MEETINGS WITH RECOGNIZABLE PRESENCES

Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,

Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;

But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,

When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!

What Kipling describes in this quatrain is a sentiment akin to Francis Fukuyama's concept of recognition, as he extrapolated it from both Hegel and Hegel-commentator Kojeve. Kipling describes what Fukuyama might term a variety of *megalothymia,* in that it describes "two strong men" taking one another's measure. The quatrain is part of a longer poem, but by itself the final phrase does not specify whether or not the strong men standing "face to face" are allies or opponents. As I view the lines, the recognition of a commonality that derives from similar levels of strength is not dependent on whether the two strong men are allies or enemies. Further, this sort of recognition would be opposed in spirit to that of Fukuyama's countervailing tendency, *isothymia,* for this mode of consciousness specifies that all human beings share the same innate rights, regardless of their strength.

As I peruse the handful of "1001 myth" entries I've done since restarting the series in July, I see a common thread evolving, though I didn't consciously plan it. All of the entries for which I've recently claimed mythic status posit an opposition between two strong presences. In contrast to Kipling's wording, these presences are just as capable of being female as being male, and in keeping with my writings on focal presences, such presences would not even necessarily need to be human, or even sentient. In contrast, the opposing "null-myths" usually fail to exploit the nature of the conflict. I esteemed as mythic the final three issues of Dave Sim's CEREBUS in part because the author provided the protagonist with an opponent-- his own son Sheshep-- who symbolized all of Sim's animadversions to pagan culture, feminism, and (apparently) any sort of hybridization process. But I viewed the preceding CEREBUS sequence "Chasing YHWH" as "null-mythic" because it was no more than a barely-coherent diatribe against celebrity figures ranging from Carl Jung to Woody Allen (who in Sim's universe somehow became a Jungian, even though little if anything in the real Allen's ouevre reflects a Jungian outlook).

Now, at the end of my essay on Ditko's mythcomic "The Destroyer of Heroes," I quoted myself from the ETHIC OF THE COMBATIVE essay-series:

The shaman deriving power from his numinous presences, the warrior gaining supernatural presents or guidance from his patron god, the bondsman studying the ways of the mortal lord in order to overthrow him-- all of these participate in the ethical dimensions of the combative mode.  Thus "might" exists to continually challenge others to partake of its nature...This potency, to challenge one's own will to greater acts of agency, is the essence of the ethic that springs from the combative mode.

Having raised the topic of the combative ethic, I want to make clear that the trope of an author opposing "two strong presences" against one another is not solely associated with the actual combative mode. Certainly real combat-myths ranging from "Hercules vs. Antaeus" to "Batman vs. the Joker" derive their narrative tension from a physical, life-and-death struggle between hero and villain. Yet clearly it's possible to evoke the *megalothymia* of two opposed strengths without actually manifesting the combative mode, given that the totality of CEREBUS is a subcombative work.

Most of the other stories recently cited are stories that fit the combative mode without much elaboration: the aforementioned Blue Beetle tale, the Flash-Mister Element story, the FF-Red Ghost story, the Man-Thing/ ghost pirates story, and the Blackhawk "Dragon Dwarves" story. The two exceptions are instructive, though.

I surveyed the first three SPIDER-MAN stories together because they tied together in terms of the psychological myth evoked. The conflict of the first story is a mixed bag, for it's more "man vs. himself" than "man vs. man." By the story's conclusion Spider-Man has met and defeated a common burglar with the greatest of ease, which doesn't make for much of a combative situation, unless one chooses to view the burglar as a symbol for all criminals, as I discussed in a related topic here. The second story is more or less "man vs. nature" in that the hero must save Jonah Jameson's astronaut son from a malfunctioning space capsule, though it sets up an ongoing conflict by making Jonah Jameson a recurring thorn in the superhero's posterior. Only the third and last story surveyed pits Spider-Man against a villain who has his own special strength-- and of course, the Vulture was the first in a line of extremely durable super-villains, each of whom had an individual style and a great capacity for what I've termed "acts of agency,"

The first new entry in the current series, "Superman's Super-Courtship," features two characters who are dominantly combative types, Superman and Supergirl, but the story under consideration is not combative. As I demonstrated in the essay, the story's conflict pertains to Supergirl playing matchmaker for her older cousin, but in such a way as to reinforce her own ego, particularly by finding him a mate who looks like an adult version of herself. The conflict then is a comic one in which Supergirl more or less moves her cousin around like a chess-piece, much like the relationship discussed here between Cosmo Topper and the Kirbys in the 1930s film TOPPER. In the original film Topper's recently deceased buddies use their ghost-powers to force the fuddy-duddy to have fun, whether he likes it or not. Arguably Topper's ghosts do him more good than Supergirl does her cousin.

So here we have three subcombative stories that manage to create a tension between strong presences-- Cerebus and Sheshep, Spider-Man and Jonah Jameson, and Superman and Supergirl-- without actually entering the combative mode. Still, two of the stories appear in series that are meant to be dominantly combative, while the CEREBUS conclusion is a religious irony fashioned in part upon the model of Robert E. Howard's barbarian-fantasy.  So my conclusion here is that even if the combative mode is not strictly necessary to create a symbolic discourse between two or more "strong presences," its narrative pattern may influence even those narratives, like CEREBUS, that eschew the ritual of violence.

VARIETY IS THE SPICE OF LIVELINESS

In VARIETY IS THE SPICE OF DEATH I wrote:

The two modes [of the varied and the unvaried] also apply to the other best-known principle whose main appeal to the kinetic senses, that of sex...
 

I hold to the conviction that authors who want to escalate the audience's kinetic tensions more frequently rely upon narrative violence rather than upon narrative sexuality.  Further, the use of violence in the varied mode is much more common than any parallel employment of sexuality.

In the above cited essay I cited two examples of stories in which a villain (or monster) sought to commit a sequence of serial murders.  The two evildoers even shared the motif of doing so for reasons of revenge, though the Joker tended to also kill off even people whom he was simply robbing.  I also pointed out that in the Joker's first appearance-- in contrast to many later stories, like "The Joker's Utility Belt" and "The Joker's Five-Way Revenge"-- the villain's killings were in the *unvaried* mode, while those of Doctor Phibes were in the *varied* mode.  Of the latter mode I wrote:

Thus in the PHIBES films the audience's intrigue may also be escalated by wondering what new death-device Phibes will introduce next.

Now, since I've asserted that narrative sexuality is a kinetic effect just as violence is, the question becomes: what discrete forms would a *varied* sexuality take?

Many, though not all, of the varied forms of violence are highly dependent on man's trademark use of weapons to inflict violence.  But although people do use instruments to facillitate sexual excitement, narratives of sexuality do not show a pattern of using same.  If anything, the use of instruments would probably diminish the audience's belief in the prowess of a professed Don Juan (or Don Juanita, for that matter). 

Narratives of sexuality can use the same pattern of serial escalation as narratives of violence: a serial killer murders victim after victim, a serial lothario brings "the little death" to conquest after conquest.  But the number of victims, or conquests, while it is relevant to the principle of escalation, is irrelevant to the question of whether a narrative employs either a varied or unvaried mode.

Only one close parallel applies.  If the use of multiple weapons is the dominant application of the varied mode in narratives of violence, then in narratives of sex, the closest parallel is that of specific sexual techniques and/or predilections.

But though works like the Kama Sutra and all its modern descendants recommend the employment of varied techniques for sex-partners in the real world, in human art the varied mode of sexuality doesn't occur nearly as often as the varied mode of violence.  Part of this is, as I said, because audiences are used to the idea of warriors or murderers employing varied methods of death-bringing.  But in addition, real sex is a much more private act than real violence, and too much variety can dispel audience identification.  I tend to think that this generalization also applies to fetishization narratives on the whole.  Should an erotic artist try to deal with both, say, incest and flagellation at the same time, the response of particular enthusiasts would probably be along the lines of the famous Reece's Peanut Butter Cup slogan.  "You got your incest in my flagellation!"  "Well, you got your..." etc. etc.

In the Western tradition the most common way to explore a variety of sexual techniques seems to be through an anthology-approach, where one can use different characters to expound different techniques.  Perhaps the best known American film on this theme is the Woody Allen farce Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask, in which each story illustrates a different technique and/or manifestation of sexuality in comic fashion, as with the segment that really ought to have been titled, "Attack of the Giant Boob."

Even in many non-Western works, the anthology-approach is favored.  Japan's OGENKI CLINIC is another farce, but a serial one, in that it revolves around the exploits of a sex-clinic doctor-- the titular Ogenki-- and his buxom nurse as they explore their clients' many and varied manifestations of sexuality under the rubric of "medical treatment."  Even so, most stories content themselves with dealing with just one manifestation at a time, as with this rather mild illustration of "superhero cosplay sex."

It should go without saying that in works that follow the general pattern of Sade-- in which victims are subjected to varied torments for the sexual entertainment of their victimizers-- and perhaps of the audience as well-- are still dominantly in the mode of "varied violence," not "varied sex."