REPETITION AND PROLONGATION PT. 2

 All of the examples of prolongation and repetition discussed in Part 1 were dominated by a relatively serious tone, which meant that in every scenario the sadist and his victim were radically opposed into a "winner" and a "loser." But this pattern of oppugnancy breaks down somewhat in the more ludicrous mythoi, where "accomodation narratives" might in theory outnumber "confrontation narratives."

In this near-myth analysis, I took issue with Gershon Legman's claim that all teenage comedy comics were just filled to the brim with young women panting with desire to harm/humiliate fathers and boyfriends. But to test his theory fairly, I scanned all of the adventures of an Archie Comics teen-heroine, Ginger Snapp, lasting from the middle forties through the early fifties. I did find some examples of the heroine Ginger occasionally visiting quasi-sadistic humiliations on either her father or her boyfriend, but there weren't enough of them for GINGER to support Legman's faulty thesis. Thus the few stories that existed in this venue fit my category of "prolongation," because the sadism-scenarios are confined to particular issues and don't reinforce one another.

The one story I analyzed, "Nightmare," was interesting because the victim's humiliation stems largely from his reactions to the titular series-star, not from overt deeds by Ginger. The story's action proceeds from Ginger's old man Mister Snapp. She asks him for money for a baseball uniform, but he, playing the "heavy father," wants to make her prove her devotion to the sport. He embarrasses himself by trying to keep up with the young folk, and then his daughter, only indirectly the author of his torments, beans him with a baseball by accident. Snapp then experiences a dream in which his daughter goes out of her way to clobber him with a giant bat, and he goes through other prolonged sufferings until he wakes up. So in his mind at least, Snapp is the "loser" and Ginger "the winner," though the only way in which the real Ginger torments him is just by the fact of being younger and healthier than her dad. This would be "exothelic prolongation" in that the reader feels humorous antipathy for Snapp, given that he becomes victimized by his own illusions.

I've written much more frequently on this blog about other serials, particularly in Japanese manga, in which sadism-scenarios recur frequently, so that all of the relevant features-- LOVE HINA, MAYO CHIKI, URUSEI YATSURA, and NISEKOI-- partake of the pattern of repetition. Often the accomodation narrative is focused on a male who keeps offending the woman, or women, who attract him, and getting clobbered by them for his transgressions. 

I examined a few key texts of NISEKOI in TENDER LOVING SADISM PT 2.  In contrast to GINGER, there were a lot of sadism-scenarios in the ongoing series, but "The Promise" is of special interest because it established that Raku, the male lead of the series, wants to live a life free of violence, and nurtures a yen for a similarly mild-mannered young classmate, Kosaki. But the manga-god controlling Raku's fate wants him to reach an accomodation with the less predictable aspects of life (or so I believe). Thus his potential new love Chitoge comes into Raku's life like a March lion. Chitoge is always "the sadist" in that she wallops Raku for the least infraction, even if she regrets her temper later on. But unlike "serious victims," Raku benefits from this "endothelic repetition" torment because it makes him stronger and more resilient. Arguably, Chitoge's aggressiveness, and that of her servant Tsugumi, even spreads to two other women in Raku's "harem," Kosaki and Marika, who don't normally beat on him. In "Transformation," it's comically implied that all four of them get drunk and "have their way" with the helpless male, though conveniently Raku's memory edits out whatever happened. After all, there's just so much "accomodating" an ordinary guy can do in that kind of situation. (And to be sure, all four females are substantially seen as "good girls," so the reader doesn't really think they molested him in any significant manner, and is mostly amused by the possibility that they could have done so.)