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SIX KEYS TO A LITERARY GENETIC CODE

In essays on the subject of centricity, I've most often used the image of a geometrical circle, which, as I explained here,  owes someth...

Saturday, March 16, 2019

STATURE REQUIREMENTS PT. 6

Before going on to the essay I mentioned in PART 5, I'll follow up on my remarks regarding distributive and non-distributive applications of charisma.

I mentioned in PART 4 that there were situations in which heroic characters could remain on the periphery of a ensemble while remaining subordinate to the ensemble. It's also possible for a very large group to be subordinate to one centric protagonist, even when that group has elements in common with the centric ensemble.

I've already discussed my determination that Ivanhoe, the protagonist of Scott's novel, is inextricably the focal presence of the narrative, even though the character may not be nearly as interesting as many other characters in the story. But few of the support-characters of IVANHOE play off one another to the extent one expects of a real ensemble-narrative.

To turn to an example generally deemed the centerpiece of Western fiction, Aristotle opined in the POETICS that THE ILIAD served as a model for his concept of "unity of action." The philosopher states that, despite all the many side-stories involving both Greek and Trojan warriors, the epic poem is primarily about "the anger of Achilles," in that the story begins with Achilles withdrawn from the battlefield in anger, and concludes with the hero mastering his rage to some extent when he releases the body of Hector to Priam. If Aristotle is judged right, then all of the other characters in THE ILIAD are subordinate to Achilles. Thus the charisma of the Greek warrior, at least in Homer's rendition, is non-distributive.

In contrast, at a much later date Apollonius Rhodius attempted his own epic, THE ARGONAUTICA, which like THE ILIAD consisted of imposing a single order upon an assortment of myth-tales. That said, although one may argue, after Aristotle, that the quest of heroic Jason for the Golden Fleece is a single action, the quest isn't as indubitably tied only to Jason's charisma as THE ILIAD is to the charisma of Achilles. Not a few comic-book people have asserted a basic identity between Jason's assemblage of many heroes for the quest and the 20th century's invention of the "superhero team." Questions of direct influence, however, are less important than discerning basic structural similarities, and I would say that the idea of  a multi-character ensemble is far more important to THE ARGONAUTICA than it is to THE ILIAD. The most prominent warriors of Homer's epic-- Odysseus, Ajax, et al-- tend to have adventures that are simply side-notes to the theme of the great Achilles' anger, which, both extrinsically and extrinsically, determines the course of the poem. However, in THE ARGONAUTICA, there are assorted moments where this or that hero performs a task that advances the achievement of the quest. Examples of these feats include Calias and Zetes driving the harpies away from Phineus, and Polydeuces using his specialized boxing skill to defeat a mountainous enemy. So in Apollonius's work, the charisma is clearly distributive, and characters like Polydeuces and Heracles are clearly coordinated with Jason's centricity .

That said, it isn't necessarily the case that every single character who went along with Jason is a crucial part of the ensemble. Hylas, allegedly the lover of Heracles, exists in the poem simply to be swept away to his doom by a water-nympth, and this event provides the occasion for Heracles to leave the quest. Whatever the provenance of this story-element in oral myth, this circumstance does give Apollonius the chance to create suspense as to whether the endeavor can succeed without the presence of the Greek strongman.

So perhaps the true determining factor here is whether or not the characters associated with the ensemble undertake a particular type of action important to the story-- possibly "charismatic action." I devoted Part 4 to explaining why the Black Widow in the 1960s AVENGERS series did not belong to the centric ensemble, in contrast to Marvel's Hercules, and my distinction was not that the Widow simply was not a member of the team, but the fact that her actions in the story did not contribute substantially to the ensemble's assorted "quests."

Thus, even though THE ARGONAUTICA, unlike THE ILIAD, distributes its charisma to a group of characters, all of whom are "coordinate clauses" to one another, some characters allied to the group remain subordinate, or, as the lingo of the theater has it, they remain 'spear-carriers."

This brings me back, in my usual circuitous fashion, to the comment I made at the end of ENSEMBLES DISASSEMBLED:

....if I were ever moved to list exactly which characters in the compendious CRISIS [ON INFINITE EARTHS] belonged to the ensemble, I would probably include only those that had a very strong influence upon the outcome of the overall plot.

At some future point I may investigate why I deem that certain long-running serials, like the manga-serials DRAGONBALL and BLEACH, are non-distributive like THE ILIAD, rather than distributive like the Jason epic.

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