AUTHENTICATING ARTIFICE PT. 2

 In Part 1 of this essay-series, I noted that a lot of film critics have ample ways of authenticating the major developments both in general film history and with respect to particular film genres. When a cineaste like Martin Scorsese talks about a genre like film noir, he can draw upon a wealth of critical writings about the most important exemplars of the genre, and about the overall history of the genre's development. 

In Part 1 I also pointed out that comics-fans have over time generated both general histories of the comic book medium and of the particular genre of the superhero in comics. Yet none of these histories has any impact on the development of superheroes in the film medium, any more than a history of noir books would impact on noir films. And in essence, there is no strong developmental history of superheroes on the big screen, not even when one shows how that history intertwines with the history of superheroes on the small screen.

If one uses the term "superhero" only in its more restricted sense of "the costumed crusader," then in American cinema the genre starts in silent cinema with 1920's MARK OF ZORRO. But that film, and its 1940 remake, were one of a very small number of feature films spotlighting costumed crusaders prior to the 1950s. The main source of costumed crusader cinema were the serials, which also began in the silent era, but which did not make substantial adaptation of superhero (and superhero-adjacent) properties until the late 1930s, the beginning of the so-called "Golden Age of Serials." Zorro put in an appearance in the serial format in 1937's ZORRO RIDES AGAIN. while 1938 saw the cinematic debut of two other prose-derived superheroes, the Spider and the Lone Ranger. Many "superhero-adjacent" comic strips also were filmed around the same time, particularly those of FLASH GORDON and BUCK ROGERS. Finally, in response to the burgeoning popularity of costumed heroes in comic books, ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN MARVEL in 1941 provided the first adaptation of a particular comic book superhero. Comic book superheroes continued to be adapted until the studios quit making serials in 1956, resulting in a list of adaptations that includes Spy Smasher (1942), Batman (1943), Captain America (1944), The Vigilante (1947), and Superman (1948). Serials never indulged in the gory violence seen in many Golden Age superhero comics, but they shared the same basic aesthetic: action, action, and more action.

Serials, which made their money from kids regularly going to the movies to see the latest serial-chapter, were doomed as soon as television began offering serial-style entertainment for free. Yet television in that decade, and through the early 1960s, paid the superhero almost no attention, even as juvenile entertainment. Though five space-opera teleserials showed up during the first decade of television's ascension, only three costumed crusader shows appeared-- THE LONE RANGER (1949-57), THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN (1952-58) and ZORRO (1957-59)-- and the first two of those were indebted to earlier radio serials, even using some of the same scripts. Slightly later, Disney produced in 1963 a three-part limited teleseries, THE SCARECROW OF ROMNEY MARSH.

The same basic dynamic informed the genre of animated theatrical shorts, which appeared alongside theatrical feature films. In the "golden age of cinema," two costumed-crusader cartoon-series predominated, resulting in seventeen SUPERMAN episodes and eighty-one MIGHTY MOUSE episodes. TV's competition with the movies meant the eventual doom of cinematic cartoon shorts and the rise of TV cartoons. On the small screen Mighty Mouse arguably gained a greater following than he ever had on the big screen, enjoying a long run as repackaged Saturday morning fare in the form of 1955's MIGHTY MOUSE PLAYHOUSE.

There had been a very tiny number of costumed-crusader feature films in the 1940s, such as three SHADOW B-films from Columbia. But in the 1950s and early 1960s, there were only a smattering of mostly forgotten "masked swashbuckler" B-flicks and two LONE RANGER feature films, the latter issued by the same production company that made the TV show. 

The upshot of all these changes was that even though the Silver Age of Comics had brought new life to the superhero genre in the late 1950s, neither the big screen nor the small screen evinced any strong interest in the genre-- until 1966.

Was '66 BATMAN influenced first by a producer reading a BATMAN comic book, or by Hugh Hefner screening the old Bat-serials for a laugh, or by Pop Art usages of comic book art? Primacy does not really matter. But although "camp Batman" was opposed to the "straight" content of the more streamlined BATMAN comics of the Silver Age, the 1966 show was the first film/TV serial that successfully communicated the appeal of a superhero who continually battled a horde of repeating adversaries. Indeed, one could argue Silver Age Bat-comics began emphasizing the hero's colorful rogues a lot more than Golden Age Bat-comics ever had, and so the 1966 show was very much in tune with that sea-change.

 Later that same year, Hanna-Barbera's cartoon studio jumped into the costumed crusader business with galaxy-protecting superhero SPACE GHOST. The same company would present six other such TV cartoons, among them an adaptation of FANTASTIC FOUR, before concerned parents campaigned against this fancied increase in Saturday morning violence.

But neither the large screen nor the small screen did much else with the superheroes for the remainder of the decade. However, one could posit that most of the superheroes of the 1970s were in the same mold as BATMAN and SPACE GHOST, and at least some of the Silver Age comics: colorful, fairly intelligent adventures with light humor and none of the gory violence seen in Golden Age funnies. This aesthetic embraced not only moderately successful 1970s teleserials like WONDER WOMAN and INCREDIBLE HULK, but also misfires like the 1975 feature-film DOC SAVAGE. Roughly the same Silver Age aesthetic stayed in place for the four live-action SUPERMAN films and the considerably less noteworthy super-films of the eighties, such as LEGEND OF THE LONE RANGER and MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE. During this "late Silver Age" of film and TV, I tend to find most of the costumed crusaders from cartoon-land to be nugatory, with the possible exceptions of 1983's HE-MAN and 1987's TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES.

Now, one might say that cinema started exploiting the grittier nature of the comic-book Bronze Age with Tim Burton's first two BATMAN films in 1989 and 1992, and maybe even with the 1989 PUNISHER and the 1990 DARKMAN. However, if elements of the comic book Silver Age only appeared in very rough fashion in American comic books of the 1970s through the 1990s, such elements continued to appear alongside the edgier fare in movies and TV shows of the nineties. Thus the other two BATMAN films of the 1990s sought to hearken back to 1966 BATMAN, albeit in a very clumsy manner. Similarly, the hallmark superhero cartoon of the nineties, BATMAN THE ANIMATED SERIES, emulates the tight plotting of Silver Age Bat-comics and, unlike the first two Burton Bat-films, eschews the transgressive violence found in Frank Miller's signature Bronze Age DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. The live-action TURTLES films followed the lead of the eighties cartoon, choosing light humor over blood and guts.

As I see it, even in 2023 we remain in a sort of "superhero soup" in cinema and TV, constantly mixing together either the sunny Silver Age motifs (the MCU's ANT MAN) or the dark and transgressive tropes of the Bronze Age (ZACK SNYDER'S JUSTICE LEAGUE). It's like modern superhero movies and TV can't decide if they want to follow the lead of Stan Lee or of Alan Moore. 

In one respect, modern costumed-crusader films and TV shows have allied themselves with the comic-book "Iron Age." In PATIENT ZERO PONDERINGS, I hypothesized that the 2009 "diversity hire" of the MS MARVEL creator marked the beginnings of hyper-politicized comic books. MCU films would not substantially begin following this storytelling model until roughly 2015, but to date the studio has not deviated significantly from said model. I don't know what it would take, in any of these media, to re-orient storytelling priorities enough to produce a "New Age" not entirely beholden to any of the others, but I suspect something's got to change eventually, even if its the extinction of the superhero genre in all its variegated forms.

TOO ILLEGIT TO QUIT PT. 1

Before delving more into the question of "Bat-legitimacy," I want to lay down some background as to what ways, if any, characters relevant to the "superhero idiom" have or have not been perceived as legitimate art-forms.

What I'm printing in this section is a slightly rewritten response to a letter. Suffice to say, I wrote a piece for my apa talking about the fact that of all superheroic types, only Tarzan enjoyed long-running serial success as a cinematic hero. A correspondent pointed out that Tarzan wasn't perceived as an "A-list" character. What I wrote in response may not be entirely easy to follow without the correspondent's words, but some of the commentary does bear on the question of legitimacy in pop culture.

___________________________

Re: my remarks on Tarzan—I wasn’t speaking of the studios’ attitude toward Tarzan, as to whether he was viewed as “A-list” or lower, but merely that audiences in the Classic Hollywood era were willing to accept him as a hero despite his lack of naturalistic normality.  It would be fair to regard Tarzan as one of many well-made B-film serial franchises, including Sherlock Holmes and Charlie Chan. Yet, while some series-franchises flirted with metaphenomenal antagonists, the heroes themselves were ordinary if exceptional-in-some-way human beings. Other attempts to feature extraordinary protagonists in cheap feature films—the Shadow, Chandu the Magician—didn’t last long for whatever reasons, and for twenty-something years the only consistent cinematic source for “superheroes” was what I choose to call the “C-list”—that is, the serials, firmly aimed at kids.  Only there did Hollywood choose to address the popularity of comic-book superheroes, whether they were adapting comic-book characters or coming up with their own versions, like “the Masked Marvel.”

But the American A-list actors only rarely went near extraordinary protagonists, with the exception of Douglas Fairbanks Sr,, who created one of the first in American cinema, the Thief of Baghdad, and provided the first film-adaptation of  Zorro, which alone probably kept that hero from falling into obscurity along with other Johnson McCulley characters. John Wayne, whom you mention, did in his early years perform in three serials, one of which, THE HURRICANE EXPRESS, might qualify for meta-status, though of course Wayne wasn’t an A-lister at the time. Once an actor moved into the A-list, he or she might appear in any number of realistic adventure-stories, in the genres of westerns, war, or mysteries—but not often science fiction or fantasy. Horror-films were something of an exception: they offered such opportunities for barnstorming performances that you could get an A-lister to do one, like Claude Rains in THE INVISIBLE MAN or Charles Laughton in ISLAND OF LOST SOULS. But then, these were also adaptations of novels that had some strong critical repute, which is more than one could say for TARZAN OF THE APES or most other novels featuring metaphenomenal heroes.

         BTW, to support the A-list distinction even more—in a TCM interview William Wellman said that he was brought in to provide uncredited direction on a Tarzan picture-- specifically, TARZAN ESCAPES--  because the studio was short-handed. He didn’t want to do it, but was surprised when he enjoyed the experience. Supposedly he asked the studio heads to let him do another, and was told, “Are you crazy? You’re an A-lister, bringing in the big money; we can’t have you waste your talents on Tarzan!”

DJINN, WITH SUMMONER PT. 1

One of the most famous tropes of the superhero idiom is that of "strength concealed by weakness," or, alternately, "strength evolving from weakness."

Obviously no credible study of the superhero can pass by the trope of the hero's "secret identity." There are of course a fair number of heroes who have no such double identities, or whose mundane origins are widely known to the public. Yet the image of the heroic figure who emerges from some unlikely source-- a meek, bespectacled reporter, a child, or an indolent playboy-- has become a major metaphor for the superhero genre. Johnston McCulley's "Zorro" was not the first character to conceal a dynamic nature beneath an unlikely facade. Still, Zorro may have been the character who most affected this trope of the superhero idiom, with obvious impact on such characters as the Shadow, the Spider, Batman, and Superman.

The Fawcett Captain Marvel is a slightly different wrinkle on the same trope. The hero's alter ego of Billy Batson is literally weak-- I'm not sure that the Fawcett version of Billy is ever seen "resorting to physical violence" as himself, even when faced with an opponent in his own weight-class. The weak alter ego doesn't just shuck off his clothes and reveal the powerful persona beneath; he must literally transform himself into a being of great power physically distinct from said alter ego.

Still, as different as these variations on a theme may be, I view both of them as examples of interiorization. That is, the hero's true, powerful self is concealed within him, and must be summoned from within.

A distinct trope, though, is that of the hero who calls up some other being to do his fighting for him.  Thus, while one can see Superman as an interior power that bursts forth from Clark Kent, and Captain Marvel as one that subsumes Billy Batson, the relationship in this trope-- what I will call the "djinn-and-summoner" trope-- is one of exteriorization.  That is, the character doing the summoning usually remains un-transformed, and the "djinn" that he calls up is a character in his or her own right.

The folktale "Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp" is patently the most famous story about a person calling forth a djinn/genie. The story doesn't qualify for inclusion in the combative mode of the superhero idiom, as I noted in my essay MIGHT VS. DOMINANCE:

The original story of ALADDIN AND HIS WONDERFUL LAMP would seem to be a subcombative form of adventure, in that there is no actual combat between Aladdin and his opponent the "Chinese Magician," nor does Aladdin fight any proxy servant of the Magician.  The conflict consists of either hero or villain swiping the lamp away from the other at this or that time, but never in a direct confrontation.  

There have been any number of takes on the Aladdin-tale in which the summoner-hero is much more dynamic than the djinn he summons, as with the 1939 POPEYE theatrical cartoon "Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp." Though Popeye/Aladdin does call up a genie, his big duel with an evil magician at the cartoon's climax is wholly dependent on his ability to empower himself with spinach, another wrinkle on the interiorization trope; ingesting some substance to unleash one's "inner strength."

Another more active Aladdin is the one from the Disney cartoon, who, instead of being a lazy layabout as in the Arabic tale, is a swashbuckling swordsman. Thus, though this Aladdin does summon a djinn to fight various antagonists, he isn't entirely dependent on his magical helper.

Yet some modern superheroic works display summoners who are almost entirely dependent upon their djinns. In this essay I cited the example of GIGANTOR. As with Billy Batson, I don't remember any instances in which the boy-summoner was seen fighting on his own behalf. But even if there were isolated incidents in which Jimmy Sparks duked it out a few times with villains, the dominant trope of the teleseries was the summoning of its robotic djinn, who would proceed to give battle to some other kaiju-sized menace.

In Part 2 I'll discuss the ways in which these types of djinn/summoner relationships sort out in relation to dynamicity and the combative mode.

ANOTHER KIND OF FOXY GRANDPA

I speak of Zorro, the fox, who in a real sense is one of the "grandfathers" of the superhero genre, even if many people don't deem him a "superhero" as such.  In this essay I compared this "uncanny" figure to an "atypical" (now called "naturalistic") hero, the Scarlet Pimpernel, and a "marvelous" one, Batman:

In the many iterations of Johnston McCulley’s Zorro, most take place in a world that is essentially like that of the Pimpernel: a world which seems to have no metaphenomenal aspects. Zorro, however, is the exception. Where “Scarlet Pimpernel” is simply a code-name for a mysterious figure, Zorro’s costume confers on him a charisma that provides him with greater narrative charisma. 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.”

I stand by my assertion that Zorro possesses a "greater narrative charisma," if only by virtue of his uncanny costume, than a more mundane type like the Pimpernel. However, I must admit that until last week I'd never got round to reading the original Johnson McCully prose story that birthed Zorro-- or as McCully frequently calls him, "Senor Zorro."  (Thus we see that Roald Dahl was not the first one to write about a "Mister Fox.")

I must admit that McCully doesn't write a lot of florid passages about Zorro's supernal appearance, as pulp authors would for characters like the Shadow and the Spider. As the above illustration shows, the original prose character wears a full face-mask, not the half-mask popularized in the 1920 Douglas Fairbanks adaptation.  Only a small handful of cinematic Zorro-costumes followed the example of the novel's costume, but then, McCully himself reputedly borrowed ideas from the movie-- the tracing of the "Z" in the enemy's flesh, for example-- which were incorporated in later editions of the novel.  The full-mask makes it more logical that no one would be able to connect Zorro and Don Diego.  In contrast, when  the hero wears the half-mask, one feels tempted to speak a line like the one from the 2011 GREEN LANTERN film:

"You don't think I would recognize you because I can't see your cheekbones?"

Compared to some of the great popular fictions of the time, McCully's novel is slight, and probably would have been forgotten had it not been adapted to the film-medium.  A substantial portion of the novel deals with Don Diego's romance with Senorita Lolita Pulido: he romances her in his identity as the mysterious but manly thief Zorro, and then turns around, pretending to be too effete as Diego to bother with details like wooing.  Superman's creators purportedly took strong influence from the Zorro model, but the Diego of the novel projects less weakness (though he does often speak of being fatigued) than the languidness of the bored aristocrat.

One interesting detail is that the novel is resolved when lone hero Zorro is joined in his efforts by The Avengers-- what is what, in just one line, a group of aristocratic young supporters call themselves when they rally to this Spanish Robin Hood.  I haven't checked yet to see if they make it into the best-known film adaptations, though they may be the basis for the serial Zorro's Fighting Legion.

Though McCully doesn't spend a lot of time describing Zorro, toward the novel's end Diego relates an interesting take on how the very identity of Zorro empowered him:

"It is a peculiar thing to explain, senores.  The moment I donnned cloak and mask, the Don Diego part of me fell away.  My body straightened, new blood seemed to course through my veins, my voice grew strong and firm, fire came to me!  And the moment I removed cloak and mask I was the languid Don Diego again.  Is it not a peculiar thing?"

I hardly need point out (though I will) that this is the essence of "uncanny phenomenality," in which no marvelous phenomenon actually takes place but there is some phenomenon that suggests the breaking of reality's borders.  This, more than the practical considerations of the costume, is what makes Zorro a hero of the uncanny.

TALES OF THE ATYPICAL, UNCANNY, AND MARVELOUS

“All narrative is a movement between two equilibriums which are similar but not identical.”-- Todorov, THE FANTASTIC, p. 163.

The unspoken corollary to this formula would be that between these two dissimilar equilibriums lies a disequilibrium, which I choose to call "the atypical" because it goes against one's expectations of typical life-routine. In TODOROV O TODOROV PART 2 I stated that “fictional narrative is always about the atypical.” By that I meant that readers derive pleasure from seeing some change in the status quo presented at the story’s beginning. One can even see some degree of this change in nonfictional narrative, though such narrative doesn’t hinge on the change in the characters. When Harvey Pekar presents a nonfictional narrative that allegedly reproduces a real-life conversation in which two black women chitchat about “okry,” that narrative isn’t dependent on the two real-life characters changing their “equilibrium.” It's possible that the reader’s perception of reality-- if only on the level of “how such-and-such people talk”-- may undergo an alteration, but even that alteration isn't as necessary in nonfiction as it is in fiction.

In my terms Todorov’s theory fails because it privileges his “category of the real” as a mimetic reproduction of reality, rather than focusing on the readers’ pleasure/pain in viewing the change that takes characters from one equilibrium to another. The readers' pleasures and pains of character identification are in no way altered by the phenomena within the story: by whether the story seems utterly fantastic, somewhat fantastic or not fantastic at all. However, other aesthetic perceptions *are* affected by their perception as to what phenomena are possible in the fictional world.

In this essay I bracketed three characters—the Scarlet Pimpernel, Zorro, and Batman—who are modeled upon the same fictional archetype: the merely-mortal ‘crusader for justice who has a secret identity.” Invested readers can identify with all three characters in terms of their personal quests for justice, but how the reader feels about the hero’s charisma changes according to their phenomenality.

The Scarlet Pimpernel, to the best of my knowledge, is never presented as anything but an ordinary man crusading for justice. Some cinematic adaptations may give the Pimpernel more swashbuckling fighting-skills than others, but to his enemies he is never more than a physical threat. Thus the Pimpernel represents what I call “base atypicality,” because there’s nothing in his world that suggests the metaphenomenal.

In the many iterations of Johnston McCulley’s Zorro, most take place in a world that is essentially like that of the Pimpernel: a world which seems to have no metaphenomenal aspects. Zorro, however, is the exception. Where “Scarlet Pimpernel” is simply a code-name for a mysterious figure, Zorro’s costume confers on him a charisma that provides him with greater narrative charisma. 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.”

However, Batman, though also merely mortal, qualifies for the category of "the marvelous" irrespective as to how many hyper-powered or costumed villains he may battle. Earlier I reprinted a panel in which Golden-Age Batman was first seen with his new inventions, the “Batarang” and the “Batgyro.” If tools like these remained in their simplest configurations perhaps Batman would fall into the “uncanny” category. But over time Batman’s arsenal was expanded beyond the level of conventional weapons. And while many Batman stories don’t play up his marvelous weapons, they remain a consistent aspect of his mythology. The 1966-68 teleseries took camp pleasure in depicting the many improbable gadgets that could spring from Batman’s “utility belt,” but that mockery contained a grain of truth, for comics-writers did at times use the Utility Belt as a sort of “Aladdin’s lamp” through which the hero could transcend normal limitations. Despite all the narrative attempts to convince readers that Batman was the opposite of Superman in being “merely mortal,” Batman’s belt and other paraphernalia boost him above the power available to a Zorro or a Scarlet Pimpernel. Thus he falls into the literary category of “the marvelous” just as much as Superman, and has just as much a claim as Superman on being a “superhero.” Zorro, in contrast, may not qualify for the appellation “superhero” as it is popularly used, but his uncanny aspects at least put him within the superhero idiom, while a figure who is merely “atypical,” like the Scarlet Pimpernel, remains on the outside looking in.

“THE ANSWER IS, ‘BECAUSE HE DOESN’T HAVE SUPERPOWERS’”

Q: “Why isn’t Batman a superhero?”—many many comic-book message-boards
As a pluralist critic, I value any form of criticism—naïve as much as sophisticated—that contains or at least leads to a greater insight. Sophistication itself is no guarantor of insight. This should be obvious to anyone capable of following the logic of this blog’s previous demolitions of such highbrow low-downers as
Theodor Adorno, Roland Barthes, and, most recently, Tzvetan Todorov.

Like the Todorov book I’ve recently critiqued, the naïve critic’s assertion, “Batman isn’t a superhero because he doesn’t have superpowers,” contains a fundamental insight despite being essentially wrong. The latter also takes a lot less time to refute. The naïve critic has chosen to view the adjective “super” in “superhero” as meaning one thing and one thing only: the possession of powers, giving one the ability to perform “super” feats that human heroes cannot perform. However, “super” clearly does not connote this, either in dictionaries or in the opinions of many readers who do consider Batman a superhero—usually for an equally simple reason, because he wears a costume.

One message-board refinement [see ENDNOTE], with which I partially agree, stated that a simple athlete-type hero like Batman should be deemed a superhero if he demonstrated the capacity to take down super-powered menaces, as Batman does regularly in JUSTICE LEAGUE if not so much in his own feature. However, the same poster didn’t think that a costumed, non-powered hero who fought nothing but common crooks would be a superhero. I see the logic of this distinction but I can’t dismiss the fact that most fans would put the label “superhero” to pretty much any figure in long underwear. As an additional complication, I’ve also seen the term applied to quite a few characters not clad in leotards, such as Flash Gordon and Doc Savage.

I toyed with the idea that one might look upon the costume as an indicator of metaphenomenal status. One approach might be the degree to which the costume makes the wearer look suprahuman. Even though Batman is just a skilled man armed with various weapons, the costume makes him look like a bat-human hybrid. However, many costumed heroes don’t look like anything but costumed humans. Zorro, one of Batman’s ancestors, doesn’t look the least like a fox, Spy Smasher just looks like a man wearing flight togs and goggles, and so on. Therefore if the costume is a signifier of metaphenomenality, it can’t be simply in terms of what it makes the hero look like.

Todorov, however, helped me out with his categories of the Uncanny and the Marvelous.
As noted in earlier essays, Todorov’s ruminations on fantastic literature are confined almost entirely to stories in a horrific mode. In Chapter 3 Todorov says:
“…we generally distinguish, within the literary Gothic, two tendencies: that of the supernatural explained (the “uncanny”), as it appears in the novels of Clara Reeves and Ann Radcliffe; and that of the supernatural accepted (the “marvelous”), which is characteristic of the works of Horace Walpole, M.G. Lewis, and Mathurin.”

A parallel to the first naïve classification seen above suggests itself. The fan that disallows Batman as a superhero is insisting upon a narrow definition of the superhero as one that has “marvelous” powers, like Lewis’ devils and Mathurin’s immortal wanderer Melmoth. Going by Todorov's original schema, Batman, who merely gives the impression of something marvelous, is explicable by rational laws of nature and would then be “uncanny,” like the fake Gothic horrors of Ann Radcliffe. (The particular example of Batman is however complicated by diverse factors, as I've already touched in on here.)

Now, for Todorov, once a spooky story decreed that there were no real ghosts, that story fell into the domain of the merely rational. But if that’s not logically true—if uncanny stories don’t belong to the realm of the rational—then the same should be true for “uncanny heroes.”

Again returning to naïve systems of classification, it’s evident that a popular reference-work on horror films, such as Phil Hardy’s OVERLOOK HORROR ENCYCLOPEDIA, certainly doesn’t bother separating “uncanny” films from “marvelous” films. A movie about a real vampire, like the 1931 DRACULA, is as much a horror film as a film with a fake vampire, like 1936’s MARK OF THE VAMPIRE. This may sound identical to Todorov’s willingness to identify both “rational” and “irrational” tendencies within the greater category of the Gothic, but the difference is that Todorov continually inveighs against using the emotional frisson of the horror-story as a common ground. He does so because he’s exclusively concerned with the cognitive side of fantasy-fiction: “is the supernatural explained or accepted?” This provides a neat parallel to the naïve critic who insists that “superhero” must be defined in a similar cognitive manner, in terms of whether the hero has powers or not.
But Todorov’s emphasis was an error, just like that of the naïve critic. In my category of the metaphenomenal, the affective holds as much significance as the cognitive. If the reader gets the frisson of horror from a “phony vampire” story, then the story is on the same affective plane as the “real vampire” story, however different their cognitive aspects.

The same holds true, then, for stories of fictional heroism, “super” or otherwise. All heroic stories appeal to the emotional dynamization I’ve termed “invigoration,” which I borrowed from the myth-ritualist Theodore Gaster. But some heroic stories are clearly meant to take place wholly in a “realistic” world, and the heroes of those stories offer only that invigorative feeling one gets from seeing a “common man” with some degree of pluck and fighting-skill succeed. This would be in contrast to the dominant image of the superhero like Superman or the Human Torch, for whom invigoration resides in the demonstration of “marvelous” powers.

However, in between these two extremes lies the domain of my version of “the Uncanny,” and unlike Todorov I don’t think it belongs to the domain of pure natural law, even when both the hero and the hero’s combatants are mere mortals. Within this metaphenomenal domain I situate the hero who is only one step removed from the “common man” in that he wears a costume. Batman is not truly uncanny in this sense, given that he not infrequently battles super-gorillas and madmen with freeze-rays. But the aforementioned Zorro fits quite well. Possibly no one would deem Zorro or any similar masked swashbucklers as superheroes per se, nor would I try to convince them of it. But I do think that Zorro’s uncanny appearance puts himself within the realm of the metaphenomenal, and thus within the superhero idiom as well.
I’ll be covering other applications of my “Uncanny and Marvelous” categories in future essays.