QUICK COMPENSATION COMPARISON

Though I've only recently chanced across a reference to the pioneering work of endocrinologist Hans Selye-- a Nobel-Prize winner credited with formulating the 20th century concept of "stress"-- even a quick Wikipedia reference points out a useful comparison with the compensation theory of Alfred Adler, first examined on this blog here.

Here's a Wikiquote I've cited before re: positive and negative compensation-- a concept I've found useful in refuting critics like Julian Darius:

Positive compensations may help one to overcome one’s difficulties. On the other hand, negative compensations do not, which results in a reinforced feeling of inferiority.
 

In 1975 Hans Selye pioneered a roughly similar "positive/negative" classification of glandular excitement states.  Again quoting from Wiki's essay on stress:

Selye published in 1975 a model dividing stress into eustress and distress.^[16] Where stress enhances function (physical or mental, such as through strength training or challenging work), it may be considered eustress. Persistent stress that is not resolved through coping or adaptation, deemed distress, may lead to anxiety or withdrawal (depression) behavior.
 

Neither psychologist Adler nor biologist Selye applied their insights to literary criticism.  On occasion lit-critics have looked at fiction through Adler's lens, though Adlerian examinations are far outnumbered by those following the lead of Sigmund Freud, the past master of explaining psychology purely through acts of "negative compensation."

While Selye's biological research in itself probably would not lend itself to the analysis of literary constructs, its central conceit-- that of "stress" having both negative and positive connotations-- proves useful to a literary hermeneutics based in notions of conflict and will, as my own is.  The notions of "eustress" and "distress" may also prove an interesting gloss on Theodor Gaster's division of the emotional tones evoked by ritualized endeavors into tones of "plerosis" or of "kenosis."

PLAYING MERRY HOBBES WITH HEROES AND DEMIHEROES

IIn this essay I commented on my use of the terms "courage" and "endurance" to distinguish the persona-types of "hero" and "demihero:"

I still believe that Reeve's opposed categories of "courage" and "endurance" have strong applicability, though I never meant to imply that these categories summarized all distinctions between hero and demihero.
 

I'm glad I said that, given that the Hobbes comment I recently employed for the posts on goal-affects also seems to have broad applicability to personas.

So that in the nature of man, we find three principal causes of quarrel. First, competition; secondly, diffidence; thirdly, glory.
 

These three motives-for-violence-- which I usually summarized as "gain," "safety,"  and "passion" of a specifically thymotic type-- also apply well to the motives of heroes in fictional narratives.  Or at least the second two do; more often than not, the motive of "gain/competition" is the motive assigned to the villain.

Thus, without dismissing the applicability of the "courage/endurance" reading, I'll offer a quick look at my proposed hero/demihero distinctions using "diffidence" (aka "safety") and "glory" (aka "passion").

As an example for a hero who evinces "glory," I'll use an example of one of the most microdynamic heroes known to me.

MIGHTY MAX, a character devised to promote a toy line in a 1993 tv cartoon, was one of the oddest "heroes" I've encountered in terms of his dynamicity. Though this simple Earth-boy was frequently referred to as "the Mighty One," he had no powers whatsoever, except a magical cap that could transport him to other realms.  In the company of a chicken-like entity ("fowl, actually") who supplied information on the threat of the week and a big warrior named Norman who provided the heavy lifting, Max foiled dozens of vile villains over the course of 40 episodes.  He did so largely through neither power nor skill, but just by having the dumb luck to constantly avoid being squashed by werewolves or dragons or whatever.

And yet, weakling though he was, he was still a hero squarely in the genre of adventure, in that the stories were all about his invigorating victories over evil.  He may prove a better example of a microdynamic hero than some of those I've used before, such as Brenda Starr and Doctor Who.

In contrast, there's the character of Mrs. Brisby from Don Bluth's dramatic cartoon THE SECRET OF NIMH.  As I mention in my review of the film, I have not read the juvenile book on which the film is based, so I confine myself to the character as depicted in the Bluth film.  From what I understand, only in the film does this mouse-character demonstrate what might termed "super-powers."

These powers are entirely the gift of a magical talisman, which Mrs. Brisby can summon only because, despite her humble appearance, she possesses the necessary virtue of "courage"--which characterization is ironic to me because I would have assigned her persona the quality of "endurance."  The magic she summons isn't used in any combative scenario, but to solve a non-violent conflict: how to transport her home to a place of safety.  But even if this mousey protagonist had used her power offensively-- as does Doctor Craven, an equally mousey protagonist whom I used as one of my first examples of a "demihero" -- would she have qualified as a hero?

By my current reasoning, no.  Brisby is a good example of "instinctive will" in that although she possesses courage, as the script says, it isn't the sort of courage that distinguishes the "intellectual will"-- a will which I link to the Hobbesian concept of "glory."  Everything Brisby does in the film is motivated by the Hobbesian concept of "diffidence/ safety," which might be characterized as more "reactive" than "proactive."

I've not advanced a "proactive/reactive" dichotomy here in so many words, but it does have applicability to what I wrote here about folklorist Vladimir Propp's opposition of the "seeker" and the "victimized hero."

I would say that the qualities of "glory" and "diffidence" also seem better matches for the characters discussed in that earlier essay, with Johnny Thunder following a pattern of "glory" while Jimmy Olsen follows one of "safety" (which I find that I prefer to "diffidence," as that seems to imply a trait of the character rather than a plot-action).

More explorations of glory and safety will probably follow, though probably not until next year.

ESCALATION PROCLAMATION

“It was this unfathomable longing of my soul to vex itself—to offer violence to its own nature—to do wrong for the wrong’s sake only—that urged me to continue and finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute”—narrator, Edgar Allen Poe’s THE BLACK CAT.

 

“Poe’s great contribution [to the spread of the murder-mystery and its sadistic nature] had been the enheroing [sic] of the avenger instead of the criminal… The reading public went on a century-long debauch of printed sadism to replace the sex notoriously absent in Victorian literature.  (For weaker stomachs, with a religious turn, the ghost story simultaneously served up masochist terrors.)”—Gershon Legman, LOVE AND DEATH, p. 11.

 

Though I specified in NARRATIVEDEATH-DRIVE PT 2 that narrative conflict did not require literal violence, narrative violence does have a potential, beyond that of any other literary device, for escalating the immediacy of the conflict.  Even the kinetic appeal of sex—so earnestly defended by Legman above—cannot match violence in terms of fomenting the narrative principle of escalation. 

 

To be sure, narrative violence only has this potential when it is repeated within the narrative.  A single violent act, such the sort of unsolved killing that initiates most murder-mysteries—including two of Poe’s three efforts in that genre—merely serves to incite the average reader’s curiosity.  What incites that reader’s deeper identification is the repetition of violence.  Through repetition of violence, the reader’s potential fears for the story’s characters are escalated.  Which character may die next? Can the hero save the next victim from the villain’s machinations?

 

This response in no way validates the sort of syndromic sadism that Legman and his fellow travelers imputed to it.  I’ve called it “casual sadism,” in order to signify that the reader’s appreciation of a villain’s violence and/or sadism goes no deeper than a casual acquaintance.  The average reader wishes only to identify with the villain in order to witness that the villain’s acts fulfill his expectations—in other words, to fulfill the demand of the story that there be a violent and/or sadistic villain. Masochism, which Legman touches on ever-so-briefly, follows essentially the same pattern, though this psychological pattern is less frequently evoked than its counterpart, as it doesn’t lend itself as well to escalation of suspense—not even in the genre of the ghost-story which, contra Legman, does not universally deal with “masochist terrors.”

 

But all of the above deals with readers, as to what extent sadism, or its counterpart masochism, informs their responses. I said at the end of the previous essay that I would demonstrate examples of fictional characters who evinced sadistic or masochistic characteristics, in illustration of what I’ve called abstract goal-affects.

 

One approach might be to cite characters from the writers whose names Kraft-Ebing used to denote the paraphilias about which each one wrote.  But both Sade and Sacher-Masoch were syndromic writers, exorcising their personal demons into prose.  Neither was writing for the audience of “casual sadomasochists” that devours such genre-fiction as murder-mysteries and ghost-stories.  So those writers’ characters don’t suffice for my purposes.

 

If one were to credence Legman’s rant, Poe—writer of both murder-mysteries and ghost-stories-- ought to supply examples of both sadistic and masochistic goal-affects.  In Poe’s works, one ought to find characters either perpetrating violence or suffering it for no concrete goal, but purely to fulfill the abstract goal of “doing wrong for the wrong’s sake only.”

 

However, anyone familiar with Poe’s three Auguste Dupin stories will recognize the silliness of Legman’s claim.  “The Purloined Letter” contains no “printed sadism” in any form, unless one counts Dupin’s desire to confound the conniving schemes of the villain because the villain did Dupin some unspecified injury in the past.  Both “Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Mystery of Marie Roget”—to which Legman makes direct reference in the paragraph preceding the quoted passage—do concern mysterious murders.  However, though the fates of the murder-victims are discussed in great detail, so that the detective (and his readers) can form a forensic picture of the crimes, there is in the end no sadistic character in “Rue Morgue”—only an angry, befuddled animal—and the never-seen murderer in “Roget” seems to have committed the crime for reasons relating to his personal safety.

 

 

 

Poe’s horror stories seem to provide a little more grist for Legman’s mill; at least there are stories of torture-devices (“Pit and the Pendulum”) and of detailed murder-schemes (“Cask of Amontillado,” “The Tell-Tale Heart”). But rarely do Poe’s characters kill for pleasure’s sake.  Montressor in “Amontillado” kills in the spirit of vengeance, and the narrator of “Heart” murders a man who was always kind to him simply out of some mysterious compulsion.  Given the conclusion of “Heart,” in which the narrator’s guilt forces him to reveal his evil deed, he, like the narrator of “The Black Cat,” would seem to be motivated by an abstract masochism; to commit evil that will “vex” his own soul in the end.       

 

   “Pit and the Pendulum” probably comes closest to the model of a “casual sadism” entertainment. Here the unnamed narrator has no wish, conscious or subconscious, to be victimized, for he welcomes his providential escape at the climax.  The faceless Inquisition-priests seem to be Poe’s most thoroughgoing sadists, for they have condemned the narrator to death and have nothing to gain from his prolonged sufferings but the knowledge that he suffers at their hands.  Further, it’s the only Poe tale that uses its sadistic terrors to escalate suspense, albeit just for one character, as opposed to the multiple victims one finds in novel-length stories.

 

In terms of the escalation of masochistic terrors, Poe’s “Black Cat” is the standout example.  Though the unnamed narrator might be mistaken for a sadist due to the violence he metes out upon his pets and his wife, he takes no pleasure in his violence, and seems, like the “Heart” narrator, to be soliciting punishment by his repeated acts.  However, because the majority of Poe’s tales are short, his oeuvre does not make the ideal illustrations of the principle of escalation.  If I do a Part 2 to this essay, I will undoubtedly choose another author or perhaps authors.  I may or may not stay within a particular genre, but the best illustration of how the principle of escalation works will certainly be in formats—be they novels or films—that can take advantage of plots that develop over a considerable amount of time and with a sufficient number of characters.

 

In conclusion, Poe’s use of sadistic and masochistic character-motivations validates my concept that such abstract goal-affects need not appear only in syndromic narratives directly concerned with sadism or masochism as such.  And despite the horror Legman shows regarding Poe’s inimical influence upon readers, it’s obvious that Poe has remained one of the most-read American authors without causing those readers to become syndromic sadists or masochists.  I reiterate that this is possible because the “death-drive” that implicates much though not all narrative is not about literal death, but is a formalized anticipation of the real thing, a pure gesture made in the face of the infinite.     

 

THE NARRATIVE DEATH-DRIVE PT.2

What I have called "concrete goal-affects" in Part 1 are, whether directed toward the goal of gain or the goal of safety, governed by a simple logical cause-and-effect, to wit:

(1) Subject A wants X.  Subject B owns X.  If Subject A attacks Subject B, A can get X as long as A feels he can overcome B without consequence.

(2) Subject B is attacked by Subject A.  Subject B responds violently to prevent his being injured or killed by A.

These scenarios don't deal with the affects, the emotional states themselves, which are more various than Hobbes' analysis, also in Pt 1.

For instance, both the attacker and attacked can experience the related emotions of fear and anger. The attacker may fear never possessing X, and thereby experience righteous anger with the psuedo-logic that the attacker does not deserve to own X.  The attacked will certainly feel both fear and anger in response to the attempt to rob him.

The desire for vengeance is also oriented on a concrete goal, though by its nature we understand that it applies more often to seeking redress wrongs done at some other time, either at a time when the one attacked could not fight back and was otherwise constrained against responding.  We think of this as being a response to one's being directly attacked, but in some circumstances an attacker may feel that he is attacking a race, creed or profession that has offended him, rather than a particular person.

A more attenuated affect-- sometimes associated with the motive of gain but more often with promoting the general safety of some group-- subsumes such concepts as "discipline" and "duty."  It's possible for Subject A to rob Subject B not for A's personal gain but for the enrichment of his ingroup, while B may risk his life to stop A on the same terms: not because he personally would lose but because the theft imperils his ingroup.  A further refinement is that violence can be perpetrated from the member of one ingroup to another for purpose of a particular type of discipline called "training," though such violence is theoretically designed to "toughen up" the one subjected to it, as with the Spartan rituals whereby older boys within a communal society would beat the younger ones for that purpose.

Doubtless I've omitted some affects in this sketch, but I consider that these three emotional states are the most frequently used concrete goal-affects within the sphere of fiction, which, as noted earlier, in my main consideration.

However, abstract goal-affects are not governed by the same straightforward logic.  At the end of Part 1 I said:

...outside this circle of "attack-and-defense," there is a much rarer species of quarrel-motivation, whose goals are as abstract as any goals can be. I will deal more fully with these motivations, at least in terms of fictional narrative, in Part 2.

Abstract goal-affects relate more properly to *thymos,* the emotional need for esteem.  Receiving high esteem in a given society does, to be sure, sometimes manifest in concrete benefits: lofty political advancement, sexual partners who want to sleep with someone "famous."  Yet without doubt there are individuals who labor to do things they deem difficult but right without any remuneration, because they can better esteem themselves for having performed such actions.  Neither the logic of the desire for gain nor the desire for safety seems to govern the operations of *thymos,* whether one speaks of real-life or fictional motivations.

I've repeatedly emphasized that the radical of all fiction is conflict.  This is far from a new notion, but it's virtually ignored by those critics who prefer to see canonical "art" fiction as phenomenologically separate from "popular fiction."  I reject that separation, of course.  Most popular fiction concerns itself with the immediate, kinetic threats of violence and/or death, and I find that these kinetic effects illustrate a "death-drive" that is present in all narrative, though it's generally disguised in fiction aimed at a minority audience. 

Popular fiction is also particularly adept at providing its characters with motivations that seem unrealistic from a mimetic standpoint but which nevertheless resonate in terms of illustrating the raw human need for "esteem," which as stated earlier parallels Hobbes' motive of "reputation."  Esteem, whether experienced within a society of peers or within one's own self-evaluation, can take many different forms in fictional narrative, but the form I find most relevant is the notion of strength, be it physical or moral.

I borrow the term "death-drive" from Freud, but reject the logic he applied to it, rooted as it was in the concept of sexuality as the fundamental form of human "libido."  Freud's late concept of "thanatos," a death-impulse to parallel "eros," the life-impulse, never proves persuasive, but the two terms could be adapted to better effect in a system that admitted, as Jung did, that "libido" must relate to all phenomena in which humans descry the phenomena of strength and/or energy.  Not infrequently human observers relate to high levels of strength or energy with what has been variously called "the sense of the sublime" or "the sense of wonder."  One might also regard this as functionally covalent with the paraphilia known as "sthenolagnia," though obviously one would not be dealing with something possessed of the same specified intensity that appears in a sexual fetish.

Narrative requires the movement from one equilibrium to another, which is usually accomplished by some form of conflict.  Of course said conflict need not require a violent or strength-oriented conflict.  However, in an etiological sense violent conflict, ranging from cave-paintings of bear-hunts to the Gilgamesh Epic, has been played a vital role in the evolution of human narrative, and cannot be reasonably set aside as irrelevant to the nature of art.  Thus the "death-drive" of narrative is that aspect of narrative that most often resolves transitions through the threat of violence and/or death.

In this essay I coined the term "sthenosadism" as a counter to the Freud-Delueze interpretation of the phenomenon of sadism, as well as to argue that Freud-influenced critics Wertham and Legman had misjudged the potential for syndromic sadism to develop in mass audiences due to their exposure to popular fiction.  My corrective position suggests that most audiences participate in a "casual sadism" insofar that they may wish to see even "good" characters put through the wringer, what Schopenhauer considers the things that the audience finds "interesting" but which are often painful for the fictional characters.  The one failing of this formulation is that this might be better called "sadomasochism," in that the reader can both identify with the character's sufferings ("masochism") and also step outside and regard those sufferings clinically ("sadism.")  Thus I'm refining the earlier position to include masochistic identification in the sthenolagniac context-- an extreme case of which can be found in Kafka, touched on here.

As a closing clarification, I am not saying that concrete goal-affects do not appear in hero-villain narratives.  Maybe the Joker sends Batman a mocking note so that Batman will come chase him, but clearly the Penguin would rather get away with the loot rather than tilt with the Caped Crusader again.  But the act of reading about Batman's struggles with both types of villains is in itself an example of an "abstract goal-affect," since the pleasures we derive from reading fiction cannot be said to promote either gain or safety in a direct relationship.

I'll give more extensive examples of abstract goal-affects that are within a given diegesis, rather than located within the reader's motive for seeking fictional "quarrels," in a future post.

QUICK KRASNOFF-ON-HEGEL-ON-FREEDOM QUOTE

For later use in analyzing the concept of freedom

"The subject's fundamental nature is to overturn all external constraints, and then to realize that this is a futile and irrational activity."-- HEGEL'S PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT: AN INTRODUCTION, Larry Krasnoff, p. 65.

THE NARRATIVE DEATH-DRIVE, PART 1

So that in the nature of man, we find three principal causes of quarrel. First, competition; secondly, diffidence; thirdly, glory.
The first maketh men invade for gain; the second, for safety; and the third, for reputation. The first use violence, to make themselves masters of other men's persons, wives, children, and cattle; the second, to defend them; the third, for trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other sign of undervalue, either direct in their persons or by reflection in their kindred, their friends, their nation, their profession, or their name.

-- Thomas Hobbes, LEVIATHAN, Chapter 13.

 

Spock: There is no logic in Gav's murder.

Shras: Perhaps you should forget logic and devote yourself to motivations of passion or gain; those are reasons for murder.-- STAR TREK, "Journey to Babel," 1967.

Spock never comments on the advice given him by Shras. but he could presumably refute the Andorian's terms.  While the term "passion" can embrace a variety of emotions, including murderous ones, the motive of committing violence-- what Hobbes calls "quarrel"-- for the purpose of gain can be pursued with the coldest of cold logic conceivable.  And as the plot shakes out in the TREK episode, "gain" is indeed the motive behind Gav's murder and various other acts of sabotage.

But what of passion?  Is passion just one thing that one should see as ineluctably opposed to cold logic, as writer D.C. Fontana suggests?  Admittedly Fontana was not propounding this notion as philosophy, merely as a notion to round out an exciting melodrama, but the question comes up in other venues as well.  So the question becomes, is it feasible that the word "passion" subsumes a variety of mental activities, two of which could in theory subsume two of the "principal causes of quarrel" Hobbes cites, "safety" and "glory?"

As it happens, the question of the various meanings of the word "passion" has come up on this blog before, quite apart from any associations with a popular teleseries currently held in simple-minded contempt by the Bloody Comic Book Elitists. In THYMOS BE DE PLACE PART 1 I devoted considerable space to refuting Noah Berlatsky's conflation of aesthetics and desire.

I don't think "desire" (which Noah defines as inherently erotic) is at the heart of human experience. I think that desire is but one interdependent chamber of a three-chambered heart that Socrates chose to call "the tripartite soul," with the other two parts being nous (intellect) and thymos (passion).

But I hear some wonder whether or not "desire" and "passion" aren't the same thing...
 

There follows a citation of a passage from Plato's REPUBLIC, which I confess I've seen cited in both Francis Fukuyama and James Twitchell, albeit to different ends.  Having noted how Socrates demonstrates the existence of a "passion" that is not goal-oriented, I continued:

Thus Socrates demonstrates that what we translate as *passion* (though the most accurate translation seems to be "spiritedness," as the root word for thymos comes from "breath"), is not identical to desire since it can oppose desire. I can think of examples in which *passion* might side with desire against intellect, but that doesn't undermine Socrates' distinction, for in both cases thymos is still a separable concept. Further, this *spiritedness* has a lot to do not with just satisfying one's temporary appetite to have something, be it food or money or sex, but to have esteem for oneself regarding one's own personal self-control. Socrates' example applies to one's internal esteem but it obviously has a wealth of applications with respect to gaining the esteem of others in more social situations.

So in this argument I've defined "desire" as both covalent with Plato's "eros" and with all goal-oriented affects, while "passion" is covalent with Plato's "thymos" and with affects that are more abstract in their satisfaction, whether they take the form of a subject establishing one's "reputation" (Hobbes) or identifying with a host of fictional characters (my own contra-Berlatsky take on aesthetics). 

I won't explore aesthetics or character identification in this essay-series; the interested readers (?) will have to assume that both can be subsumed by what I now call "abstract goal-affects," which quite naturally contrast with "concrete goal-affects."

In his time Hobbes was certainly aware of Plato, so it's not impossible that his "three principal causes of quarrel" owes some debt to Plato's concept of the tripartite soul.  But whereas Hobbes makes no distinction between his three causes, the aforementioned Fukuyama asserts that Plato's faculty of *thymos*-- more than a little comparable to the cause Hobbes calls "reputation"-- is distinct from eros/desire in that *thymos* was properly a "desire for a desire," that is, to be seen as a person of esteem in a given community.  In my terms this makes *thymos* an "abstract goal-affect." 

Eros/desire is without question within the sphere of "concrete goal-affects," whether one wishes to "gain" one's goals with passionate emotion or cold logic/reason.  For Plato nous/reason would have been the highest faculty of the soul, set to control the others, but the closest parallel it has in Hobbes' formulation is what Hobbes calls "diffidence" or "safety," which to the extent that it's a desire is principally a desire for self-preservation, for rational homeostasis.

Extrapolating from Fukuyama's reading of both Plato and Hegel, I would say that the first two quarrel-causes in Hobbes fall under my heading of "concrete goal-affects."  In fiction as in reality, violence is most often-- though not always-- motivated by the prospect of "gain."  This in turn prompts violence perpetrated in the name of those victimized to protect their "safety."

However, outside this circle of "attack-and-defense," there is a much rarer species of quarrel-motivation, whose goals are as abstract as any goals can be.  I will deal more fully with these motivations, at least in terms of fictional narrative, in Part 2.

WAS WERTHAM EVER RIGHT?

As this is a blog devoted to the critique of popular fiction, I don't often discuss current events or politics.  The notion that the discouse of fiction is a dog wagged by the tail of political discourse remains as much anathema to me now as when I refuted Frederic Jameson's work on that subject in 2009.

Still, like most persons I'm revulsed by the news of the mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school December 15, 2012, less than six months following the theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado.

By chance this week I reprinted some of my attacks on the two earliest anti-comics crusaders, Gershon Legman and Frederic Wertham.  Both men were firmly convinced that violent entertainment, including but certainly not limited to comic books, could inculcate a "monkey see-- monkey do" influence upon those who were easily influenced, particularly young patrons of such entertainment.  As anyone able to read knows, the debate did not end with Legman and Wertham, but has multiplied into a bewildering array of studies, op-ed pieces, and rhetorical defenses of artistic freedom.

One day after the Newtown shooting, little information has been released on the man accused of the crime.  Earliest information suggests that the accused, 20-year-old Adam Lanza-- who apparently shot himself to death after killing 27 victims, mostly schoolchildren-- had some sort of grievance involving his parents.

At present this would not seem to be a "monkey do" type of crime, in contrast to the Aurora shooting last July, where mass gunman James Holmes was taken alive and *may* have claimed that he was imitating the Joker from the BATMAN franchise.   But even without a link to popular entertainment in the Lanza case, it's easy to argue that such horrendous crimes take inspiration from a culture that enshrines violence, selling visceral entertainment to kiddies in the name of the almighty dollar.

Such transgressive entertainments only have an appeal, whether in capitalistic societies or any other kind, because most if not all human beings nurture resentments for wrongs real or imagined throughout their lives.  Legman and Wertham feared that most patrons of violent entertainment would have their societal inhibitions broken down by media able to speak to those persons' darkest wish-dreams.

To answer my titular question, while Wertham and his fellow-travelers were not right in any general sense, it's certainly possible for isolated individuals to take inspiration from any number of things that break down societal inhibitions-- though with the caveat that almost anything can trigger such a breakdown, from the Bible to cheerleader magazines. 

That said, the violent fantasies entertained by Lanza and James Holmes seem to go beyond the bounds of getting even with the teacher who flunked you, the cop who gave you a ticket, etc.  Do the persons committing such crimes-- sometimes with a great deal of forethought and planning-- view themselves as gutsy barbarians avenging themselves on the whole of society, as represented by the occupants of a movie theater-- or by little children who haven't even become a part of society as yet?

That's the best stab I can make toward understanding what moves this apparent rash of mass shootings.  Vengeance fantasies would seem to spring from a fear of being marginalized or mistreated.  The majority of persons who consume fantasies of violence or revenge-- and I include myself as having identified with the many mad, mistreated avengers of fiction-- can keep a sufficient mental distance as to avoid identifying fantasy with reality.   Individuals who take pleasure in mass murder, whether after the fashion of the serial killers or of the mass shooters, would appear to have lost the ability to prioritize real life above their own fantasies.  As contemptible and cowardly as the killers seem to the majority of human beings, they apparently believe themselves heroes, or at least anti-heroes like "Joker" Holmes.

I continue to believe, for whatever it's worth, that the pleasures of fictional violence don't deeply influence that majority, whether it's to commit crimes or to talk back to a nasty cop.  All such pleasures have their deepest roots in that aspect of human ressentiment that seem part and parcel of the human condition, one perfectly captured in this aphorism by Nietzsche:

"Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.”