The Socio-Economics of Pedophilia
Clark Davis is the newest arrival on the prison, infamous and notorious for being the lowest of the low: a child molester. He is compelled to confess to Juan who is a good listener. Clark gives a rather extensive narration of the events associated with his paraphilia, but there is one particularly noxious image that speaks beyond sexual deviancy and delves into the play’s thematic concerns with economic disparity and criminal behavior:
“The easiest ones were the Puerto Ricans and the black girls…Little white one would masturbate you right there in the park for a dollar or a quarter…depending on how much emphasis their parents put in their heads on making money.”
The Gospel According to El Raheem
Another theme the play explores is the search for humanity in the predatory, dehumanizing jungle of prison. Various inmates pursue this search in various ways, but it is a militant black man named El Raheem who seems most intent on getting there. In fact, he seems to have found his humanity through, ironically, casting himself as the god of his own personal religion:
“I am God…This is your school of self-awareness. Wake up, black man, melt these walls? You as me, a tangible god, to do an intangible feat? Mysterious intangible gods do mysterious intangible deeds. There is nothing mysterious about me. Tangible gods do tangible deeds.”
Or, then again, maybe El Raheem just went over the walls of sanity.
Jane Fonda
Actress Jane Fonda—or, more precisely, a picture of Jane Fonda—becomes the central piece of imagery in a monologue by Ice, a black inmate who looks much older than his twenty-something age. This premature aging may is signified as the result of systemic racism in the story Ice tells about using his picture of Jane Fonda as fantasy-fuel for an act of physical self-love that, unbeknownst to him, was witnessed by two racists who thereupon set to meting out violent punishment for his daring to transgress the boundaries of racism in America of the 1970’s. Even just fantasizing about having sex with a white woman while actually having sex with yourself was crossing the line for a black man. Fonda’s history as Vietnam War activist which deems her a communist is not even enough to overcome their almost genetic predisposition toward racial intolerance.
Juan and Cupcakes
Juan is the conscience of the cell block whose advice and intervention has kept the good-looking young Cupcakes from becoming what most men fear of becoming if they wind up in jail. Cupcakes is presented with the opportunity to repay at least a little of that loan by supporting Juan in his effort to also protect Clark the child molester from being killed. Instead, the younger man opts to side with the mob. It is not the fact that he betrayed him or even really the fact that he was willing to side with the killers of Clark that upsets Juan, however. He recognizes that Cupcakes in that moment has decided not to pursue the path of finding his humanity. In fact, he straight up tells Cupcakes “You want to be an animal too…You’re letting this place destroy you.” Later, after Clark has been murdered, Juan has the very last words of the play and they are imagery directed expressly toward Cupcakes with the implication that the consequences of this decision cannot easily be undone:
“Your fear of this place stole your spirit…And this ain’t no pawnshop.”
