OUT WITH THE BAD WILL, IN WITH THE GOOD PT. 2

A few refinements to what I wrote in Part 1:

I stated that "...no matter what sort of viewpoint character the author may choose, he may focus as easily upon the "will" within the viewpoint character (or on some figure allied to him, or an ensemble of such characters), OR upon things, people, or phenomena that are perceived as "the other" to the viewpoint character's will." I should have noted, however, that the will of the viewpoint character is a construction of the author, since no fictional character is a willing entity. Thus the viewpoint character's will-construct may subsume even things that seem opposed to that character's personal interests.

In CREATOR AND CREATOR ENSEMBLED HE THEM, I stated that I considered that both Victor Frankenstein and his monster constituted an "ensemble," in that both characters were central to the concerns of Shelley's novel. Some iterations of the Frankenstein concept have chosen to center upon just one of the two. The 1931 FRANKENSTEIN film is *exothelic,* in that it emphasizes the monstrous "other" of the Monster, but the 1957 CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN centers upon the megalomaniacal monster-maker, and is thus *endothelic.*

The novel FRANKENSTEIN is told from the POV of Victor Frankenstein, but this in itself does not make it *endothelic,* given that the 1931 film also follows Frankenstein's POV. But unlike either of the films, the Shelley novel explores the psyche of Frankenstein as a divided will. I'm far from the first to suggest that Shelley's work owes something to the German folklore of the doppelganger. The Monster is certainly not Victor's physical double in accordance to most folklore and literature about doppelgangers (notably Poe's WILLIAM WILSON). However, the Monster stalks Victor relentlessly after the former's unfortunate creation, and, more importantly, the creature may be acting upon Victor's suppressed desires and hostilities, visiting horrible deaths upon people Victor supposedly cares about. Thus, even though Victor and the Monster are opposed on the literal, "lateral" level of the novel's action, in terms of the story's *underthought* the two are one.

However, it's not impossible for characters linked via some sort of shared psyche to become distinct. In the ENSEMBLED essay, I argued that even though Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde were literally two sides of the same man, Stevenson devotes far more attention to Hyde than to Jekyll, so that Hyde is the focal presence of the story-- as he is in most adaptations-- while Jekyll is reduced to something of a "supporting character" to Hyde, much as the beast-men of Wells' DOCTOR MOREAU are subsidiary to the titular scientist. Of course, both the Stevenson and Wells novels are told from the POV of a largely uninteresting narrator, so there's no question that both of these are *exothelic.* The matter becomes a little more complicated in that most Jekyll-and-Hyde film adaptations take Jekyll's POV, but these tend to be *exothelic* as well, like the 1931 FRANKENSTEIN film. In many respects "Jekyll the support guy" conjures forth a more dynamic "alter ego" a la both Clark Kent and Billy Batson-- and so all three would be examples of the theory of exteriorization discussed here, though the latter two examples are *endothelic* in that the alter ego is not an "other" to the viewpoint "support-character."

In (temporary) conclusion, I'm meditating on also devising adjectivial forms for "the idealizing will" and "the existential will." The appropriate Greek words would seem to yield *ideothelic* and *physiothelic,* but I'm not in love with these terms at present.

MONSTROUS MISCELLANY

"[Leatherface] is never an object of pity per se, but is clearly not your standard masked maniac who delights in the torments of his victims.  He is the very banality of our primal basic animal nature; no motive, no ambitions, no conscience and no soul.  It exists merely to survive and provide for itself and its family."-- "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," essay by Michael Feischer, HORRORHOUND magazine, Jan/Feb 2013.
 

Though I don't quite get why essayist Feischer changes pronouns in midstream from "he" to "it," the fact that he does so might demonstrate that the concept of the monster is one that makes it hard to distinguish between sentient life and non-sentient objects.  A few of the monster-movies I've reviewed on NATURALISTIC! UNCANNY! MARVELOUS! even include "monsters" who are nothing more than non-sentient phenomena gone berserk, though it's more often that they're giant versions of creatures found in nature-- spiders, birds, octopi, etc.

Feischer (presumably no relation to the similarly named comics-writer Michael FLEISCHER) is only talking about one monstrous figure, but I would say that parts of his description work for my concept of the monster-persona, particularly the reference to "basic animal nature" and the focus upon survival of itself and its ingroup.

I certainly would not typify monsters as being without "motive," "ambitions," "conscience," or "soul," however.  A mad scientist like Wells' Doctor Moreau, examined here, has both motives and ambitions, although he has no conscience and arguably no soul.  In contrast, many monsters are appealing precisely because they are aware of their monstrous nature and struggle to some extent against it, even if they fail to triumph, as I recently observed in the case of the two BLACULA films.
Perhaps one appeal of the monster is that he has an "animal nature"-- which for me is the same as an "instinctive will"-- that he often fights against, though often unsuccessfully.  The rare monsters that manage to succeed are those that, like the Hulk and the Swamp Thing, do manage to become serious heroic protagonists. Comic monsters like Dick Briefer's Frankenstein must be considered successes of a sort, though since they occupy a comic universe, their struggles are by their nature lacking in deep conviction.

On another matter, I wrote in the above-cited essay:

The difference in the degree of negativity, however, makes me label Wells' Doctor Moreau a "monster" rather than a "demihero."

This doesn't contradict anything I've written, but I want to clarify that though the demihero does have some potential as a vessel for negative, life-denying forces-- and can even transform rather easily into the figure of the monster-- on the whole the "instinctive will" governing the demihero is the positive mirror-image of the "animal nature" Feischer references.  At times demiheroes are set up to be unequivocal victims, whether they are sympathetic  or not, but they have a quality of "persistence" equal to that of the monster, and so are capable of turning the tables on their monstrous doubles-- though usually without the sort of "glorious" attitude of the hero triumphing over the villain.

 

CREATED AND CREATOR ENSEMBLED HE THEM

Because one of my forthcoming "persona-essays" deals with the monstrous creation of Mary Shelley, I want to set down some thoughts about how characters in the tradition of Shelley's "mad doctor" may or may not enter into ensemble-relationships with their unholy offspring.

Just as some heroes evolve from characters who begin with villainous status, monsters sometimes evolve from the persona of a demihero.  I've termed the Henry Pym of the 1962 "Man in the Ant Hill" a demihero.  Given that he starts out as what I called a "Frankenstein  manqué," it would be easy to imagine the early Pym transforming himself into an ant-monster rather than a shrunken man, rather like this other monsterized scientist-character from another Marvel boogey-tale of the period:

Much later, long after Pym became a full-fledged superhero, writer Roy Thomas referenced that lost Frankensteinian theme, and had Pym/Goliath invent a murderous mechanical offspring, originally called "Ultron-5," who despite his similarity to Shelley's monster was framed as a "villain."

Shelley's original novel FRANKENSTEIN depicts a more complex relationship between the monster and the monster's creator-- and one in which both characters are central to the novel's concerns.  Therefore Victor Frankenstein and the being popularly nicknamed "the Frankenstein Monster"-- although Shelley never gives the latter a real name-- are equally important to the novel's structure, and form an *ensemble* much like that of those discussed here.

However, the interdependence of "creator and created" is not an inevitable development.  In the case of Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novel DOCTOR JEKYLL AND MISTER HYDE, there's the potential for the "two faces of Doctor Jekyll" to be of equal importance, just as Victor and his doppelganger-like creation are in FRANKENSTEIN.

However, in my judgment Jekyll is of secondary importance in the novel.  Stevenson's plot is focused principally upon the revelation of Edward Hyde's true nature, not on the aspects of Jekyll's character that lead to Hyde's creation.  Thus in this example, it is Edward Hyde alone who is the focal presence-- though I have seen renditions of the concept where Jekyll is more important than Hyde.

The reverse of this focus upon "the created" is one in which "the creator" alone is the focus, and his creatures are little more than manifestations of the creator's warped genius.  My example here is H.G. Wells' 1896 novel THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU.  Whereas Mister Hyde is an eruption of Doctor Jekyll's primitive self-- a self that takes on a life of its own, one more dynamic than that of its "parent"-- the monstrous Doctor Moreau is the focal presence of the novel, and his assorted creations-- the beast-human hybrids he forges through the unlikely techniques of vivisection-- are just supporting characters.

At best, the assorted beast-men of the novel are secondary excrescences of Moreau's twisted genius, not separate ensemble-characters in their own right. Moreau's death ends his hold over the hybrids, who eventually revert to their lower natures, but the narrator Pendrick realizes at one point that he might have regained control over them after the passing of Moreau and his assistant:

I know now the folly of my cowardice. Had I kept my courage up to the level of the dawn, had I not allowed it to ebb away in solitary thought, I might have grasped the vacant sceptre of Moreau and ruled over the Beast People.

I've now demonstrated that the co-existence of a "creator" and his "creature" in a narrative does not necessarily mean co-equal status as focal presences. I will further note that these figures are also mutable in terms of their persona-status.  Shelley's Victor Frankenstein, Stevenson's Doctor Jekyll, and the two Marvel characters discussed-- the original version of Henry Pym and the forgettable guy who transforms himself into "Bruttu"-- are all demiheroes.  As stated earlier the persona of the demihero tends to represent the narrative's "life-sustaining" potential.  That persona can turn negative, though usually not to the same degree as one sees in the persona of "the monster." Of the examples cited, the "monsters" who assume centricity include Shelley's Frankenstein Monster, Stevenson's Mister Hyde, and Bruttu.  In the original Henry Pym story, he is a demihero who does not share centricity with the "monstrous" ants he encounters.

The difference in the degree of negativity, however, makes me label Wells' Doctor Moreau a "monster" rather than a "demihero."  As established in EXPENDITURE ACCOUNTS PART 2, the term that for me best captures the tenor shared by monster and demihero is that of "persistence."  Moreau's function in the story is to be the originator of the ghastly hybrids, and he does so through a persistent dedication to science not unlike that of Victor Frankenstein or Henry Jekyll. However, the negative effects of Moreau's unscrupulousness makes him into more of a monster than any of his creations, who, as I said, are not as significant, as numinal, as the mad doctor.  Thus, Wells' book is one of those works in which "the mad doctor" is far more of a "monster" than his creations, as well as being the most significant monster in the book.

This compare-and-contrast can't examine in depth the treatment of these very mutable figures in the medium of film. However, I must note-- given that an upcoming essay will deal with one filmic version of the Frankenstein tale-- that many Frankenstein stories vary as to whether the creator, the creature or both enjoy centricity.

It's been commented somewhere that in the Universal Frankenstein series, the creature was the central character, while in Hammer's Frankenstein series, the creator was the center. I would certainly agree with the latter statement: most of Hammer-Frankenstein's creations are no better than those of Wells' Doctor Moreau: mere "excrescences."  However, it's not quite that simple with the Universal Frankensteins.  The first three make a rocky effort to follow the example of the book, in which the mad scientist and the monster are of roughly equal importance to the story.  However, the fourth and fifth films in the series diminish the role of the "mad scientist" to nugatory dimensions. And in the last three films in the series-- all of which were "monster-mashes"-- the Frankenstein Monster shares focal space with Dracula, the Wolf Man, and some version of a "mad scientist"-- though none of the scientists belong to the line of Frankenstein.