FANTASIES OF INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE

In my review of Wally Wood's THE KING OF THE WORLD, I had to give some thought as to what Fryean mythos it fit. I alluded to the differences between Wood's work and the work of Tolkien, whose Middle-Earth tales had some degree of influence upon KING.

Tolkien's good characters are largely good all-through, except when unduly influenced by the corruption of the One Ring. But not only is Odkin a natural born deceiver himself, he clearly lives in a world where deceit lurks around every corner. This aligns KING OF THE WORLD with Frye's concept of the "irony-mythos," which I'll discuss in a separate essay.

When Northrop Frye used the term "irony" as a category for a type of storytelling, he was of course aware that the word originally connoted a sort of intentional deceit, as per Merriam-Webster; "the use of words that mean the opposite of what you really think especially in order to be funny."

But the nature of irony is elusive, and is often confused with comedy. I've discussed the difference in various essays and won't repeat it here. But it's far more rare to see the "mortificative" effects of the irony-mythos strongly associated with the "invigorating" effects of the adventure-mythos. The majority of ironic jests at the expense of heroes and heroic fantasy are usually too emotionally distanced to allow for invigoration, a pattern seen in such films as 1967's FEARLESS FRANK and 2013's THE LONE RANGER. In my essay SOMETIMES THEY WIN, SOMETIMES THEY LOSE I noted the opposed dynamic of the two mythoi:

...the function of *adventure* is "to impart to the audience the "invigorating" thrill of victory, with little if any "agony of defeat," while in contrast "the heroes of ironic narratives usually don't win, but when they do, it's usually a victory in which the audience can place no conviction."

And yet, though I hold to the belief that every coherent story is dominated by one myth-radical, it's not impossible to juggle the fundamental appeals of two or more mythoi so that they *seem* almost inextricable-- one prominent example being the 1966-68 BATMAN teleseries. In A WHIFF OF BAT-IRONY  I wrote:

It's often been observed that the teleseries-producers pursued a two-tier approach with BATMAN.  They knew that children and some adolescents would take the adventure-elements seriously, while the adults would be entertained by the ironic distancing conveyed by the dialogue and some of the more overtly absurd situations (e.g., Batgirl almost fails to rescue Batman and Robin from a death-trap because she's careful to obey local traffic laws).  Yet, because of the two-tiered approach, Dozier and Co. couldn't avoid validating-- rather than subverting-- the most representative element of the adventure-genre: the *agon*, the fight-scene in which good wins out over evil.

My initial difficulties in determining the myth-radical of KING OF THE WORLD may have stemmed from the fact that Wood also pursued something of a two-tier approach. As I stated in the review, Wood's original idea for his fantasy was formed in his childhood, and so the adult Wood surely wanted to call to mind his youthful, "innocent" love of fantasy-tropes in the course of KING. Thus KING shows invigorative elements as the young, somewhat cynical hero encounters simple wonders like an eye in the door of Alcazar's sanctum--

Or when Odkin finds himself caught up in the fury of large-scale battles, as if he had wandered into the world of Hal Foster's PRINCE VALIANT (reputedly one of Wood's early loves).

But note that even on the page depicting pitched battle, there's an element of deceitfulness that would have been foreign to Foster's classical-art approach. Odkin's people "the Immi" ally themselves to human soldiers against the Un-Men, and they battle with a "two-tiered approach," the Immi striking low while the soldiers strike high. The page even ends with the main character appearing to flee the battle. As it turns out, Odkin has fled to enlist the help of the giants called "the Earthmen," which became the cover-image of the original release.

But despite all these moments of exciting adventure, the reader loses some conviction in the significance of the victory for assorted reasons-- the main one being the final page, wherein Odkin realizes that the sword's influence is making him uncharacteristically heroic. He tries, and fails, to fling the sword away, and so the installment ends with the picture of him being obliged to pursue the role of stalwart hero.

There's nothing comparable to this will-lessness in William Dozier's BATMAN. Dozier's hero may be corny and square as hell, but no one forces him to dress up in a bat-suit. Dozier mocked a lot of the heroic fantasies associated with superheroes, but as I said above, the *agon,* the fight-scene, still carries its invigorating charge, even with the POWs and BAMs inserted-- largely because Dozier guessed that the younger part of his audience would not accept Batman being turned into a comic stumblebum.

In contrast, Wood's long association with the fantasy-genre gave him an almost peerless ability to conjure forth spectacles of exciting, enthralling strangeness. However, perhaps because the domain of comic books was a cutthroat business, or perhaps because he gained signal fame through his association with EC Comics, Wood chose to undercut the fantasies of heroism with Odkin-- whose wits and survival skills become the tools of a manipulative, if benign, controller.

What's interesting is that while Dozier's creative choices may have been informed by his reading of television audiences, Wood was seeking to create an audience for his own work. He could have done a "fantasy of innocence" that was barely influenced by the "fantasies of experience:" a work fully in the tradition of Tolkien, if not Foster. Yet KING OF THE WORLD, when read attentively, is a deeply ironic narrative that would seem to reflect Wood's own acerbic personality, at least far more than a straight Tolkien knock-off would have.

A QUICK AND DIRTY HISTORY OF TWO CAPED AND LIVELY GUYS

While preparing a long review of BATMAN VS, SUPERMAN for the film-blog, I found myself writing this "quick and dirty history" of how Batman and Superman were treated in some of the more significant live-action film and TV adaptations. When the review is completed, I'll link it to this essay.

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One of the things that proves interesting about the early live-action history of Superman and Batman-- that is, everything from the 1940s to the 1960s-- is the apparent symmetry.

Superman received exactly two multi-chapter serials, 1948's SUPERMAN and 1950's ATOM MAN VS. SUPERMAN. Batman also got two, BATMAN (1943) and BATMAN AND ROBIN (1949). Superman's first live-action teleseries (the radio serials being outside my consideration) appeared from 1952 to 1958. Batman's first live-action teleseries followed eight years later, from 1966 to 1968.

Yet in terms of reception, not all of them were symmetrical in terms of reception. All four serials and the 1950s Superman serials were entirely constructed as children's entertainment, in keeping with the established cultural belief that superheroes were only for kids. The 1966 Bat-series, however, was something of a game-changer, in that producer William Dozier chose a two-tiered approach (quote from this blog-source);

“After the meeting,” Dozier recalls, “I scurried around and bought maybe seven or eight different vintage copies of the Batman comic books, and felt like a fool doing it. I read them -- if that is the word -- and asked myself ‘What do I do with this?’ I thought they were crazy. I really thought they were crazy if they were going to try to put this on television. Then I had the simple idea of overdoing it, of making it so square and so serious that adults would find it amusing. I knew kids would go for the derring-do, the adventure, but the trick would be to find adults who would either watch it with their kids -- or to hell with the kids, and watch it anyway.”

Clearly Dozier approached the genre of the superhero in the mood of "jesting Pilate." He could hardly have guessed, though, that he would prove influential in making mainstream converts to the "superhero religion." Comics-fans of the 1960s were at best ambivalent about the teleseries, for reasons I've explored here,  Yet for years after the series' cancellation, reruns of BATMAN had a major effect upon mainstream audiences. To be sure, many adults didn't watch BATMAN in reruns, any more than they had during its original broadcasts. But others did watch the reruns, and remembered the show fondly, both for its comedy and for its "derring-do." It's my contention that in this way the Bat-series broke down the previously impenetrable cultural barrier between "adult stuff" and "kid stuff."

In the heyday of film-serials, Alex Raymond's comic-strip hero Flash Gordon outdid both Batman and Superman, garnering a hefty three serial outings as opposed to the two allotted to the caped crimefighters. That history was roughly repeated in 1977, when a distant relation of Gordon arguably became the first superheroic film-fantasy to captive adult audiences by playing the fantasy straight; the very antithesis of the Dozier strategy. The unexpected mega-success of STAR WARS did not engender Richard Donner's ambitious adaption of SUPERMAN in 1978, for according to Larry Tye that project had its genesis back in the spring of 1974. Yet the George Lucas film may have "primed the pump" for the Superman project, with "trusting in the force" paving the way for "believing that a man could fly." Yet despite the public's unprecedented acceptance of the Superman saga, of seeing a kiddie-comics hero given the "Hollywood Epic" treatment usually reserved for Bible stories and apocalyptic SF-tales, the Superman series was not a tide that raised all boats. Productions for Popeye, the Lone Ranger, and even a refurbished Flash Gordon remained no more than curiosities to the mainstream audience.

Tim Burton's 1989 BATMAN was in its way as much a game-changer as Dozier's 1966 teleseries. Some trenchant wit, whose name I've forgotten, pointed out that Burton like Lucas played straight the very elements that Dozier played with touches of ironic distancing-- though of course Burton injected more "adult" psychodrama than had been evident in any previous superhero adaptation (Burton memorably called his story-line a "duel of the freaks.") Comics-fans of the 1960s disparaged the BATMAN teleseries for not taking the character "seriously," but I don't think that any of them really wanted some dead-serious disquisition on superhero mythology. What they wanted, in my opinion, were adaptations that respected the source material. Despite any and all failings of Richard Donner's 1978 film and Burton's 1989 movie, and the great gulf between the themes of the two stories, both showed some degree of respect for some aspects of the original material, thus pleasing some if not all hardcore superhero-fans as well as mainstream audiences. From the success of Burton's BATMAN flowed a sometimes inconstant stream of generally big-budget adaptations in the 1990s, a stream that became more of an inundation in the 2000s with the successes of franchises for X-MEN. SPIDER-MAN and IRON MAN.

The fate of Superman and Batman in the 2000s was more of a mixed bag. Bryan Singer's 2006 SUPERMAN RETURNS failed to launch the character as a viable continuing franchise, for reasons I won't seek to explore here. In contrast, Christopher Nolan delivered literally what some comics-fans claimed to have wanted: a "dead-serious disquisition on superhero mythology," though Nolan's story-lines tended to reject superhero mythology in favor of the content of high-octane crime-thrillers. It's axiomatic to state, then, that Nolan's snowballing success with the Bat-franchise in 2005, 2008 and 2012 led to the "Nolan-izing" of the Superman franchise in 2013's MAN OF STEEL, as I discussed in this review. In that review, I expressed the hope that Zack Snyder's rebranding of Superman-- which I associated with an "impoverished aesthetic" would fail to become the dominant iteration of Superman.

I didn't really expect that my wish would come true in the near future. However, despite Snyder's directorial helming of BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN, and despite Christopher Nolan's perhaps-not-too-influential production-role, I have seen a modest improvement in the first live-action crossover of DC's archetypal protagonists.

More on that on the film-blog, hopefully this week.