Twins Talk. Dona Lee Davis
medieval festivals, his depiction of the grotesque body as not individualized, as open, as having a double aspect, and as a kind of co-being that implies self/other interaction, certainly describes the twinscapes at modern-day festivals. Because they subvert normative expectations of unique identity, because the low are exalted, and because the freaks become the norm, twins festivals can be viewed as rites of inversion.
This perspective of the grotesque body and co-being is well verbalized by Maddox (2006, 66), a popular science writer who wrote a negative commentary about the 2005 Twinsburg festival. Portraying the festival, with its “muted horrors of pan-Twinism,” as exemplifying the dark side or doomsday scenario of a future world populated by clones, Maddox (2006, 66) refers to the twin participants as “deeply creeping me out with their mutual bodies.” He depicts twins as clones “without souls,” “without their own identities,” who will “never know the quintessential joy of feeling different.” Maddox also extends his distaste of what he sees as the biological duplication of one’s self to the twin’s relationship or what he terms the twin “love factor.” Maddox describes the Twinsburg twins who perambulate the festival grounds dressed alike and arm in arm as “existential puzzles,” with one twin knowing exactly what the other is going through and with a twin loving the other twin “arguably more than anyone has or ever will love us [singletons].” Maddox refers to the “I heart-heart my twin” T-shirts that depict two side-by-side hearts and that some pairs of twins wore at Twinsburg 2005 as a kind of “quiet ecstasy of platonic love” implying a kind of self-love that would promote cloning. Maddox’s equation of twinship—with fears of cloning—demonizes, oppresses, and marginalizes them. His over-the-top text, published in the popular science magazine Discover, no less, demonstrates the extent to which outsiders may see Twins Days twins’ sense of communion with each other as disintegrating or undermining boundaries between self and other. Twins, thus, undermine Western notions of relationality and an individualism that should maintain a “mystery of mutual distance between individuals” (Ehrenreich 2007, 12).
Maddox, although overwhelmed and spooked by the mass performance of identicalness, appears to have made no effort to talk to twins. Kristi, however, who began referring to the Twins Days Festival as “clone days,” repeatedly told us that what kept her grounded was the fact that Dorothy and I (who did not dress alike) were obviously “two separate individuals, two different people, two real people.” Although this chapter starts with an example of us performing our identicality, Dorothy and I initially shared Kristi’s shock at such calculated and flagrant exhibitions of likeness and what we saw as a denial of individuality. We should have known better, of course, as any twin or anyone who knows twins well understands that twins are individuals. At twins festivals, twins are doing the part of their self-work that addresses their similarities and mutuality. Yet, for us the visual and visceral impact of so many people, particularly adults our own age, looking alike and dressing alike was deeply disconcerting. As we talked to twins, however, we began to see beyond the stereotype and came to better understand the difference between public, festival performance and reality.
Festivals are fun and freaky. They entertain and excite the imagination. The outsiders’ perspectives, however, are not all negative. Singleton observers can and do positively identify with the mutuality and connectedness they observe between and among the twin pairs. Kristi reports that on the plane ride back home to South Dakota, she had never felt so alone in all her life. In his feature article on the Twinsburg festival, a British journalist writes, “I hadn’t bargained for the emotional consequences of socializing with hordes of twins. After two days I began to feel profoundly lonely, as if I were lacking another half who walked, talked and wrote features exactly like me” (Barrell 2003, 5). In this positive view of twinship, twins are viewed as uniquely close and are envied for having a best friend (Stewart 2003). Twins are assumed to have an ideal companion who understands them (Wright 1997). Kristi told us that after Twins Days she was haunted by wishes that she too had a twin; having a singleton sister was just not enough. Twins often hear others wish that they too were a twin. Twinship clearly has a positive side that celebrates a mutuality, a friendliness, and a sense of “we-ness” that singletons recognize as absent in their own lives. Obviously, the twin persona, although deviant, has negative and positive aspects. Twins, as we see in chapter 6, often refer to “having a friend for life” or “always having someone there for you.” Twins and twinship reflect multiple realities and selfways. Twins talk reflects these multiple realities and ambivalences, but first I need to comment on how twins themselves blur or bridge insider and outsider roles at Twins Days by becoming their own audience.
At all festivals and public events there are performers and audiences, but their roles are often blurred. At festivals the individual feels he is an indissoluble part of the collectivity, or the crowd—a member of the people’s mass body. In this scenario the individual body ceases to a certain extent to be itself, and at the same time people become aware of their sensual, material, bodily unity and community (Bakhtin [1965] cited in Morris 1995, 226). This is also true of twins festivals. One particular example is what I call a “twin agglomeration.” Twin agglomerations are spontaneous happenings that occur repeatedly throughout the festivals. During the festival, twins and the media are constantly taking pictures. For example, at the Twinsburg opening night picnic, there were twin sisters who wore identical, colorful West African tie-died dresses and elaborate cloth headdresses. As they agreeably posed for photographs, the twins photographing them would then join them as others took their picture. What was originally one set of twins in a photo became a line of twins standing shoulder to shoulder until the crowd got so large that no more twins fit into the picture. This happens repeatedly as festival twins switch from audience to performer with enthusiastic fluidity. Twins thus perform their identicality for the lens of other twins as well as for outside observers in which the press figures prominently. Although fun for twins, agglomerations are frustrating for professional photographers, as revealed to me by a photographer who was shooting pictures for an article in a popular science magazine. His attempts to capture one pair of twins were constantly thwarted by the continued entry of other sets of twins into his shot.
Attending a festival can be too much for some twins who try it once and never again. Yet for twins who are hooked, a large part of the pleasure comes from saving and planning for the Twins Days weekend. Our talking partners told us that when they return home, they no longer make any effort to dress alike (except for Julie and Jenny) and would feel uncomfortable doing so. It is also interesting that despite considerable effort invested in looking alike for two days, every set of twins we talked with remarked that they felt that most other sets of identical twins at the conference looked more alike than they did.
Insider View of Outsider View: What We Think You Think
Being among other sets of twins en masse ironically heightens twins’ senses of not only being twins but also of being anomalies. Our conversations with Twins Days twins reveal that they have much to say about the outsiders’ views of them as twins. Dorothy and I, before Twins Days, had never used or even heard of the term “singleton.” We certainly had a sense of being special because we were twins. We were lifelong actors of the twin game, but we had never developed a sense of “us” as twins versus a “them” of the single born. At Twinsburg, we found ourselves buying into and frequently referring to this new boundary of identity. Like other festival twins, we began to position ourselves as distinct from the singleton other. By performing twinship, Twins Days twins report that one of the attractions of participating in festivals is the sense of resisting or inverting the singleton norm. Twins festivals are a counterhegemonic act of resistance to outside moldings of one’s personality (cf. Lindholm 2001, 218) or the very nature of being. Festivals are occasions where, for a few days, a new space is created (Lindholm 2001, 219) in which twins as “us” become the norm and singletons become “them,” or the other. At festivals from a twin’s perspective, the singleton becomes an exotic other and twins the norm.
As the archetype of “twins as freaks” takes over, twins become normalized in the process. When performing as twins, insiders feel less freakish while at the same time actually confirming their freakishness to the singleton outsider. By reversing the rules, the “freaks” take over and the “mighty” are found wanting. By literally parading around, twins challenge what is seen as the natural order and everyday constructions of being. Many of our talking partners would