In Part 3 I contrasted two
teleseries—LOST IN SPACE and THE LOST WORLD-- which shared the same base
concept—a group of castaways journeying through strange worlds, often obliged
to help others in keeping with a dominant moral outlook of Good
Samaritanism. I did so to clarify that
the differences between the personas of “heroes” and “demiheroes” are not determined
by what they do, but how they do it.
The emphasis on "what they do" is one I've started calling “the recipe mentality.” Vladimir Propp’s folktale-morphology, which
I’ve admired hugely, is one example of this mentality. For Propp the difference between his two
types of protagonist, the “seeker” and the “victimized hero,” is a difference
based in their orientation in terms of folkloric plot: one is largely active,
the other is largely passive.
I admire Propp’s intent, to focus
on the bare rudiments of narrative as closely as possible, presumably to avoid
imposing some heuristic vision of his own upon the original materials. However,
some time ago I realized that in popular fiction at least, there was no clear
division between such plot-based actions, and I doubt that one exists in folktales
either. LOST IN SPACE and LOST WORLD are
two serials with essentially the same premise, but their respective
protagonist-ensembles combine, in varying proportions, the actions of Propp’s
“seekers” as well as his “victimized heroes.”
In terms of dominant plotlines, I would have to say that more often than
not the ensembles are placed in the position of the “victimized heroes,” in
that trouble usually seeks them out rather than the other way round. Still, the
Proppian distinction doesn’t capture the difference in character-attitude,
which might be fairly deemed a failure of Propp’s analysis (one attacked in
general terms by J.R.R. Tolkien, as mentioned here).
A parallel difference in
character-attitude must also be the determining factor between the personas of
the villain and the monster. I’ve
observed in past essays that some critics have tried to see the persona of “the
monster” as applying only to creatures that seem without “motives, ambitions,
or soul.” In CREATED AND CREATOR ENSEMBLED HE THEM I gave evidence as to why even a very intellectual type of
character, such as Wells’ Doctor Moreau, could still be a “monster.” This reasoning also applies as to what
qualities would separate Moreau’s monstrous nature from the nature of a
“villain” who might employ the same modus operandi, that of making animals from men. At some point I may try to make a direct
comparison between Wells’ Moreau and some more villainous version of his
type. For the time being I’ll illustrate
my “villain/monster” divide with reference to two of the most famous “mad
scientists” in popular literature, Victor Frankenstein and Doctor Fu Manchu.
When this opposition occurred to
me, I realized that it might have been awkward to compare the original
novel-characters. Mary Shelley’s mad
scientist (who technically never becomes a licensed doctor) begins and ends
within the scope of one novel. Sax
Rohmer’s “devil-doctor” seems to have been intended as a serial character from
the beginning. To keep the parallels
closer, I decided to examine how each character was constructed in terms of
works that were both intended as ongoing serial works.
I’ve now reviewed only the first
entries of the Hammer FRANKENSTEIN series and the Harry Alan Towers-produced FU
MANCHU series. Both serials starred
British actors and focused upon characters created by British authors. The Hammer series debuted in the late 1950s
and lasted sporadically until the early 1970s.
The Towers series debuted in the middle 1960s and lasted only about five
more years, and arguably it coattailed on the success of the Hammer
horror-films, since the Fu Manchu series starred an actor made internationally
famous by his assocation with Hammer.
The Hammer Frankenstein series is well regarded in some critical circles,
while Towers’ Fu Manchu films are generally beneath any critical radar. But for my purposes, the serials’ most
important point of comparison is how each uses the “mad scientist” trope.
The Shelley novel devotes
considerable time to Frankenstein’s backstory, and Rohmer’s novels build up a
complex if indirect portrait of Fu Manchu’s character. Neither THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN nor THEFACE OF FU MANCHU delves into motivation, however. As I remarked in my CURSE review, the only
motivation Victor Frankenstein has for his experiments is that he is a
“precocious child of privilege” who also happens to be a genius and wishes to
prove it. Towers’ Fu Manchu doesn’t even
get this much. Nayland Smith describes
the devil-doctor as “the most dangerous and evil man in the world,” and that’s
the only motive needed, with Towers eschewing even the minimal political
motivations of the novels (i.e., Fu Manchu may have been a product of China’s Boxer
Rebellion).
Nevertheless, even with spotty
depictions of character, it can be demonstrated that of the two characters—both
devoted to a consciensce-less pursuit of science for personal gain-- one of the
two conforms to the persona of the monster, and the other to that of the
villain.
I indicated in EXPENDITURE PT. 3
that LOST IN SPACE’s characters were characterized by the value of
“persistence.” The characters in that
series comprised a family whose primary concern was one of homeostasis; the
ability to survive from day to day while allowing the children to mature under
the best achievable circumstances. In the Shelley novel Victor
Frankenstein—whom I would view as the demihero counterpart of his monstrous
creation—also seeks a homeostasis, but in a thoroughly negative sense.
Threatened by the agency of other people, Frankenstein subconsciously wants to
be a community of one, and so allows his monster-doppelganger to kill all those
that threaten his solitary hegemony.
The Victor Frankenstein of CURSE extends
this scientific preoccupation to Sadean proportions. Like his novelistic forbear,
Hammer-Frankenstein becomes the prisoner of his own idée fixee, but the Hammer version is much
more calculatingly cruel than Shelley’s original. Whereas the novel version agonizes over his
love for his cousin Elizabeth, Frankenstein barely wants his beauteous cousin in his
life. At most he consents to marry her for societal convenience, though he may
also be aware that his tutor Paul loves her, and so wants to keep Elizabeth
around in order to manipulate Paul. Sex
for Frankenstein is an itch that he scratches with his convenient maid
Justine. When Justine has the temerity to
get pregnant, Frankenstein has no interest in the fact that she carries his child, and he
sets up the mother of his child—and his child—to be killed by his captive
creature. As I pointed out with regard
to Doctor Moreau, the negative manifestations of the demihero—dominantly a
positive persona-- are never as extreme as those of the monster, a persona
statistically dominated by a negative nature.
Like Moreau, Frankenstein prates about having his genius recognized by
others, but neither of them really cares about fame. They exist to unleash the dark forces of
their respective obsessions, and their genius-intellects are merely the vehicle
for those obsessions. The voice of a
more humanistic side of genius is heard early in the film, before Baron
Frankenstein harvests the genius’ brain for his obscene creation:
“… we [scientists] quickly tire of
our discoveries. We hand them over to
people who are not ready for them—while we go off again into the darkness of
ignorance—searching for other discoveries, which will be mishandled in just the
same way.”—Doctor Bernstein, courtesty of CURSE scribe Jimmy Sangster.
I don’t think it’s coincidence
that scribe Sangster associates the productions of science with the delving
into “the darkness of ignorance.” Normally one imagines science as a light that
dispels ignorance, but Sangster’s Bernstein sees it as unleashing dark forces
in a human community ill-prepared for such revelations, while those doing the
unleashing are no less prisoners of their own obsessed psyches. Thus science, rather than dispelling
darkness, merely allowes it to propagate new forms, like Frankenstein’s
monster. Thus the intelligent genius of
a Frankenstein conveys the same value of a “negative persistence” that we see
in unthinking monsters like Leatherface or the Blob.
I said earlier that
Hammer-Frankenstein’s obsession had been extended to Sadean proportions. By that I meant that his cruelty is more
deliberate than that of the demihero-protagonist of the Shelley novel. However, it’s a cruelty that is largely
reactive to circumstances, like the threat Justine poses to Frankenstein’s
operations. True Sadean sentiments are
proactive; they seek cruelty for its own sake, not simply to achieve
homeostasis.
The Towers Fu Manchu, as I noted
earlier, shows no political motivations in his desire for world
domination. The Fu Manchu of the Rohmer
novels dreams an impossible dream, seeking the return of the hegemony of
ancient China in the face of European dominance and (in the later novels) in
opposition to Chinese Communism. True,
since Towers’ Fu Manchu is served mostly by Asian aides—his Chinese daughter,
his dacoits, who strangle people with their “Tibetan prayer scarves”—one
presumes that if Fu Manchu achieved world conquest, the result would be a world
with Asians on top. So the threat of the “Yellow Peril” is still one of Asian
hegemony, even though Towers tries to stay away from real-world politics.
Whereas Frankenstein’s senseless
ambition merely stems from the “negative persistence” of his own ego, Fu
Manchu’s mad science is informed by “negative glory.” Admittedly, the Towers Fu Manchu doesn’t seem
to defy history quite as much as the Rohmer character does with his passion to
revive dynastic China. Still, Fu’s
central plan might be deemed a pre-technological take on nuclear
brinkmanship. He eschews dirtying his
hands with modern technology; Fu wants to destroy Western hegemony with a
natural weapon born in the remote wilds of the East, specifically Tibet. Today
modern audiences would never place credence in a death-drug brewed from some
rare Eastern flower. These audiences have too much
belief that the next source of chemical warfare will come from some terrorists’
laboratory. Such weapons, even if
conceived by Eastern enemies of the West, would still be a continuation of
Western science, but would not be the exclusive properties of the mysterious
East.
Because of this primitivist urge,
Towers’ Fu Manchu still carries the aura of Satanic defiance, of purposefully
transgressing the norms of society, as all good villains must. Monsters, in
contrast, usually transgress norms without as much conscious intention, or else
by using some false rationale, as do mad doctors like Moreau and
Hammer-Frankenstein. Thus Fu Manchu is
also a Sadean in the true sense of the word, in that he desires power for its
own sake—though in FACE it is his daughter, rather than the devil-doctor, who
shows a desire to take erotic pleasure in cruelty.
I must note in closing that in the
first Towers Fu Manchu film, the devil-doctor isn’t seen showing off his own
scientific genius as Victor Frankenstein does in CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. In FACE OF FU MANCHU the evil genius allows
other experts to brew the death-drug of the Black Lotus, and one never sees his
own perfidious inventions. However,
later Towers entries do show Fu Manchu conceiving weird weapons of his own, so
I would say that the Black Lotus peril of FACE is still evidence of Fu’s
scientific aegis, even if he has others doing the work for him. Certainly he comes across as more of a
wonder-worker in FACE than he does in MYSTERIOUS DR. FU MANCHU, where he just
knows a few exotic poisons.
Even the endings of the respective
films differ in their presentations of “persistence” and “glory.” CURSE ends with Frankenstein about to go to
the guilloutine, but since the film proved successful, Hammer’s producers found
a way to show that the baron escaped execution so that there could be further
appearances of Peter Cushing’s obsessed scientist. FACE OF FU MANCHU starts from the other
extreme: Fu Manchu appears to die in the film’s first scene, but his nemesis
Nayland Smith still imagines that he lives despite being beheaded. Nayland Smith eventually figures out how the
evil doctor pulled off the trick, and attempts to kill Fu Manchu in the film’s
final scene. But Fu Manchu implicitly
survives any and all devastating dooms levied upon him, due to the villainous
glory attaching to him. Hammer’s Victor
Frankenstein also persists from film to film, destined to come up with a new
monster each time. But Frankenstein
never becomes a glorious figure. No
matter how many innocents die for his experiments, he, the wandering monster,
is arguably more pathetic than any of them—as I hope to show with further
examinations of the Hammer series.
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