STALKING THE PERFECT TERM: EXALTATION

At the conclusion of A FINAL PARTING OTTO-SHOT I wrote:

... my formulation of three "sympathetic affects"-- "admiration" as a parallel to "fear," "fascination" as a parallel to "dread," and "ecstasis" as a parallel to "awe"-- is more properly a response to Lewis than to Otto. But in my final anslysis both scholars' formulations suffer due to a mutual overemphasis of the antipathetic affects.

As I've contemplated the term "ecstasis," I find that it doesn't make a good parallel to "admiration" and "fascination."  The latter two terms describe affects, but "ecstasis" can be deemed as much a cognitive as well as an affective state.  Whether one does or does not believe that there exists any sort of ecstatic state through which a human being can commune with a higher power-- a concept that seems to offend the Lutheran Rudolf Otto-- the word does connote that potential.


As it happens, though, Otto himself utilizes a word that fits the level of emotional engagement which befits those sympathetic to the marvelous-metaphenomenal, when he speaks of "the shamanistic ways of procedure, possession, indwelling, self-imbuement with the numen in exaltation and ecstasy."  Unlike "ecstasy," "exaltation" dominantly implies a purely affective state of mind.  Following my tendency to view "awe," then, as implying an antipathetic affect toward the marvelous-- one in which the subject feels himself abased by or otherwise separated from the marvelous-- "exaltation," in line with Otto's disapproving view of magicians and mystics, satisfying connotes the affect of sympathizing, and even taking part in, the marvelous.  Thus from now on it should be understood that the three categories of the NUM formula are thus distinguished in their affective aspects:

THE NATURALISTIC-- antipathetic aspect FEAR, sympathetic aspect ADMIRATION

THE UNCANNY-- antipathetic aspect DREAD, sympathetic aspect FASCINATION

THE MARVELOUS-- antipathetic aspect AWE, sympathetic aspect EXALTATION

PASSION FOR THE CLIMAX

I've just finished a review of the 2002 film MINORITY REPORT.  Not having seen the movie since it played in theatres, I had no clear memory of its status as a combative film, though I remembered a certain amount of spectacular stunt-work.  This raised the possibility that it, unlike the source material, might be a work in the combative mode, since I've indicated that it's impossible to convey the significant value of combative sublimity without the use of spectacle.

However, MINORITY REPORT's only important scene in this regard occurs less than halfway through the film. Prior to this scene, John Anderton (Tom Cruise) finds himself accused of being guilty of murder, albeit a murder than hasn't happened yet.  Though Anderton is a cop himself, he goes on the run from the authorities to prove his innocence.  This is a science-fiction twist on a venerable trope from the genre of mundane crime, and within crime movies there's usually no need for spectacle as such.  In this type of story, it's most desirable to show the protagonist as overmatched by the united might of the police tracking him. Rarely if ever does a protagonist in this sort of story become involved in a spectacular fight with police.

Viewers of cinematic science-fiction, however, expect some degree of spectacle, and so it would appear that director Spielberg and his scripters crafted a couple of major FX-scenes-- only one of which involves direct combat-- both of which occur early in the film and which may serve to assuage audience-expectations.  Following Anderton's escape from the police on a vertical freeway and his big fight with a half dozen armed police, the film then eschews showy spectacle for low-key suspense, after the fashion of the classic films noirs from which Spielberg claimed to have copied.  Anderton eventually uncovers the villain who framed him-- or, to be specific, his wife, acting on his behalf, does so-- but though there is a final confrontation between hero and villain, they do not fight.  The villain threatens the hero with a gun and is shot down by police; also a familiar trope out of crime films, which often take the execution of justice out of the hands of individual heroes and utilize the legal authorities to provide such violence.

So the question occurs: how important is it to the mode of the combative that there should be a literal combat near the climax, rather than at any other point in the narrative?

Though it's possible that I'll encounter some exceptions, there seems no way to demonstrate the persistence of the narrative combative value unless there is some sort of spectacle-oriented struggle at or very near the climax. On occasion there may be scenarios in which the central protagonist throws down with an apparent antagonist, only to break off the fight because he realizes it's all a big misunderstanding. Another variation is seen in my review of the 2012 DARK SHADOWS,
wherein vampire protagonist Barnabas Collins has a violent conflict with the villain but is taken out of the fight, after which the villain is destroyed by the main character's allies. But as long as there has been some narrative plot-thread to leads inevitably to some sort of spectacular combat, it doesn't matter if the combat follows the dominant pattern of the main hero overcoming the villain.  In fact, though it's rare for a combative film to end in the defeat of the hero, it does happen, most memorably in 1982's BLADE RUNNER.

Despite Spielberg's attempt to give Tom Cruise's fans some of the same thrills they enjoyed in his MISSION; IMPOSSIBLE success (even using the same stunt-team), MINORITY REPORT is a subcombative work, most comparable in structure to other works that depict violence at early points in the story, as I demonstrated here with regard to Shakespeare's subcombative drama CORIOLANUS.  This would also be another illustration of my concept of a narrative "diffuse force," as discussed here with regard to the 1953 film WAR OF THE WORLDS-- and which I've also discerned in a recent re-read of the Wells source novel, as well.

THE UBERMENSCH AND THE PRINTING PRESS

The popular origins of “superman": One finds it in the late romanticism of the serial novel; in Dumas pere: The Count of Monte-Cristo, Athos, Joseph Balsamo, for example. So then: many self-proclaimed Nietzscheans are nothing other than … Dumasians who, after dabbling in Nietzsche, “justified" the mood generated by the reading of The Count of Monte-Cristo."-- Antonio Gramsci.

I posted my review of the 1933 INVISIBLE MAN film not only on my blog, but on another site, CLASSIC HORROR FILM BOARD, that allows for some discussion of members' film reviews.  In response I got a response that discussed in some detail the question of how fantasy-characters from prose and film anticipated the real-life tyrannical figures of World War II, which interested parties can read here. Ordinarily I don't have any compunctions about quoting posters on forums of all kinds, but I don't choose to reprint any of the observations by the poster Telegonus this time.  Rather than arguing with any of the specific opinions expressed, I prefer at this time to discuss some of the questions relative to what the idea of the "superhuman" means within a literary context, as opposed to what it has come to mean in a philosophical or political context.

Nietzsche was certainly not the first to wax philosophical about the nature of larger-than-life conflict in art and life, but as we see in the Gramsci quote above, the German philosopher became associated almost indelibly with the idea of the ubermensch, variously translated as "superman" or "overman."  Gramsci's own definition of the "superman" is a good deal looser than I would like, since it includes characters like "Athos" and the "Count of Monte Cristo," whom I personally regard as just above-average adventurous types.  I can't speak to whether or not Dumas actually influenced Nietzsche or Nietzscheans generally, nor do I know anything about Dumas' fictional interpretation of historical figure-and-alleged-mage Joseph "Cagliostro" Balsamo.  But in any case Dumas is far from the first literary figure to deal with larger-than-life conflict; Nietzsche and Nietzscheans generally would have probably encountered "superman" figures first in stories of myth and folklore.

Before one can ask what the idea of "the superman" means in the literary world, one must regard the world of literature as separated into two great intersecting worlds from our current POV: the pre-modern world and the modern world.  The pre-modern literary world is one in which the majority of the populace at all or most times is illiterate and functions at an oral level of communication, and only a small minority is educated.  Some mythic figures-- however one believes that they originate-- become the centers of religious complexes.  Some figures, whatever their origins, become best known as figures in oral folklore, which on the whole would seem to be *principally* for entertainment.

In the case of religious myth-figures, some sort of extra-human power would seem to be implied in the very idea of religion.  Mircea Eliade once commented that the hierophany (manifestation of a god) was always also a kratophany (manifestation of power), be it the strength of Heracles, the ability of Aphrodite to make mortals fall in love, or even the power to become a holy sacrifice, as with Dionysus in his form of Zagreus.  Folklore proper, perhaps because it often stems from oral and/or rural roots, tends to deal more with clever if powerless trickster-heroes as well as types who possess superior power: types like the "Jack" of beanstalk-fame would seem to outnumber types like the German "Strong Hans."

I'll pass over the ways in which religious myths become transformed into literary myths, most often in the form of prose and poetic epics and theatrical enactments.  One may see in theatrical plays a movement away from the "supermen" who proliferate in religion and prose epic, if only because such things are difficult to stage.  But in any case these various manifestations of literary work remain pre-modern in terms of their overall cultural structure, no matter how many specific differences may exist between, say, the Greek Dark Ages and "classical Greece."

The printing press changes that cultural positioning by making possible the middle class, and thus eroding the power of "the Few" represented by the aristocracy and gradually placing more power in the hands of the "Many."  Wikipedia gives this description of the incredible growth of literacy due to the effectiveness of the Gutenberg press:

European printing presses of around 1600 were capable of producing 3,600 impressions per workday.^[5] By comparison, movable type printing in the Far East, which did not know presses and was solely done by manually rubbing the back of the paper to the page,^[45] did not exceed an output of forty pages per day.^[7] The vast printing capacities meant that individual authors could now become true bestsellers: Of Erasmus's work, at least 750,000 copies were sold during his lifetime alone (1469–1536).^[46] In the early days of the Reformation, the revolutionary potential of bulk printing took princes and papacy alike by surprise. In the period from 1518 to 1524, the publication of books in Germany alone skyrocketed sevenfold; between 1518 and 1520, Luther's tracts were distributed in 300,000 printed copies.^[47]

The 1500s did not see the rise of a true "popular literature"-- a literature aimed at the "unwashed masses" who worked for a living.  I would speculate that one was brewing even then, as well as in the intervening centuries. But the 19th century, for better or worse, becomes the flashpoint in which we observe the birth of a significant quantity of superhuman figures not born directly from well-known myths or religious stories.  Some of these characters, like 1818's FRANKENSTEIN, were crafted with an eye toward the current culture of "high art," but became in time a vital icon of pop culture.  Others, like DRACULA and THE INVISIBLE MAN-- both published nearly a century later, in 1897-- seem much more targeted toward a "bestseller crowd," though both have become classics recognized by at least some members of the literary community. 

More importantly, this was the century in which the idea of literary "genres" became driven by audience appreciation, rather than by the approbation of the Few.  Ghost stories, for example, had been in existence since mankind's beginnings.  Yet only in the early 19th century-- in response to innovations in the late 18th, particularly from authors like Ludwig Tieck and E.T.A. Hoffmann-- did the ghost story become postulated as a form that others could imitate, as took place at the famous convocation at the Villa Deodati, the crucible from which FRANKENSTEIN in particular took shape. 

As an American, I naturally tend to privilege the rise of genre-specific fiction magazines in the 1930s as a further elaboration of popular literature's growth.  But had such genre-specific magazines never arisen in the United States, it seems obvious that such developments were also taking place in Germany and France before the rise of the pulps.  A futher effect of genre specificity oriented toward a popular readership meant that one did not necessarily have to write just one fantastic story about a vampire or an invisible man.  One could write endless stories of "supermen" in many situations, whether one concentrated upon an English explorer constantly coming across lost cities (Allan Quatermain, Tarzan) or a German "air pirate" having adventures with hyper-technological ships (the dime-novel "Captain Mors" series).

As to what the proliferation of supermen means in terms of literary values, and not just as a literary phenomenon, that must wait for a Part Two.

THE READING RHEUM #2: CREATURES ON THE LOOSE #16-21

I mentioned here that I'd probably never write anything more about Edwin Arnold's book GULLIVER OF MARS, but I do want to write a few words about the "Gullivar of Mars" published by Marvel in the early 1970s, in the issues above specified.

I remember liking this one pretty well at the outset.  Though it's just another riff on Edgar Rice Burroughs' "John Carter" series, it's a minor improvement on Arnold's lackadaisical, pseudo-comic adventure.  In the first few issues, Gil Kane's art is strong, and the script introduces a rather interesting buddy for the colorless main hero: one totally independent of anything in the Arnold book, and one whom I liked a good deal better than Gullivar.  This was "Chak," seen below as he and white-haired Gullivar are about to be devoured by your basic sea-creature.

Though the illustration gives the impression that Chak is a bird-man, the birdlike countenance is really a mask, crafted in imitation of his species' normal physiognomy.  Underneath the bird-mask, Chak looks pretty much like a human being with purple skin.  Chak was a mutant and the only one of his kind, which could have set up the series for some good angst, had it lasted longer.  However, like a lot of Marvel series of the period, it soon fell victim to pinch-hitting, including various contributions by Gerry Conway, George Alec Effinger, Wayne Boring and (most pleasingly) Gray Morrow.

I have to say that though Roy Thomas was doing some of his best CONAN scripts during this period, his scripts for GULLIVAR show an unfortunate tendency for a lot of not-very-witty, super-referential "jokes."  Later, Thomas would only get worse and worse at this, though GULLIVAR has two of his worst ever.  In one, Gullivar, on the back of some alien horse-creature, pursues another rider while he remarks about "doing the Rogers thing-- Roy, not Buck!"  And at one point he calls the completely red aliens of Mars-- one of whom is seen in the cover above-- "rednecks!"

Gullivar was revived for one black-and-white appearance somewhere, but to my knowledge has yet to be revived for an Ultimates version.

STINKING ULTRALIBERALLY PART 2

Recenlty I started a "Paula Deen" topic on a board to see if I could coax anything resembling rational thought out of posters there.  I failed utterly, but as a minor positive result of this fracas, one of my opponents posted this link to an editorial by a lawyer named Daryl K. Washington, posted on the BLACK LEGAL ISSUES website on 6-29-13. 

Like most individuals who became acquainted with the Paula Deen controversy in the past month or so, I knew that Deen had been accused of racial and sexual violations with respect to her restaurant staff, but few details about the alleged violations made it into the news.  What most national news concentrated on was that Deen had admitted in a sworn deposition that she may have used The Big Taboo Word at times in her life.  But because she admitted this, the media went on to report, as gospel, the things that her opponent Lisa Jackson claimed that Deen said.  Washington is a little more careful than most media-outlets to report the most famous of these as "alleged," but  he nevertheless prints it in full, possibly because he's aware of its power to inflame:

Paula Deen, while planning her brother's wedding in 2007, was asked what look the wedding should have. She replied, "I want a true southern plantation-style wedding." When asked what type of uniforms the servers should wear, Paula stated, "well what I would really like is a bunch of little n*ggers to wear long-sleeve white shirts, black shorts and black bow ties, you know in the Shirley Temple days, they used to tap dance around...
 

It's amazing to see how many online media-sites report that Deen admitted to saying this.  What she confirms in her 6-11-13 deposition is that she thought about having a "traditional Southern wedding" in 2007, but did not do so because she anticipated an adverse reaction from the media. I read her entire deposition, and at no time does she claim that she used The Taboo Word in public, or within the hearing of anyone who might be offended by it.  Here's what she really says:

I don’t recall that. I recall – I do recall, once again, in my bathroom at the house, and why we would have been in the bathroom, I was probably filming and changing clothes, that’s the only reason why we would have been in that bathroom, they must have run out during my lunch break or something from filming, and I remember us talking about the meal.

And I remember telling them about a restaurant that my husband and I had recently visited. And I’m wanting to think it was in Tennessee or North Carolina or somewhere, and it was so impressive. The whole entire wait staff was middle-aged black men, and they had on beautiful white jackets with a black bow tie. I mean, it was really impressive.

And I remember saying I would love to have servers like that, I said, but I would be afraid that somebody would misinterpret.

She also states very clearly that she does not use the Taboo Word in public because she tries to call people what they want to be called:


What I find interesting about Washington's post is that he opens by admitting that "many people have been making this incident about the "N" word only," but neglects to mention that this is because the media chose to focus only on this aspect because, for one big reason, the case has yet to be tried and no one knows what validity, if any, claimant Lisa Jackson's assertions have.  No one knows what evidence she can muster.

Washington, for example, uses the word "alleged" in one sentence, and then turns around and treats the allegation as a declaration of irreproachable fact.

Paula Deen indicated that she used the N word over 20 years ago. That is not what's being alleged against her. She went as far as telling a guy he was as black as a blackboard. That lady is something else and I'm glad I never supported any of her ventures. 

Later, after citing all of Jackson's allegations against Deen, Washington immediately demands that she should not be given a "free pass," hearkening back to an argument he made in the first paragraph, where he claims that:

I personally find it to be offensive whenever someone from another race is accused of using the "N" word they are somehow given a pass because of the use of the "N" word by some in the black communities. Let me be the first to say that I find the use of the word by anyone to be wrong.

Washington is right about this much: if there is any verifiable proof that Deen or her employees instituted a racially divided workplace-- as in requiring that black workers use a specific bathroom-- then neither Deen nor anyone else should be given a "free pass" for that.

But my point is that the media has drawn attention ONLY to The Taboo Word, and that as a result of that ALONE, many of Deen's sponsors have deserted her PRIOR to any findings by the court.  The lawyers who inquired into Deen's history with the Taboo Word are of course required to do so in order to build their case, but that doesn't mean that Jackson's case isn't falsified, be it only in part or in toto.

One of the reasons that the media feels free to quote Jackson's accusation as veracious, of course, is that Deen had the temerity to admit that she once considered holding a Southern-style wedding with black waiters impersonating slaves.  To many people, this is an outright admission of a nostalgia for the actual condition of slavery. It's not hard to find books or movies-- like some of those in the oeuvre of Shirley Temple-- that romanticize the institution of slavery.  But here we're dealing with what George Orwell might describe as a "thought-crime;" Deen committed the crime of simply *thinking* about indulging in a Southern-style wedding.  She didn't actually DO it, but even to admit to thinking about it is, for some people, tantamount to incriminating her in genuine workplace abuses.  If there is substantial testimony that she has lied about her normal habits interacting with persons working in her restaurant, as with the ALLEGED "blackboard" remark, then that testimony may expose her as a practicing racist.

But thinking about doing things offensive to others is not, contrary to Jesus of Nazareth, anywhere near as bad as actually doing them, as implied by Matthew 5:28--

But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

SHEEP, SANS ELECTRICITY

Having finished my reread of Heinlein's STARSHIP TROOPERS and judged it subcombative in terms of its narrative values, I promptly launched into a reread of Philip K. Dick's DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?, which like the Heinlein book had been adapted into a film very much in the combative mode.  Going on memories of previous readings I suspected that the Dick book would also prove to be subcombative, and I was correct, but for the opposite reason.  Most of the book avoids much in the way of direct combat, pursuing instead the internal conflict of android hunter Rick Deckard as he agonizes about the interrelationships of humans and their android creations.  Only at the very end does Dick include a "shoot-out" in approved Old West fashion, even though opponents Deckard and his foe, rogue android Roy Batty, are both armed with "laser tubes."  However, Dick's approach to the fight eschews anything like the spectacle one might expect in such a duel.  Thus ANDROIDS possesses the  narrative value of the combative mode-- but not the significant value. It's not enough that there should be two megadynamic forces that appear within the same film.  In my NECESSITY OF SPECTACLE essays, here and here, I stated that "the spectacular mode of violence" was "necessary for the manifestation of combative sublimity."  But in Dick's ANDROIDS, the violence is purely in the functional mode, even if the combatants are dueling with laser tubes.  It's rare to find megadynamic forces handled in a humdrum functional manner, though Dick's motive for so doing may somewhat akin to Heinlein's reason for not winding up STARSHIP TROOPERS with a big colorful battle.  In both cases, however different their themes, the authors sought to make their protagonists seem more "ordinary" despite their marvelous surroundings and/or resources. 

Having made that determination, I ask: what about Philip K. Dick's anxiety-filled, vaguely schizophrenic works has made them so amenable to adaptation into huge, spectacular SF-adventure thrillers?  I also recently reread Dick's short story "Minority Report," and though I have yet to rescreen the Tom Cruise adaptation, it's my recollection that the Cruise film, like Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER, amps up the presence of spectacular violence by a factor of 12.  Indeed, the only violence in the short story is one man shooting another, albeit with a ray-weapon.  In future I'll probably reread the source stories for TOTAL RECALL, PAYCHECK and SCREAMERS, and see how the original prose pieces stack up against their cinematic manifestations.

So what makes Dick so attractive?  I don't get the impression that most Dick-derived films, aside from the original TOTAL RECALL, have been box-office winners-- and the first RECALL was also an Ahnold film during the height of his popularity.  BLADE RUNNER lost money on its first screening, though eventually it may have become profitable through the home-rental market, due to its fully deserved status as a "cult film." Dick may also impress filmmakers because of the fecundity of his ideas, or because BLADE RUNNER offers them a much-admired template to follow.  But in the end, the word I used earlier-- "anxiety-filled"-- may hold the key.   Dick himself, who was attempting to focus on the dramatic interactions of his characters, only used violence in a functional way, to punctuate crises in the lives of those characters.  But filmmakers-- who are known for resorting to all manners of spectacle to attract butts to stay in seats-- are able to use the paranoiac scenarios Dick invented, and then simply "add violence as needed."

That said, I want to reiterate, as I said in NECESSITY OF SPECTACLE, that the difference is not one of mere degree; it's one of narrative function.  A work in the subcombative mode, whose violence is merely functional, doesn't just change into a combative one purely through the injection of spectacular violence.  The spectacular violence is not epiphenomenal; it becomes part of the diegesis as soon as it's included, and it changes the nature of the narrative.  This distinction is comparable to a similar observation by Rudolf Otto. He opposes the idea that religious awe was simply different from ordinary fear in "degree."  For him it was clearly a difference "in kind." 

Thus, in NECESSITY OF SPECTACLE PART 2, I compare two monster-movies of roughly the same period: 1957's DEADLY MANTIS and 1961's REPTILICUS.  Both films include giant monsters that get shot at by soldiers, and even suffer attack by flamethrowers.  But the guns and flamethrower in MANTIS are different in "kind" from those in REPTILICUS, because of the way the filmmakers of each respective movie treats these human resources.  In REPTILICUS these naturalistic weapons become spectacular, megadynamic forces, but in MANTIS they remain functional and mundane because MANTIS as a film is less interested in sheer spectacle for its own sake.

SUBCOMBATIVE TROOPERS

"Man is what he is, a wild animal with the will to survive, and (so far) the ability, against all competition.  Unless one accepts that, anything one says about morals, war, politics-- is nonsense.  Correct morals arise from knowing what Man is-- not what do-gooders and well-meaning old Aunt Nellies would like him to be."-- Robert Heinlein, STARSHIP TROOPERS.

Reading this quote in isolation, one might think that Heinlein was seeking to make some point comparable about will and "the will to power" akin to the philosophical insights of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.  Heinlein, however, is pursuing more limited goals.  STARSHIP TROOPERS might be termed a "bildungsprop."  That is, on a superficial structural level it resembles the literary genre called the "bildungsroman," the novel which primarily describes a young man's maturation.  However, though a young man of a far-future era is indeed the viewpoint character of TROOPERS, and he does undergo a maturational process, that process is not oriented on showing his personal progression, but the positive effects of the era's meritocratic military upon his unsentimental education.  Hence, the intent is closer to being a propaganda-speech on the virtues of the military, which Heinlein constructs with enough sophistry to elide any possible flaws-- and with enough panache that the novel won science fiction's Hugo Award in 1960.  In addition to the novel's controversial merits in terms of its philosophical viewpoint, TROOPERS is also known as the first SF-novel to extrapolate the concept of "powered armor suits" to be worn in battle, as opposed to a warrior simply clad in some form of armor, with or without additional gimmicks.  Heinlein's term "mobile suits" became so well circulated that it entered the name of the later Japanese manga franchise MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM.

My reason for recently rereading TROOPERS, though, was to determine whether or not it fit the combative mode, as did the 1997 film adaptation of the novel.  I suspected that it did not, but I certainly hadn't even begun to think in terms of the combative mode when I first read it, much less formulating that it required both a *narrative* and a *significant* value. 

To cite the short verdict, TROOPERS possesses the *significant* value, in that there are at least two exceptional forces pitted against one another: the highly skilled soldiers of Earth, sometimes though not always garbed in mobile suits, and the alien "Bugs" who represent the "competition" of which Heinlein speaks in the above quote. Yet the narrative value isn't there, for the book is really not constructed around the conflict.  The novel opens with Earth taking military action against an unrelated group of alien combatants, during which POV-character Rico makes considerable use of his mobile suit.  After that, the novel moves back in time, describing in great detail the events that led to Rico's military service.  Eventually the novel shuttles back to real time, and the so-called "Bug War" begins, in which the aliens assail Earth by blowing up Buenos Aires, which coincidentally happens to be Rico's home city.  Eventually Rico takes part in a raid on one of the bugs' world, as he and his men attempt to take prisoner one of the "brain bugs" in the aliens' hierarchy. In the film STARSHIP TROOPERS, this battle is the culmination of the Earthpeople's endeavors.  However, because in the novel Heinlein is seeking to illustrate the chaotic quality of military action-- the better to underscore the true heroism of the ordinary soldier-- the battle is rendered fragmentary by Rico's limited POV.  Rico's part in the action ends when a roof literally falls in on him, and though the mission is judged a success, the battle itself is secondary to Heinlein's focus on the military outlook.  This strategy of eliding the potential for a combative climax compares somewhat to the ending of CORIOLANUS, a work I described in MYTHOS AND MODE 2 as also possessing the significant value but not a narrative one.

Once I finished reading, though, I also assessed the novel in terms of the Rico persona, and decided that he was more dominated by the quality of persistence rather than glory, despite Heinlein's many assertions of the military's glorious record.  This would make him a "demihero" rather than a "hero."  Further, this returns me to a line of thought I formulated in April of this year:

On a tangential note, I think that in general most works that focus on the military-- be they naturalistic or otherwise-- tend to emphasize the "emotional tenor" of "persistence" rather than "glory," as those terms were defined here. The military is more often defined by the quality of winning conflicts through group effort rather than individual excellence, and that may be one reason I couldn't view the heroes of STARGATE as fully in the genre of adventure, despite some superficial likenesses.

I did not claim that military characters could not possess the persona of the hero.  However, such characters' adventures must, in keeping with my alignment of "glory" with the concept of "megalothymia," must show a much more personal stake in a given conflict than one sees in STARSHIP TROOPERS.

For example, I cited one "heroic military" example, that of Marvel Comics' Sergeant Fury. From SGT. FURY #5, here's Fury's very personal reaction to his being challenged by the evil Nazi officer Baron Strucker.

It strikes me that this aspect of "personal glory" is exactly why, in KNOWING THE DYNAMIS FROM THE DYNAMIC, I didn't want to regard the protagonists of STARGATE as "heroes."  At the time I tried to rationalize that the Stargate heroes seemed unheroic because they belonged to the "dramatic" mythos.  In contrast, I had no difficulty in regarding drama-centric Harry Potter as a "hero," even though I had not at that time fully evolved my concept of the four personas.

Now I'm not saying that the various STARGATE heroes-- none of whose names I can remember-- never get mad or offended as Sgt. Fury does above.  But the narrative focus of the teleseries is upon "group effort," and hence victory through persistence, rather than personal glory.  There's no doubt from the first pages of the Fury-Strucker story that there's going to be some monumental combat between Fury and Strucker.  Occasional STARGATE stories may set up such a conflict.  But the narrative emphasis in the teleseries, as in Heinlein's TROOPERS novel, is upon subsuming one's personal goals into the traditions of the military.  Thus all or most of the STARGATE characters qualify as combative demiheroes.


The Johnny Rico case is more complicated.  The original template for Rico is that of a subcombative demihero, but the character-- as well as those featured in the film adaptations-- are combative demiheroes, who deviate from Heinlein's original template.  Thus far, I've seen TROOPERS movies fall into three of the four mythoi-- excluding only "comedy"-- and in all of them, the main characters are extremely combative.  But their mental orientations emphasize the concept of "isothymia," of "emptying out elements of will that seem excessive to one's society or environment."