Suggested Outline for Homecoming King Chimera Analysis Essay
Paragraph 1: 200-word introduction defines chimera and provides a personal example.
What is a chimera?
- It is a brain hijack that sinks into your brain like an eagle’s talons.
- It becomes an obsession.
- It becomes at the very least the unconscious way you define yourself.
- It warps your reality so that you behave in bizarre, extreme, and irrational ways.
Paragraph 2, your thesis: You argue that Hasan’s journey is a 2-part chimera. The first is his negative self-image and the second is his irrational conception of self-validation, belonging, and success.
Paragraphs 3-5: Address his negative self-image. What is it?
- He hates his skin color, wishes he could bathe or rub it off and he tells his teacher he wishes he were white.
- He feels emasculated by his Asian stereotype role of a nerd who can study with a white girl but cannot be her romantic interest. Anything beyond friendship and he’s “not a good fit,” so he must shrink back to his nerd role.
- He must constantly assure white America he’s not a terrorist and that he loves America even as Americans are racist toward him.
- He is pained with an existential wound, less from violent racists and more from smiling bigots who insult him with their smiling racism every day.
Paragraphs 6-8: Address his irrational forms of self-validation.
- The Great White Princess will make him whole and help him achieve validation, success, belonging, and the American Dream.
- Success, Pizza Hut commercials, a job as a comedian, and fame will give him the leverage to taunt Bethany Reed, put her in her place, and make him feel big about himself.
- He cultivates resentment over and over until it becomes a feast he loves to indulge in. He does not know how to imagine himself living without resentment.
Final Section: His Return to Sanity: Paragraph 9
Looking at Bethany Reed through the eyes of love, understanding, and forgiveness, he no longer sees her as The Great White Princess but as an imperfect person whose controlling mother pushed her daughter on the wrong path. His two-layered chimera journey is now complete and he is all the wiser for it.
Sample Introduction and Thesis
In Hasan Minhaj’s brilliant Netflix comedy special Homecoming King, he explores the madness of feeling like a misfit who wants what every American wants: dreams, freedom, and acceptance. But sadly he finds being a brown-skinned Muslim immigrant paints him as a misfit who can’t dream of “white” roles such as an astronaut or the President. He finds his religion makes him threatening to others. His skin color is looked down upon and this challenges his sense of being desirable and masculine. He feels ashamed by being “Otherized” and labeled as someone who’s “not a good fit.” He finds his parents’ expectations constrain his dreams and romantic aspirations, and finally, he equates success with potency and masculinity, forces he tries feebly to use to erase the shame and humiliation of Bethany Reed’s family rejecting him as an appropriate date for the Senior Prom. Bethany Reed, The Great White Princess, becomes Hasan’s chimera: a panacea for all his woes as a Misfit trying to make it in America. The more Hasan sinks into the White Princess Myth, the more he loses his mind, confusing success, revenge, and whiteness itself for achieving the American Dream. Only his father's wisdom of abandoning fear and hate and replacing them with forgiveness and love can help Hasan restore his sanity.
Comparing & Contrasting “Winter Dreams” and Homecoming King
Notice how “Winter Dreams” is such a dark story with no character transformation. Dexter’s demise and his steady disintegration are evident in all attempts to write a thesis statement about him.
Look at these examples:
Sample Thesis Statements
Sample #1:
Dexter Green's obsession with Judy Jones as the winter dream of social status becomes his cocaine, which diminishes him into a junkie evidenced by _________________, __________________, _______________, and ____________________.
Sample #2
"Winter Dreams" is a cautionary tale about a shallow narcissist whose relationship to Judy Jones is analogous to that of a junkie and heroin.
Sample #3
"Winter Dreams" is a Faustian Bargain tale about a man who sells his soul to the devil for unexamined ambition, a bargain that dehumanizes him like a junkie hooked on crack.
Sample #4
"Winter Dreams" is a fable about how class status anxiety can overtake us and compromise our humanity through blind ambition, using other people as trophies, and trading real life for a false representation of life.
But not all are doomed.
But not all who fall prey to the chimera are narcissists doomed to a life of personal hell and decline.
In contrast to the narcissist Dexter Green, Hasan Minhaj is a man of substance who, like Dexter, falls prey to the chimera of “The White Princess.” But unlike Dexter, Hasan shows in his Netflix comedy special Homecoming King that he is able to work his way out of his chimera.
If you decided to compare and contrast Dexter and Hasan for your essay, you might want to address the following:
- Hasan struggles with American freedom and his father's strict authoritarian control.
- Hasan and Dexter share the freedom to dream and enjoy "the audacity of equality." They both believe they can become what they want, but we see no moral compass inside Dexter. In contrast, Hasan learns forgiveness, a value imparted to him by his father.
- Hasan must find belonging in a country that smears him with racial stereotypes. Hasan loves the American Dream even though racists, especially right after 9/11, want to stigmatize him as a "terrorist." In contrast, Dexter's whiteness makes it easier for him to join "the club." But even the white Dexter never feels validated. In what appears to be insanity, Dexter attaches white privilege to his white princess Judy Jones. He never sees his insanity. In contrast, Hasan realizes how insane it was to attach white privilege with his own white princess Bethany Reed. Hasan's realization helps him let go of his chimera and restore his sanity.
- Hasan finds connection and belonging with his fellow Americans through popular culture. So does Dexter. But this popular culture that gives us things in common to share also has a status system, and for Dexter "winter dreams" refers to the "tinsel" that elevates people's status in the eyes of others. Dexter never goes beyond this tinsel. In contrast, Hasan digs deeper into his heart for meaning and core values that he has received from his family. Dexter seems to lack such core values.
- Both Dexter and Hasan have a chip on their shoulder in that they feel they've never "made it" or found the status they desire. At one point, Hasan seeks revenge on someone who he feels betrayed him and must learn a valuable lesson.
- Dexter and Hasan both have a white privilege chimera: Dexter is obsessed with Judy Jones; Hasan is obsessed with Bethany Reed. "You Are My White Princess" would be a good essay title.
- Dexter's story is horrible and full of despair with no redemption. In contrast, Hasan's story is hopeful and full of redemption.
Sources
For your sources, you can use "Winter Dreams," the Netflix special "Homecoming King," the New Yorker article, and the AV/TV Club article.
Sample Thesis Statements for the Above
- Dexter Green and Hasan Minhaj are examples of the hopes and anguish of pursuing the American Dream of success, privilege, and personal reinvention and how those dreams get channeled in a chimera of a "lost love."
- Dexter Green, who operates on white privilege, and Hasan Minhaj, who navigates through racial stigma, both desire ultimate validation in a white world, and they both express their desire for this ultimate veneration in their adulation of a "white princess" who embodies all of America's apex privileges.
- Dexter Green and Hasan Minhaj show us that the desire for validation in America's power hierarchy is so strong that this desire for validation often leads to insanity and self-destruction. The difference between Dexter and Hasan is that Dexter's through-line is from being a lost soul to being a complete lost soul evidenced by his squandered existence. In the case of Hasan, however, his journey into darkness is interrupted by wisdom, forgiveness, and redemption.
Using Block or Point-by-Point Paragraph: Block Paragraph or Point by Point Comparison
In the point-by-point, you analyze Dexter and Hasan in each paragraph.
In the block method, you spend half the essay on Dexter and the other half on Hasan.
Both forms are appropriate, but I recommend using the block method in part because students are more confident in that format.
More Sources for Homecoming King:
Porterhouse Review: "The Audacity of Equality"
New Yorker: "Hasan Minhaj's "'New Brown America'"
Vulture: "Hasan Minhaj's 'Homecoming King' Is an American Story"
AV Club: "The Daily Show's Hasan Minhaj crafts a hilarious, spellbinding immigrant story"
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The Chimera of White Chic As It Pertains to the Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch
There are two chimeras to be examined in the Netflix documentary White Heat: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch.
Chimera #1
Former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries was possessed by a fantasy that we will call the White Chic Chimera: It is a desire to live in an aesthetic of anorexic and chiseled whiteness, which represents old money from the North East, being part of an exclusive cool club, having power to aggrandize one’s privilege and sexuality while relegating “The Others” to second-class citizen status, and feeling entitled to rely on racist memes and tropes to reinforce the old-guard racial and class hierarchy.
Using an aggressive ad campaign, Jeffries and his minions scaled the White Chic Chimera to make Abercrombie and Fitch the fastest-growing clothing retail store in the world. It dominated the industry for several years.
Chimera #2
This domination made Mike Jeffries drink his own racist Kool-Aid: He believed that what he was doing--promoting a racist hierarchy to slake his greedy appetites--was smart capitalism, that he was invincible, and that his White Chic aesthetic was something to be proud of.
Jeffries’ pride in his white aesthetic was his second chimera. His pride or hubris in his racial aesthetic made him like the tragic figure Icarus who flew too quickly and too close to the sun making his fall inevitable.
Humiliation, disgrace, and ignominy were the appropriate end for a peddler of racist mythology and exclusion. The chimeras that fed Mike Jeffries’ appetites for money and glory were the very chimeras that consumed him.
Comparison Three:
In White Hot and Good Hair, the documentaries address how cultural and racial ideals brainwash people into conforming to the “perfect look.” The white aesthetic becomes an obsession that reveals much about the racial mythology, hierarchy, and beauty standards that inform American culture.
Sample Outline for Choice #3:
Paragraph 1: Explain how the white aesthetic informs both documentaries.
Paragraph 2: Develop a thesis that explains the causes and effects of the white aesthetic in both documentaries.
Paragraphs 3-7 would explain the above thesis.
Your conclusion is a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Notice there is no Counterargument-Rebuttal Section because this is not so much an argument essay as it is cause-and-effect.
Works Cited page with the sources you used would be your last page.
White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch
In this 88-minute Alison Klayman documentary, we see that CEO Mike Jeffries and his lieutenants impose a sort of white aesthetic on the employees and cultivate an “All-American Classic” or WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) old money look combined with chiseled abs to make “the rich white look” part of an exclusive club that all consumers should aspire to.
The “preppy all-American look” is code for white. And we’re not talking just any white, but a particular kind of white: old money upper-class white.
“All-American Classic” or The Rich White Club
The White Rich Club mentality informed company practices. They put idealized white people in the front of the store and people of color in the back. Work hours, promotions, and visibility were all race-based with “All-American Classic,” that is, white, being the company ideal, not just for the employees but as the actual marketing tool: consumers who buy Abercrombie and Fitch are gaining acceptance into an exclusive all-white country club.
Of course, admittance into some kind of White Club is complete BS, but that’s the point. It’s a chimera.
Colorism
Advertising leverages chimeras, and in this case, the chimera is based on aesthetics, race, and colorism.
What is colorism? Colorism is discrimination within the same racial group based on skin color, looks, and aesthetics.
For example, Tyler Perry said his dad abused him in part because he was dark-skinned.
In the white world of Abercrombie and Fitch, slender, muscular whites with the old-money chiseled look are in a higher-tier category than whites whose physiques are more corpulent and “blue-collar.”
Class Hauteur Conflicts with Diversity
Abercrombie and Fitch not only exalted a very specific kind of upper-class whiteness and a slender muscular aesthetic, but they wanted to intersect race and class into an exclusive kind of club or what we could call snobbery.
A fancy word for snobbery is hauteur.
To exhibit hauteur is to display an obnoxious sense of superiority over others. Based on “whiteness” and old-money wealth, the Abercrombie and Fitch aesthetic developed an ideal that worked for a short time in the brick-and-mortar shopping mall world of the late 90s and early 2000s, but during the rise of the Internet when young consumers became more interested in diversity and social justice, hauteur and racial exclusivity became repulsive and toxic.
Mike Jeffries was too full of himself and too drunk on his rapid success to see the conflict between his racially exclusive fashion brand and the world changing around him.
Racist Graphic Tees
Abercrombie sold grotesque racist graphic Tees, which were supposed to be funny, but glorified racial stereotypes. They were highlighted by Phil Yu of The Angry Asian Man blog and discussed in Regina King’s article “How Abercrombie’s Racist T-Shirts Motivated a Generation of Asian Americans.”
Exclusion was the Point
Abercrombie prided itself on racial exclusion. That was the whole point of its marketing chimera. It’s discussed in a YouTube video titled “The Incredibly Satisfying Death of Abercombie.”
What was cool became toxic. The backlash was intense and Abercrombie with Mike Jeffries at the helm would fall swiftly.
Mike Jeffries is another uncouth business person who flew too close to the sun. His fall was inevitable.
Zeitgeist and an Outdated Chimera
American youth were transitioning in the late 90s and early 2000s, getting away from conformity and having some adult figure like Mike Jeffries tell them what was cool to more inclusion and more individuality.
Jeffries was so intoxicated by his own Kool-Aid, he didn’t even see what was happening to youth culture.
Here is someone whose bread and butter is on knowing who his target audience is and he has no curiosity or inclination to listen to his target audience--their wants and their values--he’s only interested in his own personal fantasy, so being disconnected from his audience, he was doomed to fail.
Writing about Abercrombie’s snobbery and fall from grace, Owen Gleiberman opines in his essay “Abercrombie and Fitch Review: How Youth Fashion Turned Fascist”:
The brand was unabashed in its insider/outsider snobbery, but the problem with it — and there was a major problem — wasn’t the clothes. It was the fact that not just the company’s advertising aesthetic but its hiring practices were nakedly discriminatory. Abercrombie & Fitch was selling neo-colonial jock chic infused with a barely disguised dollop of white supremacy. Like the models, the sales people who worked on the retail outlet floors all had to conform to an “all-American” ideal — which meant, among other things, an exclusionary whiteness. At an Abercrombie boutique, the text was: We’re white. The subtext was: No one else wanted.
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Gleiberman continues to analyze Abercrombie’s fall as part of the crumbling of mall culture and the rise of social media, which would have no tolerance for Mike Jeffries’ racist employment practices and marketing:
Klayman shows us records of the store’s guide to The Look: what was acceptable for its sales people to wear and, more important, not to wear (dreadlocks, gold chains for men). The company employed very few people of color, and those it did have were mostly confined to the back room, or to late shifts where their job was to clean up. These practices were so overtly discriminatory that in 2003, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Abercrombie. The company settled the suit for $40 million, admitting no guilt but entering into a consent decree in which they agreed to change their recruiting, hiring, and marketing practices. Todd Corley, who was hired to oversee diversity initiatives, is interviewed in the film; he made a few inroads but in other ways was the symbol the company needed to try to change without changing too much.
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Body Shaming, Abuse, Harassment, Assault
As Abercrombie promotes this chimera of idealized white youth, Victoria's Secret does something similar with its “Angels,” anorexic supermodels, an industry also rife with shaming, abuse, harassment, and assault.
This is chronicled in the 3-part docuseries Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons on Hulu.
Review the Downward Spiral of Abercrombie
- Mike Jeffries is drinking his own Kool-Aid, getting high on his own supply.
- Mike Jeffries is drunk from the rapid success of his company.
- Mike Jeffries enjoys dominance in a shopping mall retail universe while being blind to the oncoming Internet juggernaut.
- Mike Jeffries is imposing racial exclusion on a generation that wants the opposite.
- Mike Jeffries is creating a chimera of the slender white body, “White Chic,” to a diverse consumere base, which becomes more and more toxic over time.
- The toxic themes of racial exclusion bleed into company hiring policies and even racist graphice T-shirts, revealing the company’s racism and hubris.
- The toxic work environment leads to harassment, abuse, bullying, and body shaming.
- The company becomes so obnoxious, racist, and toxic that to see it fall is to enjoy a giant slice of schadenfreude.
The Chimera in Good Hair
“Chris Rock explores the private mysteries of beauty salons” by Roger Ebert
"Good Hair" is a documentary about black women and their hair. Chris Rock, the host and narrator, is a likable man, quick, truly curious, with the gift of encouraging people to speak openly about a subject they usually keep private. He conveys a lot of information, but also some unfortunate opinions and misleading facts. That doesn't mean the movie isn't warm, funny and entertaining.
The film got its start for Rock when his little daughter asked him, "Daddy, why don't I have good hair?" He wonders how she got that idea. He discovers that some children even younger than his daughter are already having their hair straightened -- and that for children that is a bad idea. He talks to a great many black women about their hair, beginning with the matriarch Maya Angelou and including such celebrities as Nia Long, Eve, Tracie Thoms, Salli Richardson, Salt-n-Pepa and Raven-Symone.
He discovers that for some black women, attaining "good hair" means either straightening or using extensions. Straightening involves the application of products containing sodium hydroxide, which a dermatologist and a chemist describe as potentially dangerous to the scalp and even to inhale in quantity (your lungs might get straightened). Leave it on too long, and your scalp or face can be burned -- something that has happened to some of the woman featured in the film.
I imagine a good many black women would tell Chris Rock that having "good hair" simply means having hair that is healthy, strong and abundant. Why must it also be straight? Yes, many black women enjoy their straight hair, whether natural or by way of extensions. They look great. But often they go back and forth among hairstyles; that is the way of women, unlike us male clods who settle on a hair style in grade school and stick with it like Rod Blagojevich.
Extensions involve braiding long swatches of hair to existing hair. Think Beyonce. Where does this hair come from? India, mostly, where some women cut off their hair before marriage or for religious purposes and can sell it for amounts that mean a lot in a poor nation.
What about the hazards of straightening? Rock shows a hair-raising demonstration of an aluminum Coke can literally being eaten up in a bath of sodium hydroxide. It may help to recall that another name for sodium hydroxide is "lye." God forbid a woman should put that on her head! What Rock doesn't mention is that few women do. If he had peeked in Wikipedia, he would have learned: "Because of the high incidence and intensity of chemical burns, chemical relaxer manufacturers have now switched to other alkaline chemicals." Modern relaxers can also burn if left on too long, but they won't eat up your Coke cans.
The popularity of Afros in the late 1960s and '70s asserted that natural hair was beautiful just the way it grew (and was styled, cut and shaped, of course; Angela Davis didn't look that good without effort). Classic Davis-style Afros have grown rare, but another "natural" style, braiding, is seen all the time nowadays. Many black women and some men use braids and dreads as a fashion statement.
The use of the word "natural hair" is, in any event, misleading. Take a stroll down the hair products aisle of a drugstore or look at the stock price of Supercuts. Few people of any race wear completely natural hair. If they did, we would be a nation of Unibombers.
Black hair is a $9 billion industry. Rock plunges in. He visits Dudley Products in Atlanta, a black-owned hair-products empire, and is fascinated by the Bronner Bros. International Hair Show, an annual convention in Atlanta. Here a vast convention hall is jammed with the booths of hair-care companies, and there's an annual competition to name the hairdresser of the year. The contest is fascinating, not least because it seems to have little to do with actually taking care of someone's hair. Would you want your hair done by a stylist hanging upside down from a trapeze? Or joining you inside a giant aquarium? Showmanship is everything; one of the four finalists is a young white man who is treasured by his clients.
What Rock does is help create a film, directed by Jeff Stilson, with much good feeling and instinctive sympathy for our desire to look as good as we can. He asks direct questions, but doesn't cross-examine; he reacts with well-timed one-liners, and he has a hilarious, spontaneous conversation with some black men in a barbershop that gets into areas that are rarely spoken about. The movie has a good feeling, but why do I know more about this subject than Chris Rock does? Smile.
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“Good Hair? Hardly. How Chris Rock Gets It Wrong” by Alynda Wheat
Chris Rock’s documentary, Good Hair, opened Friday to mixed, but frequently positive, reviews. I’m going to take the painful stance of suggesting that’s because there aren’t a lot of black women in the film reviewing community. Good Hair is often funny, fascinating, and raises a few key ideas. What it doesn’t do is offer a cogent, relevant analysis of why black women relax their hair or wear hair extensions — which was supposed to have been the point.
Some background: Rock says he did the film because his daughter came to him one day, upset, that she didn’t have “good hair.” This apparently prompted the comedian to begin an odyssey that took him from the hair salons of New York City to a hair show in Atlanta, from Indian hair-shaving ceremonies, to the Beverly Hills salons that buy the Indian hair. But in all that conversation what you never hear are opposing viewpoints. Nearly everyone in Chris Rock’s movie seems to agree on a few critical ideas (that can happen when you limit your sample). Frankly, as a black woman, I sat through Good Hair with one dominant thought: Who are these people? Their opinions rarely represented my own, or those of anyone I know. I am but one voice in this vast, complicated community, but I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t say something. Here, a few of the ways Good Hair gets it entirely wrong.
- Black women do not want to be white.
Sure, you can find some poor soul who pops up on Oprah with deep-seated issues, but for the most part, black women are perfectly happy being black women. A brief history: The idea of “good hair” is one that, historically, has been fraught with racial stigma. For various reasons, black people who looked whiter, like their slave masters (read: frequently, their fathers) had advantages over those who looked more like their African ancestors. The preference didn’t die after slavery, however, in one sense surviving as the debate over “good hair.” “Good hair” was that which was easy to comb, long, and silky.
Like many cultural idiosyncrasies, the notion of “good hair” never died completely, but there isn’t anyone in the black community today who doesn’t see the term as dated, self-loathing, and patently foolish. There isn’t a black woman I know who sits down in a stylist’s chair to get a relaxer because she, as Rock posits, wants to look white. Not one. I have a relaxer. I have one for the same reason that I don’t wear makeup, don’t have a gym membership, and can usually be found in jeans and a Gap tee—I’m lazy. I like getting out of the house in a reasonable amount of time, and don’t cope well with a lot of hassle over what I consider superficial things. So why bother fighting my naturally nappy hair on a daily basis when every 8-10 weeks I can pay someone else to do it? Which brings me to my second point…
- $1000 at the salon? Get real.
The actresses and singers in Good Hair freely admit to spending a fortune on their hair, which was expected. Wildly unusual was the handful of working-class women willing to pony up a cool grand to get a weave. Again, who are these women? The cost of relaxer varies widely, from, say, $50-$200, depending on what zip code you’re in, and weaves go up significantly from there. But no one in the working class (in their right mind) spends rent on their hair. Anyone who does has way bigger issues than what’s growing out of her head.
- We don’t all have weaves or relaxers.
As I mentioned, I have a relaxer, but I have several friends and family members who don’t. And for every 10 black women I know, maybe two have weaves. It’s a common hair-maintenance style, but it certainly doesn’t extend to everyone. So before you assume you know what’s going on with a black woman’s hair, understand that we’re as diverse and varied with our style options as everyone else.
- All this is none of your business.
Unless you’re really good friends with someone, it’s rude to ask what’s in their hair, whether relaxer or weave. We’re not anthropological subjects, and we don’t like being treated as curiosities.
- White women do it, too.
Approximately 94 minutes of Good Hair is spent exploring ideas of why black women relax their hair (so damaging!) or wear weaves (so delusional!). There’s exactly one minute spent on the fact that white women do it too. White women frequently chemically treat their hair to make it straighter or curlier, and dye it so regularly they don’t even know their natural color. Does this make them culturally insecure? Hardly. Those “extensions” that lots of white women in Hollywood (and elsewhere) sport? They’re the same as weaves. Some may be clipped on or glued in, but as anyone who’s ever watched the make-over episodes of America’s Next Top Model knows, white women wear hair enhancements too. Which brings me to another point…
- Women of nearly every culture want long, thick, luxurious hair.
For every black woman who’s ever wanted to look like Beyoncé, there’s a white woman who desperately wanted hair like Farrah. Long, fabulous tresses seems to be an ideal in many, many cultures, and black women shouldn’t be criticized, ostracized, or psychoanalyzed for wanting the same thing.
- The whole idea of “good hair” is pretty moot these days.
If “good hair” is that which is silky and manageable, what’s the difference if you’re born with it or your hair dresser gets you there? In its natural state, my hair is kinky and difficult to comb. With a relaxer it’s long and holds curls pretty nicely. So do I have “good hair,” or not? Here’s the fabulous, freeing, culturally uncomplicated answer: I don’t care.
Look, I’m not saying that Good Hair has no purpose. The film introduces a conversation that’s so important, it reached the White House. (Check out the viciously racist commentary on Malia Obama’s twists, or the New Yorker cover with Michelle Obama in an afro and tell me black women’s hair isn’t a political issue.) But there’s rampant misinformation and theories that just don’t hold up. And no one ever seems to really address the cultural roots of Rock’s daughter’s question.
Neither the director nor any of the writers on Good Hair are women. It’s no surprise that a group of fellas got together and came up with a film that, while well-intentioned, just doesn’t get it. But tell me what you think, PopWatchers? Will you see the movie? Have some stories of your own you want to share?
UPDATE: I love the debate here, and please keep it coming! I just want to point out (since a lot of people are addressing it) that I have absolutely no problem with natural hairstyles. I don’t think of the word “nappy” as pejorative (as some people apparently do), and I don’t associate any negativity with natural hair or natural hairstyles. (There is, in fact, an actress in the movie whose natural hair I’d love to have.) I simply said that MY natural hair is difficult to manage. I don’t begin to suppose that everyone’s is. My whole point is that people should be free to do whatever they want with their hair, without feeling like it has some grander cultural or political point. Cut it, curl it, dye it blue. As my mother always tells me, “Do you.”
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“Look but Don’t Tough: It’s All About the Hair” by Jeannette Catsoulis
When one of Chris Rock’s young daughters asked, “Daddy, how come I don’t have good hair?,” the comedian decided to investigate the complex, often troubled relationship between African-American women and their crowning glory. He had no idea what he was in for.
Embarking on a journey that would take him from beauty shops in the United States to a Hindu temple in India, from a hair show in Georgia to a product-manufacturing plant in North Carolina, Mr. Rock unearthed a world of physical, financial and psychological hurt. But though “Good Hair” embraces the pain, digging gingerly into wounds both political and personal, the film feels more like a celebration than a lament. Spirited, probing and frequently hilarious, it coasts on the fearless charm of its front man and the eye-opening candor of its interviewees, most of them women including the actress Nia Long and the hip-hop stars Salt-n-Pepa and all of them ready to dish.
In fact, one of the happy consequences of “Good Hair” should be a radical increase in white-woman empathy for their black sisters. Whether in thrall to “creamy crack,” a scary, aluminum-dissolving chemical otherwise known as relaxer (what it’s really relaxing, observes Mr. Rock astutely, is white people), or the staggeringly expensive and time-consuming weave (often available on layaway plan), the women in the film bare heads and hearts with humor and without complaint.
For the Rev. Al Sharpton, though, that’s part of the problem. “We wear our economic oppression on our heads,” he says, wryly bemoaning the migration of the multibillion-dollar, black hair-products business from African-American to predominantly Asian manufacturers. Oppression takes on a darker hue, however, when the film travels to India to unearth the unwitting and unremunerated suppliers of all that weave- and wig-ready hair: poor, devout women who offer it to their priests in a religious ceremony known as tonsure.
Competently directed by Jeff Stilson, “Good Hair” employs humor as a medium for insightful and often uncomfortable observations on race and conformity. The film’s only misstep is its fixation on the competitors in a flamboyant Atlanta hair show. Far more entertaining are the barbershop conversations in which ordinary men jovially gripe about their honeys’ hairdos; they’re a brotherhood joined in financial commitment and thanks to hands-off-the-head decrees at home emotional frustration.
On a recent “Oprah Winfrey Show,” Mr. Rock ran his fingers excitedly through his host’s luxuriant, natural tresses, unloosed in honor of the visit. “I’ve never done that to a black woman!” he marveled, while Ms. Winfrey, who used to threaten to shave her head when she reached her 50th birthday, giggled delightedly: at that moment, she was just happy not to have followed through with her threat.
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Sample Thesis Statements
They must be the following:
Demonstrable: The information in the thesis generates body paragraphs or “reasons” for supporting your thesis, which will be the bulk of your essay.
Defensible: You can defend your thesis with logic, reasoning, evidence, facts, statistics, and credible sources, and as a result, achieve logos, pathos, and ethos.
Debatable: Your argument has two sides; therefore, you are not presenting a claim that is so obvious and self-evident as to be fatuous.
Sample #1
Mike Jeffries, the former CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch, promoted a chimera based on “whiteness,” a pernicious myth based on a fantasy body aesthetic or the anorexic “chiseled look”; an upper-east-coast WASP lifestyle, exclusiveness or snobbery, and a retroactive society based on a racial hierarchy.
Sample #2
Former Abercrombie and Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries doomed his company to failure by unwittingly clashing his pernicious white mythology with a young generation that was repelled by social exclusivity based on race, economic class, and body shaming.
Sample #3
For former Abercrombie and Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries, the chimera of whiteness was all about cruelty: The cruelty of a rigid racial hierarchy; the cruelty of a rigid economic class stratum; and the cruelty of an anorexic body aesthetic.
Sample #4
The documentaries White Hot and Good Hair successfully illustrate that the chimera of whiteness is all about cruelty: The cruelty of a rigid racial hierarchy; the cruelty of a rigid economic class stratum; and the cruelty of an anorexic body aesthetic.
Sample #4
Whereas White Hot is about the cruelty of the whiteness chimera and all of its contingent pathologies, the documentary Good Hair is less about the chimera of whiteness and more about how hair in black culture is a place of communal connection, self-expression, self-care, and big business.
Sample #5
In Alynda Wheat’s insightful essay “Good Hair? Hardly. How Chris Rock Gets It Wrong,” she persuasively argues that black women are not chasing the chimera of whiteness; rather, they are embracing various hairstyles to celebrate black culture, communal connection, self-expression, self-care, and black business.
Essay #3 Chimera Groupings
Choose one of the following "Chimera Groupings" and write a 1,200-word comparison essay in which you analyze the causes and effects of the chimeras revealed in the stories, movies, or documentaries:
Comparison One: The brain hijack of negative racial stereotypes: In the HBO documentary 38 in the Garden and the New York Times YouTube video “When Linsanity Happened,” we see that negative stereotypes go deeply into people’s unconscious, both the culprits and the victims, and that Jeremy Lin broke these stereotypes, causing people to question their own racism and giving Asians collective hope to reimagine themselves free of those stereotypes.
Sample Outline for Choice #1
Paragraph 1: Define the chimera you will be focusing on.
Paragraph 2: Your thesis: Explain the causes of the chimera and its effects. For example, as it pertains to the documentary 38 at the Garden and the theme of racial stereotypes, a sample thesis might read:
Jeremy Lin’s ascent in the NBA forced society to examine the straightjacket of Asian stereotypes, shattered those stereotypes, and gave Asian Americans the hope of reimagining a life of dignity without the rigid definitions society had imposed upon them.
Body Paragraphs 3-7 would explain the above thesis.
Your conclusion is a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Notice there is no Counterargument-Rebuttal Section because this is not so much an argument essay as it is cause-and-effect.
Works Cited page with the sources you used would be your last page.
Comparison Two: In “Winter Dreams” and Homecoming King, Dexter and Hasan go on a futile quest for the Great White Princess as a way of achieving status and belonging. The Great White Princess is a racial myth or chimera that Dexter and Hasan pursue in the hopes of achieving status, belonging, and self-worth.
Sample Outline for Choice #2
Paragraph 1, Compare “The Great White Princess” in “Winter Dreams” and Homecoming King.
Paragraph 2, your thesis: Explain why Dexter Green succumbs to The Great White Princess Chimera and why Hasan Minhaj eventually escapes his in a claim that will provide a contrast/comparison chimera.
Paragraphs 3-7 would explain the above thesis.
Your conclusion is a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Notice there is no Counterargument-Rebuttal Section because this is not so much an argument essay as it is cause-and-effect.
Works Cited page with the sources you used would be your last page.
Comparison Three: In White Hot and Good Hair, the documentaries address how cultural and racial ideals brainwash people into conforming to the “perfect look.” The white aesthetic becomes an obsession that reveals much about the racial mythology, hierarchy, and beauty standards that inform American culture.
Sample Outline for Choice #3:
Paragraph 1: Explain how the white aesthetic informs both documentaries.
Paragraph 2: Develop a thesis that explains the causes and effects of the white aesthetic in both documentaries.
Paragraphs 3-7 would explain the above thesis.
Your conclusion is a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Notice there is no Counterargument-Rebuttal Section because this is not so much an argument essay as it is cause-and-effect.
Works Cited page with the sources you used would be your last page.
Comparison Four: In Fake Famous and The King’s Jester, the enticement of fame and “celebrification” impede people from living a real, authentic life. This loss of authenticity includes the loss of boundaries.
Sample Outline for Choice #4
In paragraph 1, your introduction, compare the way fame takes over the principal people in Fake Famous and The King’s Jester.
In paragraph 2, your thesis, develop a claim that compares the way the fame chimera leads to the principal people’s moral dissolution.
Paragraphs 3-7 would explain the above thesis.
Your conclusion is a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Notice there is no Counterargument-Rebuttal Section because this is not so much an argument essay as it is cause-and-effect.
Works Cited page with the sources you used would be your last page.
Comparison Five: In Uncut Gems and Private Life, a black opal and the promise of a baby serve as a chimera for happiness, fulfillment, self-control, and status even as the characters’ lives unravel into more and more self-loathing and chaos.
Sample Outline for Choice #5
For paragraph 1, explain how the characters in both movies are seeking qualities they don’t have in their chosen chimeras.
For paragraph 2, develop a thesis that explains how as the characters pursue their chimeras with greater and greater intensity, they go through a process of moral dissolution that accelerates with greater and greater intensity.
Paragraphs 3-7 would explain the above thesis.
Your conclusion is a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Notice there is no Counterargument-Rebuttal Section because this is not so much an argument essay as it is cause-and-effect.
Works Cited page with the sources you used would be your last page.
Comparison Six: The Chimera of Conspiracies: People lose contact with reality as they go down rabbit holes of conspiracies. We will examine the forces of “the epistemic crisis,” the breakdown of faith in institutions, the death of expertise, and the Dunning-Kruger Effect, and we will narrow our focus on conspiracies to anti-vaxxing. For sources, we will look at the YouTube Channel Wisecrack, which has some pertinent videos on this subject: “Why America Loves Fake News,” “Anti-Vaxxers: What Went Wrong?” “Anti-Vaxxers: How the Media Created a Monster,” Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: “Vaccines” (June 25, 2017), Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: “Covid Vaccines” (May 2, 2021).
Sample Outline for Choice #6
For paragraph 1, your introduction, define the idea of a conspiracy as a very tempting chimera to certain types of people.
For paragraph 2, your thesis, develop a claim that explains the causes of a conspiracy chimera.
Paragraphs 3-7 would explain the above thesis.
Your conclusion is a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Notice there is no Counterargument-Rebuttal Section because this is not so much an argument essay as it is cause-and-effect.
Works Cited page with the sources you used would be your last page.
Comparison Seven. The Chimera of Magical Childhood Innocence: We will look at 3 Wisecrack videos: “How Disney Ruined Culture,” “Disney Adults: Is Disney a Religion?” “Disney Adults Part 2: Disney’s Capitalist Religion.”
Sample Outline for Choice #7:
Paragraph 1, your introduction, define the Disney Chimera.
Paragraph 2, your thesis, develop a claim that analyzes the causes of the appeal of the Disney Chimera and how this mythology affects its followers and society at large.
Paragraphs 3-7 would explain the above thesis.
Your conclusion is a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Notice there is no Counterargument-Rebuttal Section because this is not so much an argument essay as it is cause-and-effect.
Works Cited page with the sources you used would be your last page.
Study Questions for "Winter Dreams" in the Context of the Chimera
How does the story introduce social class anxieties into Dexter’s personality and how do these anxieties fuel Dexter's chimera?
America is supposed to be a democracy, a country where "everyone is equal," but this is empty rhetorical cant (hypocritical and sanctimonious talk). In truth, Americans have always been obsessed with social class.
Upon America's founding, America has used slave labor to get the hard work done. In Nancy Isenberg's book White Trash: The 400-Year Untold Story of Class in America, she writes about America's class hierarchy using "lower classes" to do dirty work. Americans abhor the thought of being in the underclass and are obsessed with class status.
Today, we can see the social class status at play at restaurants that require valet parking. The shiny silver Mercedes is parked right in front of the restaurant while the 20-year-old rusted clunker is parked several blocks away behind a decrepit liquor store.
This class division causes shame and anxiety for many, and Dexter Green is no exception.
Dexter Green's Class Anxiety
Dexter Green grows up haunted by the idea that he is perceived as lower class, a mere caddie or grocery store clerk.
We see in the story that Dexter’s dad is “second best,” the owner of a second-best grocery store, evidencing working-class roots.
Dexter works as a caddie, a servant to the upper classes, and he finds this humiliating.
He reads the bleak weather as an omen of his doom while living in the underclass, working as a servile caddy for professional players and tastemakers, people who matter.
He feels irrelevant and irrelevance stirs resentment and depression in his veins. Americans want to feel like they are on center stage.
Dexter sees life as extremes, those who have and those who have not; the dreary Northern spring and the gorgeous fall.
Dexter is desperate for something that will lift him above everyone, and give him a sense of being at the top of the American Dream. He must either be at the top or be a complete failure. There is no in-between.
All or Nothing Universe of Perpetual Adolescent
Dexter creates this false binary universe: We call this the All or Nothing Fallacy. Judy Jones has become a symbol of "making it in America," being the object of everyone's envy. In this sense, Judy Jones is the embodiment of "winter dreams," the phony, superficial class status or "Chanel No. 5" moment that feeds the souls of so many American souls who sacrifice their whole lives to prop up this tinsel image.
Dexter's Chimera is Judy Jones, his "Winter Dream":
The dominant drive of Dexter is to acquire his "winter dreams" by being rich and having Judy Jones, the ultimate trophy. Seeing people envy him is the drug that diminishes his class anxiety.
He is a man with a chip on his shoulder who needs class supremacy over others, or so he believes, to be happy.
We read that after the depression of spring, October brings him hope and November brings him “ecstatic triumph.”
We see Dexter’s vaulting ambition to get away from the lowly caddy job. He’s “too old” for it, he thinks, at 14.
What compelled Dexter to hurry away from his caddy job?
An 11-year-old girl, Miss Jones, described as “beautifully ugly” and “who are destined after a few years to be inexpressibly lovely and bring no end of misery to a great number of men.”
Indeed, beauty can unhinge men and dislocate men from reality, as we shall see in the story.
But not just beauty—beauty combined with the aura of upper class money: This is the noxious cocktail that will undermine Dexter Green.
Projection, Not Love
We must emphasize Dexter is not in love with Judy Jones the person, but he image of his own projection. Too often "falling in love" is a person projecting his inner needs and fantasies so as to worship an abstraction or idea but to be blind to the person he presumes he's in love with. In truth, Dexter's objectifying Judy Jones makes her more of a thing than a person.
Dexter Unhinged by Beauty as a Symbol of Old Money and Privilege
The girl addressed Dexter as “boy,” a sign of his lowly servitude, and this has an emasculating effect on him.
His sense of emasculation is further reinforced when the caddy-master shows up and says to Dexter, “What you standing there like a dummy for? Go pick up the young lady’s clubs.”
He quits from compulsion: “The enormity of his decision frightened him. He was a favorite caddy, and the thirty dollars a month he earned through the summer were not to be made elsewhere around the lake. But he had received a strong emotional shock, and his perturbation required a violent and immediate outlet.”
His perturbation is the great anxiety that makes him compulsive and unhinges him. He’s high-strung and compulsive.
We read a warning of his compulsive nature: “As so frequently would be the case in the future, Dexter was unconsciously dictated by his winter dreams.”
Glitter, Not Substance, Feeds Dexter's Winter Dreams:
We read a famous passage from the story: "But do not get the impression, because his winter dreams happened to be concerned at first with musings on the rich, that there was anything shoddy in the boy. He wanted not association with glittering things and glittering people -- he wanted the glittering things themselves.”
What does this passage mean?
Dexter believes he can, through hard work, embody “glitter,” that is to say the apotheosis of success. America is not a country; it’s a dream. America is “Winter Dreams,” the idea that we find personal fulfillment, meaning, and higher purpose through the attainment of “glitter.” It is this very sick idolatry that will undermine Dexter Green.
We also read that while he become successful in business, he suffered certain “denials,” and that the story is about one of those denials, and that would be the denial of acquiring Judy Jones, who for Dexter is the highest example (apotheosis) of “glitter,” of Dexter’s “Winter Dreams.”
For Dexter Green, the chimera is about the aura of wealth and power.
As we read about Dexter’s rise in the laundry industry and the rich patrons who frequent his establishments, we learn what about old and new money?
Old money has a certain aura, a certain “heritage,” and a snobbery attached to it. On the other hand, new money, the rags to riches story such as Dexter’s, has humble beginnings and class insecurity attached to it even as the person of new wealth amasses riches because in part he will always feel a bit like a fish out of water and he will always have memories of his poor beginnings. Moreover, he may not know all the codes and linguistic tics that the old rich use in their arsenal of being smugly rich. He may have some of his old caddy behaviors, which he thinks about when he returns to play golf at his old course—not as a caddy but as a man who’s “made it.”
We can surmise perhaps that Dexter is not just desperate to be rich but is desperate to have an identity of being rich, of not being looked down upon by those with old money, and his delusion is that winning the affections of old-money Judy Jones with all her intoxicating beauty is his ticket to happiness.
Old Money Vs. Nouveau Riche
Old Money has cachet and is considered superior to nouveau riche, also called arrivestes, parvenus, and vulgarian small potatoes.
But much of his quest is in his own imagination. Therefore, his quest is an illusion or a chimera, and it is this chimera that will unhinge him.
Judy Jones' aura is built on her sense of entitlement:
One of the brilliant things in this story is the way Fitzgerald quickly exposes Judy Jones’ personality at the golf course where she hits a golf ball into Mr. T.A. Hedrick’s abdomen. What do we learn about her in such a brief passage?
Judy Jones is self-centered, entitled, and used to not being accountable for anything. In other words, she is somewhat of a cipher and wastrel. She makes messes and expects others to clean them up. She can hurt others, but feel no empathy for her actions. In other words, she’s an empty-headed, repellant narcissist.
Judy Jones the chimera is just a narcissistic cipher:
And here lies the story’s tragedy: Dexter Green has hinged is whole notion of happiness on going on a Love Quest for Judy Jones, a Narcissistic Cipher. His “winter dreams” are futile, delusional, and empty. They will bring him nothing but a handful of ashes and dust.
Another important observation from this scene is that Dexter watches the old-money golf players gawk and admire Judy Jones’ beauty, doing so with a certain misogyny and lasciviousness.
Their remarks make her all the more a compelling “trophy.” Dexter is diseased by the need to create an image through the amassing of trophies, what in Latin is called the libido ostentando. Dexter’s lust for ostentatiousness will blind him from the fundamental emptiness that defines his existence.
The chimera is a drug that intoxicates its victim, becomes an addiction, and leads to madness:
After seeing the adult beauty Judy Jones at the golf course, Dexter goes on a night swim and hears piano that he associates with the correct life path he has taken: “The sound of the tune precipitated in him a sort of ecstasy and it was with that ecstasy he viewed what was happening to him now. It was a mood of intense appreciation, a sense that, for once, he was magnificently attuned to life and that everything about him was radiating a brightness and a glamour he might never know again.”
The chimera is a trickster:
How does the above passage speak to The Trickster as part of Dexter’s Quest to find his Winter Dreams?
“Winter Dreams” is essentially a chimera story: A man quests for his chimera and is crushed by the emptiness of his dream. Therefore, a chimera can be called a Trickster. A Trickster is a character or an idea that carries us through the four levels of emotion: earthly, angelic, mystical, and demonic.
The Trickster must give us hope and promise of finding a land of milk and honey only to throw us down from the heavens and into the inferno of our own making.
Beneath Judy Jones' False Exterior Lies a False Interior:
Even though Judy Jones is a flirt and a shallow coquette, she inadvertently asks Dexter an existential question during their first dinner: “Who are you, anyhow?” How does her question touch on one of the story’s major themes?
As an American, Dexter believes he can reinvent himself anyway he wants. He is a chameleon, and he is free to dream himself into the kind of person he wants to be. The idea that we can become our dream is uniquely American.
The irony is that in many ways he doesn’t know who he is since his energies have created a façade to others and to himself.
In fact, his answer to Judy’s question is unwittingly true. He says, “I’m nobody. . . . My career is largely a matter of futures.”
In fact, he only lives in the future, not the present, and this is part of his unhinged character: to be disconnected and disengaged from the present as he looks to the future when he will finally be worthy of achieving the American Dream. But he will never be worthy. His hope is a chimera that pushes him to constantly look ahead into the future and never in the present moment.
When he assures Judy he is not poor and she kisses him, her kisses arouse a “surfeit that would demand more surfeit.” In other words, his desires will always outrun his capacity to fulfill them, and Judy Jones is the embodiment of his excess desires or concupiscence.
What we have, then, is a mutually self-destructive symbiosis or interdependence. What’s scary is that that unhealthy symbiosis is the very foundation of Dexter’s “Winter Dreams.”
The chimera is an addiction that consumes its victim:
Much of the story chronicles Dexter’s addiction to Judy Jones like a junkie hooked on drugs. Explain.
We read, “Dexter surrendered himself to the most direct and unprincipled personality with which he had ever come into contact.”
The unhinged man is so needy and compulsive that he surrenders his self-interest to an unethical, morally bankrupt force in the name of his carnal and monetary idolatry.
He has no moral combat to save him from pursuing someone as unprincipled as Judy Jones.
We can further explore Dexter’s unhinging with Judy Jones by looking at her as a drug. She is less human to Dexter and more of a substance of his addiction. And in turn Judy Jones is addicted to the power she has over men by her power to intoxicate them. She in turn is addicted to seeing men addicted to her.
We see that Dexter is no needy for Judy Jones that he sacrifices his dignity and self-respect to pursue her. For example, he knows she loves other men in her shallow capricious way and that she sometimes “loves” in the same pathetic, superficial manner, and she even tells him so, but rather than be upset he accepts her imperfect, disloyal love. We read, for example, that after telling him that she was in love with another man earlier the same day as they lie in bed, he finds her words “beautiful and romantic.”
When she lies to him and says she did not kiss a man earlier the same day, Dexter knows she’s lying, but he’s okay with that because he is “glad that she has taken the time to lie to him.”
The chimera is an immoral creature:
Because Judy Jones is aware that he has no standards of behavior that she must adhere to, she knows she can get away with anything. Deep down, she can’t love him because he lacks self-respect, but she herself lacks self-respect because if she had it, she would not be in a relationship with someone she doesn’t respect. Both of them are degraded in the relationship, a fact that neither wants to see. Both are unhinged in this manner.
As you read the story, you will see that the narrative has many parallels with drug addiction as it pertains to Dexter Green’s relationship with Judy Jones.
The chimera will send you to your own personal hell:
Over and over again, we see that Judy Jones, the consummate Trickster, sends Dexter into hell through neglect and infidelity, but then gives him just enough honey so he’ll come back to her. She does this to many men, not just Dexter. We read, “Whenever one showed signs of dropping out through long neglect, she granted him a brief honeyed hour, which encouraged him to tag along for a year or so longer.”
She is clearly a sick person and the men who become addicted to her are just as sickly. They live in a demimonde of no-respect and emptiness.
Like a drug addict, Dexter becomes unhinged and cannot be civil to others when she unexpectedly disappears at a social event. He panics and is overcome with anxiety that causes him to lose his polite facade.
We read that Judy Jones is not a self-possessed person in her compulsion to torture men: “Judy made these forays upon the helpless and defeated without malice, indeed half unconscious that there was anything mischievous in anything that she did.”
Even the “strong and the brilliant, “play her game and not their own.” She always has the upper hand.
Her beauty is her power, but as we shall see, using beauty for power and identity is a sure failure because beauty is transitory.
But while her beauty is in its prime, she is Dexter’s drug, as we read: “The helpless ecstasy of losing himself with in her was opiate rather than tonic.”
When you think about the above line, many of us love the drama of a tormented obsession, and we therefore choose to stay entrapped in our torment because to lose that drama would force us to face the abyss or the existential vacuum that defines our empty existence.
In many ways, the story teaches us that we are our own worst enemy. Sadly, many of us “unhinge” ourselves from reality for lack of anything better to do.
Another way of looking at Dexter’s “Winter Dreams” is that he was feeding off the sick energy of desperation that Judy Jones created between her and her bevy of lovers.
Dexter knows he’s an addict, at least on an unconscious level. This makes him a divided soul: Part of him wants to escape his addiction to Judy Jones. He even gets engaged to another woman as a hopeful “cure” for his disease. Imagine getting engaged to someone you don’t love as a “cure” for a love addiction. That is a cogent sign of being unhinged.
His Judy Jones substitute is Irene Scheerer. Unlike Judy Jones who is described as a refined beauty, we read little of Irene’s physical charms except that she is “a little stout.”
We have to wonder if the world is full of Judy Jones archetypes that enchant men, leave them, and damage the men so that they can never love other women because these damaged men are forever fixated on their own personal “Judy Jones.” Perhaps we can call this the Angelina Jolie Factor: One look into her eyes and you’re permanently damaged, unhinged, and ready to abandon reality as you know it.
Even as he tries to love Irene, he keeps thinking about the manner in which Judy Jones beckons, torments, and insults him, and he is desperate to convince himself that he cannot pursue Judy Jones any longer. But as an unhinged man, as a man possessed by the IDEA of what Judy Jones represents—complete power, ecstasy, and abandonment—he finds his drug addiction incurable, and as such he hates himself and he hates Judy Jones—the very woman he cannot free himself from.
At night, he argues with himself about Judy Jones, going over a laundry list as to why she’d be a horrible wife. But that is the cortex in his brain. The limbic part of his brain, where emotion and reptilian desire reside, continue to rage a protest for acquiring Judy Jones.
He sees Judy Jones at a dance and he realizes that he had long ago been “hardened against jealousy.” He still wants her. He’s twenty-five, he has devoted 14 years to obsessing over Judy Jones, and he is about to marry Irene Scheerer.
About to get married to Irene, he still obsesses over Judy Jones, wondering if she still cares about him, and Irene is nothing but a backdrop to his life, “no more than a curtain spread behind him.” She will be part of a marital façade, but his demonic possession will still rage on.
The chimera tends to prey upon narcissists:
Dexter Green is empty; he has no self. He only has an idea of what the successful self looks like to others, what Kristin Dombek in her essay "Emptiness" calls "selfiness." In many ways, Dexter is a narcissist.
Dexter imitates an image of success at the expense of others whom he uses in the service of his grand performance.
Empty, loveless, and without any real connection to other human beings, Dexter focuses on all he knows: creating a "hologram of the superpowered self" or what elsewhere Dombek calls the "simulacrum of the superpowered self."
In other words, Dexter doesn't work on building a real life for himself. Rather, he becomes a curator of his fake life, which becomes a "reality" to himself and others. In doing this, he fulfills Pascal's insight that most people hate their real life but prefer to create an imaginary life for themselves and for others.
For Dexter Green, people are not people. They are tools to help him hone and chisel his successful image.
As a narcissist, Dexter disregards content, substance, morality, and integrity. He only worships one thing: the "hologram" of the Super Self. That is his "winter dream." He is smart enough to know that the "winter dream" is a destructive illusion, but he does not care, but he has invested too much of his life in this "winter dream" and this dream is all he knows.
Nothing embodies this "winter dream," this "hologram" of superior success, more than Judy Jones. The tragedy and farce of the story is that Judy Jones is a mediocrity, a cipher, a hoax, a complete illusion.
Dexter Green "gets played" by the very illusion that he worships above all else.
Comparing & Contrasting “Winter Dreams” and Homecoming King
Notice how “Winter Dreams” is such a dark story with no character transformation. Dexter’s demise and his steady disintegration is evident in all attempts to write a thesis statement about him.
Look at these examples:
Sample Thesis Statements
Sample #1:
Dexter Green's obsession with Judy Jones as the winter dream of social status becomes his cocaine, which diminishes him into a junkie evidenced by _________________, __________________, _______________, and ____________________.
Sample #2
"Winter Dreams" is a cautionary tale about a shallow narcissist whose relationship to Judy Jones is analogous to that of a junkie and heroin.
Sample #3
"Winter Dreams" is a Faustian Bargain tale about a man who sells his soul to the devil for unexamined ambition, a bargain that dehumanizes him like a junkie hooked on crack.
Sample #4
"Winter Dreams" is a fable about how class status anxiety can overtake us and compromise our humanity through blind ambition, using other people as trophies, and trading real life for a false representation of life.
But not all are doomed.
But not all who fall prey to the chimera are narcissists doomed to a life of personal hell and decline.
In contrast to the narcissist Dexter Green, Hasan Minhaj is a man of substance who, like Dexter, falls prey to the chimera of “The White Princess.” But unlike Dexter, Hasan shows in his Netflix comedy special Homecoming King that he is able to work his way out of his chimera.
If you decided to compare and contrast Dexter and Hasan for your essay, you might want to address the following:
- Hasan struggles with American freedom and his father's strict authoritarian control.
- Hasan and Dexter share the freedom to dream and enjoy "the audacity of equality." They both believe they can become what they want, but we see no moral compass inside Dexter. In contrast, Hasan learns forgiveness, a value imparted to him by his father.
- Hasan must find belonging in a country that smears him with racial stereotypes. Hasan loves the American Dream even though racists, especially right after 9/11, want to stigmatize him as a "terrorist." In contrast, Dexter's whiteness makes it easier for him to join "the club." But even the white Dexter never feels validated. In what appears to be insanity, Dexter attaches white privilege to his white princess Judy Jones. He never sees his insanity. In contrast, Hasan realizes how insane it was to attach white privilege with his own white princess Bethany Reed. Hasan's realization helps him let go of his chimera and restore his sanity.
- Hasan finds connection and belonging with his fellow Americans through popular culture. So does Dexter. But this popular culture that gives us things in common to share also has a status system, and for Dexter "winter dreams" refers to the "tinsel" that elevates people's status in the eyes of others. Dexter never goes beyond this tinsel. In contrast, Hasan digs deeper into his heart for meaning and core values that he has received from his family. Dexter seems to lack such core values.
- Both Dexter and Hasan have a chip on their shoulder in that they feel they've never "made it" or found the status they desire. At one point, Hasan seeks revenge on someone who he feels betrayed him and must learn a valuable lesson.
- Dexter and Hasan both have a white privilege chimera: Dexter is obsessed with Judy Jones; Hasan is obsessed with Bethany Reed. "You Are My White Princess" would be a good essay title.
- Dexter's story is horrible and full of despair with no redemption. In contrast, Hasan's story is hopeful and full of redemption.
Sources
For your sources, you can use "Winter Dreams," the Netflix special "Homecoming King," the New Yorker article, and the AV/TV Club article.
Sample Thesis Statements for the Above
- Dexter Green and Hasan Minhaj are examples of the hopes and anguish of pursuing the American Dream of success, privilege, and personal reinvention and how those dreams get channeled in a chimera of a "lost love."
- Dexter Green, who operates on white privilege, and Hasan Minhaj, who navigates through racial stigma, both desire ultimate validation in a white world, and they both express their desire for this ultimate veneration in their adulation of a "white princess" who embodies all of America's apex privileges.
- Dexter Green and Hasan Minhaj show us that the desire for validation in America's power hierarchy is so strong that this desire for validation often leads to insanity and self-destruction. The difference between Dexter and Hasan is that Dexter's through-line is from being a lost soul to being a complete lost soul evidenced by his squandered existence. In the case of Hasan, however, his journey into darkness is interrupted by wisdom, forgiveness, and redemption.
Using Block or Point-by-Point Paragraph: Block Paragraph or Point by Point Comparison
In the point-by-point, you analyze Dexter and Hasan in each paragraph.
In the block method, you spend half the essay on Dexter and the other half on Hasan.
Both forms are appropriate, but I recommend using the block method in part because students are more confident in that format.
More Sources for Homecoming King:
Porterhouse Review: "The Audacity of Equality"
New Yorker: "Hasan Minhaj's "'New Brown America'"
Vulture: "Hasan Minhaj's 'Homecoming King' Is an American Story"
AV Club: "The Daily Show's Hasan Minhaj crafts a hilarious, spellbinding immigrant story"
