The visual metaphor of vectors
mentioned in the previous essay has led me to invert one of the ideas
stated in STATURE REQUIREMENTS PT.5. In that essay, I made a brief
comparison between an earlier centricity-term, “stature,” and a
newer one, “charisma.” I’ve now decided to reverse my formulations in that essay and to give stature more importance than charisma.
When I consider the base meanings of
the words, stature signifies the result of physical growth, while
charisma suggests a mysterious inner quality that appears from
we-know-not-where. I first spoke of stature with respect to the
Fryean mythoi, extrapolating the term from Aristotle’s assertion
that the characters of tragedies were weightier than the characters of
comedies. Thus my term “stature” connoted the different levels of
conviction that readers could find in characters belonging to each of the
mythoi. It now occurs to me that the idea of conviction also applies
to centricity; the focal presences that occupy center stage are those
around whom a given narrative revolves—which in turn means that
they inspire maximum conviction in comparison to other presences
within said narrative. I used “charisma” to denote this special
status. Yet now it occurs to me that it makes more sense to speak of
a superior vector of stature. For instance, in KNIGHTS OF COMBAT ANDCENTRICITY PT. 1, I examined Nancy Springer’s opinion that the
titular hero of Ivanhoe was not the star simply because he was not as
interesting as other characters in the novel. I rejected this idea.
Yet I must admit that Ivanhoe does not have much of what one would
call “charisma” in the ordinary sense of the word. However, what
he does have is “stature.” He is the hero because his moral
compass inspires maximum conviction in the reader. One may not believe that
Ivanhoe resembles anyone in real life, but as the embodiment of the author's principal idea the knight is the glue that holds this particular novel together. The
same principle would apply to those ensembles that I’ve judged to
be distributive in nature, such as the Blackhawks and the Avengers.
However, charisma can be used to
account for the fact that subsidiary characters in a narrative may
hold more sheer appeal than those who enjoy the greatest stature. I
would not disagree, for instance, that in IVANHOE the character of
the Jewess Rowena proves more interesting than Ivanhoe. But now I
would say that this fact merely indicates that Rowena has a
charisma-vector superior to that of Ivanhoe, while he still has a
stature-vector superior to hers. In terms of centricity, though,
stature is always the sole indicator.
Charisma only affects centricity
indirectly, and only in the evolution of serial narratives. For
instance, in season 2 of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, the creators
introduced Spike as a more confrontational enemy for the heroine. One
could easily hold the opinion that Spike possessed greater charisma
than Buffy, even though, being both a subordinate character and a
villain, he could not possess greater stature. Hypothetically, the
producers might have chosen, for whatever reason, to make Spike a
co-equal partner to the Slayer, and then he might have attained a distributive stature. The showrunners did not go in such a direction, and so, for
the length of his tenure on the BUFFY show, Spike always had a stature-vector
unequal to that of the non-distributive heroine. Then the character
migrated to the show ANGEL—which for some time had been of the
distributive model, with Angel sharing stature with other members—and
only here, whether they outshone others in charisma or not, Spike
finally acquired stature equal to that of the other regular members.
This model also proves useful for
describing a work in which a subordinate character seems to steal the
center stage from the apparent star. For instance, I’ve written here that even though BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE is dominated by the
story of the Joker’s origin, it’s still a “Batman story.”
This is because the story does not diverge from the dominant model of
the continuing Batman series, wherein Batman always possesses greater
stature than any of his villains. However, there’s no question that
in KILLING JOKE the Joker possesses a charisma-vector greater than
that of Batman, whom, as I remarked in my review of the graphic
novel, often seems in the nature of a tired old cop.
The same dynamic also applies to those
serials that often or always focus upon “guest stars”who never
again appear in the series. Early installments of Will Eisner’s
SPIRIT are structured like almost every other adventure-hero feature,
in which the Spirit helps good people and vanquishes bad people.
However, even in the earliest years Eisner sometimes devoted stories
to one-shot characters who seemed to take center stage, in that their
triumphs or tragedies received the most attention. However, the
Spirit was still the thread holding all of those one-shot characters
together, and so he retained the greatest stature, even in stories
like THE CURSE, in which the hero barely appears. As discussed in HOSTS, HEAVENLY AND OTHERWISE, the only exception to this centricity formulation appears
in certain anthology titles. When a continuing character merely
appears as an interlocutor—Jorkens in Arthur C. Clarke’s TALES OF
THE WHITE HART, or the many “horror hosts” in comic-book
titles—then whatever focal presence inspires the most conviction in
each story possesses the greatest stature-vector, though not
necessarily the greater charisma-vector.
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