GIVE-AND-TAKE VS. THE KILLING STROKE proposed that these two tropes provided the
principal narrative strategies through which authors have created the
combative mode. In my earliest mediations upon the subject, I tended
toward the view that the key manifestations of the mode were those
narratives in which some clash of equal dynamicities transpired,
usually at the story’s climax (as noted in PASSION FOR THE CLIMAX).
But to some extent this view was a consequence of my over-emphasis on
the mode of dynamicity, since it was 2013 that I formulated the
complementary combinatory mode. That said, I still devoted
considerable space on my blogs to narratives in which a concluding
conflict failed to convey the dynamic-sublime, ranging from canonical
artworks like MACBETH to pop-art creations like WORLD WITHOUT END.
I
did allow for a major exception to the “combat-climax”
proposition, and this was what I originally called the use of
strategy. For instance, I viewed FORBIDDEN PLANET as a combative film
even though its major dynamicity-clash takes place in the film’s
middle. Rather, the Id Monster is defeated by a strategic move on the
part of the heroic space-soldiers. I hadn’t coined the term
“self-mastery” in this period, but it seems clear to me that this
is what I was aiming for, in valuing this movie’s conclusion as
combative even though the soldiers use “brain” more than “brawn.”
That said, I would not have deemed comparable characters, like those
of THE ANGRY RED PLANET, to be combative figures, given that they
didn’t show any real penchant for “brawn.” And within the same
period, I viewed that the 1953 WAR OF THE WORLDS film was not in the
combative mode. There’s a major clash of dynamicities in the middle
of that film as there is in FORBIDDEN PLANET. But the Martians aren’t
defeated by either the brain or brawn of the Earthpeople, but by
sheer dumb luck.
The
trope of “the killing stroke,” as exemplified by Odysseus’
blinding of the Cyclops, still depends on a clash of dynamicities,
but it’s one characterized less by an exchange of powerful blows
than by one principal thrust, often at a more powerful opponent’s
weak point. Arguably self-mastery, with the attendant idea of
“digging deep,” takes a more concentrated form in this trope. In the GIVE-AND-TAKE essay, I pursued a similar logical path in my
comparison of the protagonists of two works: the 1940 THIEF OF BAGDAD
and Neil Gaiman’s NEVERWHERE. The denouements of both works
involve the protagonist using a magical weapon to strike down a more
powerful menace: Abu shoots the wizard Jaffar with a magic arrow and
Mayhew stabs a big monster with a magic sword. But Mayhew exhibits no
self-mastery, while Abu does so prior to shooting Jaffar,
particularly in the young thief’s battle with a giant spider.
However,
such distinctions become a little harder to make when the “star of
the show” is the monster. For a monster-centric film to be
combative, the monster’s opponents, while often forgettable as
characters, must evince the quality of self-mastery in order for the
work to qualify as combative. Two such examples, from very different
periods of filmmaking, are 1955’s IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA and
2010’s SHARKTOPUS. Yet it’s difficult to quantify what separates
the climaxes of these films from those of, say, 1975’s JAWS and
1994’s TREMORS. It’s my conviction that even though these films
have very violent climaxes, I don’t find either the trope of
contending dynamicities or strategy informed by self-mastery. The
triumphs of the monster-slayers in the latter two films are
impressive—but just not “super-impressive.” And I make this
judgment in spite of all the other literary factors that make TREMORS
a better film than IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA, and JAWS (pretty
much without question) a better film than any latter-day shark-opus.
Next
up: considerations of self-mastery’s effects on the patterns of
exteriorization and interiorization.
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