IN MEDIA RESOLUTION

The essay's title is a pun on the Latin expression "in media res," "in the middle of things," which is generally only directed at stories that don't begin at a standard beginning, but start at a theoretical middle and then fill in the blanks about what went before. "Res" by itself denotes "a particular thing," as one sees in such Cartesian terms as "res extensa," and the word "resolution" is traced from the same root.

My response to the Scott novel IVANHOE was the proximate cause for me to write KNIGHTS OF COMBAT AND CENTRICITY PT. 2-- in which I examined the novel as an exception to the general principles exposed in the 2013 essay PASSION FOR THE CLIMAX. However, IVANHOE was not the first time I'd ever taken note of combative works which did not actually conclude with an act of combat.

Tolkien's LORD OF THE RINGS is arguably the most influential combative fantasy-work in which there's a great deal of fighting throughout the early and middle parts of the epic, not unlike IVANHOE. Yet none of the battles can unseat Sauron, who for some critics is really the titular "lord of the rings." Only by Frodo's action-- casting the One Ring into the inferno of Mount Doom-- can Sauron be destroyed. But Frodo's attempt to complete his act of renunciation fails, as his will bends to the ring's insuperable power.

The only thing that saves Middle-Earth from subjugation is the accidental intrusion of another hobbit, even more obsessed with the ring than Frodo. Gollum springs upon Frodo and bites off the finger on which Frodo has placed the ring, after which Gollum conveniently falls, "precious' and all, into the lava pit below.

Oddly, this essay makes clear that at one point Tolkien did consider a fully combative conclusion, which would have included Frodo and Samwise battling one of the Ringwraiths on Mount Doom. But this does not change the fact that Tolkien did indeed choose the less combative ending, even as Scott did with IVANHOE.

Thus, both of these are exceptions to my general rule that the narrative value of the combative mode arises when there exists "some sort of spectacle-oriented struggle at or very near the climax." I still believe that this formulation applies to the great majority of combative works. but that it's also possible for the mode to manifest at least when such spectacle has appeared in the middle portion of the narrative.

In truth, I'd already deemed some narratives to be combative even when they, like LORD OF THE RINGS, featured most of the spectacular violence in the middle and concluded with a menace being defeated by some "Achilles heel" maneuver. After the armies of man fail to vanquish the 1954 Gojira, the apocalyptic beast is defeated with a comparative lack of spectacle when he's dissolved by "the oxygen destroyer."

At the same time, there's a transitive equivalence between the mundane weapons of the military and the super-weapon. I made a similar point, without invoking the transitive effect, when discussing the 1956 film FORBIDDEN PLANET in this essay:

To be sure, when the Id Monster is defeated, it isn't because of the clash between the weapons of Earth-science and the power of the Krell machines.  The Monster is defeated by undermining the source of its power in Morbius, who is in essence the Monster's Achilles heel.
Nevertheless, without the clash of energies that establishes how potent the Id Monster is, there would be no narrative perception of the need to seek such a vulnerable point. 

An intransitive effect, however, rears its head in the 1953 WAR OF THE WORLDS adaptation of H.G. Wells, as I wrote in this essay: 

In the film as in the Wells novel, what saves the human race is not some last-minute strategy or new weapon, but a lucky break having nothing to do with Earth's defenders.  In the book, Wells stresses only irony in the fact that the Martians perish from Earth-bacteria, while the 1953 film reverses this ideological interpretation, regarding the bacteria's presence as an expression of divine providence.  But regardless of which interpretation is favored, in neither case can Earth's defenders take any credit for the Martian defeat.

Another corollary to this formulation is that some of the works that have violence "in the middle" are, like WAR OF THE WORLDS, not really deeply concerned with the spectacle of combat. My main example of such a film in PASSION FOR THE CLIMAX is 2002's MINORITY REPORT, which has one spectacle-scene inserted into a middle section, and my "in media" formulation does nothing to change REPORT's subcombative status. In the end, it comes down to something of a judgment call, not unlike my ruminations on "active and passive shares," in which the critic must decide how important the elements of spectacular violence are to the narrative.

LOST IN SPACEFIGHTS PT. 4

Concluding my survey of the LOST IN SPACE series with season 3:

"Condemned of Space"-- the Robinson party lands on a penal asteroid, where the convicts have been held past their release-date. After some tense encounters, John manages to negotiate the convicts' release. (SC)

"Visit to a Hostile Planet"-- the Jupiter returns to Earth, but in a period where their own people deem them invading aliens. The ship escapes w/o serious incident. (SC)

"Kidnapped in Space"-- the Robinsons have some violent encounters with androids armed with guns and grenades (even a few female combatants), but the Robot manages to make peace. (SC)

"Hunter's Moon"-- alien hunter Megazor forces John Robinson to be the quarry in a most dangerous game. The professor beats the hunter in a pitched battle and Megazor returns home. (C)

"The Space Primevals" the group is menaced by cavemen, who are under the sway of an ancient computer. The Robot duels the computer, both unleashing considerable powers, but the Robot loses and the computer must be defeated by other means. (SC)

"Space Destructors"-- Smith falls under the control of a war-computer, programmed to produce an army of universe-conquering androids, all with Doctor Smith's face. Not only does actor Guy Williams (Professor Robinson) get to cut down dozens of androids with his Zorro sword-skills, he also gets to "kill" androids who wear the face of the actor who constantly upstaged him. (C)

"Haunted Lighthouse"-- the group meets an old man running a space-lighthouse. A primitive boy makes a lot of trouble for all involved. (SC)

"Flight into the Future"-- the Robinsons are subjected to intense illusions by an evil computer. In the end the Robot destroys the computer with electrical force. (C)

"Collision of Planets"-- space-hippies are charged with destroying the planet on which the Robinsons reside, and they won't wait till the Jupter is ready to take off. Smith gains Samson-like strength but in his only "fight" he's trounced by the hippie-leader. The professor solves the problem by wrecking the hippies' motorcycles, thus giving the Jupter time to lift off. (SC)

"The Space Creature"-- the Robinsons are put through the mill by a creation of Will's "Id" persona; the creature is defeated but not in a combative manner. (SC)

"Deadliest of the Species" -- the Robot falls in love with a malignant female robot, out to conquer the universe. Using an electrical device created by John Robinson, the Robot puts aside his feelings and lures her to a spectacular death. (C)

"A Day at the Zoo"-- Smith takes over as ringmaster of a space-circus, and cages West and Judy.  West gets free but must save the real ringmaster from a giant dragon. However, he simply uses his ray gun to drive the beast off. (SC)

"Two Weeks in Space"-- Smith invites aliens to stay at his "hotel," the Jupiter-2. They're actually thieves with murderous intent, but John Robinson defeats the two males in pitched combat. (C)

"Castles in Space"-- the travelers give refuge to a fleeing princess, hiding her from bounty hunter Chavo. The skillful hunter defeats West in a fight, but Chavo in turn is vanquished by the superior power of "El Toro," alias the Robot. (C)

"The Anti-Matter Man"-- John Robinson finds his role usurped his double from the anti-matter universe. The two of them battle in an anti-matter void and the impostor plunges to his death. (C)

"Target Earth"-- lookalike aliens try to assume the Robinsons' identity to infiltrate Earth-society, but Will foils their plans. (SC)

"Princess of Space"-- Penny is forced to pose as a princess, but the Robinsons liberate the real one just in time to thwart a robot revolt with very little violence. (SC)

"Time Merchant"-- Chronos, an alien with control of time, gets aggrieved at Will, and John Robinson must bargain for the boy's life. Smith complicates things by using Chronos' time-machine. John ends the struggle in a fight with Chronos and his henchman. (C)

"The Promised Planet"-- a race of juvenile who never grow old try to brainwash the crew. (SC)

"Fugitives in Space"-- West and Smith are condemned to a prison planet. They break out with the help of an alien criminal. However, when the alien is destroyed trying to get his treasure, the police let West and Smith go. (SC)

"Space Beauty"-- Judy wins a space-beauty contest, but the prize is to be married to an alien fire-being. Before the alien can reach Judy, the Robinsons' weather-machine-- activated before the aliens' advent-- causes the area to be blanketed in snow, putting out the alien's fiery ardor. (SC)

"The Flaming Planet"-- an alien warlord, last of his race, wants someone from the Jupter to stay on his world and fight him to the death. The Robinsons manage to distract him by introducing him to a bevy of plant-monsters, with whom he can fight to his heart's content. (SC)

"The Great Vegetable Rebellion"-- when an alien carrot-man tries to turn everyone in the crew into plants, Robinson and West sabotage the stystem that keeps the plant-man's plants alive, and he's forced to capitulate. (SC)

"Junkyard in Space"-- the ruler of a junk-planet wants to take over the Jupiter, but Will manages to appeal to his better nature. (SC)

LOST IN SPACEFIGHTS PT. 3

I last delved into sussing out the combative/subcombative episodes of LOST IN SPACE back in October, and here's my take on Season 2.

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"Blast Off into Space"-- a space miner imperils the planet on which the Jupiter 2 resides. By accident a statue comes to life, menaces Smith and Will, and is destroyed by John Robinson. (C)

"Wild Adventure"-- a green space-siren lures Smith out of the ship. (SC)

"Ghost Planet"-- Smith gets captured by a super-computer and the Robot must kick the asses of other robotic minions to save him. John Robinson gets to karate-chop a couple robots, too. (C)

"Forbidden World"-- Smith drinks an explosive liquid. (SC)

"Space Circus"-- the owner of a space-circus tries to enslave Will, There's a very lethargic tussle between John Robinson and an ape-creature, but the ringmaster interrupts it. (SC)

"Prisoners of Space"-- aliens put the Jupiter-2 crew on trial. (SC)

"The Android Machine"-- a machine from a galactic department store creates a female android, who then seeks to learn humanity from the Robinsons and avoid being captured by officials from the store. (SC)

"The Deadly Games of Gamma 6"-- an alien entrepreneur lands on the Robinsons' current planet of residence, and challenges the Earth-people to fight for their world. Dr. Robinson wins a match against a vanishing midget, but fails to beat a more muscular opponent, partly because the fight is interrupted. The issue is settled by a "Russian Roulette" test of courage. (SC)

"Thief of Outer Space"-- near the conclusion an Arabian-looking alien thief swordfights John Robinson, but Major West interrupts the fight. A genie-like being attacks the group and Will banishes him with a magic ring. (SC)

"Curse of Cousin Smith"-- Smith's equally sneaky cousin Jeremiah comes calling, and gets both of them embroiled in a deadly wager. Robinson gets them out of it with a clever hoax. (SC)

"West of Mars"-- Zeno, a wanted outlaw, looks just like Smith and seeks to switch places with him. Episode ends with no battle, Zeno fleeing the law and law-enforcer in hot pursuit. (SC)

"A Visit to Hades"-- an imprisoned alien who looks like the Devil tries to trick Smith into setting him free. Episode ends with a comic fight in which West tries to slug the Devil; not only can West not even hurt his opponent, he's accidentally knocked out by his girlfriend Judy. (SC)

"Wreck of the Robot"-- aliens capture the Robot and study him in order to make a super-computer capable of controlling Earth mechanisms, for the purpose of conquering Earth. At the climax the Robot seeks to destroy the computer. The computer defends itself with a gale-like force but the Robot wins through and smashes it. (C)

"The Dream Monster"-- a short but combative fight at the end, when a mad scientist's android tries to kill the Robinsons and is blasted by the Robot. (C)

"The Golden Man"-- two enemy aliens try to destroy each other, thus catching the Robinsons in the middle. The good alien is almost defeated, but the bad one throws a grenade. Smith accidentally catches it, flings it away from him, and slays the bad alien. (SC)

"The Girl from the Green Dimension"-- The green siren is back, and so is her brawny boyfriend, who challenges Smith to a duel. Smith spends most of the duel running away and the siren persuades her lover not to kill him. (SC)

"The Questing Beast"-- a not-too-bright knight has spent 40 years chasing a dragon through space. Penny learns that the dragon is both female and intelligent. The knight tries to kill the dragon, but the revelation of its nature puts the damper on the crusade. Then the dragon, for old times' sake, chooses to keep the chase going, and they depart. (SC)

"The Toymaker"-- a genius toymaker comes into conflict with the galactic department store that once employed him, but the conflict is resolved peacefully. (SC)

"Mutiny in Space"-- a crazy admiral abducts Smith and Will to serve on his ship, but eventually returns them home. (SC)

"Space Vikings"-- Smith gets mixed up with a doppelganger for Thor. At the conclusion Thor hurls his hammer and drives some barely seen Frost Giants, but it's not more than functional violence. (SC)

"Rocket to Earth"-- wizard Zalto tries to trap Smith into doing his dirty work. (SC)

"Cave of the Wizards"-- Smith is possessed by an alien supercomputer, but manages to break his re-progamming thanks to Will. (SC)

"Treasure of the Lost Planet'-- a good pirate and several bad pirates make trouble for the Robinsons. (SC)

"Revolt of the Androids"-- two powerful androids battle, and the less powerful one triumphs. (C)

"The Colonists"-- alien queen Niolani enslaves the Robinsons, but they manage to sabotage her transmitter-device before she can summon her people to their planet, (SC)

"Trip Through the Robot"-- the Robot becomes Fantastically large and the Robinsons must Voyage inside him to effect repairs, only he starts shrinking again. (SC)

"The Phantom Family"-- an alien mad scientist creates doubles of the Robinsons. There's a lively scuffle between the scientist and the two alpha males, but it doesn't affect the conclusion, where the Smith double sacrifices itself to save the real Smith. (SC)

"The Mechanical Men"-- a race of miniature mechanical men want the Robot to lead them, so they transfer Smith's devilish personality into the Robot, and the Robot's into Smith's body. There's a short battle in which the Robinsons exchange laser-fire with the robot horde. Then John Robinson disables the Robot with a laser-shot, which also reverses the mind-transfer and convinces the little robots to leave. (C)

"The Astral Traveler"-- a Scottish ghost tries to avenge himself for the wrongs of Smith's ancestor. (SC)

"The Galaxy Gift"-- an alien named Arcon entrusts Penny with a special amulet, and Arcon's enemies try to get it from her. The bad aliens create an Earth-like world to hoax Smith and Penny, but Arcon intervenes at the end, causing the fake Earth to fall apart. (SC)

Hmm, only about five-six combative episodes out of thirty. It's not likely Season 3 will make any difference...

LOST IN SPACEFIGHTS PT. 2

Following up with the rest of LOST IN SPACE's Season 1 episodes, which I began analyzing for the combative mode here.

"One of Our Dogs is Missing"-- the Robinsons find an Earth-dog on their planet, also a castaway from a space-voyage. The dog helps them drive away a powerful native monster, but the violence is only functional and is therefore subcombative. (SC)

"Attack of the Monster Plants"-- Dr. Smith causes some of the local flora to mutate wildly, so that the "monster plants" attack the ship. The crew destroys the plants with a chemical attack. (SC)

"Return from Outer Space"-- Will accidentally time-travels back to early 20th-century Earth, and eventually returns to the usual planet. (SC)

"The Keeper, Parts 1-2"-- An alien collector of rare animals shows up and shows interest in collecting Earth-people. In the first part, his weapon fends off laser-fire, but is temporarily incapacitated when its mechanism is broken by a stone from Will's slingshot.  In the second part, the Keeper tries to blackmail the Robinsons into giving up two of their kids, but he changes his mind when exposed to their familial goodness. (SC)

"The Sky Pirate"-- a piratical alien, Captain Tucker, shows up. He poses no violent threat, but an alien blob-monster pursues him for his treasure. When the blob has what it wants, it departs without violence. (SC)

"Ghost in Space"-- an invisible alien, acting like a poltergeist, wreaks havoc upon the Robinsons. At the end he is either slain or driven off by the dawning of the sun. (SC)

"War of the Robots"-- a "robotoid," a robot capable of free choice, menaces the family and is overcome by the Robot in a climactic battle. (C)

"The Magic Mirror"-- Penny must escape from a strange world inside a mirror. (SC)

"The Challenge"-- Will engages in a series of contests with alien boy Quano. overseen by John Robinson and Quano's father, "The Leader." The Leader usurps the tests to challenge the professor, resulting in a duel with "volta swords," which John wins. The story ends with the alien father and son squaring off against a cave-monster. (NOTE: this was the first time actor Guy Williams got to do more sword-dueling a la his earlier character Zorro.) (C)

"The Space Trader"-- an alien trader tries to add Smith to his collection. The Robot cancels his contract and drives him and his pet monsters away with some sort of sonic attack. (C)

"His Majesty Smith"-- an alien race selects Smith to be their sacrificial king; they are defeated by deception rather than force of arms. (SC)

"The Space Croppers"-- a trio of aliens who look like refugees from "Tobacco Road" show up on the planet. They plant a deadly crop which the Robinsons must destroy with gas-bombs. (SC)

"All That Glitters"-- Smith acquires the Midas touch from an alien artifact. Faced with a space-cop who wants to repossess the artifact, Smith chases them away by threatening to "metallize" them. (SC)

"The Lost Civilization"-- When Will plays "Sleeping Beauty" with an alien child-princess, he also awakens her army, all devoted to galactic conquest. John Robinson and the Robot manage to stop the invasion force by clobbering their commander and his flunkies. (C)

"A Change of Space"-- Will and Smith undergo weird changes after entering a space-warp capsule. The capsule's owner threatens the family when he learns they've messed with his property, but no real violence ensues. (SC)

"Follow the Leader"-- an alien warlord's spirit possesses the body of John Robinson. Though the possessed  Robinson has one short fight with Major West, the spirit is only exorcised when Will declares his love for John and causes John to expel the evil from his body. (SC)

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I'll note that if the series had ended with this season, I probably would not deem it to be in the combative mode, any more than other Irwin Allen serials like "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" and "Land of the Giants."

LOST IN SPACEFIGHTS PT. 1

I'm returning once more to a topic raised in the second part of THE AMPLITUDE ATTITUDE: on what occasions is it possible for a given series to achieve the combative mode, less because of an emphasis on the continual encounter of megadynamic forces than because of an emphasis upon the outward *form* of such an encounter? In the aforesaid piece I noted that the majority of the Golden Age Spectre's adventures pitted him against mundane crooks, as opposed to devils or demigods-- yet the crooks did have the effect of being "the evil that forces the undead avenger to keep up his crusade." By way of exploring this "outward form" possibility further, I'm going to devote a series of posts to a television series whose status with regard to the combative mode has always been dubious to me.

In my various reviews of STAR TREK episodes, I've made no bones about labeling the entire series as "combative," even those episodes that don't climax in combat-scenes. Few persons familiar with pop culture would doubt that the series stressed the image of Captain Kirk, and occasionally other crewmen, heroically battling super-psychics and lizard-people and so on, all firmly in the "superhero idiom."

The 1965-68 series LOST IN SPACE seems more ambivalent. In contrast to TREK, which was clearly a series with military overtones, SPACE followed the travails of a group of castaways as they bounced around various planets, sometimes resolving their conflicts through spectacular violence, sometimes not. I've decided to examine all the episodes purely in terms of how often they used spectacular violence. If an episode used such violence in a manner typical of the "superhero idiom," it will fall into the combative mode; if not, it will fall into the subcombative mode. Since I'll only talk about the climaxes, it may be possible to get through all three seasons with dispatch. "C" meets combative; "SC" subcombative.

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"The Reluctant Stowaway"-- The sabotage of the Jupiter 2 culminates in the Robot going berserk and seeking to destroy the ship: there's some violence as the Robot fends off the male space-jockeys but it is defeated when Major West pulls off its power pack. (SC)

"The Derelict"-- the ship is trapped inside a derelict and must blast its way out. (SC)

"Island in the Sky"-- Jupiter-2 makes planetfall, and their land-chariot is attacked by an electrical tumbleweed. (SC)

"There Were Giants in the Earth"-- the spacefarers must fend off a gigantic Cyclops with their ray-weapons. (C)

"The Hungry Sea"-- the spacefarers seek to escape devastating waves of heat and cold on the planet (SC).

"Welcome Stranger"-- the spacefarers meet their first oddball human: Hapgood, an astronaut who preceded the Jupiter into space. Hapgood and West have a brawl but it does not occur at the climax nor influence the main plot (SC).

"My Friend, Mister Nobody"-- Penny befriends an invisible cosmic force. When she's hurt, the force goes berserk and attacks the other spacefarers. The Robot discharges energy at the creature but the group is only spared when the creature backs off. (SC)

""Invaders from the 5th Dimension"-- aliens try to take Will Robinson away, to use his brain as their new computer: they're defeated not by force of arms but because Will's humanity undermines their devices (SC).

"The Oasis"-- Doctor Smith temporarily changes into a giant (SC).

"The Sky is Falling"-- an alien family lands on the planet; mutual suspicions lead to a ray-gun fight but the quarrel is obviated by peacemaking overtures (SC).

"Wish Upon a Star"-- Smith acquires a wish-fulfilling machine; an alien comes to reclaim the machine and does so with no violence (SC).

"The Raft"-- Smith and Will are held prisoner by a plant-humanoid, who is summarily killed when John Robinson shoots the creature with his raygun. (SC)

I note that "the Raft" comes close to the combative in presenting a menace that is vanquished by violence. However, said violence is over and done with so quickly that I tend to label it "functional violence." In contrast, the incidents in "There Were Giants" shows a dramatic buildup, in which the spacefarers face considerable menace from the giant before they defeat it with their lasers. This "buildup" is essentially what I'm looking for in terms of exploring the "outward form" of the combative mode.

CENTRIC AND DIFFUSE WILL PT. 2

In Part 1 I chose to address two subjects-- that of the forms of narrative violence, and that of the four myth-radicals-- with reference to my conceptual word-pair "centric and diffuse force." In the next two essays I'll give each topic separate consideration.

In Part 1 I wrote:

For instance, I've written numerous times about the disparate effects of different forms of violence, particularly "functional violence" and "spectacular violence." Either one of these can be centric in the formal sense: that the climax of a narrative depends on one form or the other, and in fact in this essay I contrasted two films which both had violent conclusions, though only one showed enough sense of "spectacle" to be labeled "combative." I stress "sense" of spectacle because the combative film displayed the intent to produce spectacle even though the execution of said spectacle was lousy.

The gist is that the conflict expressed through the narrative will of one story is functional at the core, while for the other story it's spectacular at the core, despite poor execution. But neither of these obscure films is ideal for illustrative purposes.

Most horror-films concern themselves with one megadynamic presence in the film, against which characters of lesser dynamicity must contend. In 1931 two films, DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN, set the pattern for monster-oriented horror films in the era of sound films. Each film must find some way for lesser mortals to extinguish the source of horror and thus provide narrative closure for the viewer. Both films were patterned upon the scripts for stage-adaptations of the respective prose novels, but directors Tod Browning and James Whale chose very different approaches to the material. Though the film medium was capable of depicting violence in much greater detail than anyone could manage on a theater-stage, Browning chose to follow the example of the Dracula stage-play, keeping the depiction of violence to a minimum. To be sure, the extremely muted conclusion, in which the camera watches Van Helsing execute the vampire from across the room, may have been an instance where the studio bosses would not allow the spectacle of staking, for fear of critical reprisals.

Whale, despite having had experience directing on the stage as well as on film, seems to have done as much as he could to emphasize cinematic spectacle, often focusing on images that would have been difficult or impossible to put on screen.  For instance, the climactic confrontation of Frankenstein and his creation in an old mill shows them squaring off in an old mill.

Following which they look at one another through the mill wheel, as if one were the funhouse-mirror reflection of the other.

And though the scientist can't stop his creation, the aroused populace can, by the spectacular effect of burning down the mill with the creature in it.

Now, I'll reiterate the judgment I've pronounced elsewhere: as in the majority of horror-films there is only one megadynamic presence in both of the films, neither can participate in the combative mode. However, the narrative center of FRANKENSTEIN is to show the viewer the monster's rampage and his resultant destruction in the most spectacular manner possible, and so all the "centric will" of the narrative expresses spectacular violence. This does not mean that every violent act is necessarily spectacular: Karl's whipping of the chained Monster is merely functional, as is the mid-point scene in which Frankenstein and his colleague Waldman subdue the monster with the help of a drug-injection.

In contrast, all of the violence in Browning's DRACULA must deemed functional because most of it is intimated. (Allegedly Browning didn't even want his vampire to appear on-screen, only to be suggested by the reactions of other actors.) The most violent moment in DRACULA comes near the conclusion, when the vampire thinks himself betrayed by Renfield and so breaks his pawn's neck. But if even one wished to deem this a moment of spectacular violence, then it would belong to the diffuse will of the narrative, since the centric will focuses upon functional violence. By the same token, the moments of functional violence in FRANKENSTEIN are diffuse while those of spectacular violence are centric.

The principal exception to the "rule of one powerful presence" in most horror films is the "monster mash" film. The mere existence of more monsters means more potential for spectacle, as well as for the possibility of spectacular combat between two or more monsters.


Of the four "monster mashes" that emerges from Universal in the 1940s, 1943's FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN and 1948's ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN   are the only two in which some sort of "monster-battle" takes place.

Short though it is, there can be little doubt that the conclusion of FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN satisfies the requirements for not only the same spectacular violence found in FRANKENSTEIN, but also its expression in the combative mode. Violence that is both spectacular and combative forms the core of the film's centric will.

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN-- in which the comedians meet not only the Monster but also the Wolf Man and Dracula-- is another matter altogether. All three monsters are megadynamic presences, and so the script might have chosen to have two or more monsters fight each other in the midst of the comedians' antics. But clearly the script chose to emphasize the humor of having the beleaguered protagonists constantly running from the three "titans of terror." The closest thing to a monster-fight is when Dracula and Wolf Man have a shoving-match, with Costello-on-a-gurney in between.

But the two monsters don't have a real encounter, as Dracula mostly runs away from the lycanthrope. There are moments of spectacular violence here, like the Monster punching through a wooden door.

Or the creature's demise, just as fiery as his first cinematic death in sound cinema.

But as with my example of Dracula's brief moment of violence in the 1931 film, these spectacular moments represent diffuse will because the narrative's core is the use of violence in a functional way, to provoke humor as helpless humans run for the hills at the mere suggestion of megadynamic monsters. To be sure, the Monster's death comes about because the pier he's standing upon is set ablaze by a square-jawed hero-type, but this character is strictly peripheral-- and therefore diffuse-- to the dominant will of the narrative.

More later.

RUNNING ON ABOUT BLADE RUNNER

In the essay TO THE POWER OF XYZ I said:

In contrast, when I review the 1982 BLADE RUNNER I don't doubt that I will judge it to be a combative work, wherein such characters as Rick Deckard, Pris and Roy Batty take on the aura of spectacular violence.

I have finally reviewed the "Final Cut" edition of the film, but noted in the course of the review that there were many aspects of this multidimensional work that I knew I could not analyze in one review.  One of those is the film's relation to spectacular violence.

Of the Dick novel I wrote earlier:

...in Dick's ANDROIDS, the violence is purely in the functional mode, even if the combatants are dueling with laser tubes.  It's rare to find megadynamic forces handled in a humdrum functional manner, though Dick's motive for so doing may somewhat akin to Heinlein's reason for not winding up STARSHIP TROOPERS with a big colorful battle.  In both cases, however different their themes, the authors sought to make their protagonists seem more "ordinary" despite their marvelous surroundings and/or resources. 

Of course, prose-authors can be as "humdrum" as they like with regard to potentially spectacular effects.  Authors attempting to craft dramatic works frequently eschew spectacular violence in order to communicate to readers the "seriousness" of their efforts. 

The same strategy appears in the medium of film, but it's rare in those films aimed at a mainstream audience. There can be little doubt that director Ridley Scott's aims in 1982's BLADE RUNNER were no less serious than Dick's.  But since Scott sought to please a mainstream audience of filmgoers, he surely knew that he had to give them spectacle to keep them interested.  The picayune scene of Dick's novel, in which Deckard and Batty shoot at each other with laser tubes, is therefore replaced by a long chase scene in which Batty injures Deckard's gun-hand, and then pursues the armed-but-awkward policeman, continually mocking Deckard's inability to kill him.  In one scene Deckard does get in a couple of good blows with a pipe, but in my system his ability is no better than "exemplary."  In my review I pointed out that Deckard is similarly enabled by darn good luck in his encounters with other replicants, in three scenes that resemble nothing in Philip Dick's book.

Scott's use of action-adventure motifs is certainly ironic. Deckard's supervisor calls Deckard a "one-man slaughterhouse," but in all four of the blade runner's encounters with the replicants, they all beat him down and are capable of easily killing him, and Deckard is saved only by contingent circumstances, not by his own skills or powers.

When I first viewed the film, I was particularly perturbed by the scene in which Deckard is almost killed by the acrobatic Pris.  In this scene she seems close to breaking the blade runner's neck, but for no clear reason she lets him go, retreats a few paces, and then tries another acrobatic attack.  This allows Deckard the chance to kill Pris.  The film gives no good reason as to why she breaks off her attack, so that I can only assume the writers did this to "save" the hero so that he would be alive to face off with Batty a bit later.

Nevertheless, even though Deckard's formidability never reaches the higher regions of megadynamicity, as with Harrison Ford's two most famous heroic roles, I would still regard BLADE RUNNER's demihero-protagonist to be a combative one.  I've stressed in other essays that it's not strictly necessary that the protagonist should win all of his battles in order to qualify the work as one in the combative mode, and Deckard's record in this regard may be one of the least successful ever seen in a mainstream-oriented film.  Nevertheless, the violence does go beyond the limits of the functional mode seen in the novel, and so even Scott's slight ironizing does not remove BLADE RUNNER from the mode of the combative.

CAUSAL CONUNDRUMS

Upon closer examination of the dynamicity-ratings I explored in MEGA, MESO, MICRO PT. 2, I feel I should explore the differing phenomenalities of a given character's personal dynamicity and the dynamicity of the weapons he may control.

In the case of one example cited in the above essay, the heroic characters of VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA-- Admiral Nelson being the foremost figure-- exist in a naturalistic continnum.  Although the show's time-period was set a few years in the future, the setting was not distinctly distanced from the real time in which the show was filmed.  Nelson, like the rest of the Seaview crew, was just an ordinary man, perhaps better trained in self defense than an average citizen.  This military training, however, did not eventuate in the sort of spectacular fight-scenes characteristic of combative narratives, so that I rate Nelson as "mesodynamic."  The weapons controlled by Nelson-- simple handguns on the personal level, the nuclear submarine Seaview itself-- are all of a naturalistic phenomenality.  The employment of these weapons on the teleseries is similarly subcombative in nature; most of the time the various menaces covet the submarine's nuclear weapons, but rarely are they employed to produce spectacular effects.

The representative character of Captain Kirk from the 1960s STAR TREK is a more mixed example. In the essay I rated him as "megadynamic" both in terms of his fighting-skills and his weapons.  However, Kirk's personal fighting-skills by themselves are also as naturalistic in phenomenality as those of the Nelson character. In contrast, the weapons Kirk controls, the weapons typical of Federation technology, are thoroughly marvelous in nature, as is his overall environment.

His costarring character Mister Spock is a pure marvelous type.  Not only does Spock have access to the same marvelous technology appropriate to his environment, but he himself possesses attributes that go beyond the limits of the naturalistic: primarily greater-than-human physical strength and his famous "mind-melding" power.

This raises an interesting question, however.  If a given alien character is constructed so that his bodily resources are no greater than those of a standard human being, then logically he should be deemed "naturalistic" in terms of personal dynamicity, even if his environment is a marvelous one, simply because he inhabits a marvelous universe.

I'd enlarge on some of these concerns as I follow up on some of the implications of my essays on causality and efficacy here.

PASSION FOR THE CLIMAX

I've just finished a review of the 2002 film MINORITY REPORT.  Not having seen the movie since it played in theatres, I had no clear memory of its status as a combative film, though I remembered a certain amount of spectacular stunt-work.  This raised the possibility that it, unlike the source material, might be a work in the combative mode, since I've indicated that it's impossible to convey the significant value of combative sublimity without the use of spectacle.

However, MINORITY REPORT's only important scene in this regard occurs less than halfway through the film. Prior to this scene, John Anderton (Tom Cruise) finds himself accused of being guilty of murder, albeit a murder than hasn't happened yet.  Though Anderton is a cop himself, he goes on the run from the authorities to prove his innocence.  This is a science-fiction twist on a venerable trope from the genre of mundane crime, and within crime movies there's usually no need for spectacle as such.  In this type of story, it's most desirable to show the protagonist as overmatched by the united might of the police tracking him. Rarely if ever does a protagonist in this sort of story become involved in a spectacular fight with police.

Viewers of cinematic science-fiction, however, expect some degree of spectacle, and so it would appear that director Spielberg and his scripters crafted a couple of major FX-scenes-- only one of which involves direct combat-- both of which occur early in the film and which may serve to assuage audience-expectations.  Following Anderton's escape from the police on a vertical freeway and his big fight with a half dozen armed police, the film then eschews showy spectacle for low-key suspense, after the fashion of the classic films noirs from which Spielberg claimed to have copied.  Anderton eventually uncovers the villain who framed him-- or, to be specific, his wife, acting on his behalf, does so-- but though there is a final confrontation between hero and villain, they do not fight.  The villain threatens the hero with a gun and is shot down by police; also a familiar trope out of crime films, which often take the execution of justice out of the hands of individual heroes and utilize the legal authorities to provide such violence.

So the question occurs: how important is it to the mode of the combative that there should be a literal combat near the climax, rather than at any other point in the narrative?

Though it's possible that I'll encounter some exceptions, there seems no way to demonstrate the persistence of the narrative combative value unless there is some sort of spectacle-oriented struggle at or very near the climax. On occasion there may be scenarios in which the central protagonist throws down with an apparent antagonist, only to break off the fight because he realizes it's all a big misunderstanding. Another variation is seen in my review of the 2012 DARK SHADOWS,
wherein vampire protagonist Barnabas Collins has a violent conflict with the villain but is taken out of the fight, after which the villain is destroyed by the main character's allies. But as long as there has been some narrative plot-thread to leads inevitably to some sort of spectacular combat, it doesn't matter if the combat follows the dominant pattern of the main hero overcoming the villain.  In fact, though it's rare for a combative film to end in the defeat of the hero, it does happen, most memorably in 1982's BLADE RUNNER.

Despite Spielberg's attempt to give Tom Cruise's fans some of the same thrills they enjoyed in his MISSION; IMPOSSIBLE success (even using the same stunt-team), MINORITY REPORT is a subcombative work, most comparable in structure to other works that depict violence at early points in the story, as I demonstrated here with regard to Shakespeare's subcombative drama CORIOLANUS.  This would also be another illustration of my concept of a narrative "diffuse force," as discussed here with regard to the 1953 film WAR OF THE WORLDS-- and which I've also discerned in a recent re-read of the Wells source novel, as well.

THE MANY FACES OF MIGHT

In DYNAMICITY DUOS PART 1 I considered whether or not mere gangsters could be deemed as "megadynamic" foes for Batman even though they lacked any of the outward marks of exceptional status, such as costumes, gimmicky weapons, a penchant for bizarre crimes, etc.  My answer was affirmative:

I suggest that although these ne'er-do-wells are not in the same league with Batman's truly exceptional foes, as per my example of the Penguin here, they still fall into the range of the megadynamic by virtue of their narrative operations. For one thing, though in both examples Batman defeats the mundane malefactors, he has to work somewhat harder in the second case, suggesting that the lawbreakers here are smarter and/or more formidable.

My phrase "narrative operations" fits with my earlier definition of "dynamicity" as a "narrative value" rather than a "significant value," as seen in DYNAMIS VS. DYNAMICITY.  In DUOS I formulated the notion that though "tough gangsters" who give Batman a run for his money might not be as "exceptional" as the Penguin, but they at least qualified to be rated as "lower-level" x-types, best considered "exemplary" rather than "exceptional" types. 

Later, I wondered if this "lowest division of the highest level" rationale might also solve the conundrum I proposed at the end of MEGA, MESO, MICRO PT. 2. To what extent, I asked at the end of the essay, should one consider a character like Dream Girl-- whose future-forecasting power is essentially strategic in nature-- to be exceptional?  One might say that she, too, belongs on that "lowest division" level.

And yet, even Dream Girl and the "Academy for Gangsters" (the mundane opponents cited in DUOS) are still x-types in terms of the "narrative operations" they serve, operations which might be summed up with the idea of "spectacle."  It's only through spectacle that one can truly view two forms of might contending, and thus created the sublime experience of Kantian dominance.  In contrast, in MEGA, MESO, MICRO PT. 2 I cited the teleseries VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA as a "subcombative adventure," even though the starring characters regularly overcome marvelous, megadynamic threats:

Because of the lack of spectacular violence, I see VOYAGE as a subcombative form of adventure. The heroes are perhaps a little better at combat than the average man-on-the-street, but not by much. 

In the same essay I described the VOYAGE heroes' violence as "functional," and this is probably the most desirable way of describing how the spectacular quality of violence can be neutralized, so that Kantian dominance is not conjured forth.  In THE NECESSITY OF SPECTACLE PT. 2  I furnished another comparative example like the one I made between STAR TREK and VOYAGE, this time comparing two giant-monster flicks, and showing why REPTILICUS' violence was spectacular, and therefore in the combative mode, while that of DEADLY MANTIS was merely functional, and therefore subcombative.

What's interesting to me here are the many manifestations in which a lower-ranking form of *dynamicity* can overcome a higher-ranking form.  Peter Coogan's SUPERHERO: THE SECRET ORIGIN OF A GENRE asks the question, "If Sergeant Bullock defeats and captures the Penguin, is Bullock a superhero?"  Coogan's response is couched in his own hermeneutic, but mine would be, "No, because Bullock has only functional, non-spectacular violence at his disposal."


I've previously analyzed a similar pattern in this essay with the microdynamic hero "Mighty Max," but here's another example of a "mesodynamic" type overcoming a "megadynamic" one:

I recently reread Edwin Arnold's 1905 novel LT. GULLIVAR JONES, retitled as GULLIVER OF MARS when re-published in a 1960s Ace paperback format.  There are several similarities between Arnold's GULLIVAR and Edgar Rice Burroughs' 1912 "John Carter" novel A PRINCESS OF MARS.  In both works, the hero is translated to Mars via improbable fantasy-devices.  In both, the hero encounters Martian people who dispose of their dead by sending them down a "River of the Dead," and both encounter weird plant-life.  Gullivar even encounters human-eating plant-creatures, though they're not as memorable as the plant-men John Carter meets in his next outing, GODS OF MARS.  Finally, in both novels vicious warlords abduct the hero's potential beloved, and the hero goes in pursuit.

But whereas John Carter and all of his descendants chase down their enemies with true bloodlust, Arnold's Gullivar is a reluctant hero at best.  In Arnold's hands, Gullivar sounds like what one would expect if Oscar Wilde tried to create a spacefaring superhero.  Gullivar is reasonably tough, somewhat like the VOYAGE heroes above: when a warlord's men come to take Princess Heru in tribute, Gullivar brawls a little with them before getting knocked out.  He then spends half the novel in pursuit, mostly observing the weird sights of Mars on the way.  He does have a prolonged encounter with the warlord Ar-Hap, and he does get to slug the evildoer once during a big fracas.  But the violence is merely a disorganized mess, after which Gullivar returns to Earth.  Here, even though the warlord has the potential to be a combative menace, the hero is too functionally depicted to provide much of a challenge. 

I'll probably return to this topic in a part 2, but since I'll probably never write about GULLIVER OF MARS again, I can't resist adding in this historic panel from the Moore-O'Neill LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN:

 

In other words, though Moore is careful not to use full names in order to avoid the wrath of ERB's lawyers, here we have "John Carter" meeting "Gullivar Jones:"

Or, put another way, "John" meeting "Jones:"

Or maybe even-- if you give Moore enough credit for punnery:

"J'onn"-- meeting "J'onzz."

THE NECESSITY OF SPECTACLE

 ...I consider that both [STAR WARS and ALIEN] qualify as "spectactular violence," which I re-define as "that violence whose depiction is more the point of the story than the ostensible plot." Spectacular violence is the violence of the spectacle: it's meant to be looked at.-- BATTLE OF THE MONSTER TERMINOLOGIES (2009)

I should qualify that my comparison of Holmes to a "pulp hero" is made in comparison to the staid 1922 film I mentioned. Though ADVENTURES does emphasize its violent elements in terms of a strong combat, it should be noted that the degree of violence never goes beyond its function in the plot. In contrast, the 2009 SHERLOCK HOLMES does emphasize violent combat in scenarios that add little or nothing to the plot as such, and so qualify as "spectacular violence."-- FX MARKS THE SPOT PART 2 (2012)

I've re-watched the relevant scenes of ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, and will now reverse myself on my verdict in the second quotation.  Yes, ADVENTURES has more of a linear, straightforward plot than the aforesaid Holmes film of 2009.  Nevertheless, ADVENTURES doesn't focus on the type of mysteries characteristic of the majority of Holmes stories and films, where the essential point is to disclose some hidden human fault-- thus aligning such stories with the standard conception of the "drama."  But all the violent acts in the 1939 film-- the attempted assassination of an innocent woman, Moriarty's attempt to steal the crown jewels-- aren't merely functional in the terms I described in the FX-essay, where I said that "the violence is there to illustrate the theme, not to assume its own importance in the story."  I cited as examples works by Hemingway and Faulkner, but a more accessible example would be one that I cited in the BATTLE essay: Fritz Lang's 1953 crime movie THE BIG HEAT.   As this Kim Newman review has it, "The Big Heat is a film of violence, opening with a close-up of a gun about to be used in the suicide of corrupt cop Tom Duncan, and proceeding rapidly through its plot with jolting horrors that malform the characters."

In contrast to this relatively "literary" usage of violence, the violent acts in ADVENTURES exist to set up the climactic battle between Holmes and Moriarty, respectively glossed as symbols of "good" and "evil."  Yes, the violence may seem less intense in the 1939 SHERLOCK than in the 2009 version, but the discrepancy can be marked down to the nature of the FX-technology available to filmmakers in the era of Classic Hollywood.  If I were to downgrade the conflict of Holmes and Moriarty purely on the basis of the intensity of the violence, I would have to exclude every other Classic Hollywood film in which fight-choreography was not nearly as much "in the viewer's face" as it is in contemporary films-- which would include a lot of the serials of the era that I have labeled combative, like ACE DRUMMOND and THE GREEN ARCHER. Indeed, when I reviewed ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES in 2012, I didn't even remember that I'd labeled its violence as "functional" in 2009, and so categorized it as a "combative adventure."

Now the reason that I dwell on this minor point at such length is because in the past year I've formulated the idea of "the combative mode" as one that exists exclusively where at least two exceptional-- or "megadynamic"-- forces come into conflict, thus producing Kantian dominance.  Since the 1939 film has a naturalistic phenomenality, both Holmes and Moriarty can only express their respective levels of "might" through naturalistic means, but such works have the potential to be just as spectacular as either those in the uncanny or marvelous categories.


Further, I should re-emphasize the defintion of the difference between "functional violence" and "spectacular violence" in the 2009 essay, when I said that the differences between them "are not determined by intensity of effect but by narrative function." 

The question then arises: are Holmes and Moriarty "megadynamic" as they are presented within the scope of ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES?  In MYTHOS AND MODE 2 I put forth a similar re-definition.  In an earlier essay I'd labeled Shakespeare's drama MACBETH as a "combative drama."  But upon re-examination I decided that though MACBETH satisfied the "narrative value" of the combative mode, it did not satisfy the "significant value."

...I can find nothing in the play that makes the two characters “exceptional” in their dynamicity. They are good fighters, without a doubt, but not necessarily exceptional. Lacking that dynamicity, both the characters and and the play lack the significant value of combative sublimity. 
 

The case could be made that Holmes and Moriarty are also nothing but "good" fighters.  There are, for example,  no references in ADVENTURES to Holmes' storied boxing-skill.  Still, he does show, as per my comment that he seemed like a "pulp hero," much more athleticism than one sees in earlier versions of Sherlock. Additionally, the somewhat aged Moriarty takes on Holmes with considerable gusto-- to say nothing of departing from the role of the manipulator, as the professor puts himself on the front lines in plundering the Tower of London.  So in contrast to MACBETH-- a play where the concluding violence is kept offstage-- the spectacular nature of the final fight in ADVENTURES inclines me to rate the two antagonists as "megadynamic," so that the film does indeed feature combative sublimity.  Since it's a given that a hyper-athletic character like Batman could trounce both of them, Holmes and Moriarty might be seen to skew toward the "low" end of the megadynamic, as I suggested in the essays DYNAMICITY DUOS PART 1 and PART 2.

In Part 2 I'll have more to say about how the spectacular mode of violence proves necessary to the manifestation of combative sublimity.  In conclusion, I also have one even more minor amendment to a statement from FX MARKS THE SPOT PART 2:

Some of the other Holmes dramatic narratives, such as THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, would probably qualify as combative dramas.

On reconsideration I don't think that in the novel, the 1939 film version, and the 1959 adaptation, the violence is no more than functional in nature, playing a secondary role to the disclosure of the mystery.  Some adaptation might be done to boost the violence to a spectacular level, but I know of no such adaptation.  The closest thing to it would be Simon and Kirby's freewheeling take on the Doyle story in a 1942 CAPTAIN AMERICA story, where the "hound" turns out to be a malefactor dressed up in a dog suit.

MEGA, MESO, MICRO PT 2

Now here's a comparative example as to how dynamicity sorts out in popular fiction.

My chosen examples here are two 1960s teleseries, STAR TREK and VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA.  Getting some obvious points out of the way:

The former is set in the far future; the latter in the near future.

Both serials deal with heroes in military service who regularly encounter marvelous threats.

The former is a drama with elements of adventure, comedy and irony.  The latter is adventure with only minor dramatic elements.

STAR TREK is a combative drama, in that it regularly features conflicts between the megadynamic forces of the heroes and those of their antagonists. VOYAGE is a subcombative adventure, in which the heroes are essentially mesodynamic though they sometimes overcome megadynamic threats.

The megadynamic forces commanded by most of the TREK heroes-- aside from one character, Mister Spock-- stem from their weapons; without said weapons, the heroes are ordinary men.  The heroes of VOYAGE control one formidable weapon, a nuclear submarine armed with missiles, which despite its superior firepower remains a naturalistic resource.  In both cases, without these weapons, the heroes of both serials are ordinary men (except Mister Spock) who possess varying ranges of combat-ability.

Finally, even putting aside the heroes' weaponry, the most significant difference for the purpose of this essay is that producer Gene Roddenberry's TREK regularly emphasized climaxes in which one or more of the main heroes (most often just Captain Kirk) engaged in battles featurng what I've termed "spectacular violence," while the heroes of Irwin Allen's VOYAGE employed for the most part mere "functional violence" (categories explained in more detail here.)

Here's a fan-favorite example of a Captain Kirk battle, from the episode "Gamesters of Triskelion."

Though Kirk is an ordinary man, his command of fighting-skills is clearly extraordinary, in that out of four opponents he kills two, wounds one and easily subdues the wounded opponent's replacement.

In contrast, though I haven't recently studied Allen's VOYAGE series in fine detail, I have seen all of the episodes, and I'd be surprised if the show contains any scenes that go beyond the most functional: "A shoots B, X punches Y."  It may be significant that most of the screen caps available on the web show the VOYAGE stars standing around in sedate poses like this one:

Because of the lack of spectacular violence, I see VOYAGE as a subcombative form of adventure.  The heroes are perhaps a little better at combat than the average man-on-the-street, but not by much.  This type of hero thus fits my definition of the mesodynamic hero from this essay as possessed of a dynamicity ranging from "good to fair," a grouping that thus far also includes the original version of Aladdin, Doctor Who and Brenda Starr, three other subcombative types analyzed here.

Now Jack Burton, cited here, is also a mesodynamic hero, but unlike the heroes of VOYAGE and the other three, who depend a lot upon luck and/or cleverness, Burton has one decisive physical skill with which he managed to take down a Chinese wizard with clearly megadynamic powers, and that skill is the one thing that at least temporarily boosts him to a megadynamic level of dynamicity.

On a related note, I'm currently debating with myself as to whether the "meso, meso, micro" distinction applies across the  board to all heroes.  It's a possibility that it may that it applies principally to (1) naturalistic heroes like Dirty Harry, (2) uncanny heroes like Zorro and Tarzan, and (3) heroes whose marvelous abilities stem entirely from their weapons, as with (as cited here) Batman.

In other words, it may be impossible or just impractical to speak of such distinctions with regards to characters who possess marvelous intrinsic powers.

For instance, the power to predict the future is a real and marvelous power, as with Dream Girl of the LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES:

Also marvelous in nature is the ability to heal oneself quickly from any wound or sickness, as with Ben Richards of the 1970s teleseries THE IMMORTAL:

However, these are not the sort of talents one wants fighting off your basic alien invasion.  Nevertheless, they are no less marvelous than the talents of Thor and Iron Man.  If these two characters can be fairly deemed as belonging to a "microdynamic" level of force, it would still have a very different character from what I mean when I speak of microdynamic protagonists-- which assumes characters who have only a "fair-to-poor" level of power, and usually connotes those that have no special power whatsoever.

OVERTHINKING THE UNDERTHOUGHT PT. 3

How wouldst thou use me now, blind, and thereby
Deceiveable, in most things as a child
Helpless, thence easily contemn'd, and scorn'd,
And last neglected?-- Milton, SAMSON AGONISTES.

All higher or moral tendencies lie under suspicion of being rackets.-- Saul Bellow, HERZOG.

In Part 1 I disagreed with Charles Reece's WONDER WOMAN essays. In order to indict William Moulton Marston's WONDER WOMAN for being propaganda for an "ideological state apparatus," albeit one based in the worship of "Aphrodite's law" rather than the state as such, he overemphasized some factors and underemphasized others.  I also compared his method with mine, asserting that in my own WONDER WOMAN analysis I'd stayed closer to the source material and attempted to represent the narrative "underthought" in concert with its literal "overthought."  The following essay touches on some related points in that respect, particularly with respect to the Mulveyan concept of "the male gaze."


Reece likens the Amazon's Transformation Island-- where criminals are obliged to wear "Venus girdles" designed to bring them to a consciousness of Aphrodite's law-- to both real-world correctional institutions and the philosophical concept of the "panopticon:"

Liberal do-gooder resistance to retributive justice can often slip into the most totalitarian of utopian ideas. By focusing on utilitarian notions of rehabilitation and deterrence, rather than a just punishment to fit the crime, the criminal’s agency can be diminished for the general good. What results is a society that begins to look like a penal colony. There are the science fiction dystopias such as A Clockwork Orange and The Minority Report, but also B. F. Skinner’s utopian model for the real world, Walden Two, where a centrally planned system of positive reinforcements has eliminated crime through the shaping of behavior (the behaviorist had no truck with talk of free will, Beyond Freedom and Dignity being one of his major popular works). And, to my mind, Marston’s Transformation Island is a more horrifying, feminine version of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon.

The concept is ubiquitous nowadays (cf., the masthead above), but briefly: The panopticon is a circular prison with a watchtower in the center covered in two-way mirrors, where guards can observe any of the prisoners through the glass walls of their cells that face the tower. It’s a model of efficiency: few to no guards are needed at any given time, because the prisoners can’t determine when they’re being watched. Thus, they learn to act as if they’re always being watched. Besides the obvious visual analogy of the tower to the phallus, the concept can be read as masculine due to its use of Laura Mulvey’s “male gaze.” [3] Similar to what’s done with Rear Window, substitute the film audience for the guards, the screen for the glass walls and images of women for the prisoners, and you pretty much have her view of cinematic pleasure. The woman/prisoner exists as spectacle (connoting “to-be-looked-at-ness”), “freezing”/disrupting the progression of narrative/legal order, which is what the masculine camera/guard’s gaze is ultimately searching for: “This alien presence [erotic or criminal spectacle] then has to be integrated into cohesion with the narrative [patriarchal or legal order].” [4] [p. 203, Mulvey]

Laura Mulvey's (in)famous concept of the "male gaze," whatever one thinks of it, does compare reasonably well with the panopticon concept.  Both ideas are based in the fear and anxiety one may experience-- not unlike Milton's blind strongman-- of being looked at without being able to look back.  However, I'm moved to point out that Marston's concept of Transformation Island has exactly nothing to do with the idea of visual monitoring, and so a comparison to either Mulvey or Bentham seems egregious.

The only resemblance to Bentham's panopticon is that Transformation Island does have some guards.  However, the intrinsic idea of the Venus girdles involves a spirtual awakening, rather than a deadening. In WONDER WOMAN #28 one of the Transformation Island guards explains:

[The girdle] is magic metal from Venus—it removes all desire to do evil and compels complete authority to loving obedience.

Initially this sounds an awful lot like brainwashing of the Orwellian kind.  However, in the same issue, one of the long-time prisoners of the Island, after being liberated by newer escapees, has the following mental monologue:

 “Without the girdle I feel dominant—invincible! But I don’t feel cruel and wicked as I used to—the Amazons transformed me! I love Wonder Woman and Queen Hippolyte—I can’t bear to have them hurt—I must save them!”

 
It's possible, I suppose, to view the speaker as being just as brainwashed as Winston Smith.  However, to do so one must force onto Marston's narrative an "underthought" not supported by the "overthought" expressed in the story proper.

Reece's comparisons to Mulvey, Bentham and Orwell are not without purpose.  By alluding to various methods of thought-control, he can suggest that Transformation Island is simply a tool for such control, rather than what Marston believed it to be: a means of awakening "cruel and wicked" souls to a greater understanding of their own potential for love.  One may find this sort of psycho-religiosity sappy or repelling as a matter of taste, of course.  But it's impossible to overlook that in Marston's universe, the law of Aphrodite has a different phenomenological nature than any of the compulsions from 1984. 

Another problem specific to the comparison of Marston and Bentham is that in the former, readers know that the prisoners of Transfomation Island are all guilty of their crimes.  We know this with a narrative certainty that cannot extend to the philosophical prison of Bentham.  This diegetic fact weakens Reece's case for portraying the Amazon's adversaries as pawns of an "ideological state apparatus."  Therefore, to strengthen his case he brings in Mulvey's formula of the "woman-as-spectacle," the cinematic female who is also unable to prevent being under the scrutiny of a male-dominated order.  However, the comparison is not apt.  In one case we're talking about characters as they're being controlled by other characters within a narrative diegesis, and in the other, about characters being controlled by the extra-diegetic forces (a film's producers and audiences) who bring the diegesis into existence. 

In case it's not been made clear in earlier essays like PROOF OF EMBODIMENT, I reject absolutely Mulvey's cockeyed notion that only women are sources of spectacle, either in the cinematic medium or any other.  There are some differences in the ways men and women are "spectacularized," differences which have their roots in the biological and sociological identities of the genders.  And if there's any comic-book creator who did the most to shift the burden of spectacularization from female to male, Marston would be my nominee.

In my earlier WONDER WOMAN essay, I too made a comparison between the story I analyzed and the Mulveyan concept:

“Origin” could also serve as a satirical commentary on Laura Mulvey’s oversimple concept of “the male gaze.” Though Trevor is an intrusive presence, he sees nothing of the Amazon world for most of the story, and indeed his eyes seem to have been injured from his experience, since on page 12 he comments that “my eyes must be bad again” as he sees Diana in all her costumed finery, rather than as “the scientist who saved my life.” Rather than seeing, he is the one seen as Diana and her friend Mala rescue him from the waters. Yet only Diana, the one explicitly born on Paradise Island, falls in love with him and brings him back to life. Toward the tale’s end, when Hippolyte prepares to send Trevor back to his world in the company of Diana, the physician relates that she has removed Trevor’s “eye bandages.” Hippolyte orders that Trevor “must see nothing on Paradise Island,” and Diana retorts, “Nothing except me! I’ll bind him again--myself!” While Hippolyte protects Paradise Island from the rapacious gaze of men, Diana accepts Trevor’s gaze and his desire, though the binding of Trevor’s eyes may prefigure her intent to convert him, and every other man, to the bondage of Aphrodite’s law.

Obviously Marston's scenario makes Steve Trevor the "man-as-spectacle" within the diegesis of the narrative, and makes him a "blind Samson" for the length of his stay within this bower of femininity.  Of course the extra-diegetic readers see everything Trevor does not: Princess Diana, her hot Amazon sisters, and all the ritual appurtenances of Paradise Island.  Nevertheless, the Amazons aren't precisely on display as commodities for male gazers, after the fashion of Mulvey's most prominent example of male gazin': the multi-gal musicals of Busby Berkeley.  Given that WONDER WOMAN has long been a favorite of female comics-fans, it's arguable that this particular "Island of Beautiful Women" often serves the female audience's needs for the feeling of fictional superiority.  This dynamization parallels the sense of validation which Mulvey imputes to male viewers as they observe a "narrative/legal order" that always shows the guys on top.

I note also that my essay, written and printed long before Reece's, does deal with the fact that Wonder Woman's ultimate purpose is to "convert" man's world to the law of Aphrodite.  Yet, where Reece regards this sort of mental/moral conversion as just another "racket" to keep the ideological apparatus running, I regard it, first and foremost, as a fantasy.  I don't believe that Marston's vision would have worked in the real world, but not because it's fascist or invested in mind-control.

On a more minor note, I can't help noting that Reece indicts most if not all superheroes as sharing the same quasi-fascist agenda as WONDER WOMAN: "This is your basic superhero moral gobbledygook, only encoded as feminist."  Yet he also says, in the quote above:

"By focusing on utilitarian notions of rehabilitation and deterrence, rather than a just punishment to fit the crime, the criminal’s agency can be diminished for the general good. "

Most superhero comic books do not deal with "rehabilitation and deterrence" to the extent that Marston's WONDER WOMAN does-- which is, on balance, still a small though not insignificant corpus of "Transformation Island" tales against the entirety of Marston's body of work.  Usually "just punishment" is precisely what superhero comics are about.  Though some villains die (or appear to die) as a result of their crimes, many receive what is coded in the stories as "just punishment," enduring temporary imprisonment so that the writers can bring them back again and again with impunity.  The Penguin might occasionally pretend to be rehabilitated, or Mister Element may actually be reformed, but in neither case are they subjected to Orwellian mind control.  The Penguin returns to being "cruel and wicked" because it gives him a charge, while former Wonder Woman villain Paula Von Gunther becomes the Amazon's boon ally.  One is a static view of the subject of "crime and punishment," while the other involves dynamic personal transformation and is based in what Bellow calls "higher and moral principles."  One need not agree with every idea propounded by William Moulton Marston to appreciate the dynamism of his conceptual universe.