Ben Reiss and Sleep

   It was very interesting talking to Benjamin Reiss in class on Thursday and later that evening. I was surprised to find that he did not receive any backlash from what he wrote about. I thought for sure someone from the medical community or even the minority groups that he was exposing would have something to say about his work. After describing how he went about his research and his writing it made more sense to me. Rather than rehashing the story and re-exploiting the people he was researching he paid special attention to how he told their story. The way he approaches his work, as a story teller and not a scientist allows for him to ask questions not typical of questions asked in articles about science. Reiss' approach gives the “freaks” a story out of the public eye.

   His talk Thursday night brought up more interesting points about race and sleep. He showed an image from the Civil War era that showed a white women in bed. He said that white people and slave masters often slept. This made me think about Gone with the Wind and how during the war Scarlet, the main character, is always being taken care of because she has slaves. After the war when she doesn't have any slaves she is still working to get back to Tara, her plantation. She increasingly becomes depressed throughout the film and must rest often. While the slaves earlier in the film were being worked to the bone they didn't have time to take bed rest. Sleep became a sign of affluence. If someone could sleep often it meant that they did not have to work; that they had slaves to do it. In class as we discussed how simple things in life like head shape gets medicalized, Reiss took it a step further and made us all think about how sleep can be used to control other people.