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Chapter 16
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Erasure, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Race and Identity
Familial Obligation vs. Personal Needs
Artistic Integrity vs. Commercial Success
Authenticity
Summary
Analysis
Monk walks back to his hotel and considers how his newly discovered family members have “generated new levels of irony and resonance to [his] plight as Stagg Leigh.” As he walks, he passes a billboard that reads “KEEP AMERICA PURE.” Later, Stagg Leigh leaves his hotel room dressed casually in black clothing and a black fedora. Ailene Hoover enters the elevator on Stagg’s way down and asks if she knows him—he seems familiar. “I suppose I have one of those faces,” Stagg says in response.
Monk’s meeting with Gretchen and the skinhead have added “irony and resonance to [his] plight as Stagg Leigh” because it has reinforced his relative economic privilege—an advantage he has further secured through his complicity in an oppressive system ruled and perpetuated by wealth. Monk’s remark to Hoover (“I suppose I have one of those faces”) is a wry joke meant to point out Hoover’s unconscious racism—Monk (as Stagg) is implicitly suggesting that to Hoover, all Black people look alike. At the same time, he is implicitly pointing out his ongoing identity crisis.
Themes
Monk (as Stagg) arrives at the studio and waits around backstage before the Kenya Dunston Show is set to begin. Yul is there and pretends not to recognize Monk as a joke. Monk reminds him that he’ll be behind a screen (because Stagg is supposedly a vigilante on the run), so his physical disguise doesn’t matter all that much.
Monk’s appearance on the Kenya Dunston Show loosely mirrors Go’s appearance on the Snookie Cane show in My Pafology. Gradually, there is more overlap between Monk’s and Go’s stories, signaling how Monk’s performance as Stagg Leigh is gradually causing him to lose his sense of self.
Themes
Finally, the show begins. The audience sings along to the theme music. Kenya Dunston introduces Stagg Leigh and gushes over his book. When she asks him questions, though, he only gives one-word answers in response and refuses to elaborate on his inspiration for the story. Kenya uncomfortably makes a joke about Stagg being shy. During a commercial break, she yells at the producer, demanding to know what the deal is. The producer, Weiß, urges Stagg to loosen up a bit. But after the commercial break, Stagg continues the monosyllabic act. Finally, Kenya opens her copy of Fuck and reads an excerpt from the graphic scene in which Go rapes Cleona. The production staff bleep out the passage’s many expletives. When she finishes, the audience cheers. Afterward, Yul gives Stagg a thumbs up, and Stagg (as Monk) feels ashamed.
Monk’s refusal to cooperate with Kenya Dunston simultaneously reaffirms his discomfort with and his commitment to his role as Stagg Leigh (a jaded criminal like Stagg wouldn’t humor Kenya or Fuck’s majority-white readership). Kenya and her audience’s embarrassingly unflinching approval of a violent rape scene reinforces the implicit racism of readers who outwardly proclaim their support for Black representation in the arts—in failing to condemn Go’s reprehensible behavior, they essentially suggest that it is expected and acceptable for Black people to behave in this manner.
Themes
