Hi All.
I just thought it’d be interested to see each other’s papers, so for those interested, I’m posting mine here.
-Amy
Amy Gijsbers van Wijk
Final Paper
04 December 2012
The Anti-Apocalypse and the “Book of Revelation”:
Biblical Ramifications of Gender, Sexuality and Dominance in Jose Rivera’s Marisol
The Bible is often looked to as a source of inspiration: for films (from Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat to Passion of the Christ), for musicals (Jesus Christ Superstar), and best-selling book series (the “Left Behind” series). Many of these pieces are culturally-known, often successful creations that take an idea held within the Bible and create a piece in line with its teachings. These pieces of art are often discussed, though whether or not these works of art are continuing the messages of morality and faith proposed is less often analyzed. However, it is becoming more popular for works of art, often holding a more secular thematic message, to re-interpret events within The Bible, or at least re-imagine the relevance of these teachings and events. Evan Almighty showcases the flood, and Noah’s story, with comedy, relevant roles of women and children, and a Black God; The Book of Eli is a modern, science-fiction inspiration of an apocalypse, Eli being a character who wants to keep the last physical Bible in the world alive. One recent interpretation is Jose Rivera’s Marisol, a 1992 play based in New York City, during the Apocalypse that focuses on the unraveling of a 26-year-old Puerto Rican woman’s life.
In this paper, I will examine how the roles of sexuality and gender, specifically in relation to dominance, are essential in the “Book of Revelation,” and how these roles are re-imagined in Jose Rivera’s Marisol to subvert and reconfigure the traditional gender roles in the “Book of Revelation”; Rivera pushes for a non-violent, protective defender-female (who will resort to necessary violence) role and a male that embodies this protective defender while maintaining the masculine. I will only be looking at the “Book of Revelation,” in the Bible, and not other books within the Bible that may alternatively construct or suggest female and male roles, especially in relevance to power since this focuses on the Apocalypse. I will also examine whether or not Marisol seems to present an Apocalypse or anti-Apocalypse, or a hybrid of both, in comparison to the Apocalypse of the “Book of Revelation.” In this paper, “gender” will refer to a person’s biological sex based on character description; “sexuality” will refer to the invoking of sexual attraction and lust to coerce, threaten, survive, etc. and also refer to innuendo and hints of sexual behavior; “dominance” here refers to the aggressor in a situation or in a hierarchical structure and this is often connected to violence. Lastly, headers are placed not to separate the paper’s focus but only to highlight the individual aspects of Marisol being analyzed, as the play is dense and contains many potential elements to examine.
Knowing Gender and Sexuality in Notorious Women
In order to call attention to the differences in male and female depiction within the “Book of Revelation” and Marisol, one must first acknowledge the initial ideals of gender, sexuality, and dominance in the Biblical text. Initially, the first hint of dominance and gender roles occur when John, the author of the book, describes “Jesus Christ…the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood” (Revelation 1:5). Jesus Christ is the ideal; the holiest of men; the chosen son of God. He is also male, celibate, and maintains dominance separate from violence by choosing violence upon himself, the ultimate self-sacrifice. At the same time he is more than man, for he is an embodiment of the Lord. It can be said that on a certain level, Christ is dichotomously man and supernatural (in the holy sense). Angels are male, and the apostolic author of this Biblical book is as well. Women, on the other hand, are inherently human, and female, and therefore sinful. There is the Woman Clothed with the Sun, the Whore of Babylon, and Jezebel. There is also the city of New Jerusalem, with its female portrayal and its twin city of Babylon, the evil place of corruption.
Jezebel is described as woman who taught polytheism, and who may have encouraged sexual practices, as well as eating sacrificial foods. This reveals a separation from the dominance of God’s teachings, as well as encouraging the spread of Ba’al worship and feeding her prophets. According to scholar Lee Quinby, that “Queen Jezebel could afford to feed so many prophets suggests independent means or control over [King] Ahab’s wealth” which reveals another level of her ability to hold dominance over men (separate from violence) (Quinby 103). However, Jezebel is eventually killed, and her children will all be murdered – this is more than her own suffering, but that the products of her sexuality are destroyed, and removed, even as they are children. She is killed by being pushed out of a window, and her body is defiled as it is eaten by dogs.
Jezebel can be compared, at moments, to characters within Marisol. Marisol and another female character, June, work at a publishing company where Marisol reviews science publications. This alternative to religion, in Rivera’s world, makes itself known only moments before Marisol is attacked by a man in their office. While the attack does not directly relate to her publications, it is within the office that supports her work that she is attacked. However, June, who describes the darkness of their current New York City is “Good. Put the fear of God in you.” To Marisol, she says, “Don’t let them catch you not ready, okay? You gotta be prepared to fight now!” (Rivera 21). This compliment of religious fierceness that June has, as a white woman (more likely of Protestant background, inferred by her character description as “Irish-American”) and scientific support reveal an ambiguous message about the ideas of a Jezebelian female being “Jezebel” in the Biblical terms of sinful and deserving of punishment.
The other woman who is reviled is the Whore of Babylon. She is the woman who has fornicated with multitudes of kings and “the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication” (Rev. 17:2). She is named, “MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF EARTH” and she holds a cup of fornication, riding a seven-headed, ten-horned beast (Rev 17:5-17:7). However, there is a line that holds for relevance in a later moment of Marisol, when a voice says, “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins,” so that the men who have fornicated with her can repent (Rev. 18:4).
This facial-marking of Jezebel is similar to that of the newspaper article in Marisol. After the character Marisol is nearly killed several times in an evening, she finds a headline the next morning in The New York Post of a woman named Marisol Perez bludgeoned to death. The violence preceding it is important to look at in order to fully grasp the context of the headline: In the opening scene, Marisol is on a subway car and is threatened by a man with a golf club. This man claims to have seen his guardian angel tell him that there is no longer protection, and that there will be a war. The man threatens violence – thus bearing the mark of dominance and Apocalyptic prophecy in one fell swoop of masculinity. At the moment of exact impact, the train car is stopped, and Marisol runs to her apartment, safe. She hides under her covers after making a prayer to “Matthew, Mark, Luke and John” (Rivera 13). Then, she hears voices. One in particular, the second voice, is a woman shouting at her boyfriend, who she assumes is in residence in Marisol’s apartment. She states, explicitly, that she is leaving and will come back and “KILL YOU AND THEN [I’M] GONNA KILL EVERYONE IN THIS APARTMENT INCLUDING THE CHILDREN!” When Marisol finally shouts back, the woman’s anger leads to jealousy. She accuses Marisol of being Matthew’s new girlfriend, and continues with her violent actions (Capitalization and colloquialism is in the dialogue.) (14). Here, a female is depicted as punishing a male for a kind of whorishness – cheating on the voice, named Sandy, with the new assumed-identity of Marisol. The woman shoots through Marisol’s door, and Marisol opens the door to find a pillar of salt. This is a complex moment for the female characters in the play. The voice of a human woman, who is disembodied but named, attempts to wreak violence on a man. This violence leads out of a lack of male presence, because Sandy is not receiving a response from the Matthew she is looking for. This can be described as a lack of male domination or a lack of male reaction to female domination, because it can be interpreted that Sandy is looking for Matthew and thus attempting to dominate, or expecting domination from the male. Then, at the presence of Marisol, even though Marisol attempts to explain herself, she is driven to rage. Here, femaleness is battling itself. Sandy is driven from violence to a more justified type of violence, because Matthew is assumed to have committed adultery. This subverts the “Book of Revelation”’s idea of femaleness being that which tempts people to sin, since Sandy is angry at Matthew’s assumed sinning and not the temptress herself. However, the femaleness of Marisol is (again, assumed) to be that temptation and sin, which reinforces the original gender roles of females as temptresses. Therein lies a new contradiction, because Marisol attempts to correct the situation and has not actually sinned, and the male is completely absent (but his assumed sinning is enough). Then finally, Sandy commits violence in an attempt to be the dominant figure, and is subverted by the holy female power of the Angel who guards Marisol. By allowing Marisol to be protected instead of shot, the idea of a female sinner due to punishment is discarded, but the idea of violent dominance is considered damning, for Sandy is turned into salt. This layered chain-reaction of power, gender, and dominance repositions the message of this scene into one of empowered women who are non-violent, but protective. The idea of women serving as protectors is in line with the Apocalyptic myth in regards to holy women, but the idea of empowering human women to dominate men (especially with violence) is anti-Apocalyptic, leaving Marisol’s ideas of female power (at this point in the play) in conflict with itself.
The next morning, Marisol finds the newspaper with the the headline on it. The woman, “Marisol Perez,” was killed on the same block that Marisol lives on. The New York Post is generally considered a right-wing newspaper, and this perhaps adds a political layer to the idea that, in another universe – or even in the same one, unraveling in a violent fashion – Marisol is dead. She does not get saved via holy female protection. It can also be considered a word of warning for the idea that she no longer has the Angel watching over her. The Whore of Babylon was punished for fornicating, and while Marisol had not actually been fornicating with the absent “Matthew,” she is almost killed for it. She is almost assaulted on the subway by the man with the golf club for simply being present as he revels and fears in the power of the new, angel-less world. The man with the golf club can be interpreted as a prophet, but he is also one of heavy violence for he threatens to make Marisol like himself, though whether he means insane or unprotected, and suffering, is unclear. This almost-attack, and pseudo-death, can be considered the first strong hints of a coming change, of not a Godless Apocalypse but at least one without holy protection or wrath to save people. Furthermore, Apocalyptic scholar Tina Pippin cites Virginia Allen, who claims that “‘dead women, exotic women, embody a fierce and total rejection of living women’” (Pippin 39). Marisol now embodies an exotic space that will come into play when she interacts with the main male character of the story, Lenny.
Staging of the Holy
In Jose Rivera’s Marisol, the main character is the title-character, Marisol, a 26-year-old Puerto Rican woman who lives in the Bronx. Though the piece was written in 1992, the location is defined as “New York City: The present. Winter.” (Rivera 8). Even in the first scene, there is the subversion of the typical Apocalypse. “Sitting on the ladder [downstage of the wall] is Marisol’s Guardian Angel. The Angel is a young, Black woman in ripped jeans, sneakers and a black T-shirt” (9). The Angel here subverts the typical angel depicted in the Bible by her femininity. She also is youthful, where the angels in the Bible are often depicted as young-looking but ageless. Lastly, she subverts the idea of the traditional angel through her skin color, where most Biblical angels are depicted as white. Furthermore, she is dressed in a “masculine” way – there is nothing, necessarily, feminine about her outfit. Her clothes are the type worn by men and women alike within a certain age group. The black colors of her outfit may be interpreted as a masking of the body, or of someone who sneaks through the night, an assassin, and thus disregarding gender in the Angel’s costuming. As she will tell Marisol, she is leading a war against God. She has “[c]rude silver wings” that “hang limply” from her “diamond-studded black leather jacket” and she is described as looking like a “burnt-out soldier of some lost cause” (9). This is anti-Apocalyptic because she is not the glorified, holy angel of the Biblical portraiture. Her wings are shabby, evoking an image of a creature who is weak, or wounded, and thus lacking in dominance. She is also at odds, here, with the later depiction of the “large romanticized picture of a traditional Catholic guardian angel” that hangs in Marisol’s room (12). It will serve as juxtaposition for when she appears to Marisol. It is in this double-image of angels Rivera acknowledges the contradiction between his anti-Apocalyptic vision of the Angel and the traditional interpretation.
Another relevant opening stage description is that, “[f]loating in the sky is a small gold crown inside a clear glass box” (10). This can be interpreted as a metaphorical depiction for God, or for God’s power. He is depicted as masculine, dominant, and almost tyrannical. The Angel tells Marisol that “Angels are going to kill the King of Heaven and restore the vitality of the universe with His blood. And I am going to lead them…There is going to be a war. A revolution of angels” (18). This moment can be, however, tied to a male angel’s announcement of the falling of Babylon, where the male angel “come[s] down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lighted with his glory. And he cried…saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of the devils” (Rev. 18:1 – 18:2). Here, the female angel of Marisol makes a similar statement, and both are dominant and powerful. However, the male angel of Revelation is acknowledged as powerful by decree of God and is following this decree, whereas Marisol’s angel is restoring dominance through planned violence and subversion of the holy decree. Instead of the depiction of God as per the “Book of Revelation,” where God is almighty, and wrathful, God is here being depicted as losing control – a kind of impotence to the original omnipotence – and a senile, aging, destructive tyrant. To strengthen the allegorical comparison between the two angels’ announcements, the Angel of Marisol announces, in the beginning of her monologue in scene four that, “the best thing that could happen to this city is immediate evacuation followed by fire on a massive scale. Melt it all down. Consume the ruins” (15). Just like the angel of the “Book of Revelation,” except here within her own wishes and decrees, the Angel wishes for the total razing of New York City, a post-modern Babylon.
This discussion between Marisol and her Angel lead to the Angel informing Marisol that, as part of the war, she can no longer be her guardian and that Marisol will have to fend for herself. In fact, the play her juxtaposes the violence of the Angel to her preventative protection, for the Angel lists to Marisol all of the violent events and obstacles that her holy protection has offered:
“…I turned the monsters into little columns of salt! At last count, one plane crash, one collapsed elevator, one massacre at the hands of a right-wing fanatic with an Uzi, and sixty-six-thousand-six-hundred-and-three separate sexual assaults never happened because of me” (Rivera 17).
By allowing the female Angel to both create violence and protect a human female from it, the Angel exhibits domination in a layered way on par with that of Jesus Christ’s representative power mentioned at the beginning of this paper: she can be vengeful (and will), but she can also make a sacrifice to protect those who she finds deserving. She has a holy power on the level of God, and Christ, and perhaps more than the God of this anti-Apocalyptic story because she aims to overthrow God – to be able to plot against the Almighty allows for the idea of a female dominance that can think independently, and against, the hierarchy of God or the ideology of the Christian faith as portrayed in the “Book of Revelation.” There is also the clearly Satanic, Apocalyptic imagery being invoked regarding the amount of sexual assault, as it involves the number 666, the number of the “beast of the earth” (Rev. 13:11-13:18).
Lenny, June & Marisol: Sexuality and Dominance in Siblinghood
The three main characters in Marisol are predominantly female – there is Marisol, her Irish-American best friend June, and the Angel. However, there is also June’s brother, Lenny. After Marisol is attacked at their publishing office, June decides to take Marisol to her apartment, which she says is safer and much closer. As they enter, June says she has to warn Marisol about “my fucked-up brother who lives with me” (Rivera 25). Lenny, June says, is “a little weird about women” and has “turbulent sexual death fantasies,” in addition to having a fascination with Marisol because June has mentioned her for two years to Lenny – he “draws pictures of you, in crayon, covering every inch of his bedroom. He’s thirty-four…but he has the mental capacity of a child” (25). Indeed, the first portrayal of Lenny is with these words, and June describes him both as someone who is obsessive about the female in an idealized, imaginative way. There is no physical female body for him to lust after, only stories, and he is considered to be both harmless and childlike, thus separated from sexuality, and at the same time reinforces his capacity to unrealistically objectify and fantasize sexually and about the female body.
When Lenny first appears onstage, he kisses Marisol’s hand until June separates them. Then, he runs off and returns with a sculpture, titled “Marisol Perez,” that is a formless ball of nails welded together. Lenny describes her as being “a great mystery” and the sculpture representing all of the things he doesn’t know about Marisol (27). Here again is the abstracted idea of the idolized female, except that Lenny focuses on Marisol now as a person instead of as a physical female body. However, this is not unlike the depiction of Jezebel as “a fantasy space” that contains “a personality, a lifestyle, an ethical way of being in the female world” (Pippin 39). Pippin discusses that there is an eroticization of Jezebel’s death, and this can be seen as a similar thread presented in Marisol because there is, as illustrated in Lenny’s interactions with Marisol, an emphasis towards violence against women that is also inherently tied to sexual desire and dominance. Lenny continually tries to impress Marisol until June gets angry, and the two begin to shout at one another (28):
LENNY. You wish Mom had drowned me! I know that’s what you wish! Well, you don’t have to feel sorry for me anymore!
JUNE. Sure I do. You’re pathetic. The only thing separating you from a concrete bed on Avenue D is me.
Lenny threatens June until he eventually returns with a “long kitchen knife and tries to cut June’s throat” (28). Lenny begins to tell June that he had died, medically, and “my heart stopped for seven minutes and my soul was outta Lennox Hill at the speed of light…I was resurrected, I returned to the living to warn the world that big changes are coming…and we have to be ready” (28). Here, again, the male is taking on the role of a violent prophet who feels the ability, or necessity, to remove a female – in the case, there is more emotional context between June and Lenny, and it is clear that the two have been struggling with each other their entire lives.
Lenny as a prophet holds the masculine ideals of the male prophets that come before him, and the prophet who writes the “Book of Revelation,” John. There is also the obvious comparison to Jesus Christ, who also is risen from the dead. In addition, Lenny’s masculine image is heightened as this virginal, masculine ideal is not unlike that of the 144,000 virgins that “were not defiled with women; for they were virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithsoever he goeth. These were redeemed among men, being the firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb” (Rev. 14:4). This creates a status for Lenny of being somehow “chosen,” perhaps not on the same level of Christ but on a similar, privileged and holy male within the ideal of a religious man of the “Book of Revelation.” Lenny has been selected, particularly, to come back to the Earth and spread the impending message given to him by those in Heaven. Lenny is virginal, isolated from society (and thus from its sins) and is attempting to spread the word of God, or of the anti-Apocalypse, in the same ways that a good follower of Christ would. Furthermore, his seeking violence against women is in accordance with the actions that occur against women in the Bible – June, disbelieving and attempting to dominate him and wish death upon him is in opposition to his message of the coming Apocalypse, and thus it can be considered that she would be trying to block the word of God. However, instead of preaching the word of God, in the world of Marisol Lenny is preaching the word that is now going to become dominate, warning people about the angels and the war that will occur. This creates a modernized version of the virginal male in the anti-Apocalypse. Alienated from the women around him, and thus even prone to violence against them, Lenny initially is very similar to the prophets and virgin men in the “Book of Revelation.”
June then demands that Lenny leave. June invokes a comparison between herself and the Woman Clothed with the Sun, for she tells Lenny that she can’t “carry [Lenny] around protected in [her] Epic Uterus anymore” (Rivera 29). She is here portraying, again, the idea of female protection that is somehow bigger than average human female power. In addition, there is an added level of dominance about June. Instead of fully replicating the mythology of the Woman Clothed with the Sun, June does not disappear from the story or fully identify herself around Lenny’s existence – June is not considered holy, despite being related to a prophet-like virginal male. Instead, she tells Lenny that she will not take him back, nor will she let their mother take him in. She is forcing him to fend for himself, and thus creates a specific level of power between them. In this situation, the human woman without any help from angels still has the ability to create the circumstances for her “chosen” relative to live in, and can oppose him. Yet instead of this (arguably feminist) idea being sustained, it is quickly reversed.
Even after June kicks him out of the house, he later is found to have attacked her with a golf club. It is not coincidence that this violence occurs in identical fashion as the man on the subway planned to attack Marisol, except this time Lenny succeeds. Despite June temporarily having control over the “chosen” male, Lenny reverses the power and then remains in control by then becoming a main stage character, where as June disappears until closer to the end of the play. Here, the power play of June attempting to dominate the area of the home by kicking Lenny out is undermined by this violence against her, and thus reveals that the male still contains the upper hand and can reckon violence against women, in the angel-less anti-Apocalypse, without consequence.
Nevertheless, a shift occurs. This time, the shift does not undermine the previous ideas of “chosen” male dominance, but creates an entirely different consideration within the gender/difference dichotomy.
The Man Clothed With the Sun
Lenny appears two scenes later, in “Scene 8,” at Marisol’s apartment. Immediately, Marisol grabs the knife under her pillow and threatens Lenny, “Get out or I’ll rip out both your fucking eyes, Lenny!” (Rivera 32). This is not unlike the facial-marking of the Whore of Babylon, nor is it unlike the bodily decimating of Jezebel. However, this threatened violence does not occur. Instead, Lenny admits to his attack on June and explains his insanity, saying he was medically experimented on in an attempt to cure his asthma as a child. Lenny defines June as having had “everything” when Lenny had nothing. This reiterates the dichotomy between the two – this is the strongest separation between genders, as well, that Rivera possibly draws. In addition, this reveals the issue of male entitlement and dominance as built-in to the dichotomy – because Lenny was lacking in accomplishments and jealous of June (in addition to being “chosen,” though his questionable sanity begs some skepticism about the truth of this story) and thus feels entitled to rob her of these things, or at the very least to do violence against her in retaliation, and expression of his jealousy. In addition, Lenny describes that he was “neutered. I squatted and served like a goddamn house eunuch” when he was living with June (33). This metaphorical castration of Lenny further reiterates the idea that male submissiveness is negative, at least to the chosen religious male. This creates a growing space between Lenny and Marisol, which Lenny attempts to break:
LENNY. …‘Cause we have God, Marisol. We have God in common. Maybe it’s God’s will that I’m with you now. On this frontier…I’m what he designed for you.[…]I want to offer you a deal…I’m gonna let you give me control over your life. That means I’ll do everything for you…I can protect you like June did…I can be your guardian angel, Marisol.
Lenny continues, with the central statement that all he needs is for Marisol to, “Make me big. Make me central. Praise me, feed me, and believe everything I tell you” (Rivera 33). This collective monologue reveals that, while Lenny still feels Marisol would be better if she submits to him, it is qualified with the idea that Marisol gains safety in a feminine guise, being that both June and the Angel are feminine. Marisol even agrees. However, again this idea of feminine strength doesn’t last for long. Shortly thereafter, Lenny and Marisol are screaming at each other after Marisol wants to go outside and Lenny forbids it. Marisol breaks her ties with Lenny and admits that Lenny will “always be [her] enemy” and that there are “savage differences” between boys and girls. (Rivera 34). Here, Marisol asserts her dominance once and for all, and the idea that a man can present protection that is the same as the feminine protection, is rejected. Marisol hits Lenny on the head with the bloodied golf club, and thus impregnates him with both violence and the feminine protectivity that he demonstrates in his final appearance.
The character most immediately comparable to the Woman Clothed in the Sun is in fact Lenny, who reveals himself in “Act Two” as a pregnant mother. Marisol comes across Lenny, who has been living on the street. She at first marks Lenny as bloated, and denies his ability to be pregnant as a man (50-51):
MARISOL. This is your old bullshit Lenny. That’s a fucking pumpkin you got under your clothes. A big bundle of deceit and sexual CONFUSION. You’re trying to dislodge me. Finally push me over the edge. Contradict all I know so that I won’t be able to say my own name. […] Maybe you should stop pretending you’re pregnant and find a job.
LENNY. How can you say that when this is your baby?!
Through this experience, Lenny inhabits a gender space that is not male, nor is it female. Impregnated by Marisol’s violence and feminine protectiveness, he has cared for this baby. He does inspire Marisol to “start at the beginning,” and Lenny is amazed at his pregnant body saying “Every man should have this experience. There’d be fewer wars. This is power” (51). Though they both use the term “man,” it is clear that Lenny is not a man, or at least not in the gender-based sense, not anymore. He is no a woman either, and the idea that in the new age, a person who is both male and female is the most supported gender role presented in Rivera’s play, arguing for people to embody aspects of both genders, at least of the protective female and violent, dominant male.
Though the baby is born stillborn, it can be argued that it is here that the violence of Lenny’s impregnation dies, but that his new self exists to live on: a different kind of birth.
O Holy Marisol
The argument can be made that both Lenny and Marisol represent messianic Christ-figures, as well as the Angel being a Christ-figure herself, or even a more Satanic figure, as it is her that brings about the revolution of war. The Angel also holds a submachine gun, is pictured bloody, and is seen wearing military fatigues in the final scene of “Act One” (Rivera 49). This domination and violence, partnered with the holiness of the Angel (and her supernatural qualities) create an even dichotomy of femininity and violent protectiveness, the most developed of its kind within the play. She is acted on violently within the context of war, and is perhaps the only female character who is attacked based on pre-existing grounds (like war) that she knowingly went into. The fact, also, that she can clearly defend herself – and ultimately, the angels win the war against God and a new age is ushered in – make her a foil to the Jesus Christ of the “Book of Revelation,” and to the God of Marisol. She is a violent, protective, and dominant figure while at the same time being female, and is most able to reverse her role as submissive to the dominating male God. However, this is all in addition to her supernatural powers, and thus partially separates her from the human females within Marisol.
Lenny, who is both the prophet and the Woman Clothed in the Sun, but gives birth to a stillborn, not a new, lively messiah. He does, however, offer the similarity to Christ and God in that he offers to keep people safe and sound if he is “given control” over their lives, as he offers to Marisol. Ultimately, however, it is Marisol herself that is most messianic.
In the ending monologue of the piece, a woman, described as “Woman With Furs,” shoots a large group of people – she, however, is motivated by monetary obsession, and thus is not discussed in this piece on a more in-depth level because monetary obsession exists, within the play as a construct (people are thrown in jail for credit card debt) and across genders. Marisol is shot, and “dies instantly,” but Marisol speaks that “at the moment of death, [she] see[s] the invisible war” and watches as the war is won for the Angel and her revolutionary rebels (57). Marisol reappears, with the Angel, and the Angel kisses her (the Angel kisses the other people who see her within this play) in a joining of the holy womanhood and the human womanhood of protectiveness, surrounded by “what possiblities. What hope” (57). Marisol is Christ-like in her ability to rise and fall, at least once (and arguably twice – the aforementioned scene can be argued as metaphorical and/or realistic), and to lead people – Lenny, June, and another character, named Scar Tissue, a male, who appears only in Act Two – to safety and salvation. This cannot be done, however, without the Angel, who perhaps represents the female God in a new, restructured, anti-Apocalyptic Heaven and Earth.
Conclusion
Since Marisol, Lenny, and June eventually make up, there is a closing between the gap of male and female in the original representation of brother/sisterhood. Also, Lenny has been given the experience of female-ness within a new gender entirely, and this perhaps removes him from the original category of the 144,000 male virgins. Whether or not his punishment for experiencing female-ness for was the stillborn, he is irrevocably changed. I argue that he was not punished for the stillborn, but that the violence that was impregnated in him when Marisol hit him was rejected, and this was manifested in a stillborn child. However, the female protectiveness that Lenny illustrates while carrying the child irrevocably changes him, and gives him both an insight into the female experience and creates an altogether new gender – men, as Marisol says to him, cannot give birth. This illustrates that he is not simply a man becoming feminized, and that Marisol and Lenny have switched the same, traditional gender roles of men and women, but that they have both become blended in gender, and have begun to embody aspects of protective femininity and violent masculinity within themselves, and these seem to be the new, modified gender roles that Rivera most supports.
Thus, it is clear that post-modern theatre does not totally break from the Apocalyptic gender roles, even in an anti-Apocalyptic play. This can be considered a disappointment, perhaps in the minds of feminists or those adamantly opposed to the roles contained within the “Book of Revelation.” Too, though, this can be seen as accepting the fact that many things, once placed on a stage, can become ambiguous and complicated, as there are lots of layers between written words, action, setting, dialogue, and the actions that occur onstage. In addition, it is perhaps a sign of progress that, while the roles are not modified beyond recognition, a new subset of gender is created and the genders do begin to exist in a less dichotomous way – it can be interpreted that the male and femaleness now exist on a spectrum, though outside of the protectiveness and violence not a large amount of gender ambiguity is seen. Overall, Marisol is both Apocalyptic and anti-, blending complex ideas and often in battle with itself. An ideal female and male, and gender-blend, are all represented instead of a larger spectrum, but it can be argued that the females in the play are the messianic figures of the new world, and that the men (until Lenny changes gender) tend towards dangerous and helpful but not essential. (Scar Tissue, a man, is left out of these analytics for these reasons, as he does not occur through many changes but is presented at the end as a similarly emasculated, lustful male with an idealized view of Marisol, though he speaks of love and then disappears.) Thus, the ultimate representation of a woman is one who is not considered a sinner, has a capacity for change and violence, and tends towards protective non-violence unless necessary violence occurs. The final scene involves Lenny, the Angel, Marisol, June (and additional “Homeless People”), thus finalizing the image of woman and new gender subsets or blends as the hope for the new world and the future.
Works Cited
Kirsch, John. “Appendix.” A History of the End of the World: How The Most Controversial Book in the Bible Changed the Course of Western Civilization. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2006. Print.
Pippin, Tina. “Jezebel Revamped,” “Apocalyptic Horror,” “Conclusion: the joy of (apocalyptic) sex.” Apocalyptic Bodies: The Biblical End of the World in Text and Image. New York, NY: Routledge, 1996. Print. 32-43, 78-100, 117-128.
Quinby, Lee. Millennial Seduction. New York, NY: University Press, 2005. Print.
Rivera, Jose. Marisol. New York, NY: Dramatists Play Service, Incorporated, 1992. Print.
