During the
narrator’s upbringing, his psychologist father recreated and tested many famous
psychology experiments. These experiments, while cruel for a child, were also designed
in a way for the narrator’s father to expose the narrator to how he believed
blacks should behave and are perceived in America.
One of the experiments
mentioned was the Little Albert experiment where researchers turned a neutral
stimulus into a conditioned stimulus. While Little Albert was exposed to
stimulus like a bunny and heard a hammer strike a steel bar, the narrator’s
father provided stimulus such as, “toy police cars, cold cans of Pabst Blue
Ribbon, Richard Nixon campaign buttons, and a copy of The Economist” and the narrator heard gunshots and his dad shouting
“‘Nigger, go back to Africa!’” (29). The change of stimuli in the experiment
depicts the different things the narrator’s father wanted the narrator to be
scared of, and many of the stimuli were ones that black people tended to not
like. His father, through this experiment, was trying to instill these beliefs
and behaviors at a very young age.
One recreated
experiment that was especially interesting was when the father wanted to test
the bystander effect, based on the incident of Kitty Genovese who was stabbed,
sexually assaulted, and murdered in front of multiple witnesses who assumed
that others would call the police. In testing this, the narrator’s father instead
created a situation in which he got people to help him mug and beat up the
narrator. His father says that he forgot “to take into account the ‘bandwagon
effect’,” (30), however, I believe this was more to do with how social
contagion, deindividualization and risky shift created the situation in which people
helped the father instead of the narrator. Through this experiment, it was
hinted that the reason the bystander effect wasn’t applied and instead the
people helped the father was because the narrator was black and dressed with “dollar
bills bursting from [his] pockets, the latest and shiniest electronic gadgetry
jammed into [his] ear canals, a hip-hop heavy gold chain hanging from [his]
neck, and, inexplicably, a set of custom-made carpeted Honda Civic floor mats
draped over [his] forearm” (30). The father wanted to see how the bystander effect
applies to the black community, and he got his answer.
Another significant
experiment was the experiment showing the black and white dolls. The father
thought and expected his son to identify with and choose the black dolls, so
when the narrator chose the white dolls he “lost his scientific objectivity and
grabbed [the narrator] by the shirt,” (35) probably surprised by the narrator’s
answer. However, intentionally or not, the father made the Barbie and Ken dolls
have better accessories than MLK Jr, Malcolm X, Harriet Tubman, and a Weeble toy.
This depicts actual society where generally white people have better commodities
and accessories than black people.
For me, these
recreated experiments were either funny or cringey but overall very entertaining.
Having recently learned about each of the experiments in another class, it was interesting
to see how the narrator’s father recreated the experiments including an element
of the behaviors or beliefs of white and black people.
I agree that the experiments are entertaining, mostly because of their absurdity and the sympathy they draw to the narrator's childhood. The narrator's father takes experiments that were originally credible and makes them laughable. The narrator describes himself as his father's "Anna Freud," (28) being used as "both the control and the experimental group" (29). It makes me wonder why the father, who is apparently educated in psychology, would do this. I think that Beatty makes the experiments seem desperate and unfounded because the father just wants to make progress in his frenzied "quest to unlock the keys to mental freedom" (28). The narrator's father just wants to make a name for himself and to help the black community, so much so that he is willing to conduct poor recreations of well-known experiments just so he can feel like he has made a contribution. The sad irony of the father's life is that he has made next to no contribution to psychology or to his community (aside from founding the Dum Dum Donut Intellectuals), and in reality has hurt his son more than he ever helped anyone through his research. The narrator even states "I had a shitty upbringing that I'll never be able to live down," one that is haunting to him throughout the rest of the novel (29).
ReplyDeleteWhile reading The Sellout, I was also drawn to the experiments the narrator’s father conducted on him and I found myself thinking about them a lot. One of the reasons for this is (like you said) because the experiments were structured and modeled after other relatively famous experiments. Having these experiments be based on previous, well-established ones allowed me to have a slightly better understanding of what the narrator’s father was trying to do/accomplish. But even though I had an idea of what he was trying to learn, the experiments still don’t fully make sense to me. Another reason I found the experiments interesting is not only because they are entertaining and absolutely absurd, but because they are also what molded the narrator into the person he is in the latter half of the book. It was also interesting that the narrator’s father couldn’t “diagnose” what was wrong with the narrator or figure out why he had the problems he had, even though he is the reason (or at least heavily contributed to the reason) why the narrator is the way he is. The narrator states that his father never could figure him out and that the only person to ever diagnose him is Marpessa (201), who ultimately diagnosed him with “attachment disorder” (202).
ReplyDeleteDespite his eccentric attempts to instill the notion that racism is still a prevailing issue in society, the narrator’s father inadvertently contributes to this issue by inflicting this animosity on his own son. In a roundabout way, the [narrator’s] father’s experiments were not only detrimental to his own son’s upbringing, but also convinced him that white people weren’t the issue at all. While I agree that this abuse stems from the father’s paternalistic need to pre-expose his son to the racial injustices of the world, I believe that these experiments overall had the reverse effect, instead teaching the narrator that being black meant being a “coward” (44). This is demonstrated when the narrator’s father tries to replicate Drs. Kenneth and Mamie Clark’s study of color consciousness in black children, using the black and white dolls. Rather than receiving the results he expects, the experiment backfires when the narrator chooses the white dolls instead of the black, “because the white people got better accessories” (35). Even after the narrator’s father dies, this self-contempt lingers within the narrator, as every ten years he still “check[s] the box marked ‘Some other race’ and proudly write[s] in ‘Californian’” (44) on the census. In retrospect, a father shouting, “Nigger, go back to Africa,” (29) at their own son, is likely enough to make any black person have a natural aversion to his or her own race.
ReplyDelete