Funk

Acknowledgement

「funk1

/fəNGk/

noun

1. a style of popular dance music of African American origin, based on elements of blues and soul and having a strong rhythm that typically accentuates the first beat in the bar.

“a mixture of punk and funk”

2. dated•informal

a strong musty smell of sweat or tobacco.

“our sweat mingles, but the funk makes my stomach dizzy”」

「funk

/fəNGk/

informal

noun

1. North American

a state of depression.

“I sat absorbed in my own blue funk”

British

a state of great fear or panic.

2. dated•British

a coward.

avoid (a task or thing) out of fear.

“I could have seen him this morning but I funked it”」

– Dictionary definition from Oxford Languages

If you trace the etymology of the word ‘funk’, you will find that it has historically carried a negative meaning. Deriving from the latin word ‘fumus’, meaning ‘smoke’, into ‘funkier’ in early 17th century French dialects meaning ‘to blow smoke on’ or ‘musty smell’, most people from before the late 20th century would associate the word with disgust or unpleasantness.

Out of the four definitions above, three are negatively connoted. Only one, the meaning only very recently bestowed upon the word, seems positive. 

To some people, that is.

To other people, the word ‘funk’ suggests one of the green definitions above. No matter in France, Britain, or America, this word somehow carried three completely different, yet similarly displeasing meanings. 

To some, though, particularly to most born after the mid 20th century exposed to any byproduct of the African American music genre, funk means fun. It means a something that awakens the unexplainable innate human ‘groove’ and desire for freedom inside you. People say this all the time. “It’s funky”, meaning, your choice brings an unexplainable joy and not so much dull; in fact, the word funk is the exact opposite of dullness. No matter if people use this word in a music, art, or fashion context, ‘funky’ suggests a feeling that is jumpy, hip, adventurous, exciting, yet not even close to annoying.

Toni Morrison complicates these existing definitions with another definition of the word ‘funk’. The Bluest Eye defines ‘funk’ as the antithesis of “thrift, patience, high morals, and good manners” (83). More than that, it describes the “passion” and “emotion” that people come to this world with that society attempts to “erase” (83).

Therefore, funk almost carries a mission of rebellion and anti-establishmentism. 

The conflict of dull vs liveliness, or in the perspective of another, formalism vs barbarism, comes to life within the novel.

The question for me then becomes, which side should a person take?

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Resolution

Geraldine grew up in an environment that attempted to “wipe” the funkiness of people away (83). This environment nurtured people that follow a streamlined approach to life.  They sing in choir yet “never picked to solo”, they do not drink nor smoke, they never have boyfriends but “always marry” (82-83). The list that the narrator points out acts as a subtle criticism of Geraldine – she lacks an individual spirit that asks her to truly live her life for herself and not for her upbringing. She never expresses herself, she never dared to break rules, she never experienced passionate love yet establishes a family with a man that she made love to for “the six-hundredth time” but never experienced a moment of pleasure or love with(85). In fact, she subjects herself to the “clean and quiet” life so willingly, that the only time she has experienced pleasure came when her “napkin slipped free of her sanitary belt” and moved in between her legs (85). Ironically, this bit of human pleasure came from an attempt to keep herself clean. 

Throughout this section, the narrator associates the removal of funk as a racial and cultural issue. The complete absence of noise in her life came from her school. The narrator describes that they teach colored children like Geraldine “how to do the white man’s work with refinement” and how to “get rid of the funk” (83). They learn how to “instruct black children with obedience” and how to entertain the “master” with music. Here, the narrator introduces a power structure of race. The education system of the school assumes that black adults hold power to “instruct” black children. However, black adults fall under any white people – they need to “entertain” white folks. More than that, this school represents the removal of black identity for Geraldine – she came to this school for the specific purpose of learning “the white man’s work”. The power structure of this institution that chases down any trace of “funk” suggests that the word “funk” entails a racial and cultural difference between black and white.

Faced with this choice between power and poverty, Geraldine resolves to turn away from her roots. Whitewashing herself.

As someone neither black nor white, I never had the need to remove myself from funk – because there was no discussion nor awareness of funk in the culture I grew up in. China, as different as it is now from its imperial or even Mao days, still maintains a spirit of formalism and a great appreciation for traditional values.

If you take the word traditional and add some political color to it, you get the word conservative.

What this conservative culture taught me, in a huge generalization, was to become filial to your parents, become a citizen who loves the country, and to stay honest and behave with manners. Essentially, be an upright man. 

Even as a child I stayed within the boundaries of mannerism and stayed as far away as possible from any sort of minute trouble. Every adult I knew characterized me as the “frank, honest, and well-behaved” one.

Somehow, this mindset carried over to other hobbies of mine as well. I found it hard to dribble past other players while playing soccer. It felt like they always knew exactly what I wanted to do. My dad told me that I needed to create more, to come up with my own rhythm, to have fun on the pitch. 

Not that I despise this mindset, but eventually I thought that I wanted to take a few adventurous steps towards gaining that funkiness. I only live once after all. I don’t want to be a Geraldine.

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Pursuance

Whenever you dance. 

Whenever you have a laugh at an inside joke with friends. 

Whenever you shout or laugh too loud. 

Whenever you make a facial expression that does not reflect boredom.

Whenever you do anything that falls outside of what other people typically do in public.

You are engaging in an ‘unholy’ amount of funk that will bring attention, specifically, condescending looks, towards you. People call you crazy, immature, strange, barbaric… They might even feel secondhand embarrassment. Because gosh, just look at you with mud all over your face from playing in the puddles. Why are you so happy? You look stupid! I would NEVER wish what you are experiencing upon any other respectable human being. I am embarrassed for you. The fact that we call this emotion ‘secondhand embarrassment’ speaks volumes to the contagious nature of this emotion. 

The reality is that just by gazing towards that idea of ‘funkiness’ brings embarrassment to somebody. Similarly, to the begazed, It is the gaze of another human being that entraps you within that shell of formalism. We give and receive that gaze everyday, whether consciously or unconsciously. This gaze snatches funkiness away and freezes up our personality. The fact that this gaze even limits you in a psychological prison confuses me. How did we get here? How is it that our brain produces anxiety the moment we feel the focus from the eyes of another human? 

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“Funk is the means by which Black folks confirm identity through rhythm, dance, bodily fluids, and attitude. Funkiness in a person’s behavior or attitude can mean anything from an ego trip, to a protest, to escapism.”

• Ricky Vincent

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Within The Bluest Eye, the author pits the idea of the funk in between white and black; white represents a desire to remove it, and black the originator of it. Junior once carried that funkiness. However, his surroundings strips him of that element that he once used to confirm his identity. As a result, he becomes someone without an identity. 

Born as a colored individual, he did not accept the cleansing from Geraldine, his mother, instantaneously. In his youth, he “used to play with the black kids” and “wanted to smell their wild blackness” (87). Under the gaze of his mother, he opts out of that funkiness, to become friends with a white kid who “did not want to do anything” (87). The author’s choice of words reveals her bias towards funkiness. Subtly, instead of using words like “clean” or “well-behaved”, Morrison chooses to characterize the white kid as a boring kid who did not “do anything”. The italicized “do” emphasizes the lack of personality attached to Morrison’s perceived opposite of funkiness. This distancing of Junior from other Black children confirms his drift away from his own identity. At the same time that he lost that funky and “lovely casualness”, he started to “bully girls” (87). In the process of purification, he ironically carries out actions that neither side would consider ethical. Within a single paragraph, the author describes the total demonization of a child from his own pure authenticity. The funkiness that made Junior human, it has been erased, just like how it happened to his mother. 

Such is the monster that is the societal surroundings of a child. Without realization, an ideology gazes upon a child and molds them into something that they, simply, aren’t. This child then molds their own children into a blank canvas clone of the same idea. Morrison critiques what seems to Geraldine is holy as unholy and sinful.

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Psalm…?

Toni Morrison sympathizes towards the funky nature of human beings.

The author hints towards Pecola and Cholly maintaining their identity throughout the normal. At no point within the novel did Pecola and Cholly ever lose that rhythm and soul within them, 

to the point where nobody else understands their life at all and where they destroy their own lives. Their pursuant end in tragedy

a.) Cholly

Cholly stays true to himself. Even as society and even his own family time and time again desert and intrude him, he stays “dangerously free” (159). The narrator describes that “only a musician” could understand that freedom, how it is to be “free to feel whatever he felt – fear, guilt, shame, love, grief, pity” (159). In the context of early 20th century America, the word “funk” did not yet entail a positive freedom as it does today. However, even back then, musicians used the word as a compliment, as a positive attribute of music. Cholly, unlike Geraldine, stays true to his roots and lives by his funkiness and freedom. 

b.) Pecola

After the rape of Pecola, she manages to live freely with a funky attitude in mind. Cholly tears her apart both mentally and physically. She starts to spend her days “walking up and down, up and down” (204). Aimlessly. The non–omniscient narrator who describes her walking up and down does not understand why she does that, and does not attempt to explain it. The narrator only describes that her head usually “[jerks] to the beat of a drummer so distant only she could hear” (83). Pecola did not lose her funk, her own rhythm that is distinct to her. 

However, at the very end, staying true to her own identity does Pecola wrong. 

Unlike Soaphead Church or Geraldine, who climbs up the structure of power, Pecola stays true to herself. That came with the consequences of a complete absence of power. 

The same goes for Cholly. Brutal as the narrator portrays him, he became a victim of the system. When posed with a choice after numerous traumatic events to either erase his funkiness or to keep it, he chose to keep that. Without the necessarily blank canvas required to move upwards, he turns his head and abuses the little power that he holds on his own even more feeble daughter.

I pity them. I wish that they could have kept their funkiness and lived a free life without prosecution, punishment, and poverty. It seems to me only natural that a freedom to human expression should come as a holy prospect, no matter the background of a person. Somehow it seems that every society denies it to a certain extent. 

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“Funk is the absence of any and everything you can think of, but the very essence of all that is. And saying that, I’m saying funk is anything that we create in our minds that we want to do, what we want to be, but we don’t have the resources.”

-Bootsy Collins

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