MYTHOS AND MODE PT. 3

Over two years have passed since I created two essays in this series, PART 1 here and PART 2 here. I'm reviving this line of thought because even though I'm very probably the only writer trying to delve into the nature of "the combative mode," I choose to rework the schema I presented in Part 2, as to the ways in which certain narratives with the potential for that mode fail to realize it.

In Part 2 I chose to focus on the plays of William Shakespeare, partly because he is seen today as the epitome of "high culture," but only because most high-culture critics manage to ignore his thoroughgoing bloody-mindedness. I do not say that Shakespeare didn't possess the subtler qualities that have made him famous, but many critics don't appreciate how completely "the subtle" intertwines with "the gross" in the works of the Bard of Avon.

So, in part because Shakespeare is such an elitist icon, I focused on certain of his plays to illustrate my frequently made point that the potential for the combative mode is often undercut by some omission of the necessary elements, usually within the realm of "plot" or "character." The same omissions occur in many other narratives of lesser fame, many of which I've reviewed on my movie-blog, and to which reviews I'll link when applicable.

Repeating my view on Shakespeare's penchant for violence, in Part 2 I said:

Though there’s a great deal of violence and vengeance in Shakespeare, most of it does not pursue the combative mode with respect to either narrative or subjective values. 

CORIOLANUS was my choice for a play that had the potential for the significant combative value, in that its opposed characters Coriolanus and Aufidius were both portrayed as exceptional warriors seen lusting to kill each other at the play's outset.  However, because the play's plot does not end with a combat between these two well-matched characters, CORIOLANUS is not combative in the narrative sense.

Among some of the works I've reviewed on my blogs, those that lack the narrative, plot-based combative value, even though they do have the significant, character-based combative value include Rider Haggard's SHE, both H.G. Wells' novel THE WAR OF THE WORLDS and its 1953 adaptation, the 2002 adaptation of Philip Dick's MINORITY REPORT, and SON OF KONG, the sequel to the very combative 1933 film.


The exact opposite to this formulation is one in which there is potential in the plot but not in the characters. In MYTHOS AND MODE PART 2 I used MACBETH as an example of this situation. While I still believe my logic regarding that play holds, I think HAMLET makes a better illustration, in part because I've more recently examined that play in this essay, responding to a critic's observation that Hamlet's negativity almost made him "infectious" in his evil-thinking manner. Further, HAMLET, unlike many Bard-plays, is derived from a folklore-like story of a prince named Amlethus whose quest for vengeance is considerably less complicated than that of the melancholy Dane.

I realize that to elitist ears, even a mere reminder that HAMLET has its origin in a murderous spectacle-tale will sound like a betrayal of the play's high-minded themes. But of course, HAMLET is no less bloody for all its philosophy, and it does end with a sword-fight, even though the duel is supposed to be no more than a formal, non-fatal combat. When Hamlet agrees to duel Laertes as a mere courtly diversion, he does not know that his nemesis Claudius has conspired with Laertes to poison the latter's sword, as well as keeping a cup of poisoned wine on hand as a backup plan.

So, from a narrative, plot-based standpoint, HAMLET fulfills the combative mode. However, as I've repeatedly said, the combative mode applies only to two or more figures that possess exceptional dynamicity. Coriolanus and Aufidius certainly possess this dynamicity. But do Hamlet and Laertes? I see nothing definite to indicate that either nobleman is exceptional in his sword-fighting skills. In Act IV, scene VII, Claudius flatters Laertes by telling him that a sword-trainer named "Lamond" esteemed Laertes as a great bladesman, but the King may be shining Laertes on, trying to convince him that he's such a good fighter that it makes no difference whether or not they use poison on him. Later, in Act V Scene II, the duel has progressed to a point that Hamlet's mother Gertrude remarks of Hamlet that "he's fat [sweaty] and scant of breath." This suggess that even if Laertes might be exceptional, Hamlet may not be, and indeed he ends up killing both Claudius and Laertes through the use of Claudius' poison, not through sword-skill as such.

This lack of the significant, character-based combative value is also presented in such films as 1986's MANHUNTER, 1991's THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, 2005's THE BROTHERS GRIMM, 1987's JANE AND THE LOST CITY, 1959's THE ANGRY RED PLANET, and 1961's THE WONDERS OF ALADDIN.


Finally, I've sometimes observed that even a given narrative posseeses two or more characters of exceptional dynamicity, and seems to bring them into a conflict that *might* assume a combative form, the author chooses to diffuse the confrontation in some way. My Bard-example here is TITUS ANDRONICUS. This play, a little like CORIOLANUS, deals with a conflict between a Roman nobleman, the titular Titus, and a tribal leader whose forces he has vanquished, Tamora Queen of the Goths. However, after Titus brings the captive queen back to Rome, the emperor Saturninus takes a fancy to her and makes her his queen. This gives Tamora the chance to execute a revenge-plot against Titus by having her sons rape Titus's daughter. Titus later tops her revenge-plot with his own, by killing her sons, cooking them into a pie and luring Tamora into eating it.

Now, I should add here that I'm aware that Tamora and Titus could never have dueled one another as Aufidius and Coriolanus could have. Nevertheless, had Shakespeare cared to provide such a duel, he might have arranged for a flat-out duel, say, between Titus and Saturninus. Instead, the playwright eschews combat for slaughter: after Titus reveals his one-upmanship, he stabs Tamora, Saturninus stabs Titus, and Titus's son stabs the emperor. This is more "conflictive" than the rather anti-climactic ending of CORIOLANUS, where Aufidius simply orders the Roman general to be executed. In both plays, the rejections of "combative potential" is based in plot rather than character; however, TITUS serves to illustrate the type of plot in which violence does erupt between the high-dynamicity characters at the climax, but it is violence that still does not enhance the combative value.

Examples of narratives in this subcombative mode include Philip Dick's DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP, the less than bracing "battle" of Dracula and the Wolf Man in ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, and such giant monster-flicks as KONGA and THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS.

More on these matters in Part 4.

IN REMEMBRANCE YET GRIMM

Before launching into the second part of THE ETHIC, I must also revisit the propositions outlined in the essay STRENGTH, IN NUMBERS, where I did a quick survey of Grimm's Fairy Tales to explore the ways in which dynamicity manifests in the stories.  While I have stated that characters in any given story will fall into three possible dynamicity-levels-- the microdynamic, the mesodynamic, and the megadynamic-- in terms of the way dynamicity operates in plot-narratives, the first two are practically identical.  Whether a given character's dynamicity-level is "poor-to-adequate" or "good-to-fair," he is unable to reach the exceptional level of dynamicity that Kant calls "might."  Here I will use the term "might" for illustrative purposes.

If the dynamicities of characters in conflict are reducible in their plot-functions to either "non-might" or "might," then they can only combine in three dichotomous permutations, which I tried to illustrate with three examples taken from the Grimms' collection.

NON-MIGHT vs. NON-MIGHT-- "The Bremen Town Musicians," in which an ordinary group of bandits are overcome by an ordinary group of animals (discounting the animals' human-like intelligence, which is merely a convention of the story)

NON-MIGHT vs. MIGHT-- "Hansel and Gretel," in which two ordinary children manage to overcome the superior "might" of an evil witch through what I called "endurance and cunning"

MIGHT vs. MIGHT-- "The Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was," in which an unnamed young man accepts the task of spending a night in a haunted castle, and by his own heroic might overcomes terrors that would destroy ordinary men, such as a horde of demonic animals and an animated bed

Since the first two types of narrative are subcombative, while the last is indubitably combative, this schema will prove useful for my discussion as to what ethical impact the combative mode has upon human culture.  I stress that the sublime affects that arise from works of spectacular combat are not defined by its ethical or utilitarian dimensions.  However, those dimensions exist as a result of pure affects interacting with human culture, so the former should be reliably identified.

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.

MIGHT MAKES FIGHTS, AND STORIES TOO

In STRENGTH, IN NUMBERS  I made this generalization about the corpus of stories within the famous folktale-collection Grimms' Fairy Tales:

I would generalize that most of the Grimms' folktales fall into one of these two categories [i.e., having the plot-dynamicity labeled "basic strength" or the one labeled "might"].

In contrast, I only pegged one Grimms' tale which displayed the plot-pattern of "dominance," focused on two contending superior forces.

But that's just one story-collection.  How do these three deductively-extrapolated patterns disperse over the whole of literature?

I suppose my view may be influenced by a lifetime of genre-reading.  Nevertheless, genre-- and I consider folk literature to be a close relation to genre literature-- has been the dominant type of narrative (both in written and oral forms) favored by the majority of human beings in historical time.  And basing my view on everything I've read of what other people generally read, the "middle type"-- the one that Goldilocks pronounced as "just right" in another context-- is the one that I believe would rack up the highest statistics, were any kind of statistical evaluation feasible.

I hinted at the predominance of the "might" pattern in my QUICK SCHOPENHAUER POST: 

As I've mentioned elsewhere I find Cioffi's term "anomaly" useful to describe the element or elements that provide the motive force of the narrative, so it would seem that the anomaly expresses the narrative's need for conflict/transgression.

To make my meaning more explicit, I'm saying that the dominant type of story within genre narrative-- which narrative is the dominant narrative experience of historical mankind-- is one in which the characters who inhabit a normal, "typical" continuum-- characters usually possessed of no more than "basic strength"-- is confronted with an atypical anomaly-- be it a natural force or a character-- which impinges its "might" upon the continuum's static equilibrium. The anomaly may be any number of things within the scope of the Num Formula: a ruthless criminal (naturalistic), a bizarre psycho-killer (uncanny), or a blood-hungry vampire (marvelous).  As different as these three examples are in terms of phenomenality-- with one appealing to what I've called the "odd-sublime," the other two to the "strange-sublime"-- they are identical in terms of function in terms of how the plot-dynamicity works out.

If the "might" pattern is, as I assert, the dominant pattern in genre-literature-- thus supervening the patterns of non-genre literature as well-- then this would support H.P. Lovecraft's belief as expressed at the start of his critical history of the terror-tale, SUPERNATURAL HORROR IN LITERATURE:

THE OLDEST and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.

Of course no one can be sure as to which emotion was the first to be kindled in the breast of nascent humanity.  But it's possible that the confrontation of mundane "basic strength" with the power of sublime "might" is the dominant pattern because it has the greatest appeal across all genre-types.

More on these matters in a forthcoming Part 2.

STRENGTH, IN NUMBERS

In the previous essay I wrote:

To reiterate the Harvey Pekar example, clearly the vignette in which Pekar makes himself some lemonade requires no "strength" beyond this elementary level-- and neither do a variety of mundane, life-sustaining tasks-- driving a car, building a birdhouse, etc.

Admittedly, I'm more likely to use the adjectival forms I coined in the THREE-PART essay: *microdynamic,* *mesodynamic,* and *megadynamic." But the one disadvantage of these terms is that they don't lend themselves as well as do the noun-terms in some regards.

What I should have written was that the "adjectival forms" were applicable to fictional characters, and, on occasion, non-human "focal presences."  Generally speaking, only characters are microdynamic, mesodynamic, or megadynamic, and only characters are to be designated as "x-types," "y-types," or "z-types," as noted in DYNAMIS VS. DYNAMICITY.  I also used these terms to desigate the way a given character, even if he possessed "x-type/megadynamic" power as with Batman, might exert differing levels of power for different occasions, as seen at the end of THE THREE-PART HARMONY OF DYNAMICITY.

However, Kant's original use for his terms "might" and "dominance"-- from which use I extrapolated my third term, "basic strength"-- applied not to characters but to situations: generally, the manifestation of "might" in nonhuman natural phenomena.  I've repeatedly disagreed with Kant's proclivity to find sublimity only in natural forces.  Despite this disagreement, I assert that Kant's terms are elastic enough to be applied to wider use than Kant made of them-- as with respect to analyzing the *dynamis* within fictional plots.

Once again, then, I'm applying the "plot-character schism," referenced in terms of "mythoi-determination," and pressing it into the service of the "conflict and combat" distinction, if that makes things any clearer.

Patently my last few paragraphs of the previous essay applied to plots, not characters:

For instance, in my earliest discussion of "conflict and combat," I originally designated three levels of conflict. Later I simplified these to "combative" and "subcombative." Operatively, though, there is some significance to labelling some types of narrative as "noncombative." Certainly there is a mindset in some literary circles that true literary works don't deal in gauche violence. Pekar, with his kitchen-sink renditions of his own life, seems to have subscribed to this notion. In a similar vein, Northrop Frye once noted the irony that despite the popularity of Shakespeare, most later dramatists hewed more closely to the realistic example of Ben Jonson-- which means, if only in part, that this tendency eschewed the Bard's bloody-mindedness.

"Might," as situated in Kant's argument, is simply a superior force amid inferior ones. This would parallel the type of story in which there exists an anomalous force (say, the vampire Dracula) with which a group of ordinary people must contend.

"Dominance" generates a very different type of plotline, in which at least two superior forces are arrayed against one another. I'll explore this in more depth in my next essay.

I made a loose correlation between the level of "basic strength" and the overall idea of the "kitchen-sink fiction," but I don't want to imply that only modernist narratives exclude references to the sublimity-producing concepts of "might" and "dominance," though as a rule modern genre-narratives explore these concepts on a more sustained basis than do most modern would-be literary efforts.

For instance, there's no violence in the "Harvey Pekar lemonade" vignette, but it's not inconceivable that Pekar might have written of, say, some schoolyard tussle in his high school days. Had he done so, such an episode would have remained, plotwise, at the level of "basic strength," unless there were something extraordinary about the ability of one or both combatants.

Folktakes of all nations fulfilled the same basic function now assumed by genre-fiction, and many of them were, to use my earlier phrase, quite "bloody-minded."  However, there were certainly those that did not employ any sort of "might" or "dominance" in their violence, but remained at what I've called elsewhere a "functional" level.  One such tale was that of "The Bremen Town Musicians."  The story's one violent scene, occuring at the climax, is summarized on the tale's entry in Wikipedia:

Later that night, the robbers return and send one of their members in to investigate. He sees the Cat's eyes shining in the darkness and thinks he is seeing the coals of the fire. He reaches over to light his candle. Things happen in quick succession; the Cat scratches his face with her claws, the Dog bites him on the leg, the Donkey kicks him and the Rooster crows and chases him out the door, screaming. He tells his companions that he was beset by a horrible witch who scratched him with her long fingers (the Cat), an ogre with a knife (the Dog), a giant who had hit him with his club (the Donkey), and worst of all, the judge who screamed in his voice from the rooftop (the Rooster). The robbers abandon the cottage to the strange creatures who have taken it, where the animals live happily for the rest of their days.

By my lights there is nothing either "sublime" or "spectacular" about this form of violence, although there's some deliberate irony in that the robber who's been attacked by ordinary animals imagines that they were a host of powerful beings, including a witch, an ogre and a giant.

In contrast to this, we have a real witch in the Grimms' tale "Hansel and Gretel."  This tale is so well-known that I hardly need summarize its plotline, but  in it the cannibalistic witch with the candy cottage fulfills the same function of the "anomalous force" mentioned above; a force which, like Dracula, possesses such "might" that the protagonists can only overcome this antagonist through endurance and cunning.

I would generalize that most of the Grimms' folktales fall into one of these two categories, but there is at least one, semi-obscure story that qualifies as reproducing the narrative value of "dominance" in its plot, albeit with a comic touch at the end.  Again from the entry in Wikipedia for "The Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was:"

The first night, as the boy sat in his room, two voices from the corner of the room moaned into the night, complaining about the cold. The boy, unafraid, claimed that the owners of the voices were stupid to not warm themselves with the fire. Suddenly, two black cats jumped out of the corner and, seeing the calm boy, proposed a card game. The boy tricked the cats and trapped them with the cutting board and knife. Black cats and dogs emerged from every patch of darkness in the room, and the boy fought and killed each of them with his knife. Then, from the darkness, a bed appeared. He lay down on it, preparing for sleep, but it began walking all over the castle. Still unafraid, the boy urged it to go faster. The bed turned upside down on him, but the boy, unfazed, just tossed the bed aside and slept next to the fire until morning.

Most of the hero's encounters in the story are like this, where he easily bests whatever supernatural terrors attempt to strike fear in his heart.  Even at the story's comic conclusion, the protagonist still remains undefeated and never knows what it means to fear a superior power, so that the comedy of the story depends on his demonstration of Superman-like indomitability.


 Having shown how the three types of "plot-dynamicity" affect my chosen folktale-examples, I'll work my way back to current patterns of genre-fiction.


NOTE TO ANY REGULAR READERS: I revised paragraph 3 on 12-9-12 for hopefully greater clarity.

MONSTERS, DEMIHEROES, AND OTHER WILLING BEASTS

In this essay I said:

In WORLD AS WILL AND REPRESENTATION, Schopenhauer distinguishes between "intuitive" and "abstract" representations: humans share "intuitive representations" with other animals, in that they are based in the body's "percepts." But humans alone have the power to conceive "abstract representations," for humans alone can base representations in "concepts." I will use this basic opposition here, though I'll substitute "intellectual" for "abstract" purely for euphony.

A little later "instinctual" took the place of "intuitive," but I don't think I adequately explained that these representations are not inherent in the hearts and minds of the characters themselves, which is a mistake I find in the opinions of other genre-sussers cited in that essay, such as Jeff Rovin and S.C. Butler.  Rather, these Schopenhaurean representations are narrative patterns imposed upon those characters by their respective authors, irrespective of how "intellectual" or "instinctive" the characters themselves may be.

So I am not claiming that the character denoted as a hero must be intellectual, nor that the character denoted as a demihero must function by instinct alone.  The willing aspects of the characters are to be found in the narrative functions given the characters by their authors, not in the personalities of characters themselves. 

In this essay I defined Vincent Price’s character Dr. Craven as a demihero, saying that he was defined by "instinctive will."  This doesn't mean that instinct alone rules the character; rather, it rules the pattern of his narrative.  Craven is certainly more intellectual than many of the characters that qualify as heroes.  Craven is governed by “instinctive will” because even though he makes a heroic effort to oppose the villain of the story, he doesn’t become a hero.  He remains defined by his own personal goals alone, without any hint of a transcending altruism.

I’ve defined the persona of the “monster” as the generally negative counterpart of the demihero.  Usually the monster is also defined principally by self-preservation, whether the creature is destructive on a large scale (Godzilla) or covets some forbidden prize (King Kong).  Self-preservation and endurance also typify even benign monsters, like Man-Thing, of whom I said in D IS FOR DEMIHERO PT 3: 

A comics-series like MAN-THING portrays its monstrous protagonist doing good not as a conscious act but in response to instinctive tendencies. 

 

And yet there are monsters who do good as a conscious act.  A prominent example is the Incredible Hulk.  In Peter Coogan’s 2006 SUPERHERO: THE SECRET ORIGIN OF A GENRE—referenced here—he denies that Buffy the Vampire Slayer can be a superhero due to his method of “genre exclusion.”  Yet he doesn’t disallow the Incredible Hulk from superherodom despite that character’s clear alliances to the horror-genre.  And he’s correct in the latter instance.  The Hulk, though a character with no more than a brutish intelligence, exemplifies the same “intellectual will” in his narrative function, in that his authors emphasize that he makes conscious choices to battle evil.  While there are various stories in which the Hulk himself proves an unwitting menace to humanity, it’s far more typical to see him engaged in combat with outright villain-antagonists. The Hulk even has a "rogues' gallery," which is atypical for the majority of monsters of purely kenotic orientation.

The greatest exception are those serials in which a monster is drafted to become a hero in terms of plot-function, even though the monster retains the kenotic *character* of a monster.

Some examples include the 1966 KING KONG kid-cartoon:

Not to be outdone, several of Japan's Godzilla films from Toho Studios also cast the Big G in the unlikely role of Earth's protector.  In GODZILLA VS. MEGALON the Zillinator even allies himself with Jet Jaguar, one of the many progeny of UltraMan, in the battle to save Earth.

Toho's competitor Daiei Studios went even further in "super-heroizing" their monster Gamera.  After just one film in which the giant super-turtle proved a menace to mankind, every other film cast him as a heroic monster who acquired a "rogues' gallery" of mostly one-shot menaces.  A later revival even gave Gamera a backstory to explain why he was so darn beneficial.

Hanna-Barbera revisited the "hero-monster" idea in the 1978 GODZILLA TV-cartoon.  To be sure, though every episode Godzilla had to pit his reptillian righteousness against the Monster of the Week, at least the writers kept the sense that Godzilla was a big irritable beastie rather than a crusading hero.  He only protected the show's human regulars inadvertently, because his son "Godzooky" hung out with these mediocrities and the Big G had to put the welfare of his family above any possible preferences to fry the humans like so many ants beneath a magnifying glass.

So are of these permutations of respectable monster-personas "heroes?"  Only if one prioritizes the *dynamis* of plot over the *dynamis* of character.  I first established the separability of plot-dynamis from character-dynamis in KNOWING THE DYNAMIS FROM THE DYNAMIC, but my fullest examination as to this sort of division appeared in RISING AND FALLING STARS.  Examples here focused purely on the opposition of the "adventure mythos" to the "drama mythos," so that:

Observations include:

STAR WARS serves as an unreserved example of the "pure adventure," in which both plot and characters evoke the dynamis of adventure.

...in STARGATE the mythos of drama pervades the plotting of the series, overshadowing characters who would otherwise fit adventure-archetypes.

Another negative example, but one in which the mythos of drama dominates the characters rather than the plot, would be the 1978-80 versions of BATTLESTAR: GALACTICA. The plot, in which noble humans repeatedly faced the menace of Cylon invaders, clearly takes inspiration from STAR WARS, but the characters lack the *dynamis* of the adventure-mythos, tending toward drama in its manifestation of "melodrama." 

DC Comics' STARMAN, in most of the iterations of the franchise, has usually been a "pure adventure." However, the Starman introduced by James Robinson, whose continuing series ran from 1994-2001, exemplifies the type in which the plot is the main source of the adventure-dynamis.

My final example must be one in which characters with the adventure-*dynamis* override a plot with a dramatic emphasis. My choice here is the 1978 American STAR BLAZERS, adapted from the Japanese anime TV-series SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO (which I have not seen in its original form). 

I didn't give an example in which both plot-dynamis and character-dynamis were both aligned to the drama.  But in other essays I have mentioned Classic STAR TREK as one such, so I include it to fill in that space for symmetry's sake.

I mention all these mythoi-examples because I propose the same ambivalence applies to the narrative "persona-patterns."  King Kong, Gamera and Godzilla may follow the plots of heroes in these assorted works, but I assert that in terms of fundamental character they still represent "instinctive will," while the not much more intelligent Hulk represents "intellectual will."  So the Hulk does make that hypothetical "wiki-list of all superhero works that fall into the adventure mythos," mentioned in RISING, while the three big honking monsters cited would still fit the persona of the "monster" rather than that of the "hero."

RISING AND FALLING STARS

At the onset of this essay I wrote:

Q: When is a superhero not a superhero?

A: When the *dynamis* expressed by either the plot-functions or character-functions within the corpus of a given superhero's exploits is not commensurate with those characteristic of the pure adventure mythos, aligning rather with another mythos, such as that of irony, drama or comedy.

Many fans would not find that answer either funny (which it isn't supposed to be) or intriguing (which it is).  Not a few would see no point in slicing and dicing the qualities of what makes superheroes run, much less superheroes across different mythoi (or as those fans would doubtless call them, "genres.") 

I do have a point, of course.  Having evolved my own definitions for what does and does not belong in the superhero idiom, I find it encumbent on me to formulate reasons as to why I assign a given work in one category or another.  Anything else would be mere whim, assignable to Kant's notion of "agreeability" rather than rational judgment.

And then, of course, there's always the additional motivation of having made a wrong judgment in the past oneself.

In this essay I wrote near the conclusion:

...in my "Defining the Superhero" article for COMICS INTERPRETER, I toyed with the notion that Paul Atreides of DUNE might technically fall within the range of the superhero idiom, albeit one in the *mythos* of drama rather than the more normative adventure *mythos.*

The above recap is an oversimplification of what I wrote in the INTERPRETER article.  I didn't actually bring up any of the complexities of the Fryean mythoi in that article, so I didn't differentiate him from, say, Superman in that respect.  Back then I only focused on arriving at a fundamental definition of the superhero as a type of hero associated with the metaphenomenal, though back in 2002 I was still a long way from positing the NUM theory.  Only later would I define DUNE as a drama, albeit a drama in an agonistic mode (term defined here).

Similar questions of categorization arose in the three-part essay series ADVENTURE-COMEDY VS. COMEDY-ADVENTURE, from which the above Q/A was taken.  In all of these essays I contrasted an example of some superhero-ish work in which "elements" of either comedy or adventure predominated, though I usually didn't break down the elements specifically, as the first quote specifies, into those of either plot or character.  I did do so in this essay, analyzing DOCTOR WHO and STARGATE, but those were both negative examples, works that did not fall into my category of the "pure adventure."

The usefulness of the plot/character dichotomy in that essay impacts on my intention to make my categorization process as rigorous as possible.  For instance, if I wish to make a wiki-list of all superhero works that fall into the adventure mythos, that list would consist of:

All works of "pure adventure" (in which both plot and character clearly evoke adventurous *dynamis*

Works in which the plot alone conveys the adventurous *dynamis* and overrides the character-*dynamis*, which belongs to another mythos

Works in which the characters alone convey the adventurous *dynamis* and override the plot-*dynamis*, which belongs to another mythos

As per my remarks on DUNE, often two of the most easily intertwined mythoi are that of adventure and that of drama.  Therefore I'll now cite five examples of works in which (a) adventure dominates plot and character, (b) drama dominates plot or character, and (c) adventure dominates plot or character.  Since in KNOWNING THE DYNAMICS FROM THE DYNAMIC I used the TV franchise STARGATE as a negative example, it amused me to have all five examples "follow a star."

STAR WARS serves as an unreserved example of the "pure adventure," in which both plot and characters evoke the dynamis of adventure.  One can certainly detect elements of drama, comedy and even irony in the film-series (much as I did with four other franchises in this essay).  But few would debate that STAR WARS is first and foremost an adventure film-series, though naturally many would not agree with my assigning Luke Skywalker to the superheroic idiom.


As noted above I've already given a negative example, so I'll recapitulate what I said about STARGATE in KNOWING:

Over time the first serial and its epigoni took on an increasing resemblance to the "starship melodramas" of the STAR TREK franchise. I don't think STARGATE was ever as much about what Faulkner called "the human heart in conflict with itself," as all of the TREKshows have arguably been. But in the STARGATE franchise the adventure-mythos became somewhat dennatured. I view this as a lack of heroic *dynamis* within the overall plot-structure, rather than within the concept of the characters

So in STARGATE the mythos of drama pervades the plotting of the series, overshadowing characters who would otherwise fit adventure-archetypes.

Another negative example, but one in which the mythos of drama dominates the characters rather than the plot, would be the 1978-80 versions of BATTLESTAR: GALACTICA.  The plot, in which noble humans repeatedly faced the menace of Cylon invaders, clearly takes inspiration from STAR WARS, but the characters lack the *dynamis* of the adventure-mythos, tending toward drama in its manifestation of "melodrama." 

Thus neither STARGATE nor the first BATTLESTAR: GALACTICA make it onto my master list (one shouldn't even have to ask about the second GALACTICA, a "pure drama" in all respects).

On to positive examples that *would* make my hypothetical list:

DC Comics' STARMAN, in most of the iterations of the franchise, has usually been a "pure adventure."  However, the Starman introduced by James Robinson, whose continuing series ran from 1994-2001, exemplifies the type in which the plot is the main source of the adventure-dynamis.  Jack Knight, the serial's hero, is from the first framed as an eternally reluctant fighter, who ends the series by getting out of the superhero business and embracing family life.  This *dynamis* fits the archetypal characters of drama more than adventure, but Robinson is largely successful in using the characters' dramatic arcs to ramp up the spirit of adventure, as opposed to its negative example, STARGATE, in which dramatic plots dominates adventurous characters.

My final example must be one in which characters with the adventure-*dynamis* override a plot with a dramatic emphasis.  My choice here is  the 1978 American STAR BLAZERS, adapted from the Japanese anime TV-series SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO (which I have not seen in its original form).  Like GALACTICA, most of the story took place aboard a ship with a multitudinous crew, which of course was exploited for melodramatic plot-developments.  However, in contrast to GALACTICA, the heroics of main characters Derek Wildstar and Mark Venture against the formidable "Leader Desslock" received far more emphasis than any of the melodramatic situations aboard ship.  Like many Japanese anime of the period, STAR BLAZERS taps a vein of world-weariness that may stem from Japanese culture's reactions to postwar anomie.  Nevertheless, even if the main heroes are not quite as uncompromised as Luke Skywalker, their *dynamis* is allied to that of those space-opera heroes who conform to the superheroic idiom.

I realize that these five examples by themselves would not be sufficient to prove my case.  I believe that I could make a full-fledged textual analysis of plot and character motifs in all five works that would so prove it.  But that would be an undertaking too complex for a blogpost, and detractors would simply disregard sustained critical analysis if it did not lead to some preformed conclusion, like the popular "Superheroes are fascist," which still comes up from time to time.  Given those circumstances, I'm content to let this argument rest with no more than an outline of my methodology.

ADVENTURE/COMEDY VS. COMEDY/ADVENTURE, PART 1

Riddle me this:

Q: When is a superhero not a superhero?

A: When the *dynamis* expressed by either the plot-functions or character-functions within the corpus of a given superhero's exploits is not commensurate with those characteristic of the pure adventure mythos, aligning rather with another mythos, such as that of irony, drama or comedy.

So the riddle's answer isn't funny. Maybe it would sound better if one imagines Burt Ward reading it from a Batcomputer printout, though.

Back in this essay I stressed the problematic status of two similarly-themed television serials, DOCTOR WHO and STARGATE. Both serials made strong use of the *dynamis* typical of the adventure mythos, which in large part stresses the radical of the *agon,* a seriously-toned battle between good and evil whose outcome symbolically re-invigorates the society within the diegesis as well as the reader's simulated experience of that invigoration.

In that essay I concluded that neither DOCTOR WHO nor STARGATE fit the adventure-mythos, the one because it lacked the *dynamis* appropriate to the typical adventure-mythos character, and the other because it lacked the *dynamis*
appropriate to the typical adventure-mythos plot. As such they are outside the superhero idiom as such, one best filed under the portmanteau category "comedy-adventure" and the other under "drama-adventure."

Having said that, though, how much comedy can infiltrate an adventure-story before it ceases being an adventure?

It's true that DOCTOR WHO is not a comedy in the sense of constantly making viewers laugh. At times the situations in many episodes can seem extremely grim. However, I do find that dominantly WHO tends to present its audience with the incongruity of massive alien legions and monsters being undone by the waspish Doctor. Thus, I find WHO closer to the mythos of comedy, which stresses incongruity rather than the serious results of combat, in keeping with Northrop Frye's pronouncement that not every comedy need be funny. (I've noted some of my disagreements with Frye on this subject elsewhere, and I do think that comedies are dominantly defined by their humor, even though not every comedy approaches humor as intensively as the dominant type.)

Now, what should one make of the two 1960s artifacts above?

Clearly the specific images used above were meant to make audiences laugh. But did both share the *dynamis* of both plot and character characteristic of the pure comedy?

In the case of THE INFERIOR FIVE, E. Nelson Bridwell's borscht-belt paean to silly superheroes, I would say yes. Even though the five goofy heroes have power, and even sometimes manage to win battles, the characters are all defined by traits incongruous to the typical notion of the hero. The Blimp is slow, White Feather is cowardly, Merryman is weak, Awkwardman is awkward, and Dumb Bunny is so dumb (HOW DUMB IS SHE?) that she thinks a polar cap is something to keep her head warm.

(Joke stolen from Gardner Fox just for sake of variety)

The plots of INFERIOR FIVE, too, are clearly meant to stress incongruity over agonic action. I noted above that the heroes sometimes do win battles, but generally it's out of sheer dumb luck rather than through skill. At the end of one representative issue of INFERIOR FIVE, a villain hooks the captured heroes up to a machine designed to siphon off their powers and give them to one of the villain's henchmen. Instead the machine works in reverse, siphoning off the heroes' weaknesses so that, for two pages, they become super-capable at kicking the hell out of the villain and his henchmen. This scene pretty much defines how the elements of adventure are subordinated to those of comedy.

But can one make the same claim about the 1966-68 BATMAN teleseries?

Adam West once defended the series against the attacks of comics-fans by claiming that the absurdities the show depicted weren't substantially different from those of the current comic-book adventures of Batman (who, in case anyone's wondering, DOES fit the criterion of pure adventure no matter how many times he had adventures with Bat-Mite).

West was both wrong and right. He was wrong in equating the two serials in that the camp-flavored teleseries couldn't switch gears as the comic book series could. There was no place in the teleseries for a story of ratiocinative detection or a "Robin Dies at Dawn."

However, West was right in a way I doubt he suspected. That is, no matter how many absurdities the BATMAN TV-series presented, the characters believed in them, as if being threatened by a giant Frostee-Freezee death-trap were the height of high seriousness. Indeed, the "Batusi" scene from the serial's first episode, while amusing, is one of the few times West's Batman broke character. In his biography West stated that at first he wanted to do the scene in a clownish manner, but that he was persuaded that he should affect a "straight" approach to the Batusi scene in keeping with the "camp" aesthetic. However, though the scene does avoid the level of the pure pratfall, it doesn't quite succeed, as did most later episodes, of keeping Batman serious while all about him was absurdity.

For this reason I consider the BATMAN teleseries, if not "pure adventure," to be a hybrid form in which the *dynamis* of adventure dominates over that of comedy, though clearly comedy's elements are in fuller play here than in most other iterations of BATMAN.

Because the heroes seem genuinely threatened by bizarre villains and death-traps, both plot and character validate the power of the adventure-mythos even while managing to keep the comic elements in play. This is why, even for later generations of kids not yet jaded enough to laugh at Batman, the series can still excite and fascinate them, precisely because even with the giant OOFS and WHAPS, the invigorating thrill of the agon still predominates.

KNOWING THE DYNAMIS FROM THE DYNAMIC

DYNAMIC (noun): An interactive system or process, especially one involving competing or conflicting forces.

"The plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy; Character holds the second place."-- Aristotle, POETICS.

The "interactive system" of conflicting forces I'll discuss here are "plot" and "character," which Aristotle deems the two most important elements of "tragedy." Certain sections of the POETICS imply that the dynamic between the two applies to other forms of art as well, so I see no barrier to the idea of applying the dynamic to all narrative art, with the caveat that plot may not *always* be more significant than character: just that it is dominantly so because the plot is so often the structure within which the characters' acts are determined, rather than the characters imposing "their" will upon the structure.

In keeping with Aristotle's privileging of plot, Frye's formulation of literary categories is dominantly based upon plot-elements shared by works in the same category. At the same time, it should be noted that one of Aristotle's earliest points in the Poetics-- one which Frye reiterates and reformulates-- is that characters act within the plot according to expectations set up by their power of action, which connotes whether they are average, better than average, or worse than average. So even within Aristotelian theory it's easy to see plot and character joined in an interdependent pas de deux. Thus, despite the natural inclination toward plot-evaluation, the evaluation of character has unquestionable relevance if one desires to separate the dancers and see what each contributes to the dance.

In BUFFY THE MYTHOS SLAYER, my argument was largely plot-based. I focused on the plot dynamics of the BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER TV series as a means of demonstrating why I believed that it was best placed in the category of the "adventure" mythos, even though the series also demonstrated that it contained substantial elements of the other three *mythoi*: of drama, irony, and comedy. I also made brief mentions of three other serial works which each represented one of the other three *mythoi*, and compared some of their plot-functions to those of BUFFY. These, too, I discussed in terms of how the protagonists functioned within plots typical of those *mythoi.*

However, after I examined the concept I term "myth-radicals" in SUBCATEGORIAL IMPERATIVES, and discerned that there were certain subcategories within these four divisions, it further occured to me that many of the irregularities could be explained as irregularites of either plot or character with respect to the dominant dynamic of a given mythos. As mentioned earlier I chose to focus upon the adventure mythos because (as I can't stress too much) so little of worth has been written about it, but I think my mediations on categories and subcategories apply across the board to all four mythoi.

Explanatory preamble done, I move on to two specific examples of works that seem to belong to the adventure genre but which I label "subagonistic" because they have what I called a "less agonistic value." Here for the first time I'm explicating why the difference may be one either of plot or of character.

My example for character is DOCTOR WHO, as portrayed in his initial 1963-89 series and in the current BBC version. (I disinclude the American-made TV-movie because I just don't remember much about it.) Clearly, in terms of the general range of plots used on both serials, one would tend to believe that it falls within the category of adventure. Like BUFFY, DOCTOR WHO borrows liberally from other *mythoi," most obviously from that of the comedy. But since the generic WHO plot would probably boil down to something like "Those Damn Dirty Colonial Alien Overlords," it's obvious that elements of physical peril take precedence over the dynamizations of the other three *mythoi.*

Yet against the galaxy-spanning might of Sontarans, Cybermen and Daleks we get...

THIS GUY.

In DOMINANCE, SUBMISSION I concluded with another comparison of Haggard's SHE and KING SOLOMON'S MINES, with the verdict that KSM was a true agonistic work due to its focus on the heroes' winning their battle through armed combat and perservance, while the heroes of SHE, despite a certain formidable nature, basically "get lucky" because their opponent destroys herself. The Doctor is typically portrayed by a male actor who is, for one reason or another, not meant to resemble the typical he-man of adventure-fiction, which is one element that signals the serial's intent to avoid the pattern of dynamization set by those more typical stories. The Doctor, though, does not triumph over his many foes solely by luck-- though on many occasions he is considerably outgunned, and luck is at times invoked as a force that keeps him from being vaporized. But typically, the Doctor fights his foes with the centuries-spanning knowledge of a Time Lord, not with martial abilities. His doctrine is *froda,* not *forza.* This puts him very close to the territory of the typical dramatic protagonist of mainstream science fiction, but in the end DOCTOR WHO is still about external peril rather than internal instabilities, and so it still falls within the category of the adventure mythos, for all that its protagonist lacks the *dynamis* of an adventure protagonist.

Moving on to STARGATE, the comparison of the two strikes me as felicitious, since when I first saw the 1994 feature films I thought of its "colonist alien overlords" plot as being "Doctor Who without the humor." And its plot, too, seems to belong to the category of adventure by virtue of the emphasis on physical peril, while its characters, unlike Doctor Who, are definitely typical agents of *forza:* gun-toting American soldiers and their alien allies who are out to clean up the territories dominated by various overlords-in-gods'-clothing. Indeed, one of the articles in the essay-collection SUPER/HEROES:FROM HERCULES TO SUPERMAN even refers to the star of the first TV series, the Richard Dean Anderson character, as a "superhero."

Yet I find it hard to see these rather unremarkable soldier-boys (and girls) as belonging to the idiom of the superhero.
I considered that this might simply be a matter of taste-- the fact that I didn't care that much for the movie and less for the TV show(s)-- but I dismissed that idea. I'm aware of many, many unremarkable protagonists whom I do see as belonging to that idiom, who possess roughly the same *dynamis* as the STARGATE soldier-boys. To use two othe SYFY-channel serials as counterexamples, I'm not hugely fond of the characters on either SANCTUARY or WAREHOUSE 13. But I can see both of them as having stronger ties to the superhero idiom, even if the heroes are not superheroes per se.

My final verdict, then, is that there's something about the execution of the generic STARGATE plot that edges a little too far out of the bounds of the adventure-story and into those of the dramatic story with adventure-elements. Over time the first serial and its epigoni took on an increasing resemblance to the "starship melodramas" of the STAR TREK franchise. I don't think STARGATE was ever as much about what Faulkner called "the human heart in conflict with itself," as all of the TREKshows have arguably been. But in the STARGATE franchise the adventure-mythos became somewhat dennatured. I view this as a lack of heroic *dynamis* within the overall plot-structure, rather than within the concept of the characters, as it is for DOCTOR WHO.

As I've said before, this basic rule of character-irregularities and plot-irregularities would apply across the board to the other three categories and their subcategories. At present I don't think it's possible for *both* plot and character(s) to be irregular and still deserve to be labeled a part of the regular mythos. For instance, a DOCTOR WHO without the adventurous plot-elements would probably look something more like HITCHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, and so would be more properly termed a comedy.