SELF-MASTERY MEDITATIONS PT. 2

I’ve only devoted three essays to the concepts of interiorization and exteriorization, but it seems to me that the concept of self-mastery is implicit within those essays. Here I’ll attempt to extend those nations into greater elaboration.

Interiorization is a narrative pattern in which a character literally or figuratively draws upon his inner resources or character in order to become a more imposing figure, be it Doctor Jekyll unleashing his evil side or Billy Batson summoning up an idealized adult persona. As should be evident from these two examples, this pattern can be subcombative as well as combative, and even the combative example, that of Captain Marvel, requires a little further analysis. Golden Age CAPTAIN MARVEL stories don’t overtly posit that the hero is the adult form of Billy Batson, but the Captain seems to enjoy no existence independent from that of Billy. Although Billy’s ability to summon his adult self needs to be jump-started by the “Shazam-lightning,” which confer the power of legendary characters upon the Captain, Billy’s own self is strongly implicated in the formation of the hero, and therefore this qualifies as a form of self-mastery.

In contrast, I’ve cites a number of examples in which great power is thrust upon this or that character, in such a way that no self-mastery can be adduced. My review of SCOOBY DOO AND THE SAMURAI SCHOOL provides a pertinent. The characters of Shaggy and Scooby Doo are meant to be much more ludicrous in nature than Billy Batson, but all three are roughly on the same level of dynamicity. It would not be impossible to imagine a situation in which Scooby and Shaggy gained great martial-arts skills through the use of some improbable crash-course. If Howard the Duck could do it, why not Scooby and Shaggy? But the writers of SAMURAI SCHOOL may not have wanted to diverge that far from the duo’s default characterization as lovable goof-ups. Thus the duo get samurai-powers thrust upon them by an outside agent, with no indication of self-mastery.

THE COURT JESTER is another film in which the release of interiorized energies is somewhat undermined by the principal thread of the narrative. While a spoof of the swashbuckler genre does not have to be subcombative, JESTER sets up its main character Hubert Hawkins to undermine that aspect of the genre. In the early scene Hawkins wants very much to be fighting on the front lines with the courageous resistance, headed by the vaguely paternal Black Fox. Instead, Hawkins is relegated to protecting the infant heir to England’s throne. Yet in a roundabout way this “maternal” activity puts him in the position to take the identity of jester to the evil king’s court, giving him the inside track by which the king’s forces are eventually defeated. Hawkins’s only deeds of physical valor come about when a witch puts a hypnosis-like spell on the jester, making him into a wizard with a sword. Now, though this sounds like the same process described in SAMURAI SCHOOL, the setup allows for an “out” in terms of self-mastery. Since at the outset Hawkins admires the heroism of the Black Fox, it’s not impossible to imagine that he has watched sword-duels even if he never personally achieved mastery with the blade. The witch’s spell could be seen as a jump-starting process like that of Shazam’s lightning, unleashing hidden in the hero abilities that he always possessed in utero. However, the script doesn’t shoot for an integration between Hawkins’s external and internal personas, for he loses his sword-skill when he’s snapped out of his trance, and when Hawkins does defeat his main opponent, it’s done through a stratagem that undercuts the swashbuckler genre’s trope of the dazzling climactic duel.

Possibly the most improbable representative of combative interiorization can be found in the deservedly obscure Italian comedy BLONDE IN BLACK LEATHER. In this very rough precursor to THELMA AND LOUISE, Claudia Cardinale plays an abused housewife who meets a motorcycle-riding free spirit, played by Monica Vitti. Vitti encourages the naïve Cardinale to desert her heavy-handed husband and to embark on a series of rambunctious adventures. During one exploit, a gang of seven or eight gangsters surrounds the two young women, intending to commit mayhem. Neither female has displayed any skill at fighting, but Vitti performs a sort of “hypnosis” on Cardinale, saying (more or less):

Your husband beat you, didn’t he? So do what your husband did, and beat them up!

The resulting fight shows Cardinale, with barely any help from Vitti, clobbering all the gangsters with basic fisticuffs. The farcical mood is very close to that of a Bugs Bunny cartoon, where the rabbit can pull any weapon or contrivance he wants out of thin air. BLACK LEATHER is very close to being this type of fantasy-farce. Yet the basic intent still seems to be that of validating the ability of “helpless” women to kick ass if they really want to, in contrast to JESTER, which seeks to undercut the appeal of extravagant ass-kicking.

The pattern of exteriorization occurs when a character creates or empowers some other entity, or entities, to do his fighting for him. Most robot-protagonists, ranging from Gigantor to Bozo the Iron Man, are obvious combative manifestations of this pattern. However, in TO BREAK OR NOT TO BREAK PT. 2 I devoted a great deal of space to showing why a big fight at the end of 1934’s BABES IN TOYLAND, between king-sized toy soldiers and some nasty boogiemen, did not result in a combative work of art. I did not invoke the idea of self-mastery in the essay, but I emphasized the notion that there was no purposive connection between the soldiers and their dimwitted creator Stannie Dum. He builds the toy soldiers, but his achievement comes about through dumb luck, not as a means of exteriorizing his own buried passions and/or talents.

I’ve remarked that in the earliest extant telling of the story of Aladdin, there’s no combat between the lazy youth and the evil lamp-swiping magician. Disney’s version of the story gives Aladdin more swashbuckler-like abilities, though much of the film emphasizes romance more than action, and the conclusion depends largely on Aladdin undoing Jafar through strategy rather than direct combat. A more inventive, albeit forgotten, iteration was offered by 1952’s ALADDIN AND HIS LAMP.  Here as well, Aladdin is a tough sword-fighter, so he doesn’t entirely need the genie to do all of his fighting for him. Indeed, the script works in the idea of both “obedient genie” and “disobedient genie.” Though the genie will grant his new master’s wishes, the genie will also try to kill Aladdin in order to win free from his service. Since Aladdin must be vigilant to counter the genie’s attempts at assassination, this supernatural creature is more like Mister Hyde than like the traditional obedient servant of the lamp-bearer. That said, the genie ends up serving his master through Aladdin’s self-mastery strategy. The film’s villain manages to steal Aladdin’s lamp, but doesn’t keep his guard up against the rebellious spirit and thus meets the doom that could have befallen the hero.

WEAKLINGS WITH WEAPONS PT. 2

One of the most famous tropes of the superhero idiom is that of "strength concealed by weakness," or, alternately, "strength evolving from weakness." -- DJINN WITH SUMMONER, PT. 1.

The two  DJINN essays focused largely on characters who make use of "genie-like" entities to do their fighting for them. In some cases, like that of Ahmad from the 1924 THIEF OF BAGDAD and the eponymous star of Disney's ALADDIN, the main character demonstrates high dynamicity, at least for an ordinary human with no special powers. This dynamicity does not depend primarily on having a great weapon, like the aforementioned Richard Mayhew, but on a mastery of otherwise ordinary weapons.

There are a handful of exceptions. One is Michael Moorcock's sword-and-sorcery hero Elric. Born an albino, Elric is only able to fight normal human opponents thanks to sorcery. As  the panels from CONAN #13 show, Elric can only match Conan's formidable strength by the use of his sword Stormbringer, which gives him  both physical power and fighting-skill.

Despite his dependence on his sword, Elric is still a megadynamic hero in a way that, say, Hubert Hawkins of THE COURT JESTER is not. Elric may not be able to fight without his sword,  but he must exert his own will to battle his enemies. Hubert's talents are thrust upon him by an outside manipulator, and so he remains at base a weakling even with a weapon. Stormbringer qualifies as a method of *interiorization,* which I defined as a situation in which "the hero's true, powerful self is concealed within him, and must be summoned from within." Magic potions are far more often used than magical weapons, ranging from the lotion that makes the classical Jason temporarily invulnerable to Popeye's spinach and Hourman's Miraclo pills.

Charms are even dicier than weapons. I've stated on other occasions that I consider Bram Stoker's DRACULA to be a combative novel, which implies that the starring vampire is opposed by other megadynamic forces, the vampire-hunters organized by Van Helsing-- or more specifically, the more physically prepossessing members of the coterie, mainly Jonathan Harker and Quincy Morris. Van Helsing, though not an active figure in the battles with Dracula, is the only member of the group who understands the undead's true nature, and so he's able to marshal such weapons as crosses and holy water against the Count. However, the power of these charms-- implicitly stemming from the power of Stoker's Catholic deity-- are not powers inherent in Van Helsing or any of his aides. The charms cannot be used without human hands guiding them, but the charms' power is not tied to the *will* of Dracula's antagonists. The megadynamicity of Stoker's vampire-hunters inheres not in their weapons, but in the personal fighting-skills of Harker and Morris in particular.

Thus, when the Van Helsing of the 1931 DRACULA wields a cross against his opponent, Dracula must yield, but he yields to the power of God, not to the power of Van Helsing.

Nevertheless, a vampire-hunter's *amplitude* may get boosted quite a bit by his daring or unconventional use of charms or similar devices, just as I demonstrated in WEAKLINGS Pt. 1 with respect to the Jack Burton character. In the 1958 HORROR OF DRACULA, As played by Peter Cushing, Van Helsing becomes a younger, more active man, who first stuns the Count by running along a table in spectacular swashbuckler-style in order to escape the vampire and expose him to the sun.

Moments later, Cushing uses a mundane object to make a cross. I'm fairly certain that Stoker never shows anyone stymie Dracula with a near approximation of a cross; I've always believed that the original Count was affected only by genuine religious icons. So Van Helsing is perhaps inventing an "allergy theory;" that vampries aren't affected by Christian supernatural forces but by their (the vampires') own allergic reaction to anything that even looks like a cross. Thus, even though Van Helsing neither receives power from a cross, nor channels any of his own through it, he does gain megadynamic status from his inventive handling of an otherwise mundane weapon.

Throughout the various works of supernatural horror, there are many other situations where a potential victim repels a monster with the help of supernatural forces that they summon through some charm or other medium, and once again, one can only determine megadynamicity on a case by case basis. For instance, at the conclusion of the 1932 MUMMY, the evil sorcerer Imhotep is foiled when a bolt of fire from the statue of Isis burns up the Scroll of Thoth and returns the mummy to the dust of his origins.

Isis, or whatever force is left of the once-popular deity,only intervenes in answer to the call of her former priestess Anck-es-en-Amon, currently occupying the body of a modern woman, whom Imhotep plans to kill. But there's no implication that either the priestess or her modern descendant have any power of their own; they only call up greater power that is not intimately associated with them, summoners who have no real contact with their djinns.

However, on occasion charms may be used as channels for inner power, rather than for external force. The obscure 1981 film JAWS OF SATAN looks, from this VHS art, much like the first image of Van Helsing seen above: a priest wielding the power of God through the instrument of the cross.

However, the script is more ambivalent about where the main character, Father Tom Farrow, gets his ability to fight demons. In this review I wrote:

Farrow certainly doesn't believe he's worthy of a visit from the Dark Lord himself, but in time, he finds out that he shares a special heritage. Back in the days when St. Patrick allegedly cast all serpents out of Ireland, one of Patrick's followers-- not the saint himself-- attracted the ire of the local druids. They cursed him and all his progeny to be slain by snakes, which were to be commanded by Satan himself in the form of a cobra-- or something like that.  

Though it's a ridiculous premise, I have to give the filmmakers props for the audacity of invoking ancient Irish curses to explain a bunch of hostile snakes. In the end, Farrow gets his Catholic moxie together, confronts the King Cobra with his cross, and exorcises it in a flash of flame. It's a poverty-row version of the EXORCIST exorcism, but I found that it does imply a greater conflict of supernatural forces, so that this cheapjack horror-film does become a combative drama. It helps that Farrow also isn't just any old priest, but someone with a special destiny and ancestors to avenge.

That "special destiny" is suggested in the climactic scene, where in my view Farrow seems to be pulling power out of himself, rather than down from heaven, in order to set his Satanic opponent on fire. So, like the Peter Cushing Van Helsing, Father Tom joins the company of the megadynamic elite for the way he combines his own strength with the charms of his faith.

DJINN, WITH SUMMONER PT. 2

My recent meditations on the processes of "interiorization" and "exteriorization" with respect to the way that a character summons power into play-- whether it is his own power or that of another entity-- was quite intentionally reflected on the two films I chose to examine in this review from my film-blog.

The 1955 film THE COURT JESTER is yet another variation on the theme of interiorization. The comic hero Hubert is utterly unable to comport himself after the fashion of the martially skilled hero he admires. By chance a princess falls in love with Hubert and she forces her "pet witch" to hypnotize Hubert into believing that he is "the greatest swordsman in the land."  Toward the end of the film this results in an outstanding duel between Hubert and the equally skilled villain of the piece. However, the duel never comes to a decisive conclusion, because the witch's spell can be undone whenever Hubert hears the sound of fingers snapping. After poor Hubert flashes back and forth a few times between being either a peerless fighter or an incompetent goof, he's finally helped out of his troubles by some of his allies. As I wrote in MYTHOS AND MODE PART TWO, the lack of a decisive combat between two megadynamic forces means that the narrative does not possess what I term a "significant combative value."

The other film in this review-essay, 1961's THE WONDERS OF ALADDIN, provides an example of exteriorization, but one which is also, like JESTER, not in the combative mode, though for a different reason. The doofus title character has some limited control of a genie, although this summoner-hero, much like DC Comics' Johnny Thunder-- discussed here-- takes some time to figure out how to invoke his djinn's powers. Unlike THE COURT JESTER, WONDERS does conclude with a fight between Donald O'Connor's Aladdin and the evil vizier (the fellow dressed in black at right in the photo above).  Before beginning the fight, Aladdin tells his genie not to interfere. When it becomes increasingly evident that Aladdin is no match for the vizier, the genie performs a few distracting magical tricks, so that Aladdin is able to triumph.  Yet this film does not satisfy my other criterion for a combative narrative: the "narrative combative value," which speaks to whether or not the narrative's plot decisively builds toward a climactic combat.. There's a battle, all right, but Aladdin is certainly not an exceptional figure, and his victory is, like that of Hubert in JESTER, compromised by another party. So by the same logic expressed in MYTHOS AND MODE 2, the film lacks the "narrative combative value."

Now, I have to ask myself whether or not I am fudging my own definitions. I've stated that Johnny Thunder is merely a "good," not exceptional, hand-to-hand fighter, but that he becomes "exceptional" by dint of controlling the magical Thunderbolt-- all despite the fact that Thunder is a comic hero, and he frequently only invokes his djinn's powers in illogical or roundabout ways.

Yet, one major difference between the serial adventures of comic hero Johnny Thunder and the solo adventure of comic hero Aladdin is that the Thunderbolt is supposed to be a regular ally to the main character, while the genie only exists in Aladdin's world as a short-lived, contingent presence, one who will vanish as soon as he has given the hero his three wishes. This is not the first time I have disallowed a work to have combative status on these terms. In DYNAMICITY/ DEMIHERO DELIBERATIONS I faced a similar problem, in which the "summoners" of the 1934 film BABES IN TOYLAND did call up a group of "djinns," but djinns who were purely contingent on the contrivances of the plot, not as representations of the characters themselves:

I defined the problem first in this fashion:

 Both of these forces, the toy soldiers and the Boogeymen, can be seen as "genies" through which the heroes or the villain respectively seek to accomplish their ends.

However, I rejected both the djinn-characters and the summoner-characters of TOYLAND from having combative status for this stated reason:

But I find myself asking: though the soldiers and the Boogeymen are extensions of the will of heroes and villain, are they central to the struggle, or just supporting characters in the story?  ... By the logic of [cited examples from the teleserials DOCTOR WHO and MIGHTY MAX], then, the toy soldiers and the Boogeymen are support-characters, and their exceptional combat does not generate a narrative value.  They are not comparable to the "iron genies" I discussed here.

And so, unlike a lot of "combative comedy" characters I've discussed in my film-reviews, the protagonist of WONDERS OF ALADDIN lacks combative status because of the contingent nature of his allies; because he is not meaningfully tied to the powers he invokes.

ADDENDUM: Upon re-screening the climax of COURT JESTER, I felt I should note exactly what transpires, even though the actions of the climax don't affect my verdict. As I said above, Hubert under hypnosis has dazzled the evil Ravenhurst with his sword-work, but he himself cancels the hypnotic spell by snapping his fingers. Ravenhurst's sword forces Hubert to back up, toward a parapet overlooking the moat below. Just when Ravenhurst is preparing to kill Hubert, the hero's allies-- a group of dwarves-- intrude and distract the villain. However, they aren't the ones who finish off Ravenhurst, for Hubert, taking advantage of the distraction, manages to grab the wicked counselor and judo-toss him down to the moat below. However, even though Hubert does play a more direct role in the villain's defeat than I asserted in my summary above, he's still a lot like the Donald O'Connor character in the WONDERS OF ALADDIN-- "good" enough to defeat the evildoer with the aid of a distraction, but not great, and therefore, not megadynamic.

DJINN, WITH SUMMONER PT. 1

One of the most famous tropes of the superhero idiom is that of "strength concealed by weakness," or, alternately, "strength evolving from weakness."

Obviously no credible study of the superhero can pass by the trope of the hero's "secret identity." There are of course a fair number of heroes who have no such double identities, or whose mundane origins are widely known to the public. Yet the image of the heroic figure who emerges from some unlikely source-- a meek, bespectacled reporter, a child, or an indolent playboy-- has become a major metaphor for the superhero genre. Johnston McCulley's "Zorro" was not the first character to conceal a dynamic nature beneath an unlikely facade. Still, Zorro may have been the character who most affected this trope of the superhero idiom, with obvious impact on such characters as the Shadow, the Spider, Batman, and Superman.

The Fawcett Captain Marvel is a slightly different wrinkle on the same trope. The hero's alter ego of Billy Batson is literally weak-- I'm not sure that the Fawcett version of Billy is ever seen "resorting to physical violence" as himself, even when faced with an opponent in his own weight-class. The weak alter ego doesn't just shuck off his clothes and reveal the powerful persona beneath; he must literally transform himself into a being of great power physically distinct from said alter ego.

Still, as different as these variations on a theme may be, I view both of them as examples of interiorization. That is, the hero's true, powerful self is concealed within him, and must be summoned from within.

A distinct trope, though, is that of the hero who calls up some other being to do his fighting for him.  Thus, while one can see Superman as an interior power that bursts forth from Clark Kent, and Captain Marvel as one that subsumes Billy Batson, the relationship in this trope-- what I will call the "djinn-and-summoner" trope-- is one of exteriorization.  That is, the character doing the summoning usually remains un-transformed, and the "djinn" that he calls up is a character in his or her own right.

The folktale "Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp" is patently the most famous story about a person calling forth a djinn/genie. The story doesn't qualify for inclusion in the combative mode of the superhero idiom, as I noted in my essay MIGHT VS. DOMINANCE:

The original story of ALADDIN AND HIS WONDERFUL LAMP would seem to be a subcombative form of adventure, in that there is no actual combat between Aladdin and his opponent the "Chinese Magician," nor does Aladdin fight any proxy servant of the Magician.  The conflict consists of either hero or villain swiping the lamp away from the other at this or that time, but never in a direct confrontation.  

There have been any number of takes on the Aladdin-tale in which the summoner-hero is much more dynamic than the djinn he summons, as with the 1939 POPEYE theatrical cartoon "Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp." Though Popeye/Aladdin does call up a genie, his big duel with an evil magician at the cartoon's climax is wholly dependent on his ability to empower himself with spinach, another wrinkle on the interiorization trope; ingesting some substance to unleash one's "inner strength."

Another more active Aladdin is the one from the Disney cartoon, who, instead of being a lazy layabout as in the Arabic tale, is a swashbuckling swordsman. Thus, though this Aladdin does summon a djinn to fight various antagonists, he isn't entirely dependent on his magical helper.

Yet some modern superheroic works display summoners who are almost entirely dependent upon their djinns. In this essay I cited the example of GIGANTOR. As with Billy Batson, I don't remember any instances in which the boy-summoner was seen fighting on his own behalf. But even if there were isolated incidents in which Jimmy Sparks duked it out a few times with villains, the dominant trope of the teleseries was the summoning of its robotic djinn, who would proceed to give battle to some other kaiju-sized menace.

In Part 2 I'll discuss the ways in which these types of djinn/summoner relationships sort out in relation to dynamicity and the combative mode.