ACTIVE AND PASSIVE ANOMALIES PT 3

 

Arguably a lot more uncanny narratives invoke passive potency than do marvelous ones...-- ACTIVE AND PASSIVE ANOMALIES PT 2.

Aesop's famous tale, "The North Wind and the Sun," has often been used to describe the difference between "active power" and "passive potency"-- more typically known as "force and persuasion." The titular wind and sun make a bet as to who can make a certain mortal man take off his coat. The wind bombards the man with chilly gales, but that manifestation of force only makes the fellow clutch his coat around him more tightly. Then the sun slowly increases his heat-- and in due time, the man removes his coat of his own volition.

I just lied a bit, for effect. Both of the sky-entities are exerting force/active power; the sun's exertions are just subtler. A true illustration of passive persuasion might involve the sun assuming the appearance of another mortal, and in that form, he could mess with the coated man's head, suggesting how hot it was, until the power of suggestion caused the guy to remove his garment. Since the folktale-sun would not be exerting direct force, only indirect persuasion, my ad hoc revision of Aesop would fit the category I've termed "passive potency." The example loosely parallels that of Mulan's supernormal allies cited in ANOMALIES PT 1, who don't give the heroine any active aid, only bits of information or (often unhelpful) advice.      

In the quote above I mentioned the generalization that "the marvelous" most often deals with "power" and "the uncanny" with "potency," and in many past essays, I've drawn the distinction between marvelous and uncanny as that of "reality" and "fantasy," as in this statement from 2015's OUTRE OUTFITS OVERVIEW: 

When attire is not actually marvelous-- that is, when it does not confer marvelous power on a character, like Iron Man's armor-- it must conform to the rules of causal coherence. However, it can still be "uncanny" rather than "naturalistic" on the terms cited in POWER AND POTENCY PT. 2.  It's not that clothes "make the superman," as they do with Iron Man. But if they are uncanny, they can make the man SEEM LIKE a superman.

 

This is not so much a rule, though, as a broad generalization with respect to all twelve of the "uncanny trope" categories I devised.  (Tangentially, it doesn't look like I've done any surveys of all twelve categories here since 2014's THE INTELLIGIBILITY QUOTIENT PT. 2 -- and that was written before I severed the "outre outfits" category from those of "superlative skills" and "diabolical devices.") At present I can't think of any uncanny costumes that confer "passive power." They only confer "passive potency," in that they persuade witnesses to deem the wearers to be larger-than-life representations of justice or of corruption. 

However, in Part 2 I briefly referenced Tarzan. He doesn't "seem" like a superman within the uncanny domain; he would only "seem" like a superman if compared to a superman from the marvelous domain. But Tarzan possessing the utmost strength and speed attainable to a human makes his skill "superlative." Both Tarzan and Superman possess "active power" despite their disparate phenomenalities, while the previously mentioned Major Victory has only "passive power" by virtue of having been restored to life after his death. "Passive potency" applies to beings that may be marvelous or uncanny, but who operate more on the level of suggestion. Mulan's dragon is marvelous but cannot do anything beyond the level of "persuasion," and every hero who dresses up in a non-powered uncanny costume is using the art of persuasion to make himself seem more than normal. 

Finally, the best examples of "passive power" would seem to be in the category of "diabolical devices." As originally conceived, the Batarang was just a fancy version of a naturalistic boomerang, and so it possesses the same level of power when used. Aside from that usage, the Batarang can't do anything but look a little cooler than a regular 'rang.

However, if Batman attaches any sort of specialized tech to his Batarang-- even something as relatively simple as a smoke-bomb-- then it's no longer functioning as a boomerang, and the tech-addition registers as "active power" once more. Fin ally, examples of "active potency" are rare by my reckoning, with the most fruitful category being that of "enthralling hypnotism," since hypnotists are using specialized skills of persuasion. Somewhat similarly, the metaphenomenon that started these ruminations-- a Chinese doctor's use of weird acupuncture in LEGEND OF FRENCHIE KING-- coheres with active potency, since the doctor was working with his patient's "chi meridians" to produce a curious metaphenomenal effect.

                  

OUTRE OUTFITS OVERVIEW PT. 2

In Part 1 I mentioned the example of Flash Gordon. As most fans will know, he's an Earthman with no special physical powers, but he sometimes makes lists of "superheroes" because he becomes so thoroughly a "man of Mongo." Gordon makes intermittent use of Mongo's marvelous high-tech, but he's not as tied to his ray-gun as is, say, his predecessor Buck Rogers. Indeed, the earliest FLASH GORDON strips emphasize Gordon as a monster-slaying he-man, probably in emulation of the popular TARZAN comic strip by Hal Foster. Thus the most consistent indicator of his metaphenomenality is his otherworldly costume-- usually some variation on the image above, though Gordon probably changes his clothes more than most of his SF-competitors.

But Gordon is only partially a man in a science-fiction universe. From the aspect of the NUM theory, how should one regard the attire of characters fully born within such marvelous environments?

The denizens of the STAR TREK universe aren't wearing attire that would seem in any way strange to the sentients of their cosmos, while any aliens who meet them for the first time certainly wouldn't have any expectations about what sort of clothes they ought to be wearing. Unlike many latter-day science-fiction teleserials, TREK is consistent in showing that  everyone in its future is wearing some outre-looking fashion. Clearly the costume department was instructed to make even simple jumpsuits seem subtly "alien," and not by referencing European Renaissance garb, as FLASH GORDON often did.

But in most regards, the NUM theory is based not in the reactions of characters within their fictive universes, but on the response of the reader. The simple, vaguely-naval velour shirts of Classic Trek don't participate in the opulence of FLASH GORDON's fashions, or even of many of the other characters in their own universe.

Nevertheless, the uniforms of both the original TREK and its serial descendants successfully convey the aura of the uncanny: they convey "strangeness" on their own terms even apart from their association with high-tech marvelous items, like the "phasers" that duplicate the function of Flash's "ray-gun."


Here's a contrasting example, from the short-lived 1990s teleseries SPACE RANGERS:

SPACE RANGERS is less in TREK's mode of intellectualized space opera and more in that of FLASH GORDON's unapologetic science-fantasy adventure, but like TREK it takes place in a distant future wherein multiple alien worlds have been colonized by the descendants of contemporary humans, as is made clear by character names like "John" and "Daniel."

Yet, even though RANGERS takes place within a marvelous setting, the producers did not make an attempt to give their heroes' attire any strangeness. All of them wear suits that resemble a bulky form of military fatigues. To me they resemble contemporary outfits, though I can't place just where I've seen such outfits utilized. Regardless, the costuming department clearly patterned the costumes on modern dress, and so gives them all a functional "naturalistic" aura, despite the otherworldly settings of the stories.

In Part 3 I'll be dealing in more detail with the ways in which the naturalistic inevitably underlies the other two phenomenalites, albeit without defining them.

ADDENDA: Changed my mind and decided to explore the above matters in an essay with a different title, and so not confined to one particular trope.

OUTRE OUTFITS OVERVIEW

My NUM trope "outre outfits, tropes and devices" is a smorgasbord of aspects that have to do with the *dynamicity* of a given character. But I've never taken the time to observe how each of the three, despite their close association, sort out with respect to the naturalistic and the uncanny.

When attire is not actually marvelous-- that is, when it does not confer marvelous power on a character, like Iron Man's armor-- it must conform to the rules of causal coherence. However, it can still be "uncanny" rather than "naturalistic" on the terms cited in POWER AND POTENCY PT. 2.  It's not that clothes "make the superman," as they do with Iron Man. But if they are uncanny, they can make the man SEEM LIKE a superman.

Now, this is easy to demonstrate with regard to costumed heroes. Non-powered heroes like Batman and the Shadow are known for imitating unusual presences with their attire, which obviously gives them the aura of the uncanny. Yet in this essay I specified that it isn't even necessary to don an imitative costume to gain this charisma:

...Zorro’s costume confers on him a charisma that provides him with greater narrative dynamicity. The Zorro narratives, while insisting that Zorro is merely a skilled human, emphasize his presence as a spectre of fear to his opponents, and it is this which gives the black-clad avenger the charisma of “the uncanny.”

Now, science fiction narratives don't typically show their protagonists waltzing around in garments that depart from the norm. Yet though everyone in a FLASH GORDON narrative wears the same "outre" garments, Flash's outre outfit is the only one where his normal dynamicity is enhanced by the uncanny look of his outfit, because he's the hero. (Well, as Flash's opponent, Ming gets some uncanny mileage too, but definitely not Dale and Zarkov.)

Many future-Earth scenarios, though, feature a concatenation of "ordinary garments" with "somewhat weird garments." On my movie-blog I've just finished reviewing three post-apocalyptic films of the 1980s that may illustrate the dichotomy.

Here's the redoubtable Snake Plissken from ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK:

Then, his close imitator "Parsifal" from 1983's 2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK:

And finally, here's the un-redoubtable "Slade" from 1987's EQUALIZER 2000:

Now, even though all three men inhabit a "marvelous" future, none of them are real supermen. But do their clothes make them "seem like" supermen?


Though I liked the first two films and disliked the third, I don't think that fact prejudices me against the costuming of Slade in the 1987 film. The garments of Slade are simply bland and functional on their own terms; there's nothing about them that suggests the uncanny.

In contrast, though Plissken and Parsifal are not wearing "costumes" in the true sense, there has been some attention to how they convey heroic stature upon those who wear them. Russell is simply wearing almost all-black attire, as does Zorro, and the addition of the eyepatch gives him an iconic stature-- although it would be easy to get any of these elements wrong, so that they do not convey such an impression (I'll try to think of a good counter-example for later). Parsifal is not entirely copying all aspects of Plissken's look, though the influence is plain, but director Martino has given him a snazzier jacket that perhaps befits his "knightly" cognomen.

More costume-conundrums to come.