"Uncle" through the Lens of Butler's "Imitation and Gender Insubordination"

“Uncle” is the story of six-year-old Jake’s dawning of sexual understanding, facilitated by his curiosity and his sexual experiences with his older brother Vince, as well as the confidence and masculinity exuded by his favorite person, Uncle Paul. The moment per se of sexual understanding occurs just before Jake’s mom finds him and Paul in a compromising situation in the bathroom. She then assumes the worst—that Paul is sexually abusing Jake—and drags her son out, letting the door close behind them.

After leaving the bathroom, Jake believes Paul can no longer be in there—or, rather, that he can no longer be in there “like he was before.” In her essay “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” Judith Butler states that “identifications are always made in response to loss of some kind,” which explains Paul’s disappearance: After Jake has an epiphanic moment of identification with Vince’s “magical” penis and Paul’s male sexuality, leading him to understand his own status as a man whose penis can also “do magic,” he cannot see Paul as he did before his revelation. Because he recognizes himself as also possessing masculinity, he cannot return to thinking of Paul as this awesome, untouchable masculine entity.

But he does not want the Paul he knew from before his realization to disappear; after all, he loves him. This may be one reason for why he becomes so terrified of his mom reopening the bathroom door: As if Paul were a kind of Schrodinger’s cat (sorry, I couldn’t resist), Jake will not know whether he has really disappeared until the door is opened, and that is a truth that Jake does not want to face.

Another interpretation of his fear of his mom reopening the bathroom door is that he is afraid she will discover his magic—that is, his sexuality. This means we can view the bathroom as Butler’s closet. Just as, according to her, “outness” in sexual orientation is contingent upon there being a closet in which one may be “in,” so too is Jake’s mom’s (lack of) knowledge of his sexuality contingent upon the bathroom door staying closed. She would not actually perceive a shift in his sexual awareness, but he thinks she will. He wants to keep it secret from her because “she doesn’t believe in fun stuff anymore” and he is afraid of her doubtlessly oppressive reaction, therefore he cannot let her go back. And so, he simultaneously evades the moment of truth and distracts his mom by running away and willing his own penis to perform magic.