Literature Review

Sensitivity and understanding is so important in today's culture, not only is it important to the political advisors of this country but at all levels down to the children that are being integrated into the society of the public school system every day. Christos Tsiolkas addresses some very important social issues in his novel “The Slap” and he shows how culture and hatred are bred into our children and the major types of issues that it can cause in social situations. In order to trace back to where the issues started sometimes we have to go further back than we think. Even the elderly in the novel have their racist ideologies that cause hurt and hatred throughout.

Multiculturalism

What is diversity? Diversity is a problem, a problem that shouldn’t exist but it does. In fact it grows distinctively more vital each and every day. We as a society, as parents, as children have allowed diversity to become a festering wound that can only be devoured by maggots. Those maggots are going to hurt but we have to let them get into all the holes that the infection has gotten into. We discriminate by age, we discriminate by gender, by social class, and by ethnicity. Everyone has an opinion about someone else and the only way to fix it is to weed out all the stereotypes and hatred towards people. To turn off the “color vision” and see people for who they are inside, not the color of their skin. To be sympathetic to all cultures and ideologies and allow people to have opinions and beliefs that are different from our own without the necessity of seeing them as right vs. wrong. While cultural beliefs and identities are a huge piece of “The Slap” I think the idea of gender may play a much bigger role.

Misogyny

The fight for gender identity has led to a misogynistic society. Men feel a hatred for women because they feel threatened by the idea that for centuries they have been seen as the “dominant sex” and now that women have come out of their shell and liberated themselves then it has created a hostile environment. Fear of loss of power causes men to seek control and power in other aspects of relationships such as sexuality and pornography.

Sexuality

Pornography is shown in several different aspects in the novel but mostly are seen in the vulgarity of language, not only sexually but also in violence. This language mostly comes from the men (so far) in the novel. With extremely violent and uncontrolled outburst both towards sex and in response to confrontation. They seem to have very low tolerance and short fuses. This opens the door for adultery with these characters and it is starting to show a connection between the affairs and sex and violence. These traits seem to be tied to culture and the responses from their mistresses and spouses seem to tie back into the cultural differences and childhood.

I believe that as I read further that I will find while there may be some resolution that many issues will remain unresolved and friendships will be lost. I have found several arguments on multiculturalism and “pornographic logic” that I intend to integrate in my final product.