Funny Boy and Hegemonic Masculinity

Anshu Kiran

and Smarika Pareek

Chandigarh University, Mohali, India

Keywords: Funny Boy, Gender Narratives, Counter-Bildungsroman, Sexuality, Hegemonic Masculinity.

Abstract: This article emerges from the usual analyses of Shyam Selvadurai’s novel Funny boy, which had focused on

its potential meaning as a Western “coming out” bildungsroman or a memoir of Sinhalese and Tamil

nationalism's social strife. In this essay, this usual convention is further preceded and interpreted as “counter-

bildungsroman” which weaves Hegemonic Masculinity theory into Arjie's narrative of gender and his queer

awakening during the 1983 anti-Tamil violence in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Arjie playing “Bride-Bride” at the

novel's start and wilfully misquoting British poetry at its end promotes heteronormative ideals and exclusive

identity formations. Even though he is young, and the civil war symbolizes the internal conflict of erotic

awakening, the Protagonist's sexual misdemeanors in heteropatriarchal school and home threaten the

masculine populism that drove the coup attempt. Thus, R. W. Connell's Hegemonic Masculinity theory shows

that the novel's narrative space mirrors Arjie’s liminal sexual and gender identities.

1 INTRODUCTION

Despite criticism, Hegemonic Masculinity has shaped

gender studies in many fields. In the 1980s,

masculinities and men's research refined and

implemented the concept. Feminist theorists deny that

masculinity is elitist or reified to address these main

criticisms. However, gender-centered paradigms that

use rigid typologies are flawed. Contemporary

psychological models can improve Hegemonic

Masculinity research, but conceptual adaptability has

limits. Understanding Hegemonic Masculinity as a

social reproduction mechanism requires accepting

social battles in which oppressed masculinities

influence dominant forms.

This viewpoint is a doctrine or set of practices that

promote the idea that men are inherently superior and

provide an excuse for prejudice, especially against

women and the LGBTQ community. It's a way of

thinking that aims to explain why patriarchal

structures persist even in cultures where women and

other marginalized groups have been historically

excluded.

“Hegemonic Masculinity was distinguished from

other masculinities, especially subordinated

masculinities. Hegemonic masculinity was not

assumed to be normal in the statistical sense; only a

minority of men might enact it. But it was certainly

normative. It embodied the currently most honored

way of being a man, it required all other men to

position themselves concerning it, and it ideologically

legitimated the global subordination of women to

men. Men who received the benefits of patriarchy

without enacting a strong version of masculine

dominance could be regarded as showing a complicit

masculinity. It was with this group, and to compliance

among heterosexual women, that the concept of

hegemony was most powerful. Hegemony did not

mean violence, although it could be supported by

force; it meant ascendancy achieved through culture,

institutions, and persuasion” (Connell &

Messerschmidt, 2005).

Abstract rather than descriptive, the suggestions

quoted by Connell and Messerschmidt are expressed

in the language of conventional patriarchal logic. As

a result, they hypothesized that sexual politics was

highly volatile and that gender roles could shift over

time. Therefore, hegemonic masculinities that

emerge under specific conditions are malleable over

time. To be clear, it's possible that different ideals of

masculinity will vie with one another to become the

norm. There was a chance that a more understanding

and liberating view of manhood would emerge as a

result of the movement toward abolition.

Individuals who agree with the central tenet of

feminism, namely, that unequal gender relations

shape how society functions, theorists such as

Connell and Messerschmidt offer the most frequently

Kiran, A. and Pareek, S.

Funny Boy and Hegemonic Masculinity.

DOI: 10.5220/0012503300003792

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 1st Pamir Transboundary Conference for Sustainable Societies (PAMIR 2023), pages 767-772

ISBN: 978-989-758-687-3

767

cited definitions of Hegemonic Masculinity.

Additionally, they noted patriarchy's shortcomings as

an explanatory framework for this phenomenon.

Connell substituted the idea of Hegemonic

Masculinity for Patriarchy, which recognizes that

men are also stratified against each other under the

condition of Gender and Equality and that only a

small percentage of men relish patriarchal advantages

and power. It is because of how gender interacts with

supplementary important factors, like socioeconomic

standing and racial background. Messerschmidt

elaborates,

“Hegemonic Masculinity is the culturally idealized

form of masculinity in a given historical and social

setting. It is culturally honored, and glorified-such as

that the broader societal level (e.g., through the mass

media) and at the institutional level (e.g., in school)

and is constructed in relation to “subordinated

masculinities” (e.g., homosexuality) and in relation to

women” (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005).

Connell's primary illustration of Hegemonic

Masculinity is best understood as a relational concept

concerning the hierarchical sizing of male social

interactions. Therefore, while there are a variety of

masculine identities, they are not all created equal.

The dominant or idealized form of masculinity in any

given culture is typically associated with the elite.

This becomes the gold standard that almost no other

man can hope to reach.

1.1 Origin

In a deliberation over men's place in Australian labor

politics, the conception of Hegemonic Masculinity

was initially proposed in 1982 based on data collected

from an analysis of social inequality in the country's

secondary schools. Factual evidence of distinct

gender, as well as class power structures intertwined

with proactive gender-building programs, was

uncovered in the aforementioned study of high

school. These initial steps were sanctified in a paper

labelled “Towards a New Sociology of Masculinity”

(Carrigan, et al., 1985), that exhaustively criticized

"male sex role" in literature and recommended a

model of various power relations and masculinities.

A full-scale social observation of gender was then

updated to include this paradigm shift. This six-page

essay on felinity and Hegemonic Masculinity made

Gender and Power the go-to source for scholars

studying the theory.

“The concept articulated by the research groups in

Australia represented a synthesis of ideas and

evidence from apparently disparate sources. But the

convergence of ideas was not accidental. Closely

related issues were being addressed by researchers

and activists in other countries too; the time was, in a

sense, ripe for a synthesis of this kind” (Connell &

Messerschmidt, 2005).

During the period, the term "hegemony" coined by

Gramsci was popular among those trying to make

sense of the establishment of stable class relations.

Eisenstein's dual systems theory (1979) provided a

natural framework for applying this concept to the

corresponding gender dynamics issue. There was

potential for a major miscommunication because of

this.

In the end, psychoanalysis was the source of

creativity for this concept. Freud's "Wolf Man" case

study exemplifies how personal characteristics are a

blueprint under stress, with repressed but not entirely

extinguished mitigated (Freud 1955). Stoller (1968)

coined the word "gender identity" and mapped the

methods of how it generates differently in boys,

especially in the direction of transsexualism.

Friedman, Lerner, and Zaretsky's interest in men's

authority, gender diversity, and the inherent conflict

in traditional masculinities stems from their exposure

to psychoanalysis.

1.2 Construction

“What emerged from this matrix in the mid-1980s

was an analogue, in gender terms, of power structure

research in political sociology—focusing the

spotlight on a dominant group. Hegemonic

Masculinity was understood as the pattern of practice

(i.e., things done, not just a set of role expectations or

an identity) that allowed men’s dominance over

women to continue” (Connell & Messerschmidt,

2005).

Hegemonic and lateralized masculinities differed.

Hegemonic men were statistical outliers. Typical. It

was the modern standard of masculinity, the standard

by which all men were expected to measure

themselves, and the ideological justification for the

universal subordination of women. Men who profited

from the patriarchy's laxity may be complicit. This

group and compliant heterosexual women dominated.

Despite force, culture, institutions, and persuasion

established hegemony.

These abstract concepts were defined by patriarchy.

Historical gender hierarchies could change. Thus,

hegemonic masculinities emerged in specific

circumstances and allowed historical exuberance in a

bleak theory. As gender roles were dismantled,

manhood could become more empathetic and less

repressive.

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1.3 Solicitation

These definitions of Hegemonic Masculinity were

quickly adopted. Conferences, textbooks, and

academic journals all flourished in the late 1980s,

“journals, and a rapidly expanding research agenda

across the social sciences and humanities” helped

establish men and masculinity research as an

academic field (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005). A

hegemonic lens was used in studies of education to

better understand classroom dynamics like bullying

and boy resistance. It looked into questions of

curriculum and gender-blind teaching methods. It

examined physical education teachers' strategies and

identities.

Professionals practiced talking about men and boys

through this concept. Male psychotherapy, youth

violence prevention, and emotional training for boys

are illustrations. Nonetheless, it was also a topic of

conversation in the fields of law, geography, art,

and male chauvinism/feminism. "The analysis of

multiple masculinities and the concept of hegemonic

masculinity" research on gender, men and

masculinity did replace frameworks like categorical

patriarchy and the sex-role concept (Connell &

Messerschmidt, 2005).

Gender orders create multiple masculinities,

according to global research. Much research suggests

that masculinities change. Adjustments to hegemony

challenges are common. Young men are creating a

"pragmatic egalitarianism" because they expect

women to repudiate patriarchal shared and social

relations.

From a theoretical framework, Hegemonic

Masculinity with a “limited empirical base to a

widely used framework for research and debate about

men and masculinities” (Connell & Messerschmidt,

2005) from the 1980s mid to the commencement of

the 2000s. The model was applied to many cultural

and practical issues. The idea is widely criticized. I'll

use Selvadurai's human condition map to connect

gender nonconformity, queer sexuality, and political

turmoil and violence. Selvadurai's Tamil boy

protagonist Arjie embodies these constitutive bonds

that link mass violence to household strife in Funny

Boy. Before trying gay sex with Sinhalese boy Shehan

Soyza, Arjie fantasizes. Sexually engaging with

Shehan violated gender, sexual, religious, and

national laws.

Hegemonic Masculinity queerphobia enshrined in

law as nativist masculinity catalyzes and surges

violence in this novel, which many academics have

interpreted as a coming-of-age "bildungsroman" or a

story about the Sri Lankan civil war. Arjie, the novel's

most sexually transgressive, "queer" character, will

prove my point. Arjie's transgressions cause

communal violence that destroys his family's home at

the book's end. Arjie's colonial school has ethnic

strife. Arjie's life narrative is queer. This queer plot

challenges domestic and methodological principles

that voice exclusive authenticity formations and

heteronormative ideals, undermining supervisory

gender norms consolidated by heteronormative,

institutionalized settings.

A deep reading of the novel's sexuality and violence

themes goes beyond allegory. It shows that tensions

from multiple physical and ideological proclamations

of violence and sexuality before and after the 1983

pogrom drive discourse. It widens the gap between

academic research and gender violence and queer

identity books. The novel portrays political animosity

between the majority of Sinhalese and minority of

Tamil in a space once called home as alienation and

ethnic genocide.

“Funny Boy further extends and complicates the

concept of a ‘counter-bildungsroman’ by staging the

coming out/of age story in a web of violence located

at several sites: the economic, the institutional, the

physical, the verbal, the religious, the linguistic, and

the gendered. In other words, the novel operates as a

counter-bildungsroman as a strategy of skirting

articulations of ‘fictive ethnicity’ as they surface in

and through coming-of-age stories and/or previous

studies of this novel that limit their hermeneutical

scope to the conflict between Tamils and Sinhalese”

(Gairola, 2014).

1.4 Application of the Theory

“The novel introduces us to Arjie, a sexually

transgressive, Tamil adolescent caught in the

heteronormative world of the family in the troubled

landscape of urban Colombo. The narrative

chronicles tensions that erupt in the mid-1980s

between the Tamil minority in the north and the

Sinhalese-dominated south, and that set the backdrop

against which Arjie similarly experiences social

conflicts pre-figured by spatial relations” (Gairola,

2014).

In the opening chapter, location affects peripheral

people's self-image. Arjie's life is marked by sudden

changes from one domestic setting to another in Pigs

Can't Fly, culminating in his upheaval after Black

July and his eventual move to Canada. Thus, Arjie's

nonheteronormative development is intricately linked

to space and the underlying reasons why space is

categorized by nationality, gender, and queer identity.

Arjie must negotiate his growing queer identity

Funny Boy and Hegemonic Masculinity

769

within the heteronormative rules of the Tamil lifestyle

and the Sinhalese nationalist hooliganism in the home

and private school due to the lack of queer clubs and

organizations. Indeed, the novel's prologue takes

place in a family's home, foreshadowing community

violence and establishing heteronormative, Tamil

kinship. “Violence of everyday living under the

powerful discourses that regulate both gender and

ethnic norms initiates the careful negotiation of

identity and a new strategy of language” for the

protagonist (Jayawickrama, 2007).

Henri Lefebvre claims that “Social relations, which

are concrete abstractions, have no real existence save

in and through space. Their underpinning is spatial

[original emphasis]” (Lefebvre, 1991). From the very

beginning of Funny Boy, it is evident that heterotopic

space is of utmost importance, and that it is connected

to a wide variety of violent acts. Whenever the

outdoor playground becomes a location for enforcing

gender norms among youngsters, Pigs Can't Fly

explores the uncomfortable conflict that arises

between male and female gender regimes.

Arjie, Sonali, and their female cousins prefer playing

Bride-Bride in their grandparents' backyard to cricket

in the open backyard where their male relatives and

cousins play. Until a second cousin named Her

Fatness returns from overseas travel, this teen gender

nonconformity contest is going well. Kanthi Aunty,

the girl's mother, shames Arjie's parents and

indoctrinates him with words he's never heard and

heterosexuality because his cousin is angry that Arjie

and the other children won't let him play The Bride.

She drags him into the drawing room and forces him

to sit down. Gayatri Gopinath writes some very

perceptive things about this book in her analysis of it.

“The pleasure Arjie takes in this activity [dressing in

a sari with accessories] causes intense embarrassment

and consternation on the part of adults, who decree

that henceforth Arjie is to play with the boys. Arjie’s

eventual traumatic banishment from the world of the

girls and his forced entry into proper identification are

figured in terms of geography and space, of leaving

one carefully inscribed space of gender play and

entering one of gender conformity: Arjie is compelled

to leave the inner section of the compound inhabited

by the girls and enter the outer area where boys

congregate” (Gopinath, 1997).

To elaborate on Gopinath's analysis, Arjie's transition

will be described from one gendered space to another

as he is orally interpellated. His neighbor addresses

him as a “faggot” (Gairola, 2014; Selvadurai, (1994)).

“The word "funny" and Arjie's howling relatives in

the drawing room condemn his gender

insubordination, prefiguring his imminent ejection

from the feminized space of both the rear yard and the

cricket ground in the front yard where the boys

illustrate athletic masculinity” (Butler, 1999).

1.5 Climax of the Novel

In the novel's denouement, the Convent's strict gender

norms and British colonial schooling's masculine

characters are compared. Sir Henry Newbolt's poem

The Best School of All titles the book's final chapter.

Arjie's father in a hope for him to mature and become

a man sends him to boarding school at The Queen

Victoria Academy. Abeysinghe, the school's

principal, has earned the boys' scornful nickname

"Black Tie" for enforcing a strict code of conduct to

mold them into responsible men. Black Tie's

punishment resembles domestic violence and war and

riot zones. To create docile bodies that can be

exploited, manipulated, and improved, the Academy

canes and punishes. Adjectives such as illness and

burden are used for a boy if he has long hair, winks,

or licks his lips. Selvadurai's Academy is a

disciplinary institution where Sinhalese and Tamil

boys must study together.

In response to the Academy's macho culture, which

mirrors the culture of their parent's homes, Arjie and

Shehan establish a few intimate resistance gestures.

In front of the class, Black Tie slaps Shehan when he

sees him trying to cover up his long strands of hair by

pinning them up, and eventually giving Shehan a

buzz cut. Arjie feels compelled to comfort a

distraught Shehan when they meet in a deserted

classroom, "I stood watching him, and then, without

quite realizing what I was doing, I reached out and

touched his head. He moved away as if my hand had

stung him, and I quickly lowered it, embarrassed by

my involuntary gesture" (Selvadurai, 1994). The fact

that Arjie can reclaim the classroom thanks to his

involuntary gesture and at the same time place it

thoughtfully beyond the sexual preference ideologies

of honest and truthful subjects devotedly generated by

imperial pedagogical approaches is instructive in and

of itself.

“The gesture moreover undermines the hegemony of

the institutional space of the school at the same time

that it silently speaks back to the violent

demonstrations of masculinity” (Gairola, 2014).

Social transgression teaches Arjie not to identify his

action in queer identity affirmation grammar. The

boys run to the floor after escaping Black Tie's

balcony where Shehan joyfully swirls Arjie and “did

a most unexpected thing. Quickly, before I [Arjie]

was aware of what was happening, he kissed me on

the lips. My mouth must have opened in surprise

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because I felt his tongue against mine for a brief

instant. Then it was over” (Selvadurai, 1994). This

violation of normative masculinity frees Arjie's erotic

imagination, allowing him to reenact the kiss's

sensuousness in the family home, a place where he is

strictly forbidden to act in a gender-nonconforming

manner.

“The novel’s opening mediation of heteronormative

and queer spaces results in multiple exiles of Arjie

where he re-appropriates heteronormative spaces

with queer gestures. This re-appropriation and

transformation of space shifts from the subtle to the

explicit as Arjie radically ‘disidentifies’ with the

colonial hetero-normativity and communal violence

symbolized by the Academy and Black Tie’s pro-

Tamil agenda at the Academy” (Gairola, 2014).

Arjie uses the term "disidentification," coined by Jose

Esteban Muoz, to refer to a process "descriptive of the

survival strategies the minority subject practices in

order to negotiate a phobic majoritarian public sphere

that continuously elides or punishes the existence of

subjects who do not conform to the phantasm of

normative citizenship” (Muñoz, 1999). Therefore,

Arjie's method of disassociating from his identity is

to openly and blatantly blabber the poem, which is an

outstanding example of imperial aesthetics, which

might have otherwise confirmed his submissiveness.

“The final chapter of the novel is titled Riot Journal:

An Epilogue, and effectively binds together multiple

articulations of violence and competing masculinities

through Arjie’s eyewitness account. The horrifying

climax of the novel details the events that lead to

Arjie’s and many other Tamil homes and businesses

being incinerated, Sinhalese mobs immolating Tamils

in the streets of Colombo, and the sad, but necessary,

decision to flee to Canada as refugees seeking

political asylum” (Gairola, 2014).

This episode marks possibly the utmost insightful

disidentification that the protagonist endures during

as well as after his narrative of gender and queer

confirmation with his lover Shehan, as it presages the

family's impending move to a different country and

Arjie's capability overcome any emotional ties to Sri

Lanka. Despite the horror of it all, Arjie is only able

to critically examine his queer attraction to Shehan

after going through what he has. The novel is a rude

awakening for Arjie's parents, who have disciplined

her according to gender roles.

2 CONCLUSION

This essay suggests that Funny Boy's stories are about

masculinity and socio-political violence. The

Chelvaratnam house and Victoria Academy solidify

masculinity with disciplinary gender roles,

heteronormative marital rituals, religion, ethnicity,

languages, etc. In this interdependent web of

personalities and weighted assumptions, Amma,

Arjie, and Radha Aunty risk their erotic desires.

Selvadurai's novel mirrors the Black July pogrom's

nationalism and masculinity. Arjie's family home's

horrific arson attack but also his grandma and

grandpa's public murders demonstrate the primary

method of suppressing the minority of Tamils by the

government in power which is attack. Sinhalese

mobs destroy Tamil lives, property, and businesses as

displays of nationalist manhood, which the

government condones. This novel challenges

heteronormative power structures by redirecting its

praise. Despite Selvadurai's denials, the book may

reflect his nomadic past.

The novel concludes by demonstrating that a

violently forged masculinity in a particular

geographical/ethnic setting frequently results in

terrible genocides that are reminiscent of Western

imperialist pasts. In addition, this suggests that

Shyam's LGBT characters have to get over the hurt

they felt when they left and moved to make peace

with their old communities. Ironically, the need to

leave and the protection of exile allow crossing

identities that the government pathologizes to express

themselves. The inflammatory narrative of Shyam

Selvadurai links ethnic cleansing, governmentality,

deviant sexualities, and organizational discipline. A

counter-bildungsroman, the novel mixes fiction,

autobiography, and the past to show "that social

expressions of gender and sexuality can, and should,

be as tenuous as the boundaries that would confine

Funny Boy to a single way of narrating the”

intertwined brutality of white supremacist ideology

and marginalization (Gairola, 2014).

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