STALKING THE PERFECT TERM: DYNAMIZATION=VALIDATION

Note: I'll probably keep using the phrase "stalking the perfect term" over and over, world without end, until someone correctly identifies what book-title by a famed comic-strip author I'm punning upon.

I introduced my literary neologism "dynamization" way back in this 2008 essay.  It was already a real word coined as computer-science jargon:

"In computer science, Dynamization is the process of transforming a static data structure into a dynamic one"

I was seeking a value-neutral description of the process usually called "gratification," which has over the years acquired a negative value-connotation, despite the attempt of Leslie Fiedler to provide perspective with his distinction between "unearned gratification" and "earned gratification."

I don't renounce anything I've written thus far about the *process* of dynamization, but as I contemplate a new series of essays that explore why audiences have varying tolerances for *kenotic* as well as *plerotic* pleasures, I find that "dynamization" doesn't quite fit the bill.

I acknowledged a possible problem with the term the following year in DYNAMIZATION= SUPERIORITY DANCE, though I didn't follow up on it:

There's no reason that dynamization itself-- described here as a movement from a static to a dynamic state, at least as judged by the observer's set of parameters-- *must* connote that the latter is automatically superior to the former. Equally, the reverse would be no more true of any hypothetical "staticization." However, inasmuch as human society and culture is inherently hierarchical in one way or another, the dominant tendency is to say that what is perceived to be dynamic is usually assigned superior status to that which is perceived to be static, as was the case when Henri Bergson used the terms in his philosophy.

I didn't specify what works might be examples of the opposite movement, from relative dynamism to stasis.  But lately it occurs to me, as I contemplate Gaster's idea of kenosis, that a story like Franz Kafka's METAMORPHOSIS serves my purpose well.

I confess that I've read no biographies of Kafka except the one illustrated by Robert Crumb, but I find it hard to believe that another biographer could offer a significantly different picture of the writer.  While it might not be strictly correct to term Kafka a "masochist," his work shows an obsession with imagining his idealized self-- such as Gregor Samsa in the short story-- subjected to all manner of humiliations and self-denigrations.  In METAMORPHOSIS, one might regard the worst aspect of Samsa's unhappy cockroach-ification is that once he's dead every one in his family is seen to be better off without him.

What's the appeal of such a self-abnegation?  Whatever it is, "dynamization" doesn't describe it well enough, since the character actually descends into the stasis of an unimportant death.  And I certainly don't seriously contemplate using the term "staticization" at all.

Plainly, since the processes of plerosis and kenosis take so many different forms in art and literature, they must have a common appeal for humanity.  One could argue that even in a downbeat irony like this tale, both author and reader are to some extent "gratified" by descending into such kenotic depths, but again the accumulated connotations of the word work against its use in this manner.

Currently, though, I can see "validation" as working across the board, whether one is speaking of the kenotic or plerotic, the simple pleasures of "unearned gratification" or the more demanding ones of "earned gratification," and all of the Fryean mythoi with their varying types of *conviction* and *stature.*

In addition, since I use the terms *dynamis* and *dynamicity* quite a bit, "validation" has the advantage of avoiding yet another sound-alike.

MIGHT VS. DOMINANCE

As a prequel to further remarks on the subject of "the combative," I want to put forth some concrete examples of two of three qualities distinguished in this essay:

Dynamis= any kind of energy
Might= an energy which to some degree is "superior" to some unspecified lesser forces
Dominance= a superior energy which specifically arises from conflict

The MIGHT MAKES FIGHTS essay cited above already gave an example of "dynamis" in its character as generalized energy of any kind, said example being one of the least conflictive comics-pages I know, Harvey Pekar's "Making Lemonade."  So I need not repeat that here.

Leaving behind Pekar's isophenomenal cosmos, I step into the more inviting metaphenomenal world of
producer Alexander Korda's 1940 THIEF OF BAGDAD.

First, here's a scene leading up to the display of sublime "might" in the form of the old sultan (Miles Malleson), about to mount the horse he's been given by the evil Jaffar:

A few minutes later, here's the sultan finding out what the horse can do:

Now though the film as a whole builds a conflict between the wizard Jaffar and his two opponents Ahmad and Abu-- a conflict which leads to an overt combat-- the sultan's horse-riding sequence is subcombative.  Once during the sequence the sultan fears that his mount may crash them into a tower, but the dominant mood is one in which the sultan is pleasuably overcome by the particular "might" of the horse, which is its power to fly.  It would be no less possible for an isophenomenal film to picture a rider being enthralled by an ordinary horse's power to run, but clearly the affect would be different since the horse was merely doing something common to its species' nature.  Here, the mechanical horse inspires the sense of wonder/sublimity in that it's doing something ordinary horses cannot.  Going by the definition I provided above, the horse's energy is superior to that of the sultan, even though the two are not engaged in any form of combat; rather, the mechanical horse is displaying its fantastic power for the sultan's delectation.

Contrast this scene to the scene in which Abu first meets the towering genie of the lamp:

Seeing the scene out of context, one might imagine that it too might be subcombative.  But shortly later this takes place:

So in this sequence, we are dealing with something very like "dominance," although perhaps a qualified form, in that Abu vanquishes the genie by tricking him into re-entering his bottle:

There is no one-on-one combat as such between the principal heroes and the principal villain in THIEF, as usually takes place in related adventure-films.  Earlier sequences show Jaffar triumphing over the heroes with his magic with no real contest, but when Ahmad and Abu join in flouting his forces with the help of a flying carpet, Jaffar seems to run out of magic and flees, only to receive the same fate most villains get even when they do engage in combat.


Overall THIEF OF BAGDAD is a combative film, though it's easy to imagine any number of works on a similar theme that might not be.  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.  Therefore, while the idea of a mortal gaining control of a genie's illimitable power does constitute "might," it's harder to see "dominance," "a superior energy that arises specifically from conflict," in this scenario.  The traditional ALADDIN is initially characterized as the laziest kid in town, and there's a sense in which his persona in the story is closer to a comic type, even though the original ALADDIN, unlike the Disney version (which steals a lot from Korda's THIEF), is not dominantly comic in tone.

In a related vein, in my review of the 1922 SHERLOCK HOLMES, I noted how the potentially adventurous conflict between Holmes and Prof. Moriarty had been so de-emphasized that I labeled the film a "drama" rather than an adventure:

though the film strains to depict the clash of Holmes and Moriarty in Biblical terms, their personalities are too thinly drawn to sustain the hero-villain myth Doyle created.

In contrast to this, I do regard 1939's ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES as an invigorating adventure, for all that it's partly based on the same stage-play as the 1922 SHERLOCK HOLMES:

ADVENTURES presents a Holmes who fights and shoots like a pulp hero. To be sure, this Holmes is still much more restrained than the modern Robert Downey Jr. incarnation. But the epic combat of Holmes and Moriarty is played for all its worth here, rather than being “seen” via indirect means as in Doyle’s “Final Problem,” or reduced to a crime-melodrama as in the 1922 silent film.

The 1922 film is not unlike the example of Aladdin: it might be said to possess "might" in that Holmes and Moriarty remain incarnations of "good" and "evil" in a generalized sense, though their conflict is subcombative by reason of its lack of vigor.  ADVENTURES does play the combat of good and evil for all it's worth, though, so the triumph of Holmes gives him the quality of "dominance" in the above sense.

These matters will tie together when I re-examine the Kantian concepts of "might" and "dominance" in line with my own earlier categories of "spectacular and functional violence," to which I alluded in the essay preceding this one.

MIGHT MAKES FIGHTS; FIGHTS MAKE SUBLIMITY?

It occurs to me that before I can write the aforementioned essay on three types of human-centered "might" (and their consequences for sublimity) I need to define more particularly what might represents in my system, as opposed to a pure Kantian framework.

First, a quick re-acquaintance with the nature of the term "dynamic" as cited in KNOWING THE DYNAMIS FROM THE DYNAMIC:

DYNAMIC (noun): An interactive system or process, especially one involving competing or conflicting forces.

It's in this context that I invariably use the Greek term "dynamis" for any energy generated by the forces within this process.  For narrative such energies are often generated between elements of plot, characterization and other aspects of narrative, though the conflicts of character interplay and plot interweavings have proven the most fundamental to my system.

That narrative is a system, albeit not a closed one, should be obvious. In this essay I cited one of the few workable concepts I've adapted from Tzvetan Todorov:

"All narrative is a movement between two equilibriums which are similar but not identical.”

-- Todorov, THE FANTASTIC.

One of the best comics-sequences that catches the bare minimum of this narrative movement appeared in an issue of AMERICAN SPLENDOR by Harvey Pekar, celebrated by Alan Moore in a recent video.

Man is hot (first equilibrium). Man makes lemonade (transition).  Man is refreshed (new equilibrium).  The transition from one status to the next generates the energy, the *dynamis,* that makes this a narrative.  Take away any section of it and the interactive system is gone.

Now, there is *dynamis* in this enacting of a mundane chore, both in the narrative world and in the real world where presumably the real Harvey Pekar did make himself a glass of lemonade on a hot day.

But is there any "might" in it?

On this philosophy blog (which, quite frankly, I found while looking for Kantian passages to copy so that I wouldn't have to expend *dynamis* typing them), one Nate Hawthorne also cited the Kant passage I did in my last post, and adds this interpretation:

Humans have might as well. The surgeon who removes a tumor exercises a certain force to lift and hold a scalpel, and presses the scalpel to pierce the patient’s skin. Those are operations of might. A person who walks through a strong wind pushes against the force, the might, of the wind using their own might.

I disagree.  The surgeon who pierces the patient's skin, the person walking against a strong wind, and the comic-book writer who makes himself a glass of lemonade are all exerting *dynamis,* but not might (German *macht*).  Since Kant defines might as "an ability that is superior to great obstacles," then the surgeon and the comic-book writer are not exerting "might."  One could argue that the wind-walker is at least competing with the wind, but since (as Hawthorne mentions) there exists the real possibility that the wind may win the contest, the walker's exertion can't be considered superior to his particular great obstacle.

Now, it's possible that "superior" should not be taken to mean unconditional superiority, for if it were, then there would seem to be no need for Kant to distinguish "might" from "dominance."

A key element of Kant's concept of sublimity is that the person experiencing the sublime emotion must be witness to a phenomenon that is "mighty" enough to awaken the subject's sense of vastness, and yet the subject must feel that he is not in immediate danger, in which the forces of self-preservation would interrupt the subject's general mood of pleasurable displeasure, of awestruck "sense of wonder" (my term of course).

Therefore a phenomenon like a storm at sea can be "mighty," but not involve "dominance," since though there are contrary forces at work in a storm there is no sense of struggle in Kant's sense:

"Might is called dominance if it is superior even to the resistance of something that itself possesses might.”

So, to recap, we have three overlapping but distinct terms:

Dynamis= any kind of energy
Might= an energy which to some degree is "superior" to some unspecified lesser forces
Dominance= a superior energy which specifically arises from conflict

The latter two, it would seem, are implicated in Kant's theory of the sublime, and in mine as well.  But since the Pekar piece only evokes energy in its most general sense, then it would not be in any way sublime. I belabor this point in order to critique (once again) the dubious logic proposed by Douglas Wolk in his book READING COMICS, where Wolk attempted to read many if not all alternative comics as possessing Kant's quality of "unboundedness," simply because the altcomics weren't "bound" by commercial restrictions.

I foresee the need of some clarification on the functioning of the sublime in Frye's four mythoi, but may put that off until finishing the aforementioned NUM examples.

LATTER-DAY NOTE: Though I generally don't go back and revise earlier essays, I'm picking this one as an example of a place where I most misused the concept of *dynamis.*  Anyone reading this in 2012 should note that the *dynamis* term as used here has now been superseded by *plot-dynamicity," which see.

IMPERSONALLY PERSONAL

Long and winding road, but at last I'm back to talking about the "50% of the 90% that's still pretty good."

I've stated that it's possible that what I'll now call the "naive reader" may not have enough acquaintance with "good work" to understand precisely why (to use one of the earlier examples) X-MEN is said to be "crap." For this reader, if X-MEN has a good beat and he can dance to it (so to speak), then X-MEN has a good style.

At the same time if the naive reader was raised in the U.S., then there's a strong chance that by middle school he was exposed to the *idea* that "good work" had certain associations that X-MEN does not. Thus the reader may be aware of the dichotomy, as presented to him through his cultural matrix, even if he can't put into words the literary qualities that Henry James is said to offer and that X-MEN presumably lacks. So in many cases the naive reader's problem is not one of complete ignorance, but of not being able to internalize the dichotomy. More, the reader usually cannot explain just what it is he likes about X-MEN, beyond the obvious things: identifying with the characters, enjoying displays of sex and/or violence, etc.

I've described this reader as "seeking something in the reading-experience that transcends the flaws" that were summarized by Curt Purcell in his essay. Thus the reader may or may not be able to cognitively perceive a flaw like a poor writing style, but what remains constant in both cases is this "something" that I labelled "mythopoesis." Admittedly I was vague just what kind of myth-making I was addressing.

Essentially, what I meant by "mythopoesis" is the reader's formation of a "personal myth" in the Jungian sense of the word. This is more than just a summary of the reader's likes and dislikes: it is the "narrative" of his own life's nature. The naive reader's philosophical counterpart, "the sophisticated reader," will possess a personal narrative as well. However, in line with what I wrote of this type of reader in my last essay, this type of reader probably will have invested a certain "proto-critical" effort into consciously crafting his personal myth. His conscious personal myth probably will not be identical with his subconscious one, but the latter persona must logically be affected by the subject's attempt to "impersonalize" the persona with regard to conscious tastes and philosophical outlook.

Now, in the last essay I wrote:

A discerning appreciation for the ways in which the human mind constructs myths-- even while buttressing them with logical assertions and scientific evidence-- does not *have* to equate all myths as having the same content, or even the same form.

What is important to ask in all cases is what *dynamis* the artist expects to arouse in his reader...

The elitist view of the "Henry James/X-MEN" dichotomy assumes that the contrast between the two ALWAYS comes down to "substantive content" versus "divertissement." I don't oppose the notion that a lot of pop literature is consumed by its intended audience and quickly forgotten, but I don't think it's because all such works are inherently forgettable. And I think this even of works whose own authors may have conceived of doing no more than was necessary to keep food on their tables.

I suggest, rather, the naive reader remembers, however subconsciously, those elements of popular fiction that appeal to his personal myth, and forgets those that do not so appeal. The naive reader may not analyze why he thinks one type of pop-creation is better than the other, beyond simple platitudes: "Mike Hammer is better than a superhero comic because superheroes are for kids and Hammer is for adults." I presume this kind of judgment would hold sway even if the superhero comic were one written *by* Hammer's creator Mickey Spillane.

I suggest further that the sophisticated reader has the same subconscious reactions as the naive one. Once again, though, there is an attempt to construct a "conscioous smart filter" that explains to the conscious persona all the good reasons why the reader does like Henry James but doesn't like the Hernandez Brothers.

And here's where the elitist dichotomy breaks down. Though both the naive reader nor the sophisticated reader will have subconscious reasons, reasons pertaining to one's personal myth, for preferring Work A to Work B, they will also follow the same pattern of conscious justification. Thus the Hernandez-booster may downgrade Henry James for his reticence about sex, and the X-booster may downgrade Mike Hammer for being a fascist and/or racist sunnuvabitch. Elitist proponents can *claim* that the reasoned propositions of the sophisticated reader are different in kind from the less abstruse justifications of the naive one. But this too can be demolished as another "appeal to taste" rather than as a clear description of the mental processes involved in both scenarios.

In summation I think the difference between my explanation of human "crap-tolerance", focusing on the care and feeding of "personal myths," differs from Curt Purcell's concept of a "smart filter" in the following manner.

I *believe* Purcell is positing that the more complex functions of literary cognition evolve in linear fashion from the simpler ones.

I agree that the two are inextricably *related,* but not that the complex is simply an articulation of the simple.

As a post-Kantian myth-critic, I'm pretty much committed to the philosophy that the relation of the two is more like that of a hologram superimposed over a flat drawing.

What the hologram's made of and how it got that way would be food for more essays than I plan to write in future. But I will say this--

It ain't made outta Platonic Forms.

MYTHOPOESIS & DYNAMIZATION

One last time, from the conclusion of this essay:

I think [the reader's existence in an imperfect world]'s the real reason "fans love crap." It's not that they love the flaws and mistakes that prove intolerable for nonfans. *If* they are experienced enough to be aware of the flaws, then they ignore the flaws in an *intentional* manner because they seek something in the reading-experience that transcends the flaws.

That "something" I've frequently called "myth" or "mythopoesis."

Now, in a comments-post Curt Purcell speaks of the "conventionally rewarding elements" of a narrative. In DEEPLY, MADLY IF NOT TRULY I asserted that the canonical-fiction reader was no less invested (and willing to be immersed in) the type of "rewarding elements" that such a reader seeks. One may be called (after Fiedler) "unearned gratification" and the other "earned gratification," but it should be evident that as both are gratification, any differences between them must be differences of degree, not of kind.

As I've said before, in place of "gratification" I prefer my term "dynamization," which connotes nothing more than a movement of some item, entity or presence from a "static" to a "dynamic" state. In the case of art and literature, the movement takes place in the mind of the reader/audience, and is especially easy to see in the context of narrative fiction, which is generally expected to have a "static" beginning that sets up a situation and a "dynamic" end that resolves the situation. But the simple binary formula of dynamization applies not only to other forms of art but to all other "forms" (as Cassirer would call them) of human cognition.

Northrop Frye takes a Cassirerean tack in THE GREAT CODE when he writes that "mythical thinking is universal or poetic thinking, and is to predicative thought as narrative myth is to history." The main thrust here, in both Cassirer and Frye, is to indicate the development of one from the other, but a secondary focus is to indicate also the continued relationship of these cultural forms.

Myth, being imbricated with the concept of narrative, must also share the binary form of dynamization. For instance, even in archaic myths whose connotations are largely obscure to modern readers, the pattern is evident.

EXAMPLE:
STATIC SITUATION:
Jesus predicts that Peter will foreswear him three times before the cock crows.
DYNAMIC RESOLUTION:
Peter does indeed foreswear Jesus three times before the cock crows.

This is a simple narrative with none of Aristotle's "reversal:" Jesus says an unlikely thing will happen, and it does. What this narrative meant to its original audiences has been the subject of many theories, of course, but that original intent is irrelevant in a narratological vein.

What is not usually considered is that the same narrative movement pertains in terms of what Frye calls "predicative thought." The predicative thought may be buttressed with formal dialectical logic or scientific examples, but the formula remains the same.

EXAMPLE:
STATIC SITUATION:
Curt Purcell theorizes on the presence of a "passive filtering mechanism."
DYNAMIC RESOLUTION:
Curt Purcell, having provided a "reversal" of sorts by considering opposing thoughts, completes his meditation on the "smart filter."

For me the expressive breakthrough that comes to the audience from the presentation of a dynamic resolution is the motive force that makes possible not only myth in its most formal sense but all narrative, fictional and philosophical.

This is not a popular view. Opponents of "myth criticism" often act as if it endangers their hard-won intellectual boundaries, as when T.E. Apter says of Jung:

"Jung's endorsements of the mysterious and the fantastic are fundamentally platitudinous, neglecting as they do the artist's specific aims and rigorously drawn distinctions." (p. 142)

I don't believe this is the case for Jung or for Frye, at whom I've seen roughly the same criticism leveled. A discerning appreciation for the ways in which the human mind constructs myths-- even while buttressing them with logical assertions and scientific evidence-- does not *have* to equate all myths as having the same content, or even the same form.

What is important to ask in all cases is what *dynamis* the artist expects to arouse in his reader, and in my next essay on this theme that will take me back to the matter of what has been called "crap."

DEEPLY, MADLY IF NOT TRULY

At the end of this essay I said:

I think [the reader's existence in an imperfect world]'s the real reason "fans love crap." It's not that they love the flaws and mistakes that prove intolerable for nonfans. *If* they are experienced enough to be aware of the flaws, then they ignore the flaws in an *intentional* manner because they seek something in the reading-experience that transcends the flaws.

That "something" I've frequently called "myth" or "mythopoesis." More on that later, though first I may give Curt Purcell a chance to tell me if he thinks I've misinterpreted his essay.

I did not come back to the specific idea of mythopoesis in my next essay on this subject. Instead I concentrated on the proposition that the literary experience of works possessed of formal excellence might be "homologous" with that of "crap" works:

I merely pointed out that a reader's narrarive "immersion" in "crap" is essentially homologous with that of a reader's narrative "immersion" in "good stuff."

Curt Purcell then responded to my example in the comments-thread.

One problem with your Henry James example, by the way, is that anyone who appreciates James very likely sees the "nothing happens" part as feature rather than bug. It's not a flaw to be screened (no matter how it may seem to other readers), but part of the point. For that very reason, I have my doubts, too, that anyone really gets immersed in James the way we're discussing. There's a great deal of literary fiction (and its antecedents) that seems premised on the notion that immersion is suspect, if not outright pernicious. Formal difficulty and a sneering eschewal of conventionally rewarding elements (i.e. those that directly stimulate strong primary affective responses) work in tandem to withhold from the reader an experience that's immersive to almost any degree.

The first definition I accessed for "homologous" comes from American Heritage online, and reads:

"Corresponding or similar in position, value, structure, or function."

Putting "position" aside as irrelevant, let's look at how literary fiction and popular fiction compare in respect to the other three.

It's true that a text written in the canonical literary tradition *dominantly* approaches the concept of narrative in a different manner than that of much if not all things written in the tradition(s) of popular fiction. (And yes, I'm aware that the two categories can spawn some interesting crossbreeds, but that's why I have the little stars around the word "dominantly," dontcha know.) As Curt says, canonical lit-fic often the "eschews conventionally rewarding elements" that underlie popular fiction's strongest appeal, so on that aspect alone they don't function identically as to how their narrative worlds function. Mickey Spillane wants his readers to enjoy said "rewarding elements." Henry James may have his own set of "rewarding elements" but he does communicate them to the reader more by suggestion and innuendo than by outright depiction. So the two aren't homologous by function.

In terms of cultural validation, it's obvious that the two aren't valued identically, though one may be validated with higher sales while the other may be validated with Pushcart Prizes. Further, it would be a betrayal of pluralism for me to value them identically, however much I thought the culture at large failed to give Mickey Spillane his proper due, as against the more validated Henry James. Pluralism requires that Spillane be valued on the terms appropriate to pop-fiction, not because someone thinks there are hidden "existentialist" currents in his work, while James is valued in terms of canon-fiction.

That leaves structure-- and yes, it's at this point that I will say that this is where all literary experience is indeed homologous, in terms of that basic structure I term the *dynamization.*

It's noteworthy that Curt Purcell should use the term "rewarding," for when I proposed the term "dynamization" in place of gratification in this essay, I also conceived the motivation for seeking this experience in art/literature came down to a perception of rewards:

I do believe that no one reads/views any work of art without some notion of a rewarding experience down the road...

Underlying this common quest for a reward of some sort, however visceral or intellectual the reward may be, is a structural movement from one state to another (what Todorov called two "equilibriums)."

I realize, as Curt points out, that the enthusiastic proponent/reader of Henry James does not consider the criterion of "nothing happens" to be a flaw. But in bringing up James I was responding to Purcell's assertion about how the "smart filter" would work in order to screen out any narrative phenomena that might disrupt the reader's quest for the reward:

a poor writing style goes unnoticed, technical mistakes are ignored, awkward plot developments are accepted, embarrassment and self-consciousness aren't provoked by one's enjoyment of story elements that might otherwise seem silly or childish, etc.

Many if not all of these examples arise in the reader's mind due to social constructions about what is or isn't a poor writing style, about what is or isn't a silly story-element. Building on this example, Curt's "smart filter" works to screen out elements of pop-fiction that the reader knows to be deficient by SOMEONE's criterion-- say, for our Mickey Spillane reader who doesn't want the action spoiled by worrying too much about Spillane's style. This reader may even have some acquaintance with "good" writing-- as against my earlier example of the juvenile TWILIGHT-reader-- but it may be that when the Spillane-reader gets a thriller, he wants thrills, quick and dirty, and the rough Spillane style is good at delivering that, as the James style would not be.

By extension, then, I'm saying that the James reader is no less aware that many SOMEONEs don't like reading fiction made up lots of pregnant pauses. I see this reader making more of a conscious, as opposed to subconscious, choice as to what standards of the "rewarding experience" he will advocate. I fully agree with Curt that for the reader of canon-fiction "immersion is suspect," but I think it's only the immersion of those who disagree with that reader's tastes. The canon-reader is just as interested in being immersed in an experience as the pop-reader, but the former is concerned with getting an experience that he considers *unique* (or relatively so) while the latter is concerned with getting an experience he considers somewhat *typical,* but presented in an *atypical* manner.

I confess I can't prove that other readers of canon-fiction get immersed in that fiction, either by pure logic or by citation of my own experiences in that bailiwick. But when I read any book by a critic who has devoted his life to the study of art and literature, even one I disagree with-- say, Theodor Adorno-- I usually get the sense that they *are* immersed, if not in the immediate experience of what they read, then in its place in their conceptual universes.

In a Northrop Frye essay entitled "Mouldy Tales," which I covered in greater depth here, Frye suggests that certain genres invite the reader to simply throw himself into the narrative, while other genres invite what might be called a "proto-critical" attitude, in which the reader is more or less "reviewing" the author's accomplishments even as he experiences the story. But even this "proto-critical" reader is getting some personal validation as he reads. "Aren't I smart to understand what Conrad meant by this?" Or, alternately: "Aren't I clever to figure out that the Hernandez Brothers are really not all they're cracked up to be?"

As I wend toward this conclusion I still didn't manage to work in the relationship of mythopoesis and dynamization, but by and large it may not bear on Curt's specific arguments anyway.

AN OPEN QUEST, Part 1

"In the St. George plays the hero dies in his dragon-fight and is brought to life by a doctor, and the same symbolism runs through all the dying-god myths. There are thus not three but four distinguishable aspects to the quest-myth. First, the agon or conflict itself. Second, the pathos or death, often the mutual death of hero and monster. Third, the disappearance of the hero, a theme which often takes the form of sparagmos or tearing to pieces. Some times the hero's body is divided among his followers, as in Eucharist symbolism: sometimes it is distributed around the natural world, as in the stories of Orpheus and more especially Osiris. Fourth, the reappearance and recognition of the hero, where sacramental Christianity follows the metaphorical logic: those who in the fallen world have partaken of their redeemer's divided body are united with his risen body."-- Frye, ANATOMY OF CRITICISM, p. 192.

In DIVINING COMEDY I performed some corrective surgery on Frye's schema above, in that I excised Frye's comparison of the hero's "reappearance and recognition" in respect to the mythos of comedy. I'm probably the only comics-fan who would care if this operation killed the patient, but in my judgment the only thing Frye's system loses is his notion of forming all four mythoi into a closed "quest-myth," when what is more needed is an "open quest."

One reason Frye conflated the comedy-mythos with that of "rebirth" narratives was, as I discussed earlier, because he was a Christian, which meant that his religion's eschatology was oriented upon an "End of Days," to say nothing of the fact that the principle source of that eschatology is that of a book-narrative that has a beginning, middle, and end. A second reason, touched upon in earlier essays, is that Frye's literary theory owes much (albeit with modifications) to the so-called "myth-ritual school" of early 20th century classicism. The four dramatic actions from Greek theater which Frye adapted as the four "themes" of his four narrative *mythoi* were derived from one prominent member of that school, Gilbert Murray.

I won't explore here the controversies surrounding the myth-ritual school, which isn't much in favor these days though it has received some academic re-evaluations of late. At worst, it was too much of a totalizing approach to mythology, assuming that everything in archaic mythology stemmed from some ritual religious act. It wasn't as far-fetched as Robert Graves' penchant to see all myth as recapitulated ancient histories, or (to cite the fellow who let the monocausal cat out of the bag in myth-studies) Max Muller's notion that all myths related to sun-worship. But like all monocausal explanations, pure myth-ritualism left a lot to be desired.

Frye was, as others before me have observed, careful not to let his exploration of literary myths spill over into an outright endorsement of this school. Thus his literary theory doesn't stand or fall with the fortunes of the myth-ritual school, since he was simply using their literal formulations in a figurative manner: to describe the ways in which literary myths paralleled religious ones. Only in one regard did Frye approach the literalism of the myth-ritualists, and that is in the schema quoted above, in which the four *mythoi* are imagined as four stages within the life of a single protagonist. However, even here the "quest-myth," which Frye imagines as beginning with the *agon* of the romance and ending with the *anagnorisis* of the comedy, is meant as a figurative teaching-tool, rather than actually expounding on how the respective *mythoi* evolved.

To me, each of the *mythoi* is a closed system, so there is no need to see them as part of some greater spectrum modeled on the career of a particular mythic/literary character, be it the Christian St. George, referenced above, or the pagan Perseus, also referenced in the same "Theory of Myths" section of THE ANATOMY.

Frye is on much stronger ground when he compares his four *mythoi* to the cycling seasons-- or rather, with the different emotional and expressive moods called forth in human beings by the seasons. He then uses the four terms-- agon, pathos, sparagmos and anagnorisis-- to describe the themes underlying this storytelling structures, but he fails in THE ANATOMY to note what he would later expound upon in A NATURAL PERSPECTIVE: the fact that colloquially the word "theme" can be used to mean either (1) what actually happens in the story, or (2) what the story's events signify. I suspect that in ANATOMY he feels that each theme carries both "narrative values" and "signficant values," to borrow the terms in he used in "Archetypes of Literature," an essay predating ANATOMY by about four years, and which I discussed here.

In *my* adapation of Frye's terms I wish to make clear this double-sidedness of the terms he called "themes." Thus in future I will identify the words themselves, which I call "radicals," purely as "narrative values." For instance, an *agon*'s narrative purpose is to sort out the conflict between hero and villain, apart from whatever significance the story as a whole may have for audiences.

However, the adjectival forms I mentioned in AGONISTIC AND OTHERS will serve to describe the "significant values" implied by the narrative radicals. Thus "agonistic" describes the emotional and expressive *dynamization* offered by the adventure-story to its audiences, and the other three adjectives describe the dynamizations appropriate to their types of stories.

Once it is clear that each *mythos* has its own unique expressive capability, it should be possible to ward off, as in archaic ritual, the baneful influence of Bloody Comic Book Elitists. If a Gary Groth insists that Will Eisner's SPIRIT is better than other superhero works because he Eisner didn't take the superhero genre "seriously," it can be clearly demonstrated that Groth simply wants to see some other *dynamizing* formula-- that of comedy, or more likely, of satire-- rather than the one appropriate to the superhero genre.

Maintaining this openness of mind is part of the "open quest" referenced in the title, but not all, as witness Part 2.

RED IN TOOTH AND CLAW

"In men, testosterone rises and falls in response to winning or losing one’s place in the social order, such as losing a game or gaining a promotion. It is higher for men in high-powered leadership positions. Particularly in early childhood, boys prefer focusing their attention on toys and other objects that can move and that they can move around."-- Dario Nardi.


"...instead of being brave and fearless, Superman lives really in a continuous guilty terror, projecting outward in every direction his readers' paranoid hostility. Every city in America is in the grip of fiends... Every country is about to attack us... Only the Nazi-Nietzschean Ubermensch, in his provincial apotheosis as Superman, can save us."-- Gershon Legman, LOVE AND DEATH, p. 40.

"My ire is directed towards masculinity, not men."-- Noah Berlatsky's response to an accusation of misandry from 10-26-09.

I really don't understand anyone saner than Valerie Solanas having "ire" toward masculinity as such. I can understand an animus toward the statistically-dominant excesses of masculinity, as well as a similar animus toward those of femininity.

But disliking a gender's dominant proclivities in general strikes me as no more balanced than Melville's Ahab threatening to strike the sun if it insulted him.

I said earlier that I would address the concept of Heideggerian "thrownness" with respect to other matters, and one of those matters is referenced in my opening quote, a fairly by-the-book analysis, chosen at random off the Web, of the personality-orienting effects of testosterone on men, who generate about ten times more of the hormone than do women.

I call particular attention to the datum that testosterone produces in men as a group an ethos of competition in which the victor gets the spoils after reddening his teeth and claws on his victims and/or competitors.

This is, to be sure, not an ethos which by itself can support a complex civilization. For civilization to be viable, the male ethos must be, and indeed has been in the majority of societies, modified in order to allow for a cooperative ethos. The female of the species can probably take the lion's share of credit for promulgating this ethos-- and yes, they would deserve the lion's rather than the lioness's, since by all accounts the lion is the one who gets the most meat. It's possible that he gets the biggest share simply because he's big enough to beat down all competitors, though I wouldn't rule out another evolutionary possibility: that he gets it so that he has the energy necessary to fuck all the lionesses in the pride. Spoils, indeed.

The ethos also is not the only one that can inform the literature generated from civilization. It would be a dismal world if all we had for entertainment were stories of heroes beating villains.

However, it would also be a dismal and incomplete world if that particular type were missing, even if we still had all the others without alteration. And contrary to early elitist Gershon Legman and modern elitist Noah Berlatsky, one need not find some abberant psychology at work when men read stories of heroes beating villains, be it Legman's accusations of paranoia or Berlatsky's readings of "homosexual panic." If one must read Superman exclusively as an allegory for The Real World, the most logical and least strained allegory would be that Superman and similar adventure-stories allegorize the Competitive Ethos of Men.

I said above that a Cooperative Ethos comes in to modify said Competitive Ethos, but the latter certainly never goes away, any more than does its "objective correlative," the hormone that encourages men to compete not only for real gains like jobs and women but also for winning pointless contests with no money riding on the outcome.

(As a side-note, it can be argued that women haven't always been against the existence of this ethos. Given two primitive villages, one of which has a good crop and the other a failed one, how many women in Village Two would beg their men not to attack Village One: to let Village One keep its earned goods while the children of Village Two just starve to death?)

Legman's scatterbrained analysis is interesting, though, because he does put his finger on one fact about the adventure-genre: it exists in a continual state of crisis. But Legman fails to appreciate that this heightened state is at base a narrative trope whose purpose is to bring about for the readers' pleasure the dynamizing effects of the *agon.* Of the four Fryean "myth-nuclei" (my term), the *agon* most succinctly summarized the 'superiority dance' nature of all dynamizations because the *agon* involves a physical struggle, while the conflicts found in the other three "nuclei"--*pathos,* *sparagmos* and *cognitio*-- are more abstract in their nature and their effects.

In literature as in life, there's no getting away from the zero-sum-game of conflict, nor is there any justification for rejecting any genre for being overly fantasy-based. So I see no need for most of these reductive approaches to any genre, especially since they usually come off as simple-minded putdowns of those who patronize a given genre-- which is itself another "superiority dance" rather than a valid analysis.

OUR BODIES, OUR NONBODIES: PART 1

I'm not going to expatiate in detail on part 2 of the "Comics in the Closet" essay I referenced earlier, but I will use as a conceptual jumping-off point a comment from an individual with the screen-name "Pallas" who took issue with Berlatsky's essay.

Pallas said:

"I think it's a real stretch to say that because Clark can take pleasure in his own super powers, he's somehow gay, or that he can have a homoerotic desire for himself..."

Later he adds:

"Superman is battling other men in order to win reproductive rights to the girl, who is only interested in him due to his masculine strength providing the best genes to ensure her children have the greatest chance of survival."

This is by no means a groundbreaking interpretation of the Superman/Clark/Lois dynamic, but it's a refreshing common-sense statement that is far more supported by the original comic books than Berlatsky's theory.

The first exploration of the Lois/Clark dynamic in ACTION #1 (a little before Lois even meets Superman) coheres perfectly with Pallas' argument. Clark, having affected his nebbishy disguise, is plainly moved by heterosexual desire to ask Lois out, rather than, say, "hanging with the boys" as any good repressed-homosexual oughtta be. A thug and his gang intrude. Lois slaps the thug but Clark won't fight. Lois leaves in her own car, and when the thugs pursue her, Clark has the needed excuse to unleash Superman (who's apparently only made a small handful of public apperances hitherto) to give the thugs a thrashing.

Or, to be more specific, what he thrashes is their car. Can one assumes that the car is essentially a penis-substitute? Probably, though Joe Schuster should be drummed out of the Repressed-Homosexual Corps in that he really doesn't make any of the thugs being indirectly thrashed as being full of masculine potency. Personally I think Schuster tends to focus more on the attractivness of Lois Lane more than any other character, including Superman, but that too is probably just more Freudian repression of the truth.

I don't know if Freud or any of his spiritual heirs were aware of the kind of "pleasure," to which Pallas alludes, that comes from the exercise of one's abilities. As I discussed earlier, Jung was aware that all human energies did not come down to sexuality, which is why he tried (though he failed) to advance "libido" as a term to describe all potential human energies, sexual and otherwise. I have, as some may know, advanced "dynamization" as a substitute neologism for Jung's "libidinization," and will be using it somewhat in the next essay in this series.

As to the other quote I drew from Pallas, I have my doubts that Eve Sedgwick, one of the founders of queer theory, would prove very insightful on the subject of What Men Do to Get Women. I haven't read (and don't intend to read) Sedgwick any time soon, though to judge from her one-note career she ought to be at least as funny as Laura Mulvey.

What's next, Eve? (She's unfortunately deceased, so I can't really ask her.) If the conflicts of men over women in stories really reveals their gayness, should the same thing hold true of real life?

If (as the anecdote goes) young Jack Kirby once had a fistfight to drive a male rival away from his future wife Roz...

Does that mean Kirby was really Kweer for the rival, not the woman he married?

Jeez-us. (And no, that's not meant sexually! Really!!!)

Oh, no! Too many phallic exclamation points--

AUGGHHH

(To be continued)

A SIEGEL SEGUE

This is another segue from my ongoing posts re: a theoretical judgment of "sadism in the comics."

I've coined the term "dynamization" for the purposes of a study that discusses sex and violence in art, but I've done so in order to come up with a term that describes a subjective experience of ego-satisfaction that doesn't call up associations of fictive sex and violence, as I've argued that "gratification" does. The problem of word associations is not a new one: after Freud started using "libido" to mean predominantly-sexual energies, Jung tried to correct that use by asserting that since "libido" meant life, any human activity connected to life (which meant, in effect, every activity) would be "libidinal." But though Jung's logic was impeccable, the Freudian association became dominant. So had I used a term like "libidinization," that too would have suggested naught but sex-thrills.

Dynamization, as I conceive it, is certainly not confined to art. If Person One wants to build a birdhouse, that individual is in a static state with respect to his non-knowledge about birdhouse-building, and he reaches a dynamic state once he has learned the method of crafting birdhouses and does successfully build one. In comics this would comparable to the position of a reader who becomes proficient in understanding the basic rudiments of a given genre; his understanding of that genre dynamizes him and gives Person One (generally speaking) some degree of self-satisfaction. Of course Person Two may come along and tell Person One that what the latter thinks is a dynamic genre is in fact static in comparison to some other genre which Person Two favors. Person Two may even convert Person One to this very belief, but I would argue that the initial dynamization of Person One's learning the genre is a fact within his subjectivity that is not altered by his later change in priorities.

Just as the principle of subjective dynamization can apply to any activity that gives ego-satisfaction, it also has many manifestations even within what may appear a simple fictive experience. The aforementioned comics-critics Legman and Wertham chose to read nearly all comics that contained violence as "crime comics" and charged them with having the potential to infuse their readers with the seeds of sadism and fascism. Given the multifaceted nature of human beings, it's impossible to say with certainty that NO ONE ever had sadistic or fascist impulses "touched off" by reading a comic book, but one can certainly discern other sources of dynamization than that of sadism.


I've asserted that most of the violence in works belonging to the adventure-genre centers upon a fight between a hero (or heroes) and a villain (or villains). Legman and Wertham take pains to claim that comic-book villains are symbolic substitutes for the forces of organized society-- parents, policemen, other ethnic groups-- in order to make the medium's aggression seem hostile to a civilized society. And yet, the two critics never consider that the readers might, at least in part, actually read the castigations of villains as applying to actual criminals-- such as the unknown burglar who caused the death of Jerry Siegel's father.

As Gerald Jones' MEN OF TOMORROW notes, Siegel never publicly commented on the fact that, long before he was writing fast-paced crimefighting tales, his father was shot to death, presumably by a thief, in a scenario that resembles the origin of Batman more than that of Siegel's most famous creation. Since Siegel did not comment upon his early personal encounter with crime, we cannot presume that he took any especial satisfaction in punishing fictional gangsters with his heroes. On the other hand, had either Wertham or Legman known of Siegel's experience, I like to think that they would have at least conceded that his hypothetical motives for enjoying the spectacle of crime-beatings could have more to do with his personal loss than with any buried urge toward sadism.

Of course, they could also rejoin that few comics-readers personally lost loved ones to the depradations of criminals. But what Wertham and Legman failed to take seriously was that all people capable of at least elementary cognition-- whether children or adults-- know that there is always some possibility that they could be victims of violent crime, particularly (but not exclusively) when they reside in urban centers. Many people, knowing this, still do not love adventure-stories; some people may even be phobic toward scenes of violence, as indeed Legman and Wertham seemed to be. But some readers will feel a sense of dynamization at observing scenes in which a hero, with whom they identify, overcomes a real menace. Some may, as Wertham and Legman argued, disregard the "moral" of a given story, and focus only upon the violence. But it's clearly ridiculous to think that all readers of Jerry Siegel's SUPERMAN were so distanced; that the appeal of the Man of Steel was based in sadism alone.

In one of Alan Moore's JOURNAL interviews Moore took the non-elitist position that there was nothing inherently wrong with the ideals of the Superman comics as pertaining to young readers. He elaborated that as they grew older such readers would surely need to deepen and refine those early, elementary ideals in order to participate in the adult world, which is true enough, so far as it goes. I would add a caveat that the adult world, too, is governed by premises about the way culture and society work, and that many of these too have their roots in garnering a self-dynamizing satisfaction for this or that party. I've objected before to the fallacies of unilaterally preferring the sophisticated to the crude:

'The high/low prejudices can be much more virulent when dealing with works in differing modes that do not have humor as their aim, leading to (for instance) the tendency to reject modes dealing with adventure or melodrama in favor of those dealing with “serious drama"'

I take an even more pluralist view than Moore: the type of subjective dynamizations offered by "sophisticated entertainment" are in no way innately superior to those of "simple entertainment;" they can only be *conditionally* superior in certain particular aspects, and the reverse is also true. There will always be some individuals who like only one of those two broad idioms, but as society we need both-- and not just for the children.

We need both because the world in which we live is a "blooming, buzzing confusion" of conflicting energies, and anything that gives us clarity is essential.

NOTE: Some time after I wrote this, I learned that Siegel's father died of heart failure brought on by a holdup, not because of being shot.  My error.

GRATIFICATION= DYNAMIZATION?

This essay is a segue from the theme pursued last in "Pop Goes the Psychology." Since my current theme involves in part those narrative elements called "sex and violence," I find myself searching around in the corpus of literary terms in order to express what I want to say, and not finding what I want.

In other words, I feel a neologism coming on.

The closest extant term to what I want is "gratification." The word comes from a Latin root meaning to "oblige" or "please," and in litcrit is usually coupled with the word "instant" as a derogatory comment of commenting upon simple entertainments that offer only quick but short-lived pleasures. In WHAT WAS LITERATURE Leslie Fiedler contrasted "unearned instant gratification" with the kind that the schools teach one to appreciate-- i.e., the "earned" kind, the type that takes some cognitive or affective noodling to assimilate. He did not, like many critics, make this contrast as a means of privileging the latter over the former, and seemed to regard both as significant to the criticism of literature, even if the two modes (my term) were not covalent.

I do believe that no one reads/views any work of art without some notion of a rewarding experience down the road, even if that experience is one as arid and rigorous as the "alienation" preferred by Theodor Adorno (whose aesthetics I hope to touch upon in a future essay). Yet the word "gratification" does have strong associations with the sex-negative attitudes of Judeo-Christian ethics. The word also carries the association of "deferred gratification," the notion that if one puts off immediate satisfaction of desires, there will be some more fulfilling or at least more prudent outcome as a result. In this essay I've rejected the notion that those forms of literature deemed to represent "unearned gratification" should be curtailed to make way for more prudent or even more mature forms of literature, so for all of these reasons "gratification" does not quite work.

"Dynamization," however, does work as a term for what the reader of a given work perceives to be happening within him, whether he seeks for unearned or earned gratification. The word, not to my knowledge used in literary studies as yet, describes an intensification of potential, as seen by the Wikipedia definition of the term in the realm of computer science:

"In computer science, Dynamization is the process of transforming a static data structure into a dynamic one"

To relate this somewhat indirectly to my essays on sadism, for the reader who wants thrills out of a superhero comic-- whether those thrills can be deemed sadistic or not by an outsider-- he searches not just for gratification but dynamization. The fact that not all gratificatory fictions suit all readers, even among those commonly thought to be undiscriminating, should be easy to demonstrate from a casual perusal of any comic-book messageboard. The same is true for readers seeking sexual thrills through a fictional medium; one size does not fit all, and the reader will obviously seek out the experience that most gives him the thrill of arousal, not just anything that is meant to gratify.

Similarly, artcomics readers, though tending to view what the mainstream-reader likes as uniformly static, seek their own dynamization through whatever experiences they find intriguing or engrossing. A given reader of this type may find a given artcomic to be basically static in its structure-- say, a bad imitation of a Harvey Pekar "confessional" comic-- and therefore his lack of dynamization would be covalent with that of the disappointed thrillseeker.

"Dynamization," by the way, comes from a Greek word for "energy," and thus seems appropriate for talking both about the *energia* through which authors create their works and with which readers come to appreciate those works.