A NOSE FOR GNOSIS

What a difference a year makes.

It was in May 2019 that I first began referencing the four functions of Joseph Campbell's system as "epistemological patterns"-- which, as far as I know, he did not-- in the essay AND THE HALF-TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE. Of those functions I wrote:

For me, as a modern amateur pundit, I believe that both myth and literature utilize epistemological patterns-- whether sociological or psychological, cosmological or metaphysical-- to create structured fictional worlds in which those patterns confer meaning, or at least perspective, upon real life as it is lived, without any imposed meaning or perspective.

Yet, in August 2018, I didn't see any connection between my system and epistemology in the FOUNTS OF KNOWLEDGE series:

Now, I've addressed something akin to the "acquaintance/ description" duality in my writings on symbolic complexity. My concerns were never epistemological, as I believe to be the case for both James and Russell. Rather, in my early definition of my terms "functionality" and "super-functionality," I was concerned with the ways in which literary constructs could display complexity or its lack. Still, in one passage from DON'T FEAR THE FURNITURE I touched on the epistemological matters...

In subsequent essays I noted that most if not all of my previous essays had indeed been epistemological in nature, but it was, as the HALF-TRUTH essay specifies, an epistemology of "half-truths," which is not the type of knowledge with which philosophers like James and Russell were concerned. 

FOUNT also specified that I deemed merely "functional" aspects of narrative fiction to be aligned to the sensory form of knowledge, "knowledge-by-acquaintance," while the "super-functional" aspects were aligned to the conceptual form, "knowledge-by-description." I might, at some point, see whether or not my "lateral values" line up with "acquaintance" and "vertical values" with "description." But instead I'll segue to a subject I've neglected far more than epistemology: ontology.

The two philosophical terms were formulated by different thinkers at different times, but in modern times they've become joined at the hip, as in this basic statement online:

ontology asks what exists, and epistemology asks how we can know about the existence of such a thing.

Since I began examining Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy for possible application to my literary hermeneutics, as in essays like MIGHT AND MYTH, I've been examining the idea that Whitehead's "pre-epistemic prehensions" comprised an ontology, while the epistemologically oriented apprehensions formed an epistemology. Prehensions as I understand them would necessarily flow from "knowledge-by-acquaintance," while apprehensions would line up with "knowledge-by-description." So far, as I observed in MIGHT AND MYTH, I've confined these alignments to sussing out what it means that the Lee-Kirby FANTASTIC FOUR had more concrescence within the mythopoeic potentiality than the Lee-Ditko SPIDER-MAN, though to be sure, that era of SPIDER-MAN is more concrescent with respect ot the dramatic potentiality.

MIND OUT OF TIME PT. 3

 At the end of MIND 2.5 I wrote:

But for now it's more important to move on to the matter of why the presence of the magic-accepting society is as important to the category as the magic itself-- as I shall convey in Part 3.

I started this essay-series with the question, "is there something that sets the genre we usually call 'fantasy' from all other genres with metaphenomenal content?" I established that I believed that the dominant colloquial usage of "fantasy" concerned a particular subgroup of metaphenomenal narratives I have now dubbed "magical fantasy stories." From this category I have excluded narratives which are complicated by the presence of competing forms of wonder-rationale (as discussed in Part 2.5), OR by the absence of the proper kind of magic-welcoming society. I also mentioned that my desire to set aside the unique appeal of "magical fantasy stories" due to my own personal response to the fantasy-genre. I do not automatically assume that my response is characteristic of all fantasy-readers. But I also do not automatically assume that there is no relevance even if no other person has ever made the correlation I will now make.

I have reviewed, in three linked essays, one of the earliest breakthrough works of religious historian Mircea Eliade, 1957's THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE. My second essay provides the most detailed look at what Eliade sought to say in that book, though I should stress that he wrote only of religion, and not, as I do, of literature and folklore.

The first chapter, "Sacred Space and Making the World Sacred," explores many of the ways that religious people around the world have sought to endow specific objects or locales-- trees, stones, temples, or entire cities-- with a sacred quality that transcends the everyday interactions of the profane world. Given the chapter's concern with space, it's logical enough that Eliade leads off with a quote from Exodus: "put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." Eliade cites numerous other cultures-- Vedic Indian, Algonquin, Australian aborgine, Roman, Egyptian-- in order to support his claim: that "homo religiosus" shows a supervening tendency to formulate spaces in which the sacred can enter to banish the profane, which Eliade defines, albeit only briefly, as all those contingent factors involving "man's vital functions (food, sex, work and so on."

Now on this blog I've repeatedly discussed both the similarities and differences between the dynamics of religion and the dynamics of art. And I've always concluded that the differences are less significant than the similarities. The sense of constricting, "profane" ordinariness that religion banishes for the believer can also be banished by the "shadows of imagination" that audiences enjoy through art. The stories I deem "magical fantasies"are not any better or worse than any other stories in terms of potential ability to dispel dull care. But because magical fantasies create the feeling of a world imbued with magic, the worlds in those fantasies come closest to duplicating the dynamic Eliade describes:

...the desire to live in a pure and holy cosmos, as it was in the beginning, when it came fresh from the Creator's hands.

But such a cosmos is not defined only by space, but also by time. So quite logically, Eliade follows up his chapter on "sacred space" with one entitled "Sacred Time and Myths." Profane time, Eliade says, is "ordinary temporal duration, in which acts without religious meaning have their setting." In contrast, sacred time "represents the re-actualization of a sacred event that took place in a mythical past."

Now, I have not implied that magical fantasy stories, which belong to literature rather than religion, share religion's purpose of recapitulating the sacred stories of any particular culture-- though some stories do draw upon such established stories. Kelly Cipera, the essayist cited in Part 2.5, mentions that the Arthurian myths, which are not technically religious narratives, have their appeal in what *I* consider depicting events outside the scope of "profane time."

We recognize all of the ingredients of high fantasy is stories such as Le Morte d’Arthur, or the story of Arthur, Camelot and the search for the Holy Grail, a legend of Welsh origin. It is a hero’s tale — Arthur, who has no control over whether or not he can pull a sword from a stone or not, does, and suddenly kingship is thrust upon him. Matters beyond him and magic turn his life, which would have been otherwise dull and ordinary, into the stuff of legend.

Thus I am saying that magical fantasy stories recapitulate the sense of a space and time far from our own profane world, where all wonders spring from the loins of magic. This world can be entirely divorced from our own, as with Middle-Earth, or it may also be a very abstracted version of some distant historical era, like the unspecified Arabian setting of ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES. The world may display an author's scrupulous intent to center all the fictional events within a specific historical period, as Marion Zimmer Bradley does in THE MISTS OF AVALON, or it may utilize a hodgepodge of historical eras, like the teleseries XENA WARRIOR PRINCESS. The fidelity to history is only important to a given author's creative priorities, and often the religious sources of magical fantasy stories may also be a hodgepodge of material from different historical periods, as is said to be the case with both the Arthurian corpus and the Thousand and One Nights. 

And that, for now, is my conclusion as to the special appeal of what I term "magical fantasy stories." I imagine that in future weeks I might be able to write as much as I have over these two days on all of the stories that don't convey this Eliadean sense of sacred exoticism.

ADDENDA: I will note that what Eliade calls a "pure and holy cosmos" often includes, in many religious cosmologies, all sorts of significant transgressive actions-- Odin slaying Ymir to make the world out of the giant's bones, or Adam and Eve being expelled from Paradise. So the nature of religious purity and holiness does require some meditation to account for the significance of transgressive actions in molding a cosmos.

MIND OUT OF TIME PT. 2.5

Before proceeding to the conclusions suggested at the end of Part 2, I'll make some generalizations as to some types of narratives that belong in my category of "magical fantasy stories," always with the caveat that I may make additions or alterations in future.

While as I've said "fantasy" by itself has often been a rubric that can cover everything from Tolkien to Roger Rabbit, the great reputation of Tolkien has resulted in the popularization of the term "high fantasy" for the more Tolkienian forms of fantasy. Wikipedia cites this definition: 

High fantasy, or epic fantasy, is a subgenre of fantasy^[1] defined by the epic nature of its setting or by the epic stature of its characters, themes, or plot.^[2] High fantasy is set in an alternative, fictional ("secondary") world, rather than the "real" or "primary" world.^[2] This secondary world is usually internally consistent, but its rules differ from those of the primary world. By contrast, low fantasy is characterized by being set on Earth, the primary or real world, or a rational and familiar fictional world with the inclusion of magical elements.^[3][4][5][6]

The careless writing of this essay implies agreement between all the sources cited, but this is not the case. The first source, a 2011 article on the site Fandomania, not only does not use the high/low distinction-- attributed, with whatever accuracy, to a Brian Stableford book-- but cites two forms of high fantasy that the maybe-Stableford definition would term "low fantasies."

The settings for these quests are generally in one of three varieties: a world separate unto our world, one where our world for all intents and purposes doesn’t even exist; a secondary world that is reached from our world through a portal; or, lastly, a secondary world within our own world. Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings and Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series are examples of the first variety. They both exist in a completely developed secondary world that is not Earth — Earth doesn’t even exist in their minds. The Chronicles of Narnia is a classic example of a portal into another world variety and the Harry Potter series is a contemporary example of the “world within a world” type of high fantasy.

I'm glad, though, that the uncredited Wiki-writer linked to the Fandomania essay, because Cipera's broader definition is better than the very artificial high/low distinction. Cipera clearly feels that all three forms of fantasy can be associated because they are all drawing on the same wellsprings of myth and folktale to tell similar stories of high romance and adventure. 

So, all three of Cipera's categories would make it into my category of "magical fantasy stories." However, as Part 2 specified, my wider category also includes a folktale like ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES. This story includes an element of magic and does not use the competing rationales of either "science" or "just because" to justify the story's wonders. But it also qualifies as a "magical fantasy story" because it takes place in a pre-industrial society that considers magic more important than any other rationale.

In a separate essay I plan to address various examples of stories-- whether from literature or folktales-- that don't fall into my category because they meet only one of the two criteria cited, or explain their wonders with two or even three co-existing rationales. I've already cited one such exception in POPEYE MEETS ALI BABA, which is the latter type of "hybrid story," mixing "magic" with "just because." But for now it's more important to move on to the matter of why the presence of the magic-accepting society is as important to the category as the magic itself-- as I shall convey in Part 3.

MIND OUT OF TIME PT. 2

Here's the statement I made at the end of Part 1:

...despite the strong association of the colloquial use of the term "fantasy" and the "magic rationale," I think there's a more fundamental appeal to "magical fantasy" than the use of said rationale...

One reason I eliminated "the magic rationale" as the main attraction is that some extremely popular "magical fantasies" make only very minor usages of magic.

Case in point: the ARABIAN NIGHTS folktale of "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves." In the standardized version of the story-- which is the one most often adapted for modern narratives-- poor woodcutter Ali Baba witnesses a gang of thieves using a magical cave to conceal their ill-gotten treasures. The cave-door, which opens or closes in obedience to certain magic words, is the only magical item in the story. Everything else in the narrative, however improbable or melodramatic, would be deemed isophenomenal, governed by naturalistic laws. We don't know if the "open sesame" cave is the result of active or passive magic-- though I tend to favor the former, that some individual placed a spell on the cave-mouth to act as cave-mouths don't usually operate. But there's a sense of a regular magical procedure involved in the treasure-cave's makeup. The cave doesn't open "just because," say, it's funny for the purpose of a gag, a la my earlier example of ROGER RABBIT. That nonsense-rationale would imply the cave might open some times and not others.

The appeal of magical fantasies, whether they use a lot of magic or very little, inheres more in the fact that they reproduce a society that is fully or mostly "pre-industrial," in which it's possible for the characters to invest in magic because there is no competing rationale of "science." That does not mean that there is no science as such in the world, such as (say) the engineering principles needed for Ancient Egypt to build the pyramids. But in an archaic world, science simply is not as IMPORTANT as magic.

So, I'm admitting that "magical fantasies" have a vital appeal because they invest in the magic-rationale and not the other two rationales-- but there's also a greater, supervening appeal in that the contemporary reader/audience is transported back to a time when science had less influence than magic. And I'll look at some possible reasons for that appeal in Part 3.

Parenthetically, Ali Baba got the "just because" treatment in 1937's POPEYE MEETS ALI BABA, and in that cartoon short it's clear that gags like "Abu Hassan got 'em anymore" overshadow any investment in even the minor magic of the "open sesame" cave.

 

 

MIND OUT OF TIME PT. 1

I see from Google that others have used the reverse-pun in my title before this. Still, I suspect the connotations of my pun are a little different from anyone else's.

In UP WITH FANTASY, DOWN WITH HORROR, I suggested that one could regard "fantasy" and "horror"-- categories which usually appear in that famous marketing troika, "fantasy, horror and science fiction"-- as two "super-genres," at least in terms of how they organize what I've called sympathetic and antipathetic affects. Having said all that, I'm going in a different direction now, Now I'm asking the unmusical question, "is there something that sets the genre we usually call 'fantasy' from all other genres with metaphenomenal content?"

Before going further, I'd note another specification I made here regarding the three rationales all or most authors use to justify the metaphenomena in their stories:

(1) The rationale of science.

(2) The rationale of magic.

(3) The rationale of "just because."

These rationales become important partly to sorting out some of the problems with the standard colloquial usage of "fantasy." At least where prose fiction is concerned, the "magic rationale" is the one most often connoted with works called "fantasy," because so much of the genre's development in the U.S. was influenced by Tolkien. But colloquially "fantasy" can also take in "just because" works like WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT. And though "science fiction" as such is usually considered as something of an "opposite number" to fantasy, even within the "Big Tent" of SF one sees certain works labeled "science fantasy."

On a related note, I talked a little bit about the history of my personal response to the "magical fantasy" genre in this Rip Jagger's Dojo comment:

I did not get converted to Tolkien first, but to Lin Carter, at least as editor. I got a half dozen fantasy paperbacks at a college book sale, and they included at least one CONAN, a Ballantine called DISCOVERIES IN FANTASY, and the Lancer collection of JIREL OF JOIRY. My memory is that I saw new depths in those fantasies for adults that I hadn't seen in things directed more at kids, like Oz and Peter Pan. I continued to read voluminously in both fantasy and SF for the rest of my life, but something about seeing a new potential in a genre at just the right age makes me prefer the fantasy genre in an affective sense.

Now, I ask myself, to what extent was my liking for "magical fantasies" associated with the appearance of the magic-rationale?

I think that the concept of magic has definite appeal. Magic usually takes two forms in fiction: one active, one passive. The active form involves some entity-- typically a mortal sorcerer, a god, or a demon-- using magical procedures to influence some aspect of the universe. The passive form takes the form of depicting the existence of entities that are thought to be intrinsically magical, but are not brought into being by anything but the intrinsic rules of a fantasy-universe. One finds both forms in LORD OF THE RINGS, in that characters like Gandalf and Sauron utilize specific procedures to influence their world, while whole categories of entities, such as dwarfs or trolls, are passively magical in nature even though they utilize no magical procedures. 

However, despite the strong association of the colloquial use of the term "fantasy" and the "magic rationale," I think there's a more fundamental appeal to "magical fantasy" than the use of said rationale-- which I'll discuss in the next section.

THE READING RHEUM: "THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE" (1927)

THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE was another of the first HPL stories I ever read, and in many ways it's a better story of "cosmic horror" than any of the "Mythos" tales. There are no references to the many alien entities of the Mythos here, and Klinger has most likely included COLOUR because of its propinquity to Arkham, the same reason the editor included THE SILVER KEY.

The "colour" of the title is some force or property dwelling in a meteor that falls to Earth near a farm in a Massachusetts farming community west of Arkham. Researchers examine the meteor, and their investigations implicitly release the strange force, which then settles within a well on the property of farmer Nahum Gardner. The meteor itself dissolves, and it's only recently occurred to me that it may have been the "vehicle" in which the "colour" traveled.

Not that HPL endows the malignant force with any sense of intentionality. For pages and pages, HPL goes into extensive descriptions of how plants, animals and humans in the community are adversely affected by the influence of the force, either dying prematurely or being altered in some freakish manner. There is no clue as to whether the force that causes all this is in any way sentient, and calling it a "colour" seems to imply that it is just a presence from another realm of being, that may not particularly intend malice but simply poisons everything on Earth by reason of being so alien to mundane organic nature. Only toward the end is there some sense that the force may seek to return to the stars that spawned it, but even that sense is largely the impression of one of the witnesses. I'm tempted to opine that the doom the Colour brings to Earth-- which may spread to pretty much every living thing eventually-- may be in line with HPL's views of the entropy of all things, according to the science of his time.

I confess that though I think this is a great story, I didn't get into re-reading it this time, probably because its slow depiction of degeneration doesn't reward repeat visits. But I think I'll always remember my first reading of COLOUR, which was like seeing the entire universe transformed into a Gothic horrorshow.

THE LATEST KATHLEEN KENNEDY WARS

While arguing the matter of STAR WARS politicization online, I had the notion, "wouldn't it be more interesting to cite recorded statements by a prominent Disney exec, say Kathleen Kennedy, and let her damn herself by her own statements?"  I preface this line of thought by noting that I have no personal opinions on the line of Disney streaming TV projects. since I've barely watched any of them. I don't have streaming Disney now and when I briefly had access, I only watched a handful of Mandalorian episodes and barely remember what I watched. My negative opinion toward Disney SW is taken largely from the movies I've seen.

That's not the case with the podcaster I'm citing, one Mike Zeroh, who appears to be conversant with the streaming projects whether or not one accepts his opinions. This podcast appeared a month ago, made in response to a press release by Kennedy about the impending (June of this year) ACOLYTE project, and Zeroh reads verbatim selections from the Kennedy press release. This I find valuable because it indicates whether or not the virtue signaling I've argued has been sustained over some years, rather than being just a momentary whim. (The "whim defense" is how Kennedy somewhat defended wearing the infamous NIKE "Force is Female" T-shirt, BTW.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN5vRGEgZwM

Here are my takeaways from Zeroh's quotes.

(1) Kennedy claimed that only a "minority" of fans are opposed to the ACOLYTE project. In contrast, Zeroh claims that it has been the most heavily ratio'd SW project yet. One may argue that some fans may be producing more than one ratio-rating, though I don't think there's any way to prove that assertion.

(2) Kennedy denies at one point that she's promoting an "agenda," but celebrates that she's promoting not only DEI but the celebration of an all-female main cast with female show-runner Leslye Headland behind the camera. This would indicate, to me at least, that she was entirely serious about "the force is female" despite her denials.

(3) She says "George Lucas's treatments with his films" don't matter. She wants to "change the story" to reflect whatever Headland wants to champion. Wikipedia provides evidence of this, indicating that Headland wanted to attack the idea of the Jedi as fundamental good guys, which Headland claims (in separate statements, not in the video above) is right in line with Rian Johnson's positions in LAST JEDI.

The series questions the Jedi practice of training children,[ and also explores differing views on the Force and the amount of power and control that the Jedi have-- Wikipedia, THE ACOLYTE.

(4) She claimed that the sequel films had made money for the company. This avoids the question as to whether the streaming services have justified their expense, and it also does not show her taking responsibility for the box office bomb of SOLO, which barely made a million dollars past its estimated $300 million budget. Interestingly, Ron Howard blamed the failure on toxic fans, just as Headland claims such fans are responsibility for bad reactions to the ACOLYTE trailer.

In a larger sense, there have been times when Hollywood producers embraced this or that cause, and then backed off because the public did not prove receptive. But there's something weird about the Disney producers' utter, unshakable commitment to their ideological agenda. I assume that some of this attitude was brought into being by the political influence of asset manager Blackrock, but it may not be the only factor.

BATTLE OF THE GIRL BOSS FRANCHISES

 It's difficult to tell when "girl bosses" have negatively affected an ESTABLISHED franchise. Even if an audience does not like a given female character, they may still like the franchise enough to support it. But if the audience does NOT support a previously profitable franchise, it's also difficult to prove that the presence of a bad female character was the reason.

INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY was an unquestionable box office bomb. I liked it much better than the much more profitable entry in the series, CRYSTAL SKULL, so I have to ask, "why did audiences not want to see it?"

Long before the film hit theaters, there were podcasts bagging on Indiana's co-star Helena Shaw being a "girl boss." So many people may have stayed away from DIAL with the negative sense that Disney wanted to "replace" Indiana with a younger female hero. BUT-- the same negative opinions also swarmed around 2021's NO TIME TO DIE, in which it was rumored that Bond was going to be replaced by a female 007-- and TIME was not a flop. In both cases audiences had reason to believe that the respective films were going to be the last hurrahs for both the Craig Bond and the Ford Indiana, but they supported one and not the other.

I also personally think that Helena Shaw was a better character than her detractors claimed, even after they saw the movie. Certainly she's more three-dimensional than Nomi, the new 007. I think both female characters were being floated by their studios as POSSIBLE new feature-characters, but neither is so overbearing as to beat the original character into the ground, as the early podcasters feared. Those podcasters MIGHT have overreacted, though it's important to state that such neutralization DOES happen when an old franchise character's on the way out and a new one's on the way in.

So we can't in the end say that DIAL failed because of a girl boss. Her presence might not have HELPED, that's the most one can say. Given that some complaints were made that DIAL was depressing because Ford looked his age, I find an alternative theory more believable: TIME succeeded because it allowed Bond to go out looking good, DIAL flopped because it didn't allow Jones to look unfailingly great from start to finish.

HOWEVER, all of that applies to ESTABLISHED franchises, and I think Disney has flopped with many of its NEW girl boss franchises. Take THE MARVELS (please). There's no reason to see that film except to celebrate the girl boss rhetoric, but it was so bad, even the people who want more girl bosses didn't go see it, and it was a tremendous bomb. So IMO one can blame the "girl boss" theme for "going broke" only when there's no other contributing factor.

THE I CHING DYNASTY

This post at CRIVENS COMICS AND STUFF led me to ruminate a bit on the character of "the Incredible I Ching" as portrayed in his sole venue, as the teacher of "the Mod Wonder Woman" of the late sixties and early seventies. I won't discuss that phase of the Amazing Amazon's history overall, except with respect to what it means psychologically for DC's character of Wonder Woman/Diana Prince to have a father.

First off, it's necessary to state that the basic schtick behind the character's name-- where he would introduce himself by saying "I Ching"-- wasn't particularly racist or chauvinist. However, it was so lame that even the primary creators of this arc, Denny O'Neil and Mike Sekowsky, dropped it quickly.

Second, although Wonder Woman's creator William Marston was himself a father in real life, it was apparently important to him that his heroine should be fatherless; molded out of clay by her figurative mother, the Amazon Hippolyta, and then brought to life by a Greek goddess. Wonder Woman, raised in an all-female society, never evinced any sign under Marston that she felt the lack of a paternal figure in her life. After Marston's passing, Robert Kanigher was for the most part the person most in control of the WONDER WOMAN franchise for the next twenty years, and for all the divergences Kanigher took from Marston's template, I'd say that on balance his heroine too was just fine without ever having had paternity in her life.

The character's first appearance, like his last, is defined by "comic book coincidence." At the start of the "Mod" arc, the superheroine Wonder Woman has to give up her powers for contrived reasons. Almost immediately, an old blind Chinese man with peerless martial arts skills accosts Diana Prince and talks her into training with him, so that she can fight evil with her purely mortal abilities.

Though I don't believe the arc ever uses the term "sensei," the initial relationship between Diana and I Ching is purely that of student and sensei. The two of them also become a crimefighting team, particularly against a mastermind named Doctor Cyber, but it was initially a very formal relationship, not showing the parental warmth seen, say, in the Golden Age Batman/Robin interactions.

Then, toward the end of his first run on the Mod Arc, Denny O'Neil scripted a big, teary emotional outburst for Diana in WW #182. Diana has been romanced by a handsome swain, only to find out that he's an agent of Cyber. She loses control and slams him around with forceful karate punches. When Ching stops her, she rejects his fortune-cookie homilies, telling him to shut up as she runs away.

Now, I should point out that although this was meant to be a more "realistic" reaction than what passed for drama in any of the earlier Kanigher WONDER WOMAN stories, Mike Sekowsky, taking over both writing and artistic duties in the next issue, never comes back to this moment of drama, as contemporary Marvel writers like Roy Thomas or Archie Goodwin might have. This would prove to be a repeating pattern in Mod Wonder Woman.

Issues 183 and 184 take the now mortal Diana back into Amazon territory, and Ching goes along for the ride. The Amazons are now being menaced by Ares, God of War, whom Sekowsky capriciously imagines to be Hippolyta's father and thus Diana's figurative grandfather. While the Amazons are besieged, Diana voyages to a dimension where many of the Earth's heroes dwell apart from humankind, all in a quasi-Arthurian setting, despite the presence of non-Arthurian types like Siegfried, Roland, and (possibly as a sop to feminism) Brunhild, leader of the Valkyries. The heroes make a show of indifference but end up helping to defeat Ares, after which Diana and Ching go back to Earth.

The next emotional moment, from #186, shows a bit more of Sekowsky's humor about the interactions of Diana and Ching. Diana spends most of the story trying to rein in the rampage of a psychologically unstable witch named Morgana-- a "yo yo," as Ching calls her. Sekowsky's big joke is that Diana keeps trying to fight the witch with her mortal skills, and won't listen when Ching tries to tell her he just happens to know magic and can overpower the witch in that manner. And on top of that, Diana and Morgana go toe-to-toe on a purely physical plane, and Diana loses, much to her chagrin.

Issue #187 and 188 introduce a new parental wrinkle. Through a set of seeming coincidences, Ching is reunited with Lu Shan, his long lost daughter. But "seeming" is the operative word, for Lu Shan is an agent of Cyber, and she shoots Ching in the belief that he's responsible for killing her mother.

Now, one would think that even a rather erratic writer like Sekowsky would want to follow through on this big revelation, even if it was just to invalidate Lu Shan's claim as false. But nope, we don't get it from Sekowsky, and we don't get it from O'Neil in his last few scripts for the Mod Arc. But for some reason, even before the decision had been made to end the Mod Phase, in issue #188 Sekowsky delivered a two-page in-joke in which Diana clobbers two petty thieves in a department store. The in-joke is that one of the thugs is named "Creepy Caniguh," which presumably expresses Sekowsky's opinion of the former WONDER WOMAN scribe.

In the ensuing issues Ching presumably has lots of opportunities to hold forth on what caused his natural daughter's grudge, but if he expounds anything to Diana, there's no evidence on any of the pages. Then Lu Shan, last seen escaping Cyber's HQ after shooting her dad in #187, makes her bid to become a super-villain. In this O'Neil script, she kidnaps Jonny Double, potential boyfriend material for Diana, as part of a scheme to get hold of a magical jewel to power a big dimension-crossing machine for purposes of pillage. 

Diana and Ching learn about these plans, promoting what I believe is the first time Ching expresses parental affection for Diana. But of explanations about the death of Ching's wife-- nada.

The next issue, #203, is essentially the last adventure for Mod Wonder Woman. scripted by Samuel Delany as one part of a projected new story-line that never came to pass-- one in which Ching is not even mentioned. But DC Editorial had already decided to bring back the Amazon Princess, and Robert Kanigher, as if summoned from the vasty deep by Sekowsky's jibe, was tapped to return Diana to her roots.

I'm not sure I could survive revisiting the extreme stupidity of Kanigher's hackwork in this period, and in any case the only relevant part of #204 consists of seven pages in which Kanigher kills off Ching and has Diana forget her whole "mod phase" before transitioning back to her Amazon status, and to whatever plotlines mattered to Kanigher.

Now, one might view this summary execution as "tit for tat." When O'Neil and Sekowsky took over the title, they certainly didn't make a smooth transition from whatever Kanigher's last scripts had been. In fact, they showed extreme disinterest in the old WONDER WOMAN mythos by killing off Steve Trevor, just so he wouldn't get in the way of whatever romances they wanted to give Diana. Compared to Trevor's unceremonious demise, Ching's is not that bad, if one grants that, in that era, no one but hardcore fans expected seamless continuity from comic books. 

Also, it's not impossible that someone above Kanigher-- hypothetically, Dick Giordano-- might have advised Kanigher to give Ching a decent send-off, not unlike a much later incident in which Giordano *allegedly * warned Keith Giffen not to kill off Aquaman's wife. In the absence of any testimony about outside influences, though, I have to say that I like the line Kanigher writes for Diana, calling Ching the father she never had. I'm sure Kanigher cared absolutely nothing about anything that had happened during Mod Wonder Woman, just as it would be hard to argue that the author even cared about his own WW stories, beyond putting money in his wallet. But a good line is a good line, whether its author cared about the story or not.

Much later, Brian Azzarello undid the whole "virgin birth" of Princess Diana by claiming that she was the daughter of Zeus. I've read none of these. But even with all the narrative problems of the Mod phase, I Ching still holds the honor of "first father."

SIDE-NOTE: Because #204 introduces Diana's Black Amazon sister Nubia, I did force myself to revisit Kanigher's "Origin of Nubia" story in #206. It's like a lot of Kanigher's WW stories from the pre-Mod era, where events often unfold with only the thinnest justifications. Here, instead of Hippolyta praying to have a child who's like her, Aphrodite rather randomly instructs the Amazon queen to make two clay kids, one light skinned and one dark skinned-- apparently for no reason but so that Evil Ares will have the chance to steal the dark one and try to mold her into his perfect warrior. This scenario did have some mythopoeic potential, but Kanigher pretty much blows it from start to finish. But again, I have to admit that Kanigher's basic concept had some validity, since a lot of later creators took pleasure in doing their versions of "Black Wonder Woman."

CURIOSITIES #33: "THAT SURE WAS A BONER I PULLED WITH LANA" (SUPERBOY #13, 1950)

 Much funnier, IMO, than the better known "Joker's boners" meme.

I found this item reviewing the earliest appearances of Lana Lang in the Golden Age SUPERBOY. In her first outing, she's all but a xerox dupe of Lois Lane, and is overtly compared to the lady reporter. In this, her third appearance in the title, she monologues what I assume was the established credo of all the nosy women in the life of the Kryptonian hero: they think that if they can learn his secret ID, they can insinuate themselves into his private life and romance him. However, later in the same story she also makes clear that she wants to boast about her cleverness to all of her friends. Just like a woman!

Of course Superboy punishes the young girl for her pride and snoopiness. But in one sense Clark's more backward than Lana, for the super-Boy Scout doesn't seem the least complimented that this hot young redhead wants to romance him. All he can think about is how she may endanger his status as a superhero-- and I'm not sure if his indifference to romance makes him more mature or more childish. (I know which one DC writers meant to emphasize, but it would be an interesting bit of trivia to figure out the first time Superboy ever, like, noticed the unique appeal of pretty girls.)

ADDENDUM: Though in 1950 Whitney Ellsworth edited both SUPERBOY and the anthology ADVENTURE COMICS, where the Boy of Steel was the lead feature, he didn't bring Lana into the AC continuity until issue #161, dated February 1951. This quasi-introduction went further on portraying Lana as a demi-Lois, to the extent that both Lana and Clark get temporary summer jobs at a Smallville newspaper. Though this Lana still suspects Clark of being Superboy, she's less Superboy-crazy than scoop-crazy. I imagine the editors dropped the idea of "Lana Girl Reporter" pretty quickly.

And surprise, surprise-- I wasn't really expecting to find stirrings of romance between Clark and Lana (albeit with miscolored blonde hair) as early as November 1951. But the ADVENTURE COMICS for that month allows readers the first peek at Clark Kent's fancies turning lightly to-- well, maybe just puppy love.

THE READING RHEUM: "THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD" (1927/1941)

 

For convenience's sake I read the above Belmont paperback edition and then read through Klinger's annotations on the book. I noted that most of said notes talked about all of the antiquarian accuracy that HPL poured into this short novel-- which meant very little to me, given that I think all that detail hurt the story.

For me as a reader, WARD inverts all the strengths of CTHULHU's gradual detective-style revelation of a great mystery. WARD uses much the same structure and approach, but the story broadcasts the Big Reveal on the first page, talking about a magic ritual that can bring back "any dead Ancestour." The titular Ward, born in 1902, becomes enthralled with the legend of his sorcery-using, 18th-century ancestor Joseph Curwen, and accidentally revives Curwen's spirit, which then usurps Ward's body. Ward's doctor intrepidly discovers the truth and destroys the body Curwen inhabits.

HPL wasn't entirely without ability to create at least broad characterization, but he utterly fails to make Ward (a probable self-insert) even as interesting as Henry Wilcox from CTHULHU. Doctor Willett is no better, and Ward's unnamed parents are only brought in to serve very limited plot functions. For me WARD has only two distinctions, aside from inspiring loose film adaptations like 1963's HAUNTED PALACE:

(1) WARD is the first text to mention the Old One Yog-Sothoth, though only as a name within a mystic chant.

(2) There's a brief mention of a "Sign of Koth," which receives a little more expansion in DREAM QUEST. Robert E Howard used Koth as a place-name in the Conanverse, and in the 1930s tales of the comic-book hero "Doctor Occult," writer Jerry Siegel used the name for the titular hero's villain.

I guess I should also add that HPL may have been having some fun by portraying his self-insert as unwise for having invested so much time and energy into his antiquarian pursuits, since they bring about his doom. At the same the story may have been primarily a method by which HPL could share his passion for New England history with readers, though WARD wasn't published until after HPL's passing.

 

THE READING RHEUM: "THE SILVER KEY" (1926/1929)

In my review of CALL OF CTHULHU, I included no biographical data on what was going on with HPL in the year he wrote this major "Mythos story." But that story, this story, and THE DREAM QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH were all either begun or completed in 1926, the year that HPL ended his attempts to find gainful employment in other cities and returned to his beloved home town of Providence. This may not have been good for his personal life, as the move eventually led to his divorce from his wife. But the move was very good for horror fiction, because HPL wrote the majority of his major works while remaining in his cherished boyhood home.

KEY, in contrast to THE UNNAMEABLE, is an unquestionable follow-up to 1920's STATEMENT OF RANDOLPH CARTER, not only because the character's full name is used, but because the unnamed narrator of the story explicitly mentions the events of STATEMENT. KEY covers some of the same philosophical ground as UNNAMEABLE, and makes Carter's dilemma far more relatable. The narrator tells how Carter once possessed a Dunsanian ability to imagine far-flung realms of fantasy, but he loses this ability as he allows his mind to be polluted by the doctrines of realism. It's hard to say what sort of philosophy Carter ends up with, according to the narrator, but it leads him to seek unknown horrors in STATEMENT.

However, thanks to surviving his horror-hunting, Carter is able to acquire a special silver key "handed down from his ancestors," at least one of whom sounds like a magician. With the key in his possession, Carter goes driving near "the lonely rustic homestead of his people," which, incidentally, lies near the fictional Arkham. Carter never precisely opens a door with the key, but just having it on his person allows him to transition back to the time of his childhood, where he essentially merges with his younger self. The narrator concludes by saying that he will try to block the probate of Carter's possessions, since he's not really dead. And possibly Carter returns to mundane life so that he can experience the more involved visions of DREAM QUEST-- though this work too has a sort of "there's no place like home" message.

As much as I like the first half of KEY, I found that the second half did not resolve any of the philosophical questions raised, and I'm not entirely sure why Leslie Klinger included it in his collection, except for the Arkham association. Klinger does not include the sequel HPL co-wrote with E Hoffman Price, which I may examine in a future post.

THE READING RHEUM: "THE CALL OF CTHULHU" (1926/1928)

 

In my review of the short HPL story "Beyond the Wall of Sleep," I wrote:

Many commentators have talked about HPL's abhorrence for non-white races, and sometimes even for white ethnicities that the author considered decadent. I don't deny that he sported these racist views to make himself feel superior. Yet it's interesting that the first example of a wretched ethnicity in HPL's fiction-cosmos is lowborn "white trash," and the author treats Slater just as condescendingly as he would ever treat any other ethnic figure... In my opinion HPL was always separated from most of humanity thanks to his superb intellectual attainments, meaning that he related no better to most whites than he did to non-whites. Yet because HPL knew that he was of the same common clay as the most ignoble human being, and thus his fiction is filled with examples of his fear of degenerating into something inferior. (In Jungian terms Slater would be "the shadow" who incarnated that dominating fear of bodily devolution.)

I confess that I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of HPL, even regarding the specific topic of his theories on race. CALL OF CTHULHU, though, far more than the above short story, brings to mind the old quarrel between two theories about the concept of racial evolution (putting aside the question as to how applicable the term "race" is to the human species):

Polygenism is a theory of human origins which posits the view that the human races are of different origins (polygenesis). This view is opposite to the idea of monogenism, which posits a single origin of humanity.

Was HPL a foursquare advocate of one position or the other? Since polygenism was on its last legs in the early 20th century, it seems unlikely that he could have placed total faith in that theory, even if (as one online authority argued) he'd been strongly influenced by the work of Ernst Haeckel. But what I find fascinating about CTHULHU is that it promotes a sort of "psychic monogenism."

CTHULHU proceeds like a detective story, as viewpoint character Thurston labors to collate the voluminous notes left behind by his late uncle Professor Angell, who perished under dubious circumstances. What Thurston eventually learns is that there exists a widespread cult devoted to a collection of archaic cosmic entities, one of whom, Cthulhu, is said to lie buried far beneath the ocean waves. Angell's notes reveal the widespread activities of cultists, many of whom are described as "mongrel" or "degenerate." Yet at the same time Thurston remarks that the mythos worshiped by the cultists "disclosed an astonishing degree of cosmic imagination among such half-castes and pariahs as might be least expected to possess it."

Structurally, this justification is identical to the one HPL uses in "Wall:" that, because cosmic visions appear in the dreams of an uneducated specimen of "white trash," said visions must have some reality outside the brain of the individual experiencing the visions. In the case of the CTHULHU narrative, the visions commonly shared by Eskimo "diabolists" and Louisiana voodoo-worshipers stem from "thought transference," which is the method by which Cthulhu and his fellow Old Ones communicate with one another and with their human servants. But CTHULHU goes a good deal farther, for Angell also discovers a particular sculptor affected by Cthulhu's call-- an educated white fellow, one presumes, since HPL does not say otherwise. This artist, ignorant of the cult or its object of worship, was spontaneously inspired to carve the same image of Cthulhu venerated by the "half-castes and pariahs." Further, during the same period that this one sculptor created his Cthulhu-image, Angell's surveys prove that numerous "artists and poets," as well as individuals who may just be psychically sensitive, experienced their own visions, which either result in strange artworks on in suicide. 

So what do the two groups have in common? All HPL says is that other (presumably white) New Englanders surveyed by Angell-- "average people in society and business"-- had no strong responses during the period when the hypothetical "call of Cthulhu" goes forth. HPL's chauvinism meant that he probably would have not credited "degenerate" peoples as possessing similar social hierarchies between workaday types and visionaries. So my best guess is that he thought that the "mongrels" and the Caucasian visionaries all shared a common psychic receptivity, which I choose to term "psychic monogeny," since no other species save humans are affected by Cthulhu's Call. I qualify this view by stating that at no time in CTHULHU does HPL promote a widespread theory of human psychic abilities, such as we get from a later "demi-follower" of the author, like Colin Wilson.

Though HPL sneered at the "puerile symbolism" of Sigmund Freud in "Wall," the aim of the cultists seems roughly parallel to Freud's idea of the unrestricted "Id." One cultist in Angell's records claims that when the Old Ones rule Earth again, they will "teach [their followers] to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the Earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom." The corresponding theory would be that Caucasians functioned as the "Ego," the "reality principle" that keeps the Id's impulses in check. But since there are no records of what Freud texts HPL read, this is just an interesting side-note.

CTHULHU shows HPL expending far more effort in chronicling all the details of the Call's influence upon humanity before he gets to the Big Apocalyptic Moment. As in the short story DAGON, the monster and his forbidding island only remain on the surface long enough to suggest the terrors that will come when Cthulhu and his kindred enjoy full reign; then they disappear, leaving narrator Thurston to realize that "we live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity." Why does Cthulhu Island re-appear so briefly, which would imply that the stellar configurations are not quite right for the Old Ones' rebirth? And if it's not time, why does Cthulhu send forth his call? HPL does not say, so one can only guess.

It's implicit that in most if not all stories, HPL wanted to believe his own kindred were at the top of the cultural and racial matrix-- also eclipsing, I should emphasize, all those Caucasians with whom the author didn't identify. Yet had HPL been a true follower of racial polygeny-- a specter that sometimes appears in certain works of his contemporary R.E. Howard-- then it would be easy to dissociate the activities of "people of color" as being foreign to the nature of "the white race." The horror is made far greater by the intimation that all the grotesque people who embrace chaos share the same base nature as the most sophisticated spawn of humankind.

CRISES AND CONTINGENCIES

 Though I don't follow any regular serials from "the Big Two," the TPB market makes it quite evident that both companies remain as heavily invested in "multi-feature crossovers" in 2024 as they were in 1986, when such rival serials as SECRET WARS and CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS duked it out for sales supremacy. In fact, because "multi-feature crossovers" is an unwieldy mouthful, I'm considering a new term,"clusterfubars." The whole purpose of most crisis-events since 1986 has been to fuck up the status quo beyond all recognition, even if the original status quo later reasserts itself or is replaced by some other manageable state of affairs.

I have not written a great deal about clusterfubars here, though the most involved essay is probably 2008's EARTH SHATTERING CHANGES AT THE LAST MINUTE. I argued that the commercial comics-medium's penchant for "earth shattering changes" was nothing new. In fact, though I didn't explore the topic in a more systematic manner, I quoted anthropologist Lee Drummond on the subject of crises in fiction, be they in myth or in popular fiction:

...the figures of myth do not live solely by virtue of the operation of a collection of sentences woven into a 'plot'... The critical thing about the doings of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Darth Vader, R2D2, C3PO, and the rest is the elemental level of crisis-- identity crisis-- that lies right at or just beneath the surface of their actions: Will the Force or its Dark Side triumph? Will R2D2 survive? Will Luke discover the awful truth of his paternity?

Before examining the applicability of "crises" to myth and fiction generally, though, I would be remiss not to define what would be the opposite of "crisis narratives" (especially after one of my recent essays  faulted Joseph Campbell for not providing counter-examples to a proposed term).

I duly looked up antonyms for the word "crisis," and was surprised to find "contingency" listed as a SYNONYM for the word. Every connotation in which I've heard the two words suggests the opposite. A crisis is some event that few if any participants can foresee or avoid. A contingency is some event with which forethought can cope, at least up to a point. The application of each term may also depend on a given subject's span of knowledge. For the majority of persons around the globe, the appearance of the Covid virus was a crisis. For Anthony Fauci, who coordinated the use of gain-of-function research with the Chinese lab in Wuhan, the virus' appearance would have been a contingency, something he could anticipate happening if things went south.

Drummond is broadly correct that a lot of fiction of all genres and mediums depends on "crisis narratives." The theatergoer who views OEDIPUS REX learns nothing about the day-to-day life of King Oedipus or his family. Everything in that play and its sequels is defined by an unforeseeable crisis. And comedies are no different from tragedies in a structural sense. The AMPHITRYON of Plautus centers upon the merry mix-up that ensues when the title character returns from the wars, and must be prevented from finding out that the supreme god Jupiter is schtupping Amphitryon's wife, at least until Jupiter successfully impregnates the woman with Hercules.

But what would be a "contingency narrative," which is to say, a narrative whose conflict does not hinge upon some larger-than-life crisis? There are some archaic examples of such narratives in theater and in folklore, but it's correct to stress that contingency narratives really took off with the rise of naturalistic literature, particularly in 18th century Europe. I deem Daniel Defoe's two best-known works, ROBINSON CRUSOE and MOLL FLANDERS, to be novels built around a constant flow of contingencies relating to what the main characters must do to survive and/or prosper.

And since I'm primarily concerned with the medium of comic books, where do contingency narratives appear in the history of comics? Even most of the celebrated comics-stories, as agreed-upon by elitist critics, depend largely on types of crisis, even when they may be predicated on such low-level "crises" as mistaken identity (which is a not infrequent "gotcha" in a lot of one-shot horror stories). Teen comedies like ARCHIE are probably the least "crisis-like," being usually predicated on simple formula situations that the thoughtless protagonist fails to foresee (Archie makes a date with two girls on the same night; they find out and beat him up or the like.) Most such stories are one-shots, too. Some continuing comic strips, such as GASOLINE ALLEY, presented an ensemble of characters having low-wattage adventures without any dire consequences. The first superhero to regularly exploit both narrative forms was the Lee-Ditko SPIDER-MAN, who would support himself and his ailing aunt with money (contingency) made from photographing his own heroic actions (crisis), quelling the rampages of Doctor Octopus or The Lizard.

At some point in the eighties, many superhero fans-- those that dominantly embraced the superhero genre above all other genres-- clamored for low-wattage incidents in the lives of the characters they liked. These pleas brought forth various "day in the life" contingency narratives. Arguably, in subsequent decades, this fannish preference increased the frequency of other stories in which slow-paced drama took the place of fast-paced adventure. However, the same decade, as noted above, also cemented the new business model of the clusterfubar. The Big Two sought to monetize crises by having them affect numerous features at the same time, on the theory that interested readers would purchase titles they didn't normally buy in order to keep apprised of all segments of the extended crisis narrative. I have no idea as to how well this practice works as an overall sales strategy, but it's been in place for about forty years, so someone must be making money from it.

Single features like the venerable SPIDER-MAN appear to be far more guided by crisis narratives overall, rather than by a balance of both narratives. Features with large character-ensembles-- X-MEN, TEEN TITANS-- are even more awash in constant fervid crisis narratives, so that what used to be called "soap opera" is more like "disaster opera." 

More observations on this theme to come later, possibly.