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katallisonSo, some people expressed an interest in my thoughts on RayV and RayK as shame-based and guilt-based characters, respectively, so I typed out some rambling comments, which are cut away because they got incredibly long-winded.
First, a disclaimer: there's a body of literature in cultural anthropology and social psych about shame-based vs. guilt-based cultures. Because I am a crappy scholar, I did not consult that literature, of which I have only the dimmest memory, and my formulations of the shame/guilt concepts may be totally out of line with the received wisdom. So I'm just rollin' my own here, folks, and you're free to tell me how wrong I am. *g*
Having said which, I posit that shame and guilt, though similar in many ways, have a crucial difference. Shame I see as being externally focused; it grows out of the sense that one has screwed up or fallen short in the eyes of others. One has visibly failed to live up to some group norm, whether of honor or coolness or correctness or whatever. Guilt, on the other hand, is internally derived; one has failed to live up to one's own personal standards. One can feel guilty about actions, or thoughts, which no one else will ever know about (except perhaps one's God).
So, let's look at the two Rays.
Ray Vecchio as shame-based: Vecchio is a guy who cares deeply about how he's perceived by others; he's all about la bella figura. This goes beyond the obvious (his clothes, his car, his style) and shapes his behavior with others. When he gets his raise, in Juliet is Bleeding, he takes his pals out for dinner to a fancy place, because that's what a guy does, even though the tab is going to eat up most of his raise. And when the dinner is wrecked by Zuko's party, you get the sense that a large part of his anger is about losing face, not being able to show his buddies a good time, being humiliated. (RayK might just say, "Screw it, let's go down to the diner.") The pool game on his birthday, in Victoria's Secret, is farcicallly impractical, but it's the gesture that matters, the image, the amplitude and gentleman's-club luxury implied by that grossly-oversized pool table, and the graciousness of having his colleagues over for a game (never mind that none of them are really enjoying it).
When he's made to look foolish in others' eyes, he suffers. His interactions with Fraser are constantly punctuated by his mortification about Fraser's freakish behavior, and the fact that he's looking like a freak by association. When he comes back in CotW, the jabs he chooses to take at RayK are all about how his image has been damaged.
Vecchio is, as I mentioned in an earlier entry, a guy who is enmeshed in a rich, complex network of culture and tradition. A lot of his pride, self-esteem, and sense of self grow out of acting and presenting himself in ways that are seen by others in that network as being appropriate and estimable. He wants respect, and to be respected, a guy needs to be well-dressed, drive a sharp car, be suave with women, exhibit largesse, have a snappy comeback, take care of his family. There are moments throughout the Vecchio episodes that show us the private times when he actually falls short of "honorable" behavior (e.g., the deal with Frannie and the lottery tickets). As long as these things remains private (or known only by Fraser, whom Vecchio realizes operates by an entirely different code), they don't bother him. He sure doesn't lie awake at night guilting about them.
Ray Kowalski as guilt-based: Unlike Vecchio, RayK is something of an atomized individual; estranged from his family for many years, divorced from his wife, separated from his home-base precinct, with few visible old buddies or connections to the past, living alone. He comes across as someone who's largely set the terms for his own life, chooses his own conduct and appearance, and if other people don't like it, fuck 'em.
He is also, clearly, someone who feels a lot of pain about his failures to live up to standards; but to a large extent those standards are internal. The best example of this, perhaps, is Ladies' Man. All his associates are clearly pleased with how he did on the case--it was a clean arrest, he did the right thing, stop worrying about it, etc. etc. But he's in agony, because he knows something's wrong, he screwed up, and he goes against all the conventional cop code and endures the contempt of his colleagues to try to set it right. Even when he's saved Beth Botrelle from execution, he's still riddled with guilt for his failings; others might congratulate him, but he's suffering his own judgment. He still broods about the fact that he wasn't able to do the right thing, by his own standards, when his dog was hit by a car. And during his recounting in Eclipse of that formative encounter with Marcus Ellery in the bank, what's continued to eat at him over the years isn't the shame of having wet his pants in public--he seems almost shame-free about describing that to a group of strangers--but the guilt that he didn't do the right thing, didn't somehow take the guy down. (Of course, he would also have liked to look like a hero to Stella. None of this is 100%. *g*) [ETA:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shayheyred makes an excellent point in her comment below--that what's really eating him is that Stella bought his false hero facade, that their relationship was founded on that lie. Long-term guilt over being able to pull off a short-term shame-avoiding front--that's an extra-special full-gainer-with-half-twist turn on the situation. Thanks so much for pointing this out, Shay!]
It would make sense that a guy who works undercover would have to be someone who doesn't internalize whatever particular set of group norms he might be acting-as-if within at the moment. And it's noteworthy, I think, that the internal changes we see in him through the series, the way he finds a new sense of purpose and mission in his work as a cop, isn't really so much a matter of his trying to live up to Fraser's standards; rather, Fraser seems to inspire Ray to live up to his own standards, to take himself and his ideals seriously again.
As noted above, none of this is 100%. Vecchio clearly has his inner areas of guilt; it's pretty clear that a big part of what drives him to face down Zuko in the gym, in The Deal, is his guilt over not having tried to protect his schoolmate all those years ago. And Kowalski's relationship with his father clearly has a big element of shame in it; he doesn't feel guilty about having chosen to leave college and be a cop, but he's shamed for having let his dad down, not met his dad's standards.
But at heart, the two are operating from fundamentally different stances, and I think it to some extent shapes their relationships with Fraser. Fraser, of course, is himself almost wholly without shame--he really doesn't care what people think about him--but he is deeply and intimately familiar with guilt. That's one reason why it's much easier for me to see F/K than F/V; Fraser and RayK have the guilt-base in common, they're familiar with the same demons.
As a side note: Fandom supplies us with another nicely-drawn contrast of shame- and guilt-based characters, and that's Mulder and Scully. The specimen scene for me is in the episode where Max Fenig is wafted off the airplane, which then crashes, and we go to the hanger where the rubble is being laid out, and the investigating team are assembled, all bleak and hard-faced and just-the-facts. And Mulder comes sashaying in and proceeds to unleash one of his classic cockamamie the-aliens-did-it rambles, and the lead FAA guy is glaring at him contemptuously, despising him, and you can see Scully standing at his shoulder, just curdled with shame, but Mulder is utterly shameless, he's very calm, utterly willing to look the fool if it'll get him a step closer to the truth. [ETA: Just like Fraser, askormantic points out in her comment.] (Thanks to eliade, btw, for a long-ago comment that made me go back and look at this scene again.)
If Mulder is without shame what he does have in spades is guilt, of course. For not saving his sister, for not getting the evidence, not cracking the conspiracy. Which--it's not like any sane person would expect him to, but he's not sane in this regard, he expects it of himself, and he punishes himself relentlessly for falling short.
And Scully ... one continuing story thread in X-Files is Scully learning to get past her shame; her FBI-agent shame about always having to come back with shoddy or nonexistent evidence, her scientist shame about believing disreputable and unprovable kookiness, her personal shame about choosing a path that no one else except Mulder approves of for her. It's a hero's journey of a sort, just as Vecchio gains a kind of heroism in being willing to live through his own shame at the embarrassments Fraser regularly gets him into, and to stick with the guy despite it all.
First, a disclaimer: there's a body of literature in cultural anthropology and social psych about shame-based vs. guilt-based cultures. Because I am a crappy scholar, I did not consult that literature, of which I have only the dimmest memory, and my formulations of the shame/guilt concepts may be totally out of line with the received wisdom. So I'm just rollin' my own here, folks, and you're free to tell me how wrong I am. *g*
Having said which, I posit that shame and guilt, though similar in many ways, have a crucial difference. Shame I see as being externally focused; it grows out of the sense that one has screwed up or fallen short in the eyes of others. One has visibly failed to live up to some group norm, whether of honor or coolness or correctness or whatever. Guilt, on the other hand, is internally derived; one has failed to live up to one's own personal standards. One can feel guilty about actions, or thoughts, which no one else will ever know about (except perhaps one's God).
So, let's look at the two Rays.
Ray Vecchio as shame-based: Vecchio is a guy who cares deeply about how he's perceived by others; he's all about la bella figura. This goes beyond the obvious (his clothes, his car, his style) and shapes his behavior with others. When he gets his raise, in Juliet is Bleeding, he takes his pals out for dinner to a fancy place, because that's what a guy does, even though the tab is going to eat up most of his raise. And when the dinner is wrecked by Zuko's party, you get the sense that a large part of his anger is about losing face, not being able to show his buddies a good time, being humiliated. (RayK might just say, "Screw it, let's go down to the diner.") The pool game on his birthday, in Victoria's Secret, is farcicallly impractical, but it's the gesture that matters, the image, the amplitude and gentleman's-club luxury implied by that grossly-oversized pool table, and the graciousness of having his colleagues over for a game (never mind that none of them are really enjoying it).
When he's made to look foolish in others' eyes, he suffers. His interactions with Fraser are constantly punctuated by his mortification about Fraser's freakish behavior, and the fact that he's looking like a freak by association. When he comes back in CotW, the jabs he chooses to take at RayK are all about how his image has been damaged.
Vecchio is, as I mentioned in an earlier entry, a guy who is enmeshed in a rich, complex network of culture and tradition. A lot of his pride, self-esteem, and sense of self grow out of acting and presenting himself in ways that are seen by others in that network as being appropriate and estimable. He wants respect, and to be respected, a guy needs to be well-dressed, drive a sharp car, be suave with women, exhibit largesse, have a snappy comeback, take care of his family. There are moments throughout the Vecchio episodes that show us the private times when he actually falls short of "honorable" behavior (e.g., the deal with Frannie and the lottery tickets). As long as these things remains private (or known only by Fraser, whom Vecchio realizes operates by an entirely different code), they don't bother him. He sure doesn't lie awake at night guilting about them.
Ray Kowalski as guilt-based: Unlike Vecchio, RayK is something of an atomized individual; estranged from his family for many years, divorced from his wife, separated from his home-base precinct, with few visible old buddies or connections to the past, living alone. He comes across as someone who's largely set the terms for his own life, chooses his own conduct and appearance, and if other people don't like it, fuck 'em.
He is also, clearly, someone who feels a lot of pain about his failures to live up to standards; but to a large extent those standards are internal. The best example of this, perhaps, is Ladies' Man. All his associates are clearly pleased with how he did on the case--it was a clean arrest, he did the right thing, stop worrying about it, etc. etc. But he's in agony, because he knows something's wrong, he screwed up, and he goes against all the conventional cop code and endures the contempt of his colleagues to try to set it right. Even when he's saved Beth Botrelle from execution, he's still riddled with guilt for his failings; others might congratulate him, but he's suffering his own judgment. He still broods about the fact that he wasn't able to do the right thing, by his own standards, when his dog was hit by a car. And during his recounting in Eclipse of that formative encounter with Marcus Ellery in the bank, what's continued to eat at him over the years isn't the shame of having wet his pants in public--he seems almost shame-free about describing that to a group of strangers--but the guilt that he didn't do the right thing, didn't somehow take the guy down. (Of course, he would also have liked to look like a hero to Stella. None of this is 100%. *g*) [ETA:
shayheyred makes an excellent point in her comment below--that what's really eating him is that Stella bought his false hero facade, that their relationship was founded on that lie. Long-term guilt over being able to pull off a short-term shame-avoiding front--that's an extra-special full-gainer-with-half-twist turn on the situation. Thanks so much for pointing this out, Shay!]It would make sense that a guy who works undercover would have to be someone who doesn't internalize whatever particular set of group norms he might be acting-as-if within at the moment. And it's noteworthy, I think, that the internal changes we see in him through the series, the way he finds a new sense of purpose and mission in his work as a cop, isn't really so much a matter of his trying to live up to Fraser's standards; rather, Fraser seems to inspire Ray to live up to his own standards, to take himself and his ideals seriously again.
As noted above, none of this is 100%. Vecchio clearly has his inner areas of guilt; it's pretty clear that a big part of what drives him to face down Zuko in the gym, in The Deal, is his guilt over not having tried to protect his schoolmate all those years ago. And Kowalski's relationship with his father clearly has a big element of shame in it; he doesn't feel guilty about having chosen to leave college and be a cop, but he's shamed for having let his dad down, not met his dad's standards.
But at heart, the two are operating from fundamentally different stances, and I think it to some extent shapes their relationships with Fraser. Fraser, of course, is himself almost wholly without shame--he really doesn't care what people think about him--but he is deeply and intimately familiar with guilt. That's one reason why it's much easier for me to see F/K than F/V; Fraser and RayK have the guilt-base in common, they're familiar with the same demons.
As a side note: Fandom supplies us with another nicely-drawn contrast of shame- and guilt-based characters, and that's Mulder and Scully. The specimen scene for me is in the episode where Max Fenig is wafted off the airplane, which then crashes, and we go to the hanger where the rubble is being laid out, and the investigating team are assembled, all bleak and hard-faced and just-the-facts. And Mulder comes sashaying in and proceeds to unleash one of his classic cockamamie the-aliens-did-it rambles, and the lead FAA guy is glaring at him contemptuously, despising him, and you can see Scully standing at his shoulder, just curdled with shame, but Mulder is utterly shameless, he's very calm, utterly willing to look the fool if it'll get him a step closer to the truth. [ETA: Just like Fraser, as
kormantic points out in her comment.] (Thanks to eliade, btw, for a long-ago comment that made me go back and look at this scene again.)If Mulder is without shame what he does have in spades is guilt, of course. For not saving his sister, for not getting the evidence, not cracking the conspiracy. Which--it's not like any sane person would expect him to, but he's not sane in this regard, he expects it of himself, and he punishes himself relentlessly for falling short.
And Scully ... one continuing story thread in X-Files is Scully learning to get past her shame; her FBI-agent shame about always having to come back with shoddy or nonexistent evidence, her scientist shame about believing disreputable and unprovable kookiness, her personal shame about choosing a path that no one else except Mulder approves of for her. It's a hero's journey of a sort, just as Vecchio gains a kind of heroism in being willing to live through his own shame at the embarrassments Fraser regularly gets him into, and to stick with the guy despite it all.
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So. Friggin'. Brilliant.
Date: 2003-10-26 07:42 am (UTC)This is why I am your minion.
Re: So. Friggin'. Brilliant.
Date: 2003-10-26 07:54 am (UTC)Oh, okay. We can *both* be Kat's minions. We are Katty Minionites.
Amen.
And yeah, much agreement on the brilliance.
Re: So. Friggin'. Brilliant.
Date: 2003-10-26 08:03 am (UTC)Kat, you are such a brain on legs. And it's such a suave brain, too.
Re: So. Friggin'. Brilliant.
Date: 2003-10-26 11:12 am (UTC)Re: So. Friggin'. Brilliant.
Date: 2003-10-26 11:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-26 02:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-26 04:18 pm (UTC)I think I'm in the wrong thread, but here's a RayV thing--his smile. The slow easy delighted one that breaks across his face when something utterly cool befalls him.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-26 07:52 am (UTC)Now I'm wondering if it's purely my own cultural bias that makes the shame-based characters seem more accessible to me. Although frankly, I think it probably has more to do with the sheer *level* of vicarious embarassment that Mulder is capable of provoking...
Sara
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-26 02:18 pm (UTC)My dad is, like, the *master* of shame-basedness, so I have some understanding of the mindset, though I function more out of guilt myself. I'm really glad you found this interesting--thanks!
from now on
Date: 2003-10-26 07:59 am (UTC)I like the contrasts, here: Ray K/Ray V coming from different places.
In many ways, I feel like Ray V. is trying to live the life of a Mafia Don without the graft, extortion and lead pipes to the knee. He lives in a town owned by Zuko, and he's seen the people there fear Zuko, but admire him, too, for the same reasons you list above:He wants respect, and to be respected, a guy needs to be well-dressed, drive a sharp car, be suave with women, exhibit largesse, have a snappy comeback, take care of his family. I think part of his shame comes from knowing that because he's chosen the cop's path, he'll never be as flash or financially successful as Zuko, and that grates on him. We know that, for all his generosity, money is very important to him, and not just because he wants to be rich, but because he wants to be the one who's taking the best care of his family. Sure, he tried to wiggle Frannie out of her dough, but you know that Ray would have draped her in mink, sent her to Europe-- as long as he was the one the money was coming from. Which is a piggish, I'm-the-daddy attitude, but it's understandable.
Ray K. seems insecure; he doesn't worry what he looks like to other people, but he seems to have a fundamental sense of not being enough. It's like he needs to be smarter, tougher than he feels he is. So we get a lot of bravado we never see with Ray V. Ray V. may want to show off a little for the ladies, but he knows how far he's willing to go, and when he threatens you, it's not for show. But take Ray K's face-off with the performance arsonist in Burning Down The House. He's not just convincing the bad guy that he's gonna kick his head in, he's convincing himself to be the threat he's presenting. And the only person he has to convince is himself, since the arsonist is gibbling pretty much from the start.
And I dig the comparison of Mulder and Fraser, alike in their brilliance, their shameless behavior, their ever-present guilt.
Ah, Kat. I like the way you think.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-26 09:05 am (UTC)With both you and Kat on the case, I need never think again.
Great stuff here. And can I just say I love the thought of Ray draping his sister in mink, even if it is a piggish attitude?
I'm fond of it myself
Date: 2003-10-26 09:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-26 02:28 pm (UTC)I think part of his shame comes from knowing that because he's chosen the cop's path, he'll never be as flash or financially successful as Zuko, and that grates on him. Yes, yes, yes. *Excellent* point. (I suspect too that this is a big reason why things didn't work out originally with Irene--that he couldn't "afford" her.) And so of course getting to be Armando would be like--shazam! Magic time! You get to have all the swank and wealth and power that you always wanted, but underneath it you can still assure yourself you're doing the good/right thing, being a cop. (Except that, as
And your point about him & money & Frannie is *so* spot-on. Which of course in turn lends poignancy to Frannie's drive to do it *for herself,* to achieve success, furs, whatever, by dint of mobilizing her own energy and abilities.
Ray V & Shame, Frannie & DIY
Date: 2003-10-26 04:58 pm (UTC)This is an interesting thought.
And the thing is, the price would have nothing to do with money, but everything to do with his social standing and his self-esteem.
Had he married her, he'd have either had to turn a blind eye to Zuko for his wife's sake (and the community at large would figure that Zuko owned him, making him just another crooked cop, whether it was true or not), or else had a bloody showdown with him early on, very like the events of Juliet is Bleeding. And that surely would have cost him Irene.
He might have married Irene and moved far away, but he'd have had to leave his family and everything he'd known and worked for (taking care of his family and protecting his neighborhood from danger, specifically Zuko).
And of course this is assuming he'd live long enough to walk her down the aisle. I don't think the Zuko's would have been happy about a cop in the family who couldn't be bought, and I'm thinking he'd have been a chalk outline well before his first fitting at the tailor's.
And your point about him & money & Frannie is *so* spot-on. Which of course in turn lends poignancy to Frannie's drive to do it *for herself,* to achieve success, furs, whatever, by dint of mobilizing her own energy and abilities.
I've always wondered what Frannie's ex-husband was like.
If Ray V. is motivated to be as unlike as his father as possible, to be a cop instead of a drunken pool hustler, to be a conscientious family man instead of an abusive sot, then I think Frannie took a look at her mother and decided she wanted more. She wasn't gonna stay married to a guy who wasn't good to her, and she wasn't gonna depend on a man to take care of her. (I had only ever really thought of the family in terms of Ray V taking care fo them financially, but 36 K doesn't go so far. I'm sure Maria and Frannie do their part for taxes on the house, the mortgage, the groceries.) So she goes out in the world, and holds out for her ideal (Fraser, naturally). And she's disappointed, but never deterred.
I just love Frannie.
Okay, I'll shut up now. (g)
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-26 09:02 am (UTC)Man. You wow me.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-26 02:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-26 09:02 am (UTC)I would actually say it's the guilt about misleading Stella, who thought he did it on purpose, to let her get away. She did think he was a hero; only he knows the truth, and that's what eats at him. A marriage based on a lie, he tells Fraser.
Your mini-essay is wonderful, and sharp as a knife. I could listen to you deconstruct characters forever. ::signing up for minionhood::
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-26 02:32 pm (UTC)Yes, of course, totally -- and of course he'd feel even *more* guilt for having somehow been able to pull off that front. Vecchio could cope much more comfortably with such a split between shiny false facade and dingier internal reality, but it would gnaw at Kowalski relentlessly.
Thanks so much for both your excellent thoughts and kind words!
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-26 11:00 am (UTC)Which meshes very neatly with the idea that Vecchio really gets sucked into being the Bookman and is deeply affected by living according to that code for a period of time - minimal guilt over what he was doing, and no shame because he was living up to the code that was relevant, be it the mob or the feds. Hmmm.
Cool post, thanks for sharing! And for whatever it's worth, I think you did in fact nail the usual sociological meanings for shame vs. guilt - it's usually used to address East/West differences, I think, as Asian cultures tend to emphasize community over individual where modern European cultures do the reverse, but on the personal level it scans to the Rays very nicely.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-26 02:38 pm (UTC)And thanks for the reassurances that I didn't completely screw up sociological canon *g*. There's a whole ancillary part of this essay I didn't write, which has to do with the difference between southern-European cultures (e.g., Italian), where so much of life is lived in the public square, and northern-European cultures (e.g., Polish), which are more indoors and closed-off and inward, and then tying this somehow to Catholicism vs. Protestantism -- but (a) I haven't thought it through enough, and (b) I ran it by Ces a while back and she shot down some of my points, so anyway, I'll leave it for another time. *g*
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-26 03:50 pm (UTC)But, I'm racking my brain here, because I took a bunch of social history on Early Modern Europe, which included the switch from Catholic to Protestant for a lot of places, and. There's something about that, about shame vs. guilt and social organization. And I can't remember what it was.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-28 07:01 pm (UTC)If you read about the shame vs guilt vs social organization thing, and it had to do with public vs private confession of sins, then it was probably from either John Bossy's Christianity in the West or from the Rice-Grafton book The Foundations of Early Modern Europe.
...sorry for the thread necromancy. -cough-
(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-28 10:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-28 11:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-26 11:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-26 02:40 pm (UTC)Thanks for the kind words--I'm really glad you enjoyed it!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-02 04:55 pm (UTC)And it's amusing to see how Shameless!Fraser can use Guilt (reflexively, I mean) when it comes to body taboos. So, as long as he considers the situation appropriate (sweatlodge in his apartment) he doesn't fear his or other bodies. Other times he's in a full-body chastity (union suit, dress reds...) kit.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-26 11:23 am (UTC)Brava!
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-26 02:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-26 12:37 pm (UTC)I'm amazed, and although I couldn't have seen that myself, I agree 100 percent with your conclusions.
I'm so glad you took time to post this. Wow. Hope there's room for another minion. *G*
(You might consider sending this to one or more of our lists-in-common. I'll bet it would stir up some discussion there among people who aren't on LJ. Just a thought.)
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-26 02:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-26 09:54 pm (UTC)AND - I want to be your minion to. ME ME ME!!!! We can form a group - Kat and her groopies? Kat and her minionettes???
Also - I'm pleased to see you "settling into" your new position. I am so glad that it all worked out for you. More money, better job, not having to uproot - all good things - especially in this economy.
namaste SF Nancy
(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-27 08:47 am (UTC)I can't help wondering, now that you've got me thinking, where Stella might fall on this scale. It's more difficult to place her because we don't get near enough canon for her- her ritzy background and dating the politician in Strange Bedfellows might make you put her with Vecchio, but the fact that she's doing state's attorney work instead of lucrative private practice (and her obvious care for the abused wife in SB), not to mention the fact that she married Ray in the first place (the meat packer's son, regardless of his bad-boy charm, can't have been much of a prize in the eyes of her Gold Coast friends) would seem to slant things the other way.
Thoughts?