VECTORS OF INTENTIONALITY

 

In the three-part EQUAL AND UNEQUAL VECTORS series, beginning here, I referenced the way authorial well manifested in all of the conceptual categories on which I’ve meditated here, though the three essays were concerned only with the category of centricity. This essay will be concerned with the category of literary phenomenality.

A word first, though, about my use of the word “intentionality” in the title. This term has various associations in various schools of philosophy, but here it means exactly the same as the concept of “authorial will.” Based on my readings I’ve often thought the twentieth-century concepts of “intentionality” were not substantially different from what Arthur Schopenhauer meant when he spoke of “will,” and that the later term might have been introduced by writers who didn’t necessarily want to seem overly indebted to Schopenhauer. I’ve resisted using the term “intentionality” because my system does owe a lot to the Gloomy Philosopher. Yet I must admit that at times “will” is a lot less malleable as a term than the later conception. “Vectors of intentionality” simply sounds better to my ear.

My 2017 essay ECCENTRIC ORBITS supplies a case in point. At that time, I was still heavily influenced by the “circle metaphors” propounded by Northrop Frye, and so I attempted to conceive of different forms of phenomenality in terms of “centric will” and “eccentric will.” At some point I abandoned these terms, even though I still deem the logic of the ORBITS argument sound. One problem with the circle metaphors is that though they work fairly well for a complete finished work, such as a Dickens novel, said metaphors don’t work as well for serials conceived as open-ended works, whether they come to a definite end or remain indefinitely open. Whitehead’s metaphor of force-vectors works better for a teleseries like ANGEL, which, as I mentioned in the first VECTORS essay, changed its centricity-vectors from non-distributive to distributive during the process of serialization, Clearly one would not see such a transformation in a novel, even one that appeared in serialized form. It is at least easier to state, if not any easier to prove, that the character of Spike doesn’t have a centricity-vector equal to that of Buffy in her series but does have a vector equal to Angel’s.

The ORBITS essay gives several examples where the phenomenality becomes fuzzy due to authorial intentionality. There’s no doubt, for instance, that Frank Miller has a definite purpose in putting a ghost into “Nancy’s Last Dance,” one of the sub-stories of the movie SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR. This would seem to be the first time Miller put any sort of marvelous phenomenon into any SIN CITY tale. The presence of John Hartigan’s ghost, though, does not transform Miller’s cosmos into a place where ghosts or any other marvelous phenomena can be reasonably expected to make appearances. Thus, within the SIN CITY cosmos, the marvelous phenomenality possesses a subordinate vector. In contrast, Miller’s creative preoccupation with tropes of the uncanny—bizarre crimes, freakish flesh, superlative skills—appears with enough regularity that the entire series can be fairly judged as uncanny in its phenomenality. Thus even if there are occasional SIN CITY stories that lack uncanny tropes, the naturalistic phenomenality also possesses a subordinate vector.

Now, when I used the word “regularity” above, I do so while renouncing all previous attempts to *quantify * the appearances of this or that phenomenality within a work or series of works. My current conception of vectors supersedes even the concepts of “active and passive shares,” a critical stratagem by which I attempted to formulate a logical alternative to making a simple “head count” of each depiction of metaphenomenality in a series.

To hearken back to the RAWHIDE KID/RINGO KID contrast I offered while working on the active/passive formulations, both of these series, unlike SIN CITY, did not offer regular depictions of metaphenomenality, and so it would be easy to perceive both serials as dominantly isophenomenal. But where RINGO KID only has one measly mad doctor who departs from all the other naturalistic threats that the titular hero encounter, RAWHIDE KID used metaphenomenal opponents in a peripatetic manner. With RINGO, my perception is that the workaday creators, with or without the input of editors, assumed that their readers wanted westerns that were dominantly naturalistic in terms of what could happen in them: gunfights, cattle stampedes, et al. With RAWHIDE, though, the creators attempted to vary the mix. In contrast, the Rawhide Kid usually encountered gunfights and cattle stampedes, but from the earliest to the last of the series initiated by Lee and Kirby, there was always a strong vector encouraging the appearance of the metaphenomenal. As with SIN CITY, RAWHIDE KID had so few examples of marvelous phenomenality that the corresponding vector would be subordinate. However, even though the RAWHIDE creators did not keep uncanny phenomenalities front-and-center as Miller did in SIN CITY, I judge that the potential for the uncanny becomes a superordinate vector, rendering the naturalistic vector subordinate, even though the number of naturalistic stories proved superior.

A third example appears in yet another “weird western,” the teleseries KUNG FU. When I first started my project of reviewing all of the episodes in 2013, I knew that the series did not boast a huge number of episodes with a marvelous phenomenality, though on finishing the project I did find more than I anticipated (often using mild forms of marvelous tropes like telepathy or oracular pronouncements). But I knew in advance of the project that some episodes depicted Caine’s Shaolin skills as no more than naturalistic in essence—probably because those scripts didn’t need anything more—while other tales took evident pleasure in showing the priest showing off “superlative skills,” whether in minor actions like bending jailhouse bars or in major accomplishments like walking unharmed through a pit of rattlesnakes. As with RAWHIDE KID, it doesn’t matter how often the episodes were either naturalistic, uncanny, or marvelous. It only matters as to which of the three phenomenalities assumed a superordinate position. That determination can’t be deduced from a simple head count, but by an intuitive assessment of a given serial’s total concept, as it is perpetuated through various creators, usually following what insiders term a “series bible.”

Over the centuries, the disciplines of science and philosophy have remained in strife. Much of this strife may be seen as a conflict between science’s intention to judge the world’s phenomena in terms of quantity, while philosophy is far more concerned with quality. Literature, though not allied to philosophy in any fundamental sense, is conceived along roughly the same propositional lines: propositions have truth based on the qualities they enhance in the lives of audiences. I attempted to see if there was any method by which arguments regarding quantity could be used to buttress those regarding quality, but I have of late decided that the conceptual divide is insuperable.

WORK PLAY LOVE

In this review from my movie-blog I touched on the dialectic of work and play indirectly. An otherwise average episode of the teleseries KUNG FU, "The Hoots," brings the hero Kwai Chang Caine into prolonged contact with a group of Hutterite sheepherders. The "hoots" are defined in terms of their extreme pacifism and abstemiousness, and while Caine lives a life that is arguably no less disciplined, he does not define discipline in terms of self-denial. Indeed, Master Po tells Young Caine that, "The purpose of discipline is to live more fully, not less."

The scene evolves as follows: while Caine stays with the sheepherders, he pays for his keep with work. He begins cutting wood, singing a work-song as he does so. Schultz, the de facto leader of the group, objects to Caine's singing because he feels that work must be identical with "suffering." Caine expresses the opinion that singing makes the work go more easily, so why not do it? Nevertheless, the Shaolin accedes to his host's wishes but the overall trajectory of the episode is that Caine is right about the practicality of using play to lighten one's work-load, and that Schultz's desire for public suffering-- both his own, and that of his community-- stems from pride: the pride to show off how well he can wear the hair-shirt.

My first comments about the dialectic of "work and play" appears in the two-essay series THE DIVIDING LINE, starting here. I said back then:

In any case other play-acting creatures, just like humans, begin as entities with no ability to work, even if other animals aren't helpless for as long a period as humans. Both animals and humans can, however, play even if they can't work, at least in the most exploratory and unstructured manner. And though humans have a longer development period than other animals, humans don't remain isolated from the concept of work all that much longer than our fellow beasts: if their "vacation" ends with the onset of adulthood in about a year or so, the human freedom to do nothing but play ends not with adulthood but with a protracted period of learning which, because it has a discrete purpose, must be considered as "work."

So human children become intimately acquainted with the dialectic of work and play early on. But because most adults prioritize the need for play in children's development, one may symbolically identify juveniles with the activity of play.

Conversely, though adults too exist within a continuum in which they balance work and play, the essence of being adult is that an adult must work to make it possible for children to grow, develop, and play-- at least until said adult is old enough to retire from work (at least in theory) and to devote the remainder of his life to "play," if he so wishes.

I spoke of how an adult builds on his childhood experience to achieve a "balance" between the elements of work, activity that must be done, and play, activity one is pleased to do. However, I didn't comment upon the basic idea that elements of play are sometimes used to make work more pleasurable, though in FREEDOM VS. FREEDOM PT. 2 I mentioned that the two activities were interdependent:

 I mention this to emphasize that both "work" and "play" are interdependent necessities, not opposed in the conventional sense that people oppose, say, "right choice" and "wrong choice."

The activities are interdependent in part because of the way humans, and many other higher animals, have evolved to explore the world in a playful context before settling down to the business of sustaining oneself, i.e., "work." The observations that a creature makes, or does not make, in its developmental phases may well determine the creature's fitness to survive in its adult form.

Whether or not non-human animals practice any activities comparable with "work-songs," or even Disney's take of "whistling while you work," I cannot say. I think it inarguable that human beings have been pursuing this strategy for centuries. One might choose to judge it purely as an evolutionary adaptive practice, though I believe this would be too simple. At the conclusion of FREEDOM VS. FREEDOM PART 2, I said:

Can one meaningfully draw parallels, then, between the freedom to make moral choices and the ability to change one's phenomenological perspective within fictional narratives? I obviously think so, even with my knowledge that most people are not conscious of those differing perspectives. 

I chose to focus in that context upon "phenomenological perspective" because in that essay I started out contrasting "discursive thinking" and "mythical thinking." However, play need not involve phenomenology as such. Freud suggested that a baby who threw his toys out of their cribs over and over were in the grip of a "repetition-compulsion." But this overlooks the possibility that the baby, learning that his parent will pick up the toy and put it back in the crib, may simply be indulging in a rudimentary form of "play," one oriented on controlling the somewhat unpredictable parental unit.

Play can be a way of sussing out the way the normal world works, if only by contrasting normal behavior with abnormal behavior. To the Hutterite Schultz, the "normal" was defined by labor, suffering, and avoidance of conflict, while Kwai Chang Caine was concerned by the interaction of work and play, the (seemingly) normal and the (seemingly) abnormal, the peaceful mind and the need to fight to defend the body. To be sure, Schultz's over-emphasis on "work" may have come about in reaction to others who played too much: "the house of mirth" to his "house of mourning." But both of the houses include "many mansions," and it would seem that an ability to spend some time in both houses is intrinsic to learning how to live-- and love-- more fully.

THE DOUBLE EDGED SWORD OF VIOLENCE

In the series JOINED AT THE TRIP, beginning here, I refined some of my earlier statements about the nature of fictional sex and violence. My interpretation of these categories through the lens of Francis Fukuyama's thymotic system goes something like this: violence and sex in their "pure states" represent *megalothymia* and *isothymia* respectively. However, there are "impure states" in which sex can assume a function of dominance, and in which violence can assume a function of egalitarianism.

If you ask the average person what most separates sex and violence, the most likely response-- assuming you can get a coherent one on such a volatile subject-- would be that sex can produce progeny, and violence cannot, except through the medium of sex.

But, in the words of Yoda, "there is another."  In both activities human beings in their identity of *Homo habilis* have evolved dozens of artificial tools and devices that can be used either to enhance the activity (all manner of offensive weapons, sexual enhancement devices) or to curtail some aspect of that activity (all manner of defensive weapons, such as shields and armor, and pregnancy prevention devices).

Yet, when one enters the sphere of art and religion, one finds that both activities may be validated through both gods of war and gods of love, the tools don't receive equal representation.

Archaic culture is rife with the veneration of great weapons. King Arthur wields the most famous sword, Excalibur. Odin wields the spear Gungnir, Thor wields the hammer Mjolnir. In some cases an ancient culture has become so remote from us that it's sometimes unclear as to what Cuchullain's "gae bolga" was, or what it could do, but there's little question that it had some supernormal status.

In contrast, archaic culture invests a lot of items with sexual significance, but most of these are things that do not actually function as aids to sexual performance-- the Holy Grail, the Paschal candle. Some cults involved with sexual ritual, such as the Tantrics, have specialized names for emissions, so they may have names for sexual tools as well. But it seems more typical in most archaic cultures to invest sexual charisma not to objects that enhance sexual activity, but to objects that aren't usually involved in the matter.

Jumping ahead to contemporary popular culture-- in many ways the inheritor of archaic folklore's modes of communication-- we see that outside of fantasy-works that explicitly imitate archaic stories, most heroes don't name their weapons. Still, a cult of charisma still enfolds many weapons, usually referring to them not with cultic cognomens but by brand-names. Wild West heroes are often identified with their "Colts" and "Winchesters." Dirty Harry is so identified with his Magnum firearm that the second movie in the film-series is entitled "Magnum Force," as if to suggest an equivalence between the hero's power and that of his weapon-- roughly in the same way Arthur and Excalibur become mythically covalent.

In contrast, sex tools, many of which are by their nature disposable, don't receive special names. The only notable exception is a comic one; that of the sexually neglected woman who gives a man's name to her favorite dildo. But wherever this trope appears, it's invariably done As a Joke, and so even dildos with names like "Bruce" or even "Mjolnir" are comic exceptions that prove the rule.

This, then, is one side of the double-edged blade of violence. Weapons, perhaps because they allow human beings to extend their spheres of influence over other ingroups and territories, are venerated. Sex, despite being important to the furtherance of the species, is in some ways regarded as merely personal, and so the tools that extend pleasure to two or more participants "don't get no respect." The correlation between Durkheim's definitions of "the sacred" and "the profane," as explained in this essay,  should be obvious.

However, although modern pop culture sometimes evinces great respect for weapons, they can also be viewed as tools that are inferior to the primary means by which humans extend their power: the body itself. This, then, is the other side of the double-edged blade.

If there are many Wild West sagas in which a Colt .45 or a Winchester rifle are invested with positive significance, there are also many instances in which weapons register as negative markers. Whenever a narrative wants to show a character as villainous, one of the easiest ways is to have him resort to using a weapon, often-- though not always-- when his sympathetic opponent is unarmed. When the sympathetic character is a hero, rather than a victim, he usually wins out over the armed villain by the demonstration of such a high level of hand-to-hand skill that it negates the supposed advantage of the weapon.

The modern martial arts film often evinces the same disdain for the armed villain. In my recent review of 1973's ENTER THE DRAGON, I drew attention to the film's depiction of the villain Han. Han is able to use one of his weapons-- a detachable metal hand-- to kill one heroic character, in part because the hero doesn't suspect the weapon's presence. However, when Han is defeated by the superior fighter Lee-- who does use weapons in other scenes, but not against Han-- it is as if Han is a "human beast" thwarted by "the morally superior Lee." 

The teleseries KUNG FU reflected this same anti-weapons tendency. Although it was clear that the protagonist Kwai Chang Caine had been trained in the use of weapons, it was a commonplace event during the series' run to see the hero snatch away a villain's weapon and then discard it, as if its use polluted the purity of his body's superlative fighting-skill. As with Lee, there were occasions on which Caine did use weapons in battle, but an "anti-weapons aesthetic" was clearly in place.  In these and similar narratives, it is the unarmed human body that is "sacred," and weapons are "profane."