SELF-MASTERY MEDITATIONS PT. 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MASKED MASTERMINDS AND SPECIOUS SPECTRES PT. 3

At the end of Part 2 I stated that the power to create illusions was a definite power, although one should deem it to be of a different order than the ability to directly affect physical objects or entities. 

The specific example cited in Part 2 were the assorted "specious spectres" of the cartoon teleseries SCOOBY DOO, WHERE ARE YOU?  In my essay WHEN FUNNY ANIMALS ATTACK I went through some pains to specify that the basic concept of the series, in which some mystery-solving teens pal around with a talking dog, aligns the series with the domain of the marvelous.  The talking dog trumps the villains, who are aligned with the uncanny trope I termed "outré outfits skills and devices."  If there had been no talking dog in the series, then the show would have been uncanny, based on the dominant motif of said villains.

The studio Hanna Barbera produced many imitations of SCOOBY DOO's mystery-solving teens, and almost all of them also fall into the marvelous phenomenality. The well-remembered JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS (1970-71) went SCOOBY DOO one better in the department of marvel-making: borrowing more from H-B's own JONNY QUEST than from the "haunted house" comedy-mysteries of Hollywood, the globe-trotting Pussycats continually encountered evil masterminds (usually not masked) rather than schemers pretending to be spooks.  That said, JOSIE still kept up its quota for intelligent animals, as the cast included a devious feline, one Sebastian, who couldn't talk but did a number of un-cat-like things, like opening locks with his claws.

The closest thing Hanna-Barbera did to an series without marvels seems to be THE AMAZING CHAN AND THE CHAN CLAN (1972).  Perhaps because the series' main idea was to focus on the famed detective's large brood of offspring, there was just one comical animal, the dog Chu Chu. However, as memory serves he neither talked nor acted like a human being; he was closer to the model of Bandit in JONNY QUEST, in that he was for the most part a "real" dog.  As for the villains, they were cut from a more mundane cloth than SCOOBY's, but at least some of them did dress up in weird costumes and chase the kids around a little before ultimately getting caught in slapstick fashion.

None of these series register as "combative" in that there is no opposition between two exceptional types of power, as stated in THE NECESSITY OF SPECTACLE:

in the past year I've formulated the idea of "the combative mode" as one that exists exclusively where at least two exceptional-- or "megadynamic"-- forces come into conflict, thus producing Kantian dominance

The "specious spectres" of SCOOBY, CHAN CLAN, and various other ghost-chasing comedy-cartoons might not have a lot of power-- that is, they would be on the lower, "exemplary" level of the "x-type."  Ncvertheless, as long as their opponents were at least on that same level, then one would have a combative narrative.  However, because these cartoons were inspired by comedies in which the protagonists generally won out through luck rather than might or skill, the casts of SCOOBY DOO and that show's imitators were usually what I've denoted as "z-types," ranging from "poor" to "average' levels of dynamicity.

What would a combative version of the SCOOBY DOO template look like? If the heroes were exceptional naturalistic fighters, they would provide a megadynamic force able to contend directly with the uncanny menaces.  The 2002 SCOOBY DOO live-action film toyed with upgrading the characters of Fred and Daphne in this regard.  However, the sequel to that film did not emphasize this element, nor did any of the three Scooby Doo teleseries that followed the first film. 

The famous "Hardy Boys" book series might come closer to the mark, given that the main heroes were usually described as above-average combatants. However, I don't know whether or not the majority of the books-- which came out in many different editions-- would qualify as uncanny or as naturalistic.

Strangely, Hanna-Barbera produced a 1977 teleseries that had all the makings for a combative series in the SCOOBY mold, in that the show's uncanny spectres were caught by a marvelous being with a good deal more dynamicity than a talking dog.  This series, the incredibly inept CAPTAIN CAVEMAN AND THE TEEN ANGELS, featured a superhero caveman with real if erratic super-powers, who was constantly talked into solving crimes by his three hot-babe partners. However, there was no combat in the series between the goofball caveman and his adversaries. Rather, the villains were usually corralled through some slapstick device, just as in SCOOBY DOO. Thus this series-- which, I will note, wins my award for one of the most mind-numbingly awful American telecartoons of all time-- is no more combative than the series discussed in this essay, TEEN TITANS GO. The latter also substitutes goofy slapstick for even a comic version of martial combat, though happily, with far less excruciating effects.

MASKED MASTERMINDS AND SPECIOUS SPECTRES PT. 2

In Part 1, I said, "the common purpose of both the "masterminds" and the "spectres" is to create narrative tension, which is generally resolved at each story's climax when the villain/ghost is unmasked."

Despite that similarity, there's a pertinent disconnect between the two figures. Unmasking removes the mastermind's power, while it removes the spectre's appearance of power.

 

Most masked criminal masterminds don't share the agility of the villainous Bat (seen sans mask above), but they do have power, usually mainifested through the agency of gangs of henchmen or super-weapons. 

The character of Fantomas from 1911 was one of the first of this breed to circulate in early 20th-century pop culture, and the type, as noted in the previous essay, was particularly popular in serial films.  Most of the figures from silent serials are unknown save to buffs, though one, the Clutching Hand, was translated to a 1936 chapterplay. Many sound serials are replete with dozens of colorful masterminds-- the Crimson Ghost, Captain Mephisto, Doctor Satan, the Spider-- many of whom are more interesting than the films' nominal heroes.

In contrast, the spectre who pretends to be a ghost, a vampire, a mummy or whatever usually has no real power but that of illusion.  In Part 1 I also opined that "I tend to doubt that the specific trope of plotters pretending to be ghosts sustains much popularity in the prose or the cinema of these days, with the exception of SCOOBY DOO cartoons."  And whatever one thinks of said cartoons, the original 25 episodes of SCOOBY DOO WHERE ARE YOU-- unlike many later incarnations, that brought in real ghosts, zombies, et al-- always kept faith with the same basic idea.

The Mystery Inc. teens investigate rumors of a monster.

The monster appears, scares them with its ferocious looks and tries to chase them away, usually twice in each episode.

The teens set some trap for the monster, which succeeds in spite of much slapstick hilarity, and the monster generally turns out to be a man or woman in a monster-suit.

Rarely if ever do the crusading teens-- who are heroic in their intentions, if not their dynamicity-- turn and try to overpower the monster by force of numbers.  Often when the malefactors are revealed, they look about as powerful as Grandma Moses. But the cartoon's entire raison d'etre was to offer mild thrills seasoned with slapstick comedy, so the show emphasized not "the fight" but "the chase," "the trap," and "the crime-solving summation."

One may dismiss the "specious spectres" as a worn-out contrivance, but to judge from their popularity in bygone days, they served a psychological purpose that contrasts with the pleasures of the more overt horror films of the sound era. In these comedy-Gothics, monsters were all puffed-up illusions, and no doubt the mature audiences that watched THE CAT AND THE CANARY or THE SMILING GHOST enjoyed that comforting thought as much as did any and all kids who enjoyed Scooby Doo.
But as I noted in THE PHENOMENALITY OF PSYCHOS, even illusion does have a power of sorts, which I'll discuss in Part 3.

MASKED MASTERMINDS AND SPECIOUS SPECTRES

Other serials like THE GRAY GHOST, WHO IS NUMBER ONE?, [etc.] and dozens of others all had either mysterious heroes or villains. Occasionally they had both.-- Jim Steranko, HISTORY OF COMICS, vol. 1.

At the end of GHOSTS AMERICAN STYLE I alluded to one such "mysterious villain," the character of the Bat, who first appeared in a 1920 play by Mary Robert Rinehart and Avery Hopwood. I reviewed the first two silent film-adaptations of the play here, noting that one, the other, or both may have had some impact upon the creation of the much more famous Batman. My interest in THE BAT concept is both historical and narratological.  The silent film versions follow the pattern Steranko sees in serial films of the same period, with their use of mystery-villains. Since I'm no expert on this period, I'd be curious to know the general nature of these figures. Were they, like the Bat, "masked masterminds" who are the ancestors of modern super-villains, whose motives are from the first clearly aimed at gaining money and/or power?  Or were any of them "specious spectres," who are initially ambivalent to the reader as to whether they're real spooks-- or at least, madmen, like the evildoer in the 1922 John Willard play THE CAT AND THE CANARY (whose 1939 adaptation I reviewed here.)

If the Bat is one of the ancestors of modern super-villains-- who admittedly graduated from the trivia of robbing Old Dark Houses-- the basic pattern of "the Cat" is derived from Gothic fiction.  Ann Radcliffe's 1791 novel THE ROMANCE OF THE FOREST is among the earliest Gothics to explain the supposedly supernatural events of the story, though I have not read it and its summaries do not allude to any "specious spectres." The earliest kindred of the Cat that I've personally read both hail from 1909: Gaston Leroux's THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA and Bram Stoker's THE LADY OF THE SHROUD,.  Gothic fiction had a huge influence upon the history of horror fiction generally, but I tend to doubt that the specific trope of plotters pretending to be ghosts sustains much popularity in the prose or the cinema of these days, with the exception of SCOOBY DOO cartoons.

Regardless, the common purpose of both the "masterminds" and the "spectres" is to create narrative tension, which is generally resolved at each story's climax when the villain/ghost is unmasked.  The unmasking-angle may have lapsed as much in adventure-stories as in horror-fiction, and has probably become more confined to mystery-detective fiction as such.

In a future essay I'll deal with the impact of such figures upon my literary concept of dynamicity and its relation to the combative mode.

WHEN FUNNY ANIMALS ATTACK

Technically the words "funny animal" could be used for real-life critters who perform amusing stunts, like the contenders in Dave Letterman's "Stupid Pet Tricks." But it's generally used as it is in this Wiki-page: to signify creatures who are anthropomorphic in some way.

One variety is the fully humanized animal, who regularly walks on two legs, may wear clothes like a human, and who frequently interacts with cartoon versions of human beings.

Another type behaves in some ways like an amimal, and usually walks (or flies, or swims) as its real-world counterpart does. However, at any time such types can "take a break" and do identifiably human things.

They may do nothing more than think coherent thoughts, like the titular star of Disney's 1964 film THE THREE LIVES OF THOMASINA.

They may imitate only a few human actions, like standing on two legs. as Garfield often does. A
related but more outrageous type like Snoopy doesn't regularly wear clothes but can don them whenever he wants to take on another identity.

Some continue to go on all fours but can talk like-- and even to-- human beings, a la Scooby-Doo.

It's clear that in a purely technical sense, all of these types fall into the phenomenal category I call "the marvelous."  And yet it's clear from my studies of other compendia of metaphenomenal films that often this species of marvelous phenomenon is given a "pass." To my knowledge no such compendium has ever included 1972's SNOOPY, COME HOME, in spite of its walking, coherent-thinking "funny animal."  Similarly, in the essay ON FAIRY STORIES, Tolkien's great examination of the nature of fantasy, he excluded animal fables like those of Aesop from his realm of faerie.

I can well understand Tolkien's reticence. Features in which the characters look like humanized animals but essentially act like human beings generally fail to transmit what Tolkien called the "arresting strangeness" of fantasy. Mickey Mouse animated cartoons may at least have the mouse doing impossible things, but the Floyd Gottfredson comic strip was more like a rural comedy-adventure that just happened to star humanized mice, horses, etc. The erotic anthropomorphic comic book OMAHA CAT DANCER only rarely referenced the animal natures of the characters, whose adventures usually fell into the realm of soap-operatic melodrama.

It's as if funny animals have a certain "invisibility" in certain contexts: they're so obviously stand-ins for human beings that one doesn't think of them as "marvels" at all. I'm tempted to regard some of them, like the casts of OMAHA and  the MICKEY MOUSE comic strip as belonging to the naturalistic version of my narrative trope "delirious dreams and fallacious fantasies." However, to qualify as a "fallacious fantasy," the fantasy would have to be a phenomenon that was simply a departure from the work's diegetic "reality" that the audience was not expected to take seriously. An example of this would be the animated "Pink Panther" from the live-action PINK PANTHER films, who may comments upon, but is not involved in, the "reality" of those movie narratives.

In conclusion, I can only note that although many funny-animal works technically belong to the category of the marvelous, they often evoke so little of the affects of wonder and strangeness that they almost constitute an "attack" on their own domain.