In a March 1990 Bill Moyers interview with Toni Morrison - for the television series, A World of Ideas - Morrison explored the concept: "Master Narrative."
Moyers: I don’t think I’ve ever met a more pathetic character in modern literature than Pecola Breedlove in The Bluest Eye.
Morrison: She has surrendered completely to the so-called “Master Narrative,” the whole notion of what is ugliness, what is worthlessness. She got it from her family; she got it from school; she got it from the movies; she got it from everywhere.
Moyers: The Master Narrative . . . what is . . . that’s life.
Morrison: No. It’s white male life. The Master Narrative is whatever ideological script that is being imposed by the people in authority on everybody else: The Master Fiction . . . history. It has a certain point of view. So when those little girls see that the most prized gift they can receive at Christmas time is this little white doll, that’s the Master Narrative speaking: this is beautiful, this is lovely, and you’re not it, so what are you going to do about it? So if you surrender to that, as Pecola did (the little girl, the “I” of the story, is a bridge: [she] is resistant, feisty, doesn’t trust any adults) . . . [Pecola] is so completely needful; she has so little and needs so much . . . she becomes the perfect victim–the total pathetic one. And for her, there’s no way back into the community or society. For her, an abused child, she can only escape into fantasy, into madness . . . which is part of what . . . the mind is always creative . . . it can think that up.
Toni Morrison
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ9vd0lLW2g&feature=share&list=PL5hmbrDt2_Texx5uS960uvHjNI9ZF2Ogp
Shirley Temple
Imitation of Life (1934)
.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment