THE DANCE OF THE NEW AND THE OLD PT. 2

(Note: in writing this sequel to my one essay on the topic of novelty and recognizability, I've decided to replace the latter term with the term "familiarity." Accordingly I've altered the tag to reflect the change, but not the text of the first essay. I will try to replace the unwanted term in any other essays written since the first one, though.)

My meditations on the linked concepts of novelty and familiarity, beginning here, lead me to correct one of my earlier statements: that all crossovers are interactions of two or more familiar icons, with or without subordinate icons of their respective "universes." 

One of my main examples from Part 1 contradicts this: Sir Walter Scott's 1819 novel IVANHOE. Whether the individual reader experiences Scott's story in its original prose form or in some adaptation within some other medium, Ivanhoe and all the subordinate figures in his orbit (which, as I said earlier, may even include historical figures like Richard the Lion-Hearted) comprise their own universe. And since that universe never appeared anywhere before, and since Scott wrote no sequels, the novel is forever characterized by novelty. The only elements of IVANHOE that possess familiarity are those relating to the universe of Robin Hood, and thus IVANHOE is a crossover between one "novel" universe and one "familiar" universe. Further, as mentioned in the CONVOCATION series, this stand-alone novel became such a major literary event that its universe possesses a high level of stature of the Qualitative kind, which means that despite only appearing once Ivanhoe is the same exalted company as those icons more dependent on Quantitative Escalation, such as Batman and Edgar Rice Burroughs' Books of Pellucidar.

(Parenthetically I will note that other authors created serial versions of the Ivanhoe universe-- a 1958 TV show starring Roger Moore, and a 2000-2002 teleseries with lots of XENA-style action. But, while it's possible for adaptations to outstrip their source material in terms of stature, neither of these shows did so.)

So IVANHOE is a crossover meeting of two icons, one characterized by "eternal novelty" and the other by "eternal familiarity." It qualifies as a High-Stature Crossover because the two icon-universes interact in a significant way, even though the stature of one results only from Qualitative Escalation, while the stature of the other arises from both Qualitative and Quantitative forms.

The 1972 BLACULA provides a comparable example of the intersection of a novelty-icon and a familiarity-icon, but in a mode of lower stature. Though Robin Hood and his Merry Men are subordinate icons within the story of Ivanhoe, they are important to the narrative, which affects the stature of the crossover. Dracula, despite having a Qualitative Stature as great as that of Robin Hood, exists in the 1972 film only to spawn Blacula and to bestow on him a familiar if somewhat risible cognomen. From that point on, Blacula is only slightly dependent on the mythos of Dracula, for the whole project of the film is to re-interpret that mythos in keeping with seventies cultural concepts, such as "Black Pride." Blacula, unlike Ivanhoe, has one more installment in his universe, but two entries in a series do not confer much Quantitative Escalation. Blacula has a certain degree of Qualitative Escalation, but not enough to raise the level of this crossover above a low position. 

Proto-crossovers within a serial context offer a slightly different view of novelty, in that the novelty of a newly introduced character can suggest an aura of "future familiarity." AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #14 is from the get-go a hero-crossover for the presence of starring hero Spider-Man and his admittedly fractious "guest star" The Hulk. But I've also argued that it's a villain-crossover between The Enforcers, who were familiar from one previous appearance in the title, and The Green Goblin, who made his debut here. Yet though the Goblin can only possess formal "novelty" at this point in his career, it's clear from the narrative that the authors intended for him to become a regular opponent of the hero. But The Goblin only possesses a "future familiarity" because later readers know how significant he proved to be within the Spider-mythos.

But authorial intent only counts when the intent is made manifest. A 1942 Batman story introduced a new Bat-foe, a thief named Mister Baffle (clearly modeled on the prose character Raffles). The story ended with the villain's escape and the suggestion that he might come again, though he never did, so the suggestion of his re-appearance counts for nothing in the Escalation game. In contrast, the villain Deadshot, appearing just once in 1950, was also characterized only by pure novelty. But thanks to his mid-70s reworking, he became not only a regular Bat-foe but one who was involved in a "static crossover" series, THE SUICIDE SQUAD-- though almost all of the characters had been, like Deadshot, subordinate icons within the universes of various heroes.

A CROSSOVER MISCELLANY PT. 1

The essays in this series will deal with general permutations of the practice of crossing over previously established characters.

I'm henceforth replacing the term "total template deviation," put forth in this essay, for the simpler term "derivatives." Derivatives may include not only faux versions of well-known fictional characters-- some named earlier being Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and Captain America-- but also separate characters who in some other way ride on the coat-tails of an established fictional figure.

Now, when discussing the 1966 film BILLY THE KID VS. DRACULA in this essay, I called that version of Dracula a "strong template deviation" because the character strongly deviated from the depiction of the king-vampire in the original source material. However, the same producers who came out with BILLY also inflicted upon the world JESSE-- that is, JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER, patently another crossbreed between western and horror film-tropes. 

Now, the latter-billed character in the film, Doctor Maria Frankenstein, certainly can't be called a "total template deviation" with relation to the original Mary Shelley Frankenstein, because she's supposed to be the mad scientist's equally mad daughter. But she is derived, very loosely, from the history of the original character, and so that makes her in my book a "derivative." The same holds true for the "Frankenstein" creature who appears in the 1965 FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE SPACE MONSTER, who is only likened to the Shelley monster by the title of the film. The l965 film would not be a crossover, but JESSE would be at least a "low-charisma" crossover, because both title characters are only loosed related to their supposed originals.

Moving to a somewhat higher level of filmmaking, the word "derivative" also applies to the 1936 film DRACULA'S  DAUGHTER. The titular monster, Countess Zaleska, is not mentioned in the 1931 film DRACULA, to which DAUGHTER is theoretically a sequel, nor is there any sort of reference to any such offspring in the pages of Bram Stoker's novel. 

Further complicating the 1936 film is that, because it follows fast on the heels of the events of the 1931 film, Dracula-- or rather, his staked corpse-- does appear briefly in DAUGHTER. Is the film a crossover between the new character and the old one? But no, I determined that being a dead body in a given work carries no more crossover-potential than had Dracula merely been referred to, or shown in a flashback. Now, had Dracula been walking around doing something for a few minutes, I might have at least deemed the 1936 film a "low-charisma" crossover, based on the brevity of the vampire-lord's appearance. But in the absence of any "real-time" activity, DAUGHTER is a derivative but not a crossover.

The idea of having one character appear just long enough to introduce a newer one has precedent in a film like the 1972 BLACULA. In this movie's opening scenes, the original Dracula is around for ten minutes or so at the outset, talking turkey with Prince Mamuwalde. Then the vampire decides to make the African prince into an undead creature, sticks the newly vampirized unfortunate into a tomb for the next seven decades, and even gives the neo-vamp a sarcastic version of Drac's iconic name. During the main action of the film, when Blacula revives in the early 1970s, the Count does not reappear, nor is he mentioned again. To the extent that any viewer thinks about the matter, said viewer probably assumes that the racist vamp gets knocked off some time before Blacula revives in 1972. But because Dracula is such a major fictional figure, BLACULA (but not SCREAM, BLACULA, SCREAM) is a crossover-- though again, a very low-charisma type, since the iconic vamp makes only a token appearance.

More to come.

MONSTROUS MISCELLANY

"[Leatherface] is never an object of pity per se, but is clearly not your standard masked maniac who delights in the torments of his victims.  He is the very banality of our primal basic animal nature; no motive, no ambitions, no conscience and no soul.  It exists merely to survive and provide for itself and its family."-- "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," essay by Michael Feischer, HORRORHOUND magazine, Jan/Feb 2013.
 

Though I don't quite get why essayist Feischer changes pronouns in midstream from "he" to "it," the fact that he does so might demonstrate that the concept of the monster is one that makes it hard to distinguish between sentient life and non-sentient objects.  A few of the monster-movies I've reviewed on NATURALISTIC! UNCANNY! MARVELOUS! even include "monsters" who are nothing more than non-sentient phenomena gone berserk, though it's more often that they're giant versions of creatures found in nature-- spiders, birds, octopi, etc.

Feischer (presumably no relation to the similarly named comics-writer Michael FLEISCHER) is only talking about one monstrous figure, but I would say that parts of his description work for my concept of the monster-persona, particularly the reference to "basic animal nature" and the focus upon survival of itself and its ingroup.

I certainly would not typify monsters as being without "motive," "ambitions," "conscience," or "soul," however.  A mad scientist like Wells' Doctor Moreau, examined here, has both motives and ambitions, although he has no conscience and arguably no soul.  In contrast, many monsters are appealing precisely because they are aware of their monstrous nature and struggle to some extent against it, even if they fail to triumph, as I recently observed in the case of the two BLACULA films.
Perhaps one appeal of the monster is that he has an "animal nature"-- which for me is the same as an "instinctive will"-- that he often fights against, though often unsuccessfully.  The rare monsters that manage to succeed are those that, like the Hulk and the Swamp Thing, do manage to become serious heroic protagonists. Comic monsters like Dick Briefer's Frankenstein must be considered successes of a sort, though since they occupy a comic universe, their struggles are by their nature lacking in deep conviction.

On another matter, I wrote in the above-cited essay:

The difference in the degree of negativity, however, makes me label Wells' Doctor Moreau a "monster" rather than a "demihero."

This doesn't contradict anything I've written, but I want to clarify that though the demihero does have some potential as a vessel for negative, life-denying forces-- and can even transform rather easily into the figure of the monster-- on the whole the "instinctive will" governing the demihero is the positive mirror-image of the "animal nature" Feischer references.  At times demiheroes are set up to be unequivocal victims, whether they are sympathetic  or not, but they have a quality of "persistence" equal to that of the monster, and so are capable of turning the tables on their monstrous doubles-- though usually without the sort of "glorious" attitude of the hero triumphing over the villain.