INVESTMENT VS. FASCINATION PT. 2

At the end of PART 1,  I asserted that the dominion of the process of fascination over that of investment came about when "the other" received more narrative charisma than "the familiar." The former category doesn't have to be evil as such-- the Japanese "Mothra" films are a case in point-- but in some way the incarnation of the other cannot be subsumed within the audience's concept of what is familiar.

Today I finished a review of the 2005 film DOOM, in which I compared the movie to its video game iterations and to its supposed filmic influence, the 1986 ALIENS. DOOM, unlike ALIENS, presents a rather complicated dynamic of centric will, so I'll begin my analysis with the simpler dynamic of ALIENS. As I stated in the review, I view all works in the ALIEN franchise to be "exothelic," in that they depend more on fascinating the audience with the bizarre nature of the killer aliens than on building up the audience's investment in the human heroes, primarily Ellen Ripley. That's not to say that such investment does not exist. Obviously, no other hero to be found in the subgenre of "killer alien movies" has been more important to audiences than Ripley. But the ALIEN films emphasize the fascinations of the exothelic over the familiarity of the endothelic.

Now, rather than addressing DOOM as yet, I'll segue to a film-franchise that resembles the ALIEN franchise in having a simple dynamic: the live-action STARSHIP TROOPERS serial, whose films I reviewed here and here. The first film is, like the source novel, centered upon the activities of the various Earth-soldiers who go to war against a race of alien "Bugs," and the next two films in the series more or less follow the same formula. I confess that in the original review I regarded STARSHIP TROOPERS 2 to be something in the nature of an ALIEN-clone, which meant that within my system the centric will would be represented by the Bugs. Further, this determination caused me to determine that the film fell within the mythos of the drama rather than the irony seen in the other two films. However, upon re-viewing TROOPERS 2, I've decided that the Bugs still weren't emphasized as much as the humans. Indeed, Captain Dax, the soldier who perceives the insanity of the Earth's military fascism, is the most important character in that film, just as John Rico is for the first film and Lola Beck in the third one. Further, the fact that Dax perishes and fails to change the destructive course of his people makes the film cohere with the mythos of irony (I've added a correction to the original review).

Now I mentioned that the process of investment did not necessarily mean that the audience endorsed everything that a centric character said or did; it only means that the audience feels able to understand where that character comes from. Thus, even if a character like John Rico has been effectively brainwashed by his culture, the audience still feels in him a familiarity about the nature of his fictional will; how he lives and what he desires. So, now that I've revised my view to state that Rico, Dax and Beck are all investment-type centric characters, I can state my determination that the franchise as a whole (including the somewhat marginal animated video) is endothelic.

So, with these examples in mind, is DOOM endothelic (investment-centered) or exothelic (fascination-centered)? I stated that I felt that none of the starring human characters incarnated the narrative charisma, even though the character of Reaper is the nominal "hero," even as Ripley is the nominal "hero" of the first four ALIEN films. More precisely, I said:

Whereas ALIENS is a film in which the titular extraterrestrials are on center stage, dwarfing the importance of the space-marines fighting them, determining the "main characters" of DOOM becomes a little more dicey, given that the actual Martians are all dead. However, their genetic legacy-- that of passing on the mutagen  that can enhance either "good" or "evil"-- has more central importance to the narrative than any of the three human characters. A quick check of Wikis about the video game suggests that there's no generic name for the "Doom Monsters," probably because they are largely supposed to be either Hell-demons or humans possessed by demons. So for my own satisfaction, I'll state that the stars of DOOM are indeed the Doom Monsters-- and, since both Sarge and Reaper become affected by the mutagen, they become reflections of the mutagen's potential to create both monsters and monster-fighting heroes.

So in DOOM, neither Sarge nor Reaper is really "the hero," but both together can be subsumed by the ensemble-concept of "the Doom Monsters," since both are infected by the mutagen, which makes it possible for them to re-play the catastrophe that destroyed the Martians. The mutagen furnishes the connective tissue between the "good guy" and the "bad guy" so that they're both part of the same ensemble. I observed the same dynamic prevailing with the two opposed monsters of THE WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS and the two opposed psychics of John Farris' THE FURY. Of course the ensemble "Doom Monsters" also includes the long-vanished Martians and the humans who become mutated menaces-- though not any of the "victim" characters who don't become transformed.

COMBAT PLAY PT. 4

As the Nietzsche citation in Part 3 should make clear, the philosopher believed in the principle of mastery, or "overcoming" (German *uberwindung*) as a necessary aspect of the human spirit. At the same time, he believed more profoundly that the possessor of a "master morality" should also practice *selbstuberwindung,* usually translated as "self-overcoming." As I observed here, Nietzsche expressed a marginal preference for the corrupt, real-life Cesare Borgia over the simon-pure fictional character Parsifal, essentially because Parsifal had no real "self" to be overcome. For similar reasons, Nietzsche expressed disgust at those whom he deemed adherents of "slave morality" because he felt that they weren't really any more free from the impulse of aggression than the representatives of "master morality." Rather, adherents of "slave morality" merely projected the illusion of self-mastery. Only those who consciously admitted the allure of mastery, of wielding power over others, had any true capacity for self-overcoming.

In other segments of COMBAT PLAY I've sought to provide somewhat more personal motives for advocating the importance of combat-fantasies, and for arguing that they can represent "positive compensation" when dealing with the travails of ordinary life. I would add-- without bringing in all the Hegelian arguments about the nature of freedom-- that it's psychically necessary for any individual human to feel as if he or she can, as the occasion demands, fight back against oppression of any kind. At the same time, the notion of "fair play" becomes important within the sphere of fiction and fantasy, possibly more important than it can ever be in the real world of political negotiation and compulsion. In my own lit-critic cosmos, the ideal of "fair play" assumes the role of "self-limitation" that is, in Nietzsche's philosophy, occupied by "self-overcoming." Clearly the importance of this concept has led me to author essays like this one, where my main concern is to account for certain pop-culture figures, such as the Golden Age Spectre, who seem to know little if any "self-limitation." In the original series, whose tone was set by scripter Jerry Siegel, there's no question that the Spectre is positioned as a hero-- and yet only occasionally does this hero encounter opponents able to wield forces equal to his own.

In the aforesaid essay DECIDEDLY SEEKING SYMMETRY, I argued that occasional heroes who worked without the limitations of the "fair play" were a "natural, and probably inevitable, counterpoint" to the statistically dominant type of hero who tends to meet his foes on a level playing-field. I say that it's inevitable because it's the nature of affective freedom that individual authors can diverge from any statistically dominant model of a given concept, be it "the hero" or anything else. The model I've established is one in which heroes and villains alike align themselves with *glory* by championing either the positive or the negative forms of the "idealizing will," while monsters and demiheroes align themselves with *persistence* by pursuing the negative or positive forms of the "existential will."  But the existence of this model, while statistically dominant, does not prevent individual creators from diverging from it. For whatever reasons, Jerry Siegel conceptualized the Spectre as having such near-omnipotence that he could "overcome" most of his villains without the limitations of fair play. I wasn't entirely serious in SYMMETRY when I labeled such heroes as "sadists," for a true sadist would not possess the Spectre's empathy toward ordinary humans oppressed by mortal evildoers. That empathy, as well as the determination to better the world through the positive form of the idealizing will, still qualifies the Spectre as a hero. Later versions of the Spectre conformed to the dominant model, giving the Ghostly Guardian more high-energy foes to combat. But had the character never appeared anywhere but in his Golden Age adventures, I might have to view him as a "subcombative superhero," in that only rarely did the original Spectre combat megadynamic entities like himself.

By the same parallel, the nature of affective freedom also makes it possible for individual authors to diverge from the statistically dominant model of "the monster." In contrast to the hero, the monster often appears as the sole megadynamic entity in his universe, and his opponents, usually demiheroes, are not usually able to stand against him. In SYMMETRY I mentioned Freddy Krueger as an exception to this rule, in that the majority of his films end when another megadynamic entity-- usually the so-called "final girl"-- manages to defeat the dastardly dream-creature with her own display of dynamicity.

However, a better-known example would probably the combative relationship between the starring monsters of the original ALIENS film-franchise and their most "persistent" demihero-enemy, Ellen Ripley. Ripley starts out as a typical demihero, and in her first appearance she only manages to stave off the assault of one monstrous extraterrestrial by getting him in the right place for his elimination, rather than beating him one-and-one.

In the second film, however, Ripley resorts to mechanical aid to fight a Queen Alien on its own terms, and even though Ripley loses that battle and must once more trick the creature into defeat, the narrative places far more emphasis on Ripley as a megadynamic figure.

Though the character also does not directly defeat any Aliens in the last two films in the original franchise either, Ripley continues to display a megadynamic formidability, so that she is, unlike most monster-victims, a combative demihero. The fact that the Aliens' most prominent human foe can fight them back doesn't alter their persona as monsters, but their divergence sets them slightly to one side of the dominant model for monsters, just as Original Spectre's divergence sets him slightly to one side of the dominant hero-model.

DYNAMICITY DUOS PART 2

In Part 1 I expanded on my original schema for the three levels of dynamicity outlined in DYNAMIS VS. DYNAMICITY. My current schema allows for a range of dynamicity in each of the three levels, with the stipulation that the characters within a given range are united not as existing characters but as narrative functions. 

In order to illustrate the range of dynamicity in each category, I've chosen to survey one particular character who has been re-imagined by different authors over time.  In each case the dynamicity changes in such a way as to illustrate the "change in range."

In the aforementioned essay, one of my examples of the "less than good" level of dynamicity was the support-character Vicki Vale from the BATMAN franchise.  In making this determination, I was thinking of the original character who debuted in 1948 and remained a recurring character until the early Silver Age, in 1963.  Throughout this period Vicky, a skilled photojournalist, made a pest of herself by trying to ferret out Batman's identity, but showed absolutely no ability to defend herself in dire situations.  On that basis I would judge her dynamicity as "poor."

However, this character undergoes a revision when she again becomes a recurring character in the Bat-books during the early 1980s.  (Note: according to Wikipedia Vicki made limited re-appearances in the 1970s but she did not become a regular fixture.)  One change to her status was that the "pest" characterization disappeared and she began working out, with the result that on a few occasions, various characters would comment on the newer, fitter Vicki Vale.  She still was not a character one considered skilled in combat, so I would still gauge her as no better than the upper "microdynamic" level.  This character writeup from the online site COMIC VINE seems to substantially agree as to the change in the character:

"Vicki is a regular human with no known superpowers. Although not particularly athletically gifted, she has displayed enough physical ability to survive through certain dangerous situations."

 

The next level I rate as "fair-to-good," and I choose the character on whom Vicki Vale was essentially derived: "Superman's girlfriend" Lois Lane.  However, the original Lois, as articulated by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, was a woman out to push her way into man's world.  In her first appearance she slaps a gangster, though in so doing she may be depending on the social taboo against men hitting women, even in retaliation for a blow.  Nevertheless, she's occasionally seen slugging both male and female criminals, suggesting that she did have a little more than "average" fighting ability, putting her at the lower level of "mesodynamicity."

By the time Bill Finger created Vicki Vale as a pest-girlfriend for Batman, the Lois Lane that apepared in the Superman titles wasn't as gutsy as the Siegel-and-Shuster version.  Even when she got her own series, she seemed to go backwards in terms of toughness.  However, at some point the writer of the sequence below (or his editor) decided to show Lois as a really tough girl.

Following this story in LOIS LANE #78, Lois was said to have been taught the Kryptonian martial art "Klurkor" by Superman himself.  Thus, depending on the inclinations of her writers and editors, she was frequently seen duking it out with bad guys.  Still, she did so only in a pinch, not because she was a full-time crimefighter.  During one such battle, where she's kicking around three thugs, she tells them they ought to be glad they're not fighting a real tough girl like Black Canary.  On the basis and similar references, I would tend to rate this Lois as being at the higher end of the mesodynamic level.


Finally, to illustrate the lower and upper levels of megadynamicity, I find myself reaching out of the comic book world into that of the cinema.

Ellen Ripley is always mentioned when viewers list their favorite kick-ass females.  However, she's nowhere near the level of the megadynamic in the 1979 ALIEN film.  She's probably no better than "fair" in that film, for she only manages to kill the titular menace because the creature happens to attack her in an escape pod, where she's able to eject it into airless space.

Like several other characters who begin as low-dynamic foils to some mighty menace-- a list which includes the heroes of the original TERMINATOR, EVIL DEAD, and the 1999 MUMMY-- Ripley gets a dynamicity upgrade in the sequel ALIENS (1986).  After she's given arms training by her marine allies, Ripley takes on the kickass persona familiar to her fans.

However, I tend to view this level of megadynamicity to be on the lower "exemplary" level.  Ripley remains on this level through the third film in the series, ALIEN 3, but ALIEN RESURRECTION boosts her to the upper level of the exceptional.  Ripley, having died in the third film, is reborn but in a form crossbred with the DNA of her extraterrestrial nemeses.  At the very least she's stronger than an average human, though this increased dynamicity did not lead her to further adventures in the cinematic medium.