 was previously published as “Suturing the Mother: Race, Death,
and the Maternal in Barthes’ Camera Lucida,” English Language Notes 44, no. 2 (Fall/
Winter 2006): 203–8; copyright 2006 Regents of the University of Colorado; all rights
reserved; reproduced by permission. A version of chapter 2 was previously published as
“Un(di)ing Legacies: White Matters of Memory in Portraits of ‘Our Progress,’ ” Journal for
Cultural Research 5, no. 2 (2000): 261–87; reprinted by permission of Taylor and Francis
Ltd., http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals. A version of chapter 4 was previously published
as “Impregnating Images,” Feminist Media Studies 5, no. 1 (2000): 7–22; reprinted by
permission of Taylor and Francis Ltd., http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals.
Copyright 2011 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
American pietàs : visions of race, death, and the maternal / Ruby C. Tapia.
p. cm. — (Critical American Studies series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8166-5310-2 (hc : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8166-5311-9 (pb : alk. paper)
1. Motherhood in popular culture—United States. 2. Death in popular culture—
United States. 3. Ethnicity—United States. 4. Pietà. 5. Mothers in art. 6. Death in
art. 7. Race in art. I. Tapia, Ruby C.
HQ759.A447 2011
306.874'30973—dc22
2011001281
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal-o pportunity educator and employer.
18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Introduction: Race, Death, and the Maternal in
  American Visual Culture 1
1. Maternal Visions, Racial Seeing: Theories of the Photographic
in Barthes’s Camera Lucida 29
2. Commemorating Whiteness: The Ghost of Diana in the
U.S. Popular Press 43
3. Beloved Therapies: Oprah and the Hollywood Production
of Maternal Horror 67
4. Prodigal (Non)Citizens: Teen Pregnancy and Public Health
at the Border 91
5. Breeding Patriotism: The Widows of 9/11 and the Prime- time
Wombs of National Memory 109
Conclusion: Vivid Defacements 131
Acknowledgments 153
Notes 155
Index 193
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· INTRODUCTION ·
Race, Death, and the Maternal
in American Visual Culture
O
n September 11, 2001, Roman Catholic priest and New York Fire
Department chaplain Mychal Judge emerged from the World Trade
Center’s Ground Zero as the first recorded victim of the terror attacks.
Reuters photographer Shannon Stapleton was on site to capture the vi-
sion that began immediately circulating the world as an “American Pietà.”1
Startling for its simultaneous denotations of action and stillness, muscled
response and grief, the picture asked for an interpretation, a reconcil-
ing frame stable enough to carry an assuaging meaning into a ground-
shattered national context. The pietà was that frame. True to its long-
standing historical role of archetypal inspiration, the shadow- shape of the
Virgin Mary holding the dead Christ fluidly enveloped the five cradling
men and their fallen, saintly hero. Thus recognized, the “American Pietà”
birthed the terror attacks as the crucifixion of the nation, at the same time
rendering concrete and prophesized a maternally sanctioned, masculine
response.
The apparent ease with which the pietà frame fit the postmortem pho-
tograph of Judge had much to do with Father Mychal’s own saintly reputa-
tion as a longtime servant to the Catholic church and tireless comforter to
the sick and needy. Two book- length biographies, one documentary film,
a children’s book, and hundreds of online testimonies published since
9/11 render both the impact of Judge’s spiritual and material gifts to others
during his life and the extremity of personal and national loss represented
by his death.2 After decades of service as a spiritual leader to fellow New
Yorkers, Judge died from a blow to his head that occurred while he was in
World Trade Center Tower 1 tending to the injured and performing last
rites. Having lived and died in a very public role of religious leadership,
Judge’s bodily self- sacrifice was perhaps bound to be figured in the shape
of Christ. Indeed, very little of the pietà’s traditional religious contours
· 1 ·
2 INTRODUCTION
Rescue workers carry fatally injured New York City Fire Department chaplain Father
Mychal Judge from one of the World Trade Center towers, September 11, 2001. Philadelphia
Weekly reported the image being referred to as “an American Pietà.” REUTERS/Shannon
Stapleton.
needed to shift in order to accommodate the symbolic material of Judge’s
prone and lifeless body. What did need to shift and stretch, however, was
that component of the pietà mold that originally, timelessly contained
the Virgin Mother. In a photographic terror-i nstant, several male, uni-
formed first responders were put in her place.3 Circumstances of national
emergency floated these five men into a photo- sculpture of compassion:
together, they formed one maternal Mary, remarkable for its recasting of
the pietà’s conventional gendered symbolics.4 More than anything else,
it was Mychal Judge’s visual double identity as Christ and terror “Victim
0001” that made distinctly American and apparently gender- transgressive
this holy scene of maternal sacrifice, grief, and ordained resurrection/
retaliation.
A nationalism bearing the force of religion lent the American- modified
pietà its transposing power to put five men in the symbolic image- space
INTRODUCTION 3
of a holy, grieving maternal body. If it was touched and comforted by the
pietà’s impressively flexible frame, however, the public at large initially had
no knowledge of the degree to which this framing was potentially queer.
A fact known to relatively few at the time of his death, Mychal Judge was
gay and had for many years served and supported the queer community
with his spiritual leadership.5 That his gay identity was largely closeted
meant that homophobia had no opportunity to rear its head before Judge
was lovingly cast in the Christ position of the pietà or before the pope ac-
cepted Judge’s fire helmet on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church.6 Once
news of Judge’s gay identity began circulating after his death, however,
antigay voices immediately weighed the possibility of Judge’s sainthood
against his gayness. In an editorial for Catholic Online, Dennis Lynch, a
self- identified longtime friend of Judge, called the gay community’s claim-
ing of Judge as a gay hero a “September 11th hijacking.” Citing only the fact
that Judge had never told him he was gay during the ten years in which
they’d known each other, Lynch declared that Judge was a “heroic, celi-
bate, faithful Catholic priest” who had been sinisterly misappropriated
as a homosexual icon.7 While impressively confused as to the distinction
between sexual practice and sexual orientation and identification, Lynch’s
outrage clearly indexed how the political stakes of Judge’s symbolism far
exceeded a “merely” nationalist or patriotic frame.
With the release in 2006 of Saint of 9/11— a documentary film on Mychal
Judge— and later, with the 2008 publication of Judge’s personal journals,
Judge’s gay identity became widely known. Those for whom the printed
testimonies of Judge’s close friends had not been sufficient evidence now
had the words of Judge himself declaring a gay orientation that did not—
sources were careful to insist—i nterfere with his priestly vows of celibacy.
Long before this, however, Judge’s symbolic force as a “gay saint” had al-
ready done significant work on behalf of gay and lesbian communities.8 In
2002, President George W. Bush signed into law the Mychal Judge Police
and Fire Chaplains Public Safety Officers Benefit Act, which amended the
1976 version by adding chaplains to the definition of public safety officers
and by making it possible for domestic partners to collect the federal death
benefit for such officers killed in the line of duty.9 Thus, with the backing of
his symbol’s saintly, national hero status, Judge’s death achieved victories
on behalf of the gay community that he arguably could not have achieved
in life. As “Victim 0001,” his image managed to queer a piece of national law,
if not— ultimately— the white masculinist picture of the nation.10