I THINK ICON, I THINK ICON

Icon: in semiotics, a sign characterized by iconicity, the resemblance to what it signifies

Since the early days of this blog I've flirted with many terms for the various presences inhabiting fictional world-scapes. I've called them  focal and non-focal, centric and eccentric, coes and subs, and finally, superordinate and subordinate presences. But I've stuck with the term "presences" since I first started writing about such things, because the term was the best one I could find for all the various fictional figures that can influence the outcome of a narrative: not just human beings but also flora, fauna, environments, imaginary beings both sentient and non-sentient, artifacts created by humans or by similar entities, or even discarnate forces like "The Crazy Ray" of Rene Clair's 1924 film.

But now, before I write the next section of COORDINATING INTERORDINATION, I have to specify a better term than "presences," because "presences" is not good enough to imply the matrix of motives that will cause one authorial will to emulate the products of another authorial will. What I formerly called "presences" I will now call "icons."

Though my above quote from Wikipedia uses the term "icon" as it appears in modern semiotics, I'm not invoking that discipline in any way. I would imagine that when some semiotician decided to import the term into his system, he was roughly thinking about how religious icons were supposed to represent either religious figures or aspects of religious belief, as opposed, say, to figures whose resemblance to what they represented was more abstract.

For the purpose of my discussion of interordination, an icon is any kind of strongly definable entity in a given narrative. Icons are either superordinate, meaning that the action of the narrative centers upon the nature of the subordinate icon, or subordinate, meaning that these icons exist to support and explicate the mythology of the superordinate icon. The superordinate icon is the icon-type which later authors most often seek to copy from earlier authors, whether those earlier authors established an earlier icon as part of a legal franchise or as a figure in informal folklore. When a later author emulates the subordinate icon produced by an earlier author, it's usually because said icon generated some level of special popularity -- the Joker, the Wicked Witch of the West. 

Now, popularity is not strictly necessary. It's possible for even the most minor figures to be adapted for whatever purpose the derivative author wishes to accomplish. For instance, in all likelihood no play-goer watching HAMLET ever gave much thought to the extremely minor characters of Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern. However, in 1966 Tom Stoppard made these toss-off icons into the stars of his absurdist play ROSENKRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD, and within that play, these formerly nugatory characters become the stars of the show.

The base rule for an icon to be "strongly definable" is that he, she, or it must have either a name given somewhere in the text, or it must be possible for some critic to construct a distinctive name for an unnamed entity from the events of the narrative. In an operative sense, it's almost impossible for a derivative author to do anything with icons that are merely bare stereotypes, like "that cop who shot at Spider-Man in that one Romita story" or "the 553rd lion killed by Tarzan." 

In a practical sense, even an unnamed icon must have some special identity on which a critic can hang some distinction. In INCREDIBLE HULK #1 (1962), Lee and Kirby devoted one panel to an anonymous soldier who gives a name to the big green monster who shows up on the soldier's base. Many years later, because the nameless soldier had that distinction, writer Peter David constructed a short, stand-alone story about "the man who named the Hulk" for one of the HULK annuals-- which one, I'm not sure at the moment. In my 2014 essay OBJECTS GIVEN LUSTER, I defined the focal presence of the EC story "The Destruction of the Earth" (WEIRD SCIENCE #14) as the Earth itself, since the story spends most of its time showing how the planet will be annihilated, while in contrast all of the human characters in the story remain bare stereotypes. So if I were making a designation of the story's focal icon, I would concoct a distinctive name for that version of the planet, such as "The Destroyed Earth."

In my next essay it will become evident as to why a more felicitous term was necessary, when I start expounding on the concept of emulation.