ACTIVITY REPORT PT 2

 In Part 1, I advanced my new concept that iconicity, the nature of fictional icons, stemmed from two factors: activity, what the icons do, and resonance, what the icons represent. By extension this means that whatever icon or icons are superordinate to the other icons are so judged in terms of "eminent activity," "eminent resonance," or a combination of the two. In Part 1, I gave the example of Melville's short story BARTLEBY, whose eminent icon is defined only by the quality he represents-- that of an inexplicable inertia that prevents Bartleby from taking any action whatever, even to maintain his own life.

In order to describe "eminent activity," I've chosen to survey a subgenre within various media rather than just one literary work: the subgenre called "the old dark house" story. The subgenre has its roots in what some critics have called the "rational Gothic" of the 18th and 19th centuries, but I'll stick to the 20th century manifestations since (a) that's when the "old dark house" expression started, and (b) I've already written various essays on the cinema's versions of the subgenre.

The earliest prose manifestation that comes to mind is Mary Roberts Rinehart's THE CIRCULAR STAIRCASE (1908), which I have not read except in summary. The story takes place at a country house and includes someone posing as a ghost who commits one or more murders, and it received a 1915 film adaptation. Two years later, Rinehart began working on a theatrical version of STAIRCASE, which became the popular play THE BAT in 1920. This iteration may have jumpstarted many of the later suspense-plays of the decade, as well as spawning two silent film versions, both of which are still well-remembered today by enthusiasts. The costumed villain "The Bat" evidently takes the place of the criminal pretending to be a ghost in STAIRCASE, though any claims the master-thief might have to being the first costumed villain, even in cinema, are pre-empted by The Clutching Hand in the 1914 EXPLOITS OF ELAINE serial. Of passing interest too is Gaston Leroux's PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, which was first serialized in a 1909 magazine, though I for one consider his persona to be that of a "monster" rather than that of a "villain."  

Whatever characters would have been eminent icons of Rinehart's novel, there can be no doubt that in the BAT play and its movie versions, the Bat became eminent due to his peerless activities as a master thief, with little if any specific resonance otherwise. The same is true of Paul Leni's 1927 THE CAT AND THE CANARY, where "the Cat" is the menace that unites all the nugatory subordinate characters. However, the same story was reworked for a 1939 iteration, and then the eminence shifted from activity to resonance, for the 1939 CANARY had been retooled to focus upon Bob Hope's persona of the "scaredycat-ladies' man."

Less well known is the 1956 Mexican horror-comedy, PHANTOM OF THE RED HOUSE. This is another ODH movie in which one of the "good guys" (who are often little more than clay pigeons) is more resonant than either the mystery killer or a detective stalking the malefactor. In HOUSE I judged that the narrative was built around the comedic persona of "Mercedes Benz de Carrera," as essayed by the actress Alma Rosa Aguirre.

The very simplicity of the ODH subgenre makes it fairly easy to isolate whether the superordinate icons are eminent only through their activity or only through their emotional resonance. I haven't come across a PURE example of an ODH work in which I thought both activity and resonance were eminent. Still, I have mentioned Leroux's PHANTOM OF THE OPERA as being "subgenre-adjacent," even though it takes place not in a standard "house" but in a "haunted opera house." But in my view, there's no question that Leroux's prose Phantom is eminent in terms of both his activity, that of being a "demon music teacher" to the ingenue Christine, and in terms of his fascinating character as a deformed man seeking some surcease from sorrow. I can't say that such combinatory types are always the most popular eminent icons, but I tend to think that most authors strive to create characters who are resonant in terms of both their personalities and the actions they take in the narrative.           

TAKING A SHOT AT SIMPLIFICATION

Earlier today I tried to boil down my ideas re: Bhaskar on a forum, more than anything else to challenge myself and see if I could simplify my views for general consumption.  I don't think that I succeeded, but I'm reprinting it here for my own possible future use.

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I've recently finished reading a book on philosophical views relating to science, Roy Bhaskar's A REALIST THEORY OF SCIENCE.  Bhaskar is only concerned with science, but as I read it I wondered if his ideas could have some application to my literary theory.


As I said above, there seems to be no rhyme or reason as to why some tropes belong to "horror" and some don't. To repeat three of my earlier examples, some persons might not feel that Victor Hugo's HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME qualifies as horror, or anything else remotely belonging to "fantasy."  But almost everyone would agree that THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA is horror and MASK is not, even though all three deal with physically deformed characters.

Roy Bhaskar argues for his view of science against two other prominent views.  According to him, the main way that empirical science judges the nature of the world is in terms of "regularity determinism;" i.e., phenomena can be judged by their regular, repeatable nature.  According to him, Kant and the neo-Kantians judged the nature of the world in terms of "intelligibility determinism," which is to say phenomena can be judged by their accessibility to human understanding.


I see the paradigm of empirical science differently from Bhaskar. I agree that when humans begin to look at physical phenomena in terms of their regularity, and then find empirical reasons for the regularity in terms, of, say, the movements of heavenly bodies, this gives rise to a concentration on regularity.  But at the same time, this generates its own form of "intelligibility determinism," because the budding young empiricists believe that the world is fully intelligible-- that is, things need not be explained by supernatural forces-- because humans can understand the world's regularity aspects.

Now, my arguments from all this goes like this:

Whenever authors create a fictional world, they draw on the idea that the empiricist idea that the world is both regular and intelligible.  


If they create a naturalistic world, then it's like the world of MASK: nothing in that world violates the regular functions of the cosmos, and all things are basically intelligible as well.


If they create a marvelous world, even if it just has one marvelous item in it, like a deformed killer who rises from the dead (paging JASON VOORHEES), then it is a world that is no longer regular in the empiricist sense, and so also cannot be intelligible to empiricist reason.


But some worlds are "uncanny" in that even though there is nothing in them that violates the laws of a regular cosmos-- like PHANTOM OF THE OPERA and EYES OF A STRANGER, for two-- there remains something "unintelligible" about them.  Even the killer of EYES OF A STRANGER, who is in no way as bizarre in his appearance as the Phantom, conjures up a similar emotion of "dread" and so is not easily reducible to natural forces, which should conjure primarily "fear."


Hmm, I started this post, like the last one, with the idea of avoiding "proposition-based language," but I gave up halfway through.  Oh well.

TEN DYNAMIC DAEMONS

Having put forth the idea of "coherent improbabilities" here, it occured to me that though I've given examples of particular tropes or literary works that fit this category, characters are probably more accessible as exemplars.  Thus here are ten characters to match each of the ten tropes with which I've illustrated the manifestation of the "uncanny" phenomenality.

In all but one case, I chose an exemplar who appeared during the period that gave birth to the phenomenon of popular fiction, though a few of my choices come from canonical literary works.

ASTOUNDING ANIMALS-- Moby Dick, from Herman Melville's MOBY DICK.  Melville's book technically remains within the causal realm in a cognitive sense-- that is, the colossal cetacean is constantly compared with godlike beings, but there's no evidence that he's anything but a formidable animal.  But the Great White Whale, like his obsessed co-star Ahab, dwell in a world that constantly pushes into the metaphenomenal in a purely affective sense.

BIZARRE CRIMES-- Juliette, from the novel of the same name by the Marquis deSade. Sade is, in his way, something of an apostle of naturalism to the extent that he constantly denies the ideas of divinity.  Nevertheless, for Sade as for Goethe the motto is, "In the Beginning was the Act!"  But for Sade the act is not creation, but the obsessive need to find new and more exotic ways to destroy human beings-- a need which seems embodied most strongly in the character of Juliette, the blood-hungry sister of the innocent Justine.

DELIRIOUS DREAMS AND FALLACIOUS FIGMENTS-- Alice, from Lewis Carroll's two books starring that prodigious dreamer.  Within this trope, even though causality seems to win the game when Alice wakes from her descent into meaningful nonsense, it's the dreams that become more real to us than the reality.

ENTHRALLING HYPNOTISM AND ILLUSIONISM-- Svengali, from the 1894 TRILBY by George DuMaurier.  As yet I haven't reviewed any of the films starring literature's most famous
hypnotist, though most moderns know the Svengali of the movies if they know him at all.  As noted elsewhere, both "hypnotism" and "illusionism" have the effect of waking persons that dreams do upon the dreamer; making the impossible and improbable become real for the subjects.

EXOTIC LANDS AND CUSTOMS-- Allen Quatermain, from H. Rider Haggard's 1885 novel KING SOLOMON'S MINES.  The novel is famous for launching the genre of the "Lost World story," in which an archaic civilization has managed to survive in some remote corner of the world without contact with the onrush of history.  I have not read any of the "Allen" books aside from the one in which Haggard encountered Haggard's other great character, "She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed," but have gained the impression that most of the other Allen books possess an uncanny phenomenality, rather than a marvelous or naturalistic one.

FREAKISH FLESH-- Quasimodo,from Victor Hugo's 1831.  Though Hugo's original novel hews closer to the genre of the "historical novel" than that of horror, the image of the hunchback-- be it Quasimodo's or that of some lesser epigone-- has become a familiar icon of horror.  In contrast to a naturalistic exhibition of a "freak of nature," as one sees in the 1980 David Lynch film THE ELEPHANT MAN, Quasimodo's physical freakishness in the novel is constantly tied to the dark nature of humankind as a whole.

OUTRE OUTFITS, SKILLS, AND DEVICES-- These three aspects do not always occur together in a given character, though I group them together because weapons and costumes, as much as a character's physical skills, are extensions of his persona as an uncanny spectre.  One character who combines all three in significant fashion is The Lone Ranger, spawned by a 1933 radio series.  Although the hero moves through a largely naturalistic world in most of his incarnations, the very notion of an Old West champion able to dispense justice despite wearing a bandit's mask and firing silver bullets with flawless accuracy, is a figure who resides only in an uncanny domain.

PERILOUS PSYCHOS-- Norman Bates, from Robert Bloch's 1959 novel PSYCHO.  Though Jack the Ripper is a more famous psycho-killer, he's disallowed here by virtue of being a real character, however mysterious.  The Norman birthed by Bloch and midwifed by Hitchcock seems to have the fictional psycho who, directly or indirectly, spawned the greatest number of imitators.  Some of these may be considered merely naturalistic versions of the original, as with the current BATES MOTEL teleseries.  But an uncanny psycho is always discernible by his ability to invoke more "dread" than simple physical "fear."

 PHANTASMAL FIGURATIONS-- The Phantom of the Opera, from Gaston Leroux's 1909 serial novel of that name.  Leroux also employs the trope "freakish flesh" for this famed monstrous presence, but the trope that most informs the novel is the character's ability to lurk beneath the Paris Opera House, pretending to be "the Opera Ghost."  Regardless as to whether readers believed or did not believe in the existence of this particular ghost at the outset, the Phantom remains far more than the sum of his impostures.

WEIRD SOCIETIES AND FAMILIES-- Fu Manchu, first appearing in Sax Rohmer's 1913 MYSTERY OF FU-MANCHU.  Admittedly, even in that first novel, Fu Manchu displayed more "marvelous" characteristics than any of the other characters cited here, in that he often controlled assorted weapons of "mad science." At base, though, Fu Manchu's greatest appeal to readers was one that did not depend on the marvelous elements of the series: his status as a sort of "Alexander the Great" of Oriental Evil, in that his "Si-Fan" organization embraced a wildly diverse group of Asian fiends-- Indian thuggee, Burmese dacoits, the Sea-Dyaks of Borneo, and so on.  This vast conspiracy by itself stands as one of the period's best evocations of a "weird society" that goes beyond the bounds of a mere criminal organization, and sometimes seems more like a "Pandemonium" presided over by the Satanic genius.

PHINDING THE PHANTOM

Ever since Sigmund Freud asserted the universality of the Oedipus complex, countless analysts and critics have attempted to demonstrate the truth of his thesis by finding the complex in all forms of myth and literature. 

Surely the largest single compilation of such readings appears in Otto Rank's mammoth The Incest Theme in Literature and Legend.  Throughout this tome Rank-- who would later split from the Freudian fold-- finds the complex in every literary manifestation of father-son hostility and sibling rivalry.  Many of his arguments are pertinent, though in the end one cannot avoid noting that Rank never finds even so much as an ambivalent example, much less reporting one that does not conform to the Freudian paradigm.

The basic story of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA is well known thanks to its many cinematic adaptations.  Within the confines of a Paris opera house (in the 1880s in the novel, though the movies vary the temporal setting), a mysterious madman pretends to be a lurking ghost.  He insinuates himself into the life of a young opera-singer named Christine, using his vast knowledge of music to tutor the girl while planning to make her his.  Christine is also courted by a more presentable suitor, youthful Viscount Raoul de Chagny.  Like the time-setting, Raoul he too seems fairly changeable in film-versions, and sometimes becomes little more than the standard "young man" in the Freudian family romance, where a young man can only possess a young woman by overcoming the threat of an older male competitor.  For Freud and Rank, such a male competitor is always a father-figure in disguise.

Most of the other characters in PHANTOM are inconsequential, but two others are significant though they don't loom large in adaptations.  Though Raoul's father and mother are dead, he has a brother, Phillippe, who is the reigning Count and who has been a paternal influence on Raoul's life.  The fact that Phillippe is a good twenty years older than Raoul suggests strongly that he is indeed a father-substitute, though in the novel that may not mean everything a Freudian might expect.

The other character is known only as "the Persian," who in the novel's last quarter is revealed to be the only friend and confidante of the freakish Opera-Phantom.  He is a sketchy, deus-ex-machina figure, brought in to help Raoul rescue Christine, and to provide needed information on the Phantom.  Like both Raoul and Chrstine, the Phantom-- given the name "Erik" by the Persian-- has no living parents.  However, the Persian-- who meets Erik when the latter peddles his expertise in torture-devices to certain Eastern rulers-- may be seen as being both father and brother to the Phantom, even as Phillippe is to Raoul.

Of course, whereas the Raoul-Phillippe relationship or the Phantom-Persian relationship can and have been dropped in adaptations, no one would be foolish enough to elide the Phantom/Christine/Raoul triangle, which is the essence of the story.  But does the triangle conform in all respects to the Freudian paradigm?

One interesting contrast between the novel and most PHANTOM movies is that in the early chapters, Erik the Phantom-- despite possessing a macabre, skull-like visage-- isn't nearly as retiring in the novel as in the films.  Once he's convinced the majority of the opera house's personnel that he's "the Opera Ghost," thus making it possible for him to lurk around through the structure's hidden passages and near the underground lake, Erik actually exhibits himself openly on various occasions.  Apparently, even though Leroux tells us that he has the skill to disguise himself and pass through Paris as a normal, Erik chooses to spite the opera's personnel by showing off his phenomenal ugliness.  Obviously, most films don't include such episodes, for they would spoil the "big reveal" that has been a standard ever since the original Lon Chaney film in 1925.

Why does Leroux the author have the Phantom show himself so much?  One likely possibility is that he wants readers to consider in early chapters that Erik may be a real ghost-- and not just any ghost, but the ghost of Christine's dead father.  Leroux explores Christine's background in great detail, even to telling us that she and Raoul meet and form their bond when both are still children.  But the most relevant detail is that before Christine's father passes, he tells her that her gift of musical talent will be nurtured by an "Angel of Music."  Presumably the father meant this as a metaphor, but somehow Erik finds about it and manages to use it to convince the naive girl that he is her "Angel of Music," so that she better accepts his ghostly comings and goings.  Raoul first finds out about Christine's strange trysts when he overhears the two of them talking, and hears the Angel of Music pleading with Christine to love him.  He is naturally jealous for most of the novel.

But does the novel's Christine give him reason to be jealous?  In the films it's often though not always suggested that the Phantom has an erotic "demon lover" appeal for Christine, at least before she finds out how ghastly he is.  But in the novel, Christine doesn't seem to consider that the Angel may be her father returned to life, which certainly would have put a damper on any conscious romantic appeal he might've had for her.  More, the novel doesn't show Christine evincing any erotic attraction to Erik even before he unmasks.  Presumably Leroux wanted his heroine to be a "good girl," for she shows no romantic interest in anyone but her childhood sweetheart Raoul.  Thus, if Otto Rank had chosen to scrutinize PHANTOM in his "big book of incest," he would've found scarce pickings.  If anything, Leroux's story evinces an "anti-Oedipus complex," since she has no attraction to this potential avatar of her father.

To be sure, Rank might have made something of a curious circumstance toward the end of the novel: due to the havoc Erik unleashes with his bizarre mechanical devices, both he and Phillippe perish about the same time.  I can imagine Rank declaring that, because both had aspects of "the Father" to them, their mutual deaths clear the way for Raoul's unchallenged access to Christine.  There's even a little support in that Leroux reports that Paris gossip circulates a story that Christine was "the victim of a rivalry between the two brothers," which certainly suggests a scenario in which Raoul killed his sibling in the standard fight over a woman.  Yet though these details aren't without interest, they are eclipsed by the facts that Phillippe shows no interest whatever in Christine, any more than Christine does in her supernal teacher.

What this suggests to me is that PHANTOM's psychological matrix is as responsive to the dynamics of the "family romance" as any of the works Freud and Rank considered to be heralds of the paradigm-- but that Leroux did not eroticize the dynamics as Freud and Rank would think he ought to, based on the universality of said complex.  I deem PHANTOM a work of "reproductive imagination" based on the way it recapitulates the 'empirical" relationships of family life, but it doesn't "reproduce" the Freudian paradigm, even though some subsequent movie-treatments have.  That's one reason that I've termed the Oedipus complex to be just one "archetype" among many, as opposed to being an all-encompassing determinative factor.

As I plan to review some of the film-adaptations on my film-blog, I'll foreground those reviews here by noting that Leroux's novel falls into the category of "the uncanny" with respect to four of my designated tropes: "outre outfits skills and devices," "freakish flesh," "bizarre crimes," and "phantasmal figurations."  The novel also includes a strange figure who may be a real "Opera Ghost," encountered late in the novel by Raoul and the Persian.  Leroux maintained till the end of his life that there had been a real ghost in the real opera-house, but in terms of the actual narrative, he doesn't allow an actual "marvelous" element to intrude upon his "uncanny" setting, and so I can't regard this particular spectre as having any reality in the sphere of the PHANTOM narrative.

QUICK SIGMUND SUMMARY

By "Sigmund summary" I'm referencing my FINDING SIGMUND essays, seen here, here, and here.  In this series I explored some possible modern applications of Kant's dichotomy of the "reproductive imagination" (whose "synthesis is entirely subject to empirical laws") and the "productive imagination," which follows "principles which reside higher up, namely, in reason (and which are just as natural to us as those which the understanding follows in apprehending empirical nature.)"  The essential point of the essay-series was to provide a theoretical structure which would enfold the relevant aspects of Freudian criticism without being absolutely determined by those aspects.

That said, Freud wasn't always the go-to guy even for those literary works dominated by the reproductive imagination. Steranko advanced a sketchy argument for an Adlerian reading of superheroes (quote here), and while I would still hold out for the superiority of Jung, certain superheroes and their kindred in other genres are sometimes better understood through theories framed via "empirical laws."

This quick summary is a prelude to a glance at one such "kindred" figure: the Phantom of the Opera, a "masked mystery man" of a villainous rather than heroic stripe (though Leroux also penned his share of unusual heroes).  I've just reread the novel for the first time in several years, and I'm impressed with the fact that while it contains all the makings for the Freudian "family romance"-- some of which have been exploited in film-adaptations-- Leroux plays down or elides those elements that might seem to suggest the family romance.

Were Freud made aware of such a counter-argument, he would almost certainly claim that the elision was merely a form of displacement: that the universality of the Oedipus complex made it inevitable that all men and women should have their romantic leanings determined by their parental units-- or, in a pinch, by sibling-figures who were merely dopplegangers for the parents.  With this logic Freud asserts that Hamlet's hatred for his uncle, the man who murdered the Prince's father, is actually hatred for the father.

In the FINDING SIGMUND essays I chose to focus upon two examples of the "productive" and "reproductive" forms of imagination, both of which were based on works that were written before Freud made his inroads into intellectual history.  For the "reproductive" type I chose Lawrence Olivier's very Freudian version of HAMLET, while for the "productive" type I chose Rouben Mamoulian's DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE. 

However, in one respect PHANTOM OF THE OPERA might be an even better representative of the "reproductive imagination" than the Olivier HAMLET, since the former is, after all, an original work.  Perhaps in a future essay, for sake of symmetry, I'll address another original novel that captures the essence of the "productive imagination."