Film and literature analysis through writer's choice

¶ … Infinite Jest was released in 1996 it was greeted with great fanfare and critical acclaim. It confirmed what many literary critics and scholars had already suspected, that the book's young and precocious author was the preeminent writer of his generation. And for young readers, especially those who felt alienated and disenfranchised by an increasingly fragmented and impersonal society, it gave voice to their anguish. It incisively unveiled the doldrums of academia while spotlighting how students cope with the ennui, the pressure, and the power structures of academic life. In short, Infinite Jest is a book concerned with many things, among them social justice in an academic context. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the ways in which David Foster Wallace (DFW) explores social justice (as it relates to education) in his groundbreaking novel, Infinite Jest.

Anyone who has read Infinite Jest knows that it's not an easy read. It's a complex book that is structured to resemble a mathematical, fractal-like pattern called the Sierpinski gasket (D. F. Wallace & M. Silverblatt, personal communication, April 11, 1996). But if one is willing to wade through its 1,000 plus pages he/she will eventually notice the real power and magic and gravitas literature imparts to the soul. Like all great literature, Infinite Jest affects one deeply and changes him/her permanently. After finishing the book one sees the world in a different way, to some extent in a clearer way, especially with regards to education and pedagogy. DFW does more than tacitly and obliquely comment on the problems within our education system, he uncovers the injustices fraught within it and how these injustices complicate a student's experience.

To try and summarizes the book would be an exercise in futility, but to give one an idea of how Wallace tackles social justice within the context of academia it would be ideal to examine the life of Hal Incandenza, a young, fledgling tennis star who is insanely brilliant. Hal is arguably the protagonist of the story and he attends the ETA, the Enfield Tennis Academy. Hal, despite his savant-like intellect has trouble communicating and socializing and struggles to adjust to the rigors of the ETA.

The ETA is seen as an oppressive force in parts of the novel. To give one an example, DFW writes, "Since the place's inception, there's always been a certain percentage of the high-caliber adolescent players at the ETA who manage their weathers chemically. Much of this is good clean temporary fun; but a traditionally smaller and harder-core set tends to rely on personal chemistry to manage ETA's special demands" (Wallace 53). Here the reader will notice maladaptive behaviors among the students of the ETA to keep pace with the "special demands" of the ETA. The ETA is akin to a paramilitary school in the way it treats its students. It keeps them on strict study schedules and workout routines and training sessions to maximize the hours of the day. The result is a rigid and inflexible curriculum that enforces conformity and rewards obedience. There's little time for fun, for creativity, for relaxation in this high-pressure tennis academy, which is why many of the students at the ETA resort to drug use to cope with the environs.

What's missing at the ETA? Well, for starters it would have to be a well-adjusted, socially attuned pedagogy, one that embraces both the tenets of social justice and a liberal arts educational paradigm. The authors of the book, Social Justice Education: Inviting Faculty to Transform Their Institutions, define a social justice pedagogy as one that is "aware of its positionality within the power structures of academic institutions and makes this positionality transparent and thus open to inquiry and change." The question then becomes, how self-aware is the ETA? How open are they to inquiry and change? Is their approach to education one that is flexible or one that is intractable?

The answer, as intimated earlier, is that it is closed-minded, myopic, and inflexible to change. Okay, so why is the ETA so fettered to a paramilitary educational approach? The answer - well, it's not what one might think. In traditional literature or film the paramilitary approach would be the direct result of a dastardly headmaster -- think Dean Vernon Wormer from Animal House or the mole-faced principal in Uncle Buck -- but in Infinite Jest, the cause of the oppression isn't so much the prorectors (as DFW calls them) as it is the system at large and the willingness of individuals, the student body and the administration, to willfully (and blindly) submit to the imposed order of convention.

This is an interesting assessment of society. It shows a keen understanding of the complexity of the forces at play -- convention, tradition, status, authority - and to the extent that these forces rule not because of militant overlords but because that's just they way things are and because people are too apathetic to think critically about these forces. And even when they do think critically about these forces, they become resigned to the fact that passive complicity is much easier than the defiance and resistance required (to agitate) for social change. A rather startling example of this in Infinite Jest is why drug enforcement at ETA is so "flaccid," DFW writes, "Since most of the prorectors themselves are depressed or traumatized about not making it into the Show and having to come back to ETA and live in decent but subterranean rooms off the tunnels and work at assistant coaches and teach laughable elective classes… and so they're morose and low on morale, and feel bad about themselves, often, as a rule, and so also not all that surprisingly tend to get high now and then themselves (Wallace 54).

The reason why drug enforcement is lax at the ETA is because the prorectors are just as depressed and drugged up as the students. Their failures in life, their failures at becoming the thing they wanted to be (a National tennis star) have led them back to the cozy, comfortable, mundane, but soul-zapping world of the ETA (it's cozy and comfortable for the instructors and prorectors because of it's rigidity). Instead of trying to forge a new path, a new life, they'd rather entrench themselves in familiarity. And this is what makes the ETA so stifling, so oppressive, is the consensus that change and self-improvement are impossibly difficult. And the best way to handle and confront this difficulty is to pop pills to numb the senses.

In addition to the pervasive depression and numbness, the ETA also lacks scholastic vitality, one of the core ingredients to a robustly successful social justice pedagogy as the authors of Social Justice Education: Inviting Faculty to Transform Their Institutions remind the reader, they write "At its best social justice pedagogy highlights the collaboration within and outside the classroom, transforming the traditional "omniscient" professor/teacher into an informed collaborator in the common pursuit of knowledge. This transformation requires that social justice pedagogues realize their own privileged position of power within the system and continuously negotiate it" (ix). The idea here is that there is a dialogue that creates self-awareness and collaboration between the student body and the faculty, which in turn creates a place where creativity and learning can flourish. At the ETA, the only thing that flourishes is alienation, depression, the loss of self. DFW writes one of his more insightful lines about the American experience, "American experience seems to suggest that people are virtually unlimited in their need to give themselves away, on various levels" (Wallace 53). Isn't college supposed to be a place where one finds himself/herself, discovers who/she is? DFW seems to be positing that the American experience, particularly the collegiate experience, is a matter of Borg-like assimilation ("Resistance is futile"), not self-discovery leading to individuality.

In many ways what DFW is suggesting in Infinite Jest is that social justice pedagogy is an unrealistic ideal. Dialogue and collaboration only happen when it serves the interests of those already in power. And those in power are not any different than those who are not, especially in terms of their moods, feelings, and self-awareness. For the most part social mobility is a pipe dream, as is change for that matter, and that attempts to move toward a more egalitarian status quo only ends up befuddling things more. To see a more vivid example of this, one can read DFW's Tense Present Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage in which he describes the forces at play in the language debate, which are really the same forces at play in education: convention, tradition, status, and authority. Here DFW comments on the attempts to apply social justice to language, he writes:

Forget Stalinization or Logic 101-level equivocations, though. There's a grosser irony about Politically Correct English. This is that PCE purports to be the dialect of progressive reform but is in fact -- in its Orwellian substitution of the euphemisms of social equality for social equality itself -- of vastly more help to conservatives and the U.S. status quo than traditional SNOOT prescriptions ever were. Were I, for instance, a political conservative who opposed taxation as a means of redistributing national wealth, I would be delighted to watch PCE progressives spend their time and energy arguing over whether a poor person should be described as "low-income" or "economically disadvantaged" or "pre-prosperous" rather than constructing effective public arguments for redistributive legislation or higher marginal tax rates on corporations. (Not to mention that strict codes of egalitarian euphemism serve to burke the sorts of painful, unpretty, and sometimes offensive discourse that in a pluralistic democracy leads to actual political change rather than symbolic political change. In other words, PCE functions as a form of censorship, and censorship always serves the status quo.) (2001).

There's a lot being discussed here, but to highlight the essential argument is to say that even when social justice pedagogy is applied, and there is a dialogue being conducted, and there is a sensitivity to power and authority which results in a conscious effort to amend (in this case language) curriculum or a pedagogical approach it usually results in a zero sum gain, or worse, has a negative impact on society. Consider that in this example, PCE a reformed, progressive and culturally sensitive dialogue does not increase equality and comprehension among the masses, particularly among the disadvantaged (those it was intended to help), rather it acts as a form of censorship that serves the status quo. It seems like the more one tries to make an impact, the more he/she is rebuffed by the intractable ways of the system.

By the end of Infinite Jest, Hal can barely articulate his words so that others can understand him. He's alienated within the constructs of a system, a society, and an academic culture that promotes a fractured and numb emotional landscape. Hal has become a reflection of what society is, at least as rendered in Infinite Jest, a numb, indifferent, and humanly incomprehensible complexity (kind of like the Sierpinski Gasket). This is depressing, and maybe it's meant to be that way.

And now, after reading Infinite Jest, and considering the aspect of social justice it investigates, one is left with a double bind of sorts. That is to say one is duly aware that change is necessary, that social justice in education is an imperative, but at the same time one is aware of -- to rewrite a popular book title -- the mendacity of hope and the futility of change. One is aware that change is at once both necessary and impossible.

To sit here and to say that one can arbitrarily make changes to the dystopian society depicted in Infinite Jest to improve the educational experience for the students at the ETA would be intellectually dishonest. DFW makes a pretty convincing case that the more things "change" the more they stay the same (or in some cases, as in the PCE they regress). That, those students are willful participants in their own assimilation. However, in an attempt to earn full credit, I will recommend a pedagogical approach that is sensitive to the tenets of social justice and changes the paradigm the traditional educational standard has established, one that is open to change and inquiry and recognizes it's positionality. What I am referring to is the Kahn Academy.