Mediocre Man: the Lost Archetype of the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century |
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Author:
| Travis, Anna |
ISBN: | 978-1-4923-0755-6 |
Publication Date: | Sep 2013 |
Publisher: | CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
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Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | USD $9.33 |
Book Description:
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Mediocre man has trudged through two centuries of European and American culture and shows no sign of finishing his ghostly walk. The compelling tragi-comic appeal of this ''lost'' Western archetype has been unrecognised until now. Drawing on sociology, cultural theory and fiction from three centuries, this book considers why this character endures.Why is mediocre man so funny and determined to resurface in many guises and artforms? Why do ''average'' men make for rich satire? Are we...
More DescriptionMediocre man has trudged through two centuries of European and American culture and shows no sign of finishing his ghostly walk. The compelling tragi-comic appeal of this ''lost'' Western archetype has been unrecognised until now. Drawing on sociology, cultural theory and fiction from three centuries, this book considers why this character endures.Why is mediocre man so funny and determined to resurface in many guises and artforms? Why do ''average'' men make for rich satire? Are we laughing defensively, to reassure ourselves how far we are from embodying mediocre traits, when in fact they are painfully close? Do these fictions employ a warm comedy of recognition or darker comedy of distancing? Why is fiction repeatedly offering an escape from mundanity, through a revelling in its depiction? Tracing the dramatic formula of mediocre man''s quest myth through the nineteenth century to the present, I follow his despairing search for meaningful work and spiritual fulfilment. Noting our anti-heroes rage regarding his invisibility, I try to establish what social features of his era might mean mediocre man tragically fails to achieve autonomy.I ask what moral truths mediocre man embodies, to earn his place alongside the Don Juans, villains or hunted men of our collective consciousness. Our dullard''s evolution is traced from Gogol''s clerk Akaky Akakievich, to the ''Mediocre salesmen and Boardinghouse men'' of twentieth century fiction. I explore the dialectical symbolism of Mr Average and his bohemian foil, who is often despised for embodying the ''creativity'' many find little leisure time to pursue. Suburban signifiers are considered in sit-coms like The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin and N.F.Simpson''s dramas. The office neurotics of late twentieth century fiction are analysed via Ben Kafka''s Freudian tinged critical history of paperwork. Another key subset are mediocre writers, secretly penning masterworks to escape uncreative labour. These ''average'' writers are an ironic catharsis for authors, purging deep fears in distanced symbolism. Late Twentieth Century British television comedy proves a rich source of ''light entertainment'' mediocre performers, whose self-delusions lies close to the classic fool typology. The reality this figure embodies is Western modernity''s destruction of self-actualization. Weber and Adorno''s theories on culture and power help to demonstrate the function and symbolic schema of a quotidian quest myth. Mediocre man and his bohemian nemesis are folk devils of advanced-capitalistic societies, the spawn of ideologies that need an isolated, outsider position for the artist and a purported mediocrity playing his draining, opposing role. These hopeless conformists endure because they boil into a transformative rage, against familiar forces that appear beyond challenge: the distant boss, familial expectations, the free market/wage system. The ''invisible'' structures that crush our hero are the capitalist mechanisms that separate labour from creativity. As Marx argued: in deferring his desires, the producer achieves only limited autonomy, he does not transcend them. Economic work is dominated by material desires in ''the realm of necessity''. The deepest essence of man, his creative act, has been transformed into a possession. Bohemian man, in this mythology, represents the false promise of liberation through artistic activity, as a truly free form of creativity. Yet it is to the radical separation of mental and manual labour that culture owes its existence. Adorno argues the end of culture is: "the suspension of its reified status, its re-submersion in the actual life-process of society." Our protaganist plays a unique role in culture therefore as the only metaphorical figure to not simply exist because of this division, but make this rupture the tragic import of its symbolism. This average archetype is knitted into our collective imaginative fabric. Is it any wonder we forever re-enact mediocre man''s revenge?