But what about “fake
phenomena?” My NUM theory outlines ten
tropes through which it is possible for a fictional work to suggest the
affective tenor of the metaphenomenal even if the phenomenality of that work does not breach
cognitive causality. Among these tropes
I include that of the “phantasmal figuration,” in which a given phenomenon
has suspicious underpinnings. Often
this means that some human agency has faked the phenomenon. However, I also
include within this trope such works as HAMLET, where one is not precisely sure
whether the protagonist has witnessed the true ghost of his father or, as
Hamlet himself says, something sent by the Master of Lies.
One of the best known examples of
the phantasmal figuration is Washington Irving’s 1820 short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” The story strongly suggests
that the supernatural figure in the story, the Headless Horseman, is purely
a creation of Brom Bones, rival to Ichabod Crane, and that whatever spectre
Ichabod sees is merely Brom in disguise.
And yet, despite the fact that the story gives readers the
dominant impression is that the Horseman is merely an illusion, I would still
say that the Horseman is the “focal presence” of the story. It is this illusion that the reader cares
about; not the ignominious defeat of Ichabod nor the triumph of Brom. In most “phantasmal figuration” works, the
illusion takes precedence.
One interesting variation on the
“phantasmal figuration” appears in the 1935 Tod Browning MARK OF THE VAMPIRE,
reviewed here. In this film, it appears as if two
vampires—Count Mora and his daughter Luna—have arisen from the dead and are
vampirizing the locals. It's eventually revealed that Mora and Luna are merely actors pretending to be vampires,
and that there is a merely human agency behind the bloodlettings. However, the "real vampire"
has not created the illusion of the two vampires as a cover for his activities,
as the Horseman is created by Brom Bones.
Rather, the vampire-actors are hired by a policeman. This officer hopes that the
presence of phony vampires will “catch the conscience of a killer,” so to
speak, and cause the real murderer, one "Baron Otto," to out himself—which, however improbably, he
does.
So are Mora and Luna still the
focal presences of the MARK story, even though they are not the creation of Otto, the way the Horseman was the creation of Brom
Bones? I would say so. The two
vampires, even though their illusion proceeds from the detective’s finagling,
still offer a parallel to the nature of the mundane “vampire” of the story, as I noted in my review regarding the repeated incest-theme.
As David Skal comments in THE MONSTER SHOW, the original script by Endore included a backstory for the long-dead count: that he and his daughter had an incestuous liaison, after which they both perished in some sort of suicidal pact. Or possibly Mora killed Luna, since Luna's character shows no death-marks, while Mora sports a bullet-wound in his temple to depict how his persona perished by his own hand-- a wound left unexplained in the diegesis, since MGM didn't allow any direct reference to incest.
Yet, in an interesting psychological twist, the Browning-Endore script does manage to put across a quasi-incestuous motive for Otto's crime, for late in the film he reveals that he, guardian and implicit replacement for the late patriarch, coveted Irena for himself. To the extent that Otto incarnates the Freudian myth of the "bad father" who covets his own daughter, the essence of the Mora-Luna relationship does make it into the film in displaced form.
The example of MARK OF THE VAMPIRE serves to establish that there need not be a one-to-one correlation between the illusion and the one who creates the illusion. Inspector Neumann is responsible for the illusion, but he remains a supporting rather than a central character. In the end he functions largely as a stand-in for the persona of the script's author, who constructs the story of
Mora and Luna to reflect that of the real villain Otto.
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