[This is another of my guest posts at “Family Scholars Blog.” It is also crossposted on “Alas” and on “TADA.”]
I’m not sure if this scholarly consideration of marriage has been discussed on Family Scholars Blog already.
When it comes to being adorable, Jessie has pretty much everyone here at Family Scholars Blog beaten. (Even me, and I’m scrumptious.) Nonetheless, as a newly minted (albeit temporary) Family Scholars blogger it’s my sad responsibility to report that Jessie and Grover’s notion of marriage fails the universality test.
This brings up the obvious question: Why, oh why, didn’t Sesame Street bring on an actual expert on marriage to be interviewed by Grover? David, if you’re reading this, perhaps you could clarify: Did Sesame Street invite you as a guest? Is it possible that they asked, but you had a scheduling conflict, so they had to settle for Jessie? And where is Jessie’s doctorate from, anyway? Inquiring minds want to know.
What do I mean by saying that Grover and Jessie’s description of marriage fails the universality test? Well, a couple might be legally married but decline to hug and kiss. Or they might be legally married but not live together or see each other every day. A couple might be married without being friends, or even without trying to help each other.
I can think of similar errors that I’ve heard in other people’s descriptions of marriage. For instance, a marriage doesn’t have to have love to be, legally, a marriage. It doesn’t have to have children, or even the possibility of children, to be legally marriage. Not all legal marriages are heterosexual. Not all legal marriages are exclusive. Not all legal marriages include sex.
So what can we say that is universally true of all legally recognized marriages — or, at least, of 99.9999999% of them?
I think the only thing we can say is this: Other than adoption, marriage is the only way two unrelated or distantly-related people can legally become each other’s closest kin.
Someone should tell Grover.
love it. But I also loved Sesame Street and Grover. Hopefully, next time they’ll get it right!
Hmmm, most often I’m right with you or close to it, but today I’m wondering if being harsh on Jessie and Grover is the most productive strategy? Yes, the notion of marriage as espoused by Grover and Jessie doesn’t pass the universality rule as you write it, and no, Jessie doesn’t have a Ph.D. But rather than use this instance as a means to poke holes in a larger argument about the universality of marriage, what about engaging with other ideas that their dialogue opens us (and kid viewers) up to? What about the racialized aspects of this dialogue? What might those contest or shift or prop up? How might that move us toward a more progressive thinking about marriage and sexuality? What about the fact that Jessie *is* a kid? What are the limits to and the utility in having a kid speak about this?
And while I agree that not all married people hug or kiss or are friends or help each other, I’m curious how else people might realistically describe the notion of intimacy to children in ways they are ready to understand and in ways that seek not to limit the race/gender/sex/sexuality of the people involved. Any ideas? (Particularly ones that aren’t going to be readily attacked by neo-conservative politics and taken off the air).
So, I’ve been thinking about my comment above, and while others might be more interested to explore race and non-heterosexuality, I’m thinking about race and rights and Jessie and Grover.
How Jessie identifies in terms of race is unknown, but he is likely read as African-American. Grover is known to self-identify as Monster (The Monster at the End of this Book, 1971). So here we have two bodies that have historically been denied rights in a variety of ways. Both bodies have historically been construed as savage. African-American bodies have been denied citizenship rights, rights to marry, and rights to marry outside their racial group. Meanwhile, Monsters (i.e. beasts) have no rights to citizenship or marriage (at least in the modern state), and their sexuality has historically and contemporarily been defined legally solely through sodomy law. (This is somewhat funny since, in order to speak on Sesame Street, Grover has to have a hand up his ass.)
To have these two bodies be the ones who discuss marriage… well, that’s just awesome and totally radical.
And I promise to leave my comments at that.
Grover is beyond reproach.
Bonnie–The post is sort of a joke, using obviously inappropriate material to bring up definitional problems. Which doesn’t make what you’re bringing up any less interesting, but I think “today I’m wondering if being harsh on Jessie and Grover is the most productive strategy” might have missed what I read as the intended tone a bit. ;-)
Perhaps Grover is presenting an idealized view of marriage; what he thinks we should be teaching children that marriage should be.
I’ll say this; I know marriages where people don’t see each other every day. Hell, there’s plenty of times in my marriage where my wife and I are both technically home but are like passing ships in the night. Then there’s military spouses, long-haul truckers – I’m sure you can name more.
Yeah, I know, it’s a bit of a facetious post. That’s cool. But it does make one think.
And the last thing you need to teach what marriage either is or should be is a doctorate.
Mandolin,
While I see the humor is calling the source “scholarly,” I don’t see why you suggest that the media is obviously inappropriate material for bringing up the topic, and that that’s part of the joke. Could you please explain why you consider Sesame Street as source material a joke?
I’m not sure I would have chosen to argue with points like “friendship” and “kissing” to say that people don’t know what marriage is, definitionally. In my view, this is reinforcing the belief that allowing SSM will detract from hetero marriages by not allowing those positives (to most people’s thinking) to exist in the definition of marriage.
And, it certainly doesn’t help to attack Sesame Street credentials – everyone knows Grover is the best!
In NZ your entitlement to government benefits depends on your own income, and the income of anyone who you are ‘in a relationship in the nature of marriage with.’ There has been considerable battle over the years over what ‘in the nature of marriage meant. In the 1970s, the social welfare department once told a solo mother that she would lose her benefit unless she signed a contract stating she wouldn’t have dinner with her boyfriend more than three times a week, and sex more than once a fortnight).
At the same time there was some debate in parliament about what this all means. As social welfare had been harassing single mothers with male flatmates (roommates). And one conservative MP stood up and said that you didn’t need to be sleeping with someone in order for it to be a relationship in the nature of marriage, because he knew lots of married people who never slept together.
Seems to me that NZ has defined “in the state of marriage” a bit better since then, and it’s a right pain in the rear for me. Because I live with my partner, I can no longer get a mortgage by myself if the bank finds out about us. I call him my partner, but we have separate finances and we would like to continue to have separate finances until such time as we want to join them. Frankly, I’d like for marriage to be outdated and for civil unions (in NZ civil unions are the same as marriage except in name) to be legal for any two or more people to enter into. I’d like for people to not be legally financially bound simply by having sex, living together, or any other reason when finances are not intended to have been joined.
Katherine
I’m having difficulty reconciling your support for civil unions with your desire to have people not become financially bound unless they want to be. Are you theorising that nobody would get a civil union unless they want to be legally bound to their civil union partner? Or are you under the impression that civil unions don’t create a legal bond of the sort Maia’s discussing? Because I don’t think either is true.