CLEANING AROUND THE CENTER

In CENTRIC AND DIFFUSE WILL PT. 3 I compared my early use of terms like "dominant" and "subdominant" in the early history of this blog, and why those terms fell to the wayside:

The word "dominance" descends from the Latin dominus, meaning a lord or master,  and this imagery more or less accords with the thoughts I expressed in JUNG AND SOVEREIGNTY. And yet, though I don't reject any of these meditations, in recent years I've been drawn less to the image of a "master" lording it over lesser elements, and more drawn to the image of the circle. If a given narrative has elements characteristic of all four Fryean mythoi, one may see the centermost circle as being the myth-radical that most determines the total content of the narrative.  

I attempted, not very frequently, to work out a terminology for describing the way "lesser elements" give way to a "sovereign element," whether speaking of a given work's myth-radicals or of its distribution of spectacular and/or functional forms of violence, as seen in CENTRIC AND DIFFUSE WILL PT. 2. In fact, most of what I've theorized about the "centric/diffuse" word-pair concerned differing forms of dynamicity, as seen in THE NECESSITY OF SPECTACLE PT. 2:

When opposed megadynamic forces exist in a narrative but are not the main focus of the narrative, such a work is "subcombative" and the opposed forces are what I will term "diffuse forces" rather than "centric forces"-- on which I may write sometime later.

On this blog I've only occasionally mentioned  Northrop Frye's geometrically based distinction between "the centrifugal and the centripetal:"

"Frye uses the terms 'centripetal' and 'centrifugal' to describe his critical method. Criticism, Frye explains, is essentially centripetal when it moves inwardly, towards the structure of a text; it is centrifugal when it moves outwardly, away from the text and towards society and the outer world."-- Wikipedia, "Northrop Frye."

Despite not making reference to those precise terms, though, this section of Frye's ANATOMY was a great influence on me. I would imagine that when I wrote these words, I was thinking to some extent about the "diffuse forces" being like unto the so-called "centripetal" force, that tends outward from the center, while the "centric" were like unto "centrifugal force," tending toward the center.

The big problem, though, is that "centric" and "diffuse" aren't really viable opposites, though the former does have a more workable antonym: From Dictionary.com:

CENTRIC: "pertaining to or situated at the center."

ECCENTRIC: "not having the same center; not concentric."

Usually when I've introduced a new term in place of an old one, I've simply let the old blog-label remain unchanged and started new tracings for the new term. However, since as of today I only had six tracings for the labels "centric force" (or "will") and its original opposite, I've scrubbed away the old, mixed-up terms in the labels, but not in the essays themselves. From now on, I'll use only "centric will" for any element that assumes a central position in the narrative, and "eccentric will" for any element outside the center.

While most bloggers don't trouble to revise old essays, even in their labels, I do so whenever I come up with a formulation that better clarifies my position. I've revised these two forms of authorial will with the expectation of using them to further illustrate another theoretical concept. The concepts of both the "51 percent rule and of its corrollary of "active and passive shares," last referenced here, has become vital to my method of sussing out the importance of divergent elements within narratives. This terminological "house-cleaning" has thus come about in order to bring the two forms of authorial will in line with the general idea of how centricity is achieved, and what it means.

ADDENDUM 1-25-2026: Amusingly, years later the active/passive share concept has not remained "vital" to my system. It seemed like it at the time. 

 

STRUGGLE VS. COMBAT PT. 2

Here's an illustration of the difference between "struggle" and "combat," one that doesn't invoke Kantian concepts like "dynamic-sublime."

Character A uses Force X to push character B backward.

At the same time, Character C uses the same amount of kinetic energy, Force X, to push character D backward.

The amount of power exercised by A and C is thus identical. However, the act as a whole is different when we learn that:

Character B is standing at the edge of a water-filled pool, and will fall into deep water if he loses his balance.

Character D is standing at the top of a long stairway, with many many steps to fall if he loses his balance.

In THE THREE PART HARMONY OF DYNAMICITY, I designated three separate terms for assigning a level of power to any given character. I'll arbitrarily cut these down to two for the purpose of this thought-experiment, and say that any demonstration of personal power that does not reach the highest level, "the megadynamic," automatically falls into one lower category, that of "the mesodynamic." Often, whenever I've parsed out the level of power a given character possesses, I've utilized close textual reading to decide whether or not there's any proof in the text that allows me to rate the personal power or, say, Hamlet in comparison to Coriolanus. I found, in other essays on dynamicity, that Coriolanus had a valid claim to megadynamicity while Hamlet's claim was not nearly as strong.

But in the parallel examples offered above, nothing is said about the power-level or even the skill-level of the persons performing the act of assault. They use the exact same force in both cases, so it's impossible to judge if one possesses more than the other. However, the person assaulted in the second situation is more likely to be seriously harmed than the person in the first situation. Granted, Character B may fall into the pool and hit his head on the concrete surrounding the pool, or there may be other complications that keep Character B from keeping afloat in the pool. But these are special cases, whereas when Character D goes off the top of the stairway, it's very likely he will be injured by that fall no matter what his particular circumstances (barring things like the power of invulnerability and so on).

So in this parallel situation we have someone exerting the same amount of force-- which may or may not indicate how strong the character doing the pushing is-- but the result of one shove is unlikely to result in serious injury, and the result of the other is extremely likely. So "intent" can have some effect upon the dynamicity of a given character's actions, even when the actual force may not be all that spectacular.

I addressed the question of "intent vs. execution" in this 2015 essay, where I considered two films in which the culminating fight-scene was not executed very well. Yet I judged that one of the two films conveyed the general sense of a battle between opposed megadynamic forces, because this seemed to be the general *intent* of the director, while the director of the other film did not provide even slight textual clues to indicate his protagonist's power. Using the current set of terms, I would say that the former film exhibited "combat" while the latter exhibited only "struggle," but here the subject of intent was extra-diegetical. In the parallel situations above, "intent" is intra-diegetical; each character providing the push-force is aware of how much potential damage will wreak on the person pushed. Character A is not likely to think that a fall in a pool will seriously harm Character B, while Character C knows that a fall down a stairwell will add enough kinetic force to the original Force X to seriously injure Character D.

Thus, in terms of the context of the respective acts, Character A's act is that of mesodynamic struggle, while Character C's act is that of megadynamic combat.

NEAR MYTHS: ZERO'S FAMILIAR (2006)

As with the earlier MAYO CHIKI, the manga ZERO'S FAMILIAR could never be one of my mythcomics because it derives from a prose novel-series.

However, ZERO's has even less claim to symbolic density than MAYO CHIKI. It's an amiable enough comedy-fantasy, but it does not develop its mythic themes. I won't attempt to write a single essay on it here, but will include, for possible later reference, some of the notes I've made on the manga-series for my "superhero idiom" project.

OVERVIEW: In the extradimensional world of Halkegina, several kingdoms, all loosely modeled on medieval European domains, exist alongside real dragons and griffins. Aristocrats who can practice real magic rule the various countries. Young nobles, such as Louiss de la Valliere, attend schools to hone their mastery of magic, but Louise happens to be one of the worst students. When all students in her class are called upon to call up their destined familiara, Louise opens a dimensional gate to Earth. High-school student Saito Hiraga walks through the doorway and becomes bonded to Louise. (It’s later suggested that Earth and Halkeginia have interacted before, and that the two youngsters may be distantly related to a famous mage-and-familiar pair from the early history of Halkegina.) Louise is initially scornful about having a human being for a familiar, and treats him like a lowly servant, and sometimes as a dog, literally on a leash. However, the two teens become drawn to each other, and Louise becomes jealous if Saito even looks at another female. Both become involved in a battle against Reconquista, a rebel movement aimed at forcing Halkegina to serve one rule.

And my interpretation:

 Despite the comical “boy-meets-girl” plot-lines, the interaction of Louise and Saito—one a noble, the other a “commoner”—reflects a familiar trope in Japanese fiction: that of the lordly “daiimyo” and his faithful samurai, seen through the prism of “witch and familiar.” There are light S&M tropes in the relationship as well, though it’s noteworthy that Saito isn’t yanked into Halkegina against his will. Rather, he enters the dimension-doorway out of curiosity and boredom with the mundane Earth-world, and so in a sense he enters into the relationship willingly.

ETHICS AMONG THE SUBCOMBATIVES PT. 3

At the end of Part 2 of this series, I said:

In Part 3 of this new series, I'll explore some of the ramifications involved when a subcombative work aligns itself with themes most often seen in combative works.

This comment grew out of my reading of a particular subcombative work, Mark Twain's PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC. The ideal expressed in Twain's work is one I find uncharacteristic of most subcombative works. I take this snippet from Chapter 17:

She was great in battle—we all know that; great in foresight; great in loyalty and patriotism; great in persuading discontented chiefs and reconciling conflicting interests and passions; great in the ability to discover merit and genius wherever it lay hidden; great in picturesque and eloquent speech; supremely great in the gift of firing the hearts of hopeless men and noble enthusiasms, the gift of turning hares into heroes, slaves and skulkers into battalions that march to death with songs on their lips. But all these are exalting activities; they keep hand and heart and brain keyed up to their work; there is the joy of achievement, the inspiration of stir and movement, the applause which hails success; the soul is overflowing with life and energy, the faculties are at white heat; weariness, despondency, inertia—these do not exist.

Now the thematic reason that Twain writes eloquently of "the soul-- overflowing with life and energy" is to serve a greater purpose, to make clear what values Joan incarnates, the better to serve the book's theme, to show readers what was lost when she was destroyed by vicious and small-minded persecution. In the terms I've appropriated from Theodore Gaster, Twain's JOAN OF ARC most closely aligns with the *purgative* mode:

First the rites of mortification, symbolizing the temporary eclipse of the community. Next the rites of purgation, by which all noxious elements that might impair the community's future welfare are eliminated. Then the rites of invigoration, aimed at stimulating the growth of crops, the fecundity of humans and beasts, and the supply of needed sunshine and rainfall throughout the year. Finally, when the new lease is assured, come the rites of jubilation; there is a communal meal at which the members of the community recement their bonds of kinship by breaking bread together, and at which their gods are present.

Still, I find it interesting that, in the section printed above, Twain frames Joan's virtues in terms that I consider more linked to the mode of invigoration. This is a very different approach from, say, George Bernard Shaw's SAINT JOAN, where the author is more concerned with seeing Joan not in terms of her immediate impact on France's fortunes on the battlefield, but in terms of intellectual history:

“A Frenchman! Where did you pick up that expression? Are these Burgundians and Bretons and Picards and Gascons beginning to call themselves Frenchmen, just as our fellows are beginning to call themselves Englishmen? They actually talk of France and England as their countries. Theirs, if you please! What is to become of me and you if that way of thinking comes into fashion?” 

Shaw's SAINT JOAN is much more unified in terms of its mode, which I would consider that of *mortification,* which I've lined up with the Fryean mythos of irony. Twain, however, returns me to the concept of "subdominant elements" as expressed in this 2011 essay:

“Subdominant” indicates that a given narrative makes extensive use of the elements of one mythos even though the narrative as a whole fits another mythos better.

Now, although Twain's JOAN OF ARC is still a drama in the *purgative* mode, the author also makes a subdominant invocation of the *invigorative* mode. This means that it aligns itself, like such classic works as THE ILIAD, with my "narrative rule of excess," as glossed by Nietzsche.

 "To demand of strength that it should not express itself, that it should not be a will to overcome, overthrow, dominate, a thirst for enemies and resistance and triumph, makes as little sense as to demand of weakness that it should express itself as strength."-- ON THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.

What's fascinating is that while THE ILIAD is concerned with its heroes, who display this "thirst for enemies and resistance and triumph," Twain's work is concerned with an inspirational figure who encourages Frenchmen to fight and overcome their English enemies. At the same time, her ability to inspire warriors in the field does not extend to the legalists and religionists of her own nascent nation, and this is the "Achilles heel" that dooms her. Still, Twain's perception of "the rule of excess"-- obviously, through his own distinct cultural lens-- arguably makes his JOAN OF ARC a deeper and more artistic accomplishment than, say, SAINT JOAN.

STRUGGLE VS. COMBAT PT. 1

My overview of the "Hammer Dracula series" in TRANSITIVE MONSTERS PT. 2 moves me to advance a minor term, that of "struggle," in contrast to "combat."

In numerous essays I've noted how some works possess the potential for the combative mode but fail, for assorted reasons, to achieve this special archetypal synthesis. In 2013's SEMICOMBATIVE VS. SUBCOMBATIVE,  I noted that if one could, in theory, distinguish between subcombative works that portray the act of combat and those that have no action that even comes close to the act. But because my panoply of theoretical thoughts is complicated enough, I chose not to bother incorporating the term "semicombative."

Yet it seems to me that it might be useful to have a term for acts of fictive violence that *almost* make the grade. TRANSITIVE MONSTERS 2 demonstrates that the only combative works in the Hammer Dracula series are the four films in which the master vampire contends with one of Hammer's versions of Bram Stoker's Professor Von Helsing. The other four films nevertheless end with violent struggles, usually between the vampire and some young swain, but I judge these to be subcombative because  "the implication [of these films] Is always that ordinary humans can only muddle through and win by last-minute flashes of inspiration."

I suggested some of the theoretical distance between the struggle and the combat in one of my observations from STORMING ACROSS THE THRESHOLD PART 2:

[Regarding] BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS and THE GIANT BEHEMOTH--As much as their cinematic progenitor, the 1933 King Kong, both depend on giant critters wreaking havoc in big cities and then being defeated by whatever forces human beings can muster against them. In the end, no matter what specific arguments I put forth, they boil down to the subjective feeling that BEAST only tromps its way over the megadynamicity threshold, while BEHEMOTH "storms" across, in part because it shows a greater propensity toward the "dynamic-sublime."

I don't foresee re-using the metaphorical distinction between "tromping" and "storming" again, but it seems to me that a lot of the subcombative works described in the STORMING essay are best seen as films that involve "struggle," but fail to concentrate the action-elements enough to produce that instance of the "dynamic-sublime" called "combat."

MYTHCOMICS: "FIVE BILLION YEARS" (GREEN LANTERN #200, 1986)

I noted in my mythcomics analysis of "The God Killer" that it was only a part of a greater saga, but that I didn't find the entire story to have the necessary symbolic density necessary for a mythcomic.

"Panther's Rage" is rambling and episodic, and though it's never boring, its myth-themes are not integrated enough to make me list the entire arc...

"Five Billion Years" is a similar case. It's the culmination of a long arc involving DC's space-opera superhero and many of his fellow Green Lanterns from assorted planets. If that wasn't complicated enough, the greater arc is tied into DC's multi-feature epic, CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, and works in a lot of DC history seen in stories like THE SECRET ORIGIN OF THE GUARDIANS and THE SECRET LIFE OF STAR SAPPHIRE. (Below is a quick contemporaneous recap of Star Sapphire's origin.)

 In addition, this arc proved notable for building up the character of Guy Gardner, the Bad Boy of the Lantern Corps:

Most of these developments, however, relate purely to lateral meaning as I described it in RETHINKING THE UNDERTHOUGHT. The symbolic density of myth comes into being through the mythopoeic potentiality, which aligns itself with a narrative's "underthought" and frequently, though not invariably, is granted greater profundity by its interaction with the "overthoughts" of the didactic potentiality. Lateral meaning describes what the characters experience physically and what readers should understand of its emotional meaning, and so the lateral elements of this story-- things that relate purely to Hal Jordan's romantic problems or his duels with old and new enemies-- are irrelevant to the matter of myth.

The underthought of "Five Billion Years" reveals yet another "secret origin" for the Guardians of the Universe. Although Green Lantern's mentors spend most of their career looking like sexless, hyper-intellectual dwarfs, "Five Billion" hearkens back to their origins as gendered entities-- which begs the intellectual question, "what happened to the other gender?" In short, the Zamarons-- who, since their introduction in John Broome's Star Sapphire origin, were always depicted as all-female-- are called upon to be the missing "other half" of the mortal race that gave rise to the Guardians.

The confrontation of the Guardians and the Zamarons has one extrinsic purpose, to link the events of the GREEN LANTERN comic to upcoming, post-Crisis events like the MILLENNIUM mini-series. However, Englehart is skillful enough to give this "big event" a strong intrinsic meaning, in that the reunion of the two sexes is touted as an evolutionary necessity. One Guardian says:

The race born on Malthus and and developed on Oa and Zamaron must be regenerated to create a new breed of immortal...

But before this can happen, the most prominent Guardian must duel the most prominent Zamaron to prove the former's fitness to mate with the latter. Since the duel takes place in terms of energy-blasts, the event shouldn't convey any anti-feminine sentiments except to those determined to find that sort of thing.

After the head Guardian proves, at least by implication, that he and his fellows still have the Stuff, they and the Zamarons fly off to some celestial plane, telling the Green Lanterns that they too must evolve, so as to be their own masters. Their own personal "devil" Sinestro attempts to tag along in the guise of a Guardian, but he's caught, and confesses, in very Earth-centric terms, that his intention was to become "a lurking serpent in your new and secret haven."

From what memories I have of MILLENNIUM and the somewhat related NEW GUARDIANS title, I don't think the Guardians succeeded in coming up with their "new breed." In any case the little blue men didn't stay away very long, but returned to the GREEN LANTERN within the next twenty issues, prior to its cancellation.

On a minor side-note, Englehart tries to extend his evolution-metaphor into one of Green Lantern's battles, as the hero bests the mentally endowed super-villain Hector Hammond, telling Hammond, "You've reached the far end of your evolution, while I'm still going." But it's at best a forced metaphor at that point. Whatever the long-term execution of the "Guardians have sex" concept, "Five Billion Years" does manage to impart a sense of space-opera grandeur to the proceedings.

THE CONFEDERACY AND THE DUNCES PT. 2

Just another statement of general principles re: the Confederacy on some forum...

____________

Neither the Union nor the Confederacy was innocent of making profit from slavery, the South simply made more, to the extent that they didn't want to give up those profits when the North sought to marginalize them politically. And when I say "they," I mean not just "rich Southerners," but everyone who profited from Southern States enjoying prominence in politics. For that matter, the whole country profited from the industry of the South, and the same logic you use against the Confederacy could be turned against the Union. After all, the Union promoted emancipation as a war strategy, but what did it do for freedmen after the war? Allowed the South to institute Black Codes; allowed those "rich Southerners" to reclaim their property if they signed loyalty oaths. So, even though the Southern States  were "traitors," the "legitimate authority" of the Union can be seen as being no less opposed to the interests of black people. So your basic reducio ad absurdum would be that neither Union nor Confederate officers should be honored, because neither one did much to help black people.

The North did not fight the war, as Lincoln supposedly claimed, to free slaves. The serious abolitionists had moral reasons for wanting abolition, but the general indifference of the post-Civil War North to the fate of freedmen indicates that black people were just pawns that the North had employed against the South.

Given that neither side acted for dominantly moral reasons, neither side deserves monuments on that basis. But by the same token, since there is a "lack of morality" equivalence between them, one should not be denied while the other is allowed. Monuments may or may not be used at times for political reasons, but the dominant reason is that of a culture writing itself a Valentine that romanticizes the strengths and ignores the faults. You want to say "the South was nothing but a rotten cesspool," when the truth is that, judged from the position of the slavery issue, the whole country was a rotten cesspool. But there's no political advantage to be had from getting rid of all monuments in the U.S., so it all becomes about "Southern heritage is nothing but slavery" and making the South into a scapegoat for the sins of all.