payment page
It was the hat. He looked sweet in the hat. How could a man in a fuzzy blue hat have used human bones to pave his roads?”
This quotation comes from Dolly’s chapter, and it explains why she chose to put The General in a soft blue hat for the first PR photos she sets up. The General’s public image is that of a bloodthirsty, genocidal dictator. When people picture him, they think of the images that his media team has allowed to be leaked to the public, in which he looks forbidding and untouchable. The contrast between how he’s previously been shown and how vulnerable and approachable he looks in the hat is enough to shift the public’s opinion of the heinous crimes he has committed against his people.
It's Dolly’s job to take her client’s public image, strategically remold it, and use the same mechanisms of publicity that condemned them to rehabilitate them. The rhetorical question asked at the end of the quotation is the one that Dolly wants the public to be asking themselves. If The General looks this harmless, how could he possibly have committed acts of terrorism that condemn him on the international stage? The image of The General in the blue hat is not supposed to disprove any of his crimes. Instead, it’s meant to prove that he’s not type of man who could ever have “paved his roads with bones” at all.
In the Mab’s graffiti-splattered bathroom we eavesdrop: Ricky Sleeper fell off the stage at a gig, Joe Rees of Target Video is making an entire movie of punk rock, two sisters we always see at the club have started turning tricks to pay for heroin. Knowing all this makes us one step closer to being real, but not completely. When does a fake Mohawk become a real Mohawk? Who decides? How do you know if it’s happened?”
This quotation comes from Rhea's chapter, "Ask Me If I Care," and it addresses the issue of identity policing and belonging in teen culture. In this scene, Rhea describes how she and her friends eavesdrop on the goings-on of punk bands in their local scene in order to feel “one step closer toward being real.” “Being real” for Rhea means being connected, playing an authentic part in the group she’s decided to publicly declare affiliation to. She and all of her friends want to feel as if they're really punks, not just teenagers playing pretend. However, they're not sure they know any “real” punks—indeed, Rhea’s not even certain who gets to decide where that delineation is. However, she’s desperate to belong authentically to a group, and because of this, she tries as hard as she can to accrue all the markers of being a “real” punk; dyeing her hair green, affecting a scowl, rejecting authority. As with all of this novel’s forms of identity, however, one can’t simply collect a certain number of badges to be a “real” punk. Rhea is, at this point, struggling to figure out that there isn’t a single person who can tell her the difference between a “fake Mohawk” and a “real” one.
It happened as I listened: I felt pain. Not in my head, not in my arm, not in my leg; everywhere at once. I told myself there was no difference between being “inside” and being “outside,” that it all came down to X’s and O’s that could be acquired in any number of different ways, but the pain increased to a point where I thought I might collapse, and I limped away.
In the chapter “X’s and O’s”, Scotty describes trying to test his hypothesis that all of human experience is just information. Scotty discovers a huge private event at the New York Public Library —a gala for heart disease—by chance as he walks past. He’s been experimenting with trying to feel like he’s a part of things at home, and sees an opportunity here to test it in the wild. He knows he won’t be allowed in, but he observes the event to see if he can “transfer” the feeling of being there into his body. He stands outside the library, trying to rationalize that being outside is no different from being inside. However, as he does this, he doesn’t feel a sense of belonging or that he’s been included in the gala. Instead, the pain he constantly feels only increases. Rather than proving his theory, this experience makes Scotty more aware that he’s been relegated to standing on the outside of privilege. Although Scotty thinks that he can use his mental prowess to have the same lived experiences as anyone else, this passage shows that not everything is reducible to “X’s and O’s” as he hypothesizes. No matter how hard he tries, he cannot trick himself into feeling as though he belongs.
