Off the Hook 'til Next Sunday Night

Satire. Parable. Cock-and-Bull Tall-Tale. Comic Parody. These are the words I’ve been blinking at for the last ten minutes as I browse this weeks blog prompts for Salman Rushdie’s “The Prophet’s Hair.” Unfortunately for me, it’s obnoxiously hot in my downtown bachelor pad (read: decrepit shithole), and I’m covered in mosquito bites from a weekend of shirtless outdoor alcohol abuse. After a long afternoon spent traveling from bed to the refrigerator to the television and back again, I’ve finally sat down with East, West to decode these hieroglyphics and hastily type a blog response that will get me off the hook until next Sunday night. Nothing. While the obvious reaction would be to conclude that my professor, in his inferior wisdom, bumbled the prompts to the point where my master intellect can’t possibly make sense of his mindless babble, it occurs to me that his PhD and fancy British accent most likely rule out this logic. A much more plausible scenario, I reason, is that I am a bum, and am looking for any excuse to go watch NFL Draft highlights.

ESPN Draft analyst John Clayton: What I'm missing right now to write this.

How’s that for framing an article? Rushdie’s “The Prophet’s Hair” has me stumped as far as the blog prompts go; while I’m pretty confident I could tackle the “Tall-tale” route, it seems a bit of a cop-out to lump Rushdie’s complex storytelling in with Johnny Appleseed, as there’s obviously much more there. So I’m going to make life harder on myself and take on all of them.

My first time through “The Prophet’s Hair” I failed to pick up much of an air of satire, and wondered if I was missing something, or if everyone else was simply thinking too hard. However, after separating Rushdie’s careful undertones from the compelling storyline, there’s a definite sense of social commentary evident in the tale’s religious elements. Still, I wouldn’t quite call it satire as much as plain indictment. I don’t find much sly irony in an adulterous bookie, who nonetheless supports his family and encourages the female self-expression that Islam condemns, suddenly discovering a religious artifact that converts him into an abusive, fire-and-brimstone Muslim and ultimately leaves everyone dead (except for a blind woman, who is rewarded for living off the stolen possessions of others). In fact, “The Prophet’s Hair” reminds me less of classic satire like Huck Finn and Catch 22, and more like Scorsese’s The Departed, in which an ensemble cast of actors shoot each other point-blank in the face and an asshole named Mark Wahlberg is the only survivor.

I can’t figure out what Rushdie seeks to condemn in this story-- Just who, or what, is Rushdie satirizing? While it seems like Hashim’s “life of porcelain delicacies and alabaster sensibilities” comes to a violent end when he becomes a Muslim fundamentalist—thus displaying Rushdie’s disdain for religion—I doubt that Rushdie wishes to promote a greedy, hypocritical, unfaithful bookie as the poster-child for who we all can be if we reject that corrosive bastard, Religion. On the other hand, it seems even less likely that the bloodbath is just punishment for Hashim’s lack of faith, as Rushdie paints the faithful as angry monsters. The money-lender is a hypocrite, and Mohammed has some treacherous locks that should not be trifled with, but the only irony I see in Rushdie is that the Islamic world responded to his literature in the exact way that Muslims are portrayed in “The Prophet’s Hair.”

Examining the story as a parable falls short, as well. When I think “parable,” I think Bible, and while Christ’s anecdotes occasionally mention theft and corruption, they don’t immediately conjure up images of a Martin Scorsese action movie. As I mentioned earlier, it’s difficult to figure out what moral, if any, Rushdie aims for. Salman Rushdie’s agenda in “The Prophet’s Hair” is not immediately clear in an often-chaotic story-structure that ultimately leaves three innocent people dead. The only direct and obvious message I can take from this if reading as a parable, which I do not think Rushdie intends for, is Don’t F*** With Mohammed. Rushdie strikes me as far too clever and subtle to right a cautionary Aesop’s Fable to warn against ignoring religious superstition.

The same is true for examining “The Prophet’s Hair” as a Tall tale, as I refuse to liken Rushdie’s plot to a simple children’s story—he’s too smart for that. Furthermore, the dark, gritty themes of “Hair” separate it stylistically from nonsense like Paul Bunyan, with shadowy criminal underworlds and sadistic violence contrasting sharply to dopey American folklore. In fact, Rushdie’s account of the moneylender Hasmir reminds me far more of Jack Nicholson’s epic descent in horror film The Shining than a Davey Crockett tall tale.

The Good Sheperd and Bad Johnny

Rushdie’s descriptive portrayals do, however, bring about images of the dark and mysterious Arabian Nights. While I’ve never read Nights or the other famous Arabic fairy tales, I am familiar with many of the stories and themes, and “Hair” paints a similar shadowy, often sinister, portrait of its setting (perhaps it’s also the strangely exotic quality that we observe in the Arab-Indian world from our western perspective).

Salman Rushdie’s “The Prophet’s Hair” does not fall into a single category, but rather utilizes elements from many to develop its complex structure. It flirts with social commentary and religious indictment while not quite coming off as a satirical piece. It seems to have some jumbled moral message, but its complexity makes this hard to decipher. Furthermore, its reminiscence of Steven King and Scorsese doesn’t fit the mold of a traditional biblical parable, and Rushdie’s too sneaky for something that simple. The connection to Arabian Nights is evident in their stylistic and thematic similarities, though I’m not educated enough in the Arabic tales to judge “The Prophet’s Hair” as a direct parody. There’s far more beneath the surface in Rushdie, and I’d take the time to delve further but I hear the Raiders picked Darren McFadden and I’ll bet SportsCenter has some riveting highlight footage.

McFadden is a powerful and versatile back who gives the Raiders the big-play threat they lack at the position. He's quick around the corner and shows rare speed when he gets into the open field.