METAPHENOMENAL MUSINGS PT. 2

The second and last elephant in the room is that even though fans of what I call "the metaphenomenal" often use the term "fantasy-fans" for themselves (unless they're really uncompromising SF-adherents), they often consume a lot of content that would not meet the definition of fantasy I proposed in Part 1, "as violations of what can happen in either time, space, or both." This is particularly true in the world of fantasy-film fans. It's for these audiences that concordances of fantastic film include such items as PSYCHO (serial killer), TARZAN OF THE APES (man raised by animals), and even the 1939 WIZARD OF OZ (extended fantasy dream-sequence).

None of these movies technically break with accepted standards of causation within time and space. Serial killers, feral children and extended dreams are all conceivable in our reality, so they don't break with the perceived rules of time and space. However, the way in which each of these famous movies presents these unusual phenomena may be deemed to *bend* those rules. Serial killers don't commonly have the complicated double identities of a Norman Bates, long dreams are not as structured as those of Dorothy Gale, and there has never been a feral child who turned out as good-looking as Tarzan.

At the same time, it's not impossible to depict parallel versions of these real-world phenomena in which no rule-bending takes place. Carl Jung had many symbolically complex dreams that could be recapitulated in the medium of cinema without making them seem as if they had the structure of fiction, after the fashion of OZ. And there have been cinematic treatments of the real-life deviate Ed Gein, on whom Norman Bates was partly based, and of the real feral child Victor of Aveyron, the basis of Francois Truffaut's THE WILD CHILD.

Following (but not wedded to) some terminology introduced in academic circles, I've called this "rule-bending" category of the metaphenomenal "the uncanny" while the "rule-breaking" category is "the marvelous." In contrast, all those works that simply "follow the rules" I deem "the naturalistic." There are surely concordances that don't follow my categories, that may occasionally include THE WILD CHILD or the 2000 movie ED GEIN. But I believe these are minor exceptions. Most such compendia avoid the strictly naturalistic studies of serial killers like Ted Bundy or the Hillside Stranglers, but serial killers whose fictional careers suggest the bizarre and the extraordinary generally find themselves in such encyclopedias.

I plan to devote a separate essay to some of my recent thoughts about the process by which "works of the uncanny" distinguish themselves from "works of the naturalistic," but to conclude, my idea of the typical fantasy-fan, with an equal appreciation for both forms of the metaphenomenal, is illustrated by this except from the letter of a somewhat famed fantasy-author:

If. in fact, man is unable to create living things out of inorganic matter. to hypnotize the beasts of the forest to do his will, to swing from tree to tree with the apes of the African jungle...or to explore... the deserts of Mars, permit us, at least, in fantasy, to witness these miracles, and to satisfy that craving for the unknown, the weird, and the impossible which exists in every human brain.-- H.P. Lovecraft.