http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780688050337
/Coming_of_Age_in_Samoa/index.aspx
The Mead-Freeman controversy
Margaret Mead's book
- 'Coming of Age in Samoa':
is a Psychological Study of Primitive Youth
for Western Civilization.
Derek Freeman unmasked
the fake research done by Margaret Mead.
Heretic is a 1996 play
by Australian playwright David Williamson
that explores Derek Freeman's reaction to
Margaret Mead's "The Coming of Age in Samoa".
Question
‘While postcolonial literature aims to ‘subvert the canon’
by ‘celebrating the neglected or marginalized Other’
The heretic compromises and undermines the identity of the
subaltern Other instead.’
With reference to at least one theoretical essay from your
Offprints Collection, discuss this statement with reference
to David Williamson’s The Heretic.
In Williamson’s Heretic, the audience’s first impression
of the Samoans is through Margaret Mead’s perspective.
‘Coming of Age in Samoa’ Mead’s influential book of the
twentieth century portrays Samoa as a paradise on earth
(a society where sexual jealousy, envy, competitiveness and
aggression were non-existent) as well as a haven for free
love. The play depicts the fantasy effect typically
associated with the intoxicating South Pacific:
white sands, sparkling sapphire sea and Polynesian
drum rhythms. So when Aviata, the handsome, strongly built,
half-naked Samoan youth, eventually appeared and asked
Margaret ‘Would you like to be made love to properly?’
(Heretic, p.34), the Western fantasy is instantly evoked.
The audience are too mesmerized by then to ever question
this stereotyping of the Samoans. South Pacific has being
repeatedly represented as a stereotype paradise through
mythologizing and romances. It serves to inspire
the utopian hope of the ultimate ‘ideal’ society that
can remedy the inadequacies of the Western society
– being deeply repressed and sexually inhibited.
Mead by portraying Samoa as a culture of an erotic
sphere is presenting endless potential for pleasure
and perversion.
Heretic engages with the controversial issue of representing
the indigene, the Other. The issue of representation is
central in post-colonial debate: How the Other is represented
is questionable: through whose perspective? the indigene or
others? Australians are explicitly racist -anti-aboriginals;
the relationship between white settlers and aborigines is a
sensitive issue. Hence, Williamson uses distancing issue- the
academic nurture versus nature debate between two social
scientists that seems unrelated to Australian society and an
analogous situation (Mead’s relationship with Samoans) to
explore the profoundly perturbing question of specific post
-colonial predicament of representation and issues that is
fundamental to his society.
Mead, an American anthropologist, went to Samoa with a very
specific schema - if she could prove that adolescence is not
a time of mayhem with the young Samoans; it would validate
that human nature is moulded by their culture (a social
construct) rather than an inheritance derived from genes.
Her ambitious agenda is to invent an ideology to recreate
the West by introducing ‘ a new blueprint of human
possibilities’ to America from the South Seas (Heretic,p.58).
However, Mead, a sovereign Western observer, is greatly
flawed: with incomplete evidence and superficial analyses
(her knowledge of the Samoan language was insufficient, she
based her evidence only on several Samoan women and she spent
less than a year in Samoa). Anthropology, the field of
scientific endeavour is supposed to study Others objectively,
however, it has been known to be heavily constructed in
favour of the Western hegemonic philosophy. The histories,
traditions, societies and texts of ‘others’ are seen as
responses to Western initiatives- and therefore passive,
dependent...(Said, 1989, OC. No.1). Surely it is the task of
anthropology to replace this Samoan myth with more specific
and accurate account, but Mead, instead of representing the
Samoans, has projected her own fantasies upon the Samoans by
stereo-typing the enviably primitive’s sexual prowess.
Derek Freeman, the lone Australian anthropologist, offers a
counter view – to show the fallacy of Mead’s representation
while replacing it with his own. With his knowledge of the
Samoan ‘inner workings’, his fluency of their language and
his 3 years of experience in Samoa, he too did not represent
the Samoans in its entirety. Binary differences occur in any
representation; the indigene was glorified for its pantheism,
spirituality and stability, however it includes the counter-
response of being primitive and barbaric. Freeman seems to
focus on the opposing aspects of Mead’s version of the Samoan
society just to prove her wrong. Thus, if Mead said Samoans
were sexually liberated; Freeman’s version would indicate
they are sexually conservative. Though Freeman’s study of
Samoans is evidently more reliable than Mead’s; it
implicitly pave the way for his personal agenda: focusing
only on aspects that would prove Mead’s ideology a fake.
However, in the midst of the Mead versus Freeman’s
(Nurture versus Nature) debate, the Samoans were never
ever given their own voice to speak.
Derek sets Margaret as the ‘Other’: irrational and emotional
white female while depicting himself as the objective and
rational white male. However, he repeatedly reveals his
impassioned nature and distorts his own academic views:
the extent of breaking a precious Iban artifact in front of
British Commissioner, which he insists is a fake; by harping
on Margaret’s bisexual relation with Ruth which has nothing
to do with her standing as an anthropologist and his sexual
tension being exposed by his Freudian slip when he declares
to Mead ‘ I was scared you might take me to bed’
(Heretic, p.57). The representation of women in Heretic is
visibly stereotyped.When the characterization is evidently
stereotyped, the play becomes questionable and it raises
questions about representation. Mead is portrayed as highly
subjective, irrational and emotional; the Samoan women as
sexual objects; Monica, his wife as the typical submissive
wife and an artist that lacks opportunities and Elsie, his
mother serves as an archetype of the Freudian ‘s Oedipus
complex. Both Monica’s physical likeliness to Derek’s
mother and Mead’s resemblance of a teacher or ‘mother’
image is the stereotype of ‘mother-fixated’ in Freudian’s
Oedipus complex where individuals choose sexual partners
who are discernible surrogates for their mother. Derek’s
position as the defender of the oppressed is undermined by
his impulse to assert his male superiority in his marriage
and his obsession to destroy Margaret in an overwhelming need
to break free of maternal bond.
Williamson employs dramatic devices: the play is depicted in
Derek’s dream in a non-linear approach; by using this
unconventional feature: non-traditional adherence to linear
time, he aims to subvert the canon and undermine the imperial
historical narrative with its hegemonic position. The context
of the dream is significant as it is intrinsic to aboriginal
modes of thoughts. Additionally, the dream depicts the surreal
dimension- the illusion of myth and a sense of hazy distorted
representations. The sixties’ image evoked in Act one that is
associated with positive nuances of peace, hope, innocence
and youthfulness is sharply contrasted with the sixties’ image of
Act two which suggests indiscipline and interference. This
binary – positive/negative representation of the sixties-
proposes the often opposing elements of whatever that is
presented.
Williamson presents the Samoans as discerning participants
of the hegemonic Western’s strategy: ‘just because you come
from America…doesn’t mean you can come and steal our men’
(Heretic, p.33); ‘She was the copulating dog, not us!’
… She took away our humanity. She made us seem like animals
to the world…(Heretic, p.68-9). They wittily offer a
stereotype to oppose Mead’s view of Samoan’s sexuality:
‘All she talks about is sex, sex, sex… my mother says
all Americans are the same… its because they eat too
much meat’ (Heretic, p.91). The significance of Freeman
providing evidence that Mead is being duped by the two
Samoan girls who indulged in ‘recreational lying’, a
favourite Polynesian pastime; is the ultimate hoax to
subvert the hegemonic imperial centre. The Samoans in
their simplicity were able to undermine a white woman
of global power; in doing so, it reveals Mead’s naivety
in believing what she wanted to see- a myth.
Even when Mead’s Samoa was exposed as a myth, Rick Cooper
stated that ‘… but so what! It was a useful myth'
(Heretic, p.94). This suggests that in the Australian racial
hegemony, the aborigines were as Terry Goldie affirms
‘a semiotic pawn on a chess board under the control of the
white signmaker’ (OC, No.14). Samoans seems to be represented
but they are in fact being constructed as the Other from the
single perspective of the Western’s imagination. The troubled,
sexually disciplined West versus the simple-minded, sexually
promiscuous Samoans (although presented positively). Even
when representation is positive nonetheless it inexorably
defined them as the Other.
The relationship between Samoa and Western hegemonic
discourse is based on power and dominion. Only the voice
of the sovereign anthropologist (Mead) is considered, the
voice of the indigenous Samoans were silenced. This concurs
with Spivak’s assertion ‘The subaltern cannot speak’ neither
can they be heard or read. Nobody could or would speak for
them, their own voices remained unheard: silent. Though
Williamson is from the metropolitan Australian elite, he
is keenly aware of the racial and power structures that
oppressed the ‘fourth world’ (the subaltern) in the
Australian society. In ‘Heretic’, Williamson seeks to
subvert the canon, undermine the hegemonic power and
celebrate the identity of the subaltern.
(1399 words)
Bibliography
Williamson, David. (1996) ‘Heretic’, Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Australia.
Offprints Collection: Post-Colonial writings from India and Australia, SIM University, 2001.
Goldie, Terry. ‘ The Representation of the Indigene’ Offprints Collection: Post-Colonial writings from India and Australia, SIM University, 2001.
Griffiths, Gareth. ‘The Myth of Authenticity: Representation, Discourse and Social Practice’ Offprints Collection: Post-Colonial writings from India and Australia, SIM University, 2001.
Said, W. Edward. ‘Representing the Colonized: Anthropology’s Interlocutors’ Offprints Collection: Post-Colonial writings from India and Australia, SIM University, 2001.
Spivak, Gayatri Charavorty. (1985) ‘ Can the Subaltern Speak?’ Speculations on Widow-Sacrifice’, Wedge, Winter/Spring, pp. 120-30.
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