Betty and Veronica; Bad Dancing

All semester, but especially in our previous two novels, we have dealt with issues of sexual violation vs consent. We examined and critiqued elements of Their Eyes Were Watching God with our 2018 ideas of consent, namely the “pear tree ideal”, and how perhaps it is not as idyllic as we would hope, as flowers can’t give consent to bees. In Beloved, the idea of sexual violence was featured throughout the novel, and was the driving factor for many of Sethe’s choices.

So now we come to White Boy Shuffle. To be fair, we have not had the chance to have as many discussions as we normally would, but even so, our discussions of chapter four glossed over a major event: on page 82, Gunnar describes how the two sisters, Betty and Veronica corner him and molest him in a laundry room where he is hiding from them. This scene was incredibly upsetting to read, for a few reasons. To start, it was incredibly graphic, I think maybe the most graphic sexual scene we have read in this class. The imagery was very grotesque and just overall unpleasant to read. In addition, all of the religious references struck me as strange and disorienting. The girls sing various church hymns and spirituals as the assault Gunnar, giving the entire scene very conflicting imagery. Church and religion, especially church songs, are (at least for me) associated with purity and sacrity, so inserting them into this scene was very jarring.

Another weird element of this scene was that it was unclear as to what Gunnar himself thought of the event. During the scene he is very passive, not saying a single word to the girls, and afterwards, he goes home singing “Oh Happy Day”. This was interesting to me because based off of his narration, he clearly did not enjoy the experience, and yet he still exhibits happy (?) feelings afterwards. In addition, this scene leads directly into him meeting Psycho Loco, who takes interest in him because of his loud singing, and so he gets drafted into the Gun Totin’ Hooligans. I don’t know what to make of that, along with the fact that that night Gunnar writes his first poem.

We do see Betty and Veronica later on in chapter six, when Gunnar is at the club with his friends. On page 122, Psycho Loco tells him that he’s scared of women and then “On cue, Betty and Veronica would march over and demand the next dance”. The narration clearly associates a fear of women with Betty and Veronica. After, they ask him to dance and he “would mumble a yes and they’d lead [him] onto the crowded dance floor”. Although this dancing is technically consensual, he seems very hesitant and reluctant, and so my 2018 sensibilities kick in and this scene feels wrong.

Overall, the majority of this scene is characterized by two things: Gunnar’s stiffness on the dance floor, and his paralyzing fear of women. I was thinking about these things, and thought they might be connected to Betty and Veronica. Maybe Gunnar isn’t just a bad dancer, but rather this situation where men are expected to dance with women (especially in a sexual way) triggers some sort of traumatic response from him. After all, he was an 8^th grader when he was molested, and that kind of trauma especially affects kids. Perhaps it’s not his bland upbringing or an innate lack of rhythm that causes his “white boy shuffle”, but it’s something deeper, the same force that causes girls to “intimidate [him] into a state of catatonia”.