Jazz

Lynch's influence
David Foster Wallace once wrote a piece about david lunch lol. In the piece, he coined a new term: "Lynchian". Wallace described a Lynchian tone as "the unbelievably grotesque existing in a kind of union with the unbelievably banal."

He described a husband beating his 1950s housewife to death because she bought the wrong brand of peanut butter. "I told you to buy the JIF," he'd say as he's clobbering her to death. This, he said, would qualify as almost perfectly Lynchian.

I think "I Am Jazz" enters into Lynchian territory. Imagine a simple domestic scene. The women look like average suburban moms. They're relaxing on the couch. One imagines they might be discussing casserole recipes when we cut to them. But it slowly dawns on us that in the living room, with placid expressions on their faces, they're talking about the woman's transvestite son's genitals.

Despite the obvious subtext and the producers' hope to normalize this horror, the average person is totally disgusted. Nevertheless, the viewer is fascinated. We're drawn further into this. The sheer naked horror of what they're saying, the blase quality with which they're saying it, it creates this brutal paradox that almost rapes the viewer's basic sense of what is decent.

Tolkien's influence
In The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien drew upon the language and themes found in the old Medieval hero-tales in order to construct a kind of new mythology. The brilliance of Tolkien was in his departure from the Pagan modes of conduct and morality of these old tales, his creation of a syncretistic fusion between Christian thought and Pagan language, and so his work achieved a deep resonance with all who read it.

We find this passage at the conclusion of The Return of the King: The Dark Lord was suddenly aware of him, and his Eye piercing all shadows looked across the plain to the door that he had made; and the magnitude of his own folly was revealed to him in a blinding flash, and all the devices of his enemies were at last laid bare. Adversaries in the stories that Tolkien drew upon, Grendel, Mordred and the like, often served as obstacles that the heroes could overcome through feats of strength and cunning. Sauron is not like them. When Sauron is defeated, it is not because Aragorn is stronger than him or because Gandalf is wiser. They are not. It is only that his hubris was so great that it never occurred to him that anyone would want to destroy the thing he held so dear. It is not until the final few seconds of his existence that he realizes his mistake.

I think that I Am Jazz displays a similar moment. In the pictured scene, Jazz's journey to what he believes is womanhood is almost complete. He is resting after surgery, a triumphant smile on his face, his rotting groin held together by a labyrinthine patchwork of stitches and grafts. But as Eru Ilúvatar nudged Gollum over the Crack of Doom into the fires beneath, so too does the God of our world intervene in this. Pop! In a second, the follies of men are undone and Jazz's crotch explodes, a meaty froth of blood and pus pouring out of the hole where his penis used to be.

In that moment of blind panic and terror, Jazz is Sauron. All triumph and victory is gone. Only the Void remains.

A Eulogy for Jazz
He was ashamed of his deceptions, his promotions, his pretensions of self-certainty and pride; he was sorry about his passivity, his delusions, his inability to express what he now believed was the case - that he truly regretted killing Jaron, that he missed his dick as much as anybody and wished its removal hadn't been necessary. Even as he circulated his school he knew that the smiles disappeared when he passed by. He received so many mindless encouraging tweets that he could read them without any reaction except curiosity. He kept to his Florida home all day, dilating his wound and browsing a Chinese egg-timer forum, looking at his destiny in every meme and "Lynchian" pasta.

There would be no eulogies for Jazz, no photographs of his body would be sold in tabloid rags, no people would crowd the streets in the heat to see his funeral cortege, no biographies would be written about him, no children named after him, no one would ever pay two hundred fifty dollars for an all access TLC-sponsored Premium Postmortem Pass™ to stand in the rooms he grew up in.

The noose would tighten, and Jeanette would scream, but Jazz Jennings would only hang from the ceiling and look at the floor, the light going out of his eyes before he could find the right words.