Miranda July's Intermedial Art: The Creative Class Between Self-Help and Individualism 9783839433690

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Antje Czudaj Miranda July’s Intermedial Art

For my father, Georg Czudaj

Antje Czudaj received her PhD in American Studies at Humboldt-University Berlin, Germany. She lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland.

Antje Czudaj

Miranda July’s Intermedial Art The Creative Class Between Self-Help and Individualism

Berlin, Humboldt-University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities II, Dissertation, 2014.

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de © 2016 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover layout: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld Cover illustration: Daniel Boud, Sydney, 2011 Proofread by Todd Kesselman Typeset by Michael Duszat Printed in Germany Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-3369-6 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-3369-0

Contents

1 Introduction | 7 1.1 Approaching Miranda July | 7 1.2 Self-Reliance, the Individualized Society, and the Expressive Individualist | 10 1.3 The Figure of the Artist, Self-Expression, and Self-Help | 17 1.4 The Structure of This Book | 22 2

Healing the Audience? Virtual Community Versus Individualization in the Internet Project Learning to Love You More | 25

2.1 Healing Through Participation | 27 2.2 The Media and the Virtual Community | 41 2.3 A Community of Authentic Individuals | 55 3

Self-Help Strategies For Disembedded Individuals: The Film Me and You and Everyone We Know | 71

3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4

A Critique of Appropriation | 79 Spiritual Materialism | 87 Children and Sexuality | 98 Art as Self-Help | 122

4

The Search for the Self: The Short Story Collection No One Belongs Here More Than You | 135

4.1 Loneliness | 136 4.2 Expressive Individualism | 168 4.3 Sexual Inadequacy | 192 5

Conclusion: The Ambivalences of Self-Help | 209

Works Cited | 217 Acknowledgements | 225

1 Introduction

1.1 APPROACHING M IRANDA J ULY Miranda July fascinated and confused me from the moment I first read her collection of short stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You (2007). I was convinced that she lends a voice to her generation, but at the same time I was not sure who that generation would encompass and why. This initial impression directly spawned my interest in conducting academic research on her work. When I asked myself why her stories generated such confusion in me, I noticed that they left me with a vague and ambiguous impression. It was clear that the stories excessively circle around the self. Constantly engaged in self-reflection, her first-person narrators seem to be searching for something within. This concern about the self connects July
s stories with the spiritual self-help realm, which is even explicitly mentioned in the stories. Surprisingly though, July
s representations of this self-searching and of self-help often appear to be ironic. They seem to open up a conflict about how the issue of self-help is to be approached. My attempt to shed some light on this tension led to the realization that there has been little academic research on July’s work to date. To my knowledge, there are merely three articles about her Internet project Learning to Love You More (Bryan-Wilson; Graham and Cook; Balestrini “Photography as Online Life Writing”) and one about her short story “Birthmark” (Balestrini “Aylmer
s Experiment”). In contrast to this lack, journalists and art critics have largely discussed her work and her life.1 Similar to my impression, literary and film critics have also detected an undefinable strangeness (Cutter; Boncza-Tomaszewski). While the German journalist Georg Diez noticed that her work might have to do with self-help (“Glück”), an academic study of her work is still outstanding – a

1

The German art magazine Mono.Kultur and the Swiss lifestyle magazine DU each published one whole edition about her life.

8 | M IRANDA J ULY’ S I NTERMEDIAL ART

space I want to fill with this book. Diez remarks that her short stories appeal to an intellectual readership that is interested in the sophisticated, as opposed to the popular, kind of self-help. As the discourse of self-help belongs to the cultural practices of whiteness, I add the assumption that July s readership is likely to be categorized as white.2 While I find it hard to define the boundary between popular and sophisticated self-help, in my opinion Diez s comment refers to a conflict. This conflict might very well be what I experienced in my first reading of July. According to this thesis, the rationally-educated, middle-class reader is uneasy about the consultation of self-help literature. This view is in part justified by the observation that advice on how to improve one
s self often tends to be simplistic or irrationally spiritual. At the same time, however, the individual in question cannot fully discard the search for support. This is because the muchdiscussed era of “individualization” (Beck; Bauman) requires the individual to be fully self-reliant. The model achiever in this individualized society, the “expressive individualist” (Bellah; Fluck “Cultures of Criticism,” “Multiple Identities”), knows how to find and successfully market his or her individuality. Such an engagement with the self is a privilege of white identity that embodies individualism (Twine). The educated white, middle-class reader enters a conflict when he or she searches for his or her self with the help of self-reflection, meditation, or self-help books. Nevertheless, a considerable number of people, including the educated classes, seem to be pursuing this search. Statistics suggest an increased turnover of self-help books since the 1980s.3 Activities such as yoga retreats are booming because they are not only used by private persons, but also by professionals for self-awareness trainings. Additionally, the media reflects this heightened interest in this discourse of “self-help” or “therapy culture” (Illouz; Rieff).4

2

For a definition of whiteness see Frankenberg, “On Unsteady Ground.”

3

According to Steven Starker, over 3700 titles with the beginning “How to...” were published in the US from 1983 to 1984 (2). McGee writes that “[s]elf-help book sales rose by 96% from 1991 to 1996” (11). In the year 2013, Kathryn Schulz in the article “The Self in Self-Help” writes that Americans have developed an 11 billion dollars industry of self-help.

4

I am not arguing that there is no difference between psychological therapy and selfhelp. Psychology as a science performs a different task in helping people than does the popular realm of self-help. Throughout this book, I am referring to therapy in its forms that treat neuroses, such as conversational therapy or behavioral therapy, in distinction to therapies that treat psychotic mental illnesses. Along with Illouz, however, I maintain that there is a continuum between professional therapy and self-help. Their

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With its focus on the self, July
s collection of short stories appears to be based on exactly this point of conflict. The stories apply self-help rhetoric and depict first-person narrators in acts of self-reflection. The rhetoric is dramatized however, so that absurd scenes and comical moments suggest self-help
s failure. Contrary to such a critical approach, July and Harrell Fletcher
s participative Internet project Learning To Love You More (the website was active between 2002 and 2009) seems to unquestioningly reproduce self-help
s promise. This places July
s concept within a different perspective. The project transforms some concerns of the 1960s Euro-American, avant-garde movements into art as self-help. It motivates the audience to actively create art, for which July and Fletcher supply the virtual exhibition space. The participants follow strict instructions to turn their personal experiences into art. The title suggests that the aim of the project is to learn to love oneself more
. In July
s first feature film Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), art and self-help also play an important role. Here, however, everyone is not supposed to be an artist. July plays the artist Christine Jesperson, who on her way to professional recognition uses art to heal other characters from their emotional pain. July
s artistic approach to self-help is apparently reflected through the character Christine. This happens in a setting in which the characters struggle to find their place in their social surroundings. The movie contrasts their individual self-help strategies with the possibilities that art provides. With regard to July
s recurring references to self-help culture, I noticed differing approaches within her intermedial work.5 Therefore, I ask how far she supports this culture, or how far she deconstructs or even rejects it. I want to illuminate the confusion that occurred in my first experience reading her work. To that effect, I ask how she represents self-help culture in each of the following media: on the Internet, in film, and within the short story. Which topics in July
s work bear a relation to this culture and which stylistic means suggest that she affirms it or distances herself from it? Who is she talking about and why? Which conflicts does July address and what does she render visible in a unique way?

prevalence is the symptom of the same phenomenon, namely the “belaboring” of the self (McGee). 5

I am basing my understanding of intermediality on Werner Wolfs definition of intermediality in its broad sense (32). It applies to Julys work because she makes significant references within one medium to other media. With the term intermediality I furthermore refer to the fact that her work consists of different media.

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1.2 S ELF -R ELIANCE , THE I NDIVIDUALIZED S OCIETY , THE E XPRESSIVE I NDIVIDUALIST

AND

Prior to approaching these questions, I need to address the basis of the American self-help tradition and the discourse of the self and how these traditions find expression in the beginning of the twenty-first century. This can only be done selectively, that is, with regards to certain instances that I consider to be constitutive for July
s work. I am then going to explain how this context can be productive for a reading of July
s work. As one of the most influential figures in American history, Benjamin Franklin is generally accepted as the initiator of US self-help culture (McGee 27; Starker 15).6 Franklin
s advice quarterly, Poor Richards Almanac (published yearly from 1732-58), and The Way to Wealth were essentially utilitarian and propagated self-improvement as a means to accumulate wealth. Such economic concerns in self-help culture are to be distinguished from spiritual ones. Utilitarian and spiritual concerns in self-help often mingle, as McGee argues in her book Self-Help, Inc. (2005). Their categorization depends on different reading experiences, as different readings of Dale Carnegie
s self-help books illustrate. David Riesman calls Carnegie
s How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936) “inspirational” as it was supposed to serve “to adjust one to one
s fate and social state” (150). More convincing than Riesman
s is Starker
s argument: He claims that Carnegie
s advice book mainly advised businessmen on how to manipulate others (63-66). This example illustrates the merging of spiritual selfhelp with utilitarianism. Specific to American culture, they mingle in the Puritan belief that spirituality is reflected in worldly possessions. The individual
s economic success is a proof of his or her spirituality, his or her connection with god. The question of whether utilitarian and spiritual concerns can be looked at inde-

6

Some books on the history of self-help in the US also point out that the Puritans had a great impact on self-help culture. Steven Starker explains that Puritan leaders developed prescriptive guidelines to live according to Puritan values such as work, diligence, and thrift (14), as for example in Cotton Mathers Bonifacius: An Essay to Do Good (1710); also cf. McGee 27. Sandra K. Dolbys folklorist approach to the American self-help tradition bases a common advice culture in the reading of the bible (1-2). Although I do not want to dismiss biblical and especially Puritan impacts on the American self-help tradition, I am not considering them in further detail here, since I am not concentrating my readings of Miranda Julys work on specifically Christian issues. That aside, Christianity can be discussed as an “embodiment of whiteness” (Dyer 15 ff.), and hence as part of white culture in a similar way as self-help.

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pendently from each other in the American context is thus central to read July
s work. July explicitly references spirituality, while she places utilitarian or practical self-help into the background. Her work thus needs to be read critically, asking whether it relies on utilitarian beliefs disguised as purely spiritual ones. One reason for the flourishing of the US self-help industry is the great significance of the self in American culture. Many disciplines have attempted to define what exactly the self
is. Whether one regards this question as a philosopher, a sociologist, or a psychologist – there is no definite answer. In this book, I apply the term in the understanding of the transcendentalists, as explained below. The concept of the self is deeply intertwined with that of the individual and the subject. According to Fluck
s definition, the individual is the character in its social dimension, and denotes the character who secludes himself from society in order to give primary concern to him or herself and his or her necessities (“Das Individuum,” with reference to Tocqueville). The character who believes in individualism and strives to accomplish it, is referred to as an individualist. The subject is the character in its philosophical dimension. This concept denotes the ability of self-reference and self-reflection. If this process succeeds, individuality, or a unique identity, develops. Not every individual in the social sense is marked by subjectivity in the philosophical one. According to the spiritual self-help realm, the self is hidden
within the subject and therefore can only come to be known through intense self-reflection. Michel Foucault describes the cult of the self as a phenomenon that emerged from the US West coast, the place where July lives and works: “In the Californian cult of the self, one is supposed to discover one
s true self, to separate it from that which might obscure or alienate it, to decipher its truth thanks to psychological or psychoanalytic science, which is supposed to be able to tell you what your true self is” (Foucault in Rabinow, 362). He thus describes a tendency in the Californian middle-class to be obsessed with the self. In portraying individuals that are continuously concerned with their true self, July ties this cult of the self to cultural practices of whiteness. The American ideal of individualism nurtures this cult. The ideal owes part of its continuing appeal to Ralph Waldo Emerson
s concept of self-reliance’. Emerson propagated individualism and self-reliance in distinction to the “blindman
s-buff” of “this game of conformity” (23). In the Romantic period, Emerson and the transcendentalists developed philosophical ideas opposed to the dominant paradigm of rationalism and materialism. The transcendentalists were concerned with subjectivity, and hence the self, which has continued to be a concern of people who are privileged through their race, class or gender. The transcendentalists regarded the self as the spiritual origin of the world and propagated

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that the self should be able to be given complete expression. This self-renewal through self-expression of the individual appears in July
s short stories, for example, in the first-person narrators
self-reflections. In Learning To Love You More, it is implicated in the project
s very agenda. Transcendental thought and especially Emerson
s doctrine of self-reliance form great moments of American self-definition. From such Romantic ideas of the individual, Bellah et al. develop the concept of expressive individualism in their influential book Habits of the Heart. They distinguish between different categories with which Americans identify. Most importantly, they detect two different traditions of the individual. One is utilitarian individualism, stemming from a rationalist tradition. With reference to Benjamin Franklin, the worldly achiever in American history, this tradition reflects the desire for economic success. The other tradition is expressive individualism, which goes back to Romantic writers such as Emerson and Whitman and the conceptualization of the aesthetic self. Expressive individualism is [a] form of individualism that arose in opposition to utilitarian individualism [...]. Expressive individualism holds that each person has a unique core of feeling and intuition that should unfold or be expressed if individuality is to be realized. This core, though unique, is not necessarily alien to other persons or to nature. Under certain conditions, the expressive individualist may find it possible through intuitive feeling to merge with other persons, with nature, or with the cosmos as a whole. Expressive Individualism is related to the phenomenon of romanticism in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European and American culture. In the twentieth century, it shows affinities with the culture of psychotherapy. (Bellah 333-34)

The concept thus denotes that identification with cultural values is higher than with economic ones. If a person earns a lot of money, then it has to be at least through something that one loves. Based on Bellah
s concept, Fluck has shown that expressive individualism is negotiated as a topic in Romanticist literature, for which he takes Melville
s Moby Dick as a case in point (Fluck, Das kulturelle Imaginäre 229-49, “Cultures of Criticism”). Since then, he claims, the social role of expressive individualism has increased considerably. In his opinion, this process was set in motion by the growing authority of art and other forms of cultural self-expression, but especially by the increased possibilities of imaginary selfempowerment offered through fiction.7 The era of post-industrialization and

7

Fluck posits that Melville came to regard literature as the ideal medium to explore the possibilities of the performance of an expressive identity. Through writing fiction,

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postmodernism delivers a whole new range of options for expressive individualists. In Fluck
s view, the present era – with its new “post-materialist values” of self-realization and radical self-determination – provides far more possibilities for and social importance of expressive individualism than any era before (Fluck, “Cultures of Criticism” 218). Fluck argues that “the multiplication of identity typical of expressive individualism is now the new habitus for whom the flexibility of identity options is becoming second nature” (“Multiple Identities” 52). If this is true, then Miranda July is a representative of expressive individualism, one who renders its values productive for her art. However, one also needs to critically ask whether we can nowadays still regard utilitarian and expressive individualism as distinct phenomena. If expressive individualism is a way to utilitarian success, as McGee argues, then they are constitutive of each other. In consequence, while the opposition between the two categories is useful for analysis, it is doubtable whether this opposition can still be maintained in the era of consumerism, in which money buys individuality. Such a merging of utilitarian and expressive values is the topic of Richard Florida
s book The Rise of the Creative Class. I want to follow the question of whether July in her work addresses the members of this creative class’. In distinction to Fluck
s focus on literature and culture, Florida
s central reference is the economy. This new creative class consists of well-educated people in science and engineering, the arts and entertainment. Previous working ethics were fashioned according to the model in which there were few economic decision-makers and a mass of executing hands. In distinction to this outdated hierarchical model, the creative class wants to have a voice in their employers
decision-making processes. Florida thus argues that a certain form of individualism pervades the contemporary educated middle-class. The members of this class adhere to ethics that are based on the creative expression of every individual mind: “Individuality, self-expression, and openness to difference are favored over the homogeneity, conformity, and fitting in
that defined the previous age of large-scale industry and organization” (10). Business and creativity therefore do not exclude each other, but their combination promises to bring success. Florida thus confirms the notion that the ideal of expressive individualism merges in utilitarian individualism. He adds that the creative class is a mainstream phenomenon; individuals who adhere to its values do not consider themselves as members of an alternative culture (176). They want to belong to society, not outside of it. In this argument, a tension becomes obvious: If everybody is individualized in the present era, can

Fluck argues, the individual is able to extend him or herself endlessly (Das kulturelle Imaginäre 226).

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the concept of expressive individualism still provide the self with the feeling of being special? July
s work illustrates the individual
s desire to be special despite his or her commonness and everyday life experiences. Her characters
striving to belong to the creative class is fraught with difficulties. If the creative class really is a positive phenomenon – where everyone may just express him or herself in order to be successful – why do its members need self-help at all? This also leads us to ask why July (as an expressive individualist) still finds it necessary to deconstruct the self-help realm. If the social group that I have been defining here continues to consult advice literature, then this individualism must also have its negative sides. While Florida praises the creative class, Fluck does not only have laudatory words for the culture of expressive individualism. He perceives the prevalence of expressive individualism as one reason why people work ceaselessly for too little or no pay in the arts or in academia. Herein, he sees one reason for the emergence of a “prekariat” (Fluck, “Multiple Identities” 49); a creative and flexible lifestyle can become a form of identification when a stable salary is out of reach. To put it bluntly, for academics and artists who do not have a significant role in capitalism, building a brand of one
s individuality can be what money is to the stockbroker: it is his or her currency. Such an individualistic endeavor is characteristic of the members of the creative class. While the concept of individualism refers to the subject, individualization encompasses the greater structural implications within modern Western society. Some prominent sociologists provide critical perspectives on individualization, among them Zygmunt Bauman as well as Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth BeckGernsheim. Bauman coined the term “the individualized society,” which I am going to refer to throughout this book. Bauman
s and Beck/Beck-Gernsheim
s theses are based on the assumption that middle-class, Western societies at the beginning of the twenty-first century are individualized societies. With the withdrawal of institutions and their waning importance for structuring the individual
s life, much more responsibility is requested from the individual (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim). This question of the self that is so inherent to American discourse here receives a more global perspective for Western societies. Instead of pursuing traditional paths, the individual has the opportunity to fashion his or her life according to his or her own wishes.8 Due to the fragmentation of society (Bauman), the individual may choose from a multiplicity of lifestyles. 8

David Riesman in The Lonely Crowd (1950) theorized the other-directed character in distinction to the tradition-oriented character. According to him, peoples orientation on traditional paths that are preset by the family is very weak in mid-twentieth

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This argumentation can be seen as positive or rather alarming. The more positively inclined see an activation of biographical creativity in this society structure (Wagner 270). In Wagner
s study, which combines the individualization thesis with the human desire for acknowledgment, the individual can choose from whom he or she seeks acknowledgment (ibid.).9 More flexibly than in tradition-oriented societies (Riesman), the contemporary individual chooses the people he or she wants to receive acknowledgment from. This independence gives him or her a greater freedom in all aspects of life. Even more positive is the postmodern celebration of the multiplicity of life choices, where having multiple identities sets the individual free from all power relations (Wagner with reference to Foucault, 278). By contrast, the negative view on individualization postulates that while the individual is more free to make choices about his or her life, social categories and the structure of society have basically stayed the same. Free choice and selfreliance therefore merely appear as “biographical illusions” (Wagner with reference to Bourdieu, 8). In actual fact, the individual is caught in the same structures and merely undergoes self-dramatization
(ibid.). He or she is requested to control and to take responsibility for him or herself. In former times, the community (e.g., the family) provided security. Bauman deplores that the “safety nets, of the self-woven and self-maintained kind – these second lines of trenches once offered by the neighborhood or the family, where one could withdraw to heal the bruises left by the marketplace skirmishes – have fallen apart, or have been considerably weakened” (86).10 In consequence, since society now rests on the individual taking responsibility for everything that concerns his or her life, societal crises (such as high unemployment) turn into personal ones. Not surpriscentury USA. Riesmans study is limited to the white affluent urban middle class. This other-direction has to be distinguished from expressive individualism, which is not supposed to be based on an orientation on others, but also renounces traditionorientation’. 9

The concept of acknowledgment receives much attention in sociological discourse, because the desire for it motivates most (social) activity in human beings (Wagner 11). Wagner calls this the ubiquity of acknowledgment’. Georg Franck sees the desire for acknowledgment as a symptom of the affluent society. If all needs are met, people turn to other pursuits, such as wanting to be noticed by others (11).

10 Also cf. Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: “At the outset of our inquiry I noted that most Americans today feel vaguely and uncomfortably disconnected. […] The evidence from our inquiry shows that this longing is not simply nostalgia or false consciousness. Americans are right that the bonds of our communities have withered” (403).

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ingly, individualization thus produces achievers and losers. The apparent freedom of biographical choice does not create the same opportunities for every individual. Some use it to their advantage, others fail. Moreover, this freedom always bears the danger to turn into anxiety. While firm societal structures provide stability, but constrict biographical choice, freedom of choice requests selfreliance. Self-dramatization
is the consequent attempt to provide oneself with stability, without taking recourse to external factors, such as a community. The question is, do July
s characters belong to the achievers or to the losers of individualization? Considering that the freedom of life choices generates anxiety, the pervasion of self-help in the affluent classes in Western societies appears as a logical consequence of individualization. Wagner points out that the individual seeks to position him or herself through self-control, awareness, and other methods that the self-help realm provides (8, 40-41). Wagner and Bauman are critical about the possible enhancements that the search for help offers. For Bauman, the “disembedded individual” cannot be re-embedded anywhere (146; also cf. Beck). There is no community to turn to, as everybody is individualized. To him, individualization amounts to solitude, and he dismisses the possibility that there can be a community “out of solitude" (151). According to this bleak perspective on Western societies, a “diffuse” anxiety (227) is the consequence that the American sociologist David Riesman already perceived in his contemporaries in the 1950s (Riesman 25). An inclination to undergo therapy and to consult self-help literature can be an indication of this anxiety. July references this ambivalence of a society whose multiple life choices bring about freedom and anxiety at the same time. In her short stories the firstperson narrators seem isolated and therefore appear as variations of individuals who no longer distinguish between loneliness and individuality. In Me and You, the break-up of a family demands that family members position themselves anew, especially within the community of neighbors. The picture of suburban, white, middle-class life is contrasted with the figure of the artist. As the expressive individual par excellence, the artist teaches the average
person to find his or her inner self and express it. The Internet project LTLYM invites the anonymous participants to be re-embedded in a virtual community of everyday
artists.11 The content of July
s art are her characters’ strategies for coping with the 11 There is a general trend in the performing and visual arts to depict the everyday’. The theater company Rimini Protokoll coined the term “experts of every day life” in their statistics-based theater project, “100%,” that stages local citizens. They have staged this project in different cities and call it accordingly: 100% Berlin, 100% London, 100% Melbourne etc.

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implications of individualization; of living in a state between individualism and anxiety. It remains to be asked how these individuals try to help themselves and to what extent they succeed or fail.

1.3 T HE F IGURE OF THE A RTIST , S ELF -E XPRESSION , AND S ELF -H ELP Following the argument that there has been a rise of a creative class and that self-expression has become a major goal for the educated, white middle-class, it does not come as a surprise that the self-help realm is greatly influenced by the creative realm. Creativity in this sense means the fashioning of one
s life and one
s biography according to one
s personal wishes and plans. The ability to creatively fashion one
s life is a notion that has arisen as a positive implication of modernity. The individual is regarded to be freed from tradition-orientation (Riesman) and hence constriction of biographical choice. Here, the Romantic notion of the self, with its concentration on self-awareness that is to be turned into self-expression, comes into play. Moreover, it becomes clear that the artist who achieves both serves as a model expressive individualist, as for example Walt Whitman. We come closer to understanding what Miranda July as an artist and her way of creating art might have to do with self-help. While the theoretical liberty to fashion one
s life is something that probably no one would want to cede, it entails complications for the self in light of the individualized society as I have outlined above. Moreover, it can be regarded as the root of a concentration on the self that some scholars estimate as highly problematical. In fact, the need to fashion the self is based on and gives rise to a “culture of narcissism” (Lasch) in which therapy and self-help thrives. Eva Illouz maintains this thesis in her book Saving the Modern Soul. Therapy, Emotions, and the Culture of Self-help. She convincingly shows how the triumph of the therapeutic
(Rieff) has pervaded American culture. She regards popular selfhelp as a continuum of psychological science: “Whether [therapy] has assumed the form of introspective psychoanalysis, a New Age mind-body
workshop, or an assertiveness training
program, it has mustered a rare level of cultural legitimacy across a wide variety of social groups, organizations, institutions, and cultural settings” (6). In her criticism, she brings the science of psychology down from its pedestal and questions its legitimacy: “[W]hile psychology supposedly addresses and helps resolve our increasing difficulty in entering or remaining in social relations, it actually encourages us to put our needs and preferences above our commitments to others” (2). In its concentration on the self, Illouz argues,

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therapy cements the disintegration of social relations. Her argument ties in with Bauman
s opinion about eroding communities and the impossibility of connecting with others if everyone has learnt to care for him or herself only. Following this argument with all its consequences would mean that the self-help realm and therapy cement the solitude
of the modern individual. In a more popular tone, Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel, in their book One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture is Eroding SelfReliance, lament that therapism
turns the American virtue of self-reliance into the vice of self-obsession. They “oppose [...] the view that Americans today are emotionally underdeveloped, psychically frail, and that they require the ministrations of mental health professionals to cope with life
s vicissitudes” (3). The authors argue that Americans are too pre-occupied with their feelings and therapy, so that children are not brought up as self-reliant anymore. They promote a greater trust in the human psyche, which is strong enough to allow individuals to deal with troubles successfully without the help of a psychiatrist. While there certainly exists an alarming reliance on therapy in American culture, one needs to be wary of Hoff Sommers and Satel
s argument
s implications. In their strong opposition to therapism
, they seem to disregard the curative aspect of accessing one
s feelings. Moderate self-reflection is not equal to self-obsession. Sharing feelings is also a way to bond with people, and to build healthy relationships and strong communities. Moreover, Hoff Sommer and Satel build their argument on popular American myths: (T)herapism will lose credibility when more Americans come to understand how it fundamentally contradicts our ideals about character and about our national character. From the earliest days of its founding, the nation has been guided by a philosophy that social historians call the American Creed. The creeds paramount values are self-reliance, stoicism, courage in the face of adversity, and the valorization of excellence. Therapism is at odds with them all. (218)

The authors thus call upon American exceptionalism, displaying a fear of modernity by recurring to nostalgic images and nationalist language. They feed the myth of self-reliance, instead of critically reflecting on it. Their book emanates a panic about American culture
s eroding values. It is thus a testimony of therapy
s central and controversial place in American culture. Their book is proof of the obvious significance that a concentration on the self, and by extension self-help, receives in the individualized society. Micki McGee sees this connection in arguing that the self is being belabored by the self-help realm. The “largely individual undertaking” of self-help (19) is basical-

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ly aimed at fashioning one              ! rida
s term, a member of the creative class. Similar to Illouz, McGee also maintains that the incessant occupation with oneself leads to narcissism. In her aim to trace the interconnection of self-help and the employment market, she argues that since the second half of the twentieth century, self-help books have shown an increased tendency to connect the entrepreneurial with the artistic realm. “To follow the path of the heart” (44) in order to fashion one
s “life as a piece of art” (157) are slogans that combine the American virtue of following a calling with marketing the self as an expressive individual. She mentions Andy Warhol as a primary figure who embodied the artist as role model for successful entrepreneurship. He was an artist who openly claimed that “[b]eing good in business is the most fascinating kind of art” (Warhol cited in McGee, 22).12 Through him she exemplifies how aesthetic and commercial values were merged in a culture of “bourgeois bohemians” in the 1960s and 70s (22). Such artists-entrepreneurs, she claims, became the role models for wanting-to-be-successful individuals, or, “Bobos in paradise” (Brooks), in the second half of the twentieth century. Selfhelp books relying on such rhetoric became the manual for the creative class. McGee argues that the notion of the artistic and entrepreneurial self cannot be extended to everyone, but applies only to an exclusive group of achievers. However, the millions of self-help books on the market proclaim that everybody can become somebody special. For most people, self-help thus constitutes a trap: “For these individuals, the self is belabored: caught in a cycle of seeking individual solutions to problems that are social, economic, and political in origin” (177). Asking how the individual – the loser
of such an individualized society – can fight against these structures, McGee suggests that instead of concentrating on the self, individuals should build communities and change individualistic structures. The individualistic creative class is not accessible for everybody; and it is more rewarding to strive for new ways to build communities. It is not only the self-help realm which shows a connection to the discourse of the self. Some American avant-garde art from the middle of the twentieth century shares with self-help a concern for spirituality and the transcendental self. One can detect here a continuation of a tradition that runs from the transcendentalists to avant-garde art and eventually to Miranda July
s art. Supposedly, however, there are differences in the way these issues are addressed. The question is which 12 The performance artist Marina Abramovic in the documentary about her person and her work, The Artist is Present (2012), also says that money has been an important motivation for her. Obviously, against a popular romantic notion, the two categories do not exclude each other in avant-garde art.

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aspects July continues with and which ones she deconstructs or even distances herself from through irony.13 One notable likeness between the self-help realm, the avant-garde, and July
s art is the concern with Eastern spirituality. Wilfried Raussert analyses the influences of Eastern cultures on American avant-garde art in his book Avantgarden in den USA. In artworks from influential artists such as John Cage and Yoko Ono, he perceives processes of transculturation. They especially achieved this through the integration of Zen Buddhist aspects, such as paradoxical koans (i.e., riddles’, 97). Raussert points out that the transcendentalists were important predecessors to the avant-garde with regards to this inclination towards East Asian spirituality (35).14 Moreover, he identifies a continuation of the striving to combine life and art from Emerson and Whitman in the avant-garde (35-36). More controversially, Alexandra Munroe
s text “Buddhism and the NeoAvant-Garde. Cage Zen, Beat Zen, and Zen,” speaks of an appropriation rather than transculturation of Eastern spirituality. She thus evokes appropriation of foreign cultural codes as a hegemonic tool that serves white Western culture. In the Beat Movement, she sees a rejection of modernism by embracing “what these artists construed Zen Buddhism to be” (200-1, emphasis original). Hence, mediated or even imagined concepts of Zen, such as spontaneous writings and certain modes of subjectivity, became the inspiration and artistic principles of 13 There are other examples of how contemporary avant-garde art is concerned with questions around the self, self-help and therapy. The object of Jacob Wrens performances is to explore how the performer can be himself while performing, for example in Individualism Was a Mistake (2008). Another example from American performance art is Ann Liv Young, who as the character Sherry Vignon provides therapy in her participatory shows Sherapy and Cinderella. 14 In the Romantic era, the first writings emerged in the US that explicitly referenced the East

in philosophical terms. Alan Hodder points out that while Emerson set out to

theorize his concepts of self and Over-Soul without being knowledgeable about Buddhism or Hinduism, he later found in them correlations to his thinking. “His favorite doctrines of compensation or fate’, for example, often found expression in the Indian doctrine of action or karma… and hard-worked notions of the self and the OverSoul found rough correlation in the Upanishadic doctrines of "tman and brahman” (Hodder 31). The Transcendentalists were not learned scholars of Eastern spirituality. Their interest remained personal and their reasoning remained within Western discourse (34-35). They thus can be said to have acculturated some aspects of Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism in order to fit them into their Western knowledge systems. On Emerson and Thoreaus impact on Eastern influences in American art see also Vivien Greene, “Aestheticism and Japan: The Cult of the Orient,” 60-61.

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Kerouac, Ginsberg, and others (200).15 According to Munroe, at the same historical moment, the San Francisco Bay Area became the American center for the appropriation of Zen Buddhism and the aim to achieve “the practical transformation of human consciousness” in the population (211).16 With the impact of the Beat Generation and a generally heightened desire for self-awareness (Franck 237), Zen Buddhism consequently became a mainstream phenomenon. This spiritual concern with the self adds to the Californian cult of the self that Foucault defined. Miranda July
s art seems to be informed by this concern with the self and with spirituality. At the same time, the process of making art and the state of being an artist are inherent in her work. McGee
s argument makes obvious that this is a fruitful connection. She points out how the concept of the transcendental self, Eastern spirituality, and the artist as role model find their way into popular self-help literature. In the early 1990s, self-help books that coupled the notion of life as art with New Ageism became popular. Books such as Laurence G. Boldt
s Zen and the Art of Making a Living (1992) and Marsha Sinetar
s Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow (1987) give advise on how to become successful when assuming a worldview informed by Buddhism (122-25). Avant-garde artists by extension have become role models for the achievement of spiritual selfawareness and its resolute expression. The idol of the culturally expressive person that is in touch with the self thus connects the figure of the artist with selfhelp. Coming back to the discussion of the individualized society and the concentration on the self, there is an obvious ambivalence about how helpful self-help can be. For some scholars, self-help amounts to the belaboring of the self
and the cementation of a society of egocentric individuals. Others regard it as a treatment against the anxiety over becoming lonely. In the spiritually inclined self-help realm, the location of the inner self and its expression are marketed as the highest goods a person can possess. Miranda July as an artist in the avantgarde tradition apparently suits the idol of the expressive individual – an achiever of the creative class. One obvious example is that she makes herself visible in her work. It is not an exaggeration to say that her work stands in a tradition of American intellectual and artistic concern with the self. At the same time, her references to self-help culture and to a Western appropriation of Eastern spiritu15 On the Beat Movements selective appropriation of Zen Buddhism, see also Katja Werthmann, Zen und Sinn. Westliche Aneignung, Interpretation und Praxis einer buddhistischen Meditation (1992). 16 She here references the Californian Zen Guru Alan Watts. Her articles title moreover references Watts critical publication Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen.

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ality clearly align her with the spiritual self-help realm. In her art she treats that which the self-help realm popularizes. However, her transfer of this realm into the realm of art opens up a way for an ambiguous representation. It has the power to leave me irritated. This book seeks to find out how July achieves this effect.

1.4 T HE S TRUCTURE

OF

T HIS B OOK

In order to pursue these questions, I will concentrate on three of July
s major works. These are the Internet project Learning to Love You More (2002-09), the movie Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), and selected short stories from the collection No One Belongs Here More Than You (2007). The three chapters are organized chronologically according to the works
release or publication dates. Each chapter concentrates on one piece of work rather than being organized according to different topics. This structure facilitates the consideration of the different media the artworks are produced in. Moreover, and this also justifies the chronological order, it helps to detect possible differences or developments in July
s approach to self-help culture. First, the Internet project Learning to Love You More (LTLYM) most obviously references self-help by way of its very form. In this participatory art project, July and her collaborator Harrell Fletcher supply the public with assignments. These give instructions on how to make art. LTLYM provides the platform to exhibit the results. Its form is based on avant-garde principles of participation that seek ways to emphasize the audience
s role. I argue that this method bears a relation to self-help culture in providing acknowledgment for expressive individuals in a largely individualized and anonymous society. In contrast to avant-garde projects in the 1960s, Web 2.0 extends the possibilities of audience participation.17 I see the medium of the Internet as crucial for the analysis of the

17 LTLYM is not Julys only participatory project. In The Hallway (2008), the museum audience walks along a hallway, which features plates that are to represent the participants thoughts. With 11 Heavy Things (2009), she created sculptures for the fiftythird International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale. The sculptures only receive meaning when a person interacts with them. July instructs the audience to have pictures taken from this interaction. These documents of interaction are supposed to be circulated via e-mail. I am concentrating on the project LTLYM here because it is an online project larger in conception than 11 Heavy Things. Moreover, it makes the artworks visible, whereas there is no official platform for the pictures taken with 11 Heavy Things.

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work
s content. Most importantly, the project LTLYM references contemporary media culture, as for example the virtual community. With reference to questions about isolation and the lack of community that is deplored by Bauman and others, I am going to discuss the project
s means to counter individualization tendencies. In the end, the question is whom LTLYM attempts to help in finding support through an online community, and who is susceptible to such a project. Does LTLYM merely reinforce the individualization tendencies of supposedly authentic selves who desire to be part of the creative class? In contrast to the participatory basis of the Internet project, the film Me and You and Everyone We Know (Me and You) has to rely on other media-specific means to portray self-help culture. However, it also references participatory art by visualizing it. For this reason, I have chosen to analyze Me and You, while I leave her second feature film The Future (2011) aside. As another variation of the theme of expressive individualism, The Future also combines a love story with the question of self-fulfillment. Here, however, the topic of participation and healing through art fades into the background, and along with it the question of community. The film Me and You is set in a suburban, white, middle-class neighborhood and stages Miranda July as the artist Christine Jesperson, who falls in love with Richard (John Hawkes), a recently separated shoe-salesman and father of two. This main plot is interrupted by a number of sub-plots involving different characters. All of these individuals have certain concerns they attempt to cure with personally defined self-help strategies. The chapter is structured according to the degree of success that the film implies the strategies to have. It starts by analyzing representations of controversial strategies. First of all, Richard
s application of slogans and rituals from foreign cultures seems exaggerated. Therefore, the question is raised whether the film mocks the self-help strategy of appropriating foreign cultural codes. The second sub-chapter looks at a phenomenon specific to Western consumerist culture. It analyzes how economic materialism is portrayed as a common strategy to find comfort. Thirdly, I ask about the significance of the movie
s emphasis on children
s and young adults
sexualities. How are the children and young adult characters constructed and what are their roles in relation to the adults? Finally, this chapter comes back to Miranda July
s personification of the young aspiring artist. While all self-help strategies appear to implicate different controversial aspects, art is portrayed as a valuable way to help one’s self and others. How can the personal struggles be categorized and in how far does July portray the creative class in this film? The final analytical chapter provides close readings of some of July
s short stories from her collection No One Belongs Here More Than You (No One). In

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distinction to the predominantly jocular tone in Me and You, the tone in the stories is rather melancholic. I argue that this is in great part due to July
s portrayal of lonely individuals, by way of which she references the controversial side of the individualized society. Consequently, this chapter
s underlying assumption is that the short stories portray a society in need of help instead of one fostering successful self-help strategies. However, this bleak tendency is disrupted by ironic, humorist elements that disturb an unambiguous reading experience. In the first sub-chapter, I read the stories “The Shared Patio,” “How To Tell Stories To Children,” and “The Boy From Lam Kien” with regard to the topic of loneliness. In the second sub-chapter, I reconstruct how the characters deal with their imminent anxiety in the stories “Mon Plaisir,” “The Man on the Stairs,” and “Making Love in 2003.” If expressive individualism is a strategy to confront contemporary individualization tendencies, how do the characters adhere to it in order to feel acknowledged? Finally, as in the movie, sexuality is a prominent topic in many of the stories. In a disturbing way for the reader, July chooses to portray sexuality as personal failure rather than happy fulfillment. Reading the stories “Something That Needs Nothing” and “The Sister,” I ask what significance sexual inadequacy has for the portrayal of subjects in an individualized society. The irritation that accompanied my initial readings is the driving force behind my close readings in this book. This introduction sought to communicate this irritation about Miranda July
s work. In the following chapters, I want to ascertain the reasons for my reading experience. Along with these readings, it will become clear what is special about Miranda July
s art. In the end of the book, I hope I will have convinced the reader that her voice articulates a unique and thus significant critique of the modern self.

2 Healing the Audience? Virtual Community Versus Individualization in the Internet Project Learning to Love You More

The project Learning to Love You More takes place on the Internet. The Internet is a controversial space, which spawns heated discussions about its significance as alleged center of the contemporary globalized society. Proponents advocate its networking potentials. They maintain that Web 2.0 provides each person with a voice, while it globally fosters connections between people (Rheingold; Poster). Its critics see in the Internet the cementation of eroding communities and the anonymization of society. Such critics argue that Internet users
identity performances have a negative effect on social interaction in real life (Turkle Life on the Screen, Alone Together; Barber). The much longed-for attention that the individual desires (Franck) can, consequently, only be superficially satisfied. Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher
s online art project Learning to Love You More is situated in the midst of this field of tension. Based on the principle of audience participation, it employs non-hierarchical artistic principles that were conceptualized by avant-garde movements of the mid twentieth century (BryanWilson). LTLYM proclaims that everybody is an artist (as Joseph Beuys did in 1973) and that the activation of the audience has spiritual healing effects (Higgins; Bishop). In light of this, I first would like to raise the question of how the principle of audience participation that is at work in LTLYM receives new possibilities by way of the Internet medium, and to which new ambivalences it gives rise. In the second subchapter, I will concentrate on how the project positions itself and the participant in the context of digital media culture. LTLYM arguably fosters a new kind of community (Bryan-Wilson; Graham and Cook). The concept of the virtual community is highly contested with regards to its function (Song). I will discuss the Internet
s possibilities and obstructions for building a

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virtual community in light of LTLYM as a creative project. How does the project
s self-reflection of its mediality influence this process? Finally, the so-called virtual community needs to be scrutinized with regards to the question of how it can be defined as a community at all. If it is constituted merely as a loose association of expressive individualists (Bellah) who are exclusively interested in the acknowledgment of their performed authentic selves, is the term ‘community’ applicable at all? Which, if any, aspects of the Internet support the critical claim that the project merely provides a platform for anonymous egocentricities? A brief introduction of LTLYM is vital to understand its form, content and reception before moving on to the analysis. Assignment no. 63, for example, reads: “Make an encouraging banner.” The participants are asked to think about something that they say to themselves when they feel discouraged. They are asked to write the words down on paper and hang them in a highly visible place so as to provide encouragement to themselves and others. A picture of the banner is uploaded to the site and displayed there. Between 2002 and 2009, July and Fletcher posted a total of seventy assignments of this type for the audience to complete. Participants were invited to create their own artworks in different media, including writing, audio and video recording, drawing and photography. For an online art project, it was unusually successful in both the quantity and quality of responses it received (Graham and Cook 121). Indeed, the project was so popular that it received over eight thousand postings during its operation of approximately eight years.18 A print version 18 Data given on the website. In general, participants from all over the world could take part. While there have been many contributions from different countries, most were from US citizens. With LTLYM, July created her first project in the medium Internet. Since then, she has referenced the Internet in its major cultural role in her movies as well as in her books and interviews. Her work thus generally reflects the significance of online culture. In the movie Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), one storyline is concerned with finding chat partners and blind dates through online chat rooms. In The Future (2011), the starting scene shows the main characters absorbed by their computer screens. The protagonists make the radical step to cancel their Internet connection in order to confront their real lives. In the book It Chooses You (2011), where July interviews people who advertized in the Penny Saver, one question she poses to the interview partners is whether they own a computer. LTLYM#s major merits have been pinned down to be its basis of participation and its effort to create a community on the Internet (Bryan-Wilson; Graham and Cook). Prior

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with additional essays and participants
comments was published in 2007 (by Prestel). The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has archived the website since it closed. Thus, art institutions recognized its art historical significance. The large number of active participants and institutional acclaim indicates that LTLYM indeed bears significance. What might have motivated participants to engage with the project and its assignments? I will argue that the project appears to be a reflection of a certain strata of (US) society that has an interest in self-awareness and self-help. The title, Learning to Love You More, explicitly invites individuals to ‘learn to love themselves more’ through participating in the project. It is based on the spiritual idea of finding and appreciating one
s innermost self. How do single assignments and their respective renditions express a heightened need to affirm the self in this way? Which are the longings that July presupposes to exist in the “creative class” that Richard Florida considers as the contemporary dominant class?

2.1 H EALING T HROUGH P ARTICIPATION The concept of taking interest in the audience and their personal experiences has its roots in mid twentieth century avant-garde movements. One of the principles of avant-garde movements such as Fluxus was to render the audience visible. This attempt was in line with the democratic ideal of dismantling hierarchies. Moreover, a spiritual concern became immanent within avant-garde art. The concept of self-awareness had already been conceptualized in the nineteenth century Romantic period. The transcendentalists valued it higher than materialism for the constitution of the self. In the 1960s, the interest in self-awareness arose anew. Some artists wanted the audience to experience themselves on an emotional and spiritual level (cf. Higgins). This was not to be generated by looking in awe at an art piece, but by way of the experience of making art oneself. The art historian Julia BryanWilson praises LTLYM
s do-it-yourself (DIY) approach, which succeeds in activating people by motivating them to create things. Bryan-Wilson points out that “LTLYM
s assignment art
draws on numerous art historical precedents, including movements of the 1960s and 1970s such as Fluxus, Conceptualism, and feminist art” (Bryan-Wilson 144). With this in mind, she places LTLYM in an avant-

to that, in 1996, July created a community-supportive project with the video distribution network Joanie 4 Jackie for female artists in the San Francisco Bay area. This network aimed at supporting women artists with little resources (Bryan-Wilson 144).

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garde tradition of participatory art. This tradition aimed at strengthening the role of the audience through encouraging active participation in the artwork, rather than merely passive consumption.19 This approach puts into practice Joseph Beuys
s famous exclamation that ‘everybody is an artist’. The concept of the auric artist as the sole creator of an artwork was deconstructed: “Instruction art
s annexation of everyday life into the realm of art was of special interest to artists who sought to demystify the role of the artist” (Bryan-Wilson 144). By turning one
s everyday life into art, everybody could become an artist. One principle to encourage participation was to begin from the audience
s knowledge and not to require special skills, such as painting with oil or playing an instrument. Participative art did not attempt to motivate the audience to create high art; it took its inspiration from everyday life (Raussert 187). The attempt to motivate the audience to participate in the process of making art reflects a few concepts that are related to the self-help realm. In this subchapter, I will trace the links between participatory art and self-help. Then, I will consider in what way and to what extent the form and the content of the assignments refer to the self-help realm. In order to provide an answer to this question, I will critically engage with a few creations sent in. More specifically, I will reflect upon the participants’ reactions to the assignment and what, in these reactions, might suggest the experience of help. The discourse of self-help is already implicit in the introductory section of the website learningtoloveyoumore.com. July and Fletcher explain their project
s goal: Participants accepted an assignment, completed it by following the simple but specific instructions, sent in the required report (photograph, text, video, etc), and their work got posted on-line. Like a recipe, meditation practice, or familiar song, the prescriptive nature of these assignments was intended to guide people towards their own experience.

In its emphasis on the aspect of caring for the audience, July and Fletcher implicate the project
s spiritual dimension. They employ vocabulary that expresses an 19 Participatory art has a decidedly political dimension. The empowerment of the audience into active participants reflects a democratic, non-hierarchical ideal of society. I will only marginally touch upon such socio-political aspects. For more information see for example: Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics (2002); Grant Kester, Conversation Pieces. Community and Communication in Modern Art (2004); Claire Bishop, ed. Participation. Documents of Contemporary Art (2006). For a critique of collective art in the neo-avantgarde see Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-garde.

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intention to encourage spiritual healing by helping participants to actualize their artistic creativity. They want to provide a set of instructions, as indicated through the words recipe
and prescriptive nature
, or even a soft medication, soothing like a familiar song
. Instead of having to come up with a concept on their own, participants follow the artists
assignments. The assignments are not complicated; because they are close to the participants
usual everyday activities, they are easy to fulfill. This everydayness is reflected in the form of the created artworks which tend to be more realist than abstract. In order to provide a space in which they can care
for the audience, the artists supply the hosted website. The artists themselves disappear behind the amateur
artworks. Their only role is to write the assignments and to curate the reports. In the assignments, they address the site
s visitors directly and thus create a personal relationship between artist and audience. The instructions are written in the imperative and are simply worded: No. 4: “Start a lecture series,” no. 17: “Record your own guided meditation,” or no. 43: “Make an exhibition of the art in your parent
s house.” The artists filter the created artworks according to their faithful execution (cf. Graham and Cook 122). By creating step-by-step assignments, the artists signal to the participants that the project has been modeled according to the participants
abilities. It is in this sense that the artists care for the participants. The introduction to the project reflects that the artists understand themselves as therapists, and the audience as patients. Hence, the artists assume that the participants suffer from something. As the title suggests, it is the tendency to love oneself too little. The aspect of healing is also pointed out by Bryan-Wilson who states that “[s]ome of the lessons are not only aesthetically but emotionally challenging, akin to the exercises one might get from a therapist” (146). The therapeutic aim is reflected in the project
s title. Learning to Love You More implies the initiation of a process. By using the gerund, the artists underscore the process of learning by creating art. They thus allude to therapy, as a process of learning about the self and acknowledge its desires. It is noteworthy that the artists do not choose a typical title of the self-help genre. Instead of calling it “How to learn to love yourself more,” the artists suggest that learning loving oneself is a process that can be taught. The participant is not to be improved in a utilitarian, but a spiritual way.20 The title implies that the artists perceive the participants to be lovable, and that participants can learn to appreciate themselves better by engaging in the suggested practice. If the creators of the website assume that participants love themselves too little, then I ask whether this originates in the notion that the modern individual ex20 On utilitarian self-improvement, see for example McGee; Starker; Bellah.

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tensively seeks acknowledgment (Franck; Wagner). If so, then their concept builds on the assumption that the members of an anonymous and individualized society (Bauman) need help. Due to its specific spiritual leanings, I suggest that the project is inspired by East-Asian spiritual concepts. This is in line with a contemporary Western notion that Eastern spirituality
s approach to self-awareness harbors relief from certain inflictions the modern middle-class suffers from, for example stress and anxiety (Franck; Werthmann). Adding to this approach of self-awareness, being creative and displaying one
s personal experiences on the Internet can be regarded as a therapy
for the illness
of anonymization. The act of creation brings another merit for one
s self-approval. Being considered an artist is equal to being able to express one
s inner self in a most valuable way (McGee). In an individualized society, the individual needs to find such selfapproval. It is therefore vital to ask whether LTLYM is based on exactly this notion of helping the individual to overcome this anxiety. Does it proclaim that expressing one
s individuality is a way to heal oneself? The very first assignment posted already reflects the concept of healing through self-expression. July and Fletcher seem to imply that the process of learning to love oneself more begins with learning about oneself. They initiate this process by motivating participants to reflect on their childhood. The first assignment shows a picture of a baby romper and reads: Assignment no. 1: Make a childs outfit in an adult size. Recreate this jumper in a size that fits you and wear it as much as possible. Try to use a very similar fabric, it should at least be pink. You will want to try very hard to make a precise enlargement, while not getting discouraged by mistakes, or daunted by lack of sewing skills. Documentation: Take a picture of you in the jumper.

21

By instructing the participant to create and wear a baby-outfit, the first assignment symbolically inaugurates the life-cycle. At the same time, the absurdity of the assignment makes a statement about its own seriousness. The item of baby clothing is intended to transport the participant back into an infant state. This state connotes vulnerability and dependence, but also innocence. It symbolizes that like a newborn to this world, one cannot be held responsible for one
s ac-

21 Throughout this chapter, the assignments that are quoted in their entirety include the instructions on how to upload the artworks. This is vital for a consideration of the required media. All assignments are accessible on the website www.learningtoloveyou morecom. The assignments are listed by number on the left side of the screen.

.

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tions. It is regarded as a passive state, as a baby is not regarded to be an agent in society.22 The pressure of responsibility that accompanies adulthood is alleviated. A baby has not experienced socialization; it is needful of only the most basic needs, and above all, love. The state of infancy is one of purity and innocence; a state that precedes the influences of society, positive or negative. The assignment can therefore serve to symbolically place the participant into the state of being purely him or herself. This concentration on the self in its form of disregarding the social surroundings is akin to the notion of the transcendental self. It posits that one should find one
s true inner core and express it. This implicit statement in the assignment is, however, ironically twisted. Wearing a baby-outfit is certainly playful, if not ridiculous. It suggests a high degree of self-irony that contravenes the spiritual notion of the transcendental self. The irony helps to distance the participant from him or herself. Both aspects – expressing one
s true self and at the same time distancing oneself from it – constitute this assignment
s presumed healing aspect. July and Fletcher have the participant rewind his or her life and erase all heretofore gathered experiences. The adult is turned into an innocent person, freed from his or her social responsibilities. Reminding of Freudian psychoanalysis, the participants are thus asked to confront their childhood and their unsocialized self from a distance. By returning to a patient’s experience of early childhood, the analyst can asses the patient’s psyche in order to identify the reasons for his or her present mental distress. Bryan-Wilson suggests that “[t]he site thus allows for play in its frivolous sense as well as in its darker registers – play as the Freudian repetition compulsion that reworks war, death, regret, and trauma” (146). This assignment suggests that the participant plays a child in order to come to terms with his or her childhood and, subsequently, with the person he or she has become.23 22 Compare my analysis of the character “Andrew” in Julys film Me and You (chapter 3.3.2). 23 In Julys work, the child is a visible figure in many senses. Her film Me and You features a number of child characters, and in her short stories, the figure of the child often contrasts the adults emotional disposition. She takes the state of childhood and childrens agency seriously. Childhood is moreover a symbol for a state in life devoid of responsibilities and decisions. In her film The Future (2011), July transports the notion of a generation that postpones growing up as long as possible. The film portrays a couple in their mid-thirties who are reluctant to take on responsibilities as adults. As a phenomenon of contemporary individualized times, people try to stay young as long as they can. Having children seems like a symbol for the end of ones own pleasurable life. July portrays the adult who wants to stay a child and do playful things.

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At the same time, he or she stands out from the masses. In an absurd way, the participant becomes visible by wearing a baby outfit. Wearing a baby outfit in public is a controversial way to feel acknowledged as an individual. Arguably, it is a trivial way to express innocence and vulnerability. While the participant might feel acknowledged, it is rather a case of receiving attention. The quality of being seen
is lower, because it is a superficial way of seeing only the individual
s outer appearance. Such attention does not lead to a true acknowledgment of the individual
s self. As such, this assignment becomes a way of boosting individual egocentricities in a superficial way. Although there is an implicit healing effect, however trivial, the assignment to make a child
s outfit is not explicitly based on self-help rhetoric. Other assignments bear a more explicit relation to self-help culture. See, for example, assignment no. 53: Assignment no. 53: Give advice to yourself in the past. Choose a particular age you have been, perhaps a time when you were particularly lost. Write out a list of practical advice to yourself at that age. Begin the list with this header: “Advice To Michelle Cambell at Sixteen” (only use your name and whatever age you want.) You must specify the age that you are giving yourself advice to!! Be very specific with your advice, for example, dont just say "Hold on to your heart," but instead say “Dont go out with Kevin, he will eventually cheat on you. Go out with Jake instead, he is actually cooler.” If you need to use fake names go ahead. It is easy to say that everything happens for a reason, but take this opportunity to redirect yourself towards what you think might have been better. Sure everything turned out ok, but maybe you should have quit that job five years earlier, maybe you should have had children when you were 27, maybe you should have flossed, maybe you should have gone to the alternative high school, or not said that thing to your best friend. Tell yourself what to do in clear, specific language. Do not write an essay, make it in list form. Documentation: Write or type down your list of advice. (Emphasis original)

The assignment directly references the realm of self-help by motivating the participant to reflect upon him or herself through writing. Self-help literature frequently offers list writing as a kind of practical advice: “Writing exercises, including lists, sentence completion exercises, inventories of skills or shortcomings, mission statement, morning pages,
deathbed reflections, fictional autobiographies, and fantasy ideal days, are the mainstay of self-improvement culture” (McGee 155-56). This assignment suggests that one can learn from one’s experiences by writing down and reflecting upon the troubling moment. The effect of

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learning adheres to the principles of self-help. The participant is asked to extract a meaning from a situation in which he or she has not acted in a self-satisfying way. By way of reflecting on the situation from a temporal distance, the participant can confront the situation and learn something. The assignment does not ask participants to write a list about wishes for future accomplishments. Instead, it encourages self-reflection through the practice of writing. Self-improvement, as it is understood here, begins by confronting one’s past. In their personal lists, many participants give advice to their young adult selves. Conspicuously, the pieces of advice are often related to sexuality and the body. One person (Anonymous from Gilbert, Arizona) gives advice to himself at the age of fifteen: “Don
t be afraid to tell boys that you like them (or ask if they are gay). You can always have a good laugh if they reject you” (LTLYM 7). This list, like so many others, gives insight into the participant
s intimate life. By uploading intimate details of one’s life onto the site, the participants
feelings are externalized, moving from the private to the public sphere. In a similar fashion, Clara from Belgium also refers to her sexual development, and plainly advises her seventeen year-old self not to be “too careful and patient” (LTLYM 83) but to risk something without thinking: “By the time you realize how great sex can be, you won
t find this overwhelming feeling of total love anymore. So do it now; jump on him!!!” Notably, the participants are open to share their intimate experiences. In their Internet confessions, their private lives become public. Bryan-Wilson points out that “[i]t is perhaps because of the directness of the instructions that participants feel free to take emotional risks. It gives people permission to act out, to come clean, or to hide behind a pseudonym” (LTLYM 146). As in the case of Clara, participants generally choose casual, ordinary language when writing lists. Their writing style reflects their everyday experience. This generates a feeling of authenticity. The references to mistakes makes these lists into a kind of confession. These confessions are posted on the website and made available to a large audience. The visitor who reads this assignment
s postings becomes a voyeur. The interaction between confessor and voyeur constitutes an aspect of the assignment
s appeal. This assignment can therefore be situated in the midst of the debate about privacy on the Internet. Hannelore Bublitz argues that the individual at the beginning of the twenty-first century is only able to reassure him or herself of his/her own self through being made public. The new media are the ideal space in which to seek this reassurance as they re-negotiate the boundaries between public and private (11). In contrast to Umberto Eco, she maintains that this fact is not scandalous. Rather, she suggests, the confessional character of the media is the very precondition for the constitution of the modern subject. This

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process of the constitution of the modern subject is enabled through linguistic and visual self-presentation. Without this public presentation, she writes, the subject could not constitute itself. Indeed, it is through its public manifestation, that the subject produces itself – reassuring itself of its own and others
existence and testing its social affiliations (13).24 Paradoxically, then, in the performance of privacy lies an increase of individuality (15). Thus, the public presentation of personal experiences has a performative power that is not the act of breaking a taboo, but a way to increase individuality (24). While I regard the quality of this self-reassurance of individuality as questionable, Bublitz
s argument helps us to understand the driving force behind participatory websites and social networks. Bublitz argues that the notion of the self has changed in the course of the digital age. Now, we no longer regard uniqueness as a natural given that one can simply dig up. Uniqueness must be staged as a self-performance (24-25). The self is constituted through continuous public presentation of self-inspection. The experimental subject continuously re-invents itself.25 To this aim, Bublitz continues, media formats are fashioned after the (clerical) confession (57). Bublitz concludes that the (clerical) confession is one of the most important institutions for the specific Western form of the self. Its identity implies a certain form of self-thematization and self-conception. Its issue is not only self-control, but also subjectivization, self-approval and appreciation from others (58). In LTLYM, this logic is made futile. Many of the assignments apply the principle of confession by asking for the participants
personal narratives. Drawing upon Bublitz
s argument, LTLYM appears as an art project in the new media that applies the confessional aspect. It therefore is an ideal place to produce the self. Assignment no. 53, “Give advice to yourself in the past,” makes obvious the connection between confession and self-performance. Jackie from Illinois confesses and advises herself at age 16 to delay having sexual intercourse, although, she reminds herself, “you end up having a beautiful son” (LTLYM 83). “Don
t quit school simply because you became pregnant; lots of single moms still continue their education. You
ll end up regretting your decision.” Jackie arrives at her final piece of advice – “love yourself!” and thus takes the website
s title literally. This participant confesses that she has made a mistake that influenced her whole life. She presents her early pregnancy to have had negative influences on her education and, subsequently, on her social standing. With the public confes24 Among the various examples that confirm this argument, Facebook is the most prominent. Compare also the article by Joel Stein, “The Me Me Me Generation.” 25 This argument ties in with the one about the entrepreneurial self that has to find its inner core, express it and market it continuously (McGee).

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sion on LTLYM, this part of her life becomes the positive force for constituting her individuality. She considers her self-proclaimed flaw as it relates to her biography and turns it into the primary fact that constitutes her uniqueness. LTLYM becomes a confessional space in which Jackie learns to approve of herself, and she receives approval by others, in turn. The other users
acknowledgment however remains imaginary – an instance of the project
s tendency to superficiality. As argued by Bublitz, the confessional mode serves the production of the self. Moreover, it is also indicative of the participants
underlying ideologies. Hence, assignment no. 53 can be used to define the dominant group that takes part in LTLYM. Early pregnancy and lack of education are first and foremost considered as signs of social inferiority from the perspective of the white, Western middle-class. The participant’s regret regarding these two aspects of her life reveals that she derives her values from this dominant culture. At the same time, the same culture considers sexual identity and self-expression to be one of the highest human values. Therefore, participants who give advice to their younger selves in regard to sexual experiences also argue according to the values of this group. The reproduction of Western middle-class values is furthermore coupled with a great affinity to self-help culture in the lists of other participants. Linda from New York tells herself to go on living and looking after herself: Go on with your life. Be careful who you trust. Beware of men in general, especially if you are married. Wear more colorful clothes. Keep thin. Stay young. Do exercises. Think before you speak. […] Eat less. Do more walking and drinking liquids. (141)

Linda
s short and exacting list features items of advice that have to do with her bodily health. Linda reflects on the notion of beauty and concern with one’s physical appearance. The realms of sexuality and the body are both contested sites of the self and both are popularized by the self-help industry.26 This partici26 Oprah Winfreys website, oprah.com, has a special section on “Health,” that is often concerned with womens weight problems, as for example the article, “Im doing everything right, so why cant I lose weight?”.

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pant demonstrates that she understands herself in the terms of a selfimprovement culture. She expresses regret about having lived an unhealthy lifestyle and having had a depressed mindset. These feelings are made productive in the work of self-constitution. However, affirming Bublitz’s argument, her public confession changes her lack into a strength. It is by way of the list that the public comes to know about her, and which therefore constitutes her. Through the media, specifically the website LTLYM, she stages her self-perceived flaws and it is these flaws that go on to become the constituents to her authentic individuality. It can be derived that the confessional aspect of the site reproduces the cultural code of the healing confessional. July and Fletcher reproduce the notion that public confessions truly help participants to love themselves more. Participants can perform themselves as individuals by way of confessing. LTLYM thus weds the self-help realm to the new media as it produces individuals. This, however, has to be considered critically. Whether the participants
exhibitionism is an act of self-assurance or selftrivialization is debatable. Since the lives of participates only surface to a small degree, the site
s possibility to help can only remain superficial. Participatory art is the realm that provides the parameters for the construction of individuality through confession. It is also the realm that empowers the audience to become amateur artists – or, artists of everyday experience. The artists (in this case, July and Fletcher) conceptually make room for participants to become artists by passing their roles as artists to participants. Bryan-Wilson mentions Yoko Ono
s works as a predecessor to LTLYM. Conceptually, Ono (born 1933) sought to demystify the artist in her famous work Cut Piece (1964). In this performance, Ono asks the audience to come up on stage and cut her clothes, nails and hair. While she is passively sitting, Ono places herself in a vulnerable position by allowing the audience to change her physical appearance.27 By assigning the audience an active role, the artist blurs the border between audience and artist. Although the audience is invited to re-fashion the artist (which is an exploration of the artist
s role per se), the artist, Ono, remains at the center of the piece. The re-conceptualization of the audience was a central aspect in the avantgarde. In combination with the activation of the audience, the spiritual dimension of the artist-audience relationship was addressed. This was in line with the concern about self-awareness and the widening of horizons fashionable in the 1960s. Since the spiritual dimension of experience is central to LTLYM
s agenda, it is worth to define what exactly I am referring to with the term ‘spirituality’. The artist Dick Higgins (1938-98) is an important figure in the Fluxus movement
s 27 On Onos feminist agenda in this piece see Raussert 186, 192.

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re-definition of the roles of the artists and audience in spiritual terms. Higgins defines his understanding of Fluxus in Horizons. The Poetics and Theory of the Intermedia (1984) and therewith provides a conceptualization of acknowledging the audience. He refers to Gadamer
s theory of Horizontverschmelzung (3), defining it as the idea that the audience must have a consciousness of their own horizons in order to fuse them with the artist
s (3). In his own work, Higgins aimed at creating art that was able to spiritually fuse the artist horizons with those of the spectator. Within this discussion, he also points out that the audience should not be confined to their own consciousness: [I]t is valuable to the “receiver,” as we might call the listener, viewer, or reader collectively, not to be too preoccupied with sher [his or her] own identity or private, personal consciousness in any unique or linear sense. If the receiver allows sher own horizon to overwhelm that of the artist – or, worse yet, if the receiver totally concentrates on attempting to read such a consciousness into the paradigmatic sampled work at hand, the reader will fail to achieve the fusion of horizons and will thus miss the opportunity to enjoy the work. (5)

Here, the artist presents himself as the creator of the artwork that is to be enjoyed by an audience. The audience is conceptualized as active merely by acknowledging their awareness and active role in providing the artwork with a meaning. In contrast to LTLYM, they do not create art themselves. In LTLYM, the roles of artist and audience are exchanged. Although these are two different artistic approaches, Higgins
acknowledgment of the audience
s experience explains the uses of participatory art. The personal experience that July and Fletcher encourage participants to make is equivalent to Higgins
s definition of being aware of one
s horizon.28 Participatory art, by definition, places all attention on the audience, turning the audience into the creating artists in turn. Their horizons become known to the original artists who supply the assignments, and to a more general audience. 28 Higgins even describes a process of (emotional) fusion between the artist and the audience: “In general, then, the artist discovers what he or she is seeing, hearing, considering; the artist does what the material suggests, the receiver empathizes with it and experiences its principles both physically, intellectually and intuitively; one accepts the experience, one fuses the work with ones own, and the fusion fulfills the erotic in the process” (11; emphasis original). The artwork appears in the emotions between the artist and the audience. While it can be argued that art always works this way, it is notable that Higgins addresses the process specifically in his book and thus pays close attention to the audience.

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This idea is also put into practice in Ono
s “Instruction Pieces.” Here, the audience becomes an active part in the creation of an artwork. Ono first published these assignments in Grapefruit (1964), which shows a strong similarity to LTLYM in both form and content. Here, Ono merely poses assignments that the participants are meant to fulfill. Hence, they become the creators of the piece. While some instructions generate a material outcome, others generate purely imaginative outcomes. In some pieces, as for example “Painting to be Constructed in Your Head” (1962), Ono gives instructions on how to paint a painting. She then asks the audience to complete the painting, but only in their mind. There is no material artwork produced. Ono provides the initial impulse for the painting that is to be imagined, but she clearly underlines the fact that the painting depends on the participants
imagination. In this way, both the spiritual and inspirational processual aspects of art are highlighted, rather than the pure display of objects (Raussert 188). In Ono
s instruction pieces, the conceptual – and not the material – is foregrounded. These ‘instructions’ are spiritual mind exercises, comparable to a meditative practice. They are therefore comparable to Zen anecdotes, if not inspired by them (ibid.). This spirituality is also apparent in LTLYM in so far as it makes the spiritual demand upon participants to love themselves more. Unlike Ono
s “Instruction Pieces,” LTLYM publishes participants
artworks. It is much more convenient to exhibit the pieces in virtual space than in galleries.29 Therefore, one can say that the Internet allows artists to push participatory art in its attempt to turn the audience into artists. Many of Ono      $  % &  '  $   these pieces tease the participants to imagine things and are ultimately aimed at spiritual healing. While many of LTLYMs assignments have a spiritual aspect and may evoke a meditative stance, they also have a material character. LTLYM is unique in so far as it insists that documents be posted on the site. The project rests on participants’ ability to see or hear what other participants have created. The Internet makes it possible to exhibit all the renditions in one space. Yoko Ono had to rely on real
space in the 1960s and 1970s, and thus only visitors to the exhibitions could take an active public role.30 But such public participants were the minority. The concept of Grapefruit intends that the instructions are 29 Nonetheless, there have been a couple of exhibitions of LTLYM, for example in The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City (2004). For a complete list of exhibitions see learningtoloveyoumore.com. 30 Since their conceptions until today, Onos instruction pieces and participatory art like Wish Tree and Whisper Piece have been exhibited in galleries and museums, for example in the Indica Gallery in London in 1966 and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa) in New York City in 2010.

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carried out in private. Most creations inspired by Ono
s instructions, therefore, stay in the privacy of the individual. In contrast, LTLYMs responses are to be viewed by others and hence promote the visibility of individual participants. In line with Bublitz
s argument, the contemporary individual is constituted in part through this public space. However controversial this might be, the electronic age of Web 2.0 has produced such an understanding of the individual. In some assignments, the performance of the self becomes more abstract by including other people. This is the case in assignment no. 39: “Take a picture of your parents kissing.” Here, self-performance does not merely happen through explicitly referring to the self, but also to others who have had an impact on the participant
s life. While in the assignment no. 53 one is asked to give advice to oneself, in other assignments, self-reference assumes more subtle forms. This is achieved, for example, by making other subjects the center of the artwork. If the assignments were too therapeutic, they would have no artistic value. Participants must achieve an insight into their private lives, which they have probably never regarded as art. To be presented with the opportunity to see ordinary things as special is deeply motivating. This is the opportunity presented in an assignment which allows the participant to become aware of his or her parents
relationship in a new way. Assignment no. 39: Take a picture of your parents kissing. Take a picture of your parents kissing (or at least hugging). Do not send us an older picture of your parents, we are looking for a new picture taken specifically for this assignment. Documentation: Send in the picture and your parents first names to be used as the title for the picture, like “Jennifer and Ricardo.”

Displaying one
s parents is a very personal act. There is an added tension in the assignment in so far as it asks a participant to portray his or her parents and to confront their relationship and sexuality. In this way, the portrayal directly reflects on the participant. When the participants take photographs of their parents in order to display the photographs publicly, they see their parents as art objects. The publicly displayed photograph casts a new light on the participants
social relations. On the site, the participants can upload the photograph and display it to others as proof that their parents share a love relationship. Again, in this gesture, what is normally understood as private is made public and it is this public that helps to construct the individual. By presenting his or her family in an intimate moment to a public, an individual performs his or her emotional familial identity in a sentimental way. Symbolically, this is a place where the self can arm itself

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against the anonymity of the individualized society. The motive suggests that there are people who love each other until old age, whose unity is not disturbed by individualism. Moreover, acknowledging the love between one
s parents is, by extension, to acknowledge oneself. This positive and emotional image constitutes the assignment
s healing aspect. Nassim Balestrini in her article “Photography as Online Life Writing” (2013) analyses the way in which LTLYM questions social conventions. She argues that the participants are motivated to “leave [...] the comfort zone of socially affirmative photography” (342). She discusses assignment no. 39 in comparison with other assignments which involve photography. By way of this comparison, she is able to identify accepted social conventions and norms depicted in the photographs: The fact that most of the images do not surprise the viewer and seem familiar indicates that numerous photographers of their parents kisses share a sense of where one could take such a picture and of the wide spectrum between showing physical passion and embarrassment and about displaying such feelings in front of ones offspring and, ultimately, anonymous Internet users. (346)

Balestrini argues that “Parents kissing” was easy to realize because it received numerous responses, and most of these responses were compliant with the rules. She concludes that the assignment was in line with expected and accepted social norms regarding body language. While I agree that it is productive to think about this assignment in regard to the way it questions social conventions, I first want to affirm that “Parents kissing” does, in fact, question these conventions. Participants certainly do share a value system. However, this is the case because sharing forms of “socially affirmative photography” are reliant on the culture of which the participants are members (cf. Fiske). Hence, participants who posted photographs already belong to a certain group. Arguably, although the project is globally accessible, they belong to the white, Western, Christian hemisphere. These participants share a sense of how parents may be photographed, as much as the parents share a sense of how to act together in front of the camera. While I agree that certain norms about parents
sexuality are reproduced here, I also think that it is not regarded as normal in Western culture to display elderly people in a physical relationship. Pictorial representations of elderly people in love are not the norm. Rather, we are habituated to seeing depictions of young people in physical relationships. As in other instances of July
s work, revealing the un-

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derlying agism of these presuppositions appears as a fruitful way to deconstruct expected norms.31 To sum up the above analyses, the development of participative art – from its analogous beginnings in avant-garde movements to its virtual permutation – has been accompanied by a change of possibilities and of meaning. While for art movements such as Fluxus, participation mainly meant to empower the audience, the Web enables participants to render themselves visible as individuals through making art. This visibility furthers the constitution of the subject within a society that is characterized by anonymity and individualization. However, this is only the case in a superficial way. The set-up and the contents of the assignments discussed above explicitly refer to the self-help realm by insisting upon self-reflection and confession. Healing is envisioned by furthering selfawareness, or, by becoming aware of one
s own horizon. The participant
s individuality is affirmed and acknowledged in this process. Nevertheless, the question of whether receiving acknowledgment from strangers has a truly helpful impact remains open.

2.2 T HE M EDIA

AND THE

V IRTUAL C OMMUNITY

According to the previous readings, July and Fletcher re-define the concept of the artist and audience
s roles in the context of Web 2.0. From LTLYMs principles of healing the audience and of encouraging self-reflection, we now proceed to looking more specifically at the Internet medium, in particular, the aesthetic possibilities it provides, and what these possibilities harbor for reading LTLYM with respect to healing audience members. Notably, a number of assignments reflect on the Internet medium. The project reflects on its own mediality and its role as a promoter of anonymity. The participants’ representations of everyday life and the media employed in these representations is part of the participants
reality. But how can a virtual community be built by motivating participants to reflect on the media? How is the Internet
s mediality translated into a means for self-help? Although still in its relatively young state, the Internet fosters new modes of global communication, while, at the same time, raising questions about virtual community building. The Internet is the central medium of contemporary Western life. Whether it is in order to read the news, to communicate by e-mail, or to

31 Compare my analysis of the character “Michael” in Me and You, chapter 3.4.

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look up information, we use the Internet everyday. One reason for this fact is that the Internet comprises many media in one: mail, bulletin board, television – among others. For the modern information society and for the subject who wishes to keep pace with it, the Internet is indispensable. Thus, not having Internet access is tantamount to being disconnected from the world.32 The Internet is used by masses of people to display and reveal personal experiences. This general exhibitionism is so extensive that even sociologists use it to conduct research.33 Extremely popular websites like Facebook share with LTLYM the basic idea of a global network on which one posts personal details for display. As an art project, LTLYM takes this basic idea of a social network in order to motivate people to create art from their everyday lives. YouTube, as the most popular site onto which people upload art, mostly music, can also be regarded as an initial influence for LTLYM. “But in distinction to You Tube
s free-form expressions of the individual ego, each LTLYM report begins as a contribution to a collective effort” (Bryan-Wilson 147). This argument supposes LTLYM to have a superior value than other Internet platforms. While both are produced by and for the creative class, LTLYM arguably brings people together; it does not only provide a platform for egocentricities. The principle of participation underlying LTLYM does not merely concern the interaction between artist and audience, but between participants themselves. If this is true, then LTLYM tackles the much deplored crisis of community (Bauman). One has to take into account, however, that there are some who claim that the Internet has actually fostered anonymization and alienation from society (Turkle). Paradoxically, the Internet might have intensified the predicaments for rendering such a project as LTLYM helpful. The ways in which participative Internet art can further a notion of community and challenge the negative aspects of anonymization are therefore worth discussing. Felicia Wu Song
s book Virtual Communities (2009) builds on Robert D. Putnam
s much discussed claim that communities are eroding in the US. She is interested in the question of how the technological conditions of virtual communities frame contemporary beliefs and assumptions about the community and the 32 Although the Internet is supposed to be a global medium, its accessibility is still limited. Access is mostly secured in the more affluent Western countries, producing a digital

divide. The Internet can therefore be regarded as a medium that manifests if

not furthers a divide between Western capitalist countries and lower-income countries. On the digital divide see: Massimo Ragnedda, The Digital Divide. The Internet and Social Inequality in International Perspective (2013). 33 See for example the article by Christian Heinrich, “Forschen mit Facebook. Wissenschaftler nutzen Soziale Netzwerke als Labors für ihre soziologischen Studien.”

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individual. Although her research interest focuses on political participation, it encompasses questions that I am posing about creative participation: [T]he organization, rhetoric, management, and services made available through virtual communities – all of which function to define how membership is managed, how social control is maintained, how participation is enacted, and what practices are legitimized – can reveal the cultural assumptions and categories that animate and give meaning to online interaction. Exploring how online communities define community and participation might bring to light not only a sense of what virtual community founders and administrators take membership to mean but also what virtual community members are hoping to find. (9)

Song concludes that contemporary communities are set up differently than premodern ones. They do not serve a communal goal and a stable identity, but favor the individual purposes rather than a collective orientation. Personal fulfillment has become more important than a collective identity (129). Her conclusion ties in with the assumption that social individualization has become institutionalized. People do not want to be subsumed under a communal signifier, but prefer platforms that render their individualities visible. It remains to be discussed what virtual community members are hoping to find. With regards to LTLYM, it is important to ask upon which presuppositions the project is based. Of what are the participants supposedly in need and what does the project offer them as a therapy? As discussed above, Felicia Wu Song argues that virtual community membership mainly serves to strengthen the individualist tendencies that we experience in real life. She does not, however, deplore this process, but rather points out the positive sides of redefining community in the digital age. This argument needs to be evaluated with regards to LTLYM. It has to be put into its creative context as a platform that motivates people to make art. Claire Bishop as editor of Participation. Documents of Contemporary Art (2006) assumes that there is a public interest in countering the erosion of communities. According to her, one way to do so is through participative art. The audience is empowered to “a restoration of the social bond through a collective elaboration of meaning” (12). Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook in their publication Rethinking Curating: Art after New Media (2010) specifically discuss LTLYM as a valuable example on how participative systems have developed in the context of Web 2.0.34 In line with Bishop
s 34 In their emphasis on new media art, they posit that the kind of art that uses new technologies is avant-garde per se, as the new technologies are in constant emergence and flux (284). Hence, they draw a connection between New Media and avant-garde art.

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and also with Bryan-Wilson
s argument that LTLYM emphasizes the collective, Graham and Cook define LTLYM to be an online project that adds a social aspect to the new media.35 The participants are to learn to love themselves more, but they are also motivated to learn to appreciate other participants. In so doing, they form an online community and thus strengthen a social bond. Pushing this thought further, we might say that active participation in the community helps oneself to overcome a feeling of anonymity. The collaborative aspect in art has been theorized by Grant Kester in Conversation Pieces. Community and Communication in Modern Art (2004). He explains dialogic art (with reference to Bakhtin) as the kind of art where the artist enters into a dialogue with a community.36 Kester
s thoughts are also applicable to July and Fletcher
s project in regard to the communication between the parties. In entrusting July and Fletcher
s site with their personal experiences and the creations that arise from these experience, participants respond to the artists
assignments and enter into a dialogue with them. Graham and Cook elaborate Kester
s definition by arguing that instead of mere interaction, where an acting upon each other is at the center, participation requires that the audience has “a share in or take[s] part in” the project (114). They furthermore recur to Bishop who discusses audience activation and the question of authorship, and claims that the building of a community is the main concern of participatory art (10 ff.). Graham and Cook add that the audience
s creative input is a vital component of participatory art (141). This aspect plays an important role in July and Fletcher
s project. Due to the rendition in the Internet medium, LTLYM provides a place in which participants
creative contributions are at the center of the project. Through these artistic creations, participants are able to relate to each other emotionally. The project thus addresses rising anonymity, which goes hand in hand with the perceived state of eroding communities. It implies a healing effect for 35 They argue that by challenging the traditional role of the audience through participation, the users engage in a democratic system (139). The role of the artists is at the same time challenged in that they become the curators to the participants work. Graham and Cook regard this combination as the reason for LTLYMs popularity and its true social engagement. 36 Kester focuses on art that addresses inter-racial hostilities and religious stereotypes, hence, art with a decidedly political aim. He terms this art avant-garde, but at the same time it is accessible for a larger audience (13). Graham and Cook acknowledge that Kesters use of conversation theory offers a good vocabulary for interactive art (117). Similarly, Nicolas Bourriauds Relational Aesthetics (2002) describes an aesthetic theory consisting in judging artworks on the basis of the inter-human relations which they represent, produce or prompt (112).

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the participants by allowing them to create art within a community. July and Fletcher thus facilitate the production of the creative class. Prior to the digital age, such an agenda has been analogically performed in various Fluxus events. In respect to the creation of an artistic community, LTLYM owes to Alison Knowles
s (born 1933) instructional project Make a Salad. Since its inception in 1962, this piece has been performed by Knowles herself in collaboration with her daughter and/or with other participants. The everyday task of preparing food points to the Fluxus artists
concern to transfer everyday experiences into art (cf. Bryan-Wilson 144; Raussert 187). The act of preparing a salad and eating it with others stands at the center of this instruction. Make a Salad is a project that physically brings people together at a real site. By contrast, LTLYM
s market place
, or, exhibition space, is located in the virtual world. Nevertheless, Graham and Cook perceive LTLYM to have been successful in overcoming a distance from which online communities oftentimes suffer. The artists spurred first responses on the site by using their private and artist networks. They emailed people they know and motivated them to post first reports. At a later point, they organized workshops in physical form in which participants met and were invited to complete assignments. With this in mind, Graham and Cook argue, LTLYM is based on a “hybridity between the site specific and the online” that helps to eliminate the distance between artist and audience (120). July and Fletcher state that the assignments want to “bring people together and give them a new way to feel something” (no. 4: “Make a LTLYM assignment
”). In this project, the boundary between artists and participants, as much as between participants themselves, is supposedly diminished. Following these statements, the question arises of whether the project furthers feelings of selfworth in the amateur artists. What Graham and Cook call “hybridity between the site specific and the online” can thus be compared with Fluxus artist Dick Higgins
s definition of intermedia. By this term, Higgins indicates those works of art that he sees as conceptually falling between established or traditional media (Higgins 15).37 To apply Higgins
s terms, the overcoming of distance in the participatory project supports the fusion of these horizons. For Fluxus this is the case because it fuses the philosophical principles of art and life (16). In avant-garde creations, according to Higgins, there is an active, dialectical relationship between the form and the material (1). In LTLYM, the transition from virtual space to a real-life workshop is a case of media fusion. It affects the audience by overcoming the Web
s anonymity. The border between the real and the virtual, between real people work37 There are other definitions of intermedia. Some are less philosophical than structural (e.g., Wolf; Rajewsky).

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ing on a project and its mere virtual exhibition, is blurred. It is easier to be committed if one must have an actual physical presence. The participants do not remain in a virtual space, but are invited to collaboratively create art in real space and are therefore acknowledged. Mostly, however, the project took place in virtual space. Hence, the practice of bringing people together mainly had to be achieved without the aid of face-toface communication and collaborative creations in real space. In the project
s virtual reality, the community-building factor has to be constituted through media-specific means. How is the anonymized individual motivated to help him or herself through reflections on media implications and his or her position within it? Notably, a number of LTLYM assignments are concerned with the media
s reflections of reality, and/or the participant
s role as receiver in the semiotic sense (cf. Fiske). This can concern popular entertainment, or news. The project here becomes self-reflexive in its mediality. Self-reflexivity is also asked of the participants: Assignment no. 13: Recreate the moment after a crime. Many papers or on-line magazines have “crime blotters” or “save our streets” sections. Take a simple, one sentence description of a crime such as: “A woman from Hanham grabbed a handbag from a 73 year-old woman as she stood with her friend at a bus stop.” and make a video title of this. Make the title in white lettering in Futura font on an orange background. The first words of the title should be the place where the crime happened, followed by the one sentence description of the crime. This title should be up for as long as it takes to read it and should be immediately followed by a video that lasts no more than 5 seconds, or less than the length of the title. This video is a single shot of the person who was attacked (or robbed or yelled at, etc), after the attack. The shot should have no zoom or camera movement. It is a personal moment, with no violent action in it. The person playing the role of the attacked should think of the times in their life when they have been very surprised and scared in order to help recreate the moment. There shouldnt be yelling or talking in the video, this is simply a stunned moment, that is all. The video should also not be silent; the natural sounds of the environment (traffic, birds, etc.) should be audible. You may use additional information from the article to help orient yourself in the scene, such as: “The victim felt her handbag, which contained $45 in cash and various credit cards, being removed seconds before the car sped off, sent her sprawling.”

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What you would be recreating in this case is the moment after the woman has been sent sprawling, in other words: the moment after the action. Do not include any of this information in your title. Do not dress up or use elaborate props; wear your own clothes. You are yourself, trying to recreate a feeling that someone else had. DOCUMENTATION The following video formats are acceptable: Quicktime .mov file. Put the original recording in a safe place for possible future exhibition. (Emphasis original)

By asking participants to engage with media representations and the role of the media
s receiver, this assignment triggers thinking about how media represent events. At the same time, it renders transparent how such occurrences may inspire artistic processes. Putting aside the ethical question for a moment, the characteristics of the Internet medium appear to be highly suitable to combine these aspects. The principle ties in with Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin
s argument in their well-known book Remediation (1999). Its central thesis is that the dominant characteristic of the Internet is its remediation of other media. This is made obvious in LTLYM in so far as participants use different media to create their artworks. The underlying technology, including video and photography, is openly referred to in the assignments. This is also the case for assignment no. 13: “Recreate the moment after a crime.” The instructions on how the video is to be shot are exacting so that the creative process of turning the article into a video is made transparent. Thus, the artists remind us of the project
s artificiality.38 The participants are asked to turn a small snapshot into a short video; this is an act of remediation. A written text is turned into a visual one. A video leaves a considerable amount of artistic freedom, but here the instructions cut the possibilities down to an exact rendition. This ensures that the participants focus on a certain moment. The instruction not to show the insulting or violent action itself and to show, instead, the moment after the crime, has ambivalent implications. On one hand, it can be argued that by focusing on the victim
s feelings, the assignment furthers empathy. In contrast to the snapshot article, the video involves the receiver with the victim’s emotions. The meaning of the article undergoes a 38 Raussert also underlines the avant-garde aspect of rendering transparent the emergence of artistic vision through its machinery (185). He elaborates on Onos experimental movies to make his point. Lev Manovich points out that already the classical avant-garde had the concern to make the act of creation transparent and to give it meaning. In his discussion of the movie Man with a Movie Camera (1929) by Dziga Vertov, the obvious montage acquires meaning because “the new techniques of obtaining images and manipulating them, summed up by Vertov in his term kino-eye, can be used to decode the world” (xxviii).

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change in its remediation to a video sequence. The factuality that is characteristic of the genre of the news-press is remediated as sensuality in the video. The video allows the one who re-enacts the scene, and the viewer, in turn, to perceive the news emotionally in an artistic sense. On the other hand, the assignment does not ask who the victim is, what led to his or her victimization, and what happens afterwards. By re-coding the crime, its violence is taken away. The assignment can therefore be regarded as ethically questionable, as it superficially turns violence into fun. Another aspect of this assignment to be considered is the question of location. The comfortable white, Western, middle-class illusion that one is not personally involved in the news, and that the victims are people that one does not know, is challenged in this assignment. By mimicking a real-life situation, the reports create the illusion of reality. As a consequence, the viewer oscillates between illusion and reality. This oscillation reflects the aesthetics of the Internet itself. As Manovich states in his influential work The Language of New Media (2000), new media shares with leftist avant-garde strategies the breaking of illusions. This gesture is also achieved by transforming the audience from passive viewers into active participants (207). Manovich regards the new media as inherently avant-garde because of its diversity: One general effect of the digital revolution is that avant-garde aesthetic strategies came to be embedded in the commands and interface metaphors of computer software. […] The avant-garde move to combine animation, printed texts, and live-action footage is repeated in the convergence of animation, title generation, paint, compositing, and editing systems into all-in-one packages. (xxxi)

This aesthetic form brings about a break of the illusion of mere fictionality. Assignment no. 13 is a case in point of combining different media. With assignment no. 13 in mind, we might ask whether the requested documentation breaks the illusion that the news are merely fictional
. By applying the term fictional
here, my interest is not to discuss the construction of the news. Rather, I use the term to express that the news often seems removed from the recipient
s personal experience. This is true when one assumes that the respondents on LTLYM are mainly white and middle-class. This class is less exposed to violence and crime than other strata of society. For them, crime is not a normal
fact of life. This is especially the case for news on war, which, from the US perspective, mostly occurs on foreign soil. In assignment no. 13, “Recreate the moment after a crime,” however, the crimes referred to do not seem as removed from daily life as in the average

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Western city. The artists here do not refer to any lengthy reports, but rather to snapshots from crimes that appear in smaller formats, such as local newspapers. The incidents to which the articles refer mostly concern one victim alone. Such crimes happen every day, but do not receive major attention in the media. While, on one side, the assignment focuses on crimes that usually do not receive much attention, on the other side, it trivializes the experience of being assaulted. The assignment does not ask how such crimes happen. It does not question the factors that produce crime with regards to class, gender or race. Instead, it concentrates on the result of the crime and, moreover, merely on the acute emotional impact on the victim, and not on his or her persistent wounds. When July and Fletcher choose such crimes as a starting point for a piece of video art, they reflect on the fact that everyone is vulnerable to crime. At the same time, they remain blind towards the fact that the victim is not helped, and even possibly mocked by way of the remediation. While they fight the victim
s anonymity by pointing out the crimes, they do not introduce the victim further and hence the experience remains impersonal. Participants are not asked to represent the act of violence and its voyeuristic connotation. Instead, they are requested to recreate the moment after the attack – what July and Fletcher term the “personal moment.” The participant is asked to see the action from the victim
s perspective. Therefore, the participant is personally addressed. When re-enacting this moment, he or she “should think of the times in their life when they have been very surprised and scared.” It is questionable whether the participant is able to feel what the victim has felt. The anonymous victim is supposed to be empathized with, but since feelings cannot be standardized, the participant most probably fails to feel what the victim has felt. The artists nevertheless raise awareness about crime by implying that the participant him or herself could be victim to this attack. In order to heighten the identification, they provide some acting advice: “Do not dress up or use elaborate props; wear your own clothes. You are yourself, trying to recreate a feeling that someone else had” (emphasis original). The news becomes personal for the participant because the participant severs the original victim from the attack. At the same time, participants engage in the artistic rendition of this everyday news event. It is a way to perceive the news differently. The process of re-enacting a moment after a crime involves empathy, instead of mere voyeurism. What matters, the assignment seems to suggest, is the empathy felt with the victims, and not the mere fact of violence. The violence itself is thus made less important than the response it generates. This is also shown to be the case when the participant performs and expresses him or herself in the short video. The participant thusly shows him or herself – and not the victim – to the other users. Whether the par-

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ticipant also strengthens an imaginary connection to the victim and whether a community can be formed merely by the possibility of becoming a victim remains questionable. The process of empathizing with a stranger is also motivated in the following assignment. This assignment, unlike the previous, does not refer to a violent crime: Assignment no. 68: Feel the news. Go to http://www.democracynow.org/streampage.pl and watch the current show. When the segment is over, choose someone from the news who made an impression on you. Imagine that you are them, and act out a moment of their day today. Choose an ordinary moment, one without dialogue, when they are alone - maybe the moment after they hang up the phone, or before they go to sleep. It doesnt matter what they are doing, only that you try to feel what it feels like to be them today, given what you know about their life right now. Take a picture of this moment, with the help of a self-timer or a friend. Dont bother dressing up like them, dont worry if you arent the same race or gender as them. (And dont choose going to the bathroom, everyone else will do that.) Send the caption for the photo in an email - it should include the relevant news, for example: Monday, August 13, 2007: After Resigning as Presidential Advisor, Carl Rove Looks into The Refrigerator Or: Monday, August 13, 2007: Kim Kyung-ja, One of Two South Korean Hostages Freed In Afghanistan Today, Takes Off Her Shoes DOCUMENTATION Make a photograph and give it a descriptive, concise caption. (Emphasis original)

First, this assignment asks the participant to visit a political website. The participant is thus motivated to engage with current political issues and to educate him or herself. Importantly, this is an independent political website, not a mainstream supplier like ABC or Fox News.39 The assignment then asks the participant to reflect on the occurrences reported on the website by choosing a news entity that the participant feels most engaged by. Notably, the participant is then asked not to re-enact a political speech or similar public situations. Instead, it is the life of the private person standing behind the public person that is to be enacted. Obviously, the site does not want to use the Internet
s possibilities of diffusion for propagandistic purposes. Rather, expressing its own motion, it focuses on emotional life. 39 The identification with an alternative political opinion is also a building aspect for the community.

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The process of turning everyday practices into art is emphasized in this assignment. The person depicted is to be shown in a trivial situation after the politically significant act. Thus, the distance that is usually felt towards this public and politicized person is eliminated. By transporting oneself into his or her mind and daily life, the participant loses the awe that this authority imposes. In a playful and humorous manner, participants post reports that feature themselves in the pictures. One participant enacts Barack Obama drinking a cup of tea out of his favorite mug in his kitchen, after a speech. The American president is presented as a person that relaxes and needs comfort as much as everybody else and therefore, he is more easily empathized with. The content of the news also becomes more accessible by reflecting on the personal life-experience of famous politicians. The remediation mainly occurs through taking a picture of this imagined moment. This remediation underscores the transition of the meaning. On the figurative level, the emphasis on the private person draws attention to the emotional life of the person behind the mask of political professionalism. When the participant imagines the president in this way, the president, in turn, becomes more ordinary. As the message (everybody is connected by having a private side) is conveyed, the remediated
individual is no longer an anonymous subject. This strengthens the participant’s feeling of being on the same hierarchical level as the president. This logic underscores the individualist and democratic philosophies which uphold the thought that every individual is as important as every other. The idea of community based on individualists is strengthened through this image. Consequently, this assignment works in the logic of self-help as it nourishes the individual
s striving for acknowledgement. One can embody the president as his private self. In accordance with LTLYMs concept, remediations are concerned with feeling something in a new way. July and Fletcher do not merely reflect on media with a rational or factual content. In the following assignments, it is the medium of film itself that is called to be remediated. This concerns popular entertainment: Assignment no. 32: Draw a scene from a movie that made you cry. Rent a movie that made you cry. Fast forward to the exact point that really got you and pause the movie. Now draw this freeze-frame as accurately as possible. Also draw the TV and the table, or surface, that the TV is sitting on. Dont draw any other details of the room; this picture should be floating in the middle of an otherwise blank piece of paper. Draw everything as realistically as you can; dont be interpretive. Please do not use a computer to make your drawing.

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DOCUMENTATION: Scan or take a picture of your drawing. Please make sure that your image is clear and in focus. Give your drawing a title, such as “When Tom Hanks sees the dolphins in Castaway.” However, dont write your title on the drawing. Please include it separately in an email or on another piece of paper.

Assignment no. 32 was one of the most popular, with 166 people completing it in total.40 The films chosen by participants often overlap.41 For the most part, participants chose contemporary mainstream Hollywood movies. The participants are asked to reflect on the medial aspects of an emotional scene. They must watch this scene again at home, on a device that is smaller than a movie screen. Thus, the everyday activity that this involves becomes obvious. The participant is asked to draw a film scene to which he or she feels a strong connection. The participant reproduces the scene in a different medium, as a hand drawing. The remediation of the scene into a drawing also involves the apparatus that the participant has used to watch the movie. The participant reflects on the media by way of this multi-layering. Through this act of remediation, the participant creates a visual and emotional distance between him or herself and the scene. Consequently, the participant also distances him or herself from his or her initial emotions.42 The participant is able to reflect more clearly on his or her emotional response and why it was evoked at that precise moment. He or she is asked to confront that feeling another time by renting the movie and watching the scene once again. The procedure offers him or her another opportunity for selfreflection. The participant then displays his or her emotional response by posting it on the site. He or she does not express him or herself merely through present40 144 out of these were US citizens. Fifty-three people came from Lynchburg, Virginia, a fact that suggests that a group like several school classes completed it as a school assignment. 41 These are the most often chosen movies, including the number of people having completed the assignment and the release date: The movie that provided most scenes to make people cry was The Notebook (ten people, 2004), followed by The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (six people, 2004). Third most often was E.T. (four people, 1982), and three people drew scenes from each of the movies Garden State (2004), Forrest Gump (1994), and Casablanca (1942). The following movies provided scenes which were drawn by two participants each: I am Sam (2001), Dancer in the Dark (2000), Boys don#t Cry (1999), American Beauty (1999), The Green Mile (1999), Edward Scissorhands (1990), Harold & Maude (1971), and even the same scene from The Bridges of Madison County (1995). 42 On the process and effects of distancing oneself from the contents of the medium see my discussion below on hypermediacy.

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ing his or her emotions in a creative way. The assignment moreover presupposes a uniformity of feelings in participants: Crying in response to a film is a common experience. The enormous response affirms this assumption. The participants like to share this emotional response by turning it into art. In so doing, they perform themselves as expressive persons. Shedding tears, however, is not an individualistic act. Many participants have reacted to a movie scene in this way. This expression of shared emotions is another instance in which the project successfully creates the feeling of a community – a community of individuals who share emotions. The communal aspect becomes more intense when July and Fletcher pose an assignment that reflects on other people
s feelings. Some of the renditions by the participants who completed no. 32 are taken up again in no. 47: Assignment no. 47: Re-enact a scene from a movie that made someone else cry. Choose a scene from Assignment no. 32, “Draw a scene from a movie that made you cry.” For example, Mandy OBrien of Portland, OR was brought to tears by the scene in Baz Luhrmanns Romeo and Juliet where Juliet realizes Romeo is gone for good. If you chose this report then you would go rent Baz Luhrmanns Romeo and Juliet and watch the scene that got to Mandy, looking for the particular moment that Mandy drew. In the simplest possible way, act out this scene for the video camera, learning whatever lines and movements are required. Set up your environment so that it loosely reflects the location in the movie, and stick with only the most necessary props. If the scene requires other actors, enlist your friends. The important thing is to try to capture the what it is that made Mandy cry. Really let the emotional qualities of the scene in to your heart, and think of it less as a performance and more as a real experience that you are having and capturing on tape. Have you ever lost someone for good? Then remember this feeling when you are being Juliet. Have you ever been discriminated against? Then remember this feeling when you are acting out Tom Hanks part in Philadelphia (chosen by Dana Sliva). It might help to watch the entire movie first, if you havent seen it before. Your re-enactment must be less than a minute long. D O C U M E N T A T I O N: Send your name, the name of anyone else involved in the re-enactment, and the name of the person whose report you chose from Assignment no. 32.

July and Fletcher attempt to foster a feeling of community by motivating participants to interact. A fusion of the horizons between artist and participant (in Higgins
s sense) is shifted to the practice of interaction between participants. Participants are motivated to fuse their horizons through empathy. Here, the empathy that one participant had for another becomes the topic of another assignment. In

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this case, he or she does not have to empathize with an anonymous person from the news. Neither is an abstract news report the reference, but an easily accessible movie. Drawing from popular entertainment, the participants can relate to the movies that were chosen in no. 32. The artists ask the participants to put themselves in the position of the person who started to cry in that situation. As discussed in regard to no. 32, participants distance themselves from their emotions by remediating the scene into a drawing. Arguably, the different layers of media that stand between the participant
s actual emotion and the viewer of the scene
s representation put a great distance between the creator
s and the viewer
s emotions. Nevertheless, the participants of assignment no. 47 could relate to one another to such a degree that they were able to recreate the scene in a video. The remediation of the scene did not inhibit the feeling of empathy. This is a significant aspect about this assignment: The final piece of work entails the process of turning a movie scene into a drawing and then into an amateur short video. This work allows participants to collaborate – to create a way to share feelings and empathy through playful art. July and Fletcher seem to endeavor to counter the Web
s anonymity. However, they also seem to assume standardized emotions in participants. Although participants supposedly do not know one another, they can still relate to each other. By expressing themselves, they find a common denominator that allows them to build a loose community, in turn. The same logic is followed by the assignments no. 52: “Write the phone call you wish you could have” and no. 65: “Perform the phone call someone else wished they could have.” Assignment no. 52 displays wishful conversations and reveals inner desires. Participants are treated like patients in writing-therapy. They are supposed to feel relief from writing down their desires. This is a form of confession. Performing the conversations from no. 52 in assignment no. 65 once again fosters empathy. The remediation occurs from writing to audio recording. The renditions of this assignment, in the form of audio recordings, are very emotional. These renditions show that participants are able to re-enact the feelings of strangers. Apparently, the participants must share similar experiences or cultural codes in order to be able to relate to the phone calls. One rendition is performed by two participants who enact a conversation between a woman named Johanna and her ex-boyfriend. In this conversation, Johanna’s ex-boyfriend calls Johanna to tell her that he loves her.43 The wished-for conversation reveals that Johanna has longed for such a love vow for two years. Writing down the conversation has a therapeutic effect. The assignment assumes 43 Original text in assignment no. 52, the re-enactment in assignment no. 65 (learning toloveyoumore.com/reports).

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that in sharing this longing, the participant achieves solace. As a second step, the re-enactors show that they understand Johanna’s desire to write down the conversation. By re-enacting the imagined conversation, they signal that they understand her sorrow and find it valuable enough to re-enact. They indirectly heal her sorrows by acknowledging her. Although Johanna might know that the phone call will never take place, the assignment provides her with a way to work through her emotions and to feel that they are acknowledged by others. In the previously analyzed assignments, the self-help aspect mainly takes place in the form of building a loose virtual community. The relation of the self to the virtual community that is produced is emotional; it does not have a direct social or political aim. This becomes problematic in so far as it leaves the roots of structural problems un-questioned – problems such as, for example, those that relate to crime. The community here consists of people who empathize with others, but this empathy can only be performed superficially. In the assignments, the anonymity of contemporary virtual (and real) relations is made productive in two ways: Participants are more motivated to confide in one another because of the anonymous environment. At the same time, the feeling of anonymity is contravened by the formation of a virtual community based upon emotions. The site is not built by way of the performance of a successful self, but rather a wounded self. This concept counters anonymity. The media specificities of the Internet are thusly made productive. Other people
s feelings are made real by remediating and fusing together of different media as well as by breaking illusions.

2.3 A C OMMUNITY

OF

AUTHENTIC I NDIVIDUALS

The notion that every one can be an artist – and, hence, an expressive individual – was put forth by the avant-garde movements of the mid-twentieth century. A couple of decades later, the Internet took on an important new role in the conceptualization of participatory art. Nowadays, as exemplified by LTLYM, participants
creations are easier to exhibit than in purely analogous times. In a parallel way, the idea of the expressive individualist also manifested itself. Christopher Lasch argues in The Culture of Narcissism (1979) that Americans have shed the political ambitions of the 1960s and instead have become preoccupied with personal self-improvement (5). This concern with the self, which has continued until today, stands in a dialectical relationship to the media. Lev Manovich points out how the changes in media technology correlate with larger cultural change: “If the logic of old media corresponded to the logic of industrial mass society, the logic of new media fits the logic of postindustrial society, which values indi-

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viduality over conformity” (41). According to the discussion put forth in the previous subchapter, as well as Bryan-Wilson
s and Graham and Cook
s arguments, LTLYM seeks to build a community. In light of this, what is the extent to which the term community of individualists
proves to be a paradox? How can the expressive individualist be healed
by way of participating in community? In the context of the “Me Me Me Generation,” a group of people who use a website to make themselves visible easily comes under suspicion as having common interest in nothing more than self-promotion. When considering LTLYM, however, one can see certain values that are promoted on the site and which signal that the participants have a certain group membership. This is already the case for assignment no. 1, “Make a child
s outfit in an adult size.” Along with the psychological impact discussed above, this assignment promotes the DIY-culture. Bryan-Wilson points out this aspect as one of the project
s major characteristics (144). The instructions remind the participant to “not [get] discouraged by mistakes, or daunted by lack of sewing skills.” This implies that the effort to make something – and not perfectionism – is at the heart of the assignment. This assignment initiates the learning effect in a practical sense. It culminates in the participant wearing a garment that he or she created him or herself. The form of the assignment furthermore draws a connection between everyday household tasks and art. This is an indication for what Diez calls the neohippie movement in California: a DIY-movement that creates and produces goods (“Hippies”). These goods are considered alternative, ecologically correct, and bear the stamp of being locally produced as well as individualistic. In line with the hippies of the 1960s, the DIY movement claims that creating something with one
s hands is a form of self-expression. What was once considered an alternative to bourgeois culture has turned into a culture of “bourgeois bohemians” (Brooks). Diez distinguishes the contemporary DIY movement from the original hippie movement because of the former’s affirmation of marketing strategies. He counts July as a member of this movement in terms of the spirit,
or, ideology of her projects. Some assignments suggest that this ideology is a driving force behind LTLYM. With this in mind, July would fit the definition of the “hipster” that Mark Greif has suggested. He argues that “the
hipster
in fact aligns himself both with rebel subculture and with the dominant class, and thus opens up a poisonous conduit between the two” (n.pag.). He defines hipster culture at the beginning of the twenty-first century as a culture of aspiring artists who worked day jobs in bars and coffee shops [that] could unintentionally provide a milieu for new, late-capitalist commerce in design, marketing, and

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web development. The neo-bohemian neighborhoods, near to the explosion of new wealth in city financial centers, became amusement districts for a new class of rich young people. The indie bohemians [...] encountered the flannel-clad proto-businessmen and dot-com paper millionaires [...], and something unanticipated came of this friction. (n.pag.)

The result of this “friction” can be well illustrated by the assignment no. 26: “Design an article of clothing for Mona to crochet.” It is based on a real existent shop from July and Fletcher
s personal background. The two proprietors crochet all the garments by hand. The artists instruct the participants to send in designs and then the craftspeople crochet according to the designs. This project caters to the idea of an alternative consumerism that prioritizes the local over the global economy, in which one does not buy mass-produced clothing from a large chain, but from an independent neighborhood shop. The LTLYM participants build a global consumer community. It remains exclusive, however, as it is comprised only of those who know about the website. The money earned from selling the garments supports a small local shop in California, not a global enterprise. The identification with such a group of alternative consumers who wear hand-made self-designed clothes conforms to certain middle-class ideals. First, responsible consumerism is an act of whiteness
self-critique, because it is based on the notion that this kind of consumerism fights exploitation in the context of globalization. Secondly, July and Fletcher here disseminate their own idea of expressive individualism which is wedded to the notion of responsible consumerism. The community is thus constructed on certain white US middle-class ideals. The one who identifies with these “hip” ideals may become a member. While such ideals build the identificatory frame for the community, some assignments also further the identification between participants. These are conceived as an open effort to bring people together (virtually) through mutual help. This aim answers to the notion that mutual help has eroded under conditions of late capitalism. McGee states that, in the 1970s, the term ‘self-help’ still connoted community help and thus was central to US society. Today, in contrast, “[t]he self is imagined as increasingly isolated, and self-help,
with some exceptions, is represented as a largely individual undertaking” (19). The analysis of the following assignments is concerned with the aspect of community help. While we have already looked at the self-positioning in a larger context like the news, the media now move to the background. The following assignments are read according to their display of personal experiences. Here, the performance of the authentic self is not distanced by remediations. In distinction to the assignments that reflect on the self
s position within the media discourse, we now concentrate on art inspired by personal experiences. This is also the case

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for the assignment no. 32, “Draw a scene from a movie that made you cry.” In distinction to this assignment, which takes its aesthetic appeal from its complex mediality, there are other assignments which are not medially layered in the same way. They, rather, function differently by revealing other aspects of the participants
lives. Notably, there is a difference between the degree of practical and spiritual self-help in the assignments. The assignment no. 40: “Heal Yourself” is a proposition to the self as much as to other visitors to the site. With images of a finger wrapped in a banana peel, one participant explains how to extract a splinter. The participant playfully fulfills the assignment and gives advice to other users. The humorous tinge simultaneously suggests that the wound is not severe enough to be cried over. Here, practical self-help is portrayed in its playful form. Similarly, the creations to the assignment no. 64: “Teach us an exercise,” are informed by the personal self-help register of different participants who offer advice to other users. Renditions include one participant performing a head-stand between two chairs in order to increase blood circulation. The pieces of advice make participants themselves aware of the portfolio of self-help that they have gathered and show that exercise can be easily performed in everyday circumstances. Personal experiences become the link through which participants build a community. The feeling of belonging to an online community is strengthened by the mutual acts of giving advice and by sharing experiences. While these acts presumably strengthen the individual community members, they do not bind them together in a way that makes them dependent on each other. Participants can enter and leave the community without notice. For this reason, LTLYM corresponds to Bauman
s definition of peg communities
. Bauman’s theory maintains that we seek pegs on which we can hang our individual fears and desires, in order to fight them with others who have similar fears. Bauman especially speaks of the fear of loneliness. According to his rather negative connotation of such communities, Bauman maintains that the hold that they provide is weak (152; also cf. Putnam). His negative view contrasts with Felicia Wu Song
s opinion that communities which are based on individuality can in fact serve a common good. Participants probably do not seek very strong communities. How is LTLYM to be read in light of this discussion? We have seen above that in order to build even a loose community, some common identifying denominators between the users must be in place. A major common denominator in LTLYM is the identification with white middle-class culture. While this fact is not stated explicitly, it is implied in the aim of LTLYM and its choice of assignments. Since these assignments reflect the concerns of the white middle-class subject, an individual recognizes his or her values in it. But

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there also has to be an identification among the participants for the community to be built. A common political aim is not in the center of the website
s interest. The users do not know each other personally – they only know those aspects of one another’s lives that are on display as art. Thus, the users
personal experiences become the binding factor for the virtual community. The interest in display and the identification with other participants
artworks build the essential basis for this loose community. Following this assumption, the construction and exhibition of an authentic self is vital to the LTLYM community. Authenticity in an online community can be constructed only by referring to the real world. July and Fletcher take care that the notion of community does not merely rest on a virtual level. As mentioned, they initiate workshops in which participants collectively work on reports. Furthermore, they ask participants to bring their
real lives
into the online project. In assignment no. 2, “Make a neighborhood field recording,” they implicitly motivate the participants to become aware of the communities of which they are already members. The participant is probably not even aware that his or her neighborhood can in fact be categorized as a community. Neighborhoods vary in degrees of personal interaction and identification. Especially urban neighborhoods are rather anonymous. This assignment asks participants to document their neighbors performing songs. The songs of the individual neighbors, five at least, are to be audiorecorded and sent to the site together with the neighbors
photographs and names. Making and recording music at home playfully reflects on neighbors in their surroundings. Making music non-professionally underlines the folk, or, community, aspect of the assignment. Also, the title of the assignment hints at the pseudo-ethnographic method on which it is based. The audio-recordings of those who live next door become a personal ethnographic field exercise for the participant. In effect, the assignment brings him or her closer to these people. Theoretically, the step of asking one
s neighbors to perform a song can cross a boundary that one might not have previously ventured across. Consequently, the real-life community is strengthened. This effect is intensified and brought into a virtual space through assignment no. 12: “Get a temporary tattoo of one of Morgan Rozacky
s neighbors.” The assignment builds on the reports by one participant who completed assignment no. 2. July and Fletcher state that they are fascinated by these neighbors and ask participants to reflect upon them further. They build a virtual fan community for Morgan Rozacky
s neighbors. Again, participants are to fulfill the assignment playfully. The neighbors
portraits are drawn on a body part. The act of receiving a tattoo drawn with a ballpoint pen is the central artistic concern. In this assign-

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ment, everybody is an artist. First of all, the neighbors are taken seriously as musicians and performers. They reflect the avant-garde idea that everyone can be an artist. Another message of this assignment is that every one can become famous. These neighbors
portraits achieve small-scale fame: Somebody who does not know them gets a tattoo of their picture. The friend who is to draw the tattoo also becomes an artist by drawing the image. A loose community is strengthened through interactive and creative play. The positive aspect of the Internet as a space where remediation occurs comes to the foreground in this assignment. For assignment no. 2, “Make a neighborhood field recording,” the participant is to audio-record the performing neighbors. Thus, music is the assignment
s first medium. Photography is the second medium, because a picture of the neighbors is to accompany the recording. Eventually, in assignment no. 12, the participants remediate the picture of one neighbor into a ballpoint pen tattoo. Finally, a picture of this tattoo is uploaded. This tattoo implicitly states that the participant found the performing neighbor worthy of receiving a tattoo. Consequently, these assignments are based on a philosophy that aspires to take every individual seriously as an artist. At the same time, humor and fun play an important role. Both assignments proclaim that everyone is worthy of being displayed on the Internet. Through reflecting on the neighbors, the participant of assignment no. 2, and especially that of assignment no. 12 to whom these people are complete strangers, build a loose community. Every participant feels acknowledged in this all-inclusive assignment. Creative collaboration is turned into a healing experience. Self-expression through the Internet is not difficult for participants who have already acquired the necessary technical knowledge in everyday life.44 The formats that are used to upload the works of art are well known and easy to handle. Although it might require some basic drawing skills to draw a scene from a movie that made one cry (assignment no. 32), taking a digital image of it and sending it to the host does not present a considerable challenge for realizing the assignment. These tasks are easier to fulfill than creating oil-paintings on canvas and trying to find an exhibition space for them. The subject
s identification with the artwork is furthered on the level of the medium as an inherent part of everyday life. Likewise, it corresponds to what I have argued is a basic striving in a global yet anonymized society: Demonstrating to the world that one is indeed special is highly desired but difficult to attain. The highest personal aim in an individualized society is to give one  &(&   )  ( *$ ! + ! & The individual seeks ways to perform an apparently authentic self and to find 44 Moreover, Graham and Cook state that New Media predominantly reference popular culture, which makes it more accessible than references to high art would (31).

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acknowledgment for this self. The Internet appears to be the ideal medium for these strivings. It provides the most convenient ways to circulate personal matters and skills, and the user potentially receives a direct reaction. The artworks displayed on the site are expressions of this authentic self. The question of distance that is discussed above in regard to virtual and real spaces also arises with regards to the reception of the artworks
contents. If LTLYM is about participation and community building, then it is important to consider whether the users can relate to the artworks displayed. Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin provide an answer in Remediation (1999). In this text, they set a mile stone in theorizing the fascination with new media (of which the Internet is a constituent). They claim that the user
s appeal to new media oscillates between the desire for hypermediacy and the desire for immediacy. The user strongly wishes for the medium to disappear – he or she wants to have a feeling of immediacy or, in other words, to be fully immersed in the contents of the medium. This, however, is not possible because of the surface structure of Internet websites. Bolter and Grusin define hypermediacy as the windowed style of the computer interface, which, standing for fragmentation and multiplicity, emphasizes process and performance (34). In contrast to the experience of playing interactive computer games, in which the user forgets his or her presence in real life,45 the windowed Internet style does not provide the user with the possibility of immersing into the medium. Instead, through its fragmentation, the user is constantly reminded of the medium
s presence. Hence, he or she remains selfconscious. This is contrary to “the desire to get past the limits of representation” (53). Bolter and Grusin compare new media artists
methods with those of the historical avant-garde who, in their creation of collages, strove to make the viewer acknowledge the medium
s presence. Remaining aware of the medium results in a distance between the contents of the artwork and the spectator. The viewer is therefore reminded of the mediation that occurs between the Real and its representation (also cf. Manovich). The website LTLYM works according to this logic of hypermediacy. Here, real experiences are made public over the medium in a collaged and remediated style. One has to click through the galleries on LTLYM to see the different renditions. But, while the awareness of the medium distances the viewer from immersing into the artwork, the emotions displayed also enable him or her to relate to what he or she sees. In the play with everyday experiences and real
people performing for various assignments, the contents seem to be created from everyday life. The participant performs him or herself, and the viewer can identify with the emotions that the performances generate, in turn. The viewer does not 45 Bolter and Gruisin therefore call computer games transparent media.

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experience real life, but fragments of somebody else
s real life as a performance. This performing self is that which appears to be authentic. The medium plays an important role in this experience. As a communication medium shared by a global society and its implications of feeling close to other users, the Internet produces a shared interest in others
emotions. The viewer experiences the presence of the medium, as well as the presence of other media – video and photography, among others. The paradoxical effect is that, although the layering of the different media keeps the user from immersing into the contents, it renders more accessible the emotions displayed on the site. In distinction to sentimental Hollywood movies which seek to produce the immersion into a dream world, the contents on LTLYM are taken from personal experiences that seem authentic. Although there is a medial distance between the users
emotions, there can also be an identification with them. Performing the self online is something the present Internet generation does every day. The request to be creative, however, theoretically places a hurdle that might deter some users. Graham and Cook acknowledge that the project motivates the audience by reducing shyness about creating art: The skills of gaining participation lie in making the guidelines open enough to allow individual creativity but directive enough to help those with less confidence find a starting point. The artists skills come from filmmaking, performance, Net art, and sound art, but most strongly from community art, including working with nonartists. By using the term assignments, the artists are explicitly referring to the familiarity of school homework assignments and playing with the domestic context of Internet use – participants are often carrying out their assignments in their homes. (121)

The authors thus hint at the aspect of turning personal everyday experiences into art. This is exactly the clue to the site
s popularity. It gives common
people the feeling of being expressive individuals. The expressive individuals takes his life as a piece of art (McGee). The website provides the opportunity to exhibit fragments of this piece of art. LTLYM consequently ties in with the notion that individual self-expression is regarded as the highest aim for personal success. The artist is the role model who succeeds in expressing his or her innermost self through art (Fluck; McGee). In the individualized society of the creative class (Florida), expressing oneself is vital for the constitution of identity. The performance of an authentic and aesthetic self is a Romantic virtue that the self-help realm has used for the promotion of its products. It also lies at the heart of the project, which therefore bears resemblance to a self-help site. LTLYM gives the

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participant the chance to feel like an artist, somebody who knows how to express his or her innermost self. This self is constituted by everyday experiences. In response to the assignment no. 64: “Teach us an exercise,” one participant documents how she relaxes after a work day. She posts pictures depicting herself riding her bike to a coffee shop and then having coffee with a friend. The simplicity of this way of exercising and relaxing is given by the fact that it is an ordinary action. In fact, it is so simple that it is difficult to be regarded as an exercise that needs to be taught. No large effort is required to perform it. Why would it be important to document this mode of exercise? The reports document how both exercise and relaxation can be easily integrated into everyday life. They reflect how the middle-class searches for ways to relax. Before participating in LTLYM, the participant has probably never regarded this everyday activity as an art. The site again suggests that one can make moments from everyday life into art. Indeed, it is especially the seemingly trivial moments that turn out to have artistic value. In documenting this moment, the participant reflects on this everyday experience for the first time and finds out that she is actually a great creator of relaxation exercises. Her experience is turned into art and thus her life becomes a work of art. The concept of the site suggests to her that she is indeed an expressive individual. Other assignments request the participants to focus on themselves more intensely. As argued above, self-reflection stands in the center of every assignment. An exceptionally intense form of self-reflection is requested in the following assignment: Assignment no. 14: Write your life story in less than a day. In no less than one hour and no longer than 24 hours write your entire life story starting with your birth and ending with today. Try to get as many details in as possible, that will make it more interesting. Dont feel frustrated by the time limitation, it will make the task less daunting, (besides you have the rest of your life to write a more complete version if you want to) at the same time seriously try to remember everything you can from your life so far. Its okay to publish under an assumed name or “anonymous.”

It is a considerably significant emotional process to write down one
s own life story, as it forces one to reflect on one
s life and thus become emotionally involved with one
s past. Here, the participant has to construct his or her authentic self. As a form of life-writing, the aim is not to produce a perfect prosaic text, but rather to self-reflect. The time restriction fends off long elaborations and asks

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the participant to skim the moments that have been most important in his or her life. The aim is not to paint a complete picture of the person, and not to come to conclusions at the end of one
s life. It is rather a first look back on what has happened thus far – on what has shaped the person. Furthermore, it is a medially staged confession in Bublitz
s sense. There are numerous renditions of this assignment, some of which are printed in the book LTLYM. Significantly, the book also includes two responses in which participants reflect on the experience of uploading their life stories. I will now look closely at which discourses these participants evoke in their responses. How do these respondents relate to the assignment? What is the extent to which participants’ responses emphasize the aspect of self-help? One response is written by Jacinda Russell (with Tim and David Haslet). She states that she has had very positive experiences through LTLYM. Being an artist whose work is concerned with family history, she also posts her life story for assignment no. 14. After some consideration, she writes, she signs the story with her real name, although she considers herself “a private person” (148). Due to her candor, her two half-siblings – whom she has never met – find her. Jacinda is subsequently highly enthusiastic about the possibilities the project harbors for the individual. She thematizes Internet data protection and the unpleasant revelations she would not have made had she anticipated that so many acquaintances would read her text. She has considered the possibility to remove her name, “but something inside kept putting it off” (148). She feels that this risk-taking has been rewarded when her two half-brothers find her. Although she eventually does not regret to have revealed personal data, Russell
s essay underscores an ambivalence between anonymity and self-exposure. Her story is one in which the heatedly discussed data protection debate comes into play. Through the Internet, she reveals things that she had not wanted everyone to know. Her personal life becomes public. She does not anticipate that it will be so widely accessible; it is the first entry in a Google search of her name. Her data gets out of her own control, which is a common fear that surrounds Internet activity. She becomes transparent. Despite these controversial aspects, she writes that this revelation of data does not merely bring about negative experiences. On the contrary, she claims that she “learned many things from this experience, one of which is that anonymity isn
t always the answer” (149). In Russell
s own opinion, the project helped her to become closer to others and to find the missing part of her family. The website helped her to connect. Consequently, the project has reached its aim that she experiences new feelings about her family and herself. One has to take into account that Russell
s sentimental voice in fact glorifies the project
s merits. By printing her response, LTLYM promotes it-

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self and the positive sides of the Internet. Apart from Russell
s statement, there is only one more statement by a participant. Needless to say, this respondent also has a highly positive opinion of the project. Laura Lark is the second respondent in LTLYM. She is a professional artist and writer. Before she uploaded her life story, she completed other assignments on LTLYM. The first assignment, “Make a child
s outfit in an adult size,” initiated her fascination with the site: I […] never envisioned that, in 2002 at age forty, Id be running around Houston in an oversized baby romper that Id fashioned from thrift-store blankets. […] I didnt realize at the time that this huge romper […] would be the catalyst that not only changed my art, but altered my perceptions of it and the art world in general. (147)

Lark feels that this funny and seemingly trivial assignment changed her life. She thus confirms the project
s aim to have people feel differently. She also comments that the jumper brings back pleasant memories of childhood, play, and freedom. She re-lives the experience of having dirty feet and is subsequently reminded of playing games outside as a child. In her “report” on learningtoloveyoumore.com, she acknowledges the extremity of the assignment in commenting on her experience of embarrassment: “If I had been tired or depressed, I don
t think I could have fended off the implications of the raised eyebrows and puzzled looks without wanting to crawl in a hole.” The reactions she documents demonstrate that there is some self-esteem that is involved in wearing this garment. Its eccentricity causes people to look at her, to render her more visible. As an adult returning into an infantile state, she is different. That she feels different and that this fact is displayed on the website is itself an advertisement for the project. So while I am not claiming that her response is representative of all participants’ experiences, it does elucidate the way in which the site functions to make people feel acknowledged and helped. For Laura Lark, the initial good experiences of creating and wearing the baby romper – which obviously surprised her of what she herself was able to do – motivated her to complete other assignments as well (cf. LTLYM 147). As a special point in case, she writes down her life story for assignment number 14. Hers is a story of a young woman whose family members are estranged from each other and who cause each other severe emotional pain. The family must move all over the US in order for the father to find employment. Lark
s young adult life is portrayed as troubled by early drug abuse and self-destructive tendencies. Her poverty and consequent lack of health insurance denies her access to medical aid to

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treat her mental disorders. Despite her troubles, she finally settles and states that she is thankful that she is now leading a happy life. In her response in the book, Lark praises the website LTLYM for the way that it affected her own self-awareness and self-respect as an artist. Writing and posting her life story brought about a series of email replies from all over the world. In these emails, complete strangers expressed concern about her well-being. She writes: I assured them that, yes, I was. Because I was more than okay. I was blown away. The emails continued to pour in, and it dawned on me that more people had read my work in two weeks than in all the graduate workshops Id attended. Better yet, my readers on LTLYM seemed to actually care. No competitive stuff, no snide attempts to undermine the effort. Just support and appreciation. (147)

The author confirms precisely what inspired the artists to create the website: She claims that the site helped her to achieve greater self-love. This is, of course, why the authors chose to include her in the book. She supports the site
s legitimacy by asserting that she draws strength from this Internet community – a community of complete strangers united in empathy. In her words, virtual life becomes a better version of real life, the participants being more empathic than her fellow students. As a way to circulate a piece of work globally, the website allows for the dissemination of individual fates that were previously merely private matters. Not only the community of participants responded positively and thus affirmed the work. The artists July and Fletcher also approved of Lark’s work. July and Fletcher, as Lark explains, contacted her, “claiming that my piece was The Great American Story.
(It occurred to me that if mine was somehow emblematic of American life, America was dysfunctional, indeed!)” (147). As the project
s curators, this acknowledgment is equal to an affirmation by an institution or higher authority. July and Fletcher signal to her and the other participants that they take them seriously (145). The fact that many people could empathize with Lark was not only due to her self-exhibition and the consequent audience
s feeling of compassion. Lark confirms a critique that the white middle-class launches at itself. As an individual life story, Laura Lark
s story sums up how critical members of the present US middle-class perceive their status within the system. July and Fletcher include Laura Lark
s life story in the printed edition of the project. Moreover, they create a new assignment based on Lark
s story: No. 22: “Recreate a scene from Laura Lark
s life.” With this decision, they want to honor Lark
s effort to write down her story. They thus state that she is worthy of at-

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tention. Participants (and also Lark herself) shoot short scenes on video and send them to LTLYM in response. The effect of remediation is to express one
s empathy for Lark
s feelings. The reciprocity that Lark thus experiences, as she tells the reader, is “quite surreal. […] That anyone – Japanese or American – got what I had written, then actually cared enough to think about it and make a video sparked a moment of epiphany that I may never experience again as an artist or writer” (147). While LTLYM makes such a global effect possible, one has to take into account that Lark
s joy has an ambivalent source. Surely, one can claim that receiving a positive feedback is always a good thing. However, Lark
s respondents can only relate to her superficially. It is much easier to receive acknowledgment in an online community, where relationships are not as complex as in real life. The quantity of the responses might not meet the quality of one honest response in real life. Moreover, that so many people can truly feel what Lark has felt itself needs to be questioned. Here, a trivialization of feelings is at work by assuming that one can easily copy them. In the end, her real-life problems cannot be solved through the assignment. Since the conception of LTLYM, the exhibition of one
s life has become more popular. On Facebook, one posts one
s life – embellishing it with pictures and personal accounts. The expressive individualist fashions him or herself in the most favorable way. However, Facebook is not a site to display art and hence does not build on the self-expression of the creative class. This social network also furthers responses to the displayed life. It features the
I like
button one can push quickly when an event appeals to the user. Besides the difference that Facebook is not a creative space by definition, the users perform what they want others to think about themselves and their lives. In contrast to LTLYM
s confessional stance, Facebook rather motivates the users to present their lives to be as exciting as possible. LTLYMs philosophy is to allow one
s weaknesses to become public. On LTLYM, self-improvement is supposed to happen in the form that one learns to know oneself better and finds a way to express the self. Lark writes that the project gives her strength. The empowerment she has experienced does not only confirm herself as a person, but also strongly affects her real professional self, the artist: As an artist and writer, I have often criticized my endeavors as pointless, self-indulgent, solipsistic, and unnecessarily competitive. The dynamics initiated through LTLYM, however, compelled me to look at my story – something written for someone else and subsequently read by many – as a triumph. While I still spend much of my time making art alone, the knowledge that I am capable of engaging an audience and effectively imparting,

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in a powerful way, an understanding that resonates with others, affords me a creative freedom I never possessed before. (147)

The website gives Lark the support that she feels herself to lack in real life. Lark disregards the fact that it is superficial acknowledgment. It does not bother her that her creations are displayed in the same location as that of amateurs. While editors have only ever rejected her work, LTLYM has given her the platform where her work could be exhibited and its value tested through a virtual audience. The website thus functions as an alternative to the museum or gallery. Unlike a museum that merely shows works by acclaimed artists, LTLYM exhibits pieces made by regular people, or, as in Lark
s case, artists who have not yet had the chance to be exhibited in an institution.46 Through her experience of a shared community, Lark feels empowered: “Through the project that Miranda and Harrell created, my encounters with community have prompted me – post-post-postmodern, somewhat cynical, and struggling with ideas of higher being – to essentially learn to love me more” (147). In its non-ironic way, the self-help that LTLYM furthers in consequence is not only limited to healing the psyche. It also gives impulses to an artist like Lark. This obviously goes hand in hand with merging the private and the public selves. Lark gains higher self-esteem on both levels, even though one might assume this is a superficial way of helping her. Lark and Russell
s experiences from the website show that virtual life has an effect on real life. They constitute each other. Lark praises the project: “To think that a website – something electronic and impersonal in its being – can compel a greater understanding of humanity is an extraordinary thing” (147). While this is an over-enthusiastic and debatable conclusion, it shows that what is most important to her is that she is acknowledged as an expressive individual. As the above readings show, the expressive individualist experiences healing by participating in LTLYM. The project provides a platform upon which to construct and exhibit a presumably authentic self. The impression of authenticity is achieved by remediating personal experiences. Thus, the participant feels that his or her life is in fact a piece of art. The community serves to support the participant by acknowledging him or her. LTLYM thus indeed builds a lose community of individualists. The support it provides simultaneously reproduces individualism as much as it goes beyond it by building a community. It endures the paradox of a community of individualists
. Instead of providing the support of

46 For a discussion about the Internet as viable alternative museum space, see for example Graham and Cook.

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stronger communities as Bauman envisions them, the lose kind of peg community
produced here more apparently fits the modern subject. The analysis of the assignments has demonstrated that the project presupposes a desire in the individual to become visible and hence acknowledged through a loose online community. The project has been so popular because the individualized middle-class furthers the need to become self-aware and to publicly express a supposedly authentic self. It has to be noted critically that their community does not reach out with any political mission. It has no common aim but to support the individual in its individualism. It thus confirms the white middle-class luxury of wanting to talk about the self. Just to receive acknowledgment in a superficial way is telling about the state of the individualized society. The project does not solve the actual problem: that the individualized subject cannot receive enough acknowledgment to feel satisfied. Instead, LTLYM feeds this desire. Learning to Love You More provides the platform where the individual may engage in confession, in order to receive acknowledgment by a community. Thus, the creative class is reproduced by supplying a public platform for constructing the self as an artist. Healing is not attempted through putting pressure on the individual to improve him or herself. Rather, it is based on the healing principle of self-affirmation. The project therefore reproduces spiritual aspects of the self-help realm. July and Fletcher seek to provide the participants with the experience that their personal lives do matter despite the rampant anonymity in a globalized world.

3 Self-Help Strategies For Disembedded Individuals: The Film Me and You and Everyone We Know

Miranda July portrays the individualized society and its concern with self-help according to the medium she works in. Unlike the Internet project LTLYM, Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), as a film, is not able to activate the audience to participate as “expressive individualists” (Bellah; Fluck). The specificities of the film medium determine that the audience watches the end product without contributing to the creative process. Nevertheless, I argue that Me and You, like LTLYM, is based on the longing of subjects in the individualized society (Bauman) to express their inner selves and be acknowledged by others (Franck; Wagner). The film’s characters also show the symptoms of a society in which people desire to be embedded in a community without compromising themselves. Me and You is set in a suburban area of the West Coast and presents the daily life of a white middle-class neighborhood.47 At first glance, the setting appears normal
to an audience with a similar background. The movie is about white people that have the everyday problems
that arise in modern middleclass suburbia. However, what looks like normalcy
at first sight does not remain uncontested. Notably, the movie features a number of clues that confuse

47 I regard this neighborhood as white, although it is also comprised of people of color. I apply the definition “white neighborhood” according to France Winddance Twines study on the construction of whiteness in US middle-class suburban communities. Twines study is based on interviews with young women of African-American descent who grew up in predominantly white neighborhoods. Twine finds that these women have grown up regarding themselves as racially unmarked. Thus, Twine argues that such neighborhoods produce white culture as a norm that includes people of color.

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this supposed normalcy
and hence question it. Me and Yous portrayal of this American microcosm thus suggests a critique of the society that it depicts. In order to approach my question of how Miranda July negotiates self-help, I am going to provide close readings of scenes that help us to understand how she places individualism and self-help in a dialectic relationship. To what extent does the depiction of self-help culture imply a critique of the individualized society? Western self-help culture heavily relies upon the popular appropriation of non-Western cultural codes. In the film, the character “Richard” refers to East Asian cultures and rituals. As the individual most obviously suffering from psychological pressure, he reveals the merits and failings of this appropriation. If seeking help from foreign cultures is presented as ambivalent, then it can be asked whether materialism, as a Western capitalist notion, is presented as in fact more valuable to the Westerner. Through the young character “Sylvie,” however, the question emerges how the desire for security through material possessions is related to white, hegemonic self-definition. Materialism is hence likewise ambivalently connoted. At the same time conspicuous and disturbing, July focuses on the lived realities of children and young adults. Along with Sylvie
s materialism, sexuality is also explored through the younger characters. With these characters, the borders between juvenile curiosity and pedophilia, as well as activity and passivity, are being negotiated. My reading will focus on the question of what the disturbance of cultural codes makes visible about the construction of child and adult identity. While all of these topics seem controversial, art is presented as being highly valuable for the suffering help-seeker and for the expressive individual. In light of the previous analysis of the project Learning to Love You More, I ask how the medium of film specifically depicts art as helpful and which aspects about the individualized society it addresses. Before turning to a closer reading, I am first going to provide some background for understanding the story, the characters, and the genre. I am going to present the film’s plot, followed by a shot-by-shot analysis of some central scenes. This exposition consists of two scenes that establish the main characters. Further, I analyze a scene (which I term “The Goldfish Scene”) in order to understand the film’s mood. The Plot The film has one main plot and a number of sub-plots. Most of the action happens within a time span of one week. The final resolution occurs after an implied passage of a couple of weeks. The settings are relatively limited. The characters do not move outside the spheres of their daily lives, which are mostly comprised

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of their homes and neighborhoods, schools and workplaces. The main plot and the sub-plots are narrated intermittently. This generates the impression that the film relies on little narratives
that are all equally important to the story.48 Despite these occasional narrations, the main plot and the sub-plots are presented chronologically. Causes and effects can thus be easily traced. The constellation of characters is complex, however, because each person is connected through various kinds of relationships. The characters are conceived as “round,” meaning that even the minor characters have complex personal features.49 They have several, often contradictory, traits. Their motivations are not always easily understood. These facts render the film a character study that allows for turns in the plot that are not anticipated by the audience. The main plot is constituted by a romance: The protagonist Christine Jesperson falls in love with the newly-separated Richard Swersey (John Hawkes) and attempts to provoke his interest. July herself plays the character Christine, who is an artist in the early stages of her career. Christine props up her finances by transporting people who are too old to drive. Michael (Hector Elias) is a regular customer of her elder cab service. Michael
s love life constitutes one of the subplots. He lives in a retirement home where he has met the love of his life: a bedridden woman named Ellen (Ellen Geer). One day Christine picks Michael up and drives him to a department store where he buys a pair of tennis shoes. On their way, they talk about the important things occurring in their lives: Michael tells her about his late-found luck in love, and Christine speaks about her problems of gaining recognition for her art. After arriving at the shoe store, they converse with Richard, an employee. He leaves such a significant impression on Christine that she returns to the store throughout the film to get to know him. Her plan, however, is not easily realized. Another sub-plot is the recent separation of Richard and his wife Pam (JoNell Kennedy). In contrast to his wife, who is depicted as not being troubled by the break-up, he gives off a sad and feeble impression. Pam has a new boyfriend and seems quite comfortable being alone in the suburban family house. Richard sometimes acts pathetically; for example, he intentionally burns his hand with lighter fluid in front of his children. He struggles to set up a new life, having moved into a small flat with his two sons, Peter (Miles Thompson) and Robbie (Brandon Ratcliff). As a single father that also works, he frequently leaves his young sons unsupervised. 48 According to Jean-François Lyotard, the postmodern condition is characterized by an “incredulity towards metanarratives” (xxiv). They are replaced by little narratives. 49 Throughout this chapter, I apply Richard Barsams film terminology from Looking at Movies.

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Peter (age thirteen) and Robbie (age six) are therefore often shown together in front of a computer in their room. They pass the time drawing ASCII art pictures (pictures drawn with the symbols on a keyboard) and having explicit sexual Internet chats with an anonymous partner. In the new neighborhood, they have to start setting up relationships. On one side of their home, Sylvie (Carlie Westerman) lives with her parents. On the other lives Richard
s colleague Andrew (Brad William Henke). Even at her young age, Sylvie already collects household items for a future home. Two other neighbors, Heather (Natasha Slayton) and Rebecca (Najarra Townsend), are young girls that go to school with Peter. Both already have a strong interest in sex; they flirt with Andrew, a much older man. Over the course of the film, Peter interacts with both groups of girls. Little Robbie also builds new relationships. He eventually sets up a date with the anonymous chat partner that is also the target of his anal fantasies. She turns out to be the curator Nancy Herrington (Tracy Wright). Nancy, a dour and cold businesswoman, is also at the center of Christine
s aspirations to be exhibited at the Center for Contemporary Art – though at first she is unsympathetic to Christine’s work. Eventually, Nancy becomes gentler, especially after meeting Robbie and watching a videotaped personal message made by Christine. The film’s ending is generally happy. Peter and Robbie come to be reconciled with their father and their new situation. Peter builds a trusting relationship with Sylvie, and Robbie gains valuable experience for a six-year-old boy. Heather and Rebecca satisfy their appetite for adventure without having been harmed and are more united than before their flirtations with Andrew. Although Michael is sad because Ellen dies, his suffering is in part alleviated by becoming the subject of Christine
s exhibited artwork. Christine not only achieves her professional aim as an artist. She also finally receives a call from Richard. The Exposition Me and You and Everyone We Know starts with a black screen and the sound of waves. A fade-in from black focuses on an unmoving image of a golden sunset over the ocean. The backs of two heads are visible at the front of the screen, silhouettes of people watching the sunset together. We hear a female voice saying: “If you really love me, then let
s make a vow.” The picture fades to the black and white spots of television static. We hear the sound of static electricity while music fades in. The voice impersonates a female and a male making a love vow. The camera moves to the right in extreme close-up, showing the side of a TV-set and a hand adjusting a knob. A woman
s face moves in from the right side in extreme close-up. It is Christine
s face in profile, holding a microphone. She is the one speaking.

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An extra-diegetic, ambient tune of strings and synthesizing sounds is playing. There is a cut to an extreme close-up of the screen of a handheld camera. The camera is filming a wall decorated with individual photographs, which we see as blurry in the background. On the left, the frame also catches Christine
s hand holding the microphone. The camera tilts to the right and focuses on pictures on the wall, which portray different people. The romantic image with the couple is among them. All the while, we hear Christine ceremoniously speaking the love vow. Part of her curly head is visible. She points her finger alternately at the male and the female silhouette on the picture, according to whose voice she is impersonating. There is a cut to an extreme close-up of her face in profile with the TV static in the background. This is followed by a cut to a medium shot of Christine
s back with her video equipment around her. She is adjusting the knob on the TV-set while she faces away from the camera to the wall with the photographs. Then there is a close-up of her profile again. While she is still speaking, the camera moves along with her body. When she speaks the last sentence of the vow, which ends with “with grace,” there is a cut to a new scene. Before we look at the ensuing scene, it is worth noting that the first scene is an exposition of the movie
s central character and theme. The artist Christine is introduced while she is working. The succession of close-ups and extreme closeups defies an objective image of the surroundings. Rather, we see snapshots of her, her inspirational objects and her equipment. This extreme closeness to the objects signals to the spectator that Christine
s work is very emotional. The music and the sentimental love vow evoke a dreamlike, even kitschy, mood. While the process of making art is being displayed, the spectator is thus also sensitized for the movie
s spiritual mood. The first scene smoothly transitions into the second. The first frame of the second scene shows a little bird on the twig of a lemon tree. The music is still playing and Christine
s final words “with grace” are heard while a twittering fades in. The bird is filmed from a low angle, displaying a bright blue sky in the background. The whole picture emanates a positive mood of freedom, lightness, and carefreeness. There is a match-cut to a more somber image of a white, middle-aged male face in medium close-up. Richard is looking upwards from behind a window. The previous perspective on the bird was Richard
s point of view. The windowpane reflects trees, but it has bars that seem to imprison him in the house. His gaze suggests that he is fascinated by what he sees. It makes him contemplate. Apparently, he also wants the freedom and the “grace” that the bird symbolizes. But something is holding him back; the image seems unreachable for him.

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In the background behind him, we see a black, middle-aged woman in profile. The frame is reminiscent of the picture that accompanies Christine’s voiceover in the first scene. The couple behind the window is set in a similar fashion to the romantic couple in love. This is only true, however, with regards to the likeness of the two heads within a frame. These two people do not form a unity as do the two heads watching the sunset. There is the noise of paper being crushed. She says: “You don
t have to bubble-wrap everything. It
s not like you
re moving to the North Pole.” With the cut to this second scene, the movie
s initial mood is contrasted with realistic images. Here, Richard
s reality is introduced. Although he appears to be a dreamy character, sensitive to beauty and “grace,” his experiences are not fictitious. At the same time, the scene aligns his character with Christine
s, because the exposition of his character follows her
s. Through these shots, the mood and theme of the movie are established. The two people behind the window are Richard and his wife, Pam. They are packing his possessions because he is about to move out. This sad scene is contrasted with Christine
s voice-over of the two people in love. She is making art, while Richard
s experience, in contrast, is real. The film’s central topics are thus established: making art and love relationships. Its beginning therefore suggests that we are going to watch a movie which belongs to the category of sentimental romance. This initial impression is, however, quickly disturbed. The exposition of Richard
s character ends with his self-mutilation by burning his hand in front of his children.50 This disturbing image contravenes the conventions of the romance genre. Shortly afterwards in the film’s plot development, July provides further clues that disturb the reading of the film as a sentimental romance: a first clue is “The Goldfish Scene.” Despite the fact that it does not advance the plot, it is a key scene in the film. It is placed at a very early moment in the film, and its importance derives from the mood it generates. The Goldfish Scene (00:08:50) A long shot establishes this scene by framing two people, who come out of a pet shop and get into their car. One is a fair-haired father, and the other is his blonde, preadolescent daughter. A cut to a medium shot shows the father, who places a plastic bag with a gold fish on the car
s roof. An extreme close-up portrays the goldfish. Christine
s voice is heard faintly from off-screen. She is talking to Michael, as we can conclude by her reference to the shoe seller. A cut to a close-up of the father shows how he gets into his car and forgets the goldfish on the roof.

50 Discussed in subchapter 3.1.

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A medium shot frames Christine in her car, which is in front of the car with the goldfish. That car drives off with the goldfish still on the roof. There is a cut to a long high-angle shot of the highway, where Christine and Michael overtake the car with the father, his daughter, and the goldfish on the roof. Christine and Michael notice the fish. Christine says in close-up: “I guess these are the last moments of his life. Should we say some words?” (00:09:40). There is a cut to a medium close-up of Christine and Michael, who are in the foreground. As Michael silently nods, they both look out of the window to the goldfish. In a composed, quiet voice, Christine solemnly addresses him: “I didn
t know you. But I want you to die knowing that you were loved.... I love you!” A low-angle, medium close-up shows the fish from Christine
s and Michael
s point of view. Filmed in a series of quick successive shots, a black Ford overtakes the car with the goldfish, causing it to break abruptly. This motion, in turn, causes the plastic bag with the goldfish to be catapulted into the air, documented in slow motion from a low-angle close-up. At the same time, music chimes in. The goldfish lands on the black Ford
s trunk. A cut to a medium close-up of the driver reveals that he is oblivious to the goldfish
s presence. Then the goldfish is portrayed in extreme close-up. A series of medium close-ups show how the other characters interact with rolled-down windows, while still driving on the highway. Michael tells the father that they are going in front of the black Ford in order to keep it at a steady pace. A medium close-up of Christine and Michael initiates a quieter mood after all the action. Michael says: “At least we are all together in this.” An extradiegetic tune is playing, which supports a medium long, high-angle shot of the three cars. From this perspective, they resemble a funeral procession. An extreme close-up of the goldfish is followed by a medium shot of father and daughter worriedly watching the fish. But then, a cut to a close-up of the fish in the bag shows it rolling off the Ford
s trunk. Christine
s face in close-up looks upset. A match-cut to the Ford
s trunk shows her point of view. The Ford is filmed in slow motion, with a focus on its blank trunk. This underlines the fact that the fish is dead. The point-of-view-editing allows the spectator to identify with the characters and understand their sadness. “The Goldfish Scene” does not advance the plot in any significant way. It could even be taken out of the film without disrupting the plot. Due to its structure, R.W. Gray argues that it could be seen as a short film on its own. Therefore, the scene seems like an aside. Nevertheless, it is central to the film because it evokes a certain mood. By its improbability, the spectator
s immersion in the story is in-

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terrupted. Contrary to mainstream Hollywood conventions, the story here does not flow smoothly. With this scene, July establishes a mood that is emotional and kitschy, but also cynical. The goldfish, which is an absurd bearer of meaning, becomes the center of attention in the scene. It is not simply presented as being a little toy for the girl in the car. It is acknowledged as a living being. One critic has commented that the sentimentality of the scene is “enough to make one wish [that] Hemingway would step into the frame with a shotgun” (Cutter). Such criticism disregards its cynicism and consequent ambivalence. The ending of the scene is not happy, because the goldfish ultimately has to die. The stylistic aspect of cynicism is not only apparent in this scene. I argue that it is a recurring element in the movie. The way that Michael and Christine react to the situation is encoded as strange
. July applies unconventional codes (Fiske) in the semiotic sense. When Christine points out the goldfish to Michael, the audience might expect him to answer: “Well, it
s just a goldfish. Why are you making a fuss about it?” But he takes her seriously; he feels the same as her. He backs her up instead of laughing at her for her exaggerated emotions. The two adults do not react to the situation in a normal manner. They react, rather, like children, displaying childlike emotionality. Michael and Christine are united in their spontaneous worry and grief. It is one important instance of unconventionality that July presents here. Importantly, the scene evokes a spiritual mood. This is not accomplished primarily through the melancholic representation of a funeral speech and procession. What is essential in this scene is the spiritual idea of a connection between beings. In the end, Michael states: “At least we are all together in this.” The feelings of togetherness and shared emotions comfort each character involved in the scene. July thereby makes reference to the individualized society, with its growing anonymity between subjects and breaking of communal bonds. In opposition to this, she suggests that every being should be considered important. Her message is that this should be the case regardless of whether people or animals know each other directly. By allowing empathy in this situation, she treats the scene in an alternative fashion. Me and You, which is a product of the independent film scene, does not conform to the value system shared by mainstream audiences. I will proceed to read Me and You in the following sub-chapters, according to this frame of unconventional encoding that “The Goldfish Scene” provides.

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APPROPRIATION

A major consequence of the individualized society is the loss of community and the dissolution of traditional family ties (Bauman; Putnam). As Wagner points out, the modern subject has different possibilities for coming to terms with this disruption of traditional society. One is to cherish the possibilities for personal self-expression that the freedom of life-choices entails. In this case, embracing multiple identities can be celebrated as the postmodern way of self-expression (Fluck “Multiple Identities”). However, the loss of stability that goes along with the vanishing family bonds and communities also leads to a diffuse anxiety
(Bauman). Some scholars see psychological conditions, such as anxiety disorders and depression, as the grave results of individualization – symptoms of a crisis in late-capitalist, white, middle-class life. The self-help industry and its flourishing in the twentieth century originates from these circumstances. The self-help discourse is strongly informed by religious beliefs from East Asia, such as Buddhism and Hinduism. The white, Westerners fascination with these foreign cultures can be regarded as a form of hegemonic appropriation (Werthmann). In Me and You, the discourse of Eastern spirituality is evoked most acutely by Richard’s use of foreign slogans and rituals; it is his strategy for making sense of his situation and helping himself. In the following section, I am going to discuss the scenes in which self-help is informed by foreign cultural codes. To what extent does Me and You critique Western self-help culture
s acts of appropriation? I have already illustrated that the beginning of the film establishes Richard
s emotional imbalance. Richard and his wife are recently separated. This becomes clear when Pam is depicted in the act of packing his belongings. His evasiveness reveals that he is separating with more reluctance than she is. He is shown in close-up, staring at her with wide eyes. In a reverse shot, she notices his gaze and says to him with a rather resolute voice: “Can we just do this without any theatrics, please.” Richard instead suggests, “We should have some kind of ceremony. You know, with the boys, some kind of thing, so they don
t forget we were once...” (00:01:50). Richard does not finish his sentence. Instead, he leaves for their sons
room. He attempts to receive acknowledgment from them, but their attention does not make him feel loved. Richard then has the idea to spill lighter fluid on his hand and to light it in front of his children. When his hand catches fire, a close-up of his face shows the audience that his expression turns from anticipation to horror. A cut to a medium shot of Richard is one of the film
s most important scenes: In slow motion, Richard bangs his burning hand

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on the lawn in front of his house, trying to stifle the fire. Extra-diegetic music sets in to heighten the dramatic mood. The film’s title then appears on the screen. Richard is thus established as a character that is suffering. Richard wears a bandage around his hand, as a visible sign for his hurt feelings, for most of the film. He is losing his family and his stability. As a consequence, he is looking for ways to alleviate his pain, or, to put it differently, to help himself. However, his strategy is both extreme and confusing in the context of American, white, middle-class suburban life. This is obvious, first and foremost, in the fact that Richard
s family does not recognize the significance of his self-immolation. They do not understand what he wants to tell them. As Sally F. Moore and Barbara G. Myerhoff claim, a ritual needs a common code in order to be understood by all participants (7). Only then can it become a ceremony – a collective ritual. While Richard has already mentioned that he would like to have a “ceremony” with Pam and the children, burning his hand, in its violence, does not seem to be the right kind of ceremony. It can be misinterpreted as a mere act of craving attention. Moreover, according to Moore and Myerhoff, “a collective ceremony is a dramatic occasion, a complex type of symbolic behavior that usually has a statable purpose, but one that invariably alludes to more than it says” (5). Apparently, Pam does not want to join this ceremony, as she is not interested in what Richard attempts to express. For her, the relationship is over and she does not want to be reminded of it through any “theatrics.” Next to Pam, the spectator cannot fully understand Richard
s ritual either. But a short moment later, the movie provides a scene in which Richard explains himself. When at work with Andrew, Richard tells him that Pam was very angry with him (00:06:30). But he does not understand her reasons for reacting that way. He would understand if he had harmed somebody other than himself. But it is not the case that he “bombed a church.” Only through his explanation to Andrew, does the viewer comprehend his motivations: “In some cultures when you burn yourself it
s a ceremony. It
s called self-immolation.” He thus reasons that burning his hand is a significant act for himself. Richard
s explicit reference to other culture
s ceremonies is an instance of his appropriation of other cultures
codes. In the esoteric vein of self-help culture, non-Western rituals are a common way to offer help to the help-seeker. Such rituals cater to the Western imagination, which assumes that other cultures are more relaxed
and offer more ways

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toward a holistic healing of body and mind.51 In contrast, white, Western culture is strongly influenced by the Enlightenment and the ideal of the rational man. Some scholars argue that due to this rational tradition of thought, originally Western religious ceremonies have in large part disappeared. Moore and Myerhoff argue that modernity
s individualism has furthered secular ceremonies and rituals instead. According to their view, people gather in the work place or sporting events, instead of churches. Nonetheless, the public has a desire for spirituality. From this argument one can conclude that Western interest in East Asian spirituality is a symptom of this lack of religious ceremony in Western culture. Richard embodies the Western subject, who needs to spiritually express his emotions, but does not find the right form for this expression in his culture. He represents the subject who looks towards East Asia, in order to find a remedy for the pain inflicted by the society he is part of: the individualized Western society. Therefore, one can read Richard
s ceremonial act
as an appropriation of Buddhist and Hindu traditions. But since ceremonies and rituals need to have a shared, common code, his acts are unintelligible within his own culture. Richard
s wishes to preserve the memories of his loving relationship with Pam by remembering them through a ceremony does not receive the right expression. His actions are misunderstood by his family instead of being valued as an expression of his loving feelings towards them. We do not know Pam
s perspective first-hand (she is constructed as “the Other”), but according to Richard
s narration, his own reasoning seems completely alien to her. Pam represents the view that Richard
s behavior is irrational. He expresses himself in a dramatic way. He does this in front of his children. By presenting them with violence, Richard fails to embody the responsible father Pam wishes him to be. Apart from Pam’s explicit criticisms, which represent the viewpoint of reason, the film also voices an implied criticism. Richard
s unspecific claims about self-immolation reveal that he is ignorant of its origins or its political significance. For example, it has been a significant issue in feminist critiques of imperialism.52 In some cultures self-immolation has dark implications. For the most 51 In American cultural history, this notion was explicitly addressed by the Beat Generation (cf. Werthmann; Greene; Munroe). In its extreme form, it is embraced by the New Age movement. However, a milder form occurs in mainstream culture of the white American middle-class. 52 Some major works on this debate: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988) discusses whether Sati can be a demonstration of independence; Lata Mani, Contentious Traditions. The Debate on Sati in Colonial India (1998), argues that the prohibition of Sati was a colonialist act that did not have women as the prima-

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part, it has been traditionally practiced in South-East Asia for political or religious reasons. One prominent example of self-immolation occurs in India: In this tradition, a widow throws herself into her deceased husband
s pyre. Although this ceremony – Sati (widow burning) – has been officially prohibited by law in India for more than one hundred years (due to colonialism), it still occurs, though infrequently. While I do not want to engage in an extended debate about Sati here, I do want to point out that it is a way of demonstrating hurt, desperation and/or sacrifice. In light of this background, Richard
s statement is extremely cynical. That Richard performs the ceremony of self-immolation without heeding its political implications is an expression of the superficiality and ignorance of his act. He simply re-encodes it according to the Western tendency to decontextualize and popularize ritualistic knowledge in the self-help discourse. Richard has thus fallen into the trap of appropriation. Apparently, he only thinks of himself. His stress turns him into a pathetic character. This is further underlined when he admits that he did not even consciously mean to hurt himself: “Right before I lit it, I suddenly remembered it
s alcohol that burns but doesn
t burn up. Lighter fluid just burns. And then I thought, It
s okay. It
s better this way.
” Although Richard initially does not want to hurt himself, he accepts his self-mutilation as a better way to gain his family
s attention. Notably, the violence of self-immolation has not been embraced by Western, self-help culture, unlike the codes and acts that signify peace, individual strength or harmony. On the contrary, public auto-aggressive acts are instead attributed to fanaticism. Richard disregards this fact. The act has a different meaning for him: Through self-violence he expresses the hurt he feels due to the separation from his wife. As a symbol for his pain, the bandage remains around his hand until the hurt dissipates. For Richard, self-immolation is an expression of his emotional pain; an act in which it becomes visible for everybody. Richard and Andrew
s conversation helps to explain Richard
s complex character in more detail. To Andrew, a colleague and friend, he is open and explains his feelings. Richard reveals that he thinks that life has more to offer for him. At this point, his tendency to use slogans and clichés becomes obvious. He says to Andrew: “I don
t wanna have to do this living. I just walk around. I wanna be swept off my feet, you know. I want my children to have magical powers. I
m prepared for amazing things to happen. I can handle it!” (00:12:00). Again, he takes recourse to a different, magical world. This time it is not Eastern culry subjects of concern, but the Indian nation as part of the British Empire. See also James Benn, Burning for the Buddha, on (male) Chinese Buddhist self-immolation ceremonies as a sacrifice.

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ture
s spirituality, but Hollywood imagery. “Kids with magical powers” is reminiscent of American superheroes that Hollywood turns into international stars. Here, Richard becomes a representative of Californian culture. His character combines the East and the West. On the one hand, he is influenced by Western appropriations of Eastern culture; on the other by popular Hollywood culture. Irrespective of the discourse he evokes, he expresses himself and the same longings. Self-help culture changes in the light of what people are concerned with at a given time. As McGee argues, since the 1970s, the idea of the expressive individual has been prevalent in self-help rhetoric. As a representative of the contemporary, American middle-class, Richard confirms this concern about selfexpression. His character is an embodiment of someone who idolizes the expressive individual. His recurring use of the personal pronoun “I” underscores his concern with himself. He needs to repeat what he wants from life. Despite the fact that his aims are not realistic, he expresses his desire to be somebody special, somebody who is strong and “can handle it” – whatever awaits him. He wants his life to be a piece of art. In contrast to these slogans, his life does not look like art at all. His negative experience of separation dominates his life. This renders him a person vulnerable to self-help. Moreover, although Richard is a very “professional” shoe seller, according to Michael
s verdict, his job does not conform to the ideal of the creative class to which the expressive individual belongs. His job might represent this ideal if he was working at a local shoe store that sold individualized products. But he is working in a large department store, serving the masses. Richard
s uniform confirms this non-individualism. His work gear consists of a brown suit, the same as the one Andrew is wearing. The uniform is the opposite of the ideal of individualistic and self-expressive clothing. Hence, the strivings of the individualistic lifestyle conflict with Richard
s everyday life. He does not “wanna have to do this living” and he wishes to be pulled out of the commonness of his everyday life in order to become an expressive individual. Richard is not only a figure who yearns to be a representative of the ideal of expressive individualism. He is also somebody who is aware that the individualized lifestyle bears its dangers. As Bauman argues, the contemporary lifestyle heightens the possibility of becoming isolated and lonely. Richard is already suffering from one symptom of individualization tendencies: the failure of his relationship. He now struggles to strengthen the other relations in his life. His move to a new neighborhood entails the danger of feeling lonely and self-dependent.

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Therefore, Richard actively works towards becoming a part of the neighborhood, a community member. This striving is complemented by Richard
s spiritual reasoning, as evoked in the following scene. He gives Sylvie
s mother a family-discount for a pair of shoes. Prompted by Andrew because of this favor, Richard replies: “Yeah! She is my neighbor and I am trying to work on my karma. You know what karma means? […] It means that she owes me one” (00:28:08). Here again, his Western way of appropriation comes to the fore. Richard does his neighbor a favor in order to be able to ask her for one in the future. In the act of explaining his motivation with the concept of karma, Richard again evokes Eastern spirituality. However, he interprets it in a utilitarian fashion instead of a spiritual one. He turns Buddhist logic into Western rationalist thinking. Karma is a valuable example of how Eastern spirituality is appropriated by self-help in Western society. Richard re-signifies the concept in order to fit the Western paradigm. Originally, it means the sum of a person
s actions in this and previous states of existence; a deciding factor in his or her fate in future existences.53 I am not interested here in claiming that this original idea is the correct one exclusively, or that there is only one original idea for any phenomenon. Rather, my point is that every concept
s meaning is necessarily constructed according to the lived experiences a person has. At the same time, however, one needs to acknowledge that white hegemony often engages in acts of erroneous or false approbation: The concepts are resignified according to one
s own needs. Richard turns the concept of karma into an exchange of favors between people. This ironic inversion of the meaning of karma is a sarcastic joke, made intentionally by the filmmaker. Later, Richard makes use of the phrase “positive karma.” Peter is sick at school and Richard calls the neighbor. She picks up Peter and has him wait for his father at her house. With an ironic twist, Richard has – according to his appropriated definition – successfully worked on his karma. Richard is thus portrayed as struggling with his new life situation. His new role brings about self-doubts: whether or not he is a caring father. Due to this situation of instability and self-doubt, he represents a person who is prone to finding the rhetoric of self-help potentially healing. He is looking for the stability that the rhetoric of self-help claims to be able to provide. Due to his vulnerability, Richard is neither an unlikeable character, nor a figure of identification. The spectator can see that his attempts to regain strength through slogans is doomed to fail. Nevertheless, his resulting portrayal of the emotional New Man
is pre53 The American Heritage Dictionary defines karma as “[t]he total effect of a persons actions and conduct during the successive phases of the persons existence, regarded as determining the persons destiny.”

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sented as more attractive than Andrew
s virile masculinity. The two characters contrast with one another. Richard, unlike Andrew, is emotional and raises his children as a single father. Andrew, in turn, is impressed by Richard
s 54 profound
thinking and emotionality. Richard tries to live up to this image, but we witness that it is difficult for him to realize it. His difficulties in performing the role of responsible father most often culminate in his articulation of slogans. The degree of alienation from his sons becomes the gauge for his state of loss. While Richard has arranged for the neighbor to pick up the sick Peter from school, he forgets that Robbie consequently has to walk home alone through a busy district. When Richard realizes this mistake, he panics and immediately starts looking for Robbie. Finally, he finds both of his sons safe at home. Subsequently, Richard loses his composure. He shouts that they should have picked up the phone when he called (00:55:40). He has to leave the apartment in order to calm down. He has tears in his eyes. His helplessness and panic is contrasted with Sylvie
s father, who comes home from work at the same moment. Sylvie
s father looks at the confused Richard. In contrast to him, he seems composed, in control, a respectful businessman. Richard
s performance as responsible father thus suffers another setback. The boys feel wrongly accused by their father. They do not understand why he loses his temper, and they deny talking to him. Instead of apologizing to them, he pretends he is not hurt by their refusal to talk. Rather, he evokes the image of the adult who enjoys the calm of a place free from contemporary stress. He says to them: “It
s okay if you guys want to continue this silent treatment. It is like a Zen retreat for me” (01:00:15). He tries to transform the negative into its positive, but he is neither authentic nor successful. He represents the Western person who is caught in the conditions of modern life, the logic of Western societies that does not provide the means to be happy. His family life is in crisis and he does not know what to do to save it. Via slogans from Eastern culture, he gives his circumstances a new positive meaning, and creates for himself a set of rules to follow. His psychic instability is made clear through the interaction with his sons. While Richard appropriates Eastern spirituality to no avail, Peter and Robbie stay true to the means that their culture provides. At a later point in the movie, as part of the falling action that leads to the film’s denouement, the boys are reconciled with their father. When they finally join their father for a walk to end their punishment-through-silence, he feels the need to play the part of the responsible 54 This becomes obvious at a later part in the movie (discussed in subchapter 3.3.2). Another New Man in Julys work is Vincent Chang in the short story “The Shared Patio.”

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parent. He says: “You got questions you wanna ask me? You want advice from your dad? Ask me for advice on anything, anything at all” (01:10:05). When the boys do not respond, he asks them to name a song and he will sing it. Peter says, “Every Stone Shall Cry.” But Richard does not know the song. It is a Christian hymn that praises the birth of Jesus. The boys start to sing it. The mood that they evoke through their voices is festive and peaceful. Richard looks at them in astonishment. His sons are in control of the situation, while, by contrast, his nervous attempts to be a good father seem almost beside the point. The spirituality that emanates from his sons
singing is more solacing than any slogan he has voiced. Richard aims at being an expressive individual and leading a life like a piece of art’. But he can only start to live this way when he accepts his circumstances. In the end, his story comes down to the insight that all his presumed wisdom cannot help him to re-establish his emotional balance. Instead, the “amazing thing” that he has wished for happens when Christine falls in love with him. But at first he does not know how to react to Christine; she has to break through his unhappy outlook. Next to Andrew, she serves the role of rendering Richard
s motivations clear to the audience. In one scene, she does so by asking him about himself and by trying to get to know him. Their profiles are filmed in close-up. Standing face-to-face she asks him how he injured himself. Richard asks whether she wants to hear the long or the short version. She quickly decides for the long one. Richard replies: “I was trying to save my life but it didn
t work” (00:45:40). Here, Richard finally acknowledges that the burning of his hand has not helped him. His cryptic answer does not deter Christine, but raises her interest in him even more. Like Andrew, Christine understands the symbolism of Richard
s self-immolation. She asks him when he can take the bandage off. He tells her that he does not know. He guesses that he can when it stops hurting. Christine tells him to give it another fifteen seconds. As this scene illustrates, Christine wants to be the one who helps him. Through her care, she wants to heal him from the wounds that he has suffered through his separation. The burned hand persists as the symbol for Richard
s hurt. As a consequence of this hurt, he cannot trust and love Christine. Richard is the most confused and sad character in the movie; but the ending has a positive outcome for him. Notably, it is not through the slogans that his crisis is finally settled, but through love. The mottos that he voices throughout the movie thus seem superficial and do not help him to become strong in his new life situation. He can only be at peace when he unites the people that are dear to him. Richard in the end understands that he cannot get close to Christine without involving his

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children in this process. All his attempts to set up a date with her are destroyed by his obligations as a father. He is only successful when he finally asks her if she wants to meet his boys. Christine accepts his initiation without second thought and thus supports him, the New Man
, without hesitation. Through the character of Richard, the movie illustrates that the individual who feels lost in the individualized society easily defers to self-help. Richard relies on the appropriation of foreign culture
s codes. The validity of this cultural appropriation, however, is seriously questioned. Richard
s state of confusion makes him vulnerable to superficial slogans. However, he can only be healed when he remembers that he is not an isolated subject, but part of a community, a family. He needs to retrieve the trust in personal relationships in order to be reconciled with his sons and to accept Christine. Self-help cannot be imposed by rituals and slogans from the outside, but depends on the self
s ability to love. The film implies that caring for others effectively challenges individualization tendencies in society.

3.2 S PIRITUAL M ATERIALISM So far I have pointed out in this chapter that July employs concepts from East Asian religions and cultures. But economic materialism, the opposite of spirituality, also appears as a theme in her movie. The American Heritage Dictionary defines materialism as the “attitude that physical well-being and worldly possessions constitute the greatest good and highest value in life.” According to this definition, spirituality and materialism are two extremes on one scale.55 In the sense of the transcendentalists, spirituality is connected to the reliance on the self in nature regardless of material possessions. In contradistinction, economic materialism has been a major motivation first in industrialism, then in capitalism. The consumerist society has been marketing the happiness-generating value of materialist goods through the advertising industry. It promotes the idea that happiness and well-being are things that one can purchase. In this subchapter, I am asking whether July makes a mutually exclusive distinction between materialism and spirituality. To this aim, two instances in the movie are going to be analyzed: The first is the girl Sylvie and the signification of her “hope chest.” The

55 I am aware that there are examples in which materialism and spirituality are not mutually exclusive by definition. In fact, spirituality is often underscored through materialism. The catholic church with its richly decorated churches and the Puritan belief that wealth is a sign of approval by god are two examples.

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second is Christine
s first visit with Michael in the shoe department, where Richard provides them with his professional advice. To what extent does Me and You promote an exclusively spiritual kind of self-help? Does it also allow for economic materialism to help the individualized subject? Early in the movie, Sylvie is introduced as a collector of items. Sitting in front of her family
s house, she cuts out pictures from warehouse advertisements and glues them into her personal notebook. Moreover, Sylvie owns a “hope chest,” where she collects things that she buys from her pocket money. Through her conversations with Peter, the spectator is able to understand that the hope chest is very special to Sylvie. She tells Peter that it includes her “dowry.” There is a collection of matching towels, a blender, and other items for the household in the chest. This fact is a curious trait of her character: Children of her age are usually depicted as playing with toys. But Sylvie is a little girl who desires to accumulate material things. This is strange
, because materialism is usually connected with adulthood. I therefore infer that meaning emerges through a child character that could not emerge through an adult character. The following analysis will ascertain what this meaning is. Along the same lines, the question arises: To what degree does Sylvie
s depiction as a
material girl
enable the film to represent materialism in complex ways? Sylvie
s collection in her hope chest stands for the dreams she has for her future. The planning of the future is an ideology of forward-looking Western culture. By contrast, Zen philosophy teaches us to live in the present. Sylvie therefore represents the Western subject who does not concentrate on the present. Nevertheless, her materialism occupies an ambivalent position between Western, rational culture and spirituality. In fact, Sylvie
s rational planning is a way for her to imagine herself in a secure place. Imagination, here, is a spiritual process. As a kind of spiritual, self-help strategy, Sylvie plans her future. While this is already part of the constitution of the Western subject, she also confirms other stereotypes about white, middle-class life. One is the role of the caring mother. The material things symbolize Sylvie
s imagined future life in an orderly, middleclass family. Comically, this little girl is already thinking about setting up a household. Sylvie, in this sense, confirms the stereotype of the caring female. She longs to re-live what other women of her status have experienced traditionally. She desires what is to be called a white, middle-class, suburban life. In fact, it is through her that whiteness becomes marked in the movie.56 Robbie and Peter
s difference from the neighborhood is marked by their brown 56 Critical whiteness studies assume that it is a form of securing white hegemony to only speak about other ethno-racial groups as being of color, and thus mark them as different. At the same time, “whiteness remains unexamined – unqualified, essential,

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skin. While they are visibly of African-American descent, everybody else in the community is white. Their fitting-in is thus not only contested by the girls
behavior towards them, but also by the visible marker of difference. Sylvie proves to be the one who explicitly states how a white girl living in an orderly
suburban family perceives the Swerseys. In an interaction with Robbie, she points out what is outwardly visible and speaks from the position of the privileged subject who assumes superior knowledge: Sylvie: “You live next door to me.” Robbie: “No, I dont.” Sylvie: “I saw you moving in. You have a white dad and a big brother. Your whole family lives in one of those little apartments? Do you all have to sleep in the same bed?” Robbie: “My mom lives somewhere else.” Sylvie: “You should get a Hide-a-bed. During the day its a couch, but at night it folds out into a comfortable queen-sized bed.” (00:19:20)

While Robbie first resists Sylvie
s marking, he complies in light of her exact observations. Sylvie perceives herself as being in a dominant position. Her superiority is, first of all, an economic one: that this whole family has to live in a small apartment next to her large family house challenges her conception of personal space. However, she already knows what to buy in order to make the best out of the situation. She speaks from the position of whiteness as middle-class privilege; her family is able to spend money and to consume (cf. Twine). Robbie and Peter do not embody this privileged position in this neighborhood. Sylvie does not know that they spend half of their time with their mother in a home similar to hers. While Peter and Robbie are thus used to belonging to the white middleclass and feeling culturally unmarked, in this neighborhood they are constructed as culturally different. The impression of dominance is underscored by the game Sylvie is playing with a couple of children. This time, she performs the dominant person regardless of color and class. The children are lying on a lawn, forming a circle, peeping like chicks. Sylvie is standing in the middle of the circle and feeds them candy. In accordance with her dream about the future, she plays the mother who cares for the others. And she is in control. Sylvie also takes on this favored position in relation to Robbie. She is not only older and taller than Robbie, she invites him to lie down to join the game: “You want to be a little bird and get a lithomogenous, seemingly self-fashioned, and apparently unmarked by history or practice” (Frankenberg, Displacing Whiteness 1). Positioning whiteness and marking it counters the assumption of whiteness to be the unmarked norm.

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tle worm? Just lie down and peep!” Robbie readily complies and joins the game of subjection. Through this action, Sylvie has marked Robbie
s – and by implication Peter
s – difference, while at the same time making steps to include them into the white suburban neighborhood. The character Sylvie does not however merely symbolize the hegemony of white middle-class life. Her character is far more complex. At the same time that she reproduces orderly
and controlled suburban life, she also disturbs the audience. Sylvie seems too young to go shopping in a department store to buy her own blender. But in fact, this is what she does. Her character is being developed in connection to her becoming acquainted with Peter. She tells him her secret wishes about the future, something that not even her girlfriends at school know about (00:23:20). Peter acknowledges her sincerity by asking her more about her fantasies, and she willingly informs him how she imagines her future home and family (01:11:39): Peter: “So youve thought about where youll put everything? Like the interior design?” Sylvie: “Yes. Yes, I have, Peter.”

Music sets in. A tune is played by piano and strings. It is calming. She takes Peter by the shoulders and gently pulls him down to the floor. The camera frames them from above. We see the two of them lying side by side on Sylvie
s pastel colored carpet, looking up towards us. Sylvie: “If this was the kitchen...Id like there to be a little nook right over there by the window. Like the booth of a restaurant. And thered be an island right where the light is hanging. And the island would have the stove in it and a countertop on one side with tall stools under it. My daughter would sit on a stool so I could talk to her while I was making dinner or lunch.” Peter: “What would you say to her?” Sylvie: “Id say Hi, baby girl. You are a precious treasure.”

This conversation reveals that Sylvie
s aim is not to collect status symbols. Rather, all her dreams and hopes are connected to the things she collects in her hope chest. It gives her the security she seeks within a society that produces diffuse anxieties
, through offering multiple life choices (Bauman). Moreover, Sylvie
s character traits blur the lines between childhood and adulthood. She represents the postmodern phenomenon of leveled-out hierarchies. This also concerns the relationship between adults and children. However, the security that hierarchies supply breaks away. The subject in postmodern society is required to

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find alternative ways to feel secure. Sylvie does so by collecting household items. In this sense, Sylvie
s materialism has a spiritual aspect. Sylvie is not a “material girl” in the sense that she wants to show her possessions to others. On the contrary, she keeps them to herself and only shares her dreams with Peter. He listens attentively, dreaming together with her. It is not a bodily relationship that the two of them share, but a mental one. She becomes the anchor that Peter is missing in his family: a secure place. Sylvie is not only fixated on her collection of objects. She is also open to letting Peter share her dreams. This interpersonal connection between the two of them is important as it gives Sylvie more trust that her dream may become true. Meanwhile, Peter can dream along with her. Sylvie does not merely confirm the image of the child who copies behaviors from his or her environment. Her character goes one step further. She already tries to prepare the way for her dreams to become real. This is not the playful child that would keep the expectations of an adult audience intact. The end of the conversation with Peter even more clearly disrupts the image of the innocent girl. Peter and Sylvie are still lying on her carpet, looking up into the camera. She has just told him how she imagines her future home. Peter: “Id live up there, if I could. If there wasnt gravity.” Sylvie: “Yeah. But if you lived up there then all this stuff, all this stuff in my room would fall down on you and crush you and youd die.”

The camera tracks upwards, away from them, while the music becomes louder. The spectator is left for a couple of seconds to digest what Sylvie has said. Her speech serves to disrupt the sentimentality of the scene. Paradoxically, the girl who has her future planned and has a lively imagination, is not as naïve as the spectator might think. She disrupts the image of the dreamy little girl. When Peter places himself in her dream, his imagination is far too fantastical to her. Her dreams are not from the sphere of fantasy, but are real to her. She corrects Peter and remains down to earth. She implicitly punishes him for assuming that her dreams are just “up there,” where there is no gravity and no one can live. Sylvie simply imagines a life that conforms to stereotypical images of a harmonic, suburban middle-class life. While this seems to be a result of her surrounding, it also counters individualism. Her materialism is shaped by mainstream capitalism, but it also points to the desire for a harmonic life. Sylvie believes that owning certain things brings her closer to making her dreams come true. She attaches her dreams to material things. The character Sylvie hence shows that materialism is mainly a way to seek security. Consequently, it is not

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presented in a negative sense; it even receives a spiritual connotation. But Sylvie
s disturbing statement that, “all this stuff in my room would fall down on you and crush you and you
d die,” points out that material things cannot help to secure harmony in the end. In sum, economic materialism is not presented in a binary relation to spirituality here; instead it is constructed as allowing for ambivalences. Another instance of economic materialism is evoked through the character “Christine.” By purchasing shoes from the department store where Richard works, she initiates a series of significations. The shoes receive different meanings in the course of the movie. While they first seem an unnecessary purchase for her, they later become a simple way of reminding her of Richard. Finally, she writes “Me” and “You” on them and films them. To what degree is Christine
s interaction with the shoes a reflection upon the adult consumer in capitalist culture? What significance do the shoes receive with regard to self-help? Early in the film, Christine and Michael arrive at the shoe department store (00:07:15). Michael picks out a pair of bright blue, Nike tennis shoes. While he walks around in them to feel if they fit, a close-up of Christine
s face shows her gazing at something outside of the frame. There is a cut to Richard who has been looking in Michael
s direction. He turns his head to look at Christine. Noticing that she is gazing at something behind him, he again turns his head and spots a pair of pink ballerina shoes. The frame cuts to a medium long shot of the two of them sitting opposite each other. Richard picks up a pink ballerina shoe and asks her if she wants to try it on. She declines. With his face in close-up, Richards asks if she is comfortable in the shoes she is wearing. She replies that she guesses so, although they rub her ankles. The camera tilts downwards to focus on her rubbed ankle. She reasons that this is normal, because she has low ankles. Above Christine
s shoulder, Richard
s head is filmed in close-up. He is also bent down looking at Christine
s foot. In this posture he replies: “You think you deserve that pain but you don
t” (00:08:28). His eyes turn up to look at Christine emphatically. Christine
s face is then focused on in medium close-up. She looks surprised and objects by insisting that she does not think she deserves it. With a cut back to Richard
s face he says: “Well, not consciously, maybe.” In close-up, Christine replies, a little less sure of herself: “My ankles are just low...” Now the camera is focused on Richard again as he sits up and declares: “People think foot pain is a fact of life...” A cut to the medium long shot displays the two of them sitting opposite each other. In the background, Michael is advancing towards them, smiling. Richard finishes his sentence: “...but life is actually better than that!” Michael at this moment chimes in: “I
ll say!” He turns to Christine: “You

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should get some. Your whole life could be better. It
s starting right now!” (00:08:50). The scene ends with a shot/reverse-shot that shows an exchange of profound glances between Christine and Richard. Christine looks as if she was contemplating whether they were both right. Richard looks at her with wide eyes. It is their first spark of interest in each other. Richard has become more than just a shoe seller. Richard is here humorously presented as the character that stands for a fruitful combination of spirituality and sales cultures. As spectators, we already know that he is a profound
thinker, because we have witnessed how he explained to Andrew his reasons for his self-immolation. This being the first time they actually meet, Richard surprises Christine by turning out to be a psychologist. He tells her that she does not deserve the pain she feels. With his statement, Richard proves to be knowledgeable about spiritual reasoning as well as a good salesperson. Eastern spirituality and wellness culture, as it is appropriated by the West, puts an emphasis on the relaxation of body and mind. It is constructed in contrast to the ethics of continuous self-improvement and labor in capitalist working cultures. As already discussed, Zen Buddhism is one discourse favorably embraced by the West. Notably, Werthmann points out that what is often missed in the American appropriation of Zen is its strict self-discipline. She explains that every monk in a Chinese Zen Buddhist temple is required to perform tasks at set hours of the day. The working day is rigidly planned and should not be imagined as a series of relaxation exercises. Western appropriation has tended to drop this discipline in favor of a less strict application (Werthmann IV).57 Richard refers to the idea of the unity of body and mind, the physical and the spiritual. He thus engages in his typical employment of slogans as discussed earlier. By way of this technique, he convinces Christine and Michael to consume. Richard
s sales psychology is successful because he applies the concept of self-affirmation. He refers to the notion that clothes are an expression of one
s own self-worth. Ironically, in this way Richard becomes philosophical when talking about such a petty thing like pink ballerina shoes. He influences people
s decisions. That life can be better by consuming things is a decidedly marketcapitalist logic. The critic of capitalism knows that this logic increases sales, without actually changing the life of the consumer or making him or her happier. 57 The appropriation of Zen meditation also varies between cultural groups in the West. The Beatniks application, exemplified in Kerouacs The Dharma Bums, was rather spontaneous and pleasure-driven. They received a lot of criticism for their understanding of Zen. A notable American Zen guru, Alan Watts, critiqued their method in a book published in 1959, entitled Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen.

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Richard nevertheless seems to really believe that everybody merits a good pair of shoes that does not hurt. Michael
s confirming statement is exaggerated and therefore comical. Both characters repeat overly simplistic, superlative advertisement slogans. This is obviously an ironic way to present the advertising industry. Nevertheless, Michael here appears to be Christine
s advisor. His age renders him the perfect embodiment of the wise man whose advice she should consider. Thus, their combined influence convinces Christine to buy the shoes. Back in the car with Michael, she immediately regrets having done so. She accuses Michael (and Richard) of urging her to make the purchase. Christine tells Michael that she does not need the shoes: “They are exactly like my old ones except that they are pink!” (00:08:57). She complains to Michael that he seemed to believe everything that this well-versed shoe seller said. Christine, as a critical member of a consumer society, reflects on her purchase. She was seduced to buy the pair of pink shoes by the promise of being happier afterwards. Self-reflectively, she analyzes her actions and thus contemplates the contradictions of consumerist behavior. Richard and Michael had sung to her the song of consumerism: Buy and you will be happy. By way of her ensuing reflections, Christine reveals that she knows very well this is not true. Nevertheless, she had been convinced to buy the ballerina shoes. Thus, she is an example of a person who is well educated in the critique of capitalism, but who nevertheless falls into capitalism’s trap. By accusing Michael of being “gullible,” she makes him responsible for blinding her. Ironically, she is the one who was tempted and proves to be gullible. She realizes how the acknowledgement of pain, as occurs in Richard’s comments about her ankles, is connected with influence. Christine is however not so critical as to bring the shoes back or dispose of them. The shoes reoccur in the movie with different meanings. What is at first a symbol that is critical of capitalism later turns into a reminder of Richard
s first impression on her. As a third step, Christine re-signifies the shoes. While they first represent her momentary submission to market rhetorics, the shoes eventually receive a new signification. They are, after all, the beginning of Richard’s and Christine
s interests in each other. In order to understand the meanings of the shoes, it is vital to analyze scenes that elucidate Christine and Richard
s process of falling in love. The “Tyrone Street Scene” best exemplifies this complicated process in a condensed form. Christine returns to the department store for the first time after their initial encounter. Richard leaves the shop after his shift (00:28:26). Christine has been in the shop without him noticing her. Their encounter is staged on the street outside the shop. The camera tracks backwards while Richard is walking towards it.

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The shot suggests depth, because he is framed in close-up, while the long, broad street is in the background. Behind Richard, Christine appears. She has to walk quickly in order to catch up with him. When she reaches him, the frame cuts to a medium shot of the two of them. He looks at her in surprise. She smiles and says, “I am not following you.” A playful dialogue starts about a possible shared future. During the flirt they pick out road signs to symbolize the stage of life they are in. The sign “Tyrone Street” is at the end of the road, where they will have to separate because their cars are parked in different locations. During the conversation, Christine learns that Richard has just separated from his wife one month ago. He nevertheless seems open and interested to talk to her. At the end of the road, he offers her a lift to her car. She thanks him but says, “Maybe we should just be glad... that we lived this long, good life together. You know, it
s so much more than most people ever get to have.” They awkwardly say goodbye and separate. In the next shot, Richard is filmed in close-up, sitting behind the wheel and driving. He has a wide-eyed, dreamy look on his face. While he is smiling faintly, his gaze becomes fixed on his bandaged hand. He stops smiling and concentrates on the street. Then we hear Christine
s voice calling out to him. A cut shows her in full body height on the sidewalk. We see her from Richard
s perspective. There is a cut to Richard
s profile as he halts and says: “Hi. I thought your car was over here.” She replies while she is moving towards his car: “It is. It
s down there. You could give me a ride to it.” A close-up of Richard shows him confused. She opens the door, sits down next to him and puts the seatbelt on. Expectantly, she smiles at him. But in a close-up shot of Richard
s face, we see that he is not happy. He has changed his attitude abruptly and asks: “What are you doing in my car?” A cut to Christine
s laughing face confirms that she takes it as a joke. Richard makes clear that he is serious: “No, I don
t know you, and you certainly don
t know anything about me. I mean, what if I am a killer of children?” Close to tears, but still trying to laugh, she replies: “Well, that would put a damper on things, wouldn
t it.” Richard makes clear that he seriously wants her to get out of his car. He is furious. Christine gets out in bewilderment. He drives off, leaving her standing on the sidewalk, confused. This scene symbolizes the whole process that the two of them go through to fall in love. The “back and forth” remains a recurring theme for them. It also shows that the movie is not the usual romantic Hollywood story. Two moments break the logic of a continuous process of falling in love. Why does Christine insist that they separate at Tyrone Street? And why does Richard reject her rudely? Instead of trusting the other and being brave enough to open up, he takes a step back. Getting close to somebody seems to be a risky affair. Richard
s drastic re-

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action is an especially unpleasant surprise. The spectator
s immersion into the film is interrupted. While both characters lay open their actual emotions, the scene especially shows Richard
s state of confusion. He has just suffered a separation and panics when Christine crosses a boundary by entering his private space, his car. In his mind, questions and doubts seem to form: What does this stranger want from me? How easily can I trust somebody? Why should I be close to her? One can read Richard
s reaction as an act of self-protection. The moment he looks at his bandaged hand, he is reminded of the hurt caused by his separation. He cannot trust Christine because he is still suffering. The individualization tendencies surrounding him have left a mark on him. Despite this disturbing encounter, Christine repeatedly visits him at his workplace. Richard is always surprised, but not displeased, by her appearances. The next time she visits him, after he throws her out of his car, he takes an emotional step towards her by asking her out for coffee. She decidedly affirms and gives her card to him. But it takes a long time for him to call. In contrast to Christine, as spectators, we know it is because he needs to organize his family life. We also know that Christine is waiting desperately for his call. While waiting for a sign from him, she returns to the pink ballerina shoes for comfort. She recycles them into art. As an expressive individual, Christine knows how to give the shoes a new value. She connects her own feelings with the pair of shoes and re-signifies them as an art object. By writing “Me” on the left shoe and “You” on the right one, she turns herself and Richard into that pair of shoes (00:42:40). When she moves her feet to the sides, the shoes symbolize that they belong together, but that they have difficulties deciding on a single direction. The shoes stand for her and Richard
s process of approaching each other, a recurring approximation and separation. By giving it a personal meaning, she expresses her emotions. Or, she turns a material phenomenon into a spiritual one. She is a representative of a contemporary creative class that embrace postmaterialist values for their self-realization (cf. Fluck “Cultures of Criticism”). More prominently, however, through the shoes she demonstrates a connection between consumerism and art. The mass-produced pink ballerina shoes receive a personal meaning for her here. Christine does not accept the shoes as they are, but re-signifies them with her own artistic signature. She is a creative person, an artist, an emblem of the creative class. What does her act signify? Elisabeth Bronfen has noted that creativity and mass consumption are a fruitful combination in popular culture. In her book Crossmappings, specifically in the essay “Pop Kino. Hollywood und Amerikas Kultur des Konsums,” she takes examples from classic and postmodern Hollywood films to explain the connection between pop culture, mass consumerism and American cinema. As a reference

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point, she cites Andy Warhol and other pop artists, who used consumer culture for their art works. They showed its false promise for a better life, on the one hand, and mass culture
s fascination with it on the other. Pop art reflected upon the fact that a dream world was constructed for the masses, and the masses willingly believed in the fantasy. Bronfen analyses various scenes that recycle
consumer products and turn them into an ironic reflection of this false promise of happiness. I suggest that July likewise takes up the theme of mass consumerism and stages people
s entanglement within it. To this purpose, it is to be stressed that Bronfen refers to American culture as it is constructed and embraced by the white middle-class. As much as July, pop artists were representatives of this class. Whether they considered themselves as part of the masses
is contestable. Rather, pop artists used the aesthetic of consumer culture to sell their work to the masses. They distanced themselves from this culture, having analyzed and taken advantage of it. A similarly ambivalent distancing from one
s class appears in the “hipster” of the early twenty-first century (Greif). The white hipster has to continuously construct his difference to mainstream consumption only to the effect of appearing individualistic. Greif argues that the hipster
s consumption is meant as a rebellion, but in fact lacks any political agenda. With reference to Thomas Frank
s term “rebel consumer,” Greif points out that the hipster is a poor copy of “a countercultural ethos in the late sixties:” “The rebel consumer is the person who, adopting the rhetoric but not the politics of the counterculture, convinces himself that buying the right mass products individualizes him as transgressive” (Greif, n.pag.). Although the character “Christine” does not buy mass-produced shoes in this conviction, she shows common traits with the hipster. She re-signifies the shoes in order to express her individuality. Furthermore, in her manner of consumption, she oscillates between “knowingness and naïveté, guilty selfawareness and absolved self-absorption” – traits that Greif identifies as inherent to the hipster conscience. Thus, Christine
s recycling is a combination of pop-art irony and guilty, self-aware hipsterism. The irony becomes apparent in Michael
s exclamation, “Your whole life could be better!” She lays open how people “willingly believe” in the promises of consumer culture and its advertisements. It works with the same logic as the self-help industry. The person who suffers and looks for happiness is credulous. July elucidates how people wish to believe in the promises of becoming happier through consuming goods or believing in slogans. In actual fact, as her criticallyconsuming character “Christine” lays open, the people know that the promises are lies. The ironic treatment of the shoes in Me and You, however, also reflects

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July $   $  , ' %  %  -% '$    ' 'rself is an artist from a subcultural
group. Moreover, economic materialism is an inherent part of American capitalist culture at large. It appears as a variation of the longing for security, as symbolized by the character of Sylvie. July shows that we depend on our culture
s ways of making sense of the world. The shoes mirror many themes that the film deals with in general: the sales psychology which provokes Christine’s desire to buy the shoes; the realm of love, which makes her see them as a symbol for their relationship; and the realm of art, which provides the individual with the possibility to express his or her emotions. While July treats consumerism with irony, she does not seem to be only negative about it. The message is: Mass products can in fact better your life if you make use of them individually. She thus reproduces a hipster
mindset and combines it with self-help. The shoes stand for the subject
s suffering and the feeling that buying them can alleviate pain. In other words, individualism is not constructed here in a binary relation to mass consumerism. However, in line with the strivings of the creative class, one has to be creative in order to turn the material thing into something personal. In fact, the pink ballerina shoes carry the implicit message that creativity is helpful to digest one
s pain. With the characters “Sylvie” and “Christine,” July depicts white middle-class culture as deeply influenced by economic materialism. Sylvie is still a child and consumes uncritically. To her, all her belongings are a guarantee that her future will be secure and harmonic. Her figure is used to lay open the logic of consumerism and its ambivalent implications of security and control. Christine represents the critical consumer that is wary of materialism but cannot reject it completely in the end. The film fails to reflect on the fact that materialism always excludes people who do not have the luxury to consume. The film thus does not aim at showing social imbalances. July
s perspective on materialism is a privileged one. It allows us to see it as a questionable culture, but nevertheless presents it as an innocent way to care for the self and to bring comfort.

3.3 C HILDREN

AND

S EXUALITY

In Me and You, there are other children next to Sylvie that appear as characters with complex traits. While in Sylvie
s case materialism is a significant analytical category, other categories are more productive for analyzing the other child characters. In the cases of Robbie, Heather, and Rebecca, it is the category of sexuality. Children and sexuality is certainly not a new topic for the film industry. There are different examples of how it has been depicted in Hollywood
s

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history. Didactic movies warn the audience about the horrors of child abuse, as for example Alfred Hitchcock
s Marnie (1964) or Pedro Almodóvar
s Bad Education (2004). The movie Juno (2007) by Jason Reitman depicts teenage pregnancy and suggests a moral way to deal with it.58 I am going to ask to what extent July disrupts such didactic or moralizing codes that are employed in a number of mainstream Hollywood movies. If she does in fact disrupt such codes, then the question will be what this signifies. I am structuring the discussion, firstly, according to the characters, and secondly, according to the spaces where the combination of sexuality and self-help occurs. Robbie
s cyber flirtation is the major aspect in the first analysis. The second analysis is concerned with the twodimensional, and hence real-life, communication between the two young women, Heather and Rebecca, and the adult, Andrew. At last, my conclusive remarks bring both readings together by addressing the question: What have my findings revealed about the depiction of children and sexuality with regard to the individualized society and self-help? 3.3.1 Virtual Reality Versus Real Life Robbie
s story addresses topics related to the individualized society and its social actors, because it is centered around both his parents
real separation and his virtual life. The first aspect is the social circumstance Robbie finds himself in. His family has broken apart, which brings about less parental control. His consequent engagement with the virtual world connects his character to the highly contested discourse of Internet security. It breaks a taboo by depicting a child as a sexual agent, and it is transgressive by blurring children
s and adult
s spaces. In consequence, one needs to ask how this affects Robbie, who is a child, as much as Nancy, who is an adult and his anonymous chat partner. At the beginning of the movie, shortly before Richard is going to burn his hand, Peter and Robbie are sitting in their room in front of the computer. This picture will be repeated several times during the course of the film. Playing with the computer is presented as their favorite pastime. Hence, Peter and Robbie are depicted as typical contemporary children in Western societies; they grow up with computer technology as a normal fact of their everyday lives. Keeping in 58 The most famous literary example for the motive of children and sexuality is Vladimir Nabokovs Lolita. Andrea Bramberger explains that Nabokov is usually interpreted as not to have conveyed a moralizing attitude in Lolita. In contrast, she writes, the two filmic renditions of the novel either present Lolita as a victim of pedophilic desire and sexual assault (Dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1962) or as the female assaulter (Dir. Adrian Lyne, 1997).

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mind that the question about children and online culture has posed challenges to parents and pedagogues provides a critical background to the boys
activities. The central scene in which Robbie and Peter establish an online flirt follows a scene that outlines their status in the new neighborhood. This is important to note as it marks their social situation. The camera tracks backwards while focusing on Peter and Robbie in medium close-up, who are walking towards it (00:20:03). In the background we see a sunny and green Californian suburban street. They are walking on the sidewalk. A couple of meters behind them are Heather and Rebecca, seen in full body length. The boys
backpacks suggest that they are on their way home from school. Suddenly the two girls start to shout at Peter that he is not to follow them. Obviously, it is the opposite of what is occurring: The girls are following Peter and Robbie. The girls are coming closer. Their faces are distorted from their screaming. As Heather screams shrilly, a cut shows Sylvie in a medium shot, sitting on a bench, and looking up from a booklet. An eyeline match cut59 makes clear that Sylvie witnesses the scene on the sidewalk. Heather and Rebecca are becoming more excited. They shout that they are going to kick Peter in the throat. At that moment, Peter halts Robbie and they let the girls walk past. A cut back to Sylvie shows her as she calls: “Hey, come here!” She is offering them shelter. Peter and Robbie look to the side. Through a shot/reverse shot, the spectator witnesses that Peter has exchanged a glance with Sylvie. We see him in close-up as he looks away again. The two boys keep on walking. This scene establishes two facts about the boys
status among the young adults. First of all, they are not friends with any of the girls. Heather and Rebecca walk behind them instead of next to them. They do not communicate in a relaxed way. The boys do not seem well-acquainted with their neighbor Sylvie either. Although she appears to be a nice girl when she offers them shelter, they do not walk over to her. Secondly, the girls have noticed the two boys and want to attract their attention. The girls are especially interested in Peter, who is closer to their age than his little brother. They all want to receive his attention, whether it is by molesting him, as in the case of Heather and Rebecca, or through being nice to him, as in the case of Sylvie. In the end of the scene, however, all of them go their separate ways. The scene illustrates that Peter and Robbie are the new ones in the neighborhood and are still outside of the community. Moving to a new neighborhood challenges them to rely on themselves. They both must cope with their new sur59 “The eyeline match cut joins shot A, a point-of-view shot of a person looking offscreen in one direction, and shot B, the person or object that is the object of that gaze” (Barsam 259).

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rounding after their parents
separation and moving in with their father. The parents
individualization tendencies result in Peter and Robbie not being provided with close adult care. The brothers therefore rely on each other, but are otherwise isolated. They are often depicted as a good team that supports one another, but both of them also seek individual ways to overcome the challenges that accompany the change. After an interruption by two short scenes, the next scene featuring Peter and Robbie ensues. In medium close-up, they are shown in profile while sitting at their desk in front of a computer. Around them, we see children
s decorations and toys. Two reading lamps sit on the desk and on the drawer next to the desk. They illuminate and thus draw focus to the children
s faces and the computer keyboard. The drawn curtains are covered with bright orange cartoon mice. Apparently, it is already dark outside. The atmosphere suggests secrecy and isolation. Peter is typing on the keyboard. The next shot displays the computer screen and the text “Untitled: I
m wearing pants and a blouse.” It reveals that the boys are chatting with a woman. In a series of shots that move back and forth between the close-ups of the children and the computer screen, the chat and the children
s reactions are displayed: Robbie: “Ask her if she likes baloney. … What are you putting?” Peter: “I asked her what kind of bosom she had. Its probably a man.” Robbie: “Why is it a man?” Peter: “Cause everyone just makes stuff up on these things. Its probably a man pretending to be a woman. So picture a fat guy with a little wiener.” Robbie: “Whats a bosom?” Peter: “Its a nice word for titties.” Robbie: “Wheres Mom?” Peter: “What do you mean?” Robbie: “What do you think shes doing right now?” Peter: “I dont know. Screwing her new boyfriend probably.” Robbie: “I think shes buying us presents.” Peter: “Yeah, Robbie. Right now shes probably buying us each a car! …Its a man.” Robbie: “I think its a woman. I can tell it is.” Peter: “What should we write? I have a big wiener?” Robbie: “I want to poop back and forth.” Peter: “What? What does that mean?” Robbie: “Like, Ill poop into her butt hole and then shell poop it back into my butt hole. And then well just keep doing it back and forth with the same poop.”

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Peter: “Oh, my God. Im going to put that. I want to poop back and forth... Oh, God. Shes gonna think were a crazy, perverted person. …Ooh! She thinks were crazy!” Robbie: “No, tell her like how I said it.” Peter: “No, shell never write back. We have to sound like were a man, you know? Thats just lame. Its stupid.” Robbie: “But you said I could do half, and youve done all of them before this.” Peter: “Whatever. Were probably gonna get arrested. What do you want me to put?” Robbie: “Like how I said it.” Peter: “Ill poop in your butt hole and then you will poop it back into my butt and we will keep doing it...” Robbie: “Back...” Peter: “Back...” Robbie: “And forth...” Peter: “And forth...” Robbie: “With the same poop.” Peter: “Same poop.” Robbie: “Forever.” The camera displays the computer screen and we see that the chat partner “Untitled” writes back: “You are crazy and you are making me very hot.”

This scene illustrates that Peter and Robbie seek refuge in virtual life in order to connect with other people. By way of their explicit sexual language in the chat dialogue they perform an identity: The two boys pretend to be a grown up man. What we as the audience know is that they are reversing sexual roles. The boys are presented as actively pursuing a sexual relationship, which appears as an alarm signal to the spectator. While the scene is highly amusing, part of the reason for this is that they are doing something forbidden. Obviously, on a juridicial level, sexual relationships between adults and children are illegal in Western society. On an ethical level, there is a shared moral agreement that adults that pursue such relationships are sexually perverted. As a consequence, depictions of sexual relations between children and adults in film are morally acceptable only when the pedophile is presented as an evil character and is punished for violating the innocence of children. In Peter and Robbie
s case, however, the children are actively pursuing the sexual relationship. The question arises here, What happens when film confuses these moral codes? According to Kathy Merlock Jackson, children
s innocence is an important instance of keeping a worldview intact. She argues in her book Images of Children in American Film (1986) that the construction of children as “innocent” is due to the way that this construction serves as a symbol for the

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American nation. In comparison with Europe, America is young and unburdened by the past; the child has thus been the symbol for America
s innocence and bright future.60 James R. Kincaid argues, in a rather populist fashion, in his book Erotic Innocence. The Culture of Child Molesting that the sexual revolution has made the Western world cling to myths surrounding innocence and to hysterically attach this idea to its children (54). In consequence, he writes, the sexual child turns into a monstrosity. One needs to be aware, however, that this discussion always rests on the edge of an argument in support of pedophilia. As Bramberger shows, the child is always the vulnerable party in any discussion of children’s sexuality. Every discussion therefore needs to be sensitive to arguments that diminish the child
s safety. It is on this edge that Robbie
s story receives meaning. In respect of these cultural codes, the spectator is aware of the danger implied in Peter and Robbie
s chatting. The children are playing a game that can become dangerous for them. By reversing the active role, which is doubled by the fact that the viewer is only shown the children
s point of view, we are witnessing an act of transgression. This disturbing image of children is not comfortable for the adult spectator. July purposefully confuses codes that the audience wants to rely on: She puts into question the view that children are innocent. What does it mean that Robbie is constructed as a sexually transgressive child? What does July elucidate through violating these cultural codes? When asking what is uncomfortable about the scene, one needs to take into account its ambivalence; online chatting is at the same time an act of power on the children
s side. They might not be conscious of this fact, as little as they are aware of the danger. In face-to-face communication, the children would not be able to perform this same role. They use the anonymity of the Internet as a source of power and security. At this point, they are not close enough to the other person as to come in harm
s way. With her use of the Interest in this scene, July reflects upon the implications of contemporary uses of the media on children. She thereby picks up a prevalent public discussion. As childhood-studies scholar Kirsten Drotner points out, the Internet medium is a new space that adults see as a possible threat to their children. “Discourses of concern” (Drotner) circle around child molesters, but also about hate sites and the uncontrollable display of data: “In terms of digital me60 Jackson further argues that in film, this tendency was especially visible in the rise of child stars such as Shirley Temple in the era between the two world wars. Only later, in the 1970s, Jackson explains, the child also came to be represented as possibly sinful.

However, portraying the sinful child is still perceived as an act of transgres-

sion. According to this reasoning, the image of childhood innocence is vital to keep a world view intact.

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dia, public discourses of concern focus on two related areas of tension, one of which is to do with perceived dangers and transgressions, while the other one focuses on identity performance and display” (362). These discourses of concern circle around the question of sexuality especially and how much freedom a child should have when surfing the Internet. It is discussed how much the parent should oversee children
s Internet use and how to protect children from seeing and engaging with sexual content. The discussion tries to solve how harmful this exposure is to the development of a sexual identity. The underlying assumption is that children are sexually innocent and vulnerable, and thus easy victims. This causes a conflict between contemporary democratic trends in education, which strive to acknowledge children
s self-defined needs (Livingstone and Bober 109), and the need for adult supervision and control over the sites that children visit.61 July treats these discourses of concern in the movie and translates the ambivalent feelings of adults into film language. On the one hand, Robbie
s story causes laughter because of its absurdity. On the other hand, this absurdity is indicative of the fact that this story does not mirror the conversations that usually occur between children and adults. It is a representation of the children building a world for themselves in which they are the agents and the adult is merely a passive spectator that plays according to the child
s rules. For the audience and chat partner alike, July has introduced unconventional codes. Peter stands in for the spectator
s surprise about what Robbie is able to imagine. For the most part, children are not portrayed as pursuing their goals unerringly; rather they rely on adults to achieve these goals. Moreover, sexually active children especially disturb the usual codes of depiction. Instead of the evil adult seducing a child, the child is seducing the adult. Nancy Herrington – the curator who turns out to be Robbie
s Internet partner – cannot believe her eyes when she realizes that a little boy has played such a trick on her. She shares the same value system as the audience. Neither Nancy Herrington, nor the audience would ordinarily expect a child to occupy this space. Robbie, as a child in danger, is the representative through which the ambivalence between the child as social actor and easy victim is discussed. Robbie is constructed as innocent, because we perceive his language as childlike. An adult who expressed the same anal fantasies as Robbie would be categorized as sexually deviant. In Robbie
s case, the spectator perceives these words to be the expression of a child’s imagination and language. In Freudian psychoanalysis, 61 Allison James provides an informative overview of the discourse of children as agents in “Agency,” her entry in The Palgrave Handbook of Childhood Studies (2009). See also Buckingham 2006.

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these kinds of fantasies are regarded as normal for a child in the anal phase. Robbie’s manner of self-expression is indicative that he is not conscious of the sexual connotation of his anal language. He is risky and shameless, unaware of the full meaning of sexual language. The contrast with his older brother shows this. Peter knows that the language might be interpreted as transgressive, because his socialization is more advanced. He fears that, “we probably gonna get arrested.” Sooner or later Robbie will also learn through socialization that such activity is morally transgressive. Robbie does not reveal his age to his chat partner, however. The fact that he is taken to be an adult, who is expressing anal fantasies in an anonymous chat forum, turns it into sexually transgressive behavior. It is an absurd act of power. He succeeds with this strategy of impersonating an adult, because the image makes the chat partner “very hot.” We can therefore say at this point that July creates a highly ambivalent scene by disturbing cultural codes. This occurs first and foremost in the question about children
s innocence and Internet use. Her depiction is inspired by a society that is not at ease with the question of children’s agency, and how much regulation it should be given. This is a crucial question for a society that claims individualism for every person, yet frequently does not have the adequate means to supervise its children. This dilemma is depicted in Me and You through Richard Swersey. By entering a live chat that is not meant to be visited by children, Robbie and Peter perform another act of transgression. They secretively access an adult space. This anonymous world excludes their father Richard. He is the representative of the adult generation in its relation to the young “digital generation” (Buckingham). He cannot control their Internet use and does not know what they are engaging in. The film language visualizes his exclusion from this space. The computer is in the boys
room, which their father Richard mostly sees from the outside. In the movie
s second scene, when Richard is shown to be reluctantly separating from Pam, he first stands on the threshold to their room. Then he sees them from the garden through the window. Throughout the film, he almost never enters their room. Often, he has to work and is not at home at all. The children can therefore chat without being controlled. While the adults in the film are excluded from this space, the audience takes up this role of supervision. They spy on the children. Film is the suitable medium to give us the illusion of spying on somebody. As Christian Metz explains in his influential book The Imaginary Signifier, the audience
s pleasure in watching film derives from the human desire to perceive. Through voyeurism, cinema feeds our scopic drive. We see people in motion that cannot see us. In comparison to live theater, the audience is able to feign that the protagonists do not know that they are being watched (Metz 62 ff.). Hence,

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the audience
s pleasure derives from the sensation of secretly watching other people. Furthermore, the cinema is the place where desire is sustained in an endless fashion. Desire always wants to be satisfied. But at the same time, we do not want it to be satisfied, because then the pleasure of desiring would have an end. As a consequence, the desired object has to remain unattainable. In film then, the voyeuristic desire is fostered, while at the same time, the object on the screen is never attainable. Since the principle of distance is always sustained in cinema, it is the ideal space to enjoy voyeuristic desire. Because of this distance that the screen makes possible, Metz compares the screen to a keyhole. The strict spatial division between the screen and the audience is like the perspective of a child watching his or her parents being intimate, through a keyhole (64). It is as if, we are seeing something that is not meant for us to be seen. Thus, July frames the adult
s curiosity about the child
s Internet activity as a voyeuristic act. However, the role of the voyeur is confused: It is not that the children are watching the adults being intimate, but the other way round. Arguably, this is not what adult spectators wish children to do. The spectator is shocked by the virtual (sub-)space that the children are visiting. Flirting through anonymous messaging is a dangerous space. However, assumed sex roles are also reversed in other scenes. The little boy is the active part in starting a virtual sexual relationship with an adult. The absurdity of this scene is that, instead of depicting the children as victims, they are depicted as agents. They turn the Internet chat into a game. This fact constitutes the re-signification of codes that leads to the humorous and surprising effect of the scene. While Peter is more aware of the rules of this space, Robbie has to be initiated by his older brother. Peter points out to him that it is only through symbols – such as “bosom” and “big wiener” – that one can detect a person
s biological sex in real life. For him, the chat buddy’s statement that she has a “deliciously full bosom” is an exaggerated performance of the female sex, which leads Peter to unmask her as a kind of virtual transvestite. Robbie
s fantasy goes another way. When Peter explains the word bosom to him, Robbie immediately thinks of his mother. He reveals to us that the presumed woman in the chat becomes the substitute for his absent mother. Accordingly, this is Robbie
s first act of blurring the lines between virtual and real life. As a small child missing his mother, his thoughts reveal that he is thinking of her when thinking of breasts. By contrast his older pubescent brother is already interested in testing his skills as a male, seductive, sexual partner, instead of thinking of his mother. I argue that here, in virtual space, the two boys build a world for themselves. They use it as an escape from reality and at the same time extend their real life to

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it. As Kirsten Drotner explains in “Children and Digital Media,” the material aspect of the Internet is that children may encounter and connect to other realities and engage with other people beyond their physical reach. She regards globalized media as both a symptom of and a solution to the demands made on children regarding their spatial flexibility and identity performance (370). Peter and Robbie have a spatial problem in real life: Their parents have separated and they have moved into a new neighborhood. Here, they do not yet have friends. Furthermore, their mother is absent. They are victims of individualization tendencies in the adult world. They now have to rely on themselves and are isolated from their mother and from the peers in their neighborhood. Peter and Robbie are consequently presented as social actors in the process of altering the structural constraints they are facing. They engage in a form of self-help, the need for which is caused by their family situation and the longing to connect to other people. Online, they are agents and are thus a symbol for the contemporary Internet generation. The Internet medium is presented as a tool for self-help, where desires that are unattainable in real life can be pursued. Because he misses his mother, Robbie has a particular interest in changing reality. Peter is being sarcastic when he tells his little brother that their mother is probably at the very same moment “screwing her boyfriend.” While Robbie is in denial of the fact that their mother has left the family for another man, Peter shows that he is more grown up and realistic, as well as knowledgeable about sexuality. He is bitter about the fact that their mother now lives with her new boyfriend. He feels that she prioritizes him and excludes them. Both boys use the Internet to be spatially more flexible. As an extension of their situation in real life, Robbie looks for a mother substitution, while Peter practices flirting with a potential sexual partner. In contrast to Drotner
s positive stance, one can also ask the question: Can this escapism into virtual life be harmful to Robbie? Sherry Turkle
s influential book, Life on the Screen – published in 1995, when the Internet was still in its infancy – sums up the widely held belief that digital engagements are poor substitutes for social life in reality. There she claims: “[W]hat disturbs us is when the shifting norms of the virtual world bleed into real life” (230). Does this happen in Me and You and if so, does it cause a disastrous conflict? In order to answer this question, one first needs to ask whether Robbie is successful in his strategy to meet somebody. Robbie gains Nancy
s attention through his story about “pooping back and forth.” While he does not understand the transgressive character of his act, his words nonetheless raise the woman’s interest. Robbie catches up with her again at a later point (00:48:46). The scene starts with a medium close-up of Robbie
s profile in front of a computer. In the

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background we see tables and chairs, which suggests he is using the computer in a daycare institution. Nobody is sitting at a table. There is just a small figure in a pink outfit, out of focus, moving in the background. This setting signals that Robbie is keeping himself busy with the computer, unobserved by authorities. He carefully types something on the keyboard with one finger only. A cut to the computer screen shows that he has just started a conversation with “Untitled” again. She writes, “I
ve been thinking about the back and forth.” A cut to Robbie
s face shows him in close-up. He looks around cautiously as if to check if anybody is watching him. He turns off the computer screen to hide the conversation. His behavior shows that he is well aware that he is doing something forbidden and is engaging in this chat secretly – this time even without the knowledge or help of his older brother. Robbie constructs a text through copy and paste. Apparently, he is not proficient in writing yet and uses alternative methods. He symbolizes the “pooping back and forth” by inventing a sign combination: ))< >((. The computer screen displays Untitled
s positive reaction: “I get it. When can we meet?” Nancy, who is still anonymous to Robbie and to the spectators, is obviously interested in Robbie as a sexual partner. While his status of being a child is highlighted through his conversation skills, this is only understandable for the spectator. For the chat partner, who imagines him as an adult, the language appears daring and therefore interesting. Several scenes with various sub-plots interrupt Robbie and Nancy
s story. A further scene shows how they chat again (01:08:33). “Untitled” emphasizes her desire to meet him by writing: “I have to see you. Can you meet me at noon tomorrow in Laurelhearst Park? On the bench.” Two more scenes later, a cut to a medium long shot of a woman waiting on a bench in a park reveals that Robbie
s chat partner is Nancy Herrington (01:13:50). The scene therefore starts with a comical revelation. The lady who has been portrayed as extremely cold and business-like will find out that her object of desire is a little boy. The spectator is awaiting the revelation in suspense. What is Nancy going to do when she realizes who her chat partner is? It will be Robbie
s second act of blurring virtual and real life. Nancy is filmed in medium long shot, sitting on the bench. She looks around, rearranging her hair nervously. She appears to be waiting expectantly. A closeup shows her looking up hopefully. The spectator
s view is briefly obstructed. A person has walked through the frame. Nancy looks down again, trying to hide her disappointment that it was not her date. She looks tense. There is a cut back to the medium long shot of Nancy on the bench. From the side, Robbie comes into the picture. Nancy acknowledges his presence through a half-smile, her lips staying pressed together. Robbie sits down next to her. A medium close-up of his

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face shows that he is looking up at her with his wide eyes. But then he looks away. Apparently, Nancy has not returned his gaze. A cut back to the medium long shot reveals that Nancy has resumed scanning the environment for her date. She seems to have already forgotten about Robbie
s presence. After a couple of seconds and a couple of people passing by, there is a cut to a long shot of the scene. The frame now includes a tree to the right side of the bench. A man walks into the frame, and raises Nancy
s attention. But then he stops by the tree and starts to exercise Tai Chi. Nancy looks away. Her shoulders rise and fall, as she is breathing deeply in and out. Obviously, she is starting to feel disheartened. The perspective changes to a medium close-up of her profile and the top of Robbie
s head. Nancy turns her head towards the camera and looks down at Robbie. In a reverse shot, Robbie looks up at her earnestly with big dark eyes. In another reverse shot Nancy looks away again. Then, her facial expression changes and she seems to become aware of something. In that moment, non-diegetic music sets in. Her head slowly turns again to look down at Robbie. The shot reveals that she realizes he is the chat partner. Another reverse shot confirms her notion to be correct; Robbie is looking up at her and returning her gaze. A medium long shot shows that Robbie gets up on the bench to sit on his knees and turn towards Nancy. Meanwhile, Nancy looks at him and pulls her hair behind her ear. Through shot/reverse shots, the spectator follows their exchanging gazes. In medium shot, we then see Robbie
s back. He gently caresses Nancy
s hair. She looks away first, then down. Robbie stops to caress her, sits down again, and looks at her. The frame cuts back to the medium long shot of the two of them on the bench. Nancy composes herself and looks at him. A medium close-up of her frowning, but nevertheless softened, face is followed by a medium close-up of Robbie. Nancy places a hand on his shoulder and moves her head towards him. She slowly gives him a kiss on the lips. After a last brief look, she gets up and walks away. A long shot shows Robbie on the bench from behind, looking at Nancy as she walks away. She briefly turns around once, then speeds up her pace. The date has passed quickly, without a word spoken between the two “lovers.” But a lot has happened in this unspoken way. Reading the movie in line with Turkle
s argument, Robbie transgresses the rules of identity performance when he meets his virtual object of desire in real life. Although he never explicitly writes to her that he is a grownup man, she expects one and is surprised to meet a little boy. This makes clear that Nancy
s outlook is in line with the spectator
s. Luckily, she is not interested in the boy as a sexual partner. In actual fact, her being a woman mitigates the spectator
s concern about Robbie
s well-being. The scene
s effect depends on the anonymous chat partner being a woman. In the cultural imagination, women are often por-

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trayed as caring, whereas male characters harbor sexual aggression. A woman
s presence thus assures the spectator, allowing him or her to laugh rather than worry. This effect is supported by Nancy
s reaction. Although she resolutely walks away, Nancy does not in fact seem disappointed. Robbie even softens her heart. The anonymous chat with explicit sexual content appears to be only one of Nancy Herrington
s faces. The coldness of her attitude seems just to have been a mask. Nancy even half-smiles, and tenderly gives Robbie a kiss once she accepts that she has not found a sexual partner through the chat. It is the first moment in the movie that we perceive her as gentle and caring. Her meeting with Robbie leaves a lasting impression: She is going to give her exhibition a title that is obviously inspired by her and Robbie
s “affair.” Hence, “the shifting norms of the virtual world bleeding into real life” (Turkle Life on the Screen) has not shocked Nancy. She accepts the gap between her imagination and the real person that was actually typing the text. As Peter also demonstrates, the identity play is expected: the person on the other side could be a virtual transvestite. The dichotomy between virtual and real life and the respective performed identities is obvious. The performance entails the possibility for mistakes. The film thus illustrates that one needs to expect this when communicating on the Internet. The message that the sender intends might appear very differently to the receiver. There is a lot of noise
in the communication channel that disturbs the clarity of the message.62 Robbie
s desire for close physical contact is a matter of security for him. But because Nancy is lured into thinking he is a grownup man, it becomes a children
s game, without shame. The message arrives at Nancy
s side as a sexual advance, also without shame, but decidedly not innocent. Her own very limited perspective (she does not see who she is communicating with) is shaped by her desire to meet an adult partner. Apparently, she has problems approaching people and getting close to them in real life. When she meets Robbie, she is forced to admit that communication between the sender and the receiver can go wrong. The safety net that the Internet provides also prevents people from really knowing each other. In real life, a person can turn out to be somebody completely different than expected, as exemplified in an extreme way with Nancy. She was seeking an adult partner – not even necessarily a man. She also looks in anticipation at the woman jogging by. When she accepts the completely unexpected fact that it is a child she has been chatting with, she does not accuse the child of hav-

62 According to John Fiske, noise in a communication channel is anything that disturbs the receivers understanding, or decoding, of a message.

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ing deliberately led her astray. She understands that her desire shaped her expectations. She was not open to the text
s other possible meanings. The movie suggests that Nancy is not overly disappointed. Robbie comes close to her, emotionally and physically. He does not reject her. He has reasons to be happy with the outcome of the chat: That is a woman that could be my mother! Nancy is not viewed as a sexual object by her chat partner. Instead, she discovers a child
s unconditional love. The pure and innocent affection that Robbie expresses is a positive experience for her. Robbie accepts her without a second thought. Robbie has countered the anonymity of the chat and Nancy
s way of dealing with other people. He has challenged the coolness that she had been wearing as a mask. Nancy walks away with her thinking challenged. It is a challenge that helps her in the end. Maybe she will approach people differently from that moment on. Through her interaction with Christine we have witnessed that she treats people impersonally. A change in attitude might be the outcome of her having felt unconditional love. It might have caused her to love herself more, which is a precondition for approaching other people. As a character, Nancy is modeled as a career woman in late capitalism. This stereotype is one symptom of the individualized society. As somebody who does not have children, she does not live according to the traditional image of woman as mother. She is never filmed at her home. Even at night, she is shown working in the office. The subtext of the depiction of Nancy
s character is the idea that concentrating solely on one’s career leads to loneliness. While Nancy is not depicted as a person suffering from anxiety, she seems tense and unhappy. As her date with Robbie and her resulting actions demonstrate, concentrating on her work, not approaching other people, and trying to control her emotions together lead to her depression. The love of a child, by contrast, is depicted as being helpful. As such, the film is based on the traditional construction of the woman as the figure who combines care, love, and family values. Nancy, who is deprived of the role of the caring mother, has become a hardened and unfriendly person. Only the little boy, with his love, can remind her of her “traditional” role. This lesson that Robbie gives her is the reason why he is not punished for his behavior. The meaning of the scene on the bench goes beyond the risk that the situation implicates. Nancy could also have made use of her position. Although Robbie does not understand the sexual implications of the anal language, I argue that Robbie understands that he does something forbidden. Peter says it to him while they discuss the text they will type. Robbie also looks around selfconsciously in daycare when he contacts Nancy again. But he has a guardian angel. The innocent child is not accountable for his actions. While he is not pun-

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ished, nor is he rewarded; he does not receive what he sought. Nancy answers his affection with a kiss, but eventually she leaves him alone on the bench. Robbie has learned from this encounter. He tries to communicate online at a very young age, learns that identity performance does not change his reality. He fails in his search for a substitute mother. The object of his desire simply walks out on him. She leaves him to rely on himself. Although virtual space opens up a whole new path for him to connect, it turns out to be a dead end. Similar to Nancy
s experience, he learns that there is a difference between the virtual and the real. His power was just an illusion. In the future he will know that approaching a person requires more than just symbols. Nevertheless, Robbie is symbolically rewarded for following his curiosity. At the end of the movie, he leaves the house early in the morning to finally find out where the clinking noise – which has been awakening him night after night in his new home – has been coming from (01:20:30). It is revealed that it has merely been a man hitting a coin against a lamp pole. What Robbie has been intensively wondering about turns out to have such an easy answer. As in his time spent online, he ventures into the unknown and eventually becomes more knowledgeable. He has to be self-reliant and real
in order to learn. Congruent with the Hollywood discourse of the innocent child that stands for a bright future, with Robbie July creates a model of curiosity. Robbie does not want to be alone, but nevertheless he is a self-reliant child. In line with the statement that children are “capable social actors in their own right” (Drotner 366) and actively shaping society (Buckingham 3), the children
s agency does not only help the children, but also has a positive impact on adults. In sum, the child is not constructed as innocent and thus transgresses the boundaries of mainstream depictions. While it counters the adult spectator
s expectations, the movie constructs the traditional role of the woman in contrast with the one in the individualized society. It implies that Nancy has become cold because she lacks love. She is depicted as suffering from individualization. The child is able to provide her with love and acknowledgement, which inspires her to give her exhibition the title “WARM: 3-D and TOUCH in the DIGITAL AGE ))< >((”. Robbie
s story makes the tension between danger and fun productive – the space where the child is being re-signified. His agency, which arises out of loneliness, leads him to take on experiences and to advance fearlessly. Therefore, the figure of the child is presented as teaching the adult to cultivate childlike curiosity and naiveté.

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3.3.2 Real Life Versus Sexual Phantasm Aside from Robbie
s erotic chat-affair, there are other instances in the movie that disturb the depiction of children as innocent. The pubescent young adults Heather and Rebecca are the same age as Peter and are also in the process of discovering their sexuality and becoming interested in romantic relationships. Similar to Robbie
s case, their active attempt to flirt with the character “Andrew” disturbs conventional cinematic codes. The girls transgress the image of the chaste young woman who fears adult male sexuality.63 They put themselves at risk. What does the interaction between Heather, Rebecca, and Andrew make visible about the individualized society? Are the young women also helping themselves and adults? A long shot of the clean and orderly neighborhood opens the scene of the initial flirtations between Heather, Rebecca, and Andrew. The two girls stand in front of Andrew
s house. Heather is powdering Rebecca
s face, while Richard
s car drives past them into the driveway. He and Andrew get out of the car and go separate ways. Andrew collects the newspaper in front of his apartment, where Heather and Rebecca are standing. They notice each other. In a series of medium shots and medium close-ups, the flirtation between the girls and Andrew are established. After a little small talk, Andrew
s face is filmed in close-up as he suggestively asks them if they are “like... girlfriends?” (00:16:50). A number of shot/reverse shots have the spectator witness their ensuing body language and conversation: Heather stops to powder Rebecca
s face and looks at him, her head tilted. The two girls exchange a glance. Heather shuts the powder box, turns to him and says, “Maybe.” Andrew replies: “You look like you could be sisters.” Heather plays along and says, “Maybe we are sisters and girlfriends.” They ask him what he would do if they were eighteen, “which we are of course.” Andrew tells them that he would talk dirty to them. Rebecca replies that nobody has ever talked dirty to them before. Andrew says: “Really? That sounds very appealing.” The two girls exchange irritated glances, showing that they do not fully understand the meaning of his words. Andrew tells them that he is going inside. The girls call after him that he should make sure to watch, because they want to wave 63 While they are comparable with the literary figure “Lolita,” because of their age and gender, I am not going to compare the two characters in detail. Lolitas situation is inherently different from Heather and Rebeccas. She finds herself in an ambiguous relationship of dependency with her caretaker, while Heather and Rebeccas relation to Andrew is not marked by social dependency. For a further discussion on Lolita, see Bramberger.

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at him. A medium shot of his window shows him appearing within it. An eyeline match cut to the two girls depicts them smiling and waving. Suddenly, Heather turns around and lifts her skirt to reveal a pink slip. Rebecca looks at her shocked and in disbelief. Then they giggle. The two girls put their heads together conspiratorially and talk about the probability that Andrew is “jerking off.” Heather suggests that they kiss, which they do. Shown in close-up, Andrew is delightedly gazing at them from his window. This scene establishes the flirtations between Andrew and the two girls as one of the sub-plots of the movie. From that moment onwards, they continue to have interactions. The tension of their encounter is created by their significant difference in age: Andrew is much older than the two girls. He makes suggestive remarks, though he is prudent enough not to verbalize his desires. He is aware that realizing his imagination would render him a criminal. The scene is disturbing because the spectator is aware that an adult man
s perspective and intentions differ from that of two teenage girls. They are merely performing the roles of adult women, which is underlined by Heather
s act of applying make-up to Rebecca
s face. Their conversation with Andrew appears to be a game. They playfully test themselves and Andrew without thinking of the consequences. Their respect for him is limited. They categorize him as “not cute” and hence disqualify him as a genuine romantic partner. Once Andrew verbalizes his erotic thoughts, the two girls react with a curiosity reflective of their young age. By flirting with him and attempting to keep him interested, they signal that they are already becoming adults. Thus, the scene calls into question the power relations between the characters. The movie here plays with a tension between young women
s sexual curiosity and the danger that the spectator perceives in the figure of the menacing
male adult. When he deems the flirtations with Heather and Rebecca too literal, and therefore dangerous, Andrew excuses himself and retreats into the house. July stages this spatial separation between Andrew and his objects of desire through the logic of cinema. The window, with its surrounding frame, simulates a second movie screen. On that screen, Andrew
s desires are displayed. He sees something that he thought could only exist in his imagination. The two young women seem to him like a sexual phantasm. The screen spatially divides Andrew from the girls. Standing behind his window, it screens Andrew from his objects of desire. He cannot reach them from there. He is just satisfying his voyeuristic desires. From the other side, Heather and Rebecca know they are being watched. They act as if they are on stage, thereby satisfying their exhibitionist desire. Andrew is framed by the window, looking at them. The window is a screen that

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frames Andrew
s desires, just like the screen in the movie theater. From the audience $  (. ' . &.    . '     & /  ' logic of desire. In this scene, therefore, the cinematic signifier reflects itself.64 It plays with the concepts of the gaze, the spectator, voyeurism and the object.65 On that screen, looking out of the window, the spectator sees a face that is itself engaged in the act of seeing. And the movie viewer is seeing something that this subject obviously delights in. The spectator therefore sees someone (Andrew) who is seeing something that is congruent with his imagination; similar to a sexual phantasm. Moreover, the spectator catches this man in the act of subjecting two girls to his gaze. The spectator watching the whole scene doubles this objectification of the two girls. The spectator watching the film scene is a voyeur, just as much as Andrew is – or even twice so. But the two girls are not merely objects. They are also actively watching. Through their perspective, the audience sees Andrew looking at them. They are thus not only passive objects; they also return Andrew’s gaze. They even direct his gaze. Hence, Andrew does not hold a more powerful symbolic position than the two young women. This scene skillfully reflects on its own means. The film becomes conscious of itself and its voyeuristic logic when it stages the complexities of voyeurism and exhibitionism in Heather, Rebecca, and Andrew
s first encounter. The girls will never again be so real for Andrew. The scene’s self-awareness is accomplished by doubling the movie screen through the window frame. While the spectator may not be consciously aware of this fact, his or her role is reflected in the movie. July not only presents desire within the movie; she also reflects it back on the audience. It is not the first time that she does so. As discussed, this is also the case when the audience spies on Peter and Robbie while they are chatting. The spectator has the privilege of spying on children who are engaging in their first sexual encounter. The spectator
s role is thus included in the film
s conceptualization. The same window receives another role in the movie. After their first encounter, the two parties will not speak directly with each other again. The next day, and the days after, Andrew finds another way to talk dirty
to them. He starts to pin notes containing sexual suggestions to his window pane (00:20:38). In amazement, the girls read the sexual messages, which are obviously aimed at them (00:34:17). In close-ups, the several messages are displayed to the spectator. These shots alternate with the girls
faces reading them. One note is shown that reads: “Then the tall one would suck my stone-hard dick.” Instead of being offended by the suggestion, the girls start to fight about who is more sexually 64 On the cinema as imaginary signifier, cf. Metz. 65 On the concept of the male gaze, cf. Mulvey.

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apt. Heather becomes jealous of Rebecca. They start arguing about who would perform better. In this scene, the girls
maturity is again ambivalently portrayed. On the one hand, their reaction towards the notes is surprising. Instead of being shocked, Andrew
s imagination spawns a competition between them. Then, on the other hand, they start to quarrel childishly about their sexual performances, as if they were quarreling over a toy. Moreover, the second function of the screen, its role as a border between Andrew and the girls, is established in this scene. It also serves as a display surface for Andrew
s messages. After the initial conversation between the three of them, it is the only space for communication. Obviously, Andrew attracts the girls
attention with his messages. The screen marks the space where their desires meet. He wants to talk dirty  . ) , .%  they want to feel desired by a man. Moreover, this border prevents their bodies from coming into physical contact. In order to settle their quarrel, Heather decides that, “somebody should call the authorities.” This is a consciously ironic statement: the authorities are invoked to decide which of them would be the better lover and not to hold Andrew responsible for molesting them. At this point they involve Peter. The spectator is already aware that Peter struggles to find his place in the new neighborhood. Indeed, the girls around him decide what his role is. This becomes clear in the scene when they molest him on their way home from school. He goes on to quietly ignore them. He is less confident than they are. He hesitates to make physical advances or verbal comments. While he tests his performance as a man in the erotic chat, his actions stop when it comes to real life sexual relationships. In the second scene involving Peter and the two young women, Heather and Rebecca decide that he is to have a sexual experience with them (00:34:14). They see him coming home from school with his brother and follow him to the Swersey
s apartment. They pick him out as “impartial authority” to judge their fellatio skills. Peter implicitly agrees by telling Robbie to leave the apartment. Heather and Rebecca ask him to collect all the materials needed for the perfect execution of the task: a dry cloth and a wet one, a CD player for music, among other items. The girls ask him to lay on his bed with a pillow on his face. He is not allowed to look at or touch them. With dominant attitudes, they know exactly what they want, and Peter stays passive throughout the scene. He plays along with their rules. During the act, Peter says nothing and stays impartial even to the degree that he does not express any emotion or will. Nevertheless, he does not appear to be unpleased. After the act, he tells them that he could not tell a difference between them. The girls exchange contented glances.

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This scene disrupts stereotypical gender depictions. Heather and Rebecca put into question the notion that boys are active and girls are passive. They are not conforming to the usual stereotypes of the passive female. By contrast, they are competitive and follow their aim. Peter is told what to do and directed by them; he is treated as a butler who serves their wishes. This experience is nonetheless presented as positive for him. In actual fact, they serve him and his pleasure. The scene defies a homogeneous reading of gender stereotypes and hence appears confounding. While the girls thus appear to be dominant, a later scene reveals another aspect of their characters (00:56:42). The camera depicts the suburban street in a long shot. It is dark. Heather and Rebecca are sitting on the sidewalk. As tiny figures in the right corner of the frame, they look a little forlorn. When the frame changes to show their sitting bodies in medium shot, Heather says: “If he puts up another sign, I think we should go up there. I mean, what else can happen? Just more signs? Signs forever?” The ensuing conversation reveals that they had imagined their first sexual encounter to be different, that is, to involve love and a regular boyfriend. Instead, they have chosen Peter and Andrew as test subjects. Heather says: “But this is better … cause it won
t matter if we mess up. And we
ll be together.” Rebecca just looks at her silently. The scene ends with both of them in medium shot, looking ahead in contemplation. The two young women are not as cool as they pretend to be, but are actually dreaming of romantic love. The darkness symbolically has their characters appear in a different light. They are not the daring young women they are at daytime; they are thoughtful and reflective. The scene prepares the spectator for the fact that the two girls are going to sexually engage with Andrew. The night around them allows them to think about a topic that would be forbidden during the day. It creates an isolated atmosphere in which they can talk about their desires.66 They are able to decide to “go up there” and to turn Andrew
s signs into reality. Andrew, on the other hand, is presented as the passive person, who merely puts up signs. The girls, especially Heather, are not satisfied with this endless sign language that does not advance their sexual development. It is evening again when they turn their plans into reality (01:07:11). It is starting to get dark. Slow and ambient extra-diegetic music is playing while the camera cuts to a close-up of the notes that Andrew has pinned on his window. By way of point-of-view editing, a cut to Heather
s face in close-up links her to the notes. She is looking at them with determination. Her lips are painted red. The camera pans to Rebecca
s face, next to Heather
s. Rebecca
s face expresses 66 On the cultural significance of the night, see Bronfen.

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nervousness and even fear. She looks in the same direction as Heather. There is a cut to the front of Andrew
s apartment. The left half of the frame is filled by his window. Light is coming out of his apartment, suggesting that he is home. The right half shows the steps to his apartment
s door. They are dimly lit. First Heather, and then Rebecca, appear in the left side of the frame. They pass by the window and then climb the steps to the door. They are wearing short skirts and look tense and self-conscious. There is a cut to a medium shot of Andrew who is asleep on his couch. In contrast to the two girls who are made up, he is dressed in comfortable track suit pants and is obviously not anticipating any visitors. A series of repeated frames with little variation underscore the quickness of and concentration in the ensuing scene. All the while, the ambient, melodic music is playing. We see Heather
s profile while she is knocking at the door. Back in the apartment, Andrew wakes up. He slowly gets up, still sleepy and disoriented. Heather turns her face in close-up towards the camera. A cut to Rebecca
s upward-looking face makes clear that they are exchanging meaningful glances. Rebecca has not even climbed all of the steps to the door. She looks more frightened than before. Andrew appears behind his window. In medium close-up, the spectator sees him looking out, cautiously to the right. There is a cut back to the medium shot of the front of his apartment. Heather and Rebecca are standing left of the frame, looking at the door. The right side of the frame shows Andrew appearing at the window. As soon as he catches a glimpse of Rebecca, he jumps down in panic. He hides beneath the windowsill. A brief sequence inside his apartment shows that he presses himself flat against the wall. A cut back to the front ensues, where Heather and Rebecca are standing as before. Apparently, they have not noticed Andrew by the window. A cut to Andrew contrasts their obliviousness. He is laying perfectly still, frightened, pressed against the wall under his window. He looks up, as if afraid that the girls might try to spot him through the window. The camera cuts back to a medium shot of the apartment
s front side. Finally, Heather turns to look at Rebecca. Without saying a word, they suddenly start to run away. A cut to Andrew shows that he is still lying as before. The scene closes with the girls running away in slow motion. The camera tracks backwards with them, keeping them in focus in the evening
s twilight. Slowly, their faces relax and they start laughing. Their laughter is heard very faintly while the ambient music becomes louder. The music and slow motion underscore the significance of the scene. The surrounding twilight and the intense visual material and sound create a mood of secrecy. The twilight symbolizes a liminal space. They almost entered a place where they would have lost their innocence, but their fate changed in the last moment. This scene is one of the movie
s climaxes. Heather and Rebecca
s run-

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ning away introduces the movie
s falling action. Their fate was avoided, which has an effect of relief on the characters as well as the viewer. What they are leaving behind now merely seems to be a game. Despite their obvious relief that Andrew did not open his door, we can infer that they are nonetheless happy that they had the courage to ring his doorbell. With this action, the two young women can confirm for themselves that they are able to take their fate into their own hands. The pressure they had felt to have sexual experiences is lifted from them. They did what was in their power. It was up to him to open the door. Andrew by contrast did choose not to open it. Instead of depicting him as the virile man who cannot contain his sexual appetite, he is shown to be afraid of the young women. This is again a confusion of expected stereotypes. One could also argue that Andrew is more afraid of himself and his own sexuality than what might have happened if he had opened his door. I suggest however that Andrew is most afraid of the two physical presences that threaten to come close to him. The sexual phantasm threatens to become a real life experience for him. July allows the men in the film to be afraid, even of two young girls. In contrast to the active child, the adult man turns into a fearful child. He is not brave enough to confront them as the equal human beings that they are. As we have seen, Andrew is single. In front of Richard, he pretends to confirm to the stereotype of the virile man. Andrew sexualizes all relationships between men and women. His sexual, even vulgar, side is most visible. Richard instead evokes the image of his relationship with his wife that was once trusting, tender and sheltered. Andrew
s performance of masculinity is thus presented in contrast to Richard
s. Richard tells Andrew about the beginning of his relationship with Pam, when they “hated to be apart, even for an hour.” Andrew replies: “Oh, yeah. I had something like that once. A real fuck-a-thon.” But Richard did not speak about sex: “We just slept. We loved to sleep when it was time to sleep. Not sex. I mean, we had sex... but what we really loved was to sleep like babies all day long.” Andrew is surprised but replies, “[t]hat sounds perfect.” Andrew is impressed by this romantic image. He also wants to have this. So beneath the sexually explicit suggestions he has already taped to his window, he posts another sign which reads: “Then the three of us would get into bed and we would sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep like three little sleeping babies.” He imagines actually sharing a sheltered moment with the two girls. On the one hand, he reveals his underlying, innocent desire to find romantic love, shelter, and peace. On the other hand, that he directs this desire towards two teenage girls is in fact an act of perversion. When he first starts flirting with the two girls, he is performing the image of the virile man. But this image becomes flawed when he expresses his desire to

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“sleep like babies.” This infantilizing image of a relationship seems pure. But Andrew is afraid of having such a relationship. He cannot even deal with the two girls on equal terms. He prefers to stay behind the protective windowpane. The scene of their initial encounter already suggested that Andrew is not a delinquent pedophile. Watching the girls was enough for Andrew. He does not want to open the door. The fantasy would become real, and hence destroyed as a fantasy, if he let them enter. They would become more than just an objectification: a physical presence. Here again the cinematic signifier reflects itself. In order to keep the phantasm alive, the imaginary world that is seen on the screen cannot and should not enter real life. When the girls ring at his door it is clear that his apartment is like a box in which he prefers to hide. Here, he can imagine his dreams. Opening the door would threaten to make his dreams vanish. As such, he is a victim of the individualized society. On his own, he feels secure. In the company of people, he feels insecure. Therefore, the two young adults, Heather and Rebecca, make Andrew’s loneliness and self-isolation visible. Their curiosity and braveness is put in stark contrast to Andrew
s character. Their agency is revealed when they no longer fear following their aims. Andrew seems enclosed in his role of the individualized man; he is too comfortable to seriously consider communicating with the girls. The picture he has constructed of them falls apart when he realizes, with horror, that they are real agents. They challenge him to come to the door and turn his imagination into reality. His social behavior and his panic when seeing the girls at the door suggest that he acts in a childish manner. He is more comfortable in believing in a sexual phantasm. The girls, in contrast to Andrew, know that they have to become active, or they will never have experiences or realize their fantasies. However, this ending would not have been so cheerful if Andrew had not taken the final responsibility to end the affair. His role, as much as the young women
s, defy a one-dimensional analysis. Despite the difference between virtual and real space, Heather and Rebecca
s story corresponds to that of Robbie
s in a couple of ways. The girls, similar to Robbie, are actively following their goals of getting close to people. This is in contrast to the adults they are interacting with. The children
s roles tell more about the adult world than any depictions of the adults do. In fact, by way of interacting with the young characters, it becomes apparent that something is wrong in the adult world. The children do not suffer from fear or shame to make advances. Thus, they make positive experiences. The children, as much as the adults, are all interested in getting closer to another person. But in contrast to the adults, the children actively pursue their fantasies. However, it is not clear what

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would have happened if the adults had not ended the communication. The children thus rely on the adults
integrity not to get hurt. This ambivalence creates the space within which the re-signification of their roles can be tested. Before the adult characters – Nancy and Andrew – stop the interaction, the young characters take steps towards realizing their desires. July projects here a vision of a society where every member is self-reliant, be it a child or an elder. Although self-reliance is an inherently American theme, it is usually only applied to the adult character, not to the child
s. However, the figure of the independent child has already appeared in a number of films.67 This figure leaves the audience wondering whether a child could be self-reliant to this degree in reality. In the adult-child relationship considered as normal, children are under adult care because adults know what is good for them. Conversely, in the film, it is those instances where the children are unattended that provide them with the best chances to show their independence of thought and agency. Robbie knows very well how to get home from school by himself. There is no reason why his parents should argue over this. Nothing bad happens to him; he is much more selfreliant than they think. In the film, all the children and young adults have their individual ways of coping. But it is the youngest, Robbie, who acts most independently. It seems July wants to tell us that Robbie – six years old and the youngest child in the film – is least daunted by the rules of society and learned behavior because he is the least socialized. He breaks the rules without being harmed: He chats with Nancy Herrington and he walks home by himself on a dangerous street. The children in the film teach the adults and the audience how to trust and follow their intuitions. July is not content with the depiction of the pure, morally superior child, which is the common depiction of children in American film (cf. Jackson). By showing children and young adults in the context of their sexuality, July
s depictions are different from those of mainstream Hollywood. She takes children seriously and does not ridicule their concerns. Neither does she emotionalize children. Although the children do not become victims of sexual abuse, their experiences surpass the sphere that the adults imagine for them. Instead, July allows the children and young adults an active sexuality. She is not didactic in the sense that she warns the audience about child abuse, premature pregnancy or closer adult care. Instead, the children have their own experiences, even on the edge of danger. They transgress several boundaries. 67 A recent one that was released after Me and You is True Grit, in which the fourteen year-old girl Mattie Ross avenges her fathers murder (Dir. Joel and Ethan Coen, 2010)

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It is mainly the children who apply self-help independently; and these actions are the actual instances of re-coding in the film. In contrast to Andrew, Nancy, and Richard, they are not emotionally paralyzed when confronted with other people. They do not rely on fate but pro-actively confront situations. Neither do they rely much on adults for help: on the contrary. In the case of Peter and Robbie, their problems originate from their parents
separation. Moreover, the parents are unable to provide the children with enough care. Their father Richard is conscious of this fact when he says to Sylvie
s mother: “If things were reversed… you can be sure Pam and I would be sent to our rooms for all of that fighting” (00:26:30). The film reproduces the image of divorce as a symptom of the individualized society, but does provide the children with a happy outlook in the ending. It therefore depicts the problem of individualization of the contemporary white American middle-class through the Swersey family and the single characters, Andrew and Nancy. The way Miranda July presents the children’s agency is obviously an extreme one. Children cannot be left completely alone in real life. In fiction, however, disturbing roles serves to describe the individualized society, its failures and wishes. July
s representations construct the child in an alternative way to mainstream cinema
s depictions. The children have an active gaze that is not punished by the adult. Rather, the children are more self-reliant than the adults. In the end, however, in Robbie
s as much as in Heather and Rebecca
s case, the adults have enough integrity to stop the communication. Adults are not depicted as evil, but as suffering and lacking a way to actively help themselves. July treats the topic of children and sexuality in a different light in order to criticize rational adult culture. Children
s innocence and risky agency serve to imagine a society in which nobody is afraid of expressing emotions. July values a childlike curiosity as important for survival in the individualized society. While both children and adults are victims of individualization processes, the adults suffer more by having turned into isolated individualists.

3.4 ART

AS

S ELF -H ELP

The preceding interpretations have revealed various ways in which Me and Yous microcosm negotiates the problems arising in an individualized society. The characters, in different ways, confront circumstances such as the breaking apart of stable family ties. The self-help strategies that we have looked at so far are highly ambivalent. The film thus implies a critique, by way of doubting the effect of appropriation and economic materialism. In the following, the discourse

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of art will be analyzed with regards to its possibility for healing suffering subjects. If art can help and heal, how is this message conveyed? From the beginning, the film establishes that making art is one of its major topics. Christine is shown in the process of creating. She has not yet arrived at the point where she gains recognition for her art. She works hard to achieve her aim of exhibiting it. The movie narrates her progress and thereby reflects on the worth of art for the individual, be it the artist him or herself, or the spectator. In line with the self-help ethos, her art seems to stand in a dialectical relationship to working on herself. Michael attempts to help her to advance her career by giving her advice. He is the personification of the wise old man. His role is first introduced when she picks him up to drive him to the department store where Richard is to be their consultant. The camera films them in medium close-up. They are sitting in Christine
s car, with her behind the wheel. Michael turns towards her and asks: “So, how is your art project?” (00:05:08). She rolls her eyes. Apparently, this is a painful subject for her. He asks further if her art is already in the museum. Christine is irritated and flees into explanations of how the art market works. Michael cuts her short and simply says: “You know, they have to know about your work. I would just march in there and show it to them, you know? No one is going to live your life for you” (00:05:20). Christine protests and corrects him that that was not how it worked. She dismisses Michael
s suggestions and quickly changes the subject to Michael
s love life. Her behavior expresses that she is frustrated about her situation, which she deems to be complicated. Michael breaks his advice down into a simple formula. But she blocks Michael
s advice. The sequence depicts a dialogue between an insecure person and a knowledgeable teacher
. As such, it mirrors the constellation between a person prone to self-help and the authoritative provider of help. Christine
s aim becomes clear through her conversation with Michael. Her major concern is to exhibit her work. She feels uncomfortable because Michael directly addresses a concern of hers that she has not yet realized. This confrontation makes her aware that she is not successful. She tries to reason that the system is responsible for her situation. But Michael renders the situation even more uncomfortable for her by pointing out that she needs to be self-reliant. She is the one who has to direct her life if she wants her dreams to come true and to lead a life according to the path of the heart
. Christine impersonates the expressive individual who can still improve herself by actively shaping her life. Although she stubbornly rejects his advice at first, eventually she follows it. In fact, she takes it literally and “marches” into the Center for Contemporary Art in order to hand her videotape to the curator Nancy Herrington in person

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(00:13:09). Christine does not have an appointment, but by chance, she finds herself using the same elevator as Nancy. Christine brings forward her request and wants to hand her the tape. But Nancy rejects her coldly, barely taking notice of her. She tells her that she should send the tape by mail. This is a moment of slapstick comedy, as the spatial proximity in sharing the elevator is contrasted with Nancy
s distanced behavior. She insists on the anonymous application process. Christine
s venture of personally applying is defeated by Nancy
s system. Christine leaves reluctantly, visibly disappointed. Michael
s advice apparently was not good advice. The movie implies that she complies and sends the videotape by mail. The first time Nancy watches it, it is together with her assistant (00:46:57). Upon seeing Christine on the screen, she merely remarks, “oh... her.” She quickly dismisses it and turns it off, because “I think she is not ready.” Nancy
s reaction illustrates that Christine is not an accomplished artist yet. While Nancy is generally disinterested, her rejection signifies that Christine
s work is not ripe to catch the spectator
s attention. There is something missing that would accomplish it. Nancy watches the video a second time. She is alone in her office at night, shown in a medium shot (00:57:42). The room is dark. She is dressed in a dark suit and barely visible. The obscure surroundings underline her isolation. Moreover, the night symbolizes the time of the uncanny, in which longing, but also fears, are either dealt with or forgotten (Bronfen). Although she is not asleep or dreaming, Nancy is more susceptible to her subconsciousness
complexities. Alone in the dark, she is less influenced by the rigidity of her daily system. She is looking off-camera and pushes a button on a remote control. We hear sound. With a cut to what Nancy is seeing, the sound source is revealed: A flat screen shows a bright pink picture that contrasts the otherwise dark room. In the video, Christine is sitting in front of a pink wall. Thus, the video shows her in her own piece of video art. She has a large portable tape recorder on her lap. The sound emanates from this recorder and from her own voice. She alternately speaks to an imaginary audience and presses play for the noise of a cheering audience. A cut to Nancy reveals that she does not watch the video, and is distracted by the tapes that are sitting on her desk. When the perspective is back on the flat screen, the image of Christine and the recorder in the video fades out. Suddenly, the recording makes a cracking sound and we see Christine
s face in close-up, looking into the camera. She says “Hi, Nancy Herrington!” A cut to Nancy who looks up to focus on the screen. Her body language signals interest. Christine has finally caught her attention. Christine speaks to her and brings to mind their meeting in the elevator. The audience sees Christine and Nancy alternately.

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Christine starts an imaginary dialogue with Nancy, telling her about her day. She says: And now Im here...alone in my apartment. Youre probably in your big house...with your family...and your dog. And probably your dog has a family too. Youre probably all gathered around the fire singing carols...even though it isnt Christmas. Just for fun.

We perceive the stark contrast between the image of Nancy
s life that Christine evokes and reality. Nancy works late at night and nobody seems to be waiting at home for her, not even a dog. Christine
s speculations seem unlikely to the spectator. Nancy
s reality, as the audience perceives it, is not the cozy image of a large family gathered around the fire, singing Christmas carols. While Christine speaks a monologue, the camera zooms in so that the dark room
s environment disappears and the flat screen with her face becomes bigger. After a couple of medium shots of Nancy, the camera also zooms in on her, signaling her emotional growth. The two characters come closer to one another. Nancy is finally in the process of being touched by Christine
s art. The exaggerated image of Christmas that Christine brings to mind is a myth cherished by the individualized society. The bonds of large families, as a place of shelter, are breaking apart; Christine only conjures a nostalgic image of the past. Christmas stands for the perfect image of the intact family that does not exist for the individualist. Nancy, alone in her dark office, is a portrayal of a lonely modern individual. The center of her life is work rather than family. She is not cheerful; she looks rather grim, and does not reveal her emotions openly. What Christine says makes her watch and listen attentively. Their situations do not seem to be so different: Christine is also alone, “in my apartment.” Christine is honest about herself. She consciously places Nancy in the position of the luckier person. It is obvious that the image she brings up is only rhetorical. The image of the family plus its dog
s family is cartoonish and naïve. She merely uses it to underscore the notion of the harmonic, communal family. Christine assumes that Nancy also lacks the feeling of unconditional love. Christine insightfully admits her failure to make clear that she suffers from loneliness. Furthermore, she reveals her lack of confidence by admitting that she believes that Nancy is not interested in watching the tape at all: “You will never, ever see this... because you
ll never watch this far on the tape. You
ll probably never even watch the tape, will you?” Through her sincerity, Christine displays her own vulnerability. She refers to images of individualization and lack of acknowledgment as the concerns of the individualized subject. With this strategy, she gains Nancy
s attention.

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After this empathic instance, Christine
s mode of address becomes interactive. She continues by saying that Nancy should give her a definite sign in the case that she does see the video. She writes a number on a piece of cardboard and tells her to call. She is to say: “Macaroni.
Then you just hang up. No questions asked.” It is a simple and playful assignment that is not hard to execute. Nancy calls the number and quickly says Macaroni
. This is the moment when it is clear that Christine has gotten through to her and convinced her of the quality of her art. She has accomplished it. Nancy
s feeling of being acknowledged as an individual subject through Christine
s personal appellation constitutes its quality. Christine has proven that she understands the concerns of the modern individual. The assumptions that Christine makes about Nancy
s lived reality make her reflect on it. Through complying and connecting with Christine, Nancy shows that she wants to change her attitude. Nancy, who is not easily emotionally affected by art and who possesses a business-like, cold character, becomes gentle in the end. Christine
s art and Robbie
s online chat seemingly give her an opportunity to think about her interpersonal relations, and hence her life, differently. Art is presented here as helpful, because it becomes an intervention into a personal life. The request to call Christine involves Nancy even further than direct address does. The artwork is only accomplished through her interaction. This method is typical for Miranda July
s work. In LTLYM, the audience becomes an active part of the artwork by responding to the assignments. I want to stress again that it is this mixture of acknowledgment and interpersonal experience that is the basis for July
s participatory art (cf. chapter 2). This strategy is transferred to the world within the movie. Nancy Herrington is July
s interactive audience. Christine renders Nancy the explicit subject of her art by telling her about her personal fears. Christine does not speak to Nancy as an artist, but as a private person. Christine
s art is neither detached from her own self nor from Nancy. It becomes a link between the two of them. Christine is successful with this strategy. Nancy feels acknowledged, and thanks her for this feeling by responding to it. The movie does not make explicit whether it is the first time Christine employs audience interaction as a method in her art. I would indeed argue that she first recognizes its potential through the application for the exhibition. In the first scene of the movie, her tendency is already present, but her method is not yet accomplished at that time. While she does not embrace the role of the therapist, she gradually grows into it. Thus, Christine
s success develops dialectically into her ability to engage the audience. The accomplishment that she sought in her art turns out to be the realization that personal relations matter in an artwork. Nancy

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supports her because of this interactive aspect. Consequently, personal interaction is at the heart of the piece that Christine contributes to Nancy
s exhibition. Christine integrates Michael and Ellen
s story into it. In the following, this second piece of interactive art will be focused on. Christine and Michael know each other well because the two of them talk about things that are important to them. Back from shoe shopping, they arrive at the retirement home where Michael and Ellen have apparently met (00:12:26). They go into Ellen
s room. She is a weak old lady, lying in bed. Her room is decorated with personal photographs. Christine spots one of them, takes interest in it, and asks Ellen whether she may borrow it. Ellen takes a closer look to see which picture it is: “Oh, my granddaughter with her boyfriend who does not want to marry her are going to become art.” The picture shows a couple photographed from behind, looking at Mayan ruins. In a later scene, while Christine and Michael take another car ride, Michael sadly reveals that Ellen broke up with him (01:04:10). She prefers to be on her own because she thinks that she is going to die very soon. Michael regrets that he has missed his chance to take her to the Mayan ruins in Guatemala. She had truly wished to see them. Christine does not understand Ellen
s reasons for breaking up with Michael. It seems more natural to her that one would want to be with the person one loves, especially in the face of death. She asks Michael why he does not fight for her. He replies: “I have long since stopped to make people do what they don
t wanna do.” Christine interposes: “But she
s the love of your life! You
re just gonna let her go?” Michael lives up to his image of the wise old man when he replies: “No... She is just... going.” He has accepted his fate and knows he cannot change it. Michael
s wisdom is developed in contrast to the young woman
s. While she cannot understand Ellen, Michael can accept her decision. He is presented as a respected elder who has gathered his wisdom through his personal experiences, which in turn, seem superior to the consumption of spiritual or self-help literature. He accepts and deals with circumstances that he knows he cannot change by force. Unlike Richard, he does not lose his grounding when forced to give up a love relationship. Richard’s response makes it obvious that simply repeating catchphrases or mantras does not help to address loss. Messages that are imposed from the outside world, be it from advertisements, self-help books, or spiritual sources, remain superficial. Rather, July suggests, solutions only come from experiences that the characters gather from interpersonal communication. We perceive this when Richard
s appropriation of spirituality and slogans is ridiculed. Michael is older and therefore wiser than Richard or Christine. He shares his

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wisdom with the people around him. Michael gives advice that is actually able to help Christine. When Ellen dies, however, it is Christine who helps him to mourn. We learn about Ellen
s death at the same moment when we also learn that Christine
s art is being exhibited. The scene is located immediately after Robbie and Nancy
s date at the park. The uplifting rock and roll song that plays at the end of the park scene is transferred into the next scene. Thus, a smooth transition connects the two scenes thematically. The music is still extra-diegetic. In extreme close-up, the camera focuses on two black signs on a white background: < >. They thus appear extremely large and out of context. While the camera zooms out to include the context of the signs, the song fades out. The zoom-out reveals a poster that is pinned to a wall. The poster reads: “WARM: 3-D and TOUCH in the DIGITAL AGE ))< >((.” Apparently, it is the title of an exhibition. A female person walks past the poster. The camera follows that person. She walks towards a large door. The spectator recognizes the museum
s door. We know it from Christine
s first visit there. Christine and Michael enter the frame from the right, passing the sign that reads, “Center for Contemporary Art.” They follow the person into the museum. The exhibition
s title – “WARM: 3-D and TOUCH in the DIGITAL AGE ))< >((” – has numerous connotations that are worth pointing out. On a level that everybody understands, including the audience that is going to see the exhibition in the movie, this exhibition is about the contemporary age. It is concerned with the antagonism between the warmth and the cold. While warmth stands for human emotions, cold stands for the impersonal and inhuman characteristics of digitization. The title thus brings together the body and the machine, feeling and rationality. It implies that the Internet and human emotional needs are not antagonistic. It is constructed as an inspiring space that generates creativity and interpersonal connection. The title also alludes to the discussion about the positive and negative impacts of the digitization of culture, along with the discourses of concern about the Internet. Thus, the exhibition is about the contemporary media age. However, the keyboard characters on the poster remain meaningless for the general audience, outside of the obvious connection with computers. Only the viewers of the movie can read their true meaning. It is an exact copy of Robbie
s symbol for “pooping back and forth.” It reminds us of Nancy and Robbie
s story. The title thus brings together Nancy
s, Robbie
s, Christine
s, and Michael
s stories and reveals Nancy
s feelings: She was touched by her online affair with Robbie. The title thus implies that the “digital age” provokes discussions about anonymity and community. Nancy was inspired by Robbie
s advances and Chris-

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tine
s personal address in her art. With her choice of title, Nancy now confirms the concerns about the individualized society. One of its aspects is the Internet, which produces anonymous, “cold” relations between people. Nancy
s experiences with Robbie have led her to question this assumption. The movie thus implies a positive re-signification of the virtual world. When the camera pans from the poster to the entrance, where Christine is about to enter the museum with Michael (01:16:00), we hear Michael say: “Ellen would have been so proud of you.” Nancy has obviously accepted Christine for the exhibition. Therefore, we have to ask if Christine
s artwork questions the anonymity of the digital age. Inside the museum, a long shot shows the two of them from the side, surrounded by different artworks. They are facing a screen. The picture with the Mayan ruins that Christine borrowed from Ellen is projected on the screen. This scene is therefore composed on two levels: The first is Michael and Christine watching the video. The second is the video itself, which features Michael and Christine as well. We hear Michael say in the video, “Isn
t it amazing Ellen?” There is a cut to the first level, where Christine and Michael are shown in a medium shot. They are looking towards the camera, watching the video. This point-of-view editing establishes them as the spectators. In the video, Christine replies, embodying Ellen: “Yes, I am so glad you took me here. It was a whole civilization.” Afterwards, the camera frames both levels at the same time. This is accomplished because the camera is shooting from behind Christine and Michael
s backs. Their silhouettes are seen on the frame
s sides. The camera films between their heads, focused on the video screen. Thus, Christine and Michael are filmed while watching the video. In the video itself, Christine and Michael
s backs are also visible. They are looking at the couple in the picture, in front of the Mayan ruins. Thus, Christine and Michael  ' 

  & / &  &  '% ') esemble the two people in the photograph. In the video, Christine hands Michael the microphone. The camera still films from behind the backs. There are a lot of flowers and pictures in focus between their bodies and in front of them. Michael looks at this bed of flowers, decorated with pictures: the picture that Ellen lent Christine, a black and white picture of a young woman, supposedly Ellen in her younger years. Michael says: “Two Mayan people in love probably stood right where we are standing now, and thought: Look what we have built together. And now they
re gone. And so is the city. And there is just … us.” While he is saying this, there is a cut to Christine and Michael standing in the museum and watching. After another cut to the video, there is a reverse shot to a close-up of Michael
s face. He is sadly watching the video, close to tears.

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The video
s perspective changes from the close-up of the bed of flowers to a medium shot. This reveals that it is Ellen
s bed in which we saw her lying alive. Behind the bed, on the wall, there are still personal pictures and some flowers. The medium shot also allows us to see Christine and Michael next to the bed, in full view. Michael turns to Christine and thus towards the camera. He looks at Christine helplessly, visibly exhausted, and faintly says, “I am done.” Receiving the microphone from him, Christine replies, “This was great.” They hug. During this whole scene, Christine and Michael
s silhouettes are shown on the two sides of the frame. After they hug in the video, there is a reverse shot of their faces watching it. At this moment, Christine
s phone starts to ring, which disrupts their immersion in the video and our immersion in the scene. She rummages in her bag. Michael briefly glances at her and then resumes watching the looped video from its start. For an analysis of this scene, it is first of all vital to look at its staging of media. Conspicuously, the scene doubles the film medium by depicting video art. With Christine’s interpellation of Nancy in her application video, July already creates a self-reflexive scene. Here, Christine talks to Nancy while the audience assumes Nancy
s perspective. Thus, Christine breaks the fourth wall. While she is not addressing the audience outside of the movie world, she addresses Nancy; and the audience shares Nancy
s perspective. In “The Mourning Work” scene July again fuses video art, the personal, and the self-reflexivity of the film medium. As another intermedial aspect in the movie, art is depicted in the form of filmed video art. Christine
s artwork is a frame within the movie frame – a video screened in front of the audience within the movie and the audience outside of the movie world. We are all sharing the same place. The video screen is filmed with Michael and Christine
s silhouettes at the sides. Thus, they double their silhouettes in the video itself. The video artwork is filmed with intermittent reverse shots of their real faces. “The Mourning Work” evokes a reaction on their faces. Both are visibly moved; Michael is close to tears. One close-up of only Michael
s sad face constitutes him as the work
s central subject. July
s general way of working is reflected in this scene. First of all, there is no distinction between her professional and her private selves. This is congruent with the lifestyle of the creative class, where the entrepreneurial self emerges from the interests of the private self (Fluck “Multiple Identities”). This is also the case for the character Christine. To Michael, she is an artist as much as she is his driver and his friend. The different contexts of human relationships and bonds are blurred in her art. Secondly, her work speaks about the individual
s desire for acknowledgment. This time – in the film – it is focused on the older generation. She presents the elderly as individual loving subjects. This does not

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confirm to the usual image of the elderly in contemporary society. A retirement home is a location that connotes the end of life. In the collective imaginary, the elderly are brought there and left to die, instead of being cared for by family members, as was the case in pre-modern times. Thus, the images of marginalization and isolation haunt the modern middle-aged person with regards to the care of the elderly. Michael and Ellen, as a couple, contravene this stereotypical image of agism. Their love life begins when they move into the retirement home. These two elderly people have renewed their lives, because they fell in love at an old age. Besides the children, this is another instance of how July re-signifies roles through her characters: by revealing agism as unfunded stereotyping in Western society. The elderly couple of Michael and Ellen is equated with the young couple on the picture. In the picture with the Mayan ruins, the young couple stands at its side, revealing only their silhouettes. Christine copies this image in her work by framing Michael
s silhouette and her own. She thus visually underscores her notion that every human possesses equal feelings, no matter what age they are. She fights the notion that old people are outside of society. As with Michael, who gives her valuable advice, the elderly are given a role to play. Michael likewise benefits from his relationship with the young woman Christine. “The Mourning Work” is a way for Michael to say good-bye to the love of his life. Christine thus gives him a platform to express his feelings. The artist herself is also included in the piece of work. Christine employs the same technique here as she did for the art project that she handed in to apply for the exhibition. Through the video, Christine bids Ellen goodbye. Now Ellen
s granddaughter and her boyfriend have become art, along with Ellen, and above all Michael. They are all artistically joined because Christine chooses the photo as a first inspiration.68 They are connected through family ties and also through having unfulfilled love relationships. Christine knows that it was Michael
s wish to take Ellen to the Mayan ruins, a relict of the ancient past. The artwork makes an unfulfilled dream of a loving couple into a voyage that is possible in Michael
s imagination. The Mayan ruins become the symbol for their love. In the video, Michael speaks of a couple that built the monument together. Christine
s artwork becomes the monument for Michael and Ellen
s love. It can now survive forever and remind other civilizations of their love. The intense personal relationship between the characters is the strength of this work. Comparable to the “Macaroni” scene, there is a direct human response 68 This piece of art is similar to LTLYM#s assignments no. 2 and 12 in its conceptualization of acknowledging a whole group of people by turning them into art(ists) (discussed in chapter 2.3).

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between the protagonists. Christine has thus picked up the same concept that had convinced Nancy to include her in the exhibition. Her art has a dialectical relation to real life circumstances. The only difference is that in the “Macaroni” scene the audience (consisting of Nancy Herrington) is directly addressed. Nancy answers Christine by calling her. Such an audience response does not take place in the context of “The Mourning Work.” “The Mourning Work” does not invite its audience to interact. Here, the human interaction happens within the video of Michael and Christine (who embodies Ellen). Moreover, it is created from a reallife situation. It traverses the reality of the artistic to the reality of the movie. It is based on Michael
s feelings and he is there to watch it. It alleviates his suffering. As my readings have illustrated, interactive art is presented as helpful to individuals. This effect is most of all caused when art supplies characters with acknowledgment. In the case of Nancy Herrington, Christine convinces her of her work
s quality once she addresses her directly. At the same time, it is implied that Nancy is a victim of the individualized society and feels lonely. She is thankful that the artist reaches out to her and motivates her to reflect on her own situation. In treating Michael as an individual whose everyday problems are worthy of being turned into art, Christine promotes the notion that everybody can become a piece of art. The character Christine in Me and You and Everyone We Know provides a platform where the self can come to terms with him or herself. The film implies that through art troubles can be overcome. The character “Christine” is no exception; she works on her karma
successfully. The movie is a multi-layered reflection on reality because July plays an artist in it. She uses cinema to show herself and, as a consequence, to state that the borders between reality and fiction are permeable. They dialectically constitute each other. In the creative class, there is no difference between the entrepreneurial and the private self. The same holds true for the subject of art. There is no difference between the constitution of the self in a fictionalized world and the one in the real world. Eliminating the border between her self and her art, between art in real life and art within art (the film), between the concept of the audience in the movie and the audience watching the movie, she gives the impression that the border between different realities is blurred. The whole movie starts with the action of Christine recording a piece of art. Furthermore, by turning the shoes she bought from Richard into art, the audience witnesses the creative process. She thus presents herself as an authentic artist. She stages her artist-personality in the movie by incorporating her real way of creating art. As Christine, July serves as a rolemodel for her audience. She is successful through individual expression, or,

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through expressive individualism. The implied audience is addressed through the film
s self-reflexivity. The spectator could be her as well; there is no mystery about being an artist. Art is a way to express oneself. The spectator could as much express his or her individualism and become somebody special
. In conclusion, Me and You and Everyone We Know in complex ways depicts self-help culture in the individualized society. July illustrates its anxieties by portraying a microcosm of a white middle-class suburban neighborhood. The normalcy
of the neighborhood is deconstructed by way of re-signifying culturally assumed roles. The predominance of point-of-view editing ensures that the spectator can regard the action from different perspectives and thus empathize with characters. In addition, the fragmentation of the plot places the main plot and the sub-plots alongside one another and thus furthers the impression that all little narratives
(Lyotard) are equally important. This technique reinforces the Western ideology that every subject is worthy of being acknowledged individually; a message that is also transported by interactive art. The film voices a critique by showing the ambivalences of certain self-help strategies. Strategies that the West has constructed to secure its own hegemony – such as the appropriation of foreign cultural codes and the materialism of the consumer society – are in the end exposed in their ambivalence. In order to disturb a binary apprehension of these self-help instances, the film heavily relies on language. The dialogues do not often follow culturally accepted rules and thus further the characters
strangeness
. The film implicitly warns the audience not to establish an invulnerable immunity against the expectancies and responsibilities that come along with human interaction. Such individualism is presented as leading to isolation. Instead, the film recodes childlike traits, such as curiosity and naïve risk-taking, to be helpful in adulthood. For this reason, the child is depicted as a self-reliant agent. It confuses, or at least challenges, normative depictions of the white, Western middle-class. Thus, the film opens up ways of imagining new realities; in which individuals are not afraid of showing their emotions in front of others. The entrance to new spiritual realities is visually achieved through the contrast between day and night, along with the depiction of twilight as the liminal space in-between. Moreover, the Internet, and above all art, become the spaces to re-negotiate reality. In the end, art persists as the highest stage of effective self-help. Only the artist, as therapist, provides solace to her human art objects. It is her capacity to lift the characters up, to transform them into subjects of the creative class, and to allow them to express themselves. In order to make this

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claim, the film becomes self-reflexive in different scenes by doubling its frame and depicting a second frame that reflects back on the audience. The film does not eliminate the ambivalences of self-help. It shows how the need for self-help arises and who is susceptible to it. But it does not radically reject self-help. Its spiritual mood and insistence on sentimentality underscore July
s approach: that there is a lack in the individualized society that requires healing. So while I suggest reading the movie as a critique of the white middle-class at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is not a radical critique. In the end, the artist, or the expressive individual, and the child are the strongest characters. Their characteristics render them capable of enduring the ambiguities that this society produces. The film is an ode to the creative class, which does not aim to destroy the system, but to gently offer new ways of imagining reality and thus re-signifying it.

4 The Search for the Self: The Short Story Collection No One Belongs Here More Than You

In the course of individualization tendencies in Western societies (Bauman), questions arise concerning the individual
s self-positioning that the discourse of self-help claims to be able to answer. Debates in the press mirror a public debate about the question of the extent to which self-help books, spiritual guides and life-coaching practices are essential for an individual
s self-positioning. Scholars discuss the white middle-class’ inclination to live in a “therapy culture” (Rieff) or “self-help culture” (Illouz) as arising from extensive social fragmentation. As I have already demonstrated in the previous chapters, the art of Miranda July directly responds to these controversial discussions. Using different media, she asks questions regarding how the modern individual might position him or herself anew. In this chapter, I will read a selection of July
s short stories in relation to preeminently occurring topics that connect to self-help culture. Conspicuously, the motive of loneliness runs through July’s short stories. The fear of becoming lonely is defined by Bauman as one of the paradoxes of postmodern society. July
s narrators convey precisely this fear, which contrasts with their individualization tendencies. In these narrations, the narrators are presented as isolated. July achieves this effect by employing the first-person perspective, severely limiting the number of other protagonists that surround the narrator and through an almost static insistence on one motive (Schader). In order to escape the impending loneliness, it is vital for the individualized subject in an anonymized society to model himself or herself and to make his or her life appear as interesting as possible. The expressive individualist (Bellah; Fluck) is on the search for his or her true inner self and strives to realize this self by way of his or her lifestyle. What McGee calls “to follow the path of the heart” (44) is, for July
s narrators, first of all a reflection on the self – a reflection,

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which, in turn decides what actions the narrator will take in his or her effort toward self-fulfillment. Absurd scenes and ambivalent endings leave the reader doubting if the chosen strategies are, in fact, able to release them from their pursuit.69 Some of the most noteworthy aspects in July
s short stories are the “strangely erotic” elements (Cutter) that “in places […] resemble the unsolicited whisperings of a pervert on a bus” (Boncza-Tomaszewski). Sexuality as a discourse through which hierarchies of power are negotiated (Foucault Sexuality) is a highly viable topic for the self-help industry exactly because of its central social significance. In July
s short stories sexuality is strongly associated with the search for acknowledgment by others and the desire to express oneself through sexuality. The protagonists, however, narrate their experiences in almost repulsive terms and hence present themselves and their relationships as inadequate. In a post-sexual-revolutionary culture, this inadequacy dramatically contrasts with the collective dream of an unconstrained and highly satisfying sexual life. The following readings approach July
s positions towards the abovementioned motives and ask: With which specific possibilities does the short story supply her in her effort to represent self-help culture? How is this culture negotiated in the stories?

4.1 L ONELINESS The virtue of self-reliance arose in the context of American westward expansion and received a spiritual dimension in Transcendentalism. Given that this virtue finds its negative extreme in the postmodern era, Zygmunt Bauman argues, we now must instead speak of an individualized society. He further argues that this individualization in fact causes the modern subject to experience loneliness. Paradoxically, the individual calls for this state and fears it at the same time. Bauman describes the situation as follows: The rapid fading of the old art of fastening social bonds and making them last, the schizophrenic fear/desire of separation and being left alone (the perpetual vacillation between I need more space and Ally McBeals I am so tired of [being] on my own), the white-hot passions which accompany the desperate search for communities and the fissiparousness of the ones that are found. (6)

69 On Julys general tendency to end her stories tentatively, see also Nassim W. Balestrinis analysis of Julys story “Birthmark:” “From Aylmers Experiment to Aesthetic Surgery,” 77.

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July
s stories delineate processes of self-reflection in which characters oscillate between being in touch with and concentrating on themselves while also seeking acknowledgment from other people. I find this oscillation to be most prominent in the stories “The Shared Patio,” “How To Tell Stories To Children,” and “The Boy From Lam Kien.” Reading these stories, I ask in what ways July depicts different aspects of loneliness in an individualized society. 4.1.1 “The Shared Patio:” Sharing is Caring? The first story of the collection, “The Shared Patio,” negotiates the experiences of loneliness and longing for affection through the theme of sharing space. The female first-person narrator shares a patio with her neighbors, a male-female couple. When she sits on the patio with the male for the first time, he has an epileptic seizure. Instead of helping him, she falls asleep with her head on his shoulder and dreams of his devotion to her. In the end, his girlfriend finds them, wakes the narrator and rescues her partner. The narrator leads an interior monologue, but is also aware of the reader. Notably, before the narrator raises the issue of the shared territory – the patio – she begins her story in self-defense: It still counts, even though it happened when he was unconscious. It counts doubly because the conscious mind often makes mistakes, falls for the wrong person. But down there in the well, where there is no light and only thousand-year-old water, a man has no reason to make mistakes. God says do it and you do it. Love her and it is so. (No One 1)

The story starts with a cryptic explanation that serves to introduce the narrator
s intention to tell the story. The reader is placed before the riddle of just what this “it” that still counts might be. By applying a spiritual kind of language, the riddle becomes even mystic. Eventually, the narrator indicates why she feels the need to persist: She desires to be loved by someone. Her insistence and spiritual reasoning suggest that she cannot face the truth that the desired person has not, in fact, expressed his love for her. She thus establishes herself as an unreliable narrator. In its rhetoric, the beginning of the narration reminds one of Edgar Allan Poe
s “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Here, the first-person narrator addresses the reader in a similar way by insisting on his own sanity (Paige 73): “How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily – how calmly I can tell you the whole story” (Poe 303). While this address to the reader can be read as a confession

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(Auerbach 38), it is rather a self-defense (Zimmermann 143). By asserting his sanity, Poe
s narrator tries to convince the reader that his view of the story is correct. His use of rhetoric, however, does not achieve the desired result. On the contrary, as the story unfolds, the reader becomes convinced that the narrator is in fact insane. In “The Shared Patio” the narrator makes use of a comparable rhetorical style with a similar effect. The reader grows suspicious of the narrator’s reasoning. Ironically, her insistence only serves to lead the reader to doubt her reliability. Similar to Poe
s narrator, July’s female first-person narrator appears to be obsessed with something. While the narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” is obsessed with the old man
s perceived “evil eye,” the title “The Shared Patio” leaves no doubt that its narrator
s object of obsession is in fact the patio itself. The first paragraphs clearly establish this fact. The narrator compares herself to the couple who lives in the apartment below. Sharing the patio has been a thorn in the narrator
s side. She recounts that the landlord reassured her that she is as much entitled to use the patio as her neighbors, but ponders the question of whether he gave the neighbors this information: "If you look at it, you will think it is only Helena and Vincent
s patio, because their back door opens on to it” (No One 3). The narrator speaks directly to the reader and assumes the perspective of an outsider. She implies that if an outsider looked at the patio, it would seem as if it was not shared, but belonged to her neighbors
apartment. She herself is not completely convinced that she may use it. As she begins the story, the narrator repeats several times that the patio is shared (3-4). This repetition expresses her state of agitation. It also serves to reassure her of her right to use the patio. Moreover, she wants the reader to be on her side, to become her accomplice in her symbolic wrestling with her neighbors about ownership. The narrator’s interior monologues make transparent how she constructs her own position as a single woman against the couple
s togetherness. She is uneasy about using the shared space together. The narrator reports that she does not use the patio when the couple is occupying it. Her use of the shared space is reactive and planned instead of spontaneous: “Every time I see them out there, I put a little mark on my calendar. The next time the patio is empty, I go sit on it. Then I cross off the mark. Sometimes I lag behind and have to sit out there a lot toward the end of the month to catch up” (3). The narrator’s description of her own behavior underlines a sense of rivalry, which paradoxically negates the ethical aspects of unselfishness and generosity that sharing involves. Her meticulous counting of days is comical. She is obsessed with monitoring her neighbors
patio use. The simple act of talking to her neighbors in order to find out whether they know it is a shared patio seems im-

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possible for the narrator. Instead of communicating with them in person, she chooses to do so symbolically: “I have tried to demonstrate ownership by occasionally leaving something down there, like my shoes, or one time I left an Easter flag” (3). It is questionable if the neighbors understand these faint symbols, if they even acknowledge them as symbols of something. Her indirect communication strategy signifies her outsider position, and hence her isolation, from the neighbors. The narrator watches the couple downstairs in contrast to her own situation. They share an apartment while she lives alone. Her apartment
s walls are a boundary between her private life and her public life. She is habituated to living alone and cultivating an individualized lifestyle. The idea of sharing makes her nervous. She is a representation of the individualist in anonymous surroundings. That her actual motives are obscured by her obsession with the shared patio comes to the fore when she introduces the reader to her neighbor Vincent. She shows her obsessive character once again by directly addressing the reader: “Vincent was on the shared patio. I
ll tell you about this patio. It is shared” (3). The repetitive mode about the aspect of sharing stresses the importance it has for the narrator. Again in a repetitive mode, and in an address to the reader, she links the shared patio directly to Vincent: “Vincent was on the shared patio. I
ll tell you about Vincent. He is an example of a New Man” (3). While she uses a similar sequence of sentences as above, she substitutes the patio with Vincent. The patio is in fact merely a projection of her underlying motive: desire for acknowledgment by her neighbors.70 She introduces Vincent with the same meticulousness as the patio. While what is most noteworthy about the patio is that “it is shared,” the most discernible fact about Vincent is that he “is an example of a New Man.” She thus establishes him as a desirable man – a man worthy of respect. By linking him to the patio, she reveals that she is unsure what patiosharing actually entails. The patio and Vincent merge together in her mind. While she herself does not seem able to acknowledge her own motives, her discomfort at being alone and her consequent wish to share the patio with someone become apparent. In the narrative, she repeatedly emerges as a person who suffers from individualization tendencies and a subsequent neurotic disposition. Up to this point in the story, the narrator has established the setting and character constellation. The moment when she takes the opportunity to share the patio with Vincent alone constitutes a shift to the main part of the story. The two sit on lounge chairs and have a conversation. The narrator is glad that Vincent
s 70 As already discussed in the previous chapters, the desire to be acknowledged is recognized among some scholars to be the driving force behind all of peoples actions in relation to individualization tendencies (cf. Franck; Wagner).

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girlfriend Helena – whom she conceives as her antagonist - is not there. Helena is the flaw in her wishful sharing phantasy. The narrator demonstrates this to the reader when she describes Helena in a condescending manner: “She is Greek with blond hair. It
s dyed. I was going to be polite and not mention that it was dyed, but I really don
t think she cares if anyone knows. In fact, I think she is going for the dyed look, with the roots showing” (2). The narrator makes a point to convey her opinion that Helena is a person of non-individualistic taste. Helena dyes her hair and does not even pretend that it is naturally blonde. This “look,” as made popular by pop stars such as Britney Spears and Shakira, helps the narrator to construct herself as the opposite of Helena. She also implies that Vincent is merely interested in Helena because Helena conforms to the stereotype of the sexually submissive female. The narrator, by contrast, argues that she herself would be the better choice, as she and Vincent are of the same class: the creative class. The narrator is convinced that she would be a more suitable partner for Vincent because he is an art director and she is the floor manager of a printer. She over-interprets this to be “an unusual coincidence” (4). While Vincent represents the figure of the creative achiever, she euphemizes her own job to be of the same kind. According to this logic, Helena does not belong to the same class, because she is a nurse. Thus, the narrator slowly enters a self-delusion that she and Vincent would suit one another because they belong to the same class: the creative class. In the midst of their conversation, the story reaches its climax. Sitting next to Vincent on the patio and longing for his affection, Vincent suddenly lurches forward and has an epileptic seizure. This situation provides the ground upon which the narrator reveals her actual desires. Absurdly, instead of helping Vincent or seeking help for him, the narrator lays her head on his shoulder and falls asleep. “Why did I do this dangerous and inappropriate thing? I
d like to think I didn
t do it, that it was in fact done to me” (7). Through her rhetorical question, she implicitly addresses the reader. Again comparable to Poe
s narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” July’s narrator attempts to convince the reader that she is sane. Similar to the beginning of the story, she gives spiritual reasons for her inexplicable behavior and fails to acknowledge what is obvious to the reader. Absurdly, she is not agitated by her behavior. She deems it important, however, to tell the reader that she is aware of her inappropriateness. She implies that she is not neurotic and that it was some higher power that has caused her to fall asleep. Her unfulfilled desire and her longing overpower her so that she is not able to admit her failed responsibility, even in hindsight. Instead, she delegates the responsibility to a spiritual phenomenon. Ironically, she does not grasp her own motives and rejects the idea that she is suffering from neurosis.

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The wish to be loved by Vincent – or by anyone for that matter – becomes more pronounced when the narrator begins to dream. The dream serves to introduce a different layer of reality, one in which the narrator can confess her desires. Thus, “Real
becomes a slippery signifier” (Balestrini, “Aylmer
s Experiment” 67). Her desires become transparent although they are not explicitly admitted. In the narrator’s dream, Vincent tells her that he loves her. In contrast to this perfect image, the reality of sharing also haunts her in her dream: Narrator: “What about Helena?” Vincent: “Its okay, because shes in the medical profession. They have to do whatever is the best for health.” Narrator: “Thats right, the Hippocratic oath.” Vincent: “Shell be sad, but she wont interfere with us because of the oath.” Narrator: “Will you move your things up to my apartment?” Vincent: “No, I have to keep living with Helena because of our vows.” Narrator: “Your vows? What about the oath?” Vincent: “Itll be okay.… From now on I am yours.” Narrator: “No matter what? Even when you are with Helena and I am just the short woman upstairs, am I still yours then?” Vincent: “Yes, it is a fact between us, even if we never speak of it again.” Narrator: “I cant believe this is really happening.” (No One 7-8)

The dream dialogue illustrates that the narrator is lonely and envious of the couple
s relationship. Her problems with the concept of sharing a patio originate from an insecurity in human relationships. She confuses the fact of sharing a patio with sharing a personal relationship with her neighbor. The dream reveals what is at the heart of her problem with the patio. She wishes that Vincent were in love with her and accepts her, although she is “just the short woman upstairs.” Again, she constructs Helena as her rival. This is why the narrator never shares the patio with Helena and Vincent, but rather watches them enviously. Feeling excluded, she meticulously counts the days of the shared happiness of Vincent and Helena displayed in front of her. The dream dialogue is comical because, even though Vincent backs out of fully committing himself to the narrator, she is overjoyed. Apparently, she is so lonely that she has become pathetic. Instead of dreaming of Vincent
s complete devotion to her, she settles for sharing him. Absurdly, in her dream, Vincent
s suggestion that he will have both women as partners makes her happy. As a matter of fact, Vincent
s exclamation that “it is a fact between us, even if we never speak of it again” allows her to believe in his love

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beyond her dream. It provides her with a basis for her insistence that “it still counts.” Her dream does not last and the real circumstances sharply contradict it. The story takes another turn when Helena appears. The narrator wakes up when Helena finds Vincent and the narrator and shakes her out of her dream. Helena’s activity contrasts with the narrator $( ) 0     .%     1 she tells the narrator to run into the apartment to get medication. Comically, the narrator continues to react contrary to reason. When she enters the apartment, she symbolically shuts out Helena
s hurry: “Their apartment was very quiet. I tiptoed across the kitchen and pressed my face against the freezer, breathing in the complex smells of their life” (9). Comparable to the state of dreaming, the narrator again stops time in her imagination and enters a different layer of reality. She indulges in her own desires instead of providing first aid. She breathes in what she sees as the couple’s fascinating life. It appears to be an emotionally fulfilling life: They had pictures of children on their refrigerator. They had friends, and these friends had given birth to more friends. I had never seen anything as intimate as the pictures of these children. I wanted to reach up and grab the plastic bag from the top of the refrigerator, but I also wanted to look at each child. (9)

This excess of friends fascinates the narrator. She highlights the fact that their friends become more numerous by reproduction. Vincent and Helena thus do not need to work hard to increase their number of friends. These are relationships that the narrator obviously lacks. By comparison, she seems lonely. The narrator feels a voyeuristic thrill that reveals her desire to have friends in her life. The scene emphasizes her longing to have a life in which she receives more acknowledgment and affection. But her reactions to Vincent
s seizure illustrate her egocentric character and her resulting inability to care for others. In contrast to Vincent and Helena she is alone. Her contemplation is again disturbed by Helena
s appearance. Helena rushes past her to grab the medicine. The narrator stays in the apartment and watches Helena on the patio giving Vincent an injection. Now it becomes clear that Helena is the perfect partner for a chronically ill person. She, moreover, confirms the stereotype of the caring wife by definition of her profession. Hence, once again, the narrator fails in her aim to convince the reader of her opinion. She does not suit Vincent at all. Although she is inside of his home, she remains an outsider to his life. She remains the spectator of love displayed, watching the couple embrace on the patio. Her passivity – her dreamlike detachment – con-

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trasts with Helena
s care for Vincent. When the narrator walks past the couple, they do not look up (10). The narrator has not succeeded in entering Vincent
s life. Her behavior has even further estranged her from him and from the possibility of sharing. Reading the narrator
s initial statement that “it still counts even though he was unconscious” after knowing the full story, it becomes clear that the narrator fails to understand the actual consequences of her own narration. If she were honest with herself, she would admit that Vincent had not expressed any feelings for her. It is a moment of dramatic irony, since it allows the reader to see clearly that she is unable to face her inability to care for anyone else. She pretends to narrate a love story and thus misses the point of her own story, namely that she has almost left a person to die in order to nurture her personal idiosyncrasies. In so doing, she avoids self-criticism. Otherwise, she would have to admit to her pathetic longing. “The Shared Patio” is a story that presents a contrast between lone single life and loving togetherness. For the narrator, coming closer to another person is a delicate undertaking. In her craving for affection, she represents a lonely subject who longs for acknowledgment. Initially, she regards herself as separate from her neighbors. Once she decides to share the patio with Vincent, she wishes to enter his personal life far too rapidly. Consequently, the story raises questions about the negotiations of distance and intimacy. The narrator lacks the social skills to negotiate this space and thus becomes a representative of the individualized society. Her unreliability suggests that she deconstructs her own position. Her self-deception discloses that she is too involved in her own desire to be able to care for others and to be acknowledged by others, in turn. Although she does offer a monologue about herself, she never states explicitly what she longs for and does not find access to her true self. The defeat at the end suggests that she continues living in a state of self-delusion. It remains to be asked how the story
s form supports my reading. “The Shared Patio” has a predominantly linear narrative, except for the retrospection in the introductory part. Notably, the story is repeatedly interrupted by pieces of advice. These passages appear to disrupt the plot and bear no obvious relation to the narrated story. Later in the story, we learn that they are written by the narrator herself. In the story
s last paragraph, she relates them to her workplace, where a magazine called Positive is printed. She says that Positive is her favorite magazine because it is always “upbeat,” in distinction to other magazines which “build you up just to knock you down” (10). The magazine prints lists of optimistic advice for people who are HIV-positive. The narrator thus characterizes

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herself as somebody who is susceptible to self-help literature. What purpose do these pieces of advice serve? How are they to be set in relation to the character
s individualization tendencies? The first of the advice fragments appears after the introductory paragraph. It addresses a ‘you’ with a couple of questions: “What is the most terrifying thing that has ever happened to you? Did it involve a car? Was it on a boat? Did an animal do it?” (2) The narrator answers these questions with a comment and an instruction: “If you answered yes to any of these questions, then I am not surprised. Cars crash, boats sink, and animals are just scary. Why not do yourself a favor and stay away from these things” (2). The comment reveals the fragment to be a piece of advice literature. However, its triviality, even absurdity, suggests irony. Since it is not particularly “upbeat,” it represents a negative example of advice. The narrator actively engages in the culture of self-help. The narrator
s obvious inability to write advice of quality suggests that self-help is treated in a parodic manner. The second piece of advice follows the introduction of the character Helena. It does not bear any obvious relation to the narrative: If you are sad, ask yourself why you are sad. Then pick up the phone and call someone and tell him or her the answer to the question. If you dont know anyone, call the operator and tell him or her. Most people dont know that the operator has to listen, it is a law. (23)

Again, this is hardly a piece of advice that appears to be helpful and positive. It is contrary to what people seek when wanting to be consoled: to be acknowledged by someone of his or her own will, someone who cares for the person and is truly interested in his or her sorrow. This advice rather evokes serious despair. In its allusion to loneliness, it receives a dramatic meaning. This image of loneliness is connected to diffused aggression in the third piece of advice: Are you angry? Punch a pillow. Was it satisfying? Not hardly. These days people are too angry for punching. What you might try is stabbing. […] Stab until the pillow is gone and you are just stabbing the earth again and again, as if you want to kill it for continuing to spin, as if you are getting revenge for having to live on this planet day after day, alone. (4)

This advice presupposes a great amount of aggression that “people” generally feel. This aggression cannot be alleviated by merely punching a pillow. The instructor therefore advises the reader to stab the earth. July herewith alludes to the

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feeling of anger for which no one in particular is responsible. It is a diffuse and existential kind of anger. This advice is not particularly “upbeat.” The narrator does not manage to find the right tone for optimistic advice. The pieces of advice reflect the narrator
s own personal experience of isolation and loneliness. They mirror her state of mind and are inserted into the story to provide the reader with a more concrete image of her psychological disposition. Moreover, by applying the generic  you
, the narrator also addresses an unspecified other with her advice. As Monika Fludernik notes with regards to Lorrie Moore
s short story collection Self-Help (1985), second-person narration “does not naturalize the text as story
but as self-help literature” (Fludernik 462). While this holds true for the greatest part of Moore’s stories, July predominantly writes in the first person. Consequently, the application of second-person narration highlights their function within the text. In “The Shared Patio,” only the passages of advice are written in second person and thus stand out. Secondperson fiction deconstructs the hermetic story-world and also implies the reader by addressing him or her directly. The advice passages serve to construct loneliness as a problem afflicting many people, including the readership. In the way that they address the reader, the pieces of advice assume that the reader belongs to the category of people who are sensitive to self-help rhetoric. Since the selfhelp realm is aimed at members of the affluent white middle-class who seek a spiritual balance to their work life, the second-person address speaks to this category of readers. This address of a seemingly general readership in fact also appears in other instances of July
s work. It is a significant aspect of her aesthetic communication. She uses the Internet as a platform for having the public participate in making art. Similarly, her film Me and You reflects the perspective of the audience and thus blurs the boundary between fiction and reality. Consequently, in the medium of literature, second-person narration is her method of directly addressing the reader. This is already apparent in the title of her collection of short stories: No One Belongs Here More Than You. In Fludernik
s opinion, this method suggests an effort on the author
s side to “at least superficially pretend to a general validity or applicability for [...] readers” (462). Rocío G. Davis even argues that while stories written in second person are obviously someone
s stories, by extension, they become everyone
s stories (181). This argument needs to be specified, however, as the world the story portrays is not generally valid for everyone. Moore
s stories, as much as July
s, are mostly about middle-class women

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whose race can be assumed to be white.71 The stories apparently reach out to a similar readership. In his study on second person narration in postmodern fiction, Brian McHale argues that the you
can serve to break down boundaries between the levels of author, character and reader. The story can thus seduce the reader more easily because he or she can project him or herself into the gap opened up in discourse through the you
(McHale 222). This is certainly a valid argument with regard to the function of the you
. However, one needs to be aware of its tendency to subsume human beings into one homogenous entity. In the collection
s title, the undefined you
pretends to encompasses everybody and reflects the notion that every human being basically shares the same “mundane longing” (Horowitz, n.pag.).72 By contrast, Niklas Maak reads the title in geographical terms. As a 71 The narrators in Julys stories do not explicitly refer to their skin color. Whiteness stays unmarked. But they imply it by addressing the issue of race with regards to other characters. In “The Shared Patio,” the narrator addresses Vincents background with a joke: “He is of Korean descent. His name is Vincent Chang. He doesnt do hapkido. When you say the word Korean, some people automatically think of Jackie Chans South Korean hapkido instructor, Grandmaster Kim Jin Pal; I think of Vincent” (No One 1). In “Ten True Things,” the narrator catches herself stereotyping according to white racist and neocolonial assumptions. She believes that Asian women are good at sewing, a stereotype the Asian woman who sits next to her at a sewing class does not fit: “I am a really bad sewer. Interestingly, though, I am not the worst in the class; the tiny Asian woman next to me is. I was sure she would be a really good sewer because most of the clothes in the world are made by Asian women, and also, whos going to be better at making a kimono, me or someone who is Chinese or Japanese. Boy, did she teach me a thing or two about racial prejudice” (131-32). 72 In spiritual discourses, such a notion is analogous to the Emersonian notion of a universal soul, the Over-Soul, as well as to Buddhist belief. Both realms posit that every human has an individual soul as well as a shared soul. This spiritual inclination also appears in Julys stories. From an art-historical perspective, the generic you corresponds to Maaks observation that July brings her experiences of Fluxus into the short story. One of Fluxus artists main concern was to fuse the artists and the audiences experiences through art. The Fluxus artist Dick Higgins, to name a prominent example, described Gadamers theory of the fusion of horizons as the basis of his art (Higgins 3). Both artist and audience need to be aware of their own consciousnesses in order to fuse it with that of the other. The fusion is thus to be defined as a purely spiritual one. Arguably, by displaying her narrators consciousness through their selfreflections, July attempts to achieve a similar effect in the readership. On Fluxus art, see chapter 2.

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member of the white Western middle-class, he reads it as romantic at first, but then notices that it receives different connotations depending on whether the reader reads it on the couch, in the cemetery or even in prison. The romantic reading
that Maak refers to is thus a preferred reading by the subjects who form the “creative class” and who are familiar with self-help literature. Reading it in the romantic way means to read it in spiritual terms, such as with regard to the relationship between body and mind. This longing or the variation in the title, belonging, apparently refers to a place in which no one has more right to be than the self. In fact, the Here
is deliberately vague and therefore all-inclusive. The title No One Belongs Here More Than You is a reassuring statement that cannot be countered because it is too vague to offer a basis for negation. If one does not know where the Here
is, nobody can oppose one
s right to belong there. It can refer to a spiritual belonging of the self to the self. In its affirmative stance, the title thus attempts to support every reader, character and the author in his or her very being. The gap that the title opens up is disturbing in so far as it is unspecific about the Here
. The aspect of place that Maak brings up is important to consider when regarding July
s implied readership. Arguably, this is not a readership that is likely to be in prison. The self-positioning of the reader is constitutive for an interpretation of the story. It is the white middleclass whose concerns are reflected in the stories. In “The Shared Patio,” the first sentences also feature a narrative  you
. The narrator
s feelings are thus projected onto the reader, assuming that the readership is familiar with the feeling of loneliness. The narrator generalizes her idiosyncratic viewpoint, applying the unspecified compounds “the conscious mind” and “a man” (No One 1). She makes clear that she believes her reasoning is generally applicable by introducing the generic  you
in “God says do it and you do it.” This generalization points to the aim of writing advice: to address a larger readership whose experiences and need for advice are similar. The narrator points out that advice texts have to be applicable to a general readership: “They seem easy to write, but that
s the illusion of all good advice. Common sense and the truth should feel authorless, writ by time itself” (10). The pieces of advice show a process of learning how to write “good advice.” This points to the fact that the author generalizes her own experiences to be shared indiscriminately by everyone, regardless of race, class, or gender. Up to this point, however, she has not been able to successfully conform to the standard: “So far none of my submissions has been accepted.” But her repeated attempts give her reason to think, “I
m getting closer” (11). The advice with which she closes her story is more sentimental than her first couple of attempts:

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Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it is worth the trouble? Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each persons face as you pass on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face the east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. Its okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise. (11)

This advice is again informed by spirituality and by the assumption of a universal white middle-class experience. The writer of the piece of advice here moves from the figure of the lonely individual to a shared fate of human loneliness. Again, she addresses a reader whom she fashions to be universal. The advice attempts to transform the solipsist feeling of “hav[ing] nothing” into a universally shared one. The idea of a shared soul, or world soul, which appears in Emersonian philosophy and Buddhist spirituality, informs this advice. The text is ambiguous about being a parody of spiritual advice. Certainly, the narrator who writes the advice is not ironic about it. However, July has endowed the narrator with a spiritual inclination that, in my reading, has proven to fail reality. The advice appears to be inspired by the narrator
s personal experiences. Her reflections on her personal experiences with Victor and Helena leave the reader to doubt whether she can live up to the image of a person who gives trustworthy advice. July stays ambivalent about her treatment of advice literature. She dramatizes the self-help rhetoric that she employs. The first story thus opens the collection with a deconstruction of the individualized society. While the narrator is adamant that her perceptions are correct, the rhetoric renders her unreliable and therefore prone to doubts. On the one hand, the narrator has not learned to reflect on her inner motives. She does not acknowledge her failure to fight her loneliness. She insists that Vincent has feelings for her while it is obvious to the reader that her behavior caused her to have a greater distance from him than she had before. The ending of the story is also the ending of the last attempt to write advice: “It
s okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise.” This is a supposedly “upbeat” advice. But more than it is reassuring, it points to the insecurity that produces the need for advice in the first place. The story thus reveals the ambiguous merits of the white luxury of caring about the self.

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4.1.2 A Self-Delusive Family Construction in “How To Tell Stories to Children” In the story “How to Tell Stories to Children,” desiring a married man is a motive once again. July here evokes loneliness in the context of the dissolution of the hermetic family. As such, her story negotiates larger questions about postmodern society and the re-negotiation of family structures. The portrayal of a family unit with a permeable boundary implies questions about what a successful model for the postmodern society might look like. If we take it as a given that the dissolution of the hermetic family is a symptom of the fragmented society, then we might ask who is served and who is neglected by the new model in the story. Moreover, the constellation begs the question whether the supposed era of the hermetic family truly is a phenomenon of the past or whether it just reappears in a different disguise. In “How to Tell Stories to Children,” the first-person narrator Deb recounts the story about how she slips into motherhood. The central problematic in the story is initiated through her unfulfilled wish of having a relationship with her friend Tom. She introduces her object of desire who, despite his polyamory, has a steady relationship with a woman named Sarah. Deb tells us that she has “mixed intentions with regard to the man in the couple” (No One 180). Her vague statement conveys that she and Tom did have a romance which has long since passed because of Tom
s reluctance to have a relationship. Instead of concentrating on someone unrelated to Tom, she finds other ways to be close to him and to feel acknowledged. The prominent way is by becoming the babysitter of his daughter Lyon. The narrator deludes herself into thinking that she is Lyon
s intuitive mother
and she manipulates the child into believing this. The dynamic within the alternative family is fraught with tensions, which leads the family to see a counselor. When Lyon finds the counselor and Deb in bed together, she turns away from Deb and does not let her participate in her life anymore. In the end, the grown up Lyon introduces the family counselor as her new boyfriend. The dynamic between the characters is first clearly displayed when Deb comes to the family
s home for the first time after Lyon
s baby shower. Tom and his wife Sarah are fighting and are relieved to be able to give the baby to Deb. The incident triggers the feeling in Deb that she is responsible for the baby girl. In a separate room, Deb witnesses Tom and Sarah fighting, the baby in Sarah’s arms: They were in a wilderness that was too wild for me, they were living with bears, they were bears, their words flew past deadly animal teeth. I wished I were hearing about this in sec-

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ond or even third hand: “We had a terrible fight,” “I heard they had a terrible fight,” “I had an acquaintance who knew a couple who, back in the early part of the century, had a terrible fight, perhaps even had terrible fights on a regular basis, this acquaintance doesnt know for sure, she is realizing now that she didnt really know the couple, on account of the fact that she had mixed intentions with regard to the man in the couple, intentions that now are even more ancient history than this ancient, historical, terrible fight.” (180)

Deb openly admits that her evaluation of the couple      /  ' claims that she is not trustworthy because of her “mixed intentions.” She mentally distances herself from the situation, which allows the reader to perceive her uneasiness. She claims that she would like to take an external position and only hear of the fight from another person. She reflects on her own position, as well as on the position of Tom and Sarah. Before she witnesses the fight, she has already tried to seclude herself from the new family. She came to see them on “the last possible day,” feeling “horror” (179). She argues that she would have preferred not to visit them at all. She is a character who is drawn to a situation that harbors emotional danger. She knows that keeping contact with the family will not be beneficial to her. She senses that she can only be hurt by doing so. A dramatic effect is created as she goes to see them despite her uneasiness. She visits them under the pretense that she does not have a choice – because she has signed up at the baby shower to bring them a meal. Now that she is with them and hears Tom scream, her voyeurism and joy in feeling needed further legitimize her visit. She thinks about their relationship and its effect on their daughter
s psyche. She tries to shield the baby
s soft brain from “changing shape in response to the violent stimuli” and she also tries “to intellectualize the noise to protect the baby
s psyche” (180). These actions signify her decision that Lyon needs her protection. The fight introduces the couple
s dynamic and Deb
s consequent place in relation to this dynamic. Tom and Sarah fight about a sexual relationship that Sarah had while she was pregnant. Because Deb has a certain conception of relationships, she assumes that a woman would feel sorry for such actions and imagines Sarah “weeping silently” (179). But Sarah is not apologetic. The words that Deb chooses to describe the fight evoke animality and irrationality. Their fight is beyond rationality. As a consequence, they do not consider who witnesses their fight, least of all the baby that Deb tries to shelter from their aggressive voices. Deb conveys her feeling that she is the more rational, responsible person. She endeavors to be the counterpart to Lyon
s parents
fighting. From Deb
s point of view, the individual sexualities of the parents cause the child harm. The child is not to be left alone with them. Deb assumes a moral position in judging

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the parents
polyamory. In her mind, she crosses the boundary between being a friend of the family and being part of the family. As the above quoted passage elucidates, the story concentrates on family relationships. As another indicator for this fact, it is set in the private sphere exclusively. An alternative family model is presented as harboring uncertainties and tensions. The hermetic family is opened up by including a second person that assumes the mother role. The biological parents are presented as not being fit to care for the baby. They are even hurting it. Such a rupture in kinship relations is reminiscent of Raymond Carver
s (1938-88) short stories. These stories are also mostly set in the suburban, private sphere. Similar to Carver
s stories, the character constellation in “How To Tell” is informed by “dislocated” relationships (Hallett 3). Deb searches for a way to be close to Tom, but it is obvious from the start that her endeavor is self-deluded. Consequently, “How To Tell” introduces Deb as a protagonist with a tenuous connection to the other characters. In her position as an outsider to the family, she appears isolated. This isolation is reinforced through the introspective first-person narration. Through Deb, the breakup of the traditional family, and its ambivalences, is displayed. As a single woman, new chances open up for her. At the same time, the new model harbors insecurities. How do these circumstances affect Deb and Lyon
s relationship? Deb admits that she confuses her desire for Tom and her desire for his daughter, Lyon. Her desires are thus transferred from one person to the other. The child is more approachable for her: “Now he was Lyon
s father, and she possessed the daring, the warmth, the wicked charm I once thought I would find in him” (No One 183). Her interior monologue discloses her self-deception. The narration reveals an ever-growing obsession with the child Lyon. She imagines herself as the girl’s mother, as more caring than her biological mother. She justifies her feelings of kinship in a spiritual way, but admits that the world does not recognize them: “Throughout time there have been women who came by their children gradually, organically, without the formalities of conception or adoption. It felt intuitive to me but was a confusing situation for my boyfriends” (181). Deb is the only one who feels that her strong connection to Lyon is legitimate. Her isolating, first-person perspective also excludes the first hand opinions of her boyfriends. This intensifies the impression that her caring for Lyon is an obsession. She even prefers to spend time with Lyon to spending time with her own boyfriends. The men that she could actually have a family with are of secondary importance to her. Her intuitive
motherhood stands in the way of establishing enduring relationships. Deb
s construction of Lyon as an innocent child is repeatedly challenged. This shows how frail Deb
s justification is for perceiving herself as an intuitive

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mother
. Early in the story, Lyon demonstrates that she knows how much power she has over Deb. They play in her parents
pool. Lyon remains with her head underwater and holds up her hands so that her fingers visibly count the seconds she stays under. Shortly after she spreads the tenth finger, her head comes up. “I ran out of fingers!” (183). Deb offers to show her how to count higher numbers: Lyon: “I said no. I dont want to know.” Deb: “But how will you count big numbers?” Lyon: “When it goes bigger than ten, you can do it.” Deb: “Okay, but what if Im not there?” At this she laughed. She jumped out of the pool and ran toward her mother on the lounger. She shrieked, now in a drunken imitation of laughter, and hurled herself onto Sarah. Sarah: “Whats so funny?” Lyon: “Deb.” Sarah: “She is funny, isnt she. A funny bunny.” (183-84)

Lyon
s voice reveals the ambivalent and self-destructive situation that Deb has brought herself into. The child senses that she will always be there for her. She turns her back and laughs at the idea of Deb leaving. Lyon
s inability to imagine that Deb would ever leave shows that she knows that Deb is emotionally dependent on their relationship. Deb cannot even threaten to abandon her. On the contrary, Lyon demonstrates that she is more likely to be the one who leaves. Her real mother is a safety net and she shows this to Deb. She runs to Sarah and leaves Deb behind to witness the scene of bonding between daughter and mother. Sarah is an accomplice to Lyon. She will not actively interfere with Deb
s giving herself over to Lyon. Without having followed Deb and Lyon’s conversation, Sarah agrees that Deb is funny. But Sarah does not inquire further about Lyon
s laughter. Throughout the story, Sarah as indifferent to Deb and Lyon. She just thinks of Deb disparagingly, as a funny bunny
. Deb is not a serious threat to her motherhood. Against the implicit warnings expressed in the family
s behavior, Deb strengthens her connection with Lyon. According to Deb, the negative dynamic between Sarah and Tom influences their daughter
s life. From Deb’s perspective, Sarah and Tom live their lives as if Lyon were not even there. Deb slips into the place that the parents ignore. When Lyon visits Deb, Deb gives her the pleasure that she thinks is lacking at Lyon
s home: Friday night was date night, named for the date Sarah and Tom would go on while Lyon slept over at my house. But because they usually just stayed home and fought, and Lyon

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and I more often went to dinner and saw a movie, date night became our code for Night of Endless Fun. […] We talked about everything, including but not limited to: My gray hairs, should I dye them? […] And why did Tom and Sarah have to fight so much? Was it Lyons fault? No, absolutely not. Could she stop them from fighting? Again, no. (184)

During their “Nights of Endless Fun,” the bond between Deb and the child grows. It evolves in opposition to the parents
relationship with Lyon. While the parents are “self-involved” (199), Deb and Lyon create a mutually loving relationship. The child is excluded from her family because “Sarah and Tom were sleeping at other people
s houses most of the time” (186). Deb attempts to be the more caring mother
by offering “endless fun.” This points to the unorthodoxy of this child-parent relationship. Instead of playing the role of parent, Deb plays the role of entertainer. The exaggeration of “fun” foreshadows the reversal of the situation into its opposite. In the description of their pastime, the story becomes self-reflexive. Its title, “How to Tell Stories to Children,” is explicitly mentioned within the story itself, by way of a book that Deb reads to Lyon: “We read from How to Tell Stories to Children, and Some Stories to Tell. Lyon was bored by the prosaic Billy Beg and His Ball
and The Fox and the Ox
, but she loved to hear me read the chapter called The Storyteller
s Mood – A Few Principles of Method, Manner, and Voice, from the Psychological Point of View
” (185). This book indicates that Deb
s narration is not only a story about self-delusion, but also about the manipulation of others. Its initial “How to” is characteristic of advice books. Moreover, it refers to the psychological realm. Deb
s choice of the book she reads to Lyon, discloses Deb
s own method of manipulation. She manipulates the story so that she appears to be Lyon
s intuitive mother
. She applies “method, manner and voice” to convince herself and Lyon that her obsession is legitimate. Lyon
s interest in the psychological impact of “the storyteller
s mood” signifies that she knows it also concerns her. The child learns that manipulation is an implication of storytelling and also wants to learn its methods. Next to the explicit mention of advice books, the story shows its concern with therapy culture through family
counseling sessions. The decision to enter counseling is a response to Lyon
s obvious emotional stress. When she is ten, Lyon no longer wants to sleep at her home; she prefers to stay at Deb
s place, which is always open to her. She is visibly unhappy within the family environment, which gives Deb the space for additional parental involvement. During counseling, Lyon reveals her emotions, along with Deb
s secret motivations. Lyon shows what she has learned from the book How To Tell Stories To Children. Deb
s first-person narration does not make clear whether other characters

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perceive her “mixed intentions” for Tom. The reader only learns that Deb had been interested in Tom long before Lyon was born, and that Tom had rejected her. Tom and Deb’s history is only revealed through Lyon’s conversation with the therapist: Counselor: “Do you prefer living at Deborahs house?” Lyon: “Yeah, but my mom doesnt like it.” (Mom opens her mouth and then shuts it.) Counselor: “Why do you think she doesnt like it?” Lyon: “Because, you know, Deb and my dad.” (My left hand grips my right; Tom looks at the floor.) Counselor: “What about Deb and your dad?” Lyon: “You know.” Counselor: “No, I dont. Do you feel comfortable saying what you are thinking?” Lyon: “They used to be married. Thats why Debs, like, my other mom.” (Tom gasps, Sarah laughs, I speak.) Deb: “We were never married, were just friends! Weve always been friends.” Lyon: “Oh. But what about – ” Deb: “What?” Lyon: “Oh, I dont know. I thought...I dont know. Well, thanks for telling me, everyone. Now I feel dumb.” (190-91)

Lyon is the voice of truth, but she is silenced by the adults
reactions. The short dialogue leaves the actual dynamics between the characters to the reader
s imagination. The dialogue adds to the uneasy feeling that much is left unsaid between the characters. This silence furthers the possibility of manipulating the family story
. Moreover, Lyon
s “method, manner and voice,” in placing her remark, prove that she knows how to upset the family
. She uses her position as a child in order to hide whether she is intentionally causing turmoil or speaking out of innocence. Lyon confirms that there is a hidden reason for Deb
s involvement, something her parents also know, but that everybody in the family
treats as a taboo. The child
s voice reveals that there is something unnamable between Deb and Tom, which is embarrassing for everybody. Her words confirm the reader
s notion that there is something awry in the patchwork constitution of the family. Through the counseling sessions, the reader perceives that Deb
s involvement in the family is leading her to a dead end; she is living a life of delusion. Tom is not her husband, and Lyon is not her daughter. She is lying to herself about the fulfilling family life
that she leads with Lyon. But during counseling,

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her true feelings are revealed: “I was premenstrual on the day Ed Borger finally forced me to speak. But I did not speak. Instead, I wept at various different pitches and velocities, using my wail to describe a devastating unhappiness that surprised us all” (191). Deb
s unhappiness is beyond what language can express. She is surprised at the intensity of these feelings. This shows that she had repressed her unhappiness and that she has little access to her own feelings. Her physical revelation of unhappiness constitutes the turning point in the story. Deb
s pathetic clinging to a grand delusion now takes on an alarming character, which she gradually becomes aware of. After the counseling session, “my three people hugged me, and within their tangle, I felt safe” (191). Deb feels like part of the family and she feels safe in it. She is too much involved, and the other three have drawn her in too far, so that the relationship seems fatal to Deb
s psychic health. Losing this relationship would mean that she loses her safety. With her decision to care for Lyon, she takes a turn in life that decides all her further actions: I looked at him and his child, and for a fraction of a second, I could see the spell that bound me, like a spider thread catching the light. Cast upon me long ago…, it now spanned generations. Sarah rubbed my back with a chilly palm, the vision disappeared, and I felt I had nothing to say. (191)

Her revelation stays within the secrecy of her confession to the reader. She becomes self-aware and glimpses the motivations that have brought her into the present situation. But she cannot even name this “spell;” she merely experiences it as a brief “vision.” Expressing her anxiety would destroy the family dynamic, and as a consequence she would have to give up the feeling of being part of the family. She is the only one who is at risk of losing the bond. She is afraid that she would be left alone. To her disadvantage there is an imbalance in the alternative family model. She has no voice in this family: Her place depends upon good will. She faces her actual situation, having “nothing to say,” no legitimate place. When the family
quits counseling, with the impression that Ed Borger “had helped us a lot” (191), Deb
s loneliness materializes. Lyon starts to sleep at her parents
house again for half of the week. “It was hard to know what to do with myself on these evenings. I wasn
t used to sleeping alone, though I
d long since stopped having boyfriends” (192). Lyon
s absence leaves room for another person. Accidentally, Deb runs into Ed Borger, the therapist. She confesses to the reader:

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Back when we were at family counseling, I used to day-dream, what if Ed only wanted to hear what I thought, what if the rest of the family werent even allowed in the room, what if I could just talk and talk and talk and what if when I was done Ed told me I was a genius and the rest of the bunch were loony tunes and then what if Ed said he had always been attracted to me and what if he took off my clothes and I took off his clothes and we held each other for more or less the rest of our lives. (194, emphasis original)

Deb
s confession reveals her desire to be the center of attention and to be acknowledged. She admits that she thinks about herself and wants to be singled out by the therapist. She would like to just talk about herself and receive his affirmation. She owns up to her self-centered and narcissistic feelings; and she confirms the stereotype of the patient that desires the therapist.73 Deb takes Ed home with her. To the agony of everyone involved, Lyon catches them red-handed. Lyon is hurt to find out that Deb has a sexual relationship with Ed. Deb quickly fills the space that Lyon’s absence leaves open with someone who has a professional relationship with the family. Lyon perceives this as an act of betrayal and punishes Deb in the most hurtful way: She pushes Deb away and claims that she is nothing more than a babysitter. Deb tries to convince Lyon that they belong together: “Lyon, we
re family” (196). But Lyon understands that Deb is an outsider and turns this fact against Deb: “No, actually, you are not related to us, you are just a person who used to help us the way Ed used to help us. It
s really perfect that you two should fuck. All the hired help should fuck each other” (196). Lyon degrades Deb from a family member to a mere servant and destroys Deb
s fantasy that she is a legitimate family member and other mother
. Lyon finally sees through Deb
s manipulative story and does not want to believe in her motherhood
anymore. Lyon carries out what first surfaced during the pool scene: that she is the one who would leave. Deb suffers from a guilty conscience for not having fulfilled her mother role: “I blamed myself for all this so-called individuation; it had sprung from a single moment. The guilt was crushing” (197). Instead of insisting on her right to lead a sexual life as an independent adult, Deb feels guilty for her desires. She cannot distinguish between her mother-role
and her individuality. She lies to herself about the situation and pretends that “it had sprung from a single moment.” In actual fact, she had long wished to be desired by Ed. Once she becomes intimate with Ed, she loses the moral authority that defined her and differentiated her from Tom and Sarah. She therefore has a problem defining 73 This topic finds depictions in popular culture, for example in The Sopranos, where the protagonist Tony Soprano desires his female therapist. To this she merely replies: “This is all a byproduct of progress” (Season 1, Episode 6, 40:00).

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who she is. While Tom and Sarah had always led an openly polyamorous life, Deb had given up boyfriends for Lyon. She had been there for Lyon exclusively. Deb tries to stay in touch with Lyon, but all she can do is imagine Lyon
s life. Ed does not want to pursue a relationship either. Now she can no longer avoid facing her loneliness. She admits her own self-deception: “I knew nothing about her. It was really over and I really was not her mother. I was really almost fifty. I really did not feel okay about any of this, and there was really nothing I could do about it” (199). The repetition of the word “really” points out that she is still not convinced that this is actually the case. She does not want to believe that this is the end of their relationship. Nevertheless, living somebody else
s life, the life of a mother that she is not, renders Deb a lonely individual. She is emotionally dependent and feels that she has lost everything. She has not formed enduring relationships outside of her imagined family. Deb is too old to have children and to build her own family. She has missed the point of building that kind of kinship. She represents a figure that is unable to change her life. Instead, Deb wallows in her depression. She pities herself and maintains that there is “really nothing I could do about it.” Her feelings show that she blames fate for her situation. She has placed her future in the family
s hands. She does not recognize that she is the one responsible for steering her life in other directions. She has ceased to live an independent life, and even when her role as other mother
is shattered, she cannot build something new. She can only see what she does not have. In the story
s last scene, Deb
s inability to release herself from her obsession is emphasized anew. At the same time, her isolated first-person perspective is revealed to the reader as an unreliable perspective on the story. Deb is to meet Lyon at her parents
Christmas dinner. Tom has announced to Deb that Lyon is coming with her new boyfriend. It is Ed Borger, the family counselor. Deb narrates that “a funny feeling” comes up around the dinner table (200). Lyon is the center of Deb
s attention. Unprompted, Lyon hands a bowl of potatoes to Deb. The moment of exchanging the bowl bears significance: “My eyes ventured slowly from the dish, to the front of her blouse, to her eyes. What did I fear I would find there? Meanness and gloating? Slyness? Shame? They were sparkling with the old love, the greatest love of my lifetime. And they were triumphant” (201). The moment is highly ambivalent. Surprisingly, Lyon
s gaze reveals feelings that Deb has not anticipated. Deb is afraid to look Lyon in the eyes for fear of not recognizing her. Instead, she perceives the “old love” that connects them. However, since the story is entirely told from Deb
s perspective, it is unclear whether Lyon truly expresses these emotions through her gaze. The perception could merely be Deb
s projection. By contrast, Deb also perceives Lyon
s gaze to be triumphant. It is left to the reader to interpret why Lyon is tri-

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umphant. Ed appears to be a choice that Lyon has not made independently. Lyon
s choice of Ed as a partner was influenced by her family history. Deb does not tell the reader if she understands Lyon
s behavior. A clarifying conversation between them does not take place. The ending is disturbing in its ambiguity. While the relationship
s ambivalence has been central to the whole story, it reaches its climax in the ending by defying a resolution. This is characteristic of July
s tendency to ask the reader to come to their own conclusions. The reader
s response is thus central to the meaning of the story. In this regard, “How To Tell Stories To Children” fits into Cynthia Hallett
s definition of the minimal short story. Minimal short stories, she argues, shun the classic conflict-developmentresolution structure. Instead, their authors “contrive story elements in such a manner that closure must occur for the readers in the context of their individual lives” (Hallett 14). Such a construction is apparent in “How To Tell”; the story manages to stage complex emotional situations by minimalist means (Schader). The ambiguity of the ending is another way to compare July with Raymond Carver.74 According to Hallett, Carver has the tendency to end stories ambiguously, because the first-person narrators do not experience epiphanies. At the end of “How To Tell,” the reader also faces open questions concerning Deb and Lyon
s relationship. While Deb has continued to suffer from the feeling of loss and has become obsessed with it, Lyon has looked for other ways to overcome the disappointment. In Deb
s view, Lyon radically unfastens the bond to her other mother
. Deb feels that she has lost the greatest love of her life and does not see that separation is a natural part of adolescence. But Lyon does not convincingly free herself from entanglement in Deb
s story. Although she is grown up and has the power of an adult, she tries to convince her parents of her maturity with the behaviors that have been taught to her. As a grown woman, she is now at eye level with Deb. She can even rival her and win over a sexual partner. Lyon still uses the power she has over Deb. But now, this power manifests itself in adult terms. She asserts herself according to the example that her parents and Deb have set. Lyon shows that she can now play along with the adult game. The way she does so is sad, however, as her method is based on hurting the other family members. Moreover, the choice that she makes points to the failure of the alternative family model. The family stays in a closed circle because Deb chooses the same kind of sexual partner that her other mother
had chosen before her. The family seems dramatically hermetic.

74 Peter Henning has noticed a similarity between their writing with regards to their original style.

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Nevertheless, she takes on the active part and supplies the story with an ending that she manipulates. Lyon succeeds in telling her own story; she no longer allows Deb to manipulate her character. She becomes the manipulator and uses the other characters as if they were chess pieces. When Lyon introduces Ed as her boyfriend, she knows how much it hurts and degrades Deb. Instead of having grown up independently, she returns and picks someone who is well known to the family as her boyfriend. She repeats what her parents and Deb have taught her. She is caught in the same pattern of forming relationships, where the choice of one
s partner is primarily based on the desire to hurt family members. Lyon remains within the extended family by way of choosing Ed. The story thus suggests that the dissolution of the nuclear family is not a given fact. Although there are other roles than father, mother, and child, the constellation stays hermetic. The characters remain within their confined circle. This is most obvious insofar as Lyon chooses a boyfriend who is desired by her own other mother
. But as the situation around the dinner table makes clear, Lyon cannot be punished for her choice. Although there is a “funny feeling,” nobody explicitly objects to her choice. The moral codes are no longer defined in the individualized society. As seen in the alternative family illustrated in this story, the child is left to make his or her choices without being sanctioned. By refusing to act like traditional parents, Lyon’s parents can no longer legitimately judge their child
s choices. The insecurity that develops from the dissolution of hierarchies is hence depicted as posing new challenges to the family unit. Through the protagonist Deb, “How To Tell Stories To Children” provides a psychological account of an individual
s self-delusion that leads to loneliness. The first-person perspective is vital for understanding the processes of selfmanipulation that the narrator engages in. The refusal to acknowledge her anxieties – to herself, the therapist, or the family – has proven to be psychologically unhealthy and socially damaging for her. However, the character of the therapist puts into question the possibility of receiving help. His authority is severely undermined by his self-indulgence and his entanglement in Deb
s story. Therapy is questioned to heal the wounds caused by individualization tendencies and the anxiety that accompanies the dissolution of hierarchies. Deb is the pitiful representative of the individualized society. While she is obsessed with constructing her identity as an intuitive mother
, she neglects to build enduring relationships with other people. The substitution of a relationship with Tom for a mother-daughter relationship fails. Deb is punished for her selfdeception. She does not face her inner desire to be close to Tom or the way that she replaces him with Lyon. The manipulation of the self and others is an unconscious act that is directed by desire instead of rationality. Through the character

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of Deb the question is raised, To what extent can devotion to a child be a merely narcissistic act? The ambivalence between caring for oneself and caring for somebody else is not solved in the story. The narrator does not reach a conclusion about the meaning of her own story. She does not see how much entanglement in the family has been helpful and how much self-destructive. 4.1.3 “The Boy From Lam Kien:” Alienation from Society In contrast to Deb, the female first-person narrator in the story “The Boy From Lam Kien” does not even have to fear that she will be excluded from a family or community, as she is already socially isolated. The story evokes isolation by way of its character constellation. The narrator and the little boy who lives across the street are its only characters. Notably, this is another story that employs a child character in relation to an adult. What meaning does such a constellation bear in this case? The narrator does not know the boy she meets by chance in front of her house. He apparently is the son of the owners of the beauty salon Lam Kien from across the street. The boy asks whether he may see her apartment, to which she consents. Inside, his presence challenges her routine of being alone. In the end, the boy leaves. She subsequently enters a state of spiritual self-treatment, as I will explain in detail. The narrator
s isolation is obvious because she does not have contact with her neighbors and does not mention any other acquaintances, family, or colleagues. Instead, she writes that she longs to have a friend (No One 103). Her microcosm is limited to her apartment and ends “at the juniper bush” in front of her house (99). She is afraid of stepping beyond it. Thus, her character is immediately established as an isolated individual in an anonymous society who suffers from neurosis and depression. The narrator conveys her incapacity to experience strong feelings in various instances of self-reflection. She deplores this fact but at the same time finds herself lacking the energy to change it: I knew all about those things that weren23

4567 89:;67< =7 >?@5 ABC @9>> D@ 385=E F G?G:23

want any more weaklings who were activated by water and heat but had no waste and were so small that when they died, I buried them only with forgetfulness. If I was going to bring something new into my home, it would be a big starving thing. But I could not do this. (100-1)

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The narrator only entertains “weaklings” that are barely alive at all. She sees no use in keeping these unimportant things, which she does not even bother to define specifically. She does not care for them and lets them die. She desires something that makes a difference to her, something that is worthy of her care. Through this vague metaphoric language, the narrator describes the emptiness in her life. She does not give her full energy to fashioning her life. She wishes for something big, passionate, something that fulfills her. But she gives up realizing this wish before she even tries to accomplish it. She does not feel fit
to handle it. At the same time, her sadistic inclinations are uncomfortable for the reader. She is not a sympathetic character and therefore does not further the reader
s identification. Her self-characterization suggests that she represents a character who suffers from a feeling of “the inadequacy of the self” (Bauman 5). Bauman argues that the modern subject is left alone to decide how to lead a meaningful life. The numerous choices available in postmodern society overwhelm him or her. Instead of perceiving one
s situation as created by societal structures, the individual is left to blame the self for inadequacy.75 Contrary to the American ideal of a nation of self-reliant individuals, Bauman posits that the individual has difficulties in positioning him or herself without a community that provides guidance. The narrator in “The Boy From Lam Kien” depicts herself as a victim of her own social incapacities. She suffers from an unfitness
that, according to Bauman, has superseded the concept of disease
: “[I]f the mark of disease
was incapacity for factory or army life, the mark of unfitness
is a lack of élan vital, an inability to feel strongly, ennui, acidia, a lack of energy, of stamina, of interest in what the colorful life has to offer, a lack of desire and desire to desire” (226). Bauman thus describes the contemporary middle class in Western societies as vulnerable to depression. Bauman perceives the concept of fitness
to be problematic, because it is not as objectively measurable as physical health is. By fitness he refers to the ability to create one
s private and working life in a socially accepted and hence successful way. Since fitness is a subjective feeling, the individual can never be sure if he or she is fit or unfit. There is no instructor who provides guidance. The person who wants to be fit is at the same time the subject and the instructor. These unsettling questions about one .   ,       * ) .'  more, however, that anxiety – a specifically postmodern affliction – is unlikely ever to be cured and ended. It is also diffuse, as Jean Baudrillard pointed out; and diffuse, unfocused anxieties admit of no specific remedies” (ibid., 227, em75 Ulrich Beck also argues that due to individualization, the individual is left alone to make choices and to account for them (4).

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phasis original). The narrator seems to have lost the fitness that she once possessed. In her living room, there are “things that had once meant a lot to me but now seemed beside the point” (No One 102). She used to be fit, she had élan vital and passion. She used to collect abstract art, but now her energy is gone. She presents herself as having had a different life in which she played an active part in society. In this way, she also is suggesting that she fell ill at some particular point. Her encounter with the boy illustrates her illness. When he notices her and seeks her attention, it is a life changing event. But since she is afraid to go further away from her house than twenty-seven steps, she cannot go to him. “He seemed to be waiting for me to move forward. Weren
t we all. When it became clear that this was never going to happen, he yelled out to me. I have a dog!
” (100). The narrator distances herself from her own behavior. She reflects on herself as being passive, as being unable to be close with other people. She is impatient and dissatisfied with herself for being this way. Her behavior is not specific to this situation, but is her general disposition. She stands in front of her apartment and conveys that paralysis is a fact of her life. She is not
fit
to move on. Her interest in self-help literature becomes clear when the boy finds a selfhelp book in her apartment. Obviously, she has already sought help for her mental condition: Keeping Love and Intimacy Alive in Committed Relationships. I was working through it, word by word. So far I had done Keeping and was just starting on Love. I worried that by the time I got to Committed and Relationships, I would have forgotten Keeping. Not to mention Alive and all the other words. (102)

The book
s title is ironically contrasted with her living situation; it attempts to teach something that is far from her reality. Consequently, the book has not been able to help her. She is too afraid and she cannot keep up with what the book teaches. She wishes that she had a committed relationship, but presents herself as being unable to initiate one. Instead, she has entertained things
so empty of meaning “that when they died, I buried them only with forgetfulness.” The selfhelp book is unable to help her, as it presupposes a committed relationship. Owning the book makes it easier for her to pretend that she has tried to enter relationships. The narrator obviously misjudges her situation and is self-deluded. Her encounter with the boy reflects her discomfort with human relations and communication. The boy chats with her, and she feels happy that he singled her out as conversation partner. But then she senses that he is bored. This upsets her, but she does not have the power to change it. His boredom causes her to become

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“depressed and this is my own fault. It was a beautiful day and someone was talking to me of his own free will” (101). She tries to convince herself not to be depressed. The narrator blames herself for the situation and for her depression. She believes that her situation is merely a matter of her personal attitude, and not one of clinical depression. She blames herself that she is unable to think positively. There is no obvious reason to be depressed, as it is “a beautiful day.” It is an outstanding experience that somebody makes the effort to talk to her. Despite her self-enforced positive thinking, she depends on the boy
s action to change her mood again. He asks if he could see her room. She feels relief that he wants to stay and that she has an excuse to go back inside so quickly. Inside, she is self-conscious about her apartment and what it might signal to the boy: I straightened my brush on the dressing table and quietly slid my hair gel in a drawer. I didnt want him to see I was the kind of person who wore hair gel, because Im not, really. A friend left it here. Wouldnt that be nice? If I had a friend and she brought her hair gel over and she left it here? This is what I would say if I was asked. If he opened the drawer. (103)

In front of the boy, she pretends to be different than she is. It is important for her to present a favorable impression of herself. She admits to the reader that she is insecure about her image. She does not want to be who she is, “the kind of person who wore hair gel.” It makes her feel good to imagine a life that is not hers, a life that involves moving forward and having friends. Although preparing one
s home for a visitor is not a pathologic act per se, her insecurity and nervousness convey that she is most often by herself. The reader understands that she is essentially lonely through the way she treats the boy. The boy lightens up her day because she is not used to receiving attention. She is juxtaposed with his spontaneous and curious character. His boyish imagination succeeds in challenging her and keeping her delusion at bay (Schader). He does so by suggesting to her that she should buy bunk beds. Absurdly, she complies with his suggestion. She attempts to inquire about the price of the beds over the phone and she is placed on hold; meanwhile, the boy finds her hair gel and styles his hair in an “incredible look” that makes them smile at each other (No One 104). All her preparations have been in vain, as the boy finds what she has tried to hide. Because she is waiting on the telephone, she cannot even tell him the story she has made up. This humorous incident produces comic relief. The narrator shows a spontaneous emotional response by smiling at the boy. She finally re-

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laxes in his presence. With the hair gel, the boy shows the narrator that her concerns about her own appearance have been groundless. She does not have to explain anything; he “did not judge me” (100). This moment bears the possibility that the narrator might start to fight her depression. It does not last long, however, as the boy has to go home again. When it is time for the boy to leave, she pretends that this suits her. But in fact, the boy sweeps away all liveliness from her apartment and abandons her in a figurative desert. The moment the boy leaves her apartment, the realistic mode in which she has so far narrated her story shifts into a mystical one. The character enters a meditative phase, which is expressed through metaphoric language and vocabulary that evokes overpowering nature: I shut my door and listened to the sucking sound. It was the sound of Earth hurtling away from the apartment at a speed too fast to imagine. And as all of creation pulled away in this tornado-like vortex, it laughed – the sarcastic laugh of something that has never had to try. (104, emphasis original)

The narrator emphasizes the word try’. In her self-conception, she has tried to connect with another human being, but failed. Through her description of her feelings she evokes the images of nature and spirituality. These images evoke a transcendental mood. As Winfried Fluck points out, the transcendental subject seeks self-empowerment through seclusion from society. In visionary encounters with metaphysical symbols of nature, the self strives for independence from society (Fluck, “Das Individuum” 994). Romantics such as Hawthorne and Poe exposed this process as a grand self-delusion (995). The narrator
s meditative phase is such a self-delusion. She is removed from a realistic perception of society and herself. Nature does not produce a positive seclusion here, but instead underscores her feelings of isolation. When the boy visits her, he signifies “all of creation” to her, but she cannot stop this liveliness from vanishing. She is left behind in a climate where nothing can grow or survive; but she still wishes to develop a friendship. By contrast, she feels not only abandoned by the boy, but trapped in a place that she perceives to be not part of Earth. She has solipsist feelings that “creation,” all living things, laughs at her for staying behind all alone. She imagines that no one else is lonely and that other people presume this state to be a naturally given fact. They do not have to force themselves to connect with other people; they do not even have to “try.” She imagines that she is the only one who has to fight to be fit for life and therefore feels misunderstood by the whole world in her attempts to “try.” She feels like an outsider; the rest of “creation” lives happily together. Beyond her

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door, she imagines how actual life takes place and how she is excluded from it. Through her evocation that she lives in a separate world, she finds words to describe her alienation from society.76 The narrator enters into a world of her own and thus falls into solipsism and depression. Her narration creates a deeply melancholic mood. She slides under her bed covers and shuts her eyes. The bed covers console her, as signs of shelter and safety. To soothe herself, she imagines being unified with Earth: I whispered, Shut your eyes, and I shut my eyes and pretended it was night and that the world was all around me, sleeping. I told myself that the sound of my breathing was really the sound of all the animals in the world breathing, even the humans, even the boy, even his dog, all together, all breathing, all on Earth, at night. (No One 105)

The narrator fights her feelings of loneliness by addressing herself in the third person, giving herself advice. Now that the boy is gone, she undergoes selftreatment against her loneliness. In fact, this seems to be her usual attempt to solve her problems. She meditates and concentrates on herself instead of opening up to another human being. She imagines it were night, in which movement and action become suspended. She creates the romantic impression of a rhythm shared by all humankind, in thinking that breathes along with all other living things. Since she is breathing with everybody else, she knows that she is also alive. She tells herself that in spirit, she belongs to Earth just as much as everybody else. She refers to the image of a shared soul, comparable to Emerson
s Over-Soul. She imagines being one with all the things on Earth that are outside of her apartment. The story conveys the helplessness of an individual who suffers from anxiety. It is a portrait of a woman who feels unfit
. The narrator holds herself responsible for her shortcomings. She does not perceive her depression within the larger context of society. In the end, instead of initiating change, she hides from her reality. She hides in bed to find shelter from a society in which she feels inadequate, from which she is alienated. She can only feel like part of this world in her imagination. She does not have the strength to face the challenges of life, to 76 Once again, a thematic likeness to Raymond Carvers fiction is apparent. Ewing Campbell in his study about Carvers short fiction points out that he “addresses the thematic of isolation as reflected in loneliness” (Campbell 25). Campbell argues that in Carvers story “Are You a Doctor?”, the protagonists loneliness is expressed by the absence of his wife and his reluctance to leave the house. With this character, Carver addresses the individuals alienation from society in a comparable way to Julys narrator in “The Boy” does.

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become social, to actively take part in society. Instead, she seeks stability through meditation, through concentrating on herself. The mystic images of nature evoke a transcendental subject whose focus on the self leads to selfdelusion. The boy appears as a figure who might help her. He acknowledges her, which provides her with some élan vital. She might have remembered this visit as a positive experience and drawn strength from it. But instead, July depicts her as a person who is unable to change herself or the situation that she is in. The end of the story does not suggest that she goes on to initiate any major changes. Instead, she hides and concentrates further on herself. The ending implies that the narrator
s self-treatment obstructs her way to the alleviation of pain. The three short stories discussed above share some common aspects. Most notably, they evoke an atmosphere of isolation through a number of stylistic means. The first-person perspective that July predominantly applies highlights the narrators
processes of self-reflection. This gives the impression that the narrators are reflecting on experiences that have occurred shortly before the story. Their stories are thus similar to the narratives of diaries or writing-therapy. Furthermore, the first-person perspective underscores the isolation that the narrators feel with regard to other characters in the stories. This focus on the self is increased by the small number of dialogues; it leaves the reader with the impression that everything in the story happens only in the characters
minds. The main focus is thus on character development rather than plot or action. This isolating perspective is heightened by the stories
concentration on one motive, which the narrators pursues almost obsessively. They appear to be spiritually isolated in their reflections on themselves and their social contexts. These contexts are constituted by a limited number of characters and situations. As the form of the short story requires, the character constellations are simple and the number of protagonists is limited. This fact adds to the narrators’ focalization on themselves and their motives. They do not write down their stories for others to understand them, but to reflect on themselves. Frustratingly, they do not find access to their inner selves. Due to the neglect of dialogue, other protagonists
reflections on the narrators are scarce. We gain few first-hand impressions of how other protagonists perceive them. In a couple of passages, the respective narrators tell the reader how they think others perceive them. But such a judgment is necessarily biased by the narrator
s own assumptions. Another case appears in “How to Tell Stories to Children,” when direct speech by the child Lyon serves to provide an external perspective on the narrator. However, what she says complicates the story. Instead of explaining anything, her speech highlights that which is silenced or ta-

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booed. Consequently, despite the intense introspection, the narrators stay mysterious to the reader. Each of the stories discussed above explicitly mention self-help or therapy. Ironically, either they are not helpful or they appear to be parodies of self-help literature. In “The Boy,” the self-help book exceeds the narrator
s social abilities, so that she feels safe hiding in bed and does not try to live up to what the book teaches. In “How To Tell,” the counselor Ed Borger loses his authority as a helpful therapist by engaging in romantic relationships with his patients. The most distinctive reference to advice literature appears in the story “The Shared Patio.” The text fragments render transparent the process of writing helpful advice. A critique emerges by way of their absurdity. The instructions appear to be a parody of actual advice literature, because they dramatize the self-help rhetoric. In these instructional text fragments, July addresses a you
. The state of feeling alone thus does not merely arise in the context of the narrator
s story. By way of addressing the reader, the feeling of loneliness is presented as an experience shared by the readership. In their assumption that the narrator
s position finds an equivalent in the reader, the stories become analogies of the individualized society. Moreover, they appear to be based on the conviction that there is a universal
reader. However, self-help culture is not a universal phenomenon. In “The Shared Patio,” which activates a response in the reader by applying the  you
, the narrator is prone to self-help. She implicitly marks herself as white by differentiating herself from Vincent, who is of Korean descent, and Helena, who is Greek. Self-help culture is thus implicitly connected to whiteness. Additionally, all three stories generate active reader response through other means. The informal language renders the stories easily accessible and gives the impression of proximity between narrator and reader. Both colloquial style and the narrator
s self-irony serve to relieve the story
s melancholic undertone. Dark humor is a prominent tool that saves the stories from sentimentality, despite the serious portrayals of neuroses and anxieties. July leaves sufficient gaps in the stories so that a lot of the characters
motivations stay unclear. In line with Hallett
s definition of the minimal short story, the stories do not lead to resolutions. July ends them ambiguously. Since the narrators do not experience epiphanies, their self-reflections do not appear to be helpful. In consequence, the stories imply a failure of self-help and therapy. The individualized subject has to look for other means to help him or herself.

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4.2 E XPRESSIVE I NDIVIDUALISM The concept of expressive individualism is related to the Romantic idea of the self. Fluck defines expressive individualism as a literary interest in selfdramatization, which came up in the era of the American Renaissance (Das kulturelle Imaginäre 244-45). Since then, this spiritual concept of the self has reached a wider cultural significance, beyond the realm of the arts. The success of the popular self-help industry is one major indicator of this fact. Many books seek to teach how one can become an expressive individualist – by actualizing the self.77 The innermost self is a person
s “unique core of feeling and intuition that should unfold or be expressed if individuality is to be realized” (Bellah 333). Expressive individualism is defined as expressing this innermost part of the self. The prerequisite to realize one
s self is to get in touch with one
s self
through self-reflection. I perceive acts of self-reflection and hence expressive individualism in July
s predominant use of the first-person perspective.78 This focalization lays bare the narrators
self-reflections, as they search for their innermost selves. Is this search for the self and its expression depicted as helpful? In order to briefly illustrate the concept of expressive individualism, I introduce a passage from July
s story entitled, “Something That Needs Nothing.” Here, the narrator mentions it in relation to her job – performing at a peep show: “I bought a lime-green negligee, a dildo that I devirginized myself with, and a chestnut colored wig in a bobbed style called Élan. I hated my job, but I liked that I could do it. I had once believed in a precious inner self, but now I didn
t” (No One 85). She gives up any romantic notions and performs a job that violates her old sense of self-esteem. She does so because her object of desire, Pip, has left her. The precious inner self that the narrator once believed in is constituted by her feeling of self-esteem. The narrator
s self-esteem vanishes with Pip
s leaving. In her case, she could not have imagined showing her body to somebody she does not love and purely excite men by having them look at her. Now, being able to perform that job, she does not feel self-esteem anymore. Ironically, performing at a peep show is not what the creative class deems a valuable creative expression of the self. This passage suggests that July holds an ambivalent position towards the concept of self-realization. The direct mention of the precious inner self demonstrates her awareness of the concept. Besides work and sexuality, July
s stories

77 On the concept of self-actualization, see McGee 42; Starker 111 ff. 78 All of Julys stories are written in first-person, except for the stories “This Person” and “Birthmark,” which are written in third-person.

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present other categories in which the individual strives for self-expression. I will analyze the stories “Mon Plaisir,” “Making Love in 2003,” and “The Man on the Stairs,” asking which categories she employs, and to what extent the search for the self emerges as being of value for the protagonists. 4.2.1 Superficial Expressive Individualism in “Mon Plaisir” In the beginning of the story “Mon Plaisir,” the female first-person narrator tells her hairdresser she needs change, because it is the first day of the rest of her life (No One 148). Why does she need a change of life? How will she go about it? Like a step-by-step plan that a self-help book advises on, the story follows this leitmotif. At home with her husband Carl, she depicts their marriage as lacking passion. She attempts to change her outer appearance, goes to see her therapist and tries to find inspiration from the notes on a community board. She persuades Carl to play the part of background actors at a movie set. The passion they feel between them when they are acting vanishes again when they return home. They decide to separate. In her depiction of the daily life with her husband Carl, the narrator introduces the topic of self-fulfillment according to the spiritual health market. She sketches a relationship that is devoid of humor, but led according to the strict principle of meaningfulness (148). Their relationship is not based on romantic feelings, but on shared loneliness: “We never really had a proper courtship; we met at a potluck where we quickly discovered that we were both recovering from a break-up. By the time we stopped talking about our exes, we
d been together for a year” (155). Their relationship is thus based on chance instead of a conscious decision. This sets the narration
s frame: That engaging in something without one
s full passion gives rise to self-delusion. The narrator tells us how their relationship has worsened over the years. She has not been able to steer it into the right direction. Instead of love, they have to find other reasons for staying together. Although she does not say so explicitly, it becomes clear that a shared lifestyle provides the frame for their relationship: I was the one who got me and Carl focused on health four years ago. I began with whole grain bread in our sandwiches, and then came the tai chi [sic], which I never fully got the hang of, and then Buddhism. Carl completely embraced the whole lifestyle after some initial derisive resistance. Sometimes I imagine he was so threatened by my new interests that he joined me out of aggression, as if to say: You can run but you cant hide. (151)

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Notably, her intrinsic motivations for embracing this lifestyle stay obscure. Instead of developing shared interests, the narrator decides to introduce them to their relationship. However, the interests are only able to unite the two of them in a superficial way. As a matter of fact, the couple appears to follow a trend that emerged in the American West and has become significant to the white, Western middle-class at large. The concern with healthy food in contrast to fast food is an aspect of this trend. The exclusiveness of healthy living is constructed as a binary to American mainstream consumerism. The luxury to select one
s food according to its health factor is reserved for the well-educated classes that earn sufficient incomes. The couple is thus established as belonging to this privileged group of people. There are certain clues in the story that suggest a critique of this particular lifestyle. In actual fact, it is presented to separate the couple rather than to unite it. The narrator perceives Carl as hiding from her, behind their shared lifestyle. It provides him with a way to be alone in times of meditation. She likewise uses his meditation phase to relax: “I like this time because his eyes are closed; it gives me a chance to be more the way I wish I were around him” (153). The narrator can only be natural around him when he is not looking at her. This is one instance among others in which she hides her real emotions and does not share them with Carl. She confesses them to the reader exclusively. In the pursuit of a common lifestyle, they struggle for reasons that would legitimize their relationship. She senses there are many things that are wrong: My unexpressed anger at nothing in particular and: The feeling that there is a next level and I should be on it. Carl would probably have some other things to add to this list that could be called: Important Things That We Dont Understand and Definitely Are Not Going to Talk About. (150)

Her desires are constitutive of the individualist in the postmodern era, who suffers from diffuse feelings of dissatisfaction (Bauman). This individualistic tendency is further underlined by the narrator
s keeping her feelings to herself. She recognizes the same behavior in her husband. In fact she does not know about his feelings. They do not communicate them to each other. Her self-reflections are only known to the reader, but not to Carl. There is a gap between her actual thoughts and feelings and her communication with Carl. This lack of communication foreshadows the eventual breakdown of their relationship. Significantly, the narrator attempts to substitute this lack by talking to her therapist. As Bellah argues, there is a direct link between today
s value of communication and the “culture of psychotherapy” (334). He argues that “[i]n a

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world of independent individuals who have no necessary obligations to one another, and whose needs may or may not mesh, the central virtue of love … is communication” (101). Affected by the breakdown of family structures, the postmodern subject cannot take relations for granted and has to work on them continuously (114). He argues that Americans have problems in face-to-face situations, and thus turn to therapy (113). One of the central aims of therapy is to communicate one
s feelings. It is a training to express the authentic, feeling self and make oneself understood (103). Bellah furthermore argues that, “the language and some of the assumptions of the therapeutic attitude have penetrated quite deeply, at least into middle-class mainstream culture” (102). By this he refers mainly to the aspects of mutual empathy and psychological understanding. As a consequence, the situation, in which the narrator of “Mon Plaisir” finds herself, corresponds to the least desirable situation for the individual. The narrator lives in a marriage in which communication – in contrast to financial need or societal pressure – is arguably the strongest tie that is able to unite two people. But she and her husband fail to talk about their feelings, about what they are missing in their marriage. Instead, she consults her therapist. She enters her therapist
s office and “dense clouds slide away from my heart to reveal a complex landscape, a gray township, a doomed city” (No One 152). The symbolic language evinces that she usually hides her emotions, and makes them invisible to Carl. The therapist, in contrast to Carl, poses questions about her well-being and greatest fears. Whether the therapist is helpful, however, is seriously questioned in the story. The therapist always tells the narrator stories about other people
s lives, which are supposed to cheer her up. But they do not cheer her up at all: Therapist: “What is the worst thing that could happen?” Narrator: “We could never have sex again.” Therapist: “But thats very unlikely.” Narrator: “Well, it feels like I might never want to have it again. Like I wouldnt even care.” Therapist: “I have a client who was in a car accident, and she really cant have sex ever again – shes paralyzed. But is their relationship over?” Narrator: “Yes?” Therapist: “No. They have challenges, for sure, but her partner still loves her just as much.” At this point I cry.... (152)

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The comparisons hurt the narrator. She seems unable to be thankful for what she has. She does not achieve the same trust in her relationship. To be compared with other people who seem to face more difficult challenges, only makes her feel worse. She cannot name the exact reason for her unhappiness. She is confronted with the diffusion of her anxiety. This anxiety does not have an explicit reason, nor a cure. The therapist
s attempt to alleviate the narrator
s troubles has to fail: For every argument I have with Carl, Ruth has an anecdote about something similar she went through with her husband – but instead of arguing, he loved her for being a sourpuss, and she laughed sheepishly about what a sourpuss she was. God, it sounds so fucking great; I want to laugh sheepishly at myself, I want to be a sourpuss. Ruth hands me the Kleenex box and our time is up. (153)

In this depiction of the relationship between therapist and patient, therapy is parodied. At the same time, the impact of individualism is noticeable. The therapist consciously fashions herself as a role model for her patient. She implies that she is the one who knows how to handle problematic situations. Because she focuses on herself, the therapist is ironically presented as ineffective. Although the narrator is motivated to speak about her greatest fears, the therapist does not support her courage. She tries to lecture her. The narrator feels inept rather than supported. She is jealous about her therapist
s loving relationship, about her self-irony, and her lightness
in dealing with problems. She herself feels unable to live up to these examples of positive thinking. By contrast, when she comes home, she does not tell Carl that she is upset. He is meditating and thus completely immersed in himself. He is a blank page for her; she cannot reach him. Instead of uniting them, the lifestyle secludes them from one another. Their spiritual separation is also expressed by their competition; each strives to follow a lifestyle intensely. Ironically, while the narrator has introduced the mindfulness program, Carl eventually performs the role of the spiritual health seeker better than she does. He is a dedicated, even obsessed, health community member. While the narrator “never fully got the hang of” Tai Chi, “Carl completely embraced the whole lifestyle” (151). Carl goes to Tai Chi classes and meditates, while she remains vague about her personal performance of Buddhist spirituality. Carl
s creative self-expression is obsessive. Significantly, it is at the same time revealed to be superficial. She describes his activities for their spiritual community center:

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[H]e continued transcribing a dharma talk by Barry Mendelson, who is a sort of local guru. He does these transcriptions for free for the Zendo we go to. Sometimes the lectures are very long and it takes him over fifty hours to do the transcription. But it is worth it for him, because when the transcribed lecture appears on the Valley Pine Zendo website, he can say: I wrote that, and in a way, this is true. (149, my emphasis)

She implies that she does not value his work as much as he does. Her need for him to explain why he engages in this unpaid work resonates in her description of his activity. She implies that there is reason to doubt the rewards that Carl claims to receive. Carl engages in a creative activity, in writing. But a transcription is merely a copy of someone else
s words. The narrator corrects his selffashioning: Carl: “Now can I read something to you?” Narrator: “What?” Carl: “Yes or no.” Narrator: “Yes.” Carl: “When you can see the beauty of a tree, then you will know what love is.” Narrator: “Thats beautiful.” Carl: “I think it is.” Narrator: “Did you just transcribe that?” Carl: “Yeah, it came to me after dinner.” Narrator: “Came to you … through the headphones.” Carl: “Right.” (160-61)

Carl pretends to be a poet and he believes himself to be. But Carl is not the guru, the person who has realized himself in a way that gives him social appreciation. When a guru speaks, his followers look up to him. The guru is regarded as a person who lives his innermost spirituality, who cannot be divided from it. He is a role model. The figure of the guru stands in contrast with Carl $   ) ' guru is a true expressive individual. Carl does not belong to this category of people. He is certainly a good and useful Zendo community member. But the expressive individual performs his activity out of dedication to this one thing: the inner motivation to express his or her self. Carl merely aspires to do so, but actually copies the guru. His expressive individualism thus remains hollow. Carl does not request monetary compensation for his work, and therefore can be categorized as somebody who gives himself to a cause just for self-expression. This is comparable to the status of the artist who works out of passion instead of profit (cf. McGee). Carl does so out of passion and it consumes a considerable

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amount of his free time. But there is a difference between creation and reproduction. Carl
s work is not a product of his own thoughts and creativity, and hence not an artwork. The narrator does not directly tell us if she thinks his efforts are worth the amount of time he spends on them. She stresses, however, that it is to him. By this she implies his activity is valuable for his sense of self. He nourishes his illusion that he has created something. But he merely adorns himself with borrowed plumes. It is true that he writes the talk, but only “in a way.” In actual fact, he copies the talk. Carl is openly revealed to be just a plagiarist of the lifestyle; he is merely a follower, not an active leader. Most of all, it is Carl himself who gathers self-esteem from his exaggeration. But in the end it is the guru
s talk, not Carl’s, which is accessible to the readers of the Zendo website. The narrator increasingly feels oppressed by the lifestyle and its demands. From the beginning of the story, she makes clear that she feels the need to change her life. Before the narrator introduces us to her relationship with Carl and the implications of their lifestyle, we witness her conversation with her hairdresser. She comes home to her husband after having had a haircut. She is not surprised that Carl implicitly punishes her for her decision: When my husband saw the new short hair, he gave me the look we give each other when one of us forgets who we are. We are not people who buy instant cocoa powder, we do not make small talk, we do not buy Hallmark cards or believe in Hallmark rituals such as Valentines Day or weddings. In general, we try to stay away from things that are MEANINGLESS, and we favor things that are MEANINGFUL. […] Haircuts are in the same category as trimming the finger- and toenails, which is in the same category as mowing the lawn. We don23 65B>>7 H5>?545 ?: =DA?:; 385 >BA:< A5 GD ?3 D:>7 3D B4D?G 9::5I5CCB67 engagement with the neighbors. The neighbors trim their bushes into ridiculous animal shapes. Carl looked at me as if I were the neighbors, as if my hair were in a ridiculous animal shape. (No One 148-49, emphasis original)

The narrator portrays their alternative lifestyle as if it were a set of fixed rules they have to adhere by. Their lifestyle is the main point of identification for them as a couple. They live according to a set frame of self-imposed categories and must work to construct their identity. This turns their private life into a utilitarian enterprise: Everything they do must have a meaning. By this motto they wed Western conceptions of purpose with Eastern spirituality. The capital writing of meaningful
and meaningless
symbolizes the importance these concepts have for their identity. At the same time, the capital letters suggest an exaggeration and consequently a parody. The reader perceives their dogmatism as exaggerated and hence ridiculous.

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Their lifestyle is an alternative to the mainstream, embodied by the neighbors. The narrator constructs the neighbors as the opposite of their enlightened
lifestyle. Notably, although they do not believe in mowing the lawn, they subject themselves to the rules of conduct in their neighborhood. Their lifestyle does not obstruct their fitting-in. They are not radical; they do not want to change the world. Their lifestyle is merely a fashion they follow, without a more significant socio-political aim. They appear to be figures of white complacency that do not attempt to change their surroundings, but merely their insides
. This caring for one
s self only is being contested in the story. From the beginning, a mood of constriction and compulsion dominates it. Their dogmatism leaves no room for experiments. Instead of freely choosing what they like, it constraints the actions that they may take. A simple move, such as cutting her hair short, threatens her belonging to the group. Her new haircut is a signal of her alienation from it. Since she and her husband are united through their dogmatism, her new haircut is also a separation from him. She takes this step without inviting Carl to join her. It is a definite signal. She decides to distance herself from this lifestyle and from Carl
s radical, albeit hollow, expressionism. Her change of outer appearance is a symbolic rebellion against Carl and their shared life. He gives her the look they give each other “when one of us forgets who we are.” Carl does not sense the deeper reason for having her hair cut. She wants to forget who she is in order to become somebody new. The corset of their selfimposed lifestyle, forcing themselves to do only meaningful things, has become too constricting for her. She wants to break free from this lifestyle and from Carl. The narrator is not intimidated by Carl
s punishing reaction. On the contrary, it strengthens her; she follows her new choice. She is looking for a new way to express herself, or, to find a new identity. The narrator therefore is an allegory for the postmodern subject. As Winfried Fluck points out, the question of social respectability, for instance through a stable marriage, has become less important in the postmodern era (“Cultures of Criticism” 215). This notion is also reflected in literature and the arts. He argues that while economic success and social respectability were important categories for the individual before the period of Romanticism, the “experience of cultural difference” and “self-realization” have played a larger cultural role since then. Consequently, in contrast to literary genres that challenge their protagonists to fit into a category,79 “the culture of expressive individualism may instill a new form of compulsiveness, this time, however, not in defense of a stable, inner-directed character but, quite on the contrary, in pursuit of a constant reinvention of the self” (216). The narrator in 79 Fluck refers to the domestic and the realist novel.

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“Mon Plaisir” is in pursuit of exactly this reinvention of herself. She feels that her old identity no longer satisfies her; the Tai Chi and her relationship seem worn out to her. She wants to reinvent herself. In order to feel more “new strangeness,” to “form one large new way,” the narrator drives to a shoe store. “I chose a type of shoe that was completely foreign to me. The salesgirl and I stared down at my white veiny feet in their strappy yellow espadrilles” (151). The narrator wants to find her new self by experimenting. She wants to do this in distinction to her shared lifestyle with Carl. She still has to get used to this new strangeness, but she holds on to it. Her outer expression is a reflection of her inner processes. This becomes obvious in a nighttime conversation with Carl: Narrator: “Have you noticed my new look?” Carl: “Your haircut?” Narrator: “Its more than that.” Carl: “Is it internal?” Narrator: “Yes, and I also got new shoes.” Carl: “Oh.” (155)

She tries to make Carl aware of her newness, but he is not perceptive to it. He does not take much interest in it. Nor does he seem to perceive it as a threat to their relationship. The conversation is over without a telling reaction from Carl. The narrator does not make much of an effort to talk to him about her internal changes. She merely confirms the fact, and then refers to her other external change, her new shoes. This information is rather trivial and is in contrast with the seriousness of her desire to change her life. The communication is brittle, a symbol for their whole relationship. They do not share their thoughts. Their dialogue reflects the distance between them. Language is presented as insufficient to describe the narrator
s desires. Carl
s thoughts are completely hidden. The reader does not have access to his mind. As my reading has established thus far, Buddhism and health food serve the couple as substitutions for their lack of communication. However, these instances fail to unite them. Although embracing a lifestyle is a primary example of expressive individualism, it does not arise here from the characters
inner selves. Instead, they follow the rules of the lifestyle market. In a lifestyle derived from expressing oneself, by contrast, the core of a person
s interests assumes an outer shape. This couple chooses a lifestyle just to join a trend. A shared lifestyle provides people with identity through group membership. Being part of a “lifestyle enclave” (Bellah 72), which at least the Zendo or even Valley Pine might well

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be, is part of an expression of one
s private life. The self is at work here (McGee), because what one does relates to who one is. Being a member of a community, which embraces a certain lifestyle, can give strength to the individual who has lost orientation. The community provides the subject with a reason to believe in him or herself. When the diffuse anxiety, which Bauman defines in The Individualized Society, rises up, the community strengthens his or her sense of life. The healthy and spiritual way of life evoked in this story is indicative of a Californian mindfulness and health culture that has its roots in the 1960s. The two protagonists have actively decided to live according to it and express themselves through it. Expressive individualism has failed to produce a sense of sharing in their relationship. Self-expression through participation in the health movement is revealed to be an outer shell instead of a realization of an inner calling.80 Their healthy and spiritual lifestyle only provides their relationship with a purpose. The desire to be creative and to live their interests intensely increases their shared loneliness instead of uniting them emotionally. It helps them to ignore the fact that they do not belong together. The narrator approaches the problems in her relationship through her self-reflections. Sensing that everything is awry in her relationship causes the narrator to introduce change by re-modeling herself. Step by step, she distances herself from the dogmas that unite her with her husband. By way of her self-reflection, she searches for ways out of her unhappiness. To do so, she tries to be in touch with her feelings, and withholds from Carl the opportunity to understand her. She does not let him interfere. Along with her striving, the story is a parody of alternative life on the American West Coast.81 The couple wants to be part of the health movement; they pretend to pursue a useful and wholesome spiritual life. Their relationship is not passionate, but planned and controlled by their lifestyle. They pursue a Western utilitarian style of Eastern spirituality. A whole industry of healthy living has spread from the West Coast to many other industrialized countries. It promises happiness through living healthily, in touch
with one
s own body. Paradoxically, it is this very spirituality that estranges the couple from each other. Instead of trying to be close to their partner, they identify with what they do instead of who 80 McGee references Max Weber who argued that Americas rise was fostered by Protestantism and the idea of pursuing a calling. Even today, she argues, one hundred years after Webers thesis, it remains fundamental to American culture (25). 81 Similarly, the TV series Portlandia (first broadcasted in January 2011 on IFC) is a parody on the healthy living movement of a real lifestyle enclave: Portland. July lived in Portland in her early twenties and spent some artistically formative years there (cf. Degens; Maak; Cutter).

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they are. They are part of the health movement, even of a Buddhist community. But all these presumably good deeds do not render them more happy. They cannot be natural with one another; their communication is not truthful. It is a facade they live with. Their striving for self-expression creates loneliness in their relationship. It leads to the final decision that they are better served when completely alone and independent from each other. The story portrays an individual that is in between conflicting desires for stability and independent self-fashioning. The devotion that is requested for a partnership is compromised in a society that values self-expression and individualism. The narrator wants to be true to herself, to find her own style and her individual way. She is alone in the end, feeling liberated from her relationship. She cannot wait to be apart from Carl, to be alone: “This is it, I thought. I
m alone now. I looked down the street to be sure. Yes” (No One 167). The open ending is ambiguous about the narrator
s achievement. Her solitariness creates an atmosphere of relief and independence, but at the same time, of desolation. Being alone and having shed a worn-out identity does not mean that she will succeed in inventing herself anew. She ends the story at a moment when it is unclear whether she will succeed in leading a more self-fulfilling life. Leaving the reader with this unresolved situation nourishes doubts that she will succeed in inventing herself anew. The ending thus underlines the dialectical relationship between individualism and isolation. 4.2.2 “The Man on the Stairs:” Defining Individuality Through Self-Reflection July
s use of the first-person narrator allows for insight into the narrators
psyches. The focalization enables the reader to follow their motivations and learn about their secret thoughts and emotions; they cannot express these thoughts to the characters that make up their social surrounding. This strategy is most rigorously applied in “The Man on the Stairs.” The story
s frame is constituted by a man coming up the stairs and the narrator awaiting him, lying in her bed. Her interior monologue constitutes the main story. Her monologue and the man
s movements are constitutive of each other. In congruity with his upward movement – which is possibly only imagined by the narrator – she starts to selfreflect. She contemplates different aspects of her life. These involve her boyfriend and their courtship, as well as her relationship to her friends. Her selfreflections are repeatedly interrupted by her awareness of the man on the stairs. Eventually, she gets up to face him and chases him away; this breaks the stasis.

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In the following, I will analyze the story with regard to the question how selfreflection is used to define the self
s individuality. In the very beginning of the story, the narrator pulls the reader into her state of half-sleep. In the isolation of the night, she wakes up to “a quiet sound” of a man coming up the stairs (No One 33). The language elicits stasis and quietude, which establishes a mysterious atmosphere. She describes how paralyzed she is, holding her “breath,” trying to “whisper” to her boyfriend, “squeezing Kevin
s wrists in units” but “after a while I realized I wasn
t even squeezing his wrist, I was just pulsing the air” (33). Unable to move, she awaits the threatening steps to come closer. Her state of half-consciousness underscores the mysterious atmosphere. It is unclear whether she is dreaming or awake. This dreamlike state offers access to her thoughts and feelings. The story plays with the sensation of not knowing what is real and what is imagined. Not able to move, her aspirations to signal to her boyfriend are faint – as if they were not executed at all. It is as if her boyfriend were not there, as if she were alone. She hears the man slowly moving up, taking his time. He creeps into her private sphere, threatening her and her boyfriend; he knows “how vulnerable we were” (34). The man coming upstairs constitutes the story
s frame. Lying in bed, the narrator introduces us to a story about herself. The rising suspense of the man
s upward movement is thus interrupted. The man on the stairs becomes a means to enter her inner self. Pondering the man
s movements, she reflects: “He seemed to have all the time in the world for this, my God, did he have time. I have never taken such care with anything. That is my problem with life, I rush through it, like I
m being chased” (34). The man triggers critical self-reflections in her. How are the man
s upward movement and the narrator
s reflections constitutive of each other? By comparison, the narrator admires him. He is characterized by what she finds to be most prominently lacking in herself: the capacity to live in the moment and to concentrate. She thus refers to the realm of East Asian wisdom, which is perceived as contrary to the Western pace of life.82 The meditative striving for self-awareness has been appropriated by the Western self-help realm and is geared towards the stressed individual (cf. Werthmann; Franck 243-44; McGee 72). The feeling of being chased corresponds to the speed of information-society and the consequent fast urban life. The narrator represents an individual who has incorporated such a fast-paced lifestyle. She would like to have the ability to concentrate on the moment instead of rushing from one aim to the

82 In the analysis of “Mon Plaisir,” I already refer to this phenomenon by the term mindfulness.

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next. She wishes she could live more carefully, and consequently have a more balanced and fulfilled life. The story
s setting, the inactivity in the night, stands in contrast to her usual speed and distractions. It provides a situation in which she is able to concentrate. She lies still and listens. The man
s slow motion and her paralysis give her time to compare herself to him. She uses this time to ponder her life. In her perception, the man on the stairs is the exact opposite of her. He moves slowly but decidedly, his aim in sight. He knows exactly what he wants and how to achieve it. He does not rush it. His steps prove that he is self-assured that everything will happen just the way he wants. The narrator’s problem is contrasted by his movements: The silence becomes longer and longer until I start to wonder if the man is there at all.… But lo. A strong and certain creak issues from the stairwell, and what I feel is thrilling relief. He is really there, he is on the stairs, and he is coming closer in his own breathtakingly slow way. If I lived to see daylight, I would never forget this lesson in care. (No One 37)

The narrator
s anticipation is expressed by words evoking thrill and suspense. She is so curious about the near future that she becomes disappointed when she does not hear him anymore. She feels “thrilling relief” when a “strong and certain creak issues.” Awaiting him forces her to think about herself, to reflect on her own character. She takes the time to criticize herself for what she is. She looks up to the man for his decisiveness that she finds lacking in herself. She even perceives him as her teacher. He gives her a “lesson in care;” a lesson she senses she desperately needs. He carefully moves up towards his aim, without rushing. This is exactly how she wishes herself to be. He acts according to his wishes, his inner self, which renders him powerful and self-reliant. The narrator confesses that she does not take care of her own life or relationship. She narrates that a fight with her boyfriend occurred before they had gone to sleep that night. Through her memory of the process of their courtship, she pictures her second great problem in life – dissatisfaction: “I am never satisfied with what I have” (36). The dissatisfaction, she reflects, is her own fault. Living in the moment, being satisfied with what one has, is also a kind of wisdom that is taught in the East and is picked up by the Western self-help realm. She always strives for something new and better, which is a way of life promoted by consumer society. She envies the man for his self-control and implies that if she followed through with her life in the same way as he does, she would be more satisfied.

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Her self-deprecation goes further when she tells the reader about her emotional ties to other people. She considers herself to be “a drag,” that is not “adored” by her friends (35). Her self-diagnosed dissatisfaction reveals itself mostly in the manner that she talks about her friendships: “Sometimes I lie in bed trying to decide which of my friends I truly care about, and I always come to the conclusion: none of them. I thought these were just my starter friends and the real ones would come along later. But no. These are my real friends” (35). Again, she elaborates on her two prominent problems in her life: Her dissatisfaction with what she has and her lack of care. In this instance, both concern her friendships and even her relationship. She is an individualist who cares most of all about herself. However, she does not assume she is alone in feeling this way. In fact, she posits that most people can empathize: “Most people do. You always feel you are the only one in the world, like everyone else is crazy for each other, but it
s not true. Generally, people don
t like each other very much” (35). She thus confides her misanthropic opinion in the reader. By changing to a direct address, she includes the reader in her observation. She speaks about solipsism and assumes that everyone feels it. Her view appears to be a self-protection. To think that people do not really like each other takes pressure away: the desire to be liked by many people. By this move, she gives the impression that she does not see the need to change her situation. She takes it as a fact that people do not like each other. Consequently, she does not have to try to find friends she truly likes and who adore her. If most people feel this way, there is no reason that she has to feel bad about the fact that “I never really knew true love” (35). Adding to her self-protection, her view of society is fundamentally individualistic, even egocentric: Everybody just thinks about him or herself. The narrator implies that she only wants to have the best and that she is worth it. At this point, the ideal of the expressive individual clearly comes to the fore. The narrator wishes she had friends who lived according to their true selves. But they do not venture the ultimate experience, and she disrespects them for this fact: They are people with jobs in their fields of interest. My oldest friend, Marilyn, loves to sing and is head of enrollment at a prestigious music school. Its a good job, but not as good as just opening your mouth and singing. La. I always thought I would be friends with a professional singer. A jazz singer. A best friend who is a jazz singer and a reckless but safe driver. (35)

The romantic notion of the expressive individual lies at the heart of the narrator
s dissatisfaction. Her best friend does not realize her inner self according to this

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romantic image. She chooses safety, a good job, and abandons a more daring career as a singer. She represents middle-class security; whereas the narrator would admire her for being a member of the creative class. Instead of pursuing the artist
s way, the way of the self-expressionist, she chooses an office job. The narrator despises her for this. Marilyn does not realize her talent and does not pursue the experience of being a singer. She does not express her inner self. The narrator evokes the image of the passionate jazz singer who puts all her emotions into her voice. In the style of Jazz one does not know beforehand how the song will develop; it is spontaneous and wild. The narrator underscores this image by wishing her friend to be a “reckless but safe” car driver. This friend would know where she is going, and she would pursue this aim without looking back, yet still be safe. Her opinion about her friends appears to be a self-projection. The same psychological strategy emerges when she thinks about her boyfriend. She looks back to the courtship in order to explain her desire to have a boyfriend who is also an expressive individual. In the reflection on her relationship, the narrator exemplifies that she can never really enjoy what she does or has, as she always thinks of something or somebody else. She had desired her present boyfriend Kevin for thirteen years before he finally becomes interested in her. But on the day of their first date, the narrator falters: On the way to the restaurant, we stopped at a gas station. I sat in the car and watched a teenage boy clean the windshield while Kevin paid for the gas. The boy used the squeegee with a kind precision that made you know this job was not simply within his field of interest, this was exactly it, this was all he had ever wanted. La. As we pulled out of the gas station, I stared through my perfect, clean window at the teenager and thought: I should be with him instead. (36)

Her desire to be surrounded by people who know what they want to be and do makes her question her love for Kevin. She is even impressed by a teenage boy who is using a squeegee. His passion in cleaning a windshield impresses the narrator. One wonders whether the boy actually wants this trivial job, since it is not a form of expressive individualism. Working in this menial job, the boy certainly does not belong to the creative class. The fact that she becomes unhappy when comparing the boy
s passion with her boyfriend
s proves that she is indeed never happy with what she has. There is no obvious reason for her unhappiness. Apparently, she enjoys being dissatisfied. She searches for reasons to be dissatisfied and cultivates this feeling, which is proof of her depressive disposition.

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The narrator returns to tell us about her actual situation, while she anticipates the man coming upstairs. Eventually, decisively, she gets out of bed and approaches the stairwell. She is finally ready to look this threatening figure in the eye, and moves to confront it. She faces him: I expelled my dust, the powder of everything I had destroyed with doubt, and he pulled it into his lungs. My eyes were adjusting and I saw a man, an ordinary man, a stranger. We were staring into each others eyes, and suddenly I felt furious. Go away, I whispered. Get out. Get out of my house. (37)

The story
s climax is a spiritual experience. Symbolically, the narrator forces out her “dust,” something old and useless within herself. Now she experiences a sensation of self-cleansing. Her doubts have crushed solid things for so long, they have turned to “powder.” By confronting the man on the stairs she positions herself and stands as a woman. He cannot impress her anymore, as she realizes he is just “an ordinary man” and she can equal him, “staring into each other
s eyes.” She learns from the man that moving with self-reliance, without being distracted, makes an impression on others. By confronting him, she assumes a similar posture; it reflects her own empowerment and her ability to impress him and others. The night of self-reflections has provided her with the ability to ponder her life. She has to do this on her own. Nobody can help her, not even her boyfriend who is asleep next to her. She has to deal with her “dust” and with the man on the stairs on her own; she thus acquires self-reliance. The story sets out as a meditative journey to the inner self. The character seizes the moment to gather self-awareness by way of reflecting on herself. This happens through a comparison of herself with the man on the stairs, her friends, and her boyfriend. The narrator needs these comparisons to find out about herself: to see that she is impatient and dissatisfied. She implicitly characterizes herself as an individualistic, even egocentric, character. Thus, she is not a sympathetic character and disturbs the reader
s identification. Although the ending suggests that she faces these deficiencies in her character, she does not become a figure of identification. We have to doubt that she becomes a noble character. Unlike her friend Marilyn she does not want to falter over her challenges. Instead of just waiting for fate to decide about her life, she gets up to influence it. The moment of suspense about what will happen when the man arrives upstairs culminates in her actively seeking a confrontation. While she has been intimidated by the man
s self-reliance, in the end she gathers the strength to become his equal. From the certainty the man radiates, she has learned to act self-reliantly. This braveness is joined by an act of symbolic self-cleansing. She expels doubts

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about herself. Through her meditations, she has become a subject with access to herself. This is the precondition to express her inner self, to belong to the creative class, in contrast with Marilyn, who has given up. This individualistic aim will however not render her a sympathetic, noble character. 4.2.3 “Making Love in 2003:” How Not to Become an Artist Entrepreneur The story “Making Love in 2003” takes the persona of the artist as writer under scrutiny. The artist is the expressive individual par excellence (Fluck, “Cultures of Criticism” 218). According to Fluck, the Romantic period introduced the notion that the self should find expression in art. Building on a similar argument, McGee underscores that the religious idea of following a “calling” given by god has turned into the secular notion that the individual should follow a path of the heart (McGee 44). To this aim, he or she should find the inner core of his or her character and emotions, and seek a way to express this innermost self. In her focus on the professional self, McGee argues that private life and work have been merged into a single entity in the late twentieth century. The artist entrepreneur constructs him or herself as an entrepreneur of art by fashioning his or her life as a piece of art (136) and by managing his or her image (McGee 162; also cf. Fluck “Cultures of Criticism”). How does the story “Making Love in 2003” present this model of the artist entrepreneur? A young woman narrates her story of how she has met a dark shape that has become her lover. She has turned her experiences with him into a book, which her advisor finds promising. When she waits for her advisor at his house to give him her second book, he does not appear for their appointment. Instead, she meets his wife who is a famous writer. She soon finds out that her advisor has forgotten their appointment because he is having an affair with another former female student of his. The narrator then moves on to find a different occupation. She becomes a special needs assistant to a fourteen-year-old boy named Steven, who has learning disabilities. She sees in him the material reincarnation of her dark shape and starts a love affair with him. But Steven deceives her, and the story ends with all her wishes shattered. The beginning of the story, “Making Love in 2003,” depicts the narrator as pursuing the life of an expressive individualist. The young woman is in love with “a dark shape,” “a glowing darkness” that used to visit her at night when she was a teenager (No One 111). She wrote one book about her love with the dark shape, and finishes a second book. She reflects on her relationship with the dark shape by writing about it. Thus, she gives an outer shape to her innermost self,

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her desires. According to Fluck, she fits the category of the transcendental character (”Das Individuum”): She follows a path of the heart by writing about her emotions and creating art. It is now her intention to turn her expressive individualism into professional success, to become an “artist entrepreneur” (McGee 128). The young first-person narrator introduces us to the story
s frame. She sits in her former college adviser
s house, with his wife, waiting for him to appear for their appointment. Her college adviser
s wife acknowledges the legitimacy of her aspirations to become a writer: “He says you are very talented” (No One 107). Despite her obvious creative potential, her ability to become an artist entrepreneur is dependent on her supervisor. Therefore, all her hopes are concentrated on his appearance: I had written every day for a whole year with his business card taped to my computer, and now I was done […]. It was his job to do with me what he would. What would he do? What do the men do with the very talented young women who have finished writing their books? Would he kiss me? Would he invite me to be his daughter or wife or babysitter? Would he send me and my book to the place where the next thing would happen? Would he rub my legs and make me cry? (108)

From the factual recounting of how she spent the last year, and is now awaiting his arrival, she lapses into an absurd series of questions. She establishes herself as a naïve young woman. In her innocence about work life, she ponders the kind of relation she will have to her adviser. She refers to the private sphere, something she knows. She considers the possibility of a private, even emotional relationship. All she needs, she implies, is somebody who looks after her, who takes her future into his hands, a guardian. She confides in the reader that she has no realistic idea about her future. The absurdity of her questions proves that she is alien to the rationalist world and its structural rules. She thus inhabits the traits of the transcendental character. Winfried Fluck has shown with regards to Henry James
work how the transcendental character is doomed to fail because selfrealization is not possible without the character
s knowledge about the rules of society (Das kulturelle Imaginäre; ”Das Individuum”). “Making Love in 2003” recontextualizes James
character constellation of naïve woman and male guardian at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The narrator
s next steps are to be decided by her college adviser because she has no knowledge about society. Her character is thus established as a transcendental subject who seeks her individual identity through an act of imaginary self-empowerment (cf. Fluck, “Das Individuum” 996). Moreover, she also confirms the stereotype of the young artist. She sets out to be a writer, to express herself in the art of writing. She con-

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centrates her writing on herself and her experiences. This concentration on herself, her isolation in her process of writing, also isolates her from her social surrounding. She is a creative person, fulfilling the stereotype of the artist who acts according to her feelings instead of rationality. She is a transcendental subject who concentrates on her inner self in order to act according to it. To do so, she has to turn away from society. In “Making Love,” the narrator has written for a whole year, concentrating on herself and her story in seclusion. Her dependent position, as young woman barely out of college, reveals that her withdrawal is a self-delusion – it clashes with reality. This demarcation of her possibility for self-realization turns her into a realist subject. Society, or the institution, here embodied by the advisor, constitutes the realm within which she has to assert herself. She can therefore be categorized as a transcendental subject at the limits of her self-realization. The young woman patiently waits together with her college adviser
s wife, who becomes angry. The narrator suddenly realizes that if the college adviser does not show up soon, she will have to leave. “My heart fell because I hadn
t planned anything beyond this meeting.[…] I had moved everything out of my house and put it in my car, which was parked out in front of his house. I was all ready to go” (No One 108). She is an extreme character in the sense that she gives up everything to become a writer. A comical effect is produced by her irrationality and absurd behavior. At the same time, it is a dramatic moment. She has nothing else planned and has destroyed all evidence of her former life. This shows that she strongly believes that the meeting with the adviser will determine her life and take it in a new direction. She was sure that her adviser would approve of her second book and support her. Dramatically, her prior imagination of the situation proves to be completely wrong. It is amusing and alarming at the same time that she takes this risk and that she realizes too late that she has started a risky enterprise. The story
s beginning serves to introduce the narrator
s wishes, and to counteract them with reality. In total, the story is constituted by three story lines. They lead into each other with the effect that the reader is confused in trying to tell them apart. They effectively blur the boundaries between her narrating lived reality and her fictionalizing of events. At the same time, her wishful thinking stands in opposition to the actual events. Again, the transcendental subject is brought to its limits when faced with social reality. What are the contents of the different story elements? At the point of the story when she tells the reader what her first book is about, the levels of reality merge. She has written the book about her love relationship with the dark shape. The dark shape first appeared when she was fif-

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teen: “I knew right away it was a sexual predator because it was vibing me and I felt self-conscious in my nightgown” (111). Being a teenager who never kissed anybody, she soon cherishes the nighttime encounters with the dark shape: “If I was scared the first time, it was because I didn
t know I could survive such pleasure” (112). The love affair with the dark shape takes place on a metaphysical level. She addresses the reader directly in order to convince him or her of her reliability: “It was dark, but it glowed, which is the first of many facts you will have to tackle with your imagination” (111). The reader is explicitly motivated to engage his or her imagination in order to understand the story. She interrupts the flow of her story when she mentions that she has written the story for an implied reader, her college adviser: “I had only lifted my hand a little bit when the darkness was upon me. This is the part I stretched out over a whole chapter because I knew Madeleine L
Engle
s husband would get off on it. Basically, what happened was that it fucked me” (111-12). She has fashioned the story according to what she thinks would arouse her adviser
s interest. The sexually explicit language she uses contrasts with the spirituality of the recounted scene. The union with the dark shape does not merely happen spiritually, but physically. The story of the dark shape is part of her as much as being an aspiring writer. The narrator discloses the process from inspiration to the act of writing. The story here becomes self-reflexive. The narrator blurs the story about her visit to her adviser
s house and the contents of her book. Blurring the story lines presents the different layers of her reality. They become inextricably linked with each other, until they cannot be told apart. This intermingling, moreover, depicts how her transcendental self becomes interlinked with her realist self. July here applies a characteristic spirituality to her style in contrast to a purely realistic setting. In order to analyze this stylistic element, a comparison with Carver is helpful. How do they differ and to which effect? There are a couple of realistic aspects in “Making Love:” It is set in a middle-class suburban environment. The narrator visits a house that features pillows embroidered with the words “Making Love in ...” (107, 109). In this domestic sphere, the narrator is sitting together with a woman, a stranger to her, whom she perceives to be a housewife. This setting is not foreign to the white middle-class reader and resembles Carver
s “hyperrealist” fiction (Hallett 15). By contrast, the narrator
s introduction of the glowing dark shape sharply contrasts the realistic atmosphere the story conveys at first. With this supernatural element, July
s style is to be differentiated from that of Raymond Carver
s. His short stories stay in the realistic sphere exclusively. Comparable to “Making Love,” his story “Put Yourself in My Shoes” is concerned with the narrator
s inspiration to write. In that story, a writer and his wife are visiting another couple.

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They are strangers to each other, although the visiting couple knows their house well. They had rented it while the other couple had been abroad. The owners learn that the male visitor is a writer, and feel motivated to inspire him by telling stories for him to write down. They get increasingly upset when they realize that the writer ridicules their attempts and makes fun of them. The story concludes when the couple is driven out of the house because of this insolence: “He was at the very end of a story” (Carver 110). This self-reflexivity at the ending affects the entire reading experience of the story in hindsight. Carver does not disrupt the realism of his story. The artist as writer is portrayed as if doomed to be misunderstood by middle-class bigotry. But it is also the very reality that provides him with inspiration. By contrast, July
s narrator is inspired by surreal experiences. However, this is not the only level of reality that the story is set in. The narrator insists that her dark shape is real. July allows her narrator this belief in supernatural phenomena, as if to posit that reality and fiction are real to the same degree, or, constitute each other. When she recounts her act of writing, the narrator mentions her adviser
s wife, Madeleine L
Engle. When the wife tells her she is also writing, the narrator doubts this. Her interior monologue reveals her disrespect by assuming her to be a housewife without any other occupation, “[m]aybe [...] writing the word sweaters
on a big box of sweaters before putting it in the attic for the summer” (No One 109). She feels superior to the wife
s middle-class appearance. But then she learns that his wife is a famous writer. The young excited narrator is now contrasted to the calm and situated, successful writer. The narrator is making her own deductions that have little to do with reality, but are shaped by images about other people. She seems isolated from other characters. By contrast, Madeleine L
Engle lives a life that combines creativity with a situated middle-class life. She is an example of an accomplished woman writer. Here, the narrator is presented with an example of an expressive individual who has succeeded in combining her artistic and her entrepreneurial sides. All the signs that indicate that the young woman will fail are confirmed when she finally sees her advisor. The situation stands in radical contrast with her imagination and brings about a moment of absurdity. When she looks for him on the street and spots his car, she sees another former student of his satisfying him orally. The revelation that the adviser is indeed interested in young women
s sexual experiences brings another setback. She understands that her adviser forgot their meeting because he is dating another former student. At this point, her adviser
s professional interests in the narrator are to be doubted. The advisor, or guardian, is revealed to have manipulative traits.

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As I have already mentioned above, the motive of the guardian is a major one in the realistic novels of Henry James. As Fluck has argued, the figure of the guardian in Henry James
work takes on the part of leading a young woman through the complexities of society (Das kulturelle Imaginäre; ”Das Individuum”). However, the figure of the guardian is ambiguous or even deceitful. The young woman is easily subjected to manipulations by the guardian. Only if she detects the manipulation can she become an independent subject. One possible reaction to such deception is to become independent: to distance herself from the manipulating guardian (Fluck, ”Das Individuum” 1004). The other possibility is to copy the manipulative traits (Fluck, Das kulturelle Imaginäre 278). In “Making Love,” the young female narrator does not become an independent subject when she detects the deception by her advisor – or, guardian. Rather, she seeks help from somebody else. She goes to see a therapist, not to undergo therapy because of her love for an imagined ghost. She goes in order to contact him again: “Angela Mitchell LCSW, therapy supporting the integration of body, mind, spirit, and world.… I hoped Angela Mitchell meant her ad literally. I imagined a couples counseling/séance for me and the dark shape” (No One 118). But she is once again deceived, as the therapist only provides trivial advice. She does not tell the therapist that the lover she longs for is a dark shape. The therapist helps her anyway in a rational way by motivating her to get a job. The narrator starts working at a special-education school, a fact in stark contrast with her initial aim of becoming an artist-entrepreneur. The story lines of the visit to her adviser
s home and the story about herself and the dark shape are further complicated when she recounts how the dark shape eventually takes on the form of a human being. At the same time, her transcendental characteristics are further blurred with realist ones. She perceives it to be destiny when she meets a young man named Steven and sees in him her dark shape. He is a student at her work place, a school for children with special needs. Thus, her dark shape materializes as a fourteen-year-old boy with learning difficulties. She is his twenty-four-year-old special needs assistant. Obviously, this constellation carries controversial moral implications. But the narrator is not endowed with enough social integrity to refrain from seeing him as a sexual partner. The transition of her dark shape into her professional life further blurs the boundaries between her imagination and the real circumstances. The story lines are narrated in turns. Her psychic state becomes worse through her unfulfilled love and longing. She wishes that the dark shape were real, and therefore she shuts out all other desires and pretends it has become true. Now she copies the manipulative traits of her student advisor and becomes her student
s guardian
. From her vantage point, the boy returns the love. How-

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ever, the narrator
s isolating first-person narration excludes his perspective. Consequently, the reader can imagine that the boy is manipulated into becoming the narrator’s lover. The narrator disturbs the reader by way of behaving incorrectly for an adult woman and by refusing to occupy a moral position. She exploits her position and initiates a disturbing relationship. But the joy the narrator feels does not last long. Society again obstructs her happiness. First, she has to learn “to be discreet” (126) about their age difference. Then she finds out that the boy has fallen in love with a girl of his own age. Again disappointed, she has to acknowledge the failure of her love affair. Once she has become the guardian, she misuses her power to manipulate the relationship. The boy becomes independent from her and proves to have more common sense than her.83 The narrator appears defeated in her private life and work. She started out with the abilities to be an expressive individual according to Fluck
s definition. She is urged by her inner self, by her emotions, to write in order to “let go” (No One 117). Through her writing, she attempts to come to terms with her love relationship. She is spiritually perceptive, feeling a dark shape entering her body and falling in love with her. She follows her inner calling
to write. However, she fails to perform the transition to fashion her life as a piece of art. While she writes down her experiences, she has difficulties in becoming an entrepreneur of her art. By concentrating on her faculties, writing, she loses touch with a realistic conception of her career. Through her character, the transcendental subject is mislead by its self-delusions. Her naïve misconceptions of society lead to her failure. In contrast with Madeleine L
Engle, she experiences deceit from her adviser, which clashes with her aspirations. At the end of the story, she is depressed and stays in bed all day. “I wept and curled and uncurled myself in a way I couldn
t control” (128). Her life situation finds expression in her uncontrollable body. The blurring of her stories into one single story reflects her state of mind. It is hard for her to distinguish between her spiritual, transcendental inner self and the realist world. Her story lays open a youthful illusion. The mere belief in her personal future accomplishments does not result in a career. Becoming independent and working in one
s calling
is a struggle one cannot win alone. Society, here symbolized by the student advisor, also needs to be taken into account for one
s self-realization. Pure individualism is revealed to lead the subject into self-delusion. She has placed her future into her guardian ' & / '   /   &  & &( ' J) %$ ) , the manipulative traits she learned from him for her own ends, she fails once again. She does not become an independent subject who realizes herself. 83 For further analyses of Julys employment of the child figure, see chapter 3.3, “Children and Sexuality”.

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The readings of the three stories have shown that July presents the concept of expressive individualism in an ambivalent way. On the one hand, she promotes the concept of finding the inner self, most clearly displayed in the self-reflection of the narrator in “The Man on the Stairs.” On the other hand, her characters do not achieve happiness through this process. These are not stories about achievers, but about characters whose situations in the stories
endings are open to the reader
s imagination. The characters
search for their inner selves is a seemingly endless spiritual process, accompanied with a lot of agony. But despite her negative feelings, the narrator in “The Man” affirms herself in the end. “Mon Plaisir” also presents a narrator who wishes to shed an old self: to find the inner core of her feeling and reinvent herself. This continuously renewed self-realization is endless, as the ambiguous ending demonstrates. The narrators
narcissistic concerns are congruent with the form of the stories. Hence, the plot developments are secondary to the narrators
unfolding emotional worlds. The narrations appear almost static in their focus on a single motive (Schader). The plots, conforming to postmodern plot construction, are often non-linear. States of mind-expansion, as in dreams and meditation, create the disruption of linearity and contrast the ordinary settings. The narrators thus blur their wishful thinking with the reality of the story world, providing the reader with a close-up of their desires. Through this blurring, July creates a sense for the subjectivity of reality. In these states, the narrators
wishes are dramatically contrasted with the reality they are misperceiving. Fitting Hallett
s definition of the minimalist short story, the stories
endings typically deny a resolution. The open endings ask the reader to actively generate meaning. The narrators
attempts to change and to achieve happiness fail. Instead, they are in the same mindset as at the beginning of the story, not having succeeded in inventing themselves anew. In Bellah
s definition of expressive individualism, a person
s core of feelings, “though unique, is not necessarily alien to other persons or to nature. Under certain conditions, the expressive individualist may find it possible through intuitive feeling to merge
with other persons, with nature, or with the cosmos as a whole” (Bellah 333-34). This merging
with other persons is exactly what July
s characters seek. Dramatically, in the preceding stories, they do not achieve a unity of souls
. Rather, the characters
individualism is always prone to distance them from other people. The narrator in “The Man” has the feeling that the people who surround her do not value her as much as she is worth. She brings about the message that she has reason to value herself and has all rights to feel as she does. In “Making Love,” the artist as the expressive individual par excellence is

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challenged by the fact that expressing oneself is not enough. One needs to be an artist-entrepreneur in order to fashion one
s life as a piece of art. Moreover, one needs to be knowledgeable about and independent from manipulative tendencies in society. The characters are shown to be self-centered, lonely strugglers who feel misunderstood. In “Mon Plaisir,” language is unable to express the emotions that could lead to an understanding between the partners. Communication is generally not presented as a reliable tool to understand each other. Instead, the focus is on the character
s internal worlds. This concentration on the self affirms the notion that the self can only know the self, but cannot escape it. By trying to gain spiritual access to themselves, the characters seek the right path to find their inner calling
. This search in fact alienates them further from their surrounding. All three stories end on an open note that points to a new beginning – one that is, frustratingly, likely to initiate a story with a similarly unsuccessful plot.

4.3 S EXUAL I NADEQUACY Part of the search for the inner self is the search for one
s sexuality. With reference to Bauman
s argument, sexuality is regarded as a major indicator for the individual
s fitness. In order to feel the degree of personal fitness, he argues, the individual strives for sensations. The summit of all pleasurable sensation in today
s Western societies is sexual pleasure (Bauman 227). Following Bauman
s thesis, it is not surprising that sexuality is a major theme in advice literature. Eva Illouz believes that its popularity is due to its being one of the most “conflictridden areas of social conduct” (20). Individuals feel the need to manage their sexual lives to find solutions for these conflicts. In the case of negative sexual experiences or a passive sexual life, advice books offer help to the individual. The privacy that the book guarantees saves the help-seeker from embarrassing him or herself (Starker 4). In light of this, Miranda July
s characters appear painfully outspoken in describing their sexual failures. They do not withhold their negative sexual experiences, ‘strange
practices, or a total lack of sexual activity in their lives. The reader has the feeling of eavesdropping on them. As exemplified in the story “Making Love in 2003,” the description of sexual experience receives considerable attention and significance. This is also true for the story “Mon Plaisir,” which I analyzed above with regard to the aspect of expressive individualism. Here, the narrator and her husband
s habitual form of sexual intercourse mirrors their emotional separateness. The narrator
s body does not respond to her hus-

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band’s. Instead, they have a kind of sexual intercourse that belongs to the category “Important Things That We Don
t Understand and Definitely Are Not Going to Talk About”: “We did it in our way. Carl nursed and I jacked him off. Then I turned away and touched myself while Carl patted the back of my head. I came, and Carl
s hand drifted back to his side of the bed” (No One 158). Instead of describing fulfilling intercourse, the narrator
s description is replete with attributes of separateness. She stresses the border that runs through their bed as his hand drifts back to his side. He has got his side, she has got hers. Their sexual life is thus presented as lacking unity and passion. Symbolically, they do not form a unity. Moreover, the narrator
s openness in revealing this failed form of sexual unification embarrasses the reader. She and her husband Carl are pathetic figures and disturb identification. The narrators
sexual frankness has been generally attributed to July
s prose (Boncza-Tomaszewski). The theme of sexuality plays a part in the majority of July
s stories, having prompted reviews that are unable to define her “strangely erotic fiction” more specifically (Cutter, n.pag.). This lack of definition indicates that July
s fiction is special in its literary treatment of sexuality, and hence merits close reading. In the following, I offer readings of the stories “Something That Needs Nothing” and “The Sister”. What function do the disturbing moments have? How is the search for the self connected to a search for one
s sexuality? 4.3.1 Ambiguous Sexual Self-Definition in “Something That Needs Nothing” “Something That Needs Nothing” is told from a young adult
s point of view. The female narrator and her best friend Pip leave their parents and go to Portland together. The two young women
s relationship is unbalanced because the narrator is in love with Pip. They have no money and have to find a way to pay their rent. Common jobs repel them and so they try to earn money through prostitution for female clients. This strategy fails, and consequently the narrator has the idea of working in a peep show. Pip is irritated by this suggestion. Although the narrator does everything to humor her, Pip leaves her to live with another girl. The narrator suffers, but pulls herself up to start working at a peep show. One night after work, a client stalks her. The narrator calls Pip to ask her to pick her up. In her disguise, wearing a wig, Pip accepts her as a lover. After a brief happy phase, the narrator falls ill and takes off the wig. From that moment, she is again undesirable for Pip. Having lost Pip again, the narrator quits her job at the peep show.

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The story opens with a passage that leaves the parents behind, introducing the protagonists on the edge of a new beginning and a break with tradition: In an ideal world, we would have been orphans. We felt like orphans and we felt deserving of the pity that orphans get, but embarrassingly enough, we had parents. I even had two. They would never let me go, so I didn23

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note. (No One 63)

The “we” includes the narrator and her friend Pip. Their feelings are stereotypical teenager
s feelings, marking the first steps to a realization of an independent, self-reliant life. The narrator underscores the fact that she has two parents. A state that is commonly perceived as ideal in her words sounds as if it were a double burden. Besides being presented as typical, embarrassed teenagers, they are constructed as American characters, because “[b]reaking with the past is part of our past. Leaving tradition behind runs all the way through our tradition” (Bellah 75). The narrator perceives her parents as a curtailment to her freedom. They would never let her go; in other words, staying with them inhibits her development into a self-reliant adult. Therefore, she chooses a radical break and leaves them. She and Pip move to Portland together. “We were anxious to begin our life as people who had no people” (No One 64). The narrator conveys their determination to leave their past behind, emancipating themselves from their families. They have a romantic idea of self-reliance, which in fact amounts to isolating themselves. The two young women find an apartment and are amazed at the thought that it only belongs to them. The narrator however discloses to the reader that their feelings toward each other are unbalanced: “This was tremendously thrilling for one of us. One of us had always been in love with the other. One of us lived in a perpetual state of longing” (64). Pip does not return the narrator
s love, a fact that causes a hierarchy in their relationship. While the narrator wishes to move in with Pip because she loves her, Pip
s reasons remain obscure. The reader can only speculate about Pip’s reasons from the narrator
s explanation that they are living together “because we had grown up together and were the only people we knew” (70). Their relationship as best friends seems to be motivated mostly by their isolation from other people. Antithetical to the notion of best comradeship, theirs is a “dislocated relationship.” Hallett defines this kind of relationship as a characteristic for minimal short stories (3). The narrator feels inadequate because she cannot make Pip love her. Her young age suggests that she has not gained sexual confidence yet. Her homosexual desire towards Pip has however always been a fact. Although she

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ventures the first step towards fashioning her own life by leaving her parents, she does not take the second step towards this aim. Staying with Pip means that she will be “destined to sleep like children,” instead of developing an erotic, grownup relationship. “Like an old couple who had met before the sexual revolution and were too shy to learn the new way” (No One 64) the narrator does not know how to free herself from traditions she desperately wishes to shed. The narrator again refers to her wish to become self-reliant: This time it is not her parents that are responsible for her dependence, but her shared history with Pip. She wishes to find her own self, her sexuality, her path in life. Her secluded individuality, however, has its limits. Instead of becoming self-reliant, she thinks about herself and her self-realization only in connection to Pip: “We needed time to consider ourselves, to come up with a theory about who we were and set it to music” (64). The story is thus not about gaining her individuality, but about having a fulfilling relationship. The two girls have serious problems sustaining themselves. They are without parental financial support; they leave a secure and sheltered life for a more risky, expressive kind of lifestyle. Being untrained and repelled by common jobs, prostitution appears to be the only possible way to make money. Paradoxically, in order to express their inner selves, the girls prefer prostitution to socially accepted labor. Their choice affirms the impression that leaving their families is to a great extent caused by their desire to have sexual experiences. However, they only want to have sexual encounters with women. “We knew this was the only way we could make money without compromising ourselves” (65). Their reasoning is absurd, as prostitution is commonly regarded as the most selfcompromising job. For them, the idea of prostituting themselves is not the repulsive aspect; only prostituting themselves for men is repulsive. The venture to perform sexual services for women soon proves to be a failure. Eventually, they must admit that men are the target audience for sexual services. Inspired by the movie Paris, Texas, the narrator suggests that they work in a peep show. Pip is decidedly against this, and when the narrator suggests she could do it without her, Pip becomes angry. The narrator concedes: Narrator: “I wont do it, never mind.” Pip: “You sound disappointed.” Narrator: “Im not.” Pip: “It2C DLB7< F L:DA 7D9 AB:3 385= 3D >DDL B3 7D9EM Narrator: “Who?” Pip: “Men.”

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Narrator: “No, I dont.” Pip: “If you do that, then I cant be with you anymore.” (70)

The narrator is flattered as this is, “in a way, the most romantic thing she had ever said to me” (70). This statement reveals the situation
s irony. The narrator
s “pathetic” love (71) and clinging to Pip inhibits her from gathering enough courage to oppose Pip
s domination. Pip exerts her power over the narrator
s self and body. Pip
s curtailment of the narrator
s freedom is not romantic, but an exertion of power, a threat. Although the narrator abides by her will, Pip eventually leaves her to move in with another girl. The narrator
s obvious inadequacy as a lover to Pip is again confirmed. She is completely humiliated. Up to this point, the rising action has established her as having failed to achieve self-reliance in the category of sexuality. After the climax of being left, she receives a new chance to become self-reliant. After a state of paralysis, she finally gets up to do exactly what repels Pip the most. She starts working at a peep show. This act can be read as a first step towards her liberation from her unfulfilled love. Moreover, she receives affirmation for her performance. Finally, she is perceived as a sexual being. The disturbing ambivalence in the situation lies in the fact that it is in sexual services that she receives affirmation. It is absurd to emancipate oneself from somebody by subjecting oneself to somebody else – which is here the male gaze. It is exactly this demonstration of disobedience of her rules that raises Pip
s interest in her again. One night after her shift, the narrator calls Pip: Narrator: “Hey, Im in a bind here and wonder if you could help me out?” Pip: “Yeah? What?” Narrator:“Im working at this place, Mr. Peeps? And theres this really creepy guy hanging around. Do you have a car?” She was silent for a moment. I could almost hear the name Mr. Peeps vibrating in her  head. It described a man with eyes the size of clocks. She had devoted her whole life to avoiding Mr. Peeps, and now here I was, cavorting with him. I was either repulsive and foolish, or I was something else. Something surprising. I held my breath. (87)

The narrator has not fully realized her detachment from Pip, calling her for help. She admits that she had been “waiting for this moment” (86) to have an excuse to call Pip. Although she took the step to rebel against Pip
s will, she is still a pathetic lover. Her venture is risky; either she now loses Pip for good or finally convinces her of her strength and self-reliance, making herself desirable. The new situation harbors hope for the narrator. To the narrator
s great delight, Pip is

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in fact willing to pick her up. The narrator experiences “eight beautiful days” of lovemaking (89), albeit under the pretension that she is somebody else. She knows that leaving on the wig she bought for the job is the precondition for Pip
s desire for her. When she falls into a fever on the ninth day and takes off the wig, she is no longer desirable to Pip. The experience of lovemaking and then being let down by Pip again leads her to quit her job with determination. It was a job she performed in order to shock Pip and to rebel against her. She wanted to receive attention from her and prove that she was able to do something surprising. At the same time, she wanted to find her own sexuality and get a sense of who she was. By quitting the job she severs all connections with Pip. The job no longer harbors possibilities, because it does not bring her closer to Pip. Symbolically, she is now free from all traditions, all history that has arrested her in her state of being a child. Instead of feeling part of “an old couple who had met before the sexual revolution” and being “too shy to learn the new way,” she can let go of her relation to Pip. The narrator takes the second step to realize her ambivalent emancipation. She determines who may look at her body. Instead of fashioning herself according to how Pip desires her, she learns that she cannot hide her self just in order to be desired by Pip. Accepting the fact that she will always be inadequate for Pip is an agonizing struggle for her. She needs to be her undisguised self. Only when she is true to herself can she be self-reliant. That she reaches this state by prostituting herself is a disturbing element in the story. Her self-reliance cannot be entirely positive because the means by which she achieves it is questionable. The narrator
s search of self takes place in the category of sexuality. She leaves all tradition behind in order to become self-reliant and hence, an American character (cf. Bellah). Paradoxically, she liberates herself through prostitution. This ambiguous way of becoming an individual is not resolved. Her selfreliance stays ambiguous and doubtable beyond the story
s ending. She is completely alone and isolated without work to sustain herself or a community to support her. She has isolated herself from society by her choices of leaving her parents and performing at a peep show. She is not able to receive acceptance by society, because prostitution is an expression of sexuality that is considered inadequate. The topic of becoming self-reliant through a break with tradition, an inherently American theme, thus does not bear mere positive connotations. Disturbingly, this young woman gains her liberation from her family and her unhappy love by way of doubtful means. July hence disturbs the narrative of the American character that gains self-reliance through individualistic seclusion.

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4.3.2 Imagination Instead of Self-Realization in “The Sister” In contrast to the narrator in “Something That Needs Nothing” – a young woman – the first-person narrator of “The Sister” is an already old man. This old man has desired teenage girls all his life. He tells a story about how he pretends to be introduced to Blanca, his colleague Victor’s sister. Irrationally, he imagines her to be a teenage girl. The ending reveals that Victor has lied about having a sister in order to become close to the narrator. The story culminates in their becoming intimate. How is sexual inadequacy constructed in this story and what meaning derives from the connection between inadequate sexuality and old age? The narrator presents his life as suffering from a perpetual lack rather than a tradition that is to be broken with: Many times people have asked if I would like to meet their sister. Some women never marry and dont fuss much with their appearance, and the years dont tiptoe around them. These women, they have brothers, and the brothers of such women often know a man like me, an old man who is alone. (No One 39)

The story directly opens with the subject of loneliness and the search for the right partner. At the same time, the narrator is voicing misogynist opinions. Living alone into old age afflicts “some women,” but most of all himself. The narrator implies that his life is shaped by repetition and constancy. “Many times” he was asked whether he wanted to meet someone
s sister, which means that his state of loneliness has been true for a long time. We learn that this character’s relations with women are only initiated through other men that he knows. But this “old man who is alone” and who “had never been in love with anyone” (39) is not interested in these sisters who “don
t fuss with their appearance.” He is interested in young women: Sisters come in all ages; this took me a while to realize. I have no siblings, but I remember boys in school talking about their sisters, and so I always imagined sisters being of a certain age, school age. Did I want to meet their sister? (40)

The narrator confesses that the elderly sisters of his older friends take him aback. His psychosexual development is arrested in his teenage years. This is shown in his understanding of the category ‘sister’. This fact constitutes a disturbing element in the story. Comparable to the narrator in “Something That Needs Nothing,” this old man briefly takes us back to a moment prior to sexual identity. But while the young female narrator receives the chance to set herself free from an

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unfulfilled sexual life, this narrator did not manage this break in younger years. He did not take the opportunity to act according to his desires. As a consequence, his desires become inadequate for a man of his age: “It has been so long since I met a little girl. Men like me, men alone, we are the least likely people to be introduced to little girls. And I can tell you in one word why this is. Rape” (40). The narrator understands that he is perceived as a threat to little girls. His sexuality is presented as passive and at the same time inadequate. He only briefly comments on the implicit accusation of rape, but remains distanced from this exclamation, as if it does not concern him personally. Nevertheless, the carelessness with which he addresses this issue is disturbing. The story is established as bearing the possibility of him meeting a “little girl.” Following the establishment of his sexual preferences, the narrator abruptly shifts to narrate the production of purses. It serves as introduction to his work place and his colleague Victor. “When you finish your twentieth consecutive year at Deagan, they throw you a party with hula punch, and you automatically get free purses for the rest of your life. Victor Caesar-Sanchez and I are the only two people who
ve gotten the party so far” (40). He implies that the story of his work life is as much devoid of change as his love life. The common experience of working for the purse company for twenty years connects the narrator to his colleague Victor. Although they have been working for almost a quarter of a century in the same company, the narrator does not know much about Victor. This fits his general isolation and his self-categorization as a non-communicative person: “I
ve never cared much for call and response. Sometimes I will think of something to say and then I will ask myself: Is it worth it? And it just isn
t” (45). Balestrini notes that this statement suggests an intertextual reference to T.S. Eliot
s “The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock” (“Aylmer
s Experiment” 78). Indeed, just as Eliot
s speaker is leading a dramatic monologue that is not directed at a specific listener, the old man wallows in self-reference. He is not an expressive person by self-definition, keeping his thoughts to himself. This focus serves to nourish his idiosyncrasies, especially the ones concerning women. By not sharing his thoughts, he cannot meet any opposition. And by not addressing women, he cannot fail to seduce them. At the same time, a sense of his alienation emerges, again reminiscent of the modernist weariness of society in “Prufrock.” Whether the old man will gather the energy to attempt a change is questionable. Up to this point, he is somebody who is fearful of change and therefore perseveres in his situation. This he does by sacrificing his pursuit of happiness. It is just not worth it for him to run the risk of having his illusions destroyed by receiving a negative response. He does not know much about other people. This is underscored when he learns, after twenty long years of colleagueship, that Victor

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has a sister. Victor asks him whether he wants to meet her. Being used to this question, the narrator consents happily, as he again “made that mistake of imagining her a teenager” (41). This purpose of meeting Victor
s sister becomes the story
s leitmotif. He recounts a number of attempts to be introduced to Blanca. The narrator just thinks about finally meeting her, imagining her to be “a wild, out-of-control teenager” (46). His misleading imagination is at the same time funny and repulsive. While he follows Victor blindly to different locations in his longing for Blanca, the reader soon becomes suspicious of Blanca
s constant absence. Moreover, the occasions and locations that Victor chooses for the supposed meetings are symbolically charged. Victor first takes him to an AIDS benefit party. Another time, he introduces him to his parents, inviting him to what the narrator imagines as “a family-style dinner with Blanca and their parents” (44). The narrator is again disappointed that Blanca does not show up at all. Instead of having a festive dinner, Victor
s parents live in an old people
s home and are fed intravenously. This situation produces the effect of dramatic irony. The reader has reason to ask why Victor chooses these settings for introducing Blanca. The reader is distanced from the situation and perceives it as ironic that the narrator expects a festive event, which then turns out to be cynical. From Victor
s side, it is a considerable gesture of intimacy to introduce the narrator to his sick parents. The narrator, in his blind longing and in his self-denial, does not question Victor
s motivations. This renders him pathetic. He deliberately misperceives reality in favor of nurturing his desires. Thus, the narrator lives in a dream world of unfulfilled desire. His urge to meet a teenage girl is greater than his rationality. Also the facts he gives about his choice of clothes for meeting Blanca are proof of the different reality he wishes to be part of: “I wore a suit that I had never gotten the hang of in the seventies, but now it felt all right. […] It became my uniform for not meeting Blanca” (42). Ironically, he wears a suit that has been out of style for at least thirty years. He still carries with him the longing that he was unable to act out when he was young, in the seventies. Through his suit, he transports himself back to those years, as though to make up for that which he did not realize at the time. The suit shows that he is caught in a former age; he hasn’t changed at all. He ignores the present and all the signs that his conception of reality is flawed. The narrator tells us how he becomes more and more “clumsy,” “caught in agitation” (45) in his state of waiting and longing. When Victor finally invites him for drinks with Blanca at his place, “I was electric” (45). So far, the story
s rising action has been built up as an anticipation of meeting Blanca. The fact that Victor invites him to his home is a further step to its re-

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alization. The scene in Victor
s apartment is the last scene of the story, its climax. The narrator tells us how he expectantly waits for Blanca. In his dream world he still imagines that she will eventually arrive. Waiting for Blanca is very important to him; it is his greatest desire. The reality looks different, however. Victor convinces the narrator to take Ecstasy. July often uses mind-expanding experiences as stylistic devices. They provide a situation of difference, in which the character receives the possibility of experiencing something new. While they are on the drug, they listen to music; a “cowboy singer singing his cowboy song” (47). The narrator conveys that he has become emotionally perceptive. Against his habit of not expressing himself verbally, he exclaims that it is as if Victor were singing the cowboy song. The cowboy is the symbol for the self-reliant American character, but due to his seclusion from society, also for loneliness. Victor responds: “That
s me, all right. You hear the sadness in my voice. […] There
s a lot of sadness in me. […] I think you
ve got a similar pain” (47). For the first time in the story, the reader perceives the narrator from another protagonist
s perspective. Victor mirrors the narrator
s feelings and assumes that he has pain. He implies that they share a pain that arises out of their longing to be with somebody, instead of being lonely. The narrator affirms all of Victor
s statements. The cowboy, the symbol for the lonesome hero, connects the two of them in their pain. Victor senses the narrator
s pain, his longing for love and unfulfilled desire. Victor suggests they can work against it together, but the narrator again only thinks of Blanca. Under influence of the drug, however, the narrator allows Victor to touch him. Finally, he pushes him away, objecting that Blanca might walk in and see them. At this point, Victor tells him that Blanca does not exist. Victor
s revelation that he desires the narrator thus constitutes the story
s climax. He reveals that he has lied in order to get closer to the narrator. Victor has acted as if he saw through the narrator, having detected his loneliness and his longing. He was able to relate to him because of a shared pain. Their likeness, which first became apparent through their job, is now shifted to their loneliness. Because Victor was married, the narrator has believed that he was heterosexual. But Victor has given signs of his interest in the narrator. His choice of venues to meet Blanca are finally comprehensible: He admits that he wanted Victor to meet his parents before they died (49). Now that the true reason behind his actions is revealed, the story appears in a different light. It raises the question of how the story will reach its denouement. First, the narrator
s sexuality is defined. Victor asks him about his desires and the narrator proves his passivity with regards to teenage girls:

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Victor: “Tell me about the girls.” Narrator: “What girls?” Victor: “You like little girls.” Narrator: “No, teenagers.” Victor: “Where do you meet them?” Narrator: “What? I dont do that, I just think about it.” (49)

To the reader
s relief, the narrator does not turn his imagination into reality. By this exclamation, he neutralizes what he had verbalized earlier in the story. The narrator had employed a rhetoric that marked him as a pedophile. He had been legitimizing his desire: “We do terrible things, we make wars, we kill people out of greed. So who are we to say how to love? I wouldn
t force her. I wouldn
t have to. She would want me” (43). This disturbing character trait is now mitigated. He knows about the inappropriateness of his desire. Generally fitting July
s portrayal of characters, he is not delinquent. He knows that his desires would be morally inadequate if he acted them out.84 Furthermore, by not realizing his desire for teenage girls and having made clear that older women do not interest him, the narrator confirms that he leads a sexually inactive life. He evokes the image of failed masculinity, of a man with a non-reproductive sexuality. Here the shared motive with “The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock” is most obvious. As Prufrock in Eliot
s poem sees the women “come and go / Talking of Michelangelo,” he becomes self-conscious of his own vanishing masculinity through age: “With a bald spot in the middle of my hair – / (They will say:
How is his hair growing thin!
)” (40-41). Similar to Prufrock, the narrator in “The Sister” does not “dare” (“Prufrock” 38) to approach the women. He is merely imagining, and thus his story is one of “deferred eroticism” (Bloom on “Prufrock,” 2). The narrator behaves in the same way when Victor has him believe in his sister Blanca. The fact that he believes Victor, despite all the hints that speak against Blanca
s existence, shows that he enjoys the state of prospection. The simple imagination of meeting a young girl inspires him, has him feeling “electric” (No One 45). Throughout his life, this imagination has been enough to provide him pleasure. The enjoyment of comfortable prospection has resulted in his “pain,” his loneliness, his alienation. July gives the story a surprising turn by choosing a homosexual encounter between two old men as the climax of the story. But while unexpected, it is also another variation of non-reproductive sexuality. When the narrator accepts Victor, he is self-conscious and describes the situation by choosing words that signify roughness: “He held my hand and I rubbed his arm harder and harder and it 84 Compare my analysis in chapter 3.3.2 on the character “Andrew” in Me and You.

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felt okay. But then the rubbing was all of us, the whole length of our giant old selves. It was like a humping thing” (48). In contrast to Victor, who is consumed by his emotions, “with tears on his cheeks and lips,” the narrator feels aggression: “I wanted to punch him, punch a hole right through him and then fill that hole with my body, and I was, I was doing that” (50). The narrator is surprised about his own emotions and actions. By narrating it as if he was outside of his own body, he becomes self-reflective: “...and I was, I was doing that.” In order to recognize his old self, he relates Victor to his image of Blanca: “He was sobbing now the way Blanca would sob, like a child” (50). He describes the situation in extremely crude language. His lack of sensitivity gives way to his sadistic enjoyment. But instead of being satisfied, he is distanced from his experience and thinks instead of sexually transmitted diseases: “When I came, I came on the couch; I didn
t want to come inside him because of what sperm can do. But he ate it off the couch and then he kissed me with a deep tongue, so whatever sperm can do, it was doing it to me” (50). His language evokes repulsion. The antiaesthetic details further underline his infertility, the biblical image of the wasted seed. The implied motive of disease and bodily contamination convey aversion instead of pleasure. Next to this disturbing instance, it is surprising that the narrator does not experience any emotions. His tone is matter-of-fact, not evaluative. After having sex and sleeping “the sleep of one hundred years,” the narrator sees his reality clearly: “We were two old men” (50). The narrator does not tell us what he feels or what he thinks about the new and extreme experience he has had that same night. He does not even feel any change: “Everything seemed ordinary, even overly ordinary” (50). Absurdly, the man who has desired teenage girls all his life feels “ordinary” after his first homosexual experience in old age. The reader expects him to feel different, as he has done something that he had never imagined or desired. The ending suggests that this experience does not change his self-understanding. His distance to the events shows that they do not disrupt his identity. Therefore, the story disturbs the expectations that it generates. July does not end this story with a successful change. It could be a story about a man who finally has the pleasure of a bodily sensation, of somebody who is freed from merely imagining a sexual encounter. The last sentence denies him such a revelation. Nevertheless, he does not mention his desire for young women anymore and implies that his life changes after the event: “The new life came easily after this, a growl” (51). The narrator starts a new life, but without euphoria, nervousness or fear, feelings that are usually associated with a new beginning. This disturbs the reader
s expectation. His new life comes to him with a growl, with reluctance. The narrator passively accepts the newness, but it does

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not lead to more happiness for him. He does not actively change his life. His sexual life changes considerably, but without disrupting his self-understanding. Still in bed with Victor, he is thinking about what he has to do at his workplace, reminding himself of the constancy of his life. His homoerotic experience appears to him “even overly ordinary” (50). The self-distanced amazement with which he had narrated the intercourse has quickly turned into normalcy
. He denies the situation
s excitement and denies himself a deeper re-evaluation of his life. With this story, July produces ambivalence, depicts inadequate sexuality, and disturbs the reader
s expectations. Inadequacy emerges by way of a pedophile
s self-reflections, and his unexpected homosexual experience. In both cases, the category of age adds to the inadequacy of his sexuality. Both modes of sexuality are presented as dysfunctional and thus signify failed masculinity. By way of her non-moralizing tone, July does not judge the narrator. But his character is repulsive and hence does not bear any possibility of identification from the reader
s side. The narrator himself is strangely distanced from his self-reflections. He disturbs the binary conceptions of homo- and heterosexuality, good and bad, healthy
and perverse sexuality. The old man defies any categorization, and therefore only fits the category of inadequacy. He is detached from himself and leaves the reader dissatisfied; the story defies a resolution. He is an image of inadequate male sexuality, the alienated man who can hardly be cured from depressive loneliness. In comparing the two stories, the narrators
self-reflections disclose a pathetic desire for objects that are out of reach. Consequently, they are passive and do not qualify as expressive individuals. The young woman in “Something That Needs Nothing” waits for her best friend, the only person she knows, to fall in love with her. All her actions are geared towards this impossible moment. In this story, leaving things behind in order to express one
s sexuality is a precondition for finding the self, for becoming self-reliant; an American character. However, she attempts to become self-reliant through highly ambivalent activities in the realm of sexuality. This ambiguous way of becoming an individual renders her eventual self-reliance ambiguous and doubtful. Instead of self-reliance, the story conveys isolation. By way of this character
s sexual inadequacy, her alienation from society becomes obvious. Similarly, the old male narrator in “The Sister” passively waits for his desired object to become attainable. Both characters reflect the idea that desiring what is out of reach is a way for one to stay in his or her comfort zone. The young woman is simply in love with the person she always has been in love

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with. This situation is known to her, the longing is part of her. Deep inside, she has always known that Pip will never desire her. The same holds true for the old man. His perspective shows us that he longs to stay in the imaginary state of eventually meeting the desired teenage girl. The thought gives him pleasure.85 His obsessive but irrational focus on meeting Blanca proves that he likes his imagination to be fed. Not desiring an actual person has saved him from experiencing a disruption. He has lived a whole life nourishing this desire. At this late stage of his life, he comes close to a real person, but his sense of self is not disrupted by this event. The homosexual experience changes his life, but it does not change his self. In the category of sexuality, July
s interest in ambivalences is most distinctive. To this aim, she disregards any rules of politically correct depictions. Pedophilia is as much a symbol for inadequacy as homosexuality and prostitution is. This suggests that she does not follow an agenda with regard to the rights of a specific minority group. These sexualities are presented as inadequate
purely in order to confuse existing norms and to render visible ambiguities in the individualized society. The stories provide diagnoses of highly neurotic, idiosyncratic individuals, who are isolated and repulsive. The two stories “Something That Needs Nothing” and “The Sister” present self-reflections of individuals who go through fundamental experiences in the realm of sexuality. However, a change of their selves is denied. They are not examples of sexually integrated, successful individuals. Distinct from self-improvement books, which aim to render the individual
s life sexually successful, these fictions posit that sexual inadequacy is a fact of modern life that can merely be countered with irony.86 According to my reading of the selected stories, loneliness, expressive individualism, and sexual inadequacy are significant categories for July
s illustration of the individualized society. Taken together, these stories paint a highly critical picture of this society. The protagonists appear isolated by way of first-person narration, a neglect of dialogues, and persistence in single motives. On the one 85 That this is indeed one of Julys intentions is mentioned in her interview with Cutter: “What happens when you get rid of all of longing’s disguises? she asks. Is it really that you want the thing so badly, or do you just enjoy wanting it?” (July in Cutter, n.pag.). 86 Julys approach is thus comparable to Woody Allens creation of the sexually inadequate persona who suffers from neuroses but cannot find a remedy (cf. Maak). This state of being can only be met by self-irony. Maak notes that the situations in Julys stories often remind of Woody Allen, where slapstick, drama and catastrophe are so close to each other that they cannot be told apart anymore.

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hand, self-reflection appears to render a search for the self and consequent selfexpression possible. However, despite their internal focus, the narrators fail to successfully engage in this process. The frustrated individuals dig deeper into their psyches and thus paradoxically obstruct the way to successful selffulfillment. Dramatically, their focalization leads to their isolation, instead of opening them up to others. This intensifies their alienation from society. In contrast to this, the characters
reflections tell us that they long to belong. They want to belong to other people and aspire to identify with something, be it family, sexual partners, or communities. But they fail to form sustaining relationships. Through them, July presents a white, American middle-class that centers on itself and does not reach out of its own limited experiences to acknowledge the world around it. Instead of self-expression, this results in depression and individualization. She provides a diagnosis of this contemporary class; it craves attention. In light of July
s stories, it is no wonder that this society is pervaded by a need for self-help. The stories explicitly reference the selfhelp realm; as when the narrator in “The Shared Patio” gives the advice that “[i]t
s okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise” (No One 11). These references to advice culture most often carry a mocking connotation. The sentimental and melancholic tone is disrupted by way of July
s colloquial, ruthlessly candid, and humorous style. Thus, July
s account of self-help culture is ironic. The stories seem not to be able to decide whether they believe in self-help culture, expressive individualism, and other instances that testify to a belief in a spiritual access to the self. Instead, July chooses the motive of inadequate sexuality to depict a society that is not sure about its norms anymore. Regardless of political correctness, she employs the motive of distinct sexualities to disrupt the notion of normative sexuality. The protagonists become the symbols for the ambiguities of the individualized society. The characters embody the paradox of not wanting to be alone, while also not wanting to compromise their desires. It is thus impossible, in July’s stories, to be a self-reliant individual, and a person who expresses him or herself through active sexuality. The mock-supportive advice on how to counter the anxiety that derives from this paradox does not merely address the narrators. A second-person address also implies the reader: “It
s not your fault. Perhaps this was really the only thing I had ever wanted to say to anyone, and be told” (7). The reader is included as part of this culture of depressive individualism. July appears to address a universal reader. However, there is no universal reading experience. In fact, the  you
addresses a white, middle-class subject of her own generation – someone who feels addressed by her colloquial style and the indecision about whether the profits or the drawbacks of self-help culture prevail. While this culture pervades the sto-

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ries, the narrators are not characters that the creative class wants to identify with. The narrators are enclosed in themselves; this is the truly reprehensible aspect about them. They merely embrace the perspective of the saturated, white middleclass, which does not face any urgent problems of race or class. They have nothing that is more significant to change about their lives than their own selves. As such, July
s stories are highly ambivalent about this situation, but do not offer any unambiguous advice of how to initiate change.

5 Conclusion: The Ambivalences of Self-Help

In the course of this book, it has become evident that the irritation I experienced in my first reading of Miranda July
s short stories derives from her ambiguous portrayal of self-help culture. The collection of short stories No One Belongs Here More Than You is based on a highly critical approach to a culture of individualized subjects. This is in distinction to the preceding Internet project Learning to Love You More and, although to a lesser degree, the film Me and You and Everyone We Know. While in the online project and the film, creativity leads to healing, in the short stories July resolutely illustrates how individuals fail to belong to the creative class. At the outset of my study, I asked how July references self-help culture in her intermedial work. The first chapter, which examined the online project LTLYM, showed that she connects self-help culture, creativity and avant-garde principles in her work. Together with her collaborator Harrell Fletcher, July provides an outlet based on the conviction that by making art, the subject can be healed from inflictions caused by the individualization in society. The anonymized and anxious subject, they suggest, desires to be re-embedded in a loose community of expressive individuals. The artists respond to this desire by offering a virtual space for creative participation and artistic self-expression. The project
s self-help approach is constituted by the notion that finding and expressing the inner self liberates the subject from agonizing self-doubts. By applying selfhelp rhetoric, the project is vulnerable to the critique of catering to narcissistic ideals of the privileged, white middle-class. The project reproduces the ideal of primarily caring for the self by promoting the idea that the participants find their inner self and express it. Political and social critique subsequently moves into the background. It has to be positively remarked, however, that the Internet
s participatory potential is used to loosely connect the amateur-artists by mutual empathy. Such a method of interpersonal support counters anonymization tendencies.

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The acknowledgment of the negative aspects of an individualized society becomes more central in July
s ensuing work. The film and the short stories criticize the individualized society and illustrate the ambivalences of the creative class. July achieves this effect by creating ambiguous viewing and reading experiences. In the film Me and You, she challenges the audience
s expectations by employing unconventional codes (Fiske). Here, the figure of the child heals the alienated, suffering adult. The child
s agency as a sexual being challenges existing stereotypes. July thus suggests alternative ways of imagining hierarchies in contemporary Western society, here through the category of age. In distinction to the film
s humorist tone, its cynicism deconstructs the generic conventions of romance. Cynicism is applied to create unconventional codes, as established by “The Goldfish Scene:” The characters sentimentally empathize with a goldfish, which is ultimately crushed to death. Dialogues often do not follow culturally expected rules and thus further the characters
strangeness
, as in the case when Richard expels Christine from his car. These instances suggest a critique of individualization, a symptom of which is the anxiety to build relationships. Therefore, the film elucidates the tensions that constitute the individualized subject with regards to building communities. Bauman describes these tensions as the rapid fading of the old art of fastening social bonds and making them last, the schizophrenic fear/desire of separation and being left alone (the perpetual vacillation between I need more space and Ally McBeals I am so tired of [being] on my own), the white-hot passions which accompany the desperate search for communities and the fissiparousness of the ones that are found. (6)

Due to these tensions, the individualized characters in the film apply self-help strategies. By way of depicting self-help
s appropriation of foreign cultural codes and of the middle-class
s dependency on economic materialism, the film shows whiteness to rely on contradictory hegemonic practices. But these practices cannot help the subject to counter the anxieties produced by individualization. Eventually, only the figure of the artist is able to relieve the characters of their emotional pain. As in LTLYM, public acknowledgment of the individual
s pain constitutes one of art
s major healing aspects. In consequence, while July appears to be highly critical of the circumstances that produce the individualized subject, she reproduces the same ideal as is clear in the Internet project: artistic self-expression is curative. The act of making art and the figure of the artist both have therapeutic value.

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This unequivocal belief in art
s power does not emerge in the short stories. There, in their processes of self-reflection, July
s first-person narrators fail to access themselves in a way that would lead to their self-fulfillment. I analyzed the motives of isolation, expressive individualism, and inadequate sexuality and showed that July depicts the white middle-class as self-destructive and stricken with anxiety-neurosis. An identification with the pathetic narrators is disturbed by absurd plot developments and sadly unsatisfying sexual activity. Instead of lauding expressive individualism, July is critical in her portrayal of a society of depressive individualism. This depressive individualism in fact produces the need for self-help, upon which this group becomes dependent. Ironically, while the narrators continue to believe in it, self-help rhetoric and therapy are not able to release July
s protagonists from their anxious self-searching. Indeed, and in contrast with the Internet users, the protagonists are not able to build communities. They are self-obsessed and narcissistic to such a degree that they fail to achieve one of the expressive individual
s desires: to “merge
with other persons” through intuitive feeling (Bellah 333-34). Self-help instead becomes a dangerous tool for entering self-deception and isolation. July
s work oscillates between a laudation and a critique of the creative class. Through her characteristically sentimental, yet cynical and humorous style, she portrays this class in its ambivalences. July
s art thus presents a critical reflection on Richard Florida
s appreciation of the creative class. On one hand, she praises the legacies of alternative 1960s culture and the avant-garde innovation of participatory art. Both of which were influenced by the spiritual, transcendental notion of the self – a belief that also pervades July
s art. However, by way of its cynicism, her work bears witness to an alienation from the belief in a fulfilled self. Her art thus depicts the shortcomings of the individualized society and the failure of self-help culture. She implies that both phenomena have produced the belabored
self who is “caught in a cycle of seeking individual solutions to problems that are social, economic, and political in origin” (McGee 177). Such individualization tendencies have fostered a Californian cult of the self
(Foucault in Rabinow) and inhibit the building of communities. July and Fletcher in LTLYM posit that building a loose
community instead of a traditional
one is helpful to the anonymized Internet user. This is in opposition to Bauman
s argument, which denies the possibility that peg communities
are able to provide support. In LTLYM, the condition for becoming a member of the community is not to shed one
s individuality for a common aim. Instead, the participant is to promote his or her expressive individuality. The individual who strives to live a life that is like a piece of art
and to follow the path of the heart
embraces the ideals of the creative class and self-help culture alike.

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July does not depict Starker
s lower middle-class, mass-consumer; July’s work takes the perspective of the educated, white middle-class, which is dependent on, but simultaneously mistrustful of simplistic self-help rhetoric. July speaks from the perspective of the cultural group she references in her art and whose lifestyle she embraces. She interweaves her person with her art; this is obvious in Me and You in which she plays the role of an artist. She stages authenticity by being unsparingly honest. Such disarming honesty about one
s failures also appears in her other protagonists, as for example in the depiction of sexual inadequacy. July
s subjective perspective elucidates the precariousness
that Winfried Fluck has defined as an inherent trait of the expressive individualist
s lifestyle. While continuously striving to belong to the creative class, July
s characters fail to conform to middle-class ideals of self-improvement towards the utilitarian aim of economic success. Due to this failure, their legitimate place in society is continually contested. As McGee states, the anxiety not to be a successful artist-entrepreneur haunts the expressive individual. July
s art hence depicts the merits and failings of self-help culture. July draws a critical portray of the creative class by showing the anxiety of not belonging to it. The application of the concepts of expressive individualism (Bellah; Fluck) and societal models of the individualized society (Bauman) and the creative class (Florida), shed light on the motivations that draw the contemporary middle-class towards selfhelp. Notably, July
s employment of different media – resulting in intermediality – complements the content of her work. As I began my research with the question of how her intermedial approach is constitutive for her conceptual work, I followed July’s treatment of a singular motive throughout different media. I analyzed the occurrence of self-help aspects in her Internet project, first feature film, and selected short stories. This approach revealed that her intermediality allows her to shed light on a singular problem from differing perspectives. The Internet stands out as the most viable medium to present the contemporary individual
s yearning to belong to a loose community. The online project is a mirror to real life relationships. The approach of participatory art combines the acknowledgment of the individual as well as its re-embedding in a community of fellow empathic expressive individualists. Thus emerges a positive meaning of self-help culture within the creative class. July and Fletcher
s call to action does not question the sources for this class
s need of self-help. The same individualism they promote in the project is the source for the need of self-help; the project disavows this fact. Hence, the initial striving of the modernist as well as 1960s avant-garde movements to radically criticize bourgeois culture, cannot be achieved by

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LTLYM. The project is exemplary for the fact that the avant-garde has lost its critical potential. It has come to this point by the integration of the avant-garde into the mainstream, by the blurring of middle-class lifestyles – the former bourgeoisie – with common everyday life, by the integration of high culture
into consumer culture. Avant-garde art has lost its possibility for radical critique. Thus, this possibility has moved from the center of society, the white middleclass, to marginalized groups. What is left for the white middle-class is the critique of the self. This class, in its situation of complacency, does not need any radical changes. Nevertheless, it suffers from a certain amount of dissatisfaction. This is the tenor that emanates from July
s art. Graham and Cook
s question whether new media art – especially a participatory project like LTLYM – is avant-garde per se, thus needs to be negated. By contrast to the Internet
s participatory potential, film lacks the possibility of interaction between the film and the audience. The audience is not included in the creative process. Its activity is reduced to the active response to the final art product – the film. Me and You portrays characters that seek to be part of a community. The main plot and the different sub-plots, or little narratives
(Lyotard), depict the interconnections within a network of relationships. The viewer receives more insight into every character
s motivations than the characters have in relation to each other; they experience frustrating misunderstandings. We follow them in their pathetic yearning for partners or communities. Their strategies are more or less helpful, and the characters are not denied the possibility of successful re-embedding in a community. The basic problematic of individualism is addressed as destroying communities and relationships. Nevertheless, the film implies that expressive individualism is curative for the self and can thus counter individualization tendencies. In the short stories, the first-person narratives completely obstruct such a perspective. They exclude any other point of view. Here, the individual
s desires have to be accessed through his or her self-narrations. The reader thus only knows a protagonist’s thoughts, which are often absurd. Protagonists appear unreliable because of their insistence on their own viewpoint, which leads them into self-deception. In contrast to the omniscient perspective in the movie, the short stories have a focalized one. This perspective reflects the feeling of isolation in the individualized society. Hence, July
s choice of first-person writing in her short stories makes obvious what keeps individuals from building communities: the extreme focus upon the self. The possibility of forming relationships and building communities is presented as doubtable. Rather, the protagonists seem doomed to continue to suffer from individualization. While the protagonists believe in the curative search for the self and in self-help, the reader remains dis-

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tanced to their beliefs and can see that the protagonists disavow the true problems causing their neuroses. Self-obsession and narcissism have led to individualization. The protagonists cannot escape the pitfalls of individualization – such as diffuse anxiety – when they fight its symptoms, but not its cause. In consequence, July
s use of different media allows her to depict individuals’ experience of the individualized society from different perspectives. This results in contrasting, even contradictory views on the white middle-class and its reliance on self-help. Intermediality is thus constitutive of July’s aesthetic. Apart from the media included in this study, she also creates art in other formats, such as performance, short film, and video art.87 This allows for a multiplication of viewpoints. The lived reality of the creative class looks different from every angle that the online participant / movie viewer / reader looks at it. As a result, her intermedial approach is a conceptual choice that allows her to depict ambivalences, which, in turn, renders her a significant critic. As she speaks about a lived reality that she knows, her frankness and self-questioning constitute the quality of her work. In the course of this study, questions arose that beg further research on July
s work. At the outset, I did not see that the “generation” that July speaks for was limited to a group defined by race, class, and gender. The irritation I felt when reading her short stories for the first time might also have been the uncomfortable feeling of self-critique. With this in mind, new questions regarding how far July engages in self-critique as a critique of whiteness should be more concretely addressed. Mark Greif
s conference edition on the “hipster” promises thoughtprovoking impulses for an analysis of July
s position. His argument touches upon the issue of appropriating a black
term for constructing white
subculture. Greif connects this aspect with the question of how the hipster
s consumerism stands in relation to art. As I have already shown in the analysis of LTLYM with regards to DIY-culture, and in Me and You with regards to economic materialism, July references a cultural group that combines alternative, expressive culture with mass consumption. July
s own arguable self-fashioning as a “hipster” could be further analyzed in light of her artistic-ethnographic, autobiographical, text and photo publication It Chooses You, and her second feature film The Future (both 2011). By way of her method in It Chooses You to interview people who advertise in the Penny Saver, she seeks interaction with people whom she categorizes as different from herself: “It […] seemed obvious to me that the whole world, and especially Los Angeles, was designed to protect me from these people I was meeting. There was no law against knowing them, but it wouldn
t happen” (57). She thus opens 87 Meanwhile, July published her first novel, The First Bad Man.

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up a space in which she negotiates location and identity. While the people she interviews are constructed as marginalized in so far as they do not use the Internet, July fashions herself as the white, educated expressive individual. In The Future, the dancing teacher “Sophie” (played by July), who feels underrated as an artist, begins an affair with a man who embodies white, upper-middle-class utilitarian values. The juxtaposition of these two figures points out the difference between their lifestyles. The expressive individual is here constructed in distinction to the utilitarian man. These instances beg the question of how she creates her art as an interrogation of race, class, and gender. July is self-critical of white self-help culture, but at the same time she is unable to discard its rhetoric. A further analysis in regard to her construction of “hipsterism” promises to reveal similar ambivalences of the creative class
s positioning. The appeal of Miranda July
s art derives from its oscillation between embracing the values of the creative class, while simultaneously distancing itself from it. Her subjective perspective of someone who is inside
the class enables her to be self-critical. She holds up a mirror to the white American middle-class, where everyone desires to be special – an expressive individual. The concept which used to be reserved for the artist has become a mainstream phenomenon and has exhausted itself. The fight for individuality has culminated in a fight for those who want to be expressive individuals, but for whom the pursuit of personal self-fulfillment is never completed. July
s mastering of ambiguities in the concept of individualism renders her a significant voice in contemporary art. Her self-questioning does not yet seem to be complete, which is why we have to reckon with her in the future. I am confident that she will continue to create projects in different media that will further enlighten the creative class's contradictions of living in the individualized society.

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Acknowledgements

Thank you to: Martin Klepper, Eva Boesenberg, and Reinhard Isensee, as well as everybody from the American Studies doctoral colloquium at Humboldt-University Berlin. Birte Adam, Katharina Barth, and Hannes Schaser for their feedback, and especially Michael Duszat for hours of deep reading and discussion. Barbara Götz, Isabel Graf, and Roger Merguin for their flexibility and support. My family and most of all Timo Kern for years of motivation, patience, and cooking substantial and delicious meals!