EXCITING REACTIONS! REACTIVE EXCITEMENT! PT. 2

 I wrote the previous essay in this series back in April, but of course in the meantime I've been applying the "excitant/reactant" dyad to various other narratives. In the April essay I deliberately chose very simple examples of the dyad between Prime icon and assorted Sub icons by focusing on Japanese kaiju films. Here I want to discourse on a more involved narrative, which includes not just a "protagonist" amd "antagonist" but also assorted icons who may be aligned to either entity or may have no clear alignment to either.

My choice this time is Roger Corman's 1957 horror-movie THE UNDEAD. Within a tidy 75 minutes of screen-time, the script by Charles B Griffith and Mark Hanna offers a variegated cast of characters, beginning with the three who occupy the film's frame-story: the psychic researcher Quintus, his patient Diana Love, and Quintus' mentor.

My review noted that UNDEAD was "spiritually" indebted to the prose bestseller THE SEARCH FOR BRIDEY MURPHY, and this is never clearer than in the frame-story, wherein Quintus takes the part of the delver into the unknown by hypnotizing prostitute Diana Love into experiencing her previous life in another time and place. I stress that the bare bones of this frame story COULD have been expanded into a full narrative, wherein Quintus as the experimenter was the excitant and Diana the reactant. though either could have become the Prime icon depending on the narrative emphasis. Indeed, two other reincarnation dramas of the same period show opposing emphases. In SPELL OF THE HYPNOTIST, the psychiatrist uses his hypnosis-talents to play detective, actually invalidating the reactant-icon's claim to reincarnation. In THE SHE CREATURE, the vengeful researcher Lombardi functions as the excitant, calling up the titular creature from the vasty deep to occupy the body of his reactant-subject, a modern young woman. But it's the woman, in her dual identity as modern innocent and primeval monster, who drives the narrative. (I should note that CREATURE also includes a bevy of secondary reactants, mostly opposed to Lombardi's goals though at least one becomes the mad doctor's ally by not taking his threat seriously.)

So, back to UNDEAD. Once the true, internal story gets going-- that of Diana's "former life," Elizabethan-era Helene-- it becomes evident that the innocent Helene is both reactant and Prime Icon, while the witch Livia, who frames Helene with a spurious charge of Satanic sorcery. is both excitant and Sub Icon. Although Helene spends most of the film fleeing from pillar to post, in the end she sacrifices her life for the sake of the temporal order. (That's my version of the confusing rationale supplied by Griffith and Hanna.) Her reaction to the evil fate assigned her by the murderous Livia is the crux of the story, in marked contrast to the majority of witch-stories, where the actions of the sorceress, whether malign or benign, are usually the narrative focus. 

Helene and Livia both perish, though in the far future Diana Love somehow gains a new lease on life thanks to Helene's sacrifice. As for Quintus, his importance in the main narrative devolves to that of being an ally to Helene. The transplanted researcher saves Helene's swain Pendragon from selling his soul to Livia's dark lord, and as a result Pendragon dispenses rough justice by killing Livia. Quintus, like many other scientists who get wrapped up in their experiments, forgets that he's dependent on the "psychic hotline" he set up between Diana and Helene, and once Helene dies, Quintus can't return to the 20th century-- much to the amusement of Livia's horn-headed patron.

Though evil scores two wins in THE UNDEAD. the conclusion is meant to reassure the viewer that Helene's sacrifice tips the scales toward the preservation of an orderly, and thus good, cosmos. Though as I said the writers don't really provide a good explanation for that order, it now occurs to me that they COULD have said that in the original timeline Helene dies and Pendragon still kills Livia and then marries someone else-- and thus Helene, in sacrificing herself, preserves the temporal progeny of Pendragon's other wife. But such details probably would have doubled UNDEAD's sparse run-time.              

CURIOSITIES: "SWEET LITTLE FOURTEEN"

 Now this one makes AMERICAN SHOTACON looks "normie" by comparison. I've mentioned that I usually don't read online humor comics issue by issue but skip around to see what I might click on randomly. Which is how I stumbled across issue 345 of ARCHIE'S GIRLS BETTY AND VERONICA, and found this:

 

 

 

I don't think I was reading any ARCHIE comics in the early 1970s, so I didn't know that there was a story in which Veronica had a little-girl cousin named Pamela, who created some mischief and then fell in love with Jughead. But GCD established as much for me, after I was thunderstruck by the bizarre 1986 follow-up to the 1972 story: "Sweet Little Fourteen."

I mean, I would never have blinked an eye had the story dealt with a SIXTEEN-year old girl who intruded on the territory of Betty, Veronica and their similarly ageless teen buddies. But the writer goes out of her way not to just state that Pamela is now a well-developed fourteen, but that both Archie and Reggie keep salivating over Pamela even AFTER they've been told she's nowhere close to legal.

My only guess as to why such a story would appear in a squeaky-clean ARCHIE title is that (1) someone in editorial was asleep at the wheel, AND (2) that the 1986 writer was exorcising some demons, maybe regarding some bf with freaky tastes.   

MYTHCOMICS" "SNOW WHITE AND THE DEADLY DWARFS" (VAMPIRELLA #39, 1975)

 

Once or twice, I've stated that I believe that the crafting of concrescent mythcomics is a democratic talent. It doesn't appear only in the works of whatever persons are deemed "the Greats" of the medium. That said, raconteurs who produce a lot of material to sustain themselves as professionals may not always do their best work in the best-known features. For instance, both Gerry Conway and Len Wein had long tenures on the SPIDER-MAN title, but neither of them produced much of anything with a strong symbolic discourse. Each also labored in the world of the horror genre, though, and so I did find that they did rather better in that bailiwick. Steve Skeates is another writer whose contributions to superhero titles I found ordinary, but I recently came across this 1975 story. Since I usually don't read that many Warren horrors, I credit the oddball title "Snow White and the Deadly Dwarfs" with drawing me into this story Skeates co-authored with one Gerry Boudreau-- though the Esteban Maroto art held some appeal as well.     

The first two pages of this six-page effort establish that beautiful Myra Banner possesses an unexplained antipathy toward the outside world. Her backstory mentions that she did desert her "hortus conclusus" briefly to attend college at the Pennsylvania-based Swarthmore, where she was given the nickname "Snow White" as a comment on her reluctance to surrender her virginity, even to her nominal boyfriend Warren. Yet even Warren didn't believe that she lived with seven little bearded men, who seemed vaguely menacing though they never spoke to her nor interacted with her. 

Warren, for his part, has been extraordinarily patient, since he's continued to date her for three years after they both graduated college. He journeys to her fusty mansion to appeal to her once more, while to herself Myra wonders "what it was [about her body] that made those filthy men want to touch it." This minor detail makes an interesting contrast with the traditional Snow White story, in that the reader always knows that Snow is the "fairest in the land" even though the heroine herself is not aware of her burgeoning attractiveness.

     

The short tale proceeds to its climax as quickly as Warren attempts to argue his case, kissing Myra for the first time ever. Instead of Myra being awakened from a state of death by "true love's kiss," the kiss causes Myra to feel the need of protection-- and for the first time, the dwarfs speak, promising Myra their protection as they stab Warren to death. However, it's no great surprise that the dwarfs turn out to be projections of Myra's mind, and she's the one who really slays Warren to guard her purity.

The SNOW WHITE story in its best-known version has little to do with sexual fear, but it does center upon the young girl's need of a male protector. Most stories barely mention the father who inflicts on Snow the wrath of an irate stepmother, but in the standard tale, the seven dwarfs are manifestly unable to keep Snow from being killed, as the queen almost succeeds twice before apparently offing Snow on the third try. What the writers did here was to eliminate female fear of other females and to put Myra in between competing male protectors-- a contest which Warren manifestly loses. The traditional Snow is also a symbol of feminine purity, which makes her a willing prize for her prince charming. But here, though Myra considers that Warren endangered her sexual purity, she's also unwilling to accept her responsibility for violence, deflecting it onto "little men" who, despite their masculine nature, will never do anything to Myra but  to keep her in the state of isolation she desires.

One additional myth-trope appears in the eminent character's name. The last name "Banner" originally meant "one who carries a banner," as in wartime-- meaning someone who champions a cause. And while the name "Myra" may have two or three possible origins, the most relevant speculation is that it began as an anagram for "Mary." I hardly need mention the association of THAT name with the concept of feminine inviolability.    

         

 
     

MYTHCOMICS: "PLAYTHINGS OF PERIL" (SUPERMAN #44, 1947)

 

I've made no secret of my exasperation with most Golden Age SUPERMAN stories, despite their being under the creative control of the two men who originated the hero and so jump-started the costumed hero craze. After the inspired story of the Man of Steel's beginnings on Krypton, Siegel, Shuster and their various uncredited collaborators treated Superman like just another job, requiring no more effort than simple junk like "Federal Men" or "Slam Bradley." Admittedly, the majority of DC heroes weren't much better. But even though there might not be a ton of concrescent mythcomics at DC or at any other Golden Age company, I can find a lot more "near-myths" in the more popular features-- BATMAN, WONDER WOMAN, JUSTICE SOCIETY-- and a prevalence of near-myths, more than full myths, indicates that the comics-makers were engaged with creating inventive fantasies with which to grab the attention of kid-buyers.

But I finally found a concrescent SUPERMAN myth, albeit one published in the same year that Siegel and Shuster lost their contract with DC Comics, though the creators' names are cited on the first page of "Playthings." Fans identified the true authors as writer Don Cameron (who also co-created the story's villain) and artist Ira Yarbrough (who may have worked from roughs created by Shuster, though there's no record of even that contribution).

The first story-page establishes that "Playthings" will deal in part with economic hardship. To his credit, Jerry Siegel did a fair number of such tales, with the first appearing in ACTION COMICS #3, but those I've read I've found a trifle sappy. Cameron shows a harder edge. When Clark Kent and Lois Lane call upon the public to send help to the indigent of Metropolis, Clark notes that they aren't getting much response from the wealthy, who "sometimes need urging." And for once, Superman's foe the Toyman is on the same wavelength, though he wants to use the stinginess of the rich to enrich himself. Toyman approaches several businessmen with publicity schemes involving his fabulous toys: schemes for which the magnates pay nothing while they get a reputation for philanthropy. Toyman's remark is apposite: "They're all alike, these rich businessmen! Show them how to get something for nothing and they're happy!"

Toyman's game is yet another riff on the Trojan Horse: he hides cameras and microphones in the toys in order to glean info, and he also rigs the toys to malfunction so the rich guys will summon Toyman to repair the mechanisms. During the villain's first heist, the Man of Steel shows up. Since Toyman's weapons couldn't hurt the hero, the crook has to distract Superman with threats to human life, and, more amusingly, a company's tax records (!) 

 Superman foils Toyman's thefts, but when the hero makes a direct appeal to the charitable nature of the assembled businessmen, they turn a deaf ear. The rejoinder "I won't donate a penny to failures" is implicitly an indictment to all of them. Superman, however, promises that they'll soon learn the error of their ways.

   Just as Toyman realized that he could pull off crimes by using the magnates' desire for positive publicity, Superman figures out that he can compel ethical behavior with the threat of negative publicity. Ironically, about thirty years later, this is exactly how Siegel and Shuster were able to get pensions and credit lines out of stingy DC: by threatening to give bad publicity to the upcoming SUPERMAN movie. As for Toyman, the crusader lures him out of hiding by using another effigy to mock the reprobate for being in his "second childhood." Yet Superman doesn't give his foe adequate credit. Without Toyman's greed, the Man of Steel would have had no club to hold over the heads of the rich men, to make them correct a problem that required use of capital rather than super-powers. It's refreshing that at no time does the audience see the businessmen soften their hearts; they end up paying a hefty price for seeking free publicity, but at the end of the story they're still acquisitive greedheads. The end scene, in which the slums of the financially afflicted are consumed in "the greatest bonfire in the history of Metropolis" is particularly effective, giving the dissemination of bounty a touch of ritualism.

Jerry Siegel probably had no creative input into Cameron's story, except in the sense that Siegel first articulated the idea of the Herculean hero playing the role of a trickster, using satire and deception to make foolish mortals do the right thing.       

NEAR-MYTHS: "THE SUPER-FOES FROM PLANET X" (WORLD'S FINEST #96, 1958)

 

I've written elsewhere about how science fiction content increased in the "Superman Family" books of the late 1950s, but I confess I usually wasn't factoring in the WORLD'S FINEST comic, which began co-starring Batman and Robin with Superman. starting in 1954. I can't see how this feature could have been ruled by the alleged dictum to make the SUPERMAN titles resemble the 1952-58 ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN, though I may be prejudiced in that I saw heavy SF-content in the reprints I saw in my youth. Only a thorough study of the feature during the 1950s would answer the question one way or the other.

The only credited editor on WF 96 is Whitney Ellsworth, though the real work may have been any of his subordinates, such as Jack Schiff, who in these same years had been persuaded to insert more aliens into his two BATMAN titles. Most of these Bat-tales are not well regarded. But what didn't work well in the chronicles of the Dynamic Duo had often charming results for the "World's Finest" team, particularly thanks to the combined talents of writer Edmond Hamilton and artist Dick Sprang. 

Hamilton, one of the great space-opera writers of SF's Golden Age, outdid himself in "Super-Foes" with colorful alien monsters to test the united talents of Dynamic Duo and Man of Steel. Three times a disembodied voice warns the heroes of extraterrestrial menaces, starting with the "Solar Sponge."

On Batman's advice, Superman overloads the Sponge with amplified solar power. Then the voice warns of the menace of The Storm Top. a colossal whirligig that can whip up sea-tempests.

  The heroes send the Top spinning off into space (hope it doesn't land on J'onn J'onzz's Mars, or something). The voice then directs the good guys to a third locale, where they meet The Crawler, an insect that can make humans shrink with its antenna-vibrations.

  Once again, even in miniscule forms, teamwork vanquishes the ornery arthropod. Then the voice summons the heroes to yet another locale, where, after a little more trouble, they learn what's going on-- though it doesn't make a lot of sense when read by an adult.

So the sentients of Planet X lost the power to repair many of the machines with which they'd defended themselves from their world's natural predators. Ok, the message about not becoming too dependent on technology is okay, but the delivery needed some work. What Hamilton proposes is that despite the Xians' lack of overall knowledge, they conveniently retain the knowledge of how to operate one of their starships and to load it with specimens of Planet X predators for the Earth-heroes to overcome. The aliens' rationale for setting up the creature-fights is almost a recapitulation of the WORLD'S FINEST team's raison d'etre: having been given graphic examples of how nonpowered and super-powered heroes work together, the Xians claim they'll train themselves like Batman and Robin while having their robots perform super-feats. Of course, the real reason for the complicated deception was to intrigue the reader. And even at my current age, I found myself intrigued with the question of who started the trope of "hoax perpetrated by well-meaning types rather than thieves/murderers." But that's a question for another essay.         

PRIDE GOETH BEFORE A NATION

 Yesterday the United States passed its 250th anniversary. Since I probably will not be around for the 300th one, this is my last opportunity to discuss the question of what makes the nation special within an anniversary-context.

Many years ago, someone asked me if I was, as the song lyric goes, "proud to be an American." I recollect that at the time I was probably infected with some of the Liberal guilt-complex, so thinking about "The Indians" and "The Slaves" made outright pride difficult. Yet even then, I think I was aware that the nations that preceded America-- both in the Old Worlds of Asia and Europe, and in the pre-Columbian tribes of the "New World"-- had bloodied their hands so deeply in unjustifiable suffering that by comparison American hands  barely have more than red stains on their fingernails.

The culture of guilt-- which only APPEARS to be the polar opposite of pride-- has resulted in many recent clickbait articles on the subject of the 250th anniversary. The general gist of the articles seems to be "Conservatives are proud to be Americans, Liberals are not." A recent speech by New York Mayor Mandami takes a more cunning strategy, seeking to redefine American pride in terms of fighting entrenched power.

The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional because here, nothing is fixed into place. The frontier may be closed, we may have walked on the moon, but the work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence — that work endures, my friends, and it belongs to us all. It belongs too to our newest Americans, those standing here with me today, all of whom were recently naturalized. Nearly a decade ago, I too felt what you feel — the joy of no longer being just a New Yorker, but an American too. You each hold a special power. The power to determine what America means.  

The powerful have always known their answer. America, in their view, is an arena of supremacy, where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal. America, if you ask them, becomes less the more people it welcomes. America, they will tell you, belongs only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin. The rest of us, they insist, should be grateful for merely being allowed to visit.  

 

The problem with this simplistic "fight the power" ethic is that it says nothing about what it means if this nation, or any nation, acquires power, or any particular reason to use power in the manner Liberals approve of. For instance, if many Liberals think that the nation should have "open borders" while Conservatives disagree, then Mandami's logic is that the only possible reason for opposing Liberal permissiveness must be that old devil Racism. 

That's why I stated that guilt only appeared to be the polar opposite of pride. Mandami doesn't feel the weight of the collective guilt he seeks to foist upon his listeners; he's given himself exculpation by pretending to be one of The Elect. He doesn't want to be proud of the whole America, which like all other tribes and nations includes both dark sins, often undertaken for survival, and examples of far-sighted illumination. He's proud only of being an American Liberal, and any sins he commits are justified by the battle against entrenched interests. The idea that some Liberal causes become entrenched interests-- and that they would thus engender resentment and opposition-- would never occur to Mandami, though such opposition entirely fits with his cant that "nothing is fixed into place."

Today, though I'm still wary of the misuses of both patriotism and anti-patriotism, I'd say that no tribe or nation without the basic pride of self-survival: the pride that says, "We deserve to exist." Proverbs says that "pride goeth before destruction," but I believe the writer opposed the sort of pride in which individuals set themselves against the good of the people, which is symbolized as the will of God. Anti-patriots like Mandami don't ever care about the overall good of the people, and while a super-patriot like Trump may not care about people as such, he *may* be more likely to act in the interest of the nation as a whole.

In the Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake wrote, "The pride of the peacock is the glory of God." This is the self-assertiveness of all natural living things, even in creatures incapable of justifying their existences. When White settlers bought Black slaves from Muslim slave-dealers and used these slaves to carve a nation out of the wilderness, I can cavil as well as anyone that the decision was morally wrong. But I didn't live with the difficulties of frontier life, and I don't know absolutely that those slaveholders weren't partly justified in desiring to control a work force that couldn't pick up and leave when it pleased. My current answer to that long-ago question is that I am proud of the concatenation of wills, good and bad, that it took to make this country, and that I am also proud that the USA has done more than good than bad than most if not all of their predecessors.                    

             

THE READING RHEUM: FAHRENHEIT 451 (1953)

 

I liked most of Ray Bradbury's early works in my younger years. but on subsequent re-readings, certain works have struck me as somewhat precious and/or pretentious. For instance, I reread SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES a while back, but I found the novel too much "a thing or shreds and patches" for my taste. I even thought the 1983 film felt more coherent.

I didn't have that problem with FAHRENHEIT 451. Because the book is one of Bradbury's most popular works, there are ample articles talking about how the author wove together elements from several earlier narratives, abortive or otherwise. Yet even the few elements that didn't seem to work that well, such as the mechanical Hound at the fire station, were subsumed by the strength of the master trope: firemen who set fires.

In one commentary, Bradbury described 451 as a romance between not male and female, but between readers and their reading-materials. That's probably why there's no hint of an erotic relationship between the main character, book-burning fireman Guy Montag, and his wife Mildred, or between Montag and "the other woman" in his life, Clarisse McClellan. Both Guy and Mildred have been effectively neutered by their future-world culture: by a world that insists on the blandest possible entertainment. Mildred has fully embraced that escape from life's harsh realities, which is certainly one reason they have no children (though I don't remember small kids even making any appearances in 451). When Guy meets Clarisse, she kindles in him not romance but his submerged desire to be a father to such a vivacious young thing. Clarisse incarnates all the uncertainties of natural life, the things that the future-world represses. But since her primary importance is to force Guy to embrace incertitude in the form of reading materials, Bradbury writers Clarisse out of the novel in such a way that Guy never truly knows what happened to her.

Two other characters take over from Clarisse. Fire Captain Beatty projects the possibility that he may be covertly sympathetic to Guy's forbidden love affair with books, though this turns out to be an illusion. An older intellectual, Faber, is able to succor Guy to a new level of covert disobedience, but he too fades from the latter half of 451. In the justifiably famous conclusion, Guy finds his way to a community of people who memorize books, in a sense returning humankind to the oral tradition. Bradbury may have thought that Guy's pursuers might eventually discommode the book-commune, for on the last page Bradbury throws in a nuclear war that conveniently eradicates the repressive culture but leaves the commune free to rebuild.

Bradbury's poetic diction is never better than it is in 451, and anyone who loves reading will feel the passion the author brings to the seemingly endless possibilities of human art.