MYSTERY OF THE MASTER THREAD PART 3

                             
The last comics-item I rated as an inconsummate null-myth was 1965’s “THE HAUNTED ISLAND” (CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN #43). It’s without question a story whose constituent parts don’t cohere into a pleasing whole, but it also illustrates my new distinction regarding concrescence, in that its parts don’t even relate to one another within the narrative.



For purposes of comparison with other narratives, I’ll identify ISLAND’s master thread as being that of “hero must confront evil counterpart.” To be sure, the story probably came about for extrinsic reasons of stoking the feature’s sales, in that editor Murray Boltinoff probably made the decision to give the heroes new uniforms, and assigned Bill Finger to come up with a rationale in story-form. Finger’s oddball solution was to have the “Challs” (as they were informally called) kidnapped by five mutated scientists, all of whom considered that they lived “on borrowed time”as did the quartet of adventurers. I mentioned that the imagery of ISLAND is all over the place, best exemplified by a mutant who looks like the Frankenstein Monster in a Beatle wig (the haircut even gets an explicit comment from one of the heroes). Yet even more damaging to the story as a whole is that the mutants initially want the heroes to subject themselves to mutation willingly—meaning that they’ll no longer be the heroic figures that the mutants found appealing. When the Challs decline, the mutants threaten to put them in suspended animation like the rest of their collection—though both scenarios would seem to render the idea of giving the heroes new costumes nugatory. Thus ISLAND demonstrates both a state of inconsummation and a poor level of mythopoeic concrescence.

To remain focused on the “evil counterpart” thread, a more effective example is 1969’s “AND SO MY WORLD ENDS” (JLA #71). Like the Challengers story, this one focuses upon an ensemble of heroes, though one among them, the Manhunter of Mars, receives “special guest star” billing. J’onn J’onzz convinces the heroes of Earth to follow him to Mars to prevent a Martian threat to Earth, but even the Martian doesn’t know that a civil war between Mars’ two races has decimated both sides, leaving only handsfuls of survivors on both sides. Green Martian J’onn meets his White Martian opposite number in battle, and though J’onn prevails, the victory is pyrrhic, since his civlization is all but perished. This is an entirely consummate story insofar as it gives the reader a feeling of completeness and satisfaction, even if it may incorporate one or two lapses in logic. But the master-thread of “hero’s evil counterpart” is only adequately explored, though a subordinate thread about the futility of war provides ample support, giving WORLD a fair level of mythopoeic concrescence.

   Finally, the 1947 story “THE INJUSTICE SOCIETY OF THE WORLD” provides an example of both consummate status and a high level of concrescence. In my review I wrote:

Other comics-features had played around with the idea of pitting heroes, whether in solo features or in groups, against teams of villains, so the basic idea of the Injustice Society was nothing new in 1947. What makes this story a "mythcomic," though, is Kanigher's attention to making the villain-group a formidable reflection of the good-guy group.
Much of the time, the JSA heroes won their battles a little too easily, partly because so many of their foes were just ordinary thugs and swindlers. I've argued elsewhere that one has to respect the gumption of commonplace crooks in challenging do-gooders who had godlike powers, but it still didn't usually give rise to many memorable battles.

I won’t repeat the various reasons I stated for validating the mythopoeic discourse of INJUSTICE, though, like the other two stories analyzed here, the tale’s not free of flaws and is not one of the more“sophisticated” even within the superhero genre. But it provides a good example of a story notable for just one strong master-thread, and nearly no subordinate threads in the mythopoeic vein.

CONSUMMATION AND CONCRESCENCE

My recent essays on the concept of the master-thread have sparked some re-consideration of the titular categories.

When I wrote CONSUMMATING PASSIONS in 2011, I may have contemplated the notion of using consummation to explain certain operations of fictional narrative, more or less in the same fashion that I now utilize "concrescence." However, I didn’t end up using “consummation” as a consistent term over the years. I now believe that the term is too static. Going by the standard usage of the word and its opposite, a work can only be consummate or inconsummate insofar as the parts of the narrative do or do not work in harmony to give the reader a sense of “completion.” PASSIONS, though, was written before I began formulating my concepts of the four potentialities, and of discourse between the various *quanta * of those potentialities.

In contrast, concrescence is not about the relationship of the parts to a hypothetical whole; it concerns the relation of parts to other parts within the narrative, in a rough parallel to the mundane medical use of the word. One part, as I’ve written at the beginning of the master-thread series, is always dominant within the narrative, and the other parts are woven around this central thread. The thread-metaphor helps to explain how a given narrative may be strong within a given potentiality, mythopoeic or otherwise, even if the narrative develops only the superordinate master thread but no subordinate threads. I’ll provide further explication of the proper terminological relationships of these two categories in my next essay.

MYSTERY OF THE MASTER THREAD PART 2

                               

To my knowledge, no written work of fiction provides a mythopepic discourse denser than that of Herman Melville’s MOBY DICK. This sprawling tale is replete with many threads of mythopoeic vertical meaning, ranging from the relationship of white men to colored men (which theme preoccupied Leslie Fiedler) to the nature of fate (Fedallah’s MACBETH-like prophecies). But all of these meaning-threads are subordinate to the master thread, which, if removed, would unravel the whole kit and kaboodle. The master thread for MOBY DICK consists of the myth of the Hunter and the Hunted—with the additional fillip that the Hunted is either God or the agent of God’s inscrutable will, so that the Hunt itself is inevitably doomed.

All of the subordinate vertical threads of MOBY DICK are so well developed that the author could have made stand-alone stories out of any of them. This is not generally the case, however. Of the thousands of other narratives that possess strong mythopoeic meaning, most of them possess no more than a single strong master thread.

Case in point: CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. When I wrote my mythcomicsreview of CRISIS, I was more than a little aware of the serial’s numerous flaws, from the bland scripting of Marv Wolfman to the drably functional manner in which the story tossed together nearly every famous or semi-famous character in DC Comics history. Those subplots that even came close to vertical meaning were frequently botched, as with a maudlin encounter between Kamandi—Jack Kirby’s “Planet of the Apes” swipe—and Solovar, one of DC’s seemingly endless supply of intelligent gorillas. However—there was one master thread I discerned, one in which Wolfman built upon the “devilish” character of Krona, and contrasted this character’s impiety with a “holy trinity” of characters implicated in the death of the old cosmos and the birth of the new.

On the more positive side, some master-threads receive support in unpredictable ways. Jack Kirby’s NEW GODS saga, reviewed here, has one obvious master-thread: the prophecy of an eventual confrontation between the tyrant Darkseid and the hero Orion. I wasn’t entirely pleased with Kirby’s years-later wrap-up of his epic series. But even though the author went down a somewhat unsatisfying path, HUNGER DOGS wasn’t without mythopoeic meaning in itself.

But I’ve recently noticed one particular subordinate thread, one so subtle that one could barely even assign a didactic meaning. In my review I had no space to examine the curious relationship between Darkseid and his mother Heggra.

The reader only three things about the wizened queen: (1) that she rules Apokolips before Darkseid ascends to the throne, (2) that her influence obliges Darkseid, against his will, to wed a noblewoman named Tigra, who ends up being the mother of Orion, and (3) at some time, Darkseid has his mother killed, probably because she blocked his rise to power.

But in recent months, I noticed that the given names of Heggra and Tigra are not dissimilar, suggesting a symbolic identity between them. Visually, they’re opposites, for Tigra is lean and given to overt violence, while Heggra is sedate, like a brooding hen sitting on her “hegg.” But despite these differences they collude to create Orion, whom Darkseid will make the mistake of casting out. The result is that Orion becomes dedicated to his father’s defeat, and though Orion’s primary mission is to keep Darkseid from gaining the Anti-Life Equation, it would not be incorrect to say that the conflict of father and son ends up avenging the maltreatment of two maternal figures. It’s a subordinate vertical thread that in no way diminishes the master thread of the father-son conflict, but because of this mini-discourse, the master thread is made yet denser and richer.

MYSTERY OF THE MASTER THREAD PART 1

In essays such as THE LINE BETWEEN FAIR AND GOOD PART II, I’ve compared the organization of fictional narratives to the ways in which students are taught to structure their compositions around a “theme statement.” I never developed that line of thought, but of late it’s struck me that there’s a parallel between the general idea of a “theme statement” and my concept of the “focal presence,” insofar as both are organizing principles. But there is a salient distinction between the two.

According to my lit-crit system, the focal presence is allied to a narrative’s lateral meaning, the combination of the kinetic and the dramatic, of the things that physically happen to characters and how they feel about it. The focal presence denotes the narrative’s centricity, which in keeping with my observations in STRONG AND WEAK PROPOSITIONS, does not require vertical meaning in order to engage a reader’s conviction.

In contrast, any “theme statement”—a term I will soon replace with one more apt for my purposes—must correlate principally with vertical meaning. This meaning, as I’ve mentioned earlier, can be represented by didactically presented ideas, mythopoeically presented symbols, or (in the words of Janis Joplin) a “combination of the two.” I’ve frequently pictured these vertical meanings as either being “over” or “under” a narrative’s lateral meaning, but for current purposes maybe it might be better to imagine them as many disparate threads running through the (potentially) labyrinthine structure of the narrative. A single narrative can incorporate more than one vertical meaning. However, to be coherent said narrative needs what I’ll henceforth call a “master thread.”

Since standard theme statements emphasize didactic meanings, I won’t spend a lot of time on that topic. I'll confine myself to stating that two given narratives can both possess the requisite master thread, but one can be better developed than the other (for instance, Upton Sinclair’s socialist diatribe in THE JUNGLE is far less compelling than Charles Dickens’ “anti-utilitarian argument” in HARD TIMES—not simply because I personally favor one over the other, but because the latter possessed greater intellectual elaboration than the former.

I have a great deal more to say about the ways mythopoeic master threads disport themselves, coming up in Part 2.

THE READING RHEUM: THE TRAIL OF FU MANCHU (1934)

                                                          

,I noted earlier that BRIDE OF FU MANCHU was atypical in that Sax Rohmer constructed it like a traditional notvel, rather than being a concatenation of episodes. Until I re-read TRAIL OF FU MANCHU, though, I didn’t realize that the author must have formulated at least some of the plot-threads of TRAIL in mind when he wrote BRIDE. For instance, during one of Fu’s many BRIDE-lectures to viewpoint character Alan Sterling, the doctor discourses a bit on alchemy. The subject has no affect on BRIDE’s plot, but it’s of particular consequence in TRAIL.

Obviously, given Rohmer’s treatment of Karameneh in the first three books, it was perhaps a given that TRAIL would deal in part with the aftermath of Alan Sterling “stealing” the bride of the devil-doctor, Fleurette, long-lost daughter of Karameneh and Doctor Petrie. Fu Manchu kidnaps Fleurette here just as he abducted Karamenehh in Book Three, and by the book’s end the doctor swears not to do so again, just as he (largely) left Karameneh alone following her abduction. (In essence, whenever Fu promised to leave someone alone, it meant that author Rohmer didn’t intend to make any great use of said character in future.)

TRAIL isn’t as tightly written as BRIDE, but it has a different distinction. Every previous Fu-book used a single viewpoint character, but Book Seven is the first one to utilize multiple viewpoints. Alan Sterling doesn’t tell any of the story until eighty pages in, a couple of viewpoint characters are throwaway figures, and a couple of others are “firsts:” Nayland Smith narrates a chapter or two and Fleurette has the distinction of being the first female character in a Fu-novel to get her own chapter. All of the transitions work well, and though the plot is looser than that of the previous book, only one episode—an early subplot in which Fah Lo Suee fakes her death for no clear reason—doesn’t cohere with the rest of the narrative.

Another Fah-related subplot has become a major part of the Fu Manchu mythology. Fah and Nayland Smith don’t seem to have crossed paths prior to her introduction in Book Three, and Rohmer barely has the two interact afterward. Then, toward the end of this novel, Fah Lo Suee --despite having styled herself as a person of “light loves”—suddenly announches, in front of her father, her father’s minions, and several captives, including Smith—that she’s loved Smith since she first laid eyes upon him. The announcement proves so arresting that even Fu Manchu, who’s rarely surprised by anything, admits that he didn’t see this one coming—perhaps mirroring the astonishinent of Rohmer’s regular readers. The only one who doesn’t react much is Nayland Smith, though he’s rather preoccupied at the time. Not only does he witness Fu executing his disloyal daughter (though of course she’s back soon enough), the doctor also fully plans to slay Smith and his allies this time, and only Smith’s resourcefulness saves the day, making for one of Rohmer’s most exciting action-sequences.

In addition, Rohmer also experiments with bringing a little more verisimilitude to his adventurous sage. Though Fu Manchu escapes police captivity with ridiculous ease in BRIDE—much as he did in Book One—this time he isn’t able to poof away like an Arabian genie, nor can he conjure up bevies of scorpions and dacoits out of nothingness as he always had before. Smith doesn’t explain exactly what he’s done to cut Fu off from his Si-Fan network. Yet somehow, as the novel opens the policeman has managed to make Europe hot for the villain, which is one reason Fu returns to England, to kidnap Fleurtte as a future bargaining chip. More central to the mastermind’s plan, though, is his attempt to overcome his financial embarrassment by manufacturing gold after the fashion of the ancient alchemists. Rohmer is understandably vague about the process, though Fu makes an intriguing suggestion that the operation involves the sacrifice of human flesh. Aside from the technique of gold-making and some of the mental tricks performed by the two Asian evildowers, TRAIL departs from most of the “mad scientist” tropes seen in BRIDE. And though Rohmer is never all that wrapped up in the realities of running a criminal empire, it’s amusing to speculate that Fu’s expensive BRIDE laboratory may have caused him to overspend his resources, as much as any action taken by Nayland Smith.

Late in the novel Smith says to his confidante, “Seems like old times, eh, Petrie?” But early in the book Rohmer shows a sedulous determination to remind readers of the long history between the policeman and the super-criminal. One chapter references “the Zayat Kiss,” and one of Fu’s minor associates from the 1910s, John Ki, returns for a few scenes. The novel’s greater emphasis on verisimilitude has a consequence: the characters, particularly Fu Manchu, are not quite as deeply mythic as they are elsewhere. But TRAIL does boast one deeply resonant scene, which improves upon a similar event in HAND OF FU MANCHU. In that novel, Fu Manchu needs an operation, and he forces Petrie and another doctor to do the deed. In TRAIL, Fu’s alchemical stratagem is destroyed, but he gets a physical rebirth thanks to Petrie. To save Fleurette—who, once again, never shares any scenes with the Oriental schemer—Petrie must save Fu Manchu from the ravages of old age by administering the exilir vitae. Just as the aggrieved physician approaches his patient, Fu does his mind-reading trick, once more disclosing the fact that, no matter what crimes he commits, he’s always the most interesting man in the room:

“’O mighty Caesar! Dost thy lie so low?’ I observe, Doctor Petrie, that this beautiful passage from an otherwise dull play is present in your mind… You honor me.”

THE READING RHEUM: THE BRIDE OF FU MANCHU (1933)

                                                                   

The sixth Fu Manchu book is arguably the best in the series, with the possible exception of the novel that introduces the devil-doctor. It’s definitely the first book in the series that doesn’t feel like a bunch of episodic events strung together, which may be the result of Rohmer treating his small cast of characters after the fashion of archaic Greek drama.

New viewpoint character Alan Sterling is certainly a huge improvement over the dull Shan Greville from books four and five. Though Sterling’s occupation of “roving botanist” doesn’t sound as promising as the career of roving archeaologist Greville, Sterling’s a much more decisive hero, managing to slay two of Fu Manchu’s dacoit servants, albeit with a handgun. And while Greville merely fantasizes about enacting the “Troy complex” when he first meets Doctor Petrie’s beauteous wife Karameneh, Sterling actually does manage to steal the titular “bride of Fu Manchu.”

Sterling’s flower-hunting profession is key to his involvement in the story, for he consults informally with the redoubtable Doctor Petrie, investigating a deadly new contagion in France. The contagion is of course the creation of Fu Manchu, and both Petrie and Denis Nayland Smith have been drawn to France to foil the doctor’s plans for world domination. (Petrie, incidentally, catches the disease he’s trying to cure and spends most of the novel at death’s door, though his prior discovery of a vaccine ends up nullifying Fu’s plans.) Yet Sterling is the first to make indirect contact with Fu’s fiendish plans, for in addition to menacing the world with a disease carried by hybrid flies, the doctor’s brought his prospective bride to France as well. Fleurette (French for “little flower”) charms Sterling the mment he has a meet-cute with her, even though he’s given reason to suspect that she’s the kept woman of an older master. By the magic of authorial fiat, though, Sterling crosses paths twice more with Fleurette, and his slaying of the second dacoit leads Fu Manchu to abduct the botanist.

Indeed, being a botanist is apparently the only thing that saves Sterling’s life. Fu Manchu’s French hideout is one of the first and best of all “supervillain lairs,” a massive underground laboratory devoted to diverse researches, replete with exotic plants, fearsome animals (not least a spider “as large as a grapefruit”), and a deformed, artificially-grown humanoid called a “homunculus.” Moroever, Fu Manchu has considerably upped his game in terms of servants. In the previous five books, most of Fu’s servants seem to be near-mindless assassins, and the doctor’s principle stratagem seems to be trying to find ways to foment in the East against the interests of the West. But Fu’s French laboratory is staffed with the finest scientists from East and West—some of whom are supposedly dead, and all of whom have been subjected to chemical brainwashing. The prospective plague is of course Fu’s principle threat, but he needs botanists like Sterling to help with his research, not least to improve on his elixir vitae, which keeps Fu vigorous despite his considerable age.

As in previous books, though, the master scientist outsmarts himself, this time by bringing Sterling into closer contact with Fleurette. The devil-doctor is certainly aware, in his magisterial way, of Sterling’s attempt to flirt with Fleurette, but evidently the villain assumes that once his people subject Sterling to the brainwashing, the young man will no longer pose any threat. But Fu’s rebellious daughter Fah Lo Suee doesn’t want her father to give her any siblings—particularly not a son, who would in theory supplant her—and so she makes sure that Sterling’s brainwash-chemical is compromised, and the botanist remains mentally free, albeit in captivity.

Because of this relative freedom, Sterling does unveil some of Fleurette’s mysteries, learning that she’s half-Arab and that from childhood she’s been schooled to become “the perfect woman” in terms of bearing and intellect, the better to be the mother of a new son of Fu Manchu. (Apparently Fu tried this before with the Russian mother of Fah Lo Suee, but he blames the fruit of that union on the “taint of a distant ancestor.” Whether it’s a paternal or maternal ancestor, Fu does not say.) Rohmer also tosses out the idea that Fleurette may have prophetic powers that could aid Fu Manchu in his quest for dominion, though she’s not really seen showing any such propensities. Indeed, Sterling is seen having more than his fair share of precognitive episodes, though Nayland Smith attributes these incidents—like seeing the face of Fu Manchu in a dream-reverie, long before meeting the villain face-to-face—to some sort of empathic connection between Sterling and Fleurette.

It’s not clear why the doctor, who’s willing to brainwash almost everyone in his service, does not do the same to Fleurette, so that she would feel for him such adulation that love with another man ought to be impossible. As it is, Fleurette only feels immense respect for Fu, her substitute father-figure, though Rohmer provides no scenes of character-interaction between Fu and his intended. Whatever the doctor’s reasons for not covering his bets, Sterling succeeds in winning Fleurette from her master. Surprisinigly, while Fu Manchu is willing to consign thousands to plague-death in order to reshape the world, he isn’t willing to contravene the power of love, either by killing Sterling or by belatedly brainwashing Fleurette. (He does take out some of his frustration on the traitorous Fah Lo Suee, expressing his contempt for Western chivalry as he personally flogs his daughter—which action may speak volumes about why she’s so often a thorn in his side.)

Nayland Smith belatedly enters the novel to lead police forces on the compound, but though the police rescue Sterling, Fu escapes with both Fleurette and Doctor Petrie (whose death the mastermind fakes, with the long game of making Petrie into another slave). The pursuit does lead to Fu Manchu being captured by French police, though, as in the first novel, the mastermind uses his skills of illusionism to escape and menace the world once more. Both Petrie and Fleurette are liberated, but by then Sterling has learned a further secret from Nayland Smith: that Fleurette is actually the long-lost daughter of Petrie and Karameneh.

It’s at this point that Sax Rohmer does seem to borrowing a bit from the Atreus Saga. Eighteen years ago, the Petries believed that their infant daughter had perished of illness. In truth, the medical mastery of Fu Manchu placed the child in a cataleptic state, and then allowed one of his agents to raise the girl to maturity, always with the plan that Fleurette would become Fu’s bride later.

I’ve mentioned in my review of INSIDIOUS DR FU MANCHU that Rohmer first characterizes Karameneh as someone who might be Fu’s “servant, daughter, or lover,” though only the first appellation proves literally true. Petrie manages to enact his own “Troy complex” by stealing the heart of Karameneh, and though in the second book Fu Manchu retaliates by trying to eradicate Karameneh’s memory of Petrie, love restores the former slave’s memory. Indeed, Fu’s first “rebel daughter” repays him in kind: he messes with her mind, and she shoots him in the head. After the introduction of the villain’s genuine daughter, she proves alternately obedient and rebellious to her father’s will. Fleurette is the first female character who has the potential to be “servant, daughter and lover” to Fu Manchu, and though she’s not as willful as either Karameneh or Fah Lo Suee, Rohmer does give her more wit and personality than most of his femmes fatales. Surprisingly, no one in the novel makes any comment at all upon Fu’s motives for choosing to steal the child of the Petries. The logical supposition of most similar thrillers would be that he did so for base revenge. However, over the years Rohmer built up the image of Fu Manchu as a magnanimous foe, so mere vengeance would have seemed out-of-character, even though the act of child-stealing has the same emotional impact on its victims. The author may have wanted this magnanimity in order to explain why the villain does not (for example) ever attempt Karameneh’s life for her act of rebellion. (He does kidnap Karameneh in the third book, but once he’s used her as a chess-piece against Petrie, he never bothers her again.) The next book repeats this pattern, as Book Seven shows Fu kidnapping Fleurette, not for vengeance but to use her as a pawn in his unending chess-game.

THE LING VIRUS

Posted this on my political forum re: the mini-controversy regarding "the China virus:"

__________

[the OP] spoke of "ethnic scapegoating." I reiterate that it's not incorrect to speak of a virus in terms of its point of origin, and that by NOT doing so, you open the door to losing track of persons who may be responsible for the virus' promulgation.

For instance, on an episode of THE VIEW this week, Lisa Ling found fault with Trump's lack of action in the first two months (which she describes as "months and months," as if half a year transpired). While (falsely) claiming that she didn't want to play the blame game, she claimed that Trump's only possible reason for using the term "Chinese virus" was to "deflect" from his own lack of action. "Wag the Pekingese Dog," if you will.

She also talked out of both sides of her face. One minute she claims she has "no love for the Chinese government" and that she found their hushup "indefensible." Yet the next minute she claims that it wouldn't made any difference to whether or not the U.S. took the disease more seriously as to its "severity?" Hello? Does anyone actually believe that, if the Chinese gov't had been totally transparent in January, Trump would not have ramped up defenses then, instead of in March?

This sort of willful amnesia is precisely what I'm talking about. Ling is of Chinese extraction, and some of her people have undoubtedly been attacked or inconvenienced by dimwit racists. But her problems don't excuse her attempt to rewrite the same history we've all experienced. At the end of her screed Ling even claims "we should be asking China for help" in managing our situation. Yeah, if I were Prez I don't think I'd be in any great hurry to follow China's lead. I don't have to believe that she likes the Chinese Communist government to realize that she's the one using the virus as an excuse to attack Trump on the usual talking-points of supposed inefficiency and supposed racism.

On a semi-related note, I heard some idiot reporter on MEET THE PRESS ask Joe Biden if Trump "had blood on his hands." Wow, talk about playing to the peanut gallery! At least Ling was relatively subtle in her partisanship. ADDENDA: the idiot reporter was Chuck Todd, whom I've never watched before, and plan not to watch again.