Funny Boy

1
Funny Boy

• Gender and Nation

Sri Lanka
2
Outline

• Background
• Riot Journal An Epilogue
• Pigs Cant Fly
• The Best School of All

3
Background

• Funny Boy set against the increasing violence
  between a between Sinhalese and Tamil in Sri
  Lank, culminating in the civil war which lasted
  for almost a decade(1983-1991).
• Black July, 1983 between 400-3000 Tamils were
  killed, tens of thousands of houses were
  destroyed, and a wave of Sri Lankan Tamils left
  for other countries. (source)
• The author Shyam Selvadurai and his family are
  forced into exile after the 1983 racial riot
  against the Tamil in Colombo.
• The protagonist, "Arjie" Chelvaratnam, is the
  second-son of a privileged middle-class Tamil
  family in Colombo.

4
Tamil vs. Sinhalese

• Sinhalese(????)migrated from Northern India to
  Sri Lanka since 5th-6th century BCE, while Tamil
  (????) came from Southern India around since 2th
  BCE.
• Sinhalese -- Buddhism
• Tamil -- Hinduism, more sent to Sri Lanka by the
  British government in the 19th century and
  supported by the latter.
• The British policy of divide and rule -- placed
  minorities (i.e. Tamils) in positions of power in
  colonies.
• Since its independence as Ceylon, the Sinhalese
  (80 majority) put forth Sinhala Only Law in
  support of their political power, which causes
  discontent among the Tamil people (20).

5
Funny Boy

• Connected stories of how Arjie is continually
  isolated from his family and then exiled from his
  society because of his gender orientation and the
  societys racial tensions and despite attempts at
  breaking boundaries and rebellion.
• "Pigs Can't Fly-- Arjie's early childhood and his
  gravitation towards the imaginative games his
  female cousins play as opposed to his male
  cousins' beloved game of cricket.
• "Radha Aunty" --Arjie's Aunt Radha, and her
  doomed affair with a Sinhalese man.

6
Funny Boy

• "See No Evil, Hear No Evil-- his mother's
  extra-marital affair with a childhood sweetheart.
  
• "Small Choices" --chronicles one of Arjie's first
  crushes a puppy love obsession with a young man
  employed by his Father,
• The Best School of All Arjies experience of
  the conflicts between colonial education and
  Sinhalese nativism, between his need to conform
  and his love for Shehan.
• "Riot Journal" -- first hand accounts of
  anti-Tamil violence.

7
Riot Journal An Epilogue

• The process of fear, loss and displacement (FB
  280, 291-92, 298. 304)from denial, to not
  feeling anything, to crying over the
  grandparents house, to finally crying over his
  own burned house.
• Shehan 295, 303
• The nation with its internal racial and gender
  divisions

8
Pigs Cant Fly Discussion Questions

• Why cant Arjie play bride-bride? What does the
  mother mean when she says Because the sky is so
  high and pigs cant fly. (19)
• What does the sky mean? What does being funny
  mean?
• Is he funny because he is homosexual?

9
The title

• Funny --either humorous or strange (17) disgust
• But Meena also crosses gender boundaries in
  playing the cricket game.
• The other girls do, too, in the bride-bride
  game.
• Arjies view of being a bride (5) and jewel and
  sari (15)
• ? the story is about the ideological system (the
  sky), and the power struggle within it.

10
Discussion QuestionsI. Childhood Games and
Social System

• What does "spend-the-day" mean for both the
  adults and the kids, maybe excepting the servant
  cook who cannot have a break? (pp. 1-2)
• How are the boys' game and girls' game divided up
  and located? (p. 3)
• What are the rules of the boys' cricket game and
  the girls' Bride-Bride?   Do these rules make
  sense?   Do these groups' structure reflect that
  of adults, or not? 

11
II. Battle for Power and Gender Boundaries

• Why does Her Fatness want to be the bride?
• What gender roles do Arjie and Her Fatness take
  respectively in their power struggle? 
• If Arjie is the one to be ordered back to the
  realm of men, who else also crosses the gender
  boundaries in this story? 

12
The Girls Game

• Arjie as the leader because of the force of his
  imagination(p. 4)
• His imagination allows him to "leave the
  constraints of his self and ascend into
  another, more brilliant, more beautiful self"
  (5).
• Still conditioned by the goddesses of the
  Sinhalese and Tamil cinema (breaking the racial
  boundary).
• A world for girls the groom the most useless
  (p. 6)

13
The Boys GameCricket

• Competition -- with winning as the goal
• trading players
• less powerful ones Sanjay
• girlie-boy Arjie
• the batting order p. 26
• Numbers marked in the sand for the players to
  step on
• The older and better ones play first

14
The Childrens Struggle for Power

• Her Fatness in need of attention
• An outsider
• Kanthi Aunt her anger (p. 8)
• Wins attention
• by lying (7)
• by showing off the dolls (p. 8) which is less
  powerful than the bride-bride game
• by playing a loud groom (9)
• by appealing to traditional gender boundaries
  (11) A girl must be the bride.

15
Arjies Fight back

• Insisting on the rule to be the first one to play
  ? so that he becomes offensive and can run away
• the sari in the bag as a weapon
• Agrees to play the groom, and then attracts the
  other girls attention.
• Sari gone so is his power.

16
Images representing the system

• Amachi and her cane p. 38
• The seaside and the tall building as a mirage p.
  38

17
The Best School of All Questions

• The roles of the authorities
• Black Tie and Mr. Lokubandara (pp. 206, 207
  215)
• the Queen Victoria Academy and its discipline,
  will force...Arjie to become a man"
• The use of spaces (e.g. the school building 209,
  the toilet and the garage)
• The school boys bravado 210, Sinhalese vs. Tamil
  210, Cheliah vs. Salgado 214
• Black Tie against Shehan 217-
• How does Arjie rebel against both kinds of
  authorities? The use of games (hide-and-seek
  251-59, Scrabble)
• How does the school life prepares us for the
  racial tensions which are to follow?

18
The Best School of All Images of Authorities

• Black Tie, the principal-- a man with "a sola
  topee, that white domed I had only seen in
  photographs from the time the British ruled Sri
  Lanka" (209).
• "...the old principal, Mr. Lawton, raised him,
  and educated him. The values he was taught are
  the ones he still holds on to, so you must not
  blame him too much for what he did to you" (240).
  One of these values, he explains, is that "you
  can beat knowledge into a student.
• In support of racial mixture 240

19
The poems why fragmented?

• Recited without any conviction 227
• The cane 229
• The possible consequences 233 240 conflict in
  Arjie 242
• Efforts in the library
• Smile 236 --Arjies dreams 237, ? getting closer
  to Shehan kiss 243 ? Where is your mother 247 ?
  dream 259
• Diggys intervention 249 Black Ties role 262-

20
The poems why fragmented?

• The recital 274 a complete fragmentation of the
  original text, and
• Black Ties responses 275-76, which are
  self-contradictory