The Flag Finish

If and when I hear Sandra Bernhard’s name in the future, I’m going to think of the flag scene.  An image from this scene serves as the film’s cover and the title line is uttered during it – making this moment very clearly significant to the overarching themes of the work.  The scene begins as Sandra walks back on stage to say “I just wanted to tell you everything I told you tonight was a lie.” She then expresses the desire to be able to refund her audience the price of attending her show and delivers the line, “Without you, I’m nothing.” This line, a familiar closing moment after reading Bretch’s The Good Person of Schezwan and  Shakespeare’s As You Like It,  gives the sense that identity is simply who you are interpreted to be, making identity a concept constructed outside of self rather than an internalized, constant truth.  The fact that she stumbles before delivering this line, initially beginning with “without me” before stopping to start again, seems telling.  As we discussed in class, identity is often conceptualized as internal, and this slip seems to nod to this fact.  Though Bernhard acknowledges this conception of identity, she thoroughly destabilizes notions of essential  identity throughout her performance. Sandra displays several different identities for the guests of the same aged “supper club,” performing as an African American woman before slipping into traditional Jewish songs and then slipping out of most of her clothing. This performance destabilizes not only essential identity, but the notion that variable identity is a product of differential relationships or ways of interacting with certain people. Sandra slips in an out of identity performances, refusing to envelop a marked space of identity and develop an identifiable comedic calling card. Her calling card as a performer becomes this lack of coherency.

The American flag imagery used in this last scene tied together her critique of mainstream American culture. In particular, this moment was an interesting commentary on patriotism.  Showy displays of patriotism have become necessary to succeed in some realms of our society, a lack of enthusiasm for America an act of sacrilege. At the same time, these excessive displays of patriotism are often a cloak to justify or disguise hate, ignorance, and greed.  By wearing the flag as a cloak and then shedding it to begin her dance, Bernhard comments on the often complex nature of the performance of patriotism in our age.