ONE LAST SHOT AT GRANT'S FOLLY

'The Hulk?!! What does the Hulk help anyone understand?Especially since his creators (sorry, Stan & Jack) got it all wrong. (i.e. "Massive doses of radiation don't give you leukemia, bone cancer, failed internal organs and agonizing death, they make you Big and Strong!") I don't blame Stan or Jack, those were the times, but as object lesson or explanation of complexities of science or modern existence, the Hulk means absolutely nothing. They don't even beat the "tormented, innocent outsider" drum much anymore.(Doesn't mean people can't enjoy Hulk stories, though.)'

After I posted my pair of essays about Steven Grant's misreading of Joseph Campbell, I was pretty sure that he would not reply, either here or on his forum, where I posted notice that I had refuted him. Thus Grant joins the select company of Jeet Heer, Alan Moore, and Heidi MacDonald who either don't realize they've been refuted on this blog, or know and don't care because there's no profit in taking issue with it.

Neither of these is objectionable to me. If I was Alan Moore, I'd certainly find better things to do with my time than reading (or even keeping) any blogs. And most professionals who are even aware of being dissed on blogs have no stake in refuting the refutations. They may respond if someone challenges them in their own bailiwick, because not to respond makes them look wussy. But responding elsewhere is usually a zero sum game, which costs time, which means (as the cliche goes) money. That I respond to any of them is thus merely an exercise in logical argument, without expectation of engagement.

Still, I decided that a good argument could also be built from Grant's above quote-- taken from the PERMANENT DAMAGE message boards, in response to someone who suggested that the Hulk might be a modern myth, contrary to Grant's essay. I find the quote interesting in part because it buttresses my assertion that Steven Grant is like many current misreaders of mythology who believe that myth's goal was to help people "understand" things in a proto-scientific sense-- understanding why the sun seems to travel across the heavens, etc. If this were true, then THE INCREDIBLE HULK comic book would indeed be at fault for promoting a fallacious view of radiation's effects.

But of course Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were no more at fault for "distorting" science than if they had had the Hulk created by some exotic chemical, like the one that was supposed to have split Doctor Jekyll into Mister Hyde. Nor would they have been distorting science had they gone the Captain Marvel route and had the monster transformed by a magical lightning bolt (maybe with a bunch of mythological progenitors-- Heracles Ulikummi Loki and Kullervo-- thrown in for good measure). Stan and Jack could not have distorted science with any of these creature-creating tropes because their story was not an extrapolation of the then-known facts of science but an expressive reaction to the perceived potential of science.

As for being an "object lesson," well, that's where we get into the question of allegorical meaning, as in the many "giant beastie" monster-movies that influenced the HULK comic no less than the example of Doctor Jekyll. I've noted elsewhere that it's almost impossible to allude to the symbolic discourse inherent in a fictional story without unfortunately making it sound like an allegory, but often even where an allegorical statment is explicitly made in a text (as in the oft-heard "He meddled in things man should leave alone!"), this sort of "didacticism for dummies" often conceals what's really going on under the story's surface. So while it could be fairly stated that the Hulk was one of many pop-cultural artifacts designed to respond to the double-edged sword of nuclear science, it would be erroneous to state that the HULK's "object lesson" was, "Don't mess around with atoms or you'll spawn a nasty green muscleman."

Finally, I find it amusing that Grant should assume that the Hulk can have no meaning if the Green Goliath's adventures do not include any "explanation of complexities of science or modern existence." As I noted before, this is tantamount to claiming that only those systems that utilize discursive thought-- the sciences, and quasi-scientific disciplines like economics-- can be a source of meaning. This is merely a naive form of positivism in modern dress, not to mention representing an aesthetic so barren that even the fulminations of the "culture industry" crowd are preferable. At least to those elitists, a character like the Hulk represents the threat of "mass culture"--no matter how poorly that concept may have been thought out-- rather than "nothing."