LEGENDS OF YESTERYEAR PT 2

 In the first LEGENDS OF YESTERYEAR, I said:

I won't pause at this time for a rigorous definition of what I mean by "legends," but I think it important to stress that though there are hundreds of famous historical figures who have been committed to fiction, very few of them have taken on the quasi-unreal status of legends. Billy the Kid is such a legend. A later author can imagine him doing all sorts of unhistorical things-- becoming a vampire who fights Bloodrayne, or being taught gunmanship by the Two-Gun Kid, but each fictionalized Billy has that legendary quality. Thus even in a story in which the Kid is a superordinate character, Billy sustains only "crossover-charisma" when he appears alongside a stature-bearing character like Bloodrayne or Two-Gun. In contrast, the vast majority of historical figures, even when they're shown doing unhistorical things, are still no greater than what the reader/audience knows of the originals. Winston Churchill is just Winston Churchill even if he's seen consulting with The Invaders. Adolf Hitler is just Hitler, even if he's depicted as the secret creator of The Red Skull.

When I wrote the above passage almost a full year ago, I was concentrating on creating a coherent lexicon for all possible manifestations of crossovers, so I back-burnered any possible definitions of what I tentatively called "legendary quality." But it came to me recently that legendary or historical fictionalized figures with this "quality," are subsumed by the literary mode I have termed "artifice," while fictionalized figures without such a quality are subsumed by the literary mode I have termed "verisimilitude." 

My most direct comparison of these two modes appeared in ARCHETYPE AND ARTIFICE PT. 4, where I paralleled the modes with their literary effects of "affective freedom" (for artifice) and "cognitive restraint" (for verisimilitude):

 "Affective freedom," rather, stems from the author's intention to privilege the tropes from the domain of literary artifice over tropes that signify adherence to worldly verisimilitude...

Also, in the same essay, I specified that "artifice-tropes" were the source of everything I might have previously styled as "larger than life" in its literary effects. "Verisimilitude-tropes," by contrast, always signal that phenomena within their purview can only be "life-size," reflecting that "adherence" to ordinary, limited experience. (I'll forbear to pursue my additional parallels to the categories of "the limitless" and "the limited" at this time.)

Now, in other essays I've judged as *innominate* both fictionalized figures of history-- which are all I discussed in the except above-- and fictionalized figures of legend. The distinction, which I may not have made clear, is that historical figures are generally well documented as to when they lived and what deeds they performed, while legendary figures are not as well documented. Some of the latter may never have existed at all, which seems to have been the case for the 19th century outlaw Joaquin Murrieta. Some, like King Arthur, Robin Hood and Gilgamesh, may have been based, VERY tenuously, upon historical figures. But whether the legend-figures were totally imaginary or were based on real, once-living people, legends are manifestly dominated by "artifice-tropes."

Historical figures, when subjected to fictionalization, can go either the way of artifice or the way of verisimilitude. To repeat one of my earlier counter-examples to Billy the Kid, Adolf Hitler's historical record can never be diminished by fictionalization. Hundreds of years in the future, he might become a legend of evil, but at present his presence in literature is always dwarfed by his presence in history. A fiction-story can depict Hitler in dozens of completely artificial situations-- he creates the Red Skull, he gets burned to death by The Human Torch, his body (or, more frequently, just his brain) gets preserved so that he can be revived in some new, world-conquering form. But these artifice-tropes never supersede the historical record.

In the case of Billy the Kid, the record of his real-life exploits as a hired killer ARE superseded by all the artifice-tropes built around the name, "Billy the Kid." In fact, only a relative handful of fictional depictions even make the Kid a nasty customer. His conversion into a righteous hero may have started in 19th century dime novels, but I would venture that none of these remained available to pop-fiction audiences by the beginning of the 20th century. Somehow, just the name "kid" seemed to connote not only youth, but righteousness. In the 1940s, Buster Crabbe made ten B-westerns about a heroic Billy, while Charlton's baby-faced crusader earned a comics-title in 1957 and endured until 1983. But good Billy or bad Billy, the name of the character has become divorced from almost every aspect of the historical figure. And the legend that grew out of the long dead Henry McCarty even engendered countless "western kids" in cinema and comics, who borrowed the artifice-trope inherent in the name and nothing else.

MYTHOS AND MODE

Back in 2009, as evidenced by this post, I started writing about "the combative" and "the subcombative," though I spoke of them as "elements" at that time.  In that post I temporarily cast those terms aside, but reclaimed them again in this essay.  In 2012 I also started referring to "the combative" not as an "element" but as a "mode," according to the definition I formulated earlier:

"Mode” is a somewhat fluid term, applying to anything about the method by which the artist accomplishes his aims.-- NOTES TOWARD A SUPERHERO IDIOM.

 

By my current reasoning, all possible varieties of the “subcombative”—whether they exclude literal violence altogether or simply de-emphasize it in comparison with other story-elements—would also qualify as “modes.”

However, the sum total of all narrative forms of conflict—“the conflictive,” as I've termed it—is not a mode, but a fundamental requirement of narrative. 

As conflict of some sort is necessary for narrative to proceed, it follows that it’s primarily associated with plot.  This stands in contrast to the term “mythos,” which is the organizing principle which determines the emotional tonality dominating a given narrative. It’s because all four Fryean mythoi convey typological tonalities for both plot and character that I’ve spoken of a “plot-character schism.”  The essay RISING AND FALLING STARS puts forth examples of works in which the radical of adventure can dominate over other elements in the work through the tone of the plot alone, or through the tone of character alone, or through a combination of the two.

Yet, though no equivalent of a “plot-character schism” applies to the combative and subcombative modes, Frye’s concept of the “narrative value / significant value schism” would seem to apply quite well.

To blend a foursome of terms derived from disparate Frye essays, narrative values are those that are “centripetal,” applying to values within the structure of the narrative; the values that make the narrative work.  Significant values are “centrifugal,” in that they apply to the values that make it possible for audiences to relate to the actions of the characters within the narrative structure.

Though I didn’t invoke the narrative /significant schism in RULES OF ENGAGEMENT, my series of essays on the function of rules in narrartive-- which begin here--these essays touch on one of these distinctions. 

In the first essay, I agreed with Grant Morrison that even though Batman is supposed to be a mortal who can live and die as can mortals in the world of the people reading Batman’s adventures, Batman cannot age as mortals do.  The average reader realizes that this is a structuring value of Batman’s world, introduced as a narrative strategy so that the franchise can remain open-ended for an indeterminate amount of time, in a state which Frye called “refrigerated deathlessness.” 

To cite my argument in full:

I'll say up front that Morrison's attitude on the ageing of serial characters is one with which I entirely agree. It remains a study in futility for any fan to attempt to ground serial characters in the real world in terms of how slowly or quickly they age. Umberto Eco touches on some of the narrative consequences of this deathless status quo in his "Myth of Superman," though he doesn't ever quite get to the heart of what makes such a deathless fantasy appealing. However, purely from the standpoint of anyone interested in writing such characters, Morrison's statement shows that the fantasy is clearly one that has strong appeal and that therefore attempts to deal with the anomalies in terms of real-world verisimilitude are doomed to perish of their own fatuity.

The structuring value of Batman's inability to age, then, is one of the best examples of a centripetal narrative value.  Readers who choose to abide by it can identify with the fantasy of Batman; readers who want characters who both age and die must look outside the regular franchise, perhaps to one-shot "imaginary tales" like Miller's DARK KNIGHT RETURNS-- or, more likely, beyond the pale of anything resembling Batman's artificial continuity.

In contrast to this internal value, we have the values that Batman incarnates for his readers—despite their awareness that he is a literary construct, who exists not to have a static identity but to be identified with, as per my “law of identification.” 

The significant values within Batman’s adventures are highly fluctuant.  Many authors of the character’s adventures insist that Batman has a moral antipathy against firearms, which at the very least implies a significant value through which the hero’s athletic skill is exalted over such mechanical appurtenances. 

 However, some authors may choose to show Batman making limited use of firearms, tacitly endorsing a different, more realistic value: that a hero’s facility with such weapons marks him as a serious badass. 

The two values, different as they are, are alike in that they can be best pictured as springing from the implications of the narrative in a “centrifugal” fashion.   

 Whether or not the "narrarive/subjective" schism between meaning within and meaning without can influence the modes of the combative and subcombative will be seen in future installments of MYTHOS AND MODE.

LOST IN TRANSCENDENCE PART 2

"We either live together or we die alone."-- Jack Shepherd, LOST

"Hell is other people."-- Sartre, NO EXIT.

There have been any number of literary attempts, from Sartre to Norman Spinrad, to construct fictive worlds where the ethos of determinism holds court, essentially abolishing the illusion of Judeo-Christian free will. Yet Sartre avers that an individual can still possess a sort of heroic will insofar as he can make his peace with the Sisyphean rock of a pitiless reality, and become reconciled, even "happy," on those terms.

I recognize the intellectual conviction behind these fictional worlds, but in the end they are no less the symbolic projections of what the authors wanted to believe than the Christian triumphalism of C.S. Lewis. Lewis would probably make Charles Reece's shit-list in that Lewis molded a fantasy-world where all conflicts are sorted out in a concluding "Manichean battle," from which the final book in the series, THE LAST BATTLE, takes its title. In Lewis "free will" *is* paramount, though it's the kind of will described in the old canard: "Perfect freedom is perfect service," e.g., do what's right in the first place and you and God will get along.

I bring in Lewis' orthodox-Christian vision of free will as a contrast to the one I theorize that the LOST producers will give their fans when the series ends. I haven't a clue as to what shape that vision will take: I only assert that I think that the show's constant iterations of determinism-- "Whatever happened, happened"-- are a setup for some sort of turnaround that will transcend doleful determinism.

But how to do that, without the kind of "cheat" that Reece and others started to suspect as soon as LOST's Season 5 revealed that the Island is inhabited by at least two superhuman beings? Given the existence of these "demigods" it's natural enough to suspect the old deus ex machina, though I'm guessing that the LOST producers aren't going to try anything as obvious as Lewis' Aslan.

So I suspect that if indeed free will transcends determinism in LOST, it will be a transcendence more figurative than literal-- or perhaps, to pilfer the terminology of Immaneul Kant, one of the few philosophers not (to my knowledge) referenced on the show-- more "a priori" than "a posteriori."

Kantian terms aside, how can transcendence, even a figurative one, be made to have a validity that does not cheat on or otherwise annul LOST's own ample testimony as to "pitiless reality?" The deaths of Boone, Shannon, Ana Lucia, Juliet and many others seem to this watcher as arbitrary and meaningless as anything in Sartre, for all that these cruel fates also reflect behind-the-scenes exigencies of plotting or even actor-availability.

So how might the LOST-makers do it? Could it be that some horror-film, released in 2008 and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, might suggest an example of such narrative transcendence?

*****

Even when films are designed to be viewed first on the movie-theatre screens, I'm not sure that all of them are best seen that way, in contradiction to being viewed on the (relatively) small screen in one's home entertainment console.

I did see Shyamalan's first two major films, THE SIXTH SENSE and UNBREAKABLE, on bigscreen. I liked both, though I had some problems with the latter, but both worked well on the large movie-screen.

I didn't see THE VILLAGE or LADY IN THE WATER on the large screen, and didn't like either, so my opinion of Shyamalan in recent years has not been high. I've still never seen SIGNS and only in the last few months did I check out a DVD of 2008's THE HAPPENING out of mild curiosity. I had and have no memory of any favorable reviews and had the general impression that most audiences hated it.

I thought HAPPENING was Shyamalan's best film yet (except for that awful title). Possibly my seeing it at home freed me of the thrillseeking expectations shared by many theater-audiences, most of whom justifiably want a thrill-ride for their ten-dollar tickets. In any case, I enjoyed the fact that it treated a major catastrophe, full of action and human suffering (i.e., *pathos*) in a cerebral and philosophically provocative manner-- not unlike the teleseries LOST.

To be sure, there are ample differences between LOST and THE HAPPENING, apart from that of medium. LOST's "island survivors" catastrophe happens to an ensemble comprised of over a dozen central characters. In HAPPENING,a catastrophe befalls a vast section of the U.S.'s Northeastern Seaboard, not unlike the scenario in Spielberg's WAR OF THE WORLDS, but with something like human beings involved. However, HAPPENING focused only on two viewpoint characters, Elliot and Alma Moore, a young married couple played by Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel. Their status as the two central characters informs the film's outcome, which is the main point of my comparison.

Because I'm concerned here with the ending, I'll merely sketch the bulk of the film.

In brief, Shyamalan's movie gives viewers a world where Hobbes trumps Rousseau. The social contract that enables human beings to live peaceably in a society breaks down when a mysterious malady sweeps over the northeastern states, and those infected become exemplars of Hobbes' "war of all against all." Indeed, not only do the victims become aggressive enough to attack others flagrantly, they even "war" against themselves, committing suicide by leaping from buildings, crashing cars, and so on. The Moores are among the many people who flee the cities for the countryside, only to suspect that the source of the malady is Earth's plant-life, some of which has started to manufacture and spread toxins able to break down human volitional controls.

In some ways, HAPPENING shares elements of both horror and suspense films. The idea of city-dwellers thrown into a mammoth catastrophe evokes the suspense-oriented narrative of the disaster film, with a side-dish of terrorist-fantasy flavoring. However, the theory about the source of the malady is presented in so oblique a way that it partakes less of the well-defined threats of a suspense-film and becomes more of a *mysterium,* as seen in HAPPENING's nearest horrific genre-neighbor, George Romero's 1968 NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. There, too, humanity doesn't know what force has caused the dead to walk, and though the protagonists of HAPPENING make some correct conclusions about the airborne toxin, Shyamalan never allows the threat to become easily predictable.

Now, the 1968 NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD is in essence an ironic horror-film, as is demonstrated by its black-humor conclusion. HAPPENING, however, is a dramatic horror. To build upon Sartre's aphorism, the constant breakdown of the social contract evinces just how hellish other people are to one another in the raw-- even in the case of some individuals not affected by the toxin! But in Shyamalan's film, other people are a hell one needs.

There's probably no way to describe the film's salvative turning-point (which is not precisely the ending, thanks to a coda) without it sounding sappy. Film has for over a century exploited the mythic image of reunited lovers as the image of transcendence, and countless bad "clinches" have given the essential archetype a bad rep.

Again, in brief: the turning-point comes when the Moores take refuge on an isolated farm. The owner of the farm is one of the latest victims of the spreading toxin, so Elliot and Alma, having become separated, each barricade themselves in separate buildings. However, this is clearly not a plan for long-term survival, and so, in a Sartreian embrace of their potential fate, the Moore both leave their hiding-places and embrace, ready to live and die together rather than living and dying alone.

But-- in a moment of figurative transcendence-- the Moores are spared, as the toxin abruptly ceases to have any further effects.

Understand: at no time does Shyamalan step outside the Cartesian box to suggest that the expression of love caused the plague to end. Within the diegetic narrative of the film proper, it's merely a coincidence, and Shyamalan makes this clear in the coda, where it's suggested that the toxin has stepped up for another whack at humanity. But in the extra-diegetic symbolism of the film, humanity is temporarily spared because the Moores come "un-moored" from their desire to protect their personal selves and to join as one, despite any fatal consequences.

To my mind, this figurative transcendence is not a "cheat" to anyone of the determinist party. It makes clear that the protagonists would seem to have "no exit" by any rational criteria, and yet the film gives them an exit through an exercise of free will that isn't indebted to the stoicism of Sisyphus and his rock.

In the conclusion of LOST, will there be a redeeming act of free will on the part of one or more LOST protagonists? I think that we have already seen a few. In Season 3 Desmond is tempted to a Faustian bargain by his psychic flashes. He comes to believe that if he lets Charlie die as seen in his vision, Desmond's beloved Penny will come to the island. Desmond comes very close to letting Charlie perish, but does save Charlie (just barely). Diegetically, it's seen that the figure Desmond thought would come to the island is not Penny, is someone else entirely-- but extra-diegetically, it's as if Desmond's breaking of the bargain cost him the chance to be with Penny again. Admittedly, since Desmond is reunited with Penny at the end of Season 4, it's something less than a supreme sacrifice, but Desmond doesn't know that in Season 3.

I'll close by clarifying that I'm no way implying that anything the LOST-makers do will be directly influenced by the works of Shyamalan. But I do think like-minded creators seek narrative answers in parallel ways, and that's what keeps me hoping that the conclusion of LOST will be at least as moving and satisfying as that of the Shyamalan film.

P.S. For some reason I can't remember if the Moore's little daughter is with them when they do the big climactic clinch. But whether she is or not, that detail doesn't change my interpretation of the figurative transcendence.

LOST IN TRANSCENDENCE

Where will viewers be left once they reach the center of the teleliterary labyrinth that is LOST?

Back in this comments-thread Charles Reece said, "I don't see how anything but a determinist outcome would be more than a cheat for the show," and went on to aver in this essay that he hoped that the producers were not setting viewers up for "some simplistic Manichaean battle" between godlike manipulators Jacob and "Nemesis."

I would agree to some extent that a "Manichean" good-vs.-evil conclusion would not be in tune with previous themes expressed on the TV show, and I also agree that I don't think it's likely that the producers will go in that direction. I don't agree that such a conflict is inherently "simplistic," though: just that such a conflict is not suited for the *mythos* to which LOST belongs, as it is for, say, C.S. Lewis' NARNIA series.

Of the four Fryean *mythoi*, LOST is in essence a drama with elements of irony, comedy, and adventure, just as in this essay I described BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER as an adventure-serial with aspects of the other three mythoi mixed in. This judgment as to LOST's narrative mythos-category means that its myth-radical is the *pathos,* which emphasizes all forms of suffering, whether they take the form (to use two of Aristotle's examples for tragedy) of the outright tragic death of OEDIPUS REX, or that of an intense suffering that is overcome through some reversal, as seen in the conclusion of IPHIGENIA AMONG THE TAUREANS.

Based on Aristotle's parameters for what he called "tragedy," and what I choose to call "drama," it's evident that a drama can go either way in the spectrum of happy or unhappy endings for the dramatis personae. It should be said that in Western culture there is a marked critical preference for the "unhappy ending," which many feel to be more realistic and "bracing." Drama's opposite number, the comedy, is associated more strongly with the happy ending, though one can certainly find any number of comedies that end unhappily for this or that protagonist, albeit in a humorous way that takes away much of the sting one gets from the "unhappy drama." In contrast, irony almost always emphasizes an unhappy ending (even if the principal characters are vaguely content with their lot, as at the end of CANDIDE), while adventure-stories almost always end happily for their protagonists.

Further, as if to highlight the ambivalence of their chosen narrative mythos, the producers of LOST have situated their drama to be a mammoth debate about the function of "free will" vs. "determinism." As seen in the quote above, Reece feels that "anything but a determinist outcome would be more than a cheat for the show," which is a valid emotional response to the way in which the producers would seem to have tipped the scales more in one direction than the other.

I have a notion, however, that the LOST-men have a more subtle goal in mind than the mere validation of determinism, and that this goal will be fulfilled in presenting, if not a "happy ending" as such, a sort of "happy medium" between the two extremes.

More on these speculations anon.

COGNITIO/ DISSONANCE

Once again I return to Northrop Frye's concept of the four "archetypal themes" or "radical roots" of his four mythoi: for romance/adventure, the agon, for tragedy/drama, the pathos, for irony, the sparagmos, and for comedy the anagnorisis, which he asserts is more or less equivalent to the Latin cognitio.

Back in this essay I expressed more than a little discomfort with Frye's analysis of the comedy mythos, in which he tended to overemphasize, in keeping with Greek New Comedy, comedy's power to join together disparate parts of society, often through a climactic banquet or wedding-scene. It's true that there are some indications that the tradition of the "happy ending" climax might even go back to Greek Old Comedy, so that aspect of comedy may predate New Comedy's concentration of romantic plot-devices.

That said, when Frye writes something like this--

"These five phases of comedy may be seen as a sequence of stages in the life of a redeemed society."

-- I can't help but feel that something's being left out of the equation, like the question of whether the archetypal theme of comedy should relate to aspects of life we find funny, not redeeming as such. Surely one can find aspects of redemptive value in the other three mythoi as well.

Here's the longest thing Frye writes on the question of why we find things funny:

"The principle of the humor is the principle that unincremental repetition, the literary imitation of ritual bondage, is funny...Repetition overdone or not going anywhere belongs to comedy, for laughter is partly a reflex, and like other reflexes it can be conditioned by a simple repeated pattern... The principle of repetition... is well known to the creators of comic strips, in which a character is established as a parasite, a glutton... or a shrew, and who begins to be funny after the point has been made every day for several months."

This passage, whose theory of humor sounds strikingly like that of Henri Bergson's, demonstrates that Frye was well acquainted with modern forms of repetitive comedy. Indeed, his description of the glutton sounds a lot like Dagwood Bumstead.

The problem, however, is that a comic strip like BLONDIE is so repetitive that it's hard to imagine it being one of the "stages in the life of a redeemed society." Rather, BLONDIE seems a New Comedy in reverse, where the romantic plot that originally drove the feature was concluded, so that from then on all the humor stemmed not from a young man overcoming opposition to his romance but from an older man finding himself trapped in what Marshal McLuhan called the strip's "mothering-wedlock."

So anagnorisis does not really seem to apply to a work as fiercely repetitive as BLONDIE, which makes one wonder if the term really serves for the archetypal theme of comedy. In that earlier essay I noted that I might use Frye's term with the caveat that I really referenced not his notion of "comedy as redemption" but something more like Kant's "comedy as incongruity," but since that's an easy point to fall by the wayside, I'm now planning to use the Latin cognitio in place of the Greek one. And I seem not to be the first to need something more expansive than the Aristotelian term: according to Terence Cave's study of the concept of literary recognition, Renaissance critics (covered in Chapter 2) also used cognitio to denote a wider concept of recognition that the one favored by Aristotle, which Frye channels into his interpretation of characters experiencing some epiphanic redemption.

I mentioned in the Comedy-and-Irony essay that I thought the archetypal theme of comedy should be capable of embracing every form of incongruity from the philosophical ruminations of Woody Allen to the slapstick of the Three Stooges. I still believe that, but if one believes that the essence of humor is not repetition but incongruity, then it implies that the pleasure we get from humor is not in cognitive knowledge but in knowing nothing in life ever quite coheres the way we think it ought to, as in Milton's encomium on Socrates:

“The first and wisest of them all professed
To know this only, that he nothing knew.”

Thus my theme of cognitio is fundamentally about knowing that humans don't really know anything, but whereas this "discovery" is often a cause for despair or deep reflection in the other three mythoi, in comedy such knowledge is the source of the pleasure itself.

This attempt to refine aspects of Frye's archetypal themes will tie in with a later essay that will cover my earlier-mentioned reading of Theodor Gaster's THESPIS, and why its influence on Frye's ANATOMY might be extended into new territory.

BATTLE OF THE MONSTER TERMINOLOGIES

"The scenes I have in mind are ones of violence, specifically ones of preposterous violence. By 'preposterous' I mean so exaggerated that most of the audience know full well that what they are watching is make-believe."-- James B. Twitchell, PREPOSTEROUS VIOLENCE (1989), p. 3.

Roughly twenty years have passed, and to my knowledge no one's forged a better overarching analysis of the element of violence in pop culture than Twitchell. I don't advocate his thesis as a whole, which focuses on pop culture as pedagogical training somewhat after the fashion of Bruno Bettelheim, but the book puts forth a number of telling insights, one of which is his above-cited concept of "preposterous violence." I won't be using his term here, in part to distance my theories from Twitchell's, and in part because one of the problems with his theory as expressed in PV is that he doesn't formulate a term for the opposite of his "exaggerated" form of violence.

I said in an earlier essay that I would address the differing "intensities" of violence in fiction, by which I meant what I called "clean violence" vs. "dirty violence." These are NOT meant to be covalent with my versions of Twitchell's preposterous violence and its unnamed opposite. I refer to the "intensities" of clean and dirty because they are determined purely by how intensely the work does or does not present scenes of violence. As I see it preposterious violence and its opposite are not determined by intensity of effect but by narrative function.

In that earlier essay I used STAR WARS as an example of "clean" violence while ALIEN served for "dirty violence." Clearly the distinction doesn't arise from any quantification of violent acts, since there are many, many more scenes of violence in SW than in ALIEN, and many of those scenes culminate in someone's death. ALIEN's violence involves only the title critter and a half dozen humans vying with one another.

But ALIEN, though less violent in terms of numbers, is "dirtier" than STAR WARS because of the former's determination to show the visceral side of violence in all its oozing, bleeding, gushing and chest-bursting glory. The violent acts in STAR WARS are "clean" because the film declines to show Storm Troopers with their chest cavities blown open, or with their blood gushing out onto the hangar deck, and so on. Indeed, scuttlebutt asserts that the only reason Lucas had Obi-wan cut off some alien felon's arm in the Cantina Scene was to avoid having the film given the kiss-of-death "G" rating.

Now, in my view both SW and ALIEN, despite the intensity or lack of same with which they depict violence, are alike in the way both use violence as a narrative tool. I don't know if James Twitchell would find that both of them qualify as "preposterous violence" (neither gets much attention in PV), but I consider that both qualify as "spectactular violence," which I re-define as "that violence whose depiction is more the point of the story than the ostensible plot." Spectacular violence is the violence of the spectacle: it's meant to be looked at.

In contrast to this, I offer the term "functional violence." Twitchell doesn't put a name to this category of violence in PV but he clearly describes its distinction from its more exaggerated relation on page 188:

"The three film-genres which the Museum of Modern Art chose as being the most violence-prone [in 1969] were the Western, the detective, and the juvenile-gone-delinquent... But if you really examine the films chosen to typify violence in America in the early postwar decades, your immediate reaction is that they seem tame by modern standards... Violence is almost always a means to an end..."

Twitchell goes on to compare a list of these tame postwar films, including classics like LADY FROM SHANGHAI and THE BIG HEAT, against both the films that rose in the late 60s and early 70s (WILD BUNCH, STRAW DOGS) and in later periods (NIGHTMARE ON ELM ST, DAWN OF THE DEAD). [Side-note: he mistakenly implies that 1963's BLOOD FEAST belongs in this third list.) Twitchell stresses the greater "intensity of violence" in the later films.

Yet some viewers might find the scalding of Gloria Grahame's face in THE BIG HEAT as viscerally horrifying as anything in STRAW DOGS. Because of this sort of viewer ambivalence I choose to determine the "intensity" of the violence in a work purely on the "clean/dirty" dichotomy. Does blood flow, do arms get broken, are heads blown off? If not, they're "clean;" if so, they're "dirty," using "dirty" in the sense that Mary Douglas defined dirt as "matter in the wrong place."

For me the defining distinction is that films like THE BIG HEAT generally use their violence, no matter how visceral, in a "functional" way: as "a means to an end." In such a work a given violent act may be spectacular but it does not detract from the plot.

More in Part 2.

THE GATE OF THE GODS, Part 2

Repeating the Frye quote from part 2:

"The creative process is an end in itself, not to be judged by its power to illustrate something else, however true or good."

In one of those interesting cross-correspondences I sometimes encounter, the same week I read the Frye quote, I came across this fascinating post on the blog AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS.

Said post, by blogger CRWM, began in reaction to posts that are fully documented on this blogpost by Curt Purcell. Now as it happened, I've no dog in the specific fight that inspired CRWM's post, as I've not seen any of the films he references: INSIDE or the two HOSTEL films.
But I enjoyed CRWM's defense of the idea of meaning as being inherent in any narrative (which I *think* is implicit in his argument even though in the following quote he speaks only of the film medium:

"Every film, no matter what its final form, is the product of a creative process that inevitably leaves traces of interpretable clutter behind it. No matter how lame or great, no matter powerful or dull, there's always already something beyond the literal. Even if you could somehow remove all human agency from the creation of a film, the fact that you removed all human agency from the creation of the film introduces space for interpretation.You'll never make a perfectly flat film. To even try is to automatically fail."

Now, CWRM is also careful to emphasize that not all forms of meaning are equal by saying that some works can have such a low level of meaning that it's not incorrect to judge them to be "lame" or "dull." But CRWM's point is that it's a critical mistake to speak of any work as intrinsically "pointless."

In making these assertions, I think CRWM has broadly agreed with the above Frye quote, that one work is not automatically superior to another because the first seems to "illustrate something else, however true or good." This would apply just as much, I should think, to the appearance of a "higher purpose" in a horror film, even if that "higher purpose" may not illustrate anything particularly "true" or "good:"

'Again and again we get some sort riff on the idea that violence, even perhaps the most extreme violence, would be okay if it were somehow wedded to a higher purpose. Violence shouldn't be "the point" of violence, but should rather serve "weighty and serious in intent" or be, somehow, necessary.'

It's because I find meaning inherent in works that are not necessarily "wedded to a higher purpose" that I formulated my conceptions of Thematic Escapism, which I explored here and here. Though I haven't seen the specific films that CRWM defends on the basis of their not needing a "higher purpose" to be interesting, I've certainly sampled many, many works whose only aim was to excite the audience n what I've called a "kinetic" manner. Some of these works fail even at that aim and so are both lame and dull: PUNISHER WAR ZONE comes to mind as one that failed to impress, despite its considerable production budget. While not the worst work of its kind ever produced, it was still less interesting than a lot of drive-in junk that on occasion had nothing more than a daring, exploitative idea to run with. Frye in a less charitable moment would have called such works a "babble." But the word "babble" is an interesting one, for though it directly descends from a 13th century European word, it has a perhaps-coincidental resemblance to the words that gave rise to the city-name Babylon: "Bab-ilu," which despite sounding like a Desi Arnaz song connoted "the gate of the gods."

And how can that which seems to be without purpose or function be the gate of the gods?

More in part 3.

AGON IN SIXTY SECONDS

Though neither Rider Haggard's SHE or KING SOLOMON'S MINES are much-read today, they make a convenient example of my combative and subcombative modes.

As far as I can think, the "noncombative" mode doesn't apply to the adventure/romance mythos at all, given the strong emphasis of the mythos upon physical striving. When an author takes a genre with strong adventure-associations, such as the western, and seeks to de-emphasize the "man vs. man" pattern in favor of the "man vs. himself" approach, he's moved from one mythos to another. Peter Fonda's 1971 THE HIRED HAND would be an example of a western that (to the best of my recollection) falls more properly into the category of the drama, for example.

Both SHE and KSM were enormously influential on the development of European and American adventure-fiction, and, being works written in a popular idiom, both are usually given short shrift in the world of literary criticism. To be sure, KSM is a much simpler novel than SHE, and possesses far less mythicity as well, but neither can be understood properly without appreciating how well they capture the spirit of their mythos, for all that their modes are different.

The plot of KSM is clearly the more combative of the two. Allan Quatermain-- who if not for Alan Moore would now be remembered as "Richard Chamberlain's INDIANA JONES" by modern audiences-- is the archetypal great white hunter who leads his employers into the search for a missing white man in Africa and ends up both finding a fabulous treasure and making it possible for a noble black monarch to regain his throne from a usurper. For all the side-action of the missing European and the treasure, the novel builds to the climactic action of the battle, in which the Europeans help the noble African regain his throne.

There are, to be sure, important scenes of combat in SHE. However, there is no particular combat toward which the novel builds, no *agon* which decides the fates of all and sundry. Ayesha, the *She* of the title, is at times frustrated from reaching her goals by meddling fate, but despite her intentions of conquering the modern world once her lost love returns to her-- intentions which make her something of an early "super-villain"-- she is defeated not by any particular opponent but by another twist of fate: stepping into the Fire of Life a second time reverses her gift of immortality (making for a rather graphic illustration of Heraclitus' admonition that one may not step twice into the same river). Still, though there is no definitive battle in SHE, the efforts of the protagonists to survive in her world, as well as to avoid becoming the chattel of Ayesha, still mark SHE as belonging to the mythos of adventure, albeit in a subcombative mode.

Interestingly, for all that Alan Moore did an atrocious job realizing his version of She in BLACK DOSSIER, his method often reminds one more of the Haggard of SHE than that of KING SOLOMON'S MINES, as DOSSIER in particular is devoted less to perilous adventures and more toward windy woolgathering. But that's another essay.

FOUR IF BY STRUCTURE, TWO IF BY TONE

The four modes to which I refer above are often incorrectly called "themes." I've been unable to track down where they first appeared, and they often get revised by this or that author, but the ones that I find most felicitous are:

1) Man vs. Man

2) Man vs. Nature (which includes Fate or Your Circumstances at Birth and so on)

3) Man vs. Society

4) Man vs. Himself

But none of these are not themes, as that word implies some form of didactic/discursive thought. They are modes, in accord with this earlier-quoted definition of "mode" from the WRITER'S WEB:

“MODE: an unspecific critical term usually identifying a broad but identifiable literary method, mood or manner that is not tied exclusively to a particular form of genre.”

Because the word "mode" is so unspecific, though, one has to distinguish between different types of modes. During the essay in which I quoted the above definition, I discussed modes pertaining to *emotional tonality:" in particular comparing the *subtle* mode of Noel Coward's DESIGN FOR LIVING vs. the *gross* mode of Mike Myers' WAYNE'S WORLD. But there are structural modes as well, and the four modes of opposition may well be the most basic modes in all narrative, since it's a commonplace that all narratives must have opposition as an organizing principle.

Now, most web-resources not only call this foursome "themes," but "themes of conflict." I have a definite neologism-nurturing reason for wanting to refer to the modes in terms of "opposition," for I want to use the word "conflict" in its adjectival form, "conflictive," in contrast with another term, "combative," in order to distinguish two tonal modes I've discovered as a result of analyzing the way various narratives make use of the plot-element of opposed forces.

In other words, all narratives possess an equal need for some elements of opposition, but some narratives are "more equal than others."

More on this "combat and conflict" theme anon, probably in the essay I plan to title, "Combat vs. Conflict."

FIVE AWE-INSPIRING ADVENTURE CDM'S

I saved for last the mythos of adventure. Frye’s schema, probably derived from Theodore Gaster’s formulations of Greek dramatic structure in his book THESPIS, begins with the mythos of the adventure/romance and cycles through tragedy, irony and comedy. But I think it could be interesting to view the adventure/romance as developing from the comedy-mythos rather than being simply the prelude to the tragedy/drama. While no literary mythos is inherently more mythopoeic than any other, historically the adventure-story has been the best source of myth-motifs in popular fiction, since adventure shows the least tendency to compromise with base reality.

FLASH GORDON (1936)—There are a lot of great CDM serials that deserve more recognition, but this translation of the Alex Raymond comic strip works on two levels. On one, it’s a faithful recapitulation of Raymond’s space opera, given a great deal of verve by worthy B-list actors like Buster Crabbe, Charles Middleton and the underrated Priscilla Lawson. On another, even though the FX are frequently primitive, their very sparseness enables one to better enjoy using one’s imagination by “seeing through” the effects.


BATMAN (1989)— The Richard Donner SUPERMAN is a high watermark, but it failed to birth a new paradigm for the superhero adventure-film, and that’s what makes the Tim Burton BATMAN an exemplary film in its subgenre. As STAR WARS succeeded in making the space opera relevant to adult audiences, the Burton BATMAN did the same for the costumed hero, transforming Bat-camp into punk Gothic.


RIKKI-OH (1991)—I haven’t seen the Saruwatari manga on which this live-action flick is based, but RIKKI-OH is a classic of cheesy, extravagant action. The scenario is simple: supreme martial artist Rikki is unjustly consigned to a hard-core prison, where the corrupt warden and guards continually strive to break his spirit with all manner of tortures, only to be regularly defeated by Rikki’s martial mastery. It’s action for the sake of action alone, and even bad special FX contribute to the pulpy pleasures.

THE MYSTERY OF MAMO (1978)— Japanese anime had tremendous influence on the development of the adventure-mythos in the medium of cinema, so it’s tough to pick one CDM that best captures the potential of the anime adventure-film. MAMO was the first of the adaptations of Monkey Punch’s LUPIN III, and unlike the later Miyazaki-directed CASTLE OF CAGLIOSTRO, MAMO gives its adaptation of Punch’s thief-hero a bit more adult tone. The SF elements are damn cool as well.


SPIDER MAN 2—There are a few missteps in Raimi’s Spider-Man adaptations. For one, he never seem to know how to pace the dramatic scenes, as with his conversations between Peter Parker and Aunt May. But SM2 is exemplary in showing the potential for using the tool of CGI in an imaginative manner, bringing to cinematic life the sort of spectacles that were once confined only to the comics page. The melodramatic elements are better handled than in the first film, and Alfred Molina realizes Doc Ock's raving egotism perfectly, but the film's main accomplishment is to translate, as well as possible, the superb fight-choreography of Steve Ditko to the big screen.

FIVE INCREDIBLE IRONIC CDM'S

Irony is, in essence, the tragic vision translated to a world where man was never “sufficient to stand,” as Milton had it. The irony may verge into black humor but with or without strong humor all ironies are dominated by a vision of a world without the glories of tragedies and romances or even the sheer dumb luck that blesses the hero of the comedy.

GHOST WORLD (2001)— I’m no great fan of the work of Daniel Clowes, but there’s no question that he evokes a world of ironic ugliness and surreal tackiness like no other comics-professional today. Terry Zwigoff’s adaptation of the GHOST WORLD graphic novel is not quite as concerned as the original with the distanciation of emotional states, but Zwigoff’s own brand of black humor abounds, particularly in the scenes that expand the Crumb-esque character played by Steve Buscemi.


DEATH NOTE (2006)—Live-action movie version of the Oba/Obata manga series has the same ruthless vision of the TV-anime, in which the only “gods” are the Japanese Shinigami, who exist to write in their books the names of the mortals destined to die. Such a book falls into the hands of handsome alpha-male Light Yagami, who then arrogates to himself the right to kill whomever he pleases by inscribing the names of his victims in said book. The story then traces the pursuit of this self-appointed executioner by his own Inspector Jauvert, the gnomish “L”—a nice reversal of the hero/villain expectations.


BARBARELLA (1968)— Jean-Claude Forest’s sexy space-fantasy might have borrowed a lot of paraphernalia from FLASH GORDON, but the tone of Barbarella is more Rabelais than Raymond. At times Vadim’s best work verges on straight comedy, but the satirical elements dominate, particularly in the scene of Barbarella’s most memorable combat-scene, where she out-orgasms a mechanical sex-machine.

TALES FROM THE CRYPT (1972)—I suspect this anthology-film, made up of tales from the EC-horror comic book, would be more popular with comics-critics if it had a tonier cast and direction, maybe along the lines of the 1945 anthology DEAD OF NIGHT. But EC Comics weren’t aimed at an elitist audience, and so the match between the grossout-tales of the comics and the stalwarts of commercial horror-cinema (Freddie Francis, Peter Cushing) proves a fine match to embody EC’s sadistic visions of sparagmos.





FRITZ THE CAT (1972)-- Here’s another one I haven’t seen in many a moon, but memory tells me that the Ralph Bakshi film successfully translated the gross world of 1960s underground comics. Fritz’s creator Robert Crumb was so repelled by Bakshi’s translation that afterward he did a story that killed off the famous feline, implicitly rejecting any further association between his work and such commercial entertainments. Or maybe Crumb didn't like Bakshi showing the grossness of Crumb's works unleavened by whatever "intellectual implants" (as I called them earlier) added on. Who knows?

FIVE CAPRICIOUS COMEDIC CDM'S

As I noted earlier, the comedy manages to bring forth incongruity so as to provoke laughter, but with greater ebullience than one gets from the bleak humor of the irony. For this reason the mythos of comedy is attuned to stories that are, for lack of a better term, more “life affirming.”

BLONDIE (1938)— Few comics-critics praise the form of the situation comedy, and those that mention it at all choose to dismiss even its most excellent expressions as “middlebrow” or some such drivel. The Chic Young comic strip was one of the first and best modern formulations of the familiar “clever wife/stupid husband” trope, which as I mentioned here sometimes edged into mythopoeic territory. The first BLONDIE film begat about twenty more in the series, but the end scene of the first film—in which Blondie has to explain to a peeved judge that her husband is just a big dumb child— perfectly captures Marshall McLuhan’s analysis of the strip’s motif of “mothering-wedlock.”


FINAL URUSEI— While ONLY YOU, the first animated film of Rumiko Takahashi’s URUSEI YATSURA, would make a better introduction to the zany Takahashiverse, FINAL is noteworthy for translating the last stories of the manga series (not yet translated into English). Understanding all the slapstick gags does require some prior acquaintance with URUSEI’s huge supporting cast, but the key story—the “love is hell” relationship of schmuck Ataru with alien princess Lum— shows great psychological acuity even while portraying that hell as “devoutly to be wished.”


THE MASK (1994)—The original stories published by Dark Horse have more of the irony’s darkness, but the Jim Carrey film is a pure slapstick romp, in which nerd Stanley Ipkiss gains a magical mask that allows him to express his id in any idiosyncratic way he pleases, including the everynerd dream of making it with Cameron Diaz.


THE ADDAMS FAMILY (1991)—This one might make the list just on the strength of the opening scene, translating Charles Addams’ famous “Christmas carolers” cartoon. It must be admitted that the cartoons provided less of the template for Sonnenfeld’s film than the “altogether ookie” 1960s TV show, but Sonnenfeld makes the family even ookier than before, particularly in upgrading the character of Wednesday Addams from an oddball little girl to a budding young Sadean tormentor.

POPEYE MEETS SINBAD THE SAILOR (1935)—The enormous popularity of the Popeye cartoon shorts from the Fleischer Studios birthed three “long cartoons,” which I understand sometimes played as second features in some theaters. Popeye’s battle with Sinbad (played by perennial antagonist Bluto) is a great comic send-up of the adventure-mythos, best exemplified by the scene with an awe-inspiring roc that Popeye reduces to a turkey dinner.

FIVE DAUNTING DRAMATIC CDM's

As noted earlier, what I call the “drama” is based on the Fryean category of the tragedy, but I’ve chosen to use the former word to allow for works that do not end tragically.

(1) WATCHMEN (2009)—I might have some problems with particular choices made by Zack Snyder in the adaptation of the Moore-Gibbons graphic novel, but I don’t object in principle to Snyder’s elimination of the ironic elements in favor of something closer to a drama with superheroes in it. Indeed, most of the comic books influenced by WATCHMEN chose drama over irony. Most of the strong scenes are simply good translations of those in the novel, though Snyder improves one or two. The scene where Rorschach expresses disbelief that the Comedian would be caught “crying” is one such.

(2) NAUSICAA IN THE VALLEY OF THE WIND (1984) —This early Miyazaki work is still one of the best early anime-films to use adventure-motifs in the service of drama. Admittedly I’ve not seen it in a long time, but key scenes still stick with me over 20 years later.

(3) OLDBOY (2003)—I’ve not read the original Korean manhwa by Minegishi, but this is a very suspenseful revenge-drama in which ordinary schmuck Oh Dae-su is pulled off the street and imprisoned for over a decade without any knowledge as to his captors of their motives. He goes hunting for both his captors and the answers.


(4) AKIRA (1988)— Given the degree of skull-bursting violence that erupts throughout the length and breadth of AKIRA, I could understand it if some critic chose to to categorize it as “adventure.” Yet I tend to privilege as “adventure” those works that feature a strong conflict between a hero and an adversary, and here the conflict is more than of ordinary protagonist Kaneda seeking to save his former friend Tetsuo from the scientifically-implanted psychokinetic powers that turn Tetsuo into a psychotic god. This Frankensteinian parable, like the original by Mary Shelley, is much more about pathos than agon.

(5) BLUEBERRY (2004)—I don’t think this is the ideal filmization of the hard-bitten Lieutenant Blueberry stories of Charlier and Giraud/Moebius, but as with Snyder’s WATCHMEN, it’ll have to do till a better one comes along. The standout scene takes place when Blueberry enjoys a psychedelic “trip” that feels in sync with the design strategies of Moebius in his more science-fictiony works.

TWENTY EXEMPLARY CDM'S

As noted in an earlier post “CDM” is my acronym for a “comics-derived movie,” a movie based on a comic book or comic strip source, even if nothing more than the name is borrowed for said movie. A “movie” I consider to be anything that has the same basic form of a theatrical film, even if the work under discussion actually first appeared on television or as a direct-to-rental release. Yet I make some exceptions in terms of form for works that did appear first in big-screen theaters. I can regard as a movie a multiple-part serial that tells one story, as long as it did appear in theaters, but I would not include a multi-part serial that was made for video or DVD rental, since such serials are designed to be viewed in the home, more after the fashion of television shows than films. And one of the “movies” I do cite is closer in length to a film short than to a feature film, but the one I'll cite is three times longer than most other shorts in the series, so I deem it a featurette. Also, I rate live-action and animation together.

I got this idea from coming across another blogger’s list of 20 best CDMs. I had no interest in putting another "best films" list out there, but I've noticed that many such lists are disproportionate in their preference for “serious drama.” So I thought it would be interesting to formulate a list in the best pluralist tradition: a list that would represent the best in each of the four mythoi I’ve talked about elsewhere: comedy, drama, irony and adventure. By choosing five examples of exemplary movies in each mythos-- that is, works that reveal something significant about the type of stories told-- I propose to talk about what each accomplished in terms of its storytelling mythos.

The plan for the next few days is to devote one blogpost to each of the four mythoi, with short reviews of the films chosen. Again, the purpose is not just to list what I particularly thought to be "the best," which is a fun but critically meaningless exercise. Of course I doubt I'll convince anyone as to the hidden interrelationships between movies with killer zombies and movies in which disaffected teens simply act like zombies, but that's the way the Golden Age comic book crumbles.

COMEDY! IRONY! LIVIN' IN IMPERFECT HARMONY!

I'm backburnering the essay I said I'd do next to clarify my thoughts on the following.


Northrop Frye's poetics is probably the Moby Dick of all literary theories. To refute him adequately one would have to have the same level of literary knowledge he had, and then to show why his schema did or didn't encompass as much of literature as Frye claimed it did. To the best of my knowledge the few Ahabs who have made the attempt have gone down with their ships (=theories) like their fictional precursor.

But naturally, no system is perfect, nor (I believe) would Frye have claimed his was.


Because the theory of mythoi is drawn from Frye's imagined "quest-myth"-- in which he imagines a protagonist cyclically passing through each of the four mythoi as a human being passes through the seasons-- some of the phases may be overdetermined by this model.

Earlier I commented:

'I should add that Frye’s definition of comedy proper is strongly predicated on the model of Greek New Comedy, which dominantly centered about the idea of young lovers successfully being joined despite some opposing force. It may be possible to see the theme of anagnorisis, or “discovery,” even in comedies that are not about overt romantic themes, but that would be a project for another time.'


Naturally I'm not going to attempt such a project on a blog in any depth, but here are some thoughts I formulated after re-reading Frye's sections on comedy and irony.

The so-called "New Comedy" of the Greeks still comprises much of the formulas of contemporary comedy-- but not all. It would be hard to find very many New Comic setups in the hundred-plus "Three Stooges" shorts, where the emphasis is almost entirely on violent slapstick. So "discovery" in the sense of bringing about connubial happiness doesn't seem adequate to take in everything that comedy can do, especially since it can be argued that Frye's other three modes-- irony, tragedy, and romance-- use anagnorisis in their own distinctive manners.

I'd argue, though, that both romantic comedies and slapstick japes like the Stooges use the notion of "discovery" with a tonality not present in the other modes. Frye generally pairs romance and comedy because they resolve their conflicts with upbeat conclusions, as opposed to tragedy and irony, which resolve conflicts with downbeat conclusions. Yet though the romance generally ends in an upbeat way, it could be asserted that it is rarely a surprise that it does so. The same could be said of tragedy and irony: once it's suggested that the story's theme is that of the fall of a great man, or the descent of a mediocre hero into a hell of greater mediocrity, the progress is pretty much the same all around.

Comedy's theme is also predetermined by its genre, but it does depend much more on the tonality of sudden surprise. Only sudden surprise provokes the sort of disinterested laughter that is as amused by the discomfiture of the hero (say Charlie Chaplin) as by that of Chaplin's opponent, against whom, in theory, the audience should want to see discomfited.

Romance, irony and tragedy are usually not quite so disinterested, for they are more invested in following through on a specific myth-theme, symbolized by narrative actions Frye terms agon, pathos, and sparagmos.

The narrative action of "discovery," though, could mean not just the discovery of the new society postulated by Frye from New Comedy, but also the discovery of pure incongruity in any seemingly-normal situation. It could be found as much in Woody Allen's comic meditations on the need for relationships, as in Moe using a scissors to catch Larry by the nose. (I should add that I'm partial to the incongruity theories of humor as put forth by Kant and Schopenhauer.) In any case, if in future posts I make use of the myth-theme anagnorisis to characterize comedies, this is the meaning the word has for me.


The element of anagnorisis makes a strong if more predictable showing in romances and tragedies, but it might be at its weakest in the ironic story. Frye does not identify the radical of irony as he does with romance, but of the four mythoi irony would seem the one most predetermined by fate (i.e., the author's decision to portray a world without significant freedom).


Though Frye speaks of the (often mundane) horrors that dominate the irony, he never explicitly links that form to the genre of horror, as I have. I don't mean to suggest that all horror stories fall under the mythos of irony, but certain ones do. In classical mythology one might think of stories in which a victim perishes ignobly-- say, Actaeaon-- as the ancestors of ironic horror, in contrast to the noble, tragic horror found in the story of Oedipus.

One reason I've decided to clarify these two details of my system is that one of my next planned posts is to deal with what I deem the 20 most exemplary CDMs, which I'll write as a way of giving further examples of particular examples of modes.

And if the reader doesn't recognize the term CDM, that's because I just made it up.

CDM= Comics-Derived Movie

More later.

SATIRE-RIASIS

There's a good discussion here on Groovy Age of Horror, referencing some of the same territory I'm talking about with my Fryean concept of modes: the notion that every genre depends on a set of "logical conclusions," even if those conclusions spring from an illogical set of premises, as is often the case with the superhero genre. Genres and modes are obviously not the same thing, but for the purpose of this argument I'll pass over the differences.

Curt mentions that when Rick Veitch outlined his ambitions for BRAT PACK he spoke of "destroying the superhero." Frank Miller and Alan Moore have made similar allusions to undermining the genre with DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and WATCHMEN respectively, and more recently Zack Snyder, following in their deconstructive footsteps, claimed that his WATCHMEN adaptation would be the last word on superhero films.

Such declarations suggest that the speaker is extremely naive, though I've also considered the possibility that they're made with an eye to garnering media-attention. Certainly being the person who has the "last word" is an enormous boost to the ego, rather like the belief of the apocalyptic Christian who rejoices that even if his generation can't have the privilege of being the first, at least they can be the last.

Certainly this sort of hubris was not born with the "grim and gritty" era of comics in the 1980s (which really got started in the 1970s, but that's another story). The earliest practitioner of genre-hubris was probably the fellow whom Alan Moore feted as his favorite comics-creator: Harvey Kurtzman, best known for his satires of superheroes and other pop-entertainments in MAD MAGAZINE.

There's a Kurtzman quote in his longest COMICS JOURNAL interview that I haven't time to look up just now, to the effect that he felt that he had accomplished some great breakthrough when he took the dominant image of the superhero (courageous and supremely competent) and inverted it, so that the superhero (as seen in the classic 1953 "Superduperman") was a loser and a goof.

In the larger historical sense this was, of course, no more a breakthrough when Kurtzman did it than when similar heroic skewerings were undertaken by Cervantes and Voltaire. Both satire and its close cousin comedy depend on the inversion of desired expectations, but this inversion is simply another expectation, not a liberation from expectation, be it that of genre or dominant ideology or whatever.

Kurtzman's MAD satires were, of course, supremely funny, but they didn't disclose any reality but the narrative reality of the satiric mode. And though Kurtzman might have desired to see his "Superduperman" expose the implied banality of its model, his satire probably had no measurable effect on the prosperity of SUPERMAN. Indeed, within three or four years of the satire, the feature became far more inventive, possibly in response to the growing appeal of science-fiction in various media of that decade.

Kurtzman's satires, though, might be deemed as more straightforward than those of Veitch and Moore (Miller is an exception in that he was doing a romance-adventure with satiric elements). Because Veitch and Moore did essay ironic superhero stories with adventure-elements, both had some influence (however good or bad in the long run) on the development of mainstream superheroes. All artists are magpies: they swipe from the creative "nests" of other artists anything that they think will work for them and/or their audience, and any artist who denies this is either a fool or a liar.

Kurtzman would probably have been pleased that the mainstream heroic comics of his time did not derive much (if anything) from his satires (the various spoofy imitations of MAD being outside the frame of that mode/genre). Thus he could go to his grave believing that he had "subverted the dominant" or some such ideological fantasy, and without giving any aid and comfort to the enemy.

Others, however, could not say the same-- the least being any so-called "destroyers of superheroes."

FUNNY COMPANY

As further support for my observation that BATMAN and THE SPIRIT are rough equals despite differences in their respective levels of humor and pathos, I'll put forth a parallel example, drawn from comedy.

Consider two genuinely-comical comic strips, both with some degree of critical fame, BARNABY, first published in 1942, and POPEYE, "born" in 1929 in the strip THIMBLE THEATRE, which had kicked around about ten years before the one-eyed sailor took it over.

I don't think that anyone would have a problem labelling these two comic strips as "comedies." One might have to do a lot of tweaking to Northrop Frye's theory of mythoi in order to see them both as pursuing the theme of anagnorisis, but that's a theoretical problem for another time. Both strips are certainly dominated by the narrative aim of being funny, just as THE SPIRIT and BATMAN are arguably dominated by the narrative aim of being exciting.

Now, let us assume that all right-minded people agree that both BARNABY and POPEYE fully deserve their reputations for being good comedies, however different the types of humor may be. One may like BARNABY's gentle spoofery more than Popeye's slapstick violence, or vice versa, but in theory one can agree that each fulfills its comic mythos admirably.

Now, because POPEYE does use slapstick violence, it does have a narrative element in common with SPIRIT and BATMAN that might cause one to associate the former with the latter two in terms of its *mythos.* POPEYE does sometimes incorporate elements of the adventure-mythos, with emphasis on the agon, which can take the form of Popeye's many battles with big ugly brutes (of which his cartoon nemesis Bluto was just one minor example) or his duels with menaces like the Sea Hag. Despite these elements, by my calculation the strip was never dominantly about adventure, but it could be termed correctly a "comedy with adventure elements."

Now, it's my stated position that to the extent that the Golden Age BATMAN ever attempted any dramatic stories (which wasn't often), they were probably never as well executed as those of Eisner's SPIRIT. But saying that doesn't eliminate the accomplishments of both features as adventure-mythoi.

However, if one were to say "superior pathos makes THE SPIRIT the better work," then by the same token one would have to say that POPEYE is better than BARNABY because POPEYE had better agon-fights.

I've only read one collection of BARNABY, and I don't think it had any fights in it whatsoever. But if in BARNABY's ten years anything like a fight ever happened in the strip, and if the quality of that one fight was inferior to those in POPEYE, then POPEYE would be the superior work because it didn't realize that narrative element as well as POPEYE did.

Unless, of course, one takes the position that the narrative elements of the agon simply don't matter.

And in the world of unsupportable beliefs, I suppose anything is possible.

BUFFY THE MYTHOS SLAYER

“The four mythoi that we are dealing with, comedy, romance, tragedy, and irony, may now be seen as four aspects of a central unifying myth. Agon or conflict is the basis or archetypal theme of romance, the radical of romance being a sequence of marvelous adventures. Pathos or catastrophe, whether in triumph or in defeat, is the archetypal theme of tragedy. Sparagmos, or the sense that heroism and effective action are absent, disorganized or doomed to defeat… is the archetypal theme of irony and satire. Anagnorisis, or recognition of a newborn society rising in triumph around a still somewhat mysterious hero and his bride, is the archetypal theme of comedy.”—Northrop Frye, ANATOMY OF CRITICISM, p. 192.

When I referenced these four mythoi in essays like NOTES TOWARD AN IDIOM OF THE SUPERHERO, I wrote:

“By contrast, a work that purports to put aside the element of adventure for other elements is by Frye’s definition deviating from the mode of romance.”

For “other elements” I probably should have said “the elements of other myth-themes.” A given work may share elements of all four myth-themes in varying proportions—may include elements suggestive of conflict, of catastrophe, of abjection, and of rebirth—and yet still have be more strongly oriented toward one theme rather than to any of the other three. I would revise Frye’s terminology here with regard to one of his themes, however. Though he says that pathos can be present in a work whether or not the protagonist is a victim or a victor, the word “tragedy” inescapably suggests that he must be a victim. Therefore for tragedy I will substitute “drama.” Colloquially Americans understand “drama” as applying to works that are more “serious” than either romance or comedy, though such “drama” is still a good deal more accessible to most audiences than is the continuum Frye calls irony/satire.

(I should add that Frye’s definition of comedy proper is strongly predicated on the model of Greek New Comedy, which dominantly centered about the idea of young lovers successfully being joined despite some opposing force. It may be possible to see the theme of anagnoris, or “discovery,” even in comedies that are not about overt romantic themes, but that would be a project for another time.)

For an example of a work that shares elements that might support all four themes, I’ll cite BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. For instance, in contrast to many “normative” superhero works, the BUFFY teleseries could easily viewed as a drama with action-elements, given the show’s focus on the agonies and ecstasies of teens confronting both the horrors of adult life as well as real monsters. Yet to solve the question of which narrative elements predominate—those of action or of drama—one might compare BUFFY to the book-series HARRY POTTER. Though different in medium, POTTER also pursues the subject material of young people balancing the demands of school and of supernatural menaces. But elements of pathos in POTTER are often, unlike most conflicts in BUFFY, resolved without a single punch in anyone’s face. If it is demonstrable that BUFFY’s problems are usually solved or even tempered by violent action, then BUFFY is dominated by the agon of the romance.

One could also make a case for BUFFY as an irony. Often the show’s the characters are reduced, physically and emotionally, to an extent that parallels similar developments in the Moore-Gibbons WATCHMEN, which I’ve already cited here as an ironic take on the superhero romance. Additionally, BUFFY’s universe is, like that of WATCHMEN, a world without transcendence, where the Powers of Evil basically control the universe and can only be beat back a little at a time. But despite these moments of sparagmos (i.e, “tearing apart”), the characters of BUFFY are never quite as thoroughly humiliated by events as are the Watchmen. Despite the fact that WATCHMEN’s Doctor Manhattan possesses more raw power than any of the BUFFY heroes, the former is powerless to take meaningful action, at least on the planet of his birth. The “power of action” for the BUFFY protagonists is far more expansive.

The narrative structure of BUFFY also succeeds in part as a New Comedy, beyond the surface elements of the witty repartee for which the series is well known. Admittedly, when the teleseries concludes Buffy Summers is not married or even “with anyone.” But it could be argued that even without a marriage she has not only preserved the nucleus of her own “Scooby family” despite all opposition, and ends up “propagating” a new family by activating all the women who have dormant “Slayer potential.” This would parallel the theme of anagnorisis insofar as her “discovery” of a new way to combat evil births a new society. Yet the “Slayer society” is a warrior clan, which by its nature cannot suggest the sort of stable social order in which real children can be nurtured. A better example of the superhero put forth as pure comedy might be Rumiko Takahashi’s RANMA ½. Though the adventures of Ranma Saotome vary between high adventure and low sitcom goofiness, the constant focus of the series is the how Ranma and his reluctant betrothal Akane “discover” the depths of their feelings for one another and become reconciled to them. These characters are no more married at the conclusion of the series than Buffy is, but the final story does at least feature an attempt to get them married, even if it descends into comic chaos. More, it’s implicit that these two teenagers are destined, by their creator’s fiat, to have the New Comic “happy ending” at some undisclosed point in their futures.

(Yes, I know some people wouldn’t deem Ranma Saotome comparable with costumed superheroes, even though Ranma can punch through stone walls and triumph over any number of super-powered adversaries. But despite the sitcom-feel of many RANMA-stories, Ranma may be closer in spirit to Buffy—or Batman, for that matter-- than either Harry Potter or any of the Watchmen, since comedies and romance-adventures both tend toward the upbeat rather than the downbeat.)

It seems clear to me that BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER’s narrative emphasizes most prominently the elements of the romance-adventure. Comic repartee and familial bonding help Buffy triumph over both the agonies of personal pathos and the perhaps-darker aspects of an ironic universe, but neither repartee nor bonding overshadow the elements of the agon, of the combative hero’s ability to kick evil in the teeth. Buffy’s triumph doesn’t eradicate evil, but she deals the Powers of Evil a substantial setback. And whereas constant vigilance against future threats would not be the sort of “triumph” most comedies could sustain, for a romance/adventure it’s satisfying, for the hero is identified with his (or her) endless struggles than his (or her) social role.

And thus, despite possessing elements germane to the other three mythoi, BUFFY belongs most to the romance-adventure category. From this we can deduce that an ambitious superhero work does not necessarily need to renounce the elements proper to the romance-adventure mythos simply to appear more “sophisticated,” despite elitist critical cant to that effect.

MO' MOORE

In UNMOORED, PART3 I wrote:

"Alan Moore is only the best writer of superheroes within an ironic literary mode"

And it later occured to me that this was a little misleading, inasmuch as it might sound as if I were saying that Moore had never written in any mode than the ironic for superheroes. This is not the case, but I do think that as yet no one else has managed to do superheroes in that mode better, though it's a short list from which to choose. The Mills-Nowlan MARSHAL LAW is probably the closest rival to WATCHMEN, though naturally WATCHMEN is more sophisticated in its satire and darker in its implications. I suppose Kurtzman would be a close analogue except that all of his satires of superheroes are one-offs, which suggests a differing form even if the mode is the same.

In the essay I'm printing next, I'll analyze a particular superhero-like work to see if I can make clear what elements privilege a work to being in one mode or another.

By the way, saw the movie, and my prediction was half-right. Even to someone who knows the story, it doesn't succeed in the mode of an irony. Snyder tries to let viewers like the characters too much, even the Comedian, so his universe isn't sufficiently nihilistic. But I was incorrect in predicting that it might be retooled to something along the lines of a high-mimetic drama, a la Moore's own high-mimetic comic THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN. Instead, Snyder's take on the WATCHMEN material is closer to the low-mimetic mode, which is the mode to which Northrop Frye assigns not only comedy but "realistic fiction" in general.

By the way, Moore may have the ironic mode almost all to himself, but he's not the best writer of high-mimetic superheroes. He has too much competition in that realm.

As far as ending the cinematic world's flirtation with superheroes, as Snyder claimed it would, I feel sure WATCHMEN will neither particularly hurt nor harm the romance. But it's an interesting translation on some levels, particularly for coming up with a better end-threat than Moore himself did.