HERO VS. VILLAIN, MONSTER VS. VICTIM PART 3

"Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall."-- Milton, PARADISE LOST, Book 3.

In Part 2 of this series I expatiated for a bit on this concept:

I argued that Schopenhauer's term "objective" compared well with both the irony and the drama-- and thus with Freud's so-called "reality principle"-- and the term "subjective" could be aligned with the adventure and the comedy, and thus with the "pleasure principle." But what's the nature of the disagreement in the heterogenous forms, "irony" and "comedy?"

The nature as I express it is summed up by the different metaphors of "hero vs. villain" (pleasure principle) and "monster vs. victim" (the reality principle).

After meditating on the matter off and on over the past few months, I've decided that my metaphors were too narrowly chosen for the sake of holding symmetry with the Schopenhaurean formulas.  I don't necessarily dismiss my comparisons with Schopenhauer, but it now seems to me that my primary model ought to be what the stories do first, and their comparisons with the gloomy philosopher second-- even though early on I noted that said philosopher is a key influence on my overall literary theory.

The "vs." reference in my essay-title does have Schopenhauerean implications insofar as I believe that all fiction can be boiled down struggles of the will, however one may choose to define the term. 

An important point I overlooked, though, is that in every such conflict, narrative sympathy always flows in the direction of the characters-- whether "focal" or merely "viewpoint" types-- whom the audience regards as "life-supporting" in some way, and against those deemed to be "life-defeating" in whatever manner.

In "plerotic" narratives, it's a basic given that the forces of life will win the most significant struggles, whether they do so through *agonic* effort or through *incognitive* good fortune.

In "kenotic" narratives, it's a given that the forces of life will lose the most significant struggles, whether they do so under the sway of *pathetic* or *sparagmotic* forces.

Because I've meditated somewhat on the factor of narrative sympathy, I'm discarding the "reversal" metaphors I used in Part 2.  Now my metaphorical summations of the four Fryean mythoi read like so:

ADVENTURE= "hero vs. villain"
DRAMA= "hero vs. monster"
IRONY= "victim vs. monster"
COMEDY= "victim vs. villain"


This arrangement has the advancement of making clearer that "hero" and "victim" are the life-affirming forces in all four pairings, while "monster" and "villain" are the "life-denying forces.

There's not been a lot of fan-debate about the differences between "heroes" and "victims" because the two seem separated by an abyss of power; one presumes that a "victim" must normally be a disempowered character.  Yet as I've stated in earlier essays, comic and ironic characters aren't necessarily less powerful overall than those of adventure and drama.  What separates them is not lacking power to save themselves, but lacking *stature.*  For the time being I will assume that this point has been made clear in the essay STATURE REQUIREMENTS.

In contrast, there has been a fair amount of debate on the difference between "monsters" and "villains," not because all of these character-types really *are* similarly powered but because we tend to think only of those that possess excessive dynamicity. 

For instance, author Jeff Rovin attempted to separate the two concepts in terms of their usage in fantasy-oriented fiction for his two comics-oriented encyclopedias: THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF VILLAINS and THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MONSTERS.  I won't discuss Rovin's definitions of the two terms at length because I feel that in practice he contradicts himself repeatedly in his applications, but in short, Rovin emphasizes emotive quality.  Villains, he says, are often "sadistic," while monsters are "terrifying" to some character in the story or the audience but may lack any "malevolence."

I found a more persuasive argument on this site, authored by one S.C. Butler:

What is the difference between a villain and a monster, anyway? To my thinking, a villain is someone who chooses to be evil. (Or, if that’s not morally relativistic enough for you, who chooses to oppose the aims and goals of the hero for the sake of narrative tension and structure in theme and plot.) There has to be a conscious decision on the villain’s part to do things that are to his benefit, and others’ detriment. It has to be a rational choice.
Monsters, on the other hand, are just doing what comes naturally. They’re forces of nature. They do what they have to do, what is essential to their being. They have no choice in the matter, no more than a hurricane has choice. Monsters just are.

I can think of possible exceptions to these categories even as I can with Rovin's.  For one, I look upon the Martians of H.G. Wells THE WAR OF THE WORLDS more as "monsters" than as "villains," even though textually they are supposed to be intelligent aliens capable of a rational choice between good and evil.  In Butler's view, this would make them villains, the same way his example of Tolkien's Sauron is a villain.  Yet to me the Martians seem less like discrete, responsible entities than like a ravening plague.

I've also long thought, in line with my Milton quote above, that there is an element of choice one associates with villains: that they are "sufficient to stand" but that they "choose to fall," much like Milton's own uber-villain Satan.  Many monsters do not seem "sufficient to stand."  As Butler argues, they have no more choice about being monsters than a force of nature.

Rather than the element of "choice" suggested by both Milton and Butler, I will suggest the key element is actually that of  "will"-- or, to be more specific, two types of will, whose designations I borrow from Schopenhauer even though they aren't derived from him as actual categories. 

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.

Rovin and Butler's categories for villains and monsters are if anything enhanced by the consideration that their "monsters" are essentially embodiments of an "intuitive will," while "villains" are embodiments of an "intellectual will."  But the real advantage is that this dichotomy applies just as well to the positive "plerotic" forces in the respective equations.

Heroes, of course, are recognizably heroes because they, like villains, choose a given course in an intellectualized manner.  And of course the idea of villains mirroring heroes is an old one.  What has received less comment, however, is that the narrative figure of the "victim" is a mirror-image of the "monster."

The victim's true characteristic is to be allied to the ludicrous just as the hero is allied to the serious, as per my various remarks on these Schopenhaurean categories.  With this in mind, "victim" should not connote a disempowered state within the sphere of narrative analysis, for when he is a primary actor he can be quite powerful.  But he creates the expectation of losing even as the hero does of winning.  And further, most victims encounter conflict in what I term an "intuitive" manner-- that is, not actively seeking trouble as heroes often do, but simply seeking to live life on a basic level-- just as many if not all monsters seek to do.

 With the current arrangement, the "kenotic" mythoi of drama and irony are shown to reverse the normal trend of the "plerotic" mythoi by "switch-hitting" opponents.  In the adventure-mythos, the hero is "meant" to conquer the villain.  However, he may or may not be able to conquer a "monster," whether that monster is a discrete entity or the mindless mechanisms of destiny.

In irony, the victim is meant to be conquered by the monster; he has essentially no real chance, any more than the villain does against the hero,  However, in the comedy, the victim can triumph for the most part against the figure of the villain.

In a future essay I will expand on these formulas in terms of specific examples.

HERO VS. VILLAIN, MONSTER VS. VICTIM PART 2

For some time I've tended to see a polarity between the above-named scenarios.  I mentioned in this 2010 essay, which addresses the multivalence of the genres "crime" and "horror," that in practice both were dominated by the dramatic mythos.  In various academic essays I've seen efforts to treat them, at least in their 1930s film-manifestations, as parallel genres, since both deal with the destruction of a "monster" that imperils society.  Robin Wood, speaking solely of horror, boiled the genre down to the phrase, "Normalcy is threatened by the monster."

In the first part of HERO VS. VILLAIN I aligned drama with irony in terms of what Theodor Gaster terms *kenosis,* the process that expels harmful energy from society, and adventure with comedy in terms of *plerosis,* the process that brings positive energy back into the community, in the following terms:

,,,plerosis is best conceived as the life-force engendered by the contest of hero-and-villain, taken seriously for the adventure and humorously for the comedy, while life is purged or otherwise compromised in the black-comic irony and in the drama.

Now, having meditated awhile on Schopenhauer's distinctions between the homogenous status of "serious" discourse versus the heterogenous status of "comic" discourse, the above thought requires some modification.

As noted in this essay, Schopenhauer determined his assessment of either homogeneity or heterogeneity with respect to the agreement or disageement between "perceptual representations" and "conceptual representations." In order for me to apply these principles to literature, I had to make the distinction that in a literary world the former meant the verisimilitude within a given world, while the latter meant the expectations that the audience brought to the work.

In the second part, I argued that Schopenhauer's term "objective" compared well with both the irony and the drama-- and thus with Freud's so-called "reality principle"-- and the term "subjective" could be aligned with the adventure and the comedy, and thus with the "pleasure principle."  But what's the nature of the disagreement in the heterogenous forms, "irony" and "comedy?"

The nature as I express it is summed up by the different metaphors of "hero vs. villain" (pleasure principle) and "monster vs. victim" (the reality principle).

In the adventure-tale, every internal aspect of its world is dominated by the need for the hero to win out in the end, which is made credible to the audience by the fact that the hero possesses above-average combative power/skill.  Thus both "percept" and "concept" are homogenous because both are dominated by the pleasure principle. expressed by the metaphorical phrase "hero over villain."

In the dramatic story, every internal aspect is dominated by the possibility that the hero may fail, and that even if he wins, his triumph will evince substantial *pathos.*  Thus every aspect of the world is meant to convey the possibility of failure, in keeping with the expectations of the audience, rendering the two potentialities homogenous as well.  The hero's power of action is often compromised, so that it's credible when and if he meets a dire fate-- which fate is summed up by the triumph of "monster over victim," aka the reality principle.  

Now, Northrop Frye often alludes the idea that the irony reverses many tropes of the adventure, and the comedy of the drama, and Schopenhauer *might* say that it is because the latter two express heterogeneity between "percept" and "concept."  I express the first reversal as "villain over hero." As noted many times before, the hero of the irony is even more compromised than the hero of the drama, meaning that even when he has power he has no positive power-of-action.  But because the reader's level of conviction has dropped precipitously, the reader no longer identifies strongly with the disempowered hero, but instead views the hero's reduction by the reality principle in ironic, humorous terms.  Thus the reality principle dominating the world is reversed in terms of its effect, yielding a heterogenous form of pleasure.

Finally, the world of the comedy is dominated by the reversal "victim over monster."  Thus, though the comic hero usually does not possess the heroic stature one would expect of anyone able to conquer monsters (be they real monsters, criminals, heavy fathers or whatever)-- and thus sacrifices the verisimilitude logic would demand-- the world, dominated by the pleasure principle, is oriented on giving the comic hero a "free pass" that allows him to triumph-- though in some ways the compromise makes it clear that the reader gains that pleasure by "foul means" rather than the "fair means" of the adventure-mythos.  This too is entirely congruous with Schopenhauer's remarks on the nature of this type of humor.

As far as *plerosis* and *kenosis" are concerned, however, it doesn't matter whether they are reached by fair means or foul-- or homogenous or heterogenous devices.  Thus my earlier assignment of comedy and adventure to *plerosis,* and irony and drama to *kenosis,* remains applicable.

HERO VS. VILLAIN, MONSTER VS. VICTIM

...Gaster introduces two Greek terms that identify how the respective rites work. Rites of jubilation and invigoration are both characterized by *plerosis,* or "filling," because both give the sense that the ritual fills the community with new life. Rites of mortification and purgation are both characterized by *kenosis,* or "emptying," because they "empty out" the community of "noxious elements" one way or another.

While both of these processes are particularly abstract as described above, plerosis is best conceived as the life-force engendered by the contest of hero-and-villain, taken seriously for the adventure and humorously for the comedy, while life is purged or otherwise compromised in the black-comic irony and in the drama.  I've remarked in earlier essays that I regard that the best-known works in the genres known as "crime"and :"horror" usually fall into the mythos of drama, because they usually focus on forces inimical to society.  The forces of evil in these genres are usually conquered at the eleventh hour, but they're still the focal presences of those narratives.  This focus has a dominantly purgative effect, emphasizing a distanced societal process of casting out evil rather than the adventure-hero's "might" in vanquishing evil.  The irony shows the society as incompetent to cast out evil, resulting in a mortificative effect.

However, within the adventure-mythos it is possible to have a "force of evil" be the focal presence, and yet not lose the invigorative, life-enhancing effect.  Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu book-series is one such example.  Fu Manchu is the star of the show, and though he's always defeated, his contests with Nayland Smith and other opponents center upon *agon* rather than *pathos.*

Similarly, it's possible-- though much more rare-- for a comedic work to focus upon a villain.  The few that do usually focus on a villain who's in the Fu Manchu vein but is clearly incompetent, as seen in the mammothly-unfunny Peter Sellers comedy, THE FIENDISH PLOT OF FU MANCHU.

I'll pursue further comparisons between the adventure-mythos' use of "evil stars" with that of the drama in Part 2.

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