Sag Harbor: realities behind insult formulas and alpha dog olympics
I found Benji in Sag Harbor struggling through the same pressure of rules following and fear of embarrassment from friends as Jason Taylor from Black Swan Green. Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead follows 15-year-old Benji and details his journey navigating the African American community in the summer. Similar to how Jason follows unspoken social codes on clothing and names they’re supposed to call each kid (details on Jason check my other blog :)), Benji and his friends are also bound by rules for creating the correct insults. In the second chapter, Benji graphs out a table to correctly construct insults: First come the modifiers, followed by the -in’ verbs, and ending with the object (Whitehead 52). This formulaic approach suggests how performative these teenagers’ daily lives are. They are constantly insecure of making lame jokes or weak insults in front of each other. The formula shows their daily expressions, jokes, or insults aren’t natural and relaxed. They all learn the patterns of...