Capstone Project

I was thinking about some topics I could approach for the Senior Capstone Project (Malcolm X’s movements, separatist/nationalist extremist Louis Farrakhan, the BAM and BPM as a whole, iconography and pop culture in modern times of the Black Panther Movement, and even “The Theme Is Blackness). However, I think I’ve settled on utilizing “Dutchmen” as a criminal case study.

Originally I thought I could expand on one of my blog posts by featuring more visual iconography or a Psychoanalytical double consciousness approach to a relevant topic but “Dutchmen” seems more appropriate in combing discourses. At first glance, the play exudes sexual tension as Lula looks at Clay through a subway train window and follows him on, sitting beside him, and entrapping him before killing him in a public metro station with people onboard. I drew similarities between Lula and Blanche from A Streetcar Named Desire and woman serial killer Aileen Wuornos. She seems to be on a power trip in re-establishing control by putting stereotypes on Clay.

It seemed weird to me there were many witnesses and not one intervened which reminded me of a similar case called the Apathy case or Kitty Genevese case where a woman was attacked and murdered in broad daylight with many witnesses around the apartment complex building and not a single person had intervened. In a similar manner, “Dutchmen” had created a persona of the Symbolic self through Lula. In Lacan’s consciousness of the self, the Symbolic self is a way to represent the self among the Others. In other words, in wanting to belong there was also an appeal to be accepted by the Other-which, in this case, is Clay. In addition to that, the strangers that were witnessing this crime happen sat and did nothing until Lula asked them to help, meaning there was either a mob mentality to act together once called upon, there were apathetic and looking for someone else to step forward first, or this public demonstration was specifically choreographed to play out this exact scene where Lula had been feeding Clay lines in order to illicit a response and justify killing him.

Clay himself seemed like a live-action version of the painting “The Son of Man” and Adam and Eve. The Son of Man is a portrait of a man in a suit and hat standing up straight with a green apple covering his face. The apple is in front of the man’s face blocking it entirely which had many interpretations in and of itself but also symbolized an aspect of hiding the self  which Clay had been doing in hiding his truth self both physically with the newspaper and metaphorically with his performativity of “whiteness”/properness. His true self was when he had exposed how he truly felt about being black and how ignorant Lula had been in wanting to “expose” him for who he really was.

bing images “The Son of Man”